Space Summary
The Twitter Space ArkreenTalk with Ehsan from Functionland hosted by arkreen_network. ArkreenTalk with Ehsan from Functionland delves into the transformative potential of Web3 technology in reshaping global renewable energy landscapes. The discussion emphasizes the role of decentralized systems, blockchain transparency, and Functionland's contribution to sustainability through innovative Web3 solutions. Insights highlight the challenges and opportunities in integrating blockchain with renewable energy, aiming to drive positive environmental impact and drive sustainability through scalable Web3 solutions.
For more spaces, visit the Infrastructure page.
Questions
Q: How does Web3 technology contribute to global renewable energy resources?
A: Web3 enables decentralized and efficient mechanisms for integrating renewable energy globally.
Q: What role does blockchain play in enhancing transparency in carbon reduction?
A: Blockchain provides a secure and transparent platform for tracking and measuring carbon reduction activities.
Q: Why are decentralized systems vital for advancing renewable energy efforts?
A: Decentralized systems promote resilience, efficiency, and democratization in renewable energy applications.
Q: How do Web3 and blockchain intersect with carbon reduction initiatives?
A: Web3 and blockchain technology streamline carbon offsetting mechanisms, ensuring accountability and traceability.
Q: What challenges lie in integrating blockchain with renewable energy solutions?
A: Challenges include scalability, interoperability, regulatory frameworks, and data accuracy within the energy sector.
Q: In what way does Functionland contribute to environmental sustainability through Web3?
A: Functionland leverages Web3 infrastructure to drive innovation, sustainability, and efficiency in renewable energy and carbon reduction practices.
Q: What impact can Web3 infrastructure have on environmental conservation efforts?
A: Web3 infrastructure can revolutionize energy distribution, carbon offsetting, and sustainability practices, fostering a greener future.
Q: How does Functionland address the scalability of Web3 solutions in renewable energy?
A: Functionland focuses on scalable and impactful Web3 solutions to address the evolving needs of renewable energy and sustainability challenges.
Q: What opportunities does Web3 present for redefining renewable energy processes?
A: Web3 opens up opportunities for innovative business models, transparency, and efficiency in renewable energy and carbon reduction applications.
Q: What is the vision of Functionland in the realm of environmental sustainability?
A: Functionland aims to pioneer Web3 solutions that drive positive environmental impact, sustainability, and global innovation in renewable energy and carbon reduction fields.
Highlights
Time: 12:03:29
Web3 Revolutionizing Renewable Energy Exploring the transformative potential of Web3 in reshaping global renewable energy landscapes.
Time: 12:15:47
Blockchain Transparency in Carbon Reduction Discussing how blockchain ensures transparency and trust in carbon reduction initiatives.
Time: 12:30:15
Functionland's Role in Sustainability Insights into how Functionland is driving sustainability through innovative Web3-powered solutions.
Time: 12:45:02
Scalability Challenges in Web3 Renewable Energy Examining the challenges and solutions for scaling Web3 infrastructure in renewable energy applications.
Time: 13:00:19
Integrating Blockchain with Renewable Resources Understanding the benefits and complexities of integrating blockchain technology with renewable energy sources.
Time: 13:15:57
Web3 Impact on Global Sustainability How Web3 technologies can impact global sustainability efforts in renewable energy and carbon reduction applications.
Time: 13:30:11
Functionland's Sustainability Vision Exploring Functionland's vision for sustainability through innovative Web3 strategies in the energy and environmental sectors.
Key Takeaways
- Web3 technology can transform the energy sector by enabling globally distributed renewable resources.
- Blockchain can enhance transparency and efficiency in carbon reduction applications.
- The importance of decentralized systems in advancing renewable energy and sustainability efforts.
- Interconnection between renewable energy, blockchain, and carbon reduction for a greener future.
- Exploration of how Web3 can revolutionize energy distribution and carbon offsetting initiatives.
- The role of Functionland in shaping the landscape of renewable energy and carbon reduction through Web3.
- Discussions on the potential scalability and impact of Web3 infrastructure on environmental conservation.
- Challenges and opportunities in integrating blockchain technology with renewable energy solutions.
- Insights on the intersection of Web3, blockchain, and environmental sustainability.
- How Functionland aims to drive innovation and sustainability through Web3 infrastructure.
Behind the Mic
Introduction and Overview
Yes. All right. I think we should get started. Right? Cool. Yeah. So, hello everyone. Welcome to our yet another episode of the ocarina talk. Today we have Ethan from Function Learn, so we're going to learn more about, you know, their project solutions, as usual. My name is Abba. I'm head of product and partnership at Akrine. So I will be guiding you through this topic, function learn, building the world's largest user own data ecosystem. So without spending much time. So I'll give Esan to introduce himself and also give brief background about the project they are working on.
Ethan's Introduction
So, hello, Ethan. Hey. Hey everyone. Thanks for inviting me. I'm eh sound, founder of Function Land. My background is actually technical, so I've been a software hardware developer for 20 years creating software hardware solutions for large corporations such as L'Oreal. And we started function land a few years ago. Actually, it was the time that Google announced that they are removing the free tier from their photos app. So it was a huge thing in Android. In the Android world, we are all using Google Photos to synchronize our photos with the Google servers from our phone. When they removed the free tier, it meant that now we are hitting that free quote that we have on Android very quickly and it affected a lot of users.
The Origin of Function Land
There was a lot of noise, a lot of news around that. So me and K one, we decided to actually create an open source photos application that was like just the initial idea. We wanted to have a photos application that is free, but if we wanted to host it on the central cloud, then were facing the same problem as Google. We had to charge users. So we decided to host it on web three as a decentralized alternative. It looked like amazing. We hosted it on Internet computer. Initially we got a grant. We had some of the most attended spaces in dfinity community. But then due to some at that time, some limitations for mobile native applications and file storage.
Expansion into a Decentralized Data Ecosystem
Specifically, we moved to creating our own ecosystem for data storage, for decentralized data storage. And then the idea grew larger into a decentralized data ecosystem. And now function land is actually aiming toward creating the world's largest data ecosystem. And the difference between data storage and data ecosystem, I just want to quickly mention, is data. We all know that large corporations such as Google, Apple, they are just more than data storage, they are data ecosystems, meaning that we all put our data there. They create these APIs that everyone else can use to interact with our data easily and monetize our data. So there are a lot of stuff that are around our data happening in these ecosystems.
Ownership and Benefits
And that's what makes them data ecosystems just larger than a data storage. And that's the aim of functional and to create a decentralized data ecosystem that now we are in control of our data, we have full ownership of our data, and we can benefit from the data that we have online everywhere. Oh, that's very interesting. Thank you so much, Ehsan. Yeah, so you just reminded me, you just asking about the data on achieve data control. So what does function learn? Define inalienable rights to data ownership within or from the perspective of web three context.
The Concepts of Web Evolution
Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, like we all have. Seen these graphs about the evolution of web one to web three. You know, like everyone knows Web one as read only, then web two read write, and web three read write own. But right now, the thing is that we have a lot of protocols in. Webtree, a lot of projects that theoretically. On the paper, they give you the. Ownership, but without owning the underlying layer of everything we have, which is data. Data ownership is really impossible. You can encrypt your data, you can. Do all type of things to secure the data, but ownership means physically owning your data.
Infrastructure for Data Ownership
And physically owning your data requires an infrastructure. If we use AWS like Google Cloud, we can encrypt our data, but we. Are not physically owning our data. So to achieve that goal, what function. Land did was mixing the protocol side with the deep inside. So with the hardware side to decentralize the infrastructure as well. Instead of relying on AWS, instead of. Relying on Google Cloud to hold our. Data, we now have these devices. We can run like, everyone can run. These devices at home and easily set up a device, run it to store parts of the data in the network. That means that everyone now is able to physically hold their data.
Continued Benefits and Control
They can still get the same benefits. Of web two, share their data with whoever they want. Everything is secured, encrypted. All the benefits are still there. But we added that data ownership into it. We believe that in the recent world, everyone knows data as the oil of this century. So a lot of companies are built on top of monetizing our data, but. They are not sharing that revenue that. They are generating with us. With actually owning our data, we can control it, we can monetize it ourselves.
Impacts on Personal Decision Making
We can actually benefit from the data that we are generating every day. And that also means we have more control over our path, our decisions in life. Because right now, if I talk about something, if I type something in Google. Everything is going to those central servers, and they actually right away, I'm going to see a lot of ads about what I just searched on Google or.
Instagram Searches and Data Ownership
What I searched on Instagram. And that's not bad. But the bad thing is I'm not. Getting any revenue because they are using. My data to actually sell those ads to advertisers. But they are not sharing with me. They are just using me as a. Buyer, as a product, basically. So data ownership actually makes me able to participate in that process of revenue sharing with advertisers, with whoever needs my data. Cool. That's pretty interesting. Thank you so much, Ehsan. This is also a perfect model or description of the work web three is all about. Now, we are in a web three, you know, so you just talk about. Yeah, because we talk about data. That means generic or general data, like from your side function, learn. So are you focusing on which type of data? Like, you know, for this kind of storage I mentioned, like, how does, what are the limitations of the current, let's say, the portal, the video sharing platform, that portal aims to address, for example, from your perspective, how can you differentiate this kind of photo or data ownership related to video or the, you know, the picture?
Types of Data Support
Yeah, yeah. Functional. And actually, like, the platform is built to be able to host all types of data. All types of data. You know, like, we usually categorize the data in three types. You know, like, call the storage. Like, that's the data storage use cases, basically. So call, all the storage is for the data that we don't occasionally access. It's probably, we access them once a month, twice a month. So we don't require immediate access to that. Hotel storage or real time access is for the data that we frequently interact with. When I open Instagram, when I open my Gmail, when I open my one drive, I want to interact with my data immediately. And then we have a streaming data. So right now, for example, I'm speaking live and everyone is hearing right away. So these three types of data is what we support at function land. So the protocol is built to enable you to interact with your data in real time. So you can basically store data, edit them in real time, share it with whoever you want, and they can access it, expire their access.
Function Land Ecosystem
So these are the features that we have on the cloud, and we are giving it in our ecosystem and streaming. So you can have a streaming event on top of our ecosystem. Right now, as you mentioned, we built actually an application that I mentioned actually initially in the introduction of FX photos, which is an alternative to Google photos or Apple photos. So you can use it to synchronize your media files, photos and videos with the decentralized backend. But that's not limited to only photos or media like functional and protocol is not just limited to those types of data. Anything like documents, videos, images, anything can be uploaded into the network. And right now a lot of web three protocols for file storage are either lacking support for one of these three categories. So some of them only support cold storage, so not real time access. Some of them don't support streaming access. Most of them don't support mobile native interaction with your data. So to interact with your data, you have to open a web browser in Chrome and upload or download your data.
Challenges with Data Interaction
But the problem is, usually people don't interact with their data through web browser. Right now, I'm pretty sure most of us has joined this distributed space with our phones. Most of use mobile phones to interact with our data. And that's what function land also enables. We enable building applications, mobile native applications, which is the main source of interacting with our data and enables us to now have applications like YouTube alternatives, Instagram alternatives, Twitter alternatives, anything on top of our data. And actually we all are hearing if you are following news, you all know that Elon Musk, for example, talks about he purchased Twitter for freedom of speech. But we all know that freedom of speech, or any uncontrolled access to the data doesn't come if we don't truly own the data. At some point whoever is controlling a platform can decide to ban, some people can decide to censor some data. So unless we have true control, true ownership of the data, that aim can be achieved. And I believe true data ownership is the only way that we can have freedom of speech, freedom control over our data and our lives, actually.
Data Safety and Accessibility
Cool. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. Thank you so much, Asan. Yeah. So you talk about different types of data, the control of data, how the user can also share the data for the benefit. Yeah. So what are the biggest challenges in ensuring users never lose access to their data on the function learn platform? So let me just give an example from the central board. First, how Google or AWS or any of the central providers guarantee that your data stays in their servers. Accessible is through replicating your data on their servers. So when you upload something on Google, for example, they replicated three or four times on their server, so that if one of their servers, one of the locations of the servers went down, you still have access to the data from another server. But here now to bring the example to the function, land, ecosystem. What happens is we have nodes, like hardware nodes running around the world.
Node Strategy
These are individually owned nodes. So these are not nodes that function, land, own, or operate or control, or anyone else, actually. So individuals, anyone can run a node. And now when someone uploads the data into the network, what happens is first the data gets encrypted, it gets chunked, the chunks are being sent to the devices that are around you, like closest to you. And then we replicate each piece of data six times in the network, which means even if, you know, like three of the network nodes, like half of the network goes down, you still have replications of the data on some other nodes and you can fetch them. And if the replications falls beyond the threshold, then the protocol is constantly monitoring the network, which is a fresh copy of your data and put it on another device. If, for example, one of the devices goes offline for more than a specific period of time.
Global Accessibility of Information
Okay, cool. Yeah. So the next question is, how does function learns approach guarantee global accessibility of information without restrictions? For example, maybe, yeah, you can share, because it's a decentralized. And some of the challenges of particular region or some particular places, they have some kind of requirements for the way how people use or access in the data. Yeah. Maybe you can share with us a bit from the function perspective of function learning. Oh, yeah, sure. So, on the restrictions that you mentioned, I believe you are asking about both types of restrictions.
Legal Restrictions and Censorship
One of those legal restrictions and regulations like GDPR, that, for example, require the data that belongs to citizens of a specific country to stay within that country. And the other is censorship, basically, which we think it's not really a legit restriction. Some countries ban access to specific platforms, to specific data. Actually, it happened in Canada, too. You may not know if you are outside of Canada, but at least in Ontario, we don't have access to a lot of news services. So if you open a news service on Instagram, you don't see the news. So these type of restrictions for both, we have some considerations in functional network, so fares for GDPR, which is like a legit regulation.
Decentralized Data Pools
What we have is we added a concept called pools to the network, which means we have certain pools in different areas of the network. Right now, the pools are wide, but we can have them narrower. So, for example, we can have a pool in Europe, or we can have a pool in Canada. And then whoever uploads their data to that pool can be sure that the data stays within the nodes that are part of that pool. So, for example, I'm in Canada I upload my photos to the Canada pool or select the Canada pool, basically. So I select the Canada pool and then my data stays within the nodes that are in Canada.
Platform Compliance and Censorship Stance
So this means that the platform can be GDPR compliant and can accommodate those regulations for censorship. Obviously we are against that. So like I, when you have access to your data, you don't want anyone to be able to ban your access. When you want to distribute something to someone else, we don't want anyone to be in control of that distribution. And that's the same as the financial world. When you are sending bitcoin to someone, no one can stop that transaction, no one can prevent you from doing that. And we want to have the same with the data. So we don't impose any restriction or we can't actually impose any restriction on the data itself.
Incentivizing Developers Within the Ecosystem
So how can function learn, incentivize developers to build and monetize their products within its ecosystem? Do you have kind of maybe provision? Yes, and actually that's the one of the largest parts of the functional network. So as I mentioned, we wanted to create a data ecosystem, not just the data storage. And data ecosystem means we need to have data storage providers, data users and application developers and content developers. So, you know, like for example, in Google ecosystem, you have applications built. In Google we have users, we have youtubers who create applications, influencers who create content. So we want to monetize it for all participants.
Revenue Distribution in the Ecosystem
For the storage providers, we already like explained it, you provide a storage, you rent part of the storage, your devices and you get paid for it for applications developers and content creators. Actually it's going to be very interesting because right now when you create an application on a central provider or distribute a content on a central provider, a large chunk of your revenue is being taken by these central authorities, by Google, Apple. A large portion of your revenue actually is taken by them and you are very reliant on the distribution of your content or application to be controlled by these central authorities. In our ecosystem, what happens is whenever an application developer creates an application and distribute it, and the distribution happens through any way that you want, you can distribute it through Google Play or app store, to a third party store, to a web three data store.
Application Usage and Reward Distribution
Any mean that you want, you distribute the application. And whenever a user uses your application, part of the tokens, like part of the rewards, basically that the user is paying is for the storage. Part of the tokens goes to the application developers. These small chunks of revenue that you are earning from the application development of rewards that you are earning from the application development actually is very small from each user. But combined together, when you have thousands of users for an application, it grows to a large number and actually larger than any central provider. Anything that you can actually get from a central provider for content creators is the same concept. So when you create a content video, for example, distributed on the network, whenever users watch that content, they get rewarded.
Recovering from Disconnections
Hello? Oh yes, now here. Yeah, seems like we lost connections. Yeah, I can hear you. I think it was you or was. I got disconnected. If anyone didn't hear me, can you raise your hand? Yeah, I think maybe from my side. Yeah, yeah, we should. Yeah, that's fine. Oh, yeah. So that was like on the monetization side, I was just explaining that, you know, like in our network, everything is monetized for both developers, application developers, content creators and a storage provider. So these are the three pillars that are contributing to the data economy of a fuller ecosystem.
Token Distribution and Utility
So you talk about this kind of token distribution related to the product or content creator. Like what are the specific functions or functionalities of this? You mentioned like Fuller, if may I correct it? Yeah, talking within the function learn network. Yes. So for the utility, are you referring to the token utility, Abba? Yeah. This fuller in your network token, is it Fuller? It is Fuller, yes. That's the native token that is designed for the interactions that happen in the network. So the specific reason for having a token, and it's a utility token, you know, like the specific reason for it is because for example, when you provide a storage to others, first you definitely aren't doing it for free.
Transactions and Reward Utilization
So you are expecting something. You are, it's like a platform, you know, like Airbnb. So you rent part of your room and someone uses part of that room and pays you. Right. So now for Fuller, the thing is, when we want to record that transaction, obviously you don't want to put your bank accounts public out there for everyone to see and everyone to pay you. So the token is just to make that transaction smooth and easy. And then from the rewards that you earn, you have the option actually to reuse them. You earn rewards for providing a storage or creating applications. But all of us have tons of applications on our devices. All of us have a lot of data that are right now stored on Google or Apple Cloud.
Cost Reduction and Data Ownership
So what we can do is we cancel those subscriptions. And now from the rewards that we are earning from providing a storage, from creating applications, use them to store our own data to synchronize our data, use applications this time basically for free, because we are earning tokens and we are spending them for getting services from getting applications, from storing our data. So that means that we can reduce the cost of our storage, we can reduce the cost of our applications, and we can, on top of having the full privacy and I data ownership aspect of the ecosystem.
Discussion on FX blocks Hardware
Yeah. So how does this FX blocks hardware? You mentioned address existing barriers to decentralized in as decentralized storage solutions. Yeah, I believe. Oh, I suppose you have hardware, right? So you are, yeah. So can you explain a bit of how does it address this barrier for this decentralized storage solution?
Understanding Web Three Challenges
Sure. Yep. So you know, like, as I was explaining earlier, one of the main problems in Web three is like the protocols, the projects, everything is built around data ownership, but the underlying infrastructure is not owned by us. Like, you know, like probably, you know that all of our nfts are now stored on AWS. So if AWS rug pools at some point, and it will happen, it's just a matter of when it happens. Web three is actually vulnerable to the same risks of web two at this moment, unless we take back the ownership of the infrastructure as well.
Creating Accessibility with FX Blocks
So it's a hard thing, you know, like we, obviously, most people can't run a server at home. It's very technical, it requires, you know, like a lot of things to be managed. It's very expensive. So to make it easier for people to own the infrastructure, we created our hardware product, which is called FX blocks. So the aim for FX blocks is give a cheap way, an easy way, a non technical way for anyone to join the network as the underlying infrastructure for the data storage system. So what happens is now you can get one of these FX blocks devices, plug it to the Internet, you have an application that you can set it up through a few clicks and then it starts to provide a storage to the network, so to yourself and to others.
Technical Simplification with FX Blocks
And that gives you an easy way to own part of this infrastructure instead of relying on you basically become like part of AWS, but without the cost of a server, without the cost for infrastructure like firewalls or expensive like load balancers or any of the technical hardware and software requirements, and without running a single line of code, basically on your laptop. We also allow users to actually join the network with their own devices, with laptops, with raspberry PIs, with whatever device they want. But ethics blocks basically gives them the ability to join the network with less technical barrier, with less maintenance barriers.
Engaging Developers with Accessible APIs
Cool. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. So yeah, I suppose also you have this, you just mentioned about build an application. So you have API, right? So what are the key features and functionalities offered by this API for developers? Maybe you can share in case there are many developers who might be interested to see how they can join and also build an application or acquire your services.
Plans for Developer Engagement
Yeah, yeah. So actually next year we will be holding hackathons and grant programs for application developers, Dora, hacks, probably like most people in web three, knows them for holding hackathons. So they like, we will be coordinating events with them. So we have like SDKs actually development kits for mobile application developers that they can use to build applications. But the features that we provide is actually enabling them to create applications without the knowledge of web three.
Simplifying Application Development
Right now we have, for example, the metamask, a lot of the wallet applications. They also have SDKs, but just for interacting with wallet. But the problem with those SDKs is they are very central in web three. So a web two application developer can't really go through interacting with metamask without a good knowledge of web three and they have to go through a steep learning curve. This is what we try to take away from the developer. So we wanted to make it easier for web two developers to create an application that interacts with the data in the web three world.
Aiming for Accessibility in Development
So that's like the concept of the SDKs that we provide. So any application developer, any mobile application developer can simply import our libraries into their application, build an application, anything basically. So someone can create an Instagram alternative, for example, without going through steep learning curves of web three. So they don't have, need to know anything about wallets, they don't need to know anything about decentralization. They can import the libraries the same way that they create any application using any framework that they want.
Future Vision and Partnerships
For example, react native and create a web three app, but using their web two knowledge. So that's the aim of rsdks. And as I mentioned, we'll be holding hackathons and grants next year for onboarding developers. Cool. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. So I think maybe we are almost running out of time. Thank you so much. This is really, well, interesting insight to share about what you are building.
Looking Ahead: Mission and Vision
So maybe one more last thing. Maybe you like to share with you some of the audience or what message in terms of you. Maybe you can share about your mission, the vision, the progress and what should be the next maybe in the next five years, how you should proceed the function, learn in this websteri ecosystem. Yeah, yeah. Thank you Abba for having me on the show and thanks everyone for tuning in.
Towards a User-Owned Data Economy
You know, like for the next five years, what we will be hoping for to, and aiming for actually, as I mentioned, is creating a full data economy around the functional land network, which means like an the world's largest user owned data economy. And when I'm saying like, when I'm mentioning the user owned part, it's because right now we are contributing to the growth of these central corporations, even like chat GPT, you know, like we are contributing to the growth of those AI models, but we are not really benefiting from the revenue that these corporations are generating.
Decentralized Solutions for AI
So we are also right now partnering with other projects like singularity, for example, with the aim to be able to also provide decentralized compute and decentralized AI. And that means a few years down the road, we don't have to worry about the data that we are now sending to chat GPT because we are using it. And that's actually raising a lot of worrying us right now in organizations and individuals and governments that what is happening to all my data that I'm sharing with these chat bots.
Eliminating Data Concerns
So in the decentralized world, when we achieve that aim, you don't need to worry about that. No one can use your data. They can still train their AI models and they can provide the benefits, but they can't abuse the data. Let's be that way. So we are right now, like, we are progressing fast. A lot of news is happening actually every day.
Staying Connected and Updated
So I urge everyone, if they are interested, follow us on Twitter and telegram on both channels. It's like function land. So if you search, it comes up to be able to follow the news. We are announcing a lot of partnerships. We are actually going with our token listing soon. So, yeah, if you want to stay in the loop, feel free to follow us on telegram and Twitter.
Closing Remarks
Yeah, that's. Thank you so much, Ethan. Thank you so much. This is really great. Amazing. Yeah, thanks to the all listeners. I think that's bring to the end of our session. Yeah, so I hope you guys enjoyed. Yeah, bye. Thank you so much.
