Implementing a Polkadot-native system parachain for data storage: Phase 1/3

We would like to add native storage offering to Polkadot.

One that uses DOT exclusively as the native token and where anyone in the ecosystem through XCM would be able to store and retrieve data. This is mainly inspired by the vision Gavin presented at Decoded 23 about building the Ubiquitous Supercomputer. When thinking about the app-centricity design and the Space and Cores model it will be critical for us to have native storage and not depend on other networks.

This basically extends the Polkadot value offering to include storage, similar to Filecoin, and brings us closer to the supercomputer vision.

We believe it's very important that this work is done as a system parachain with DOT used as the fee token, otherwise, any dependence on other networks or other tokens would undermine the goals.

Compared to existing offerings like Crust:

1. Crust uses IPFS as its underlying storage network, on the other hand this would be native storage provided by the Polkadot storage providers, not the same storage network, not a subset. Even if you have a great incentivization model, being dependent on the storage technology limits what you can offer and how far you can innovate. For one to be free from these constraints it needs to have control of the whole stack.

2. We are not proposing to create a new token on top of which our business model and investor returns would be built upon. This is a network owned solution, a system parachain, not a private endeavor like Crust. We want DOT to be the exclusive fee payment token. Someone said in another chat "than put all the eggs into the basket of one team which, if it disappears, takes the product with it (which is the case with every parachain right now)" and that is what we are trying to avoid and solve for. We just want to build the solution, not own it, system parachain, so avoiding "here's another token". Everything would be open source, open license, no ownership. Anyone can then make proposals to maintain and improve it. This whole industry, this is what its all about, open source and decentralization, making the system own itself.

Read our full proposal here.

Notes about our experience:

• We are bringing MoveVM to Substrate

• We worked on and maintained IPFS in Rust for several years. Our engineers are the top contributors (Eiger is a child company of Equilibrum)

• More about our experience in section 2.4 of the proposal document

More links:

• Our 48 page extensive research on how to do this. Read this as it complements this proposal

• Polkadot forum discussion.

• Github repository

• Eiger website