From Subspace to Autonomys: Future Solutions for Blockchain Storage, Computation, and AI Integration

From Subspace to Autonomys: Future Solutions for Blockchain Storage, Computation, and AI Integration

Subspace: Addressing the Dilemma of Farmers in PoC Networks

Subspace Network is a decentralized PoC (Proof-of-Capacity) network that optimizes PoC algorithms to tackle the “impossible trinity” of blockchain, striving to become a low-energy storage blockchain that balances security, scalability, and decentralization with continuous scalable TPS.

Compared to traditional mining methods that heavily rely on computation, the PoC consensus mechanism reduces energy consumption and enhances fairness and decentralization. However, previous PoC designs have led Farmers to maximize storage space utilization rather than maintaining the chain state and history. For instance, PoC networks like Filecoin and Chia tend to favor centralized pool mining, leading to oligopoly and monopoly effects, thus impacting the network’s security and decentralization.

To resolve this issue, Subspace introduced a Proofs-of-Storage mechanism, where Farmers collectively store the blockchain history, with each Farmer storing as many copies as possible based on their disk space. Consensus and computation are separated, with Farmers only responsible for transaction ordering, while dedicated execution nodes maintain the state and compute transactions. This design reduces the storage and computational burden on Farmers, ensures efficient history recovery and retrieval, and maintains economic sustainability through dynamically adjusted transaction fees. Subspace’s architectural optimizations provide a solid foundation for decentralized applications and storage.

Team

Subspace Labs is an international, distributed team with members who have worked at Dapper Labs/Flow, Restream, Protocol Labs, GitHub, Stanford, etc.

Jeremiah Wagstaff, co-founder of Subspace, graduated from Texas A&M University, USA.

Nazar Mokrynskyi, Chief Software Development Engineer at Restream and Protocol Development Engineer at Subspace Labs, is an open source enthusiast. Previously, he founded Ecoisme and served as CTO. He is an active contributor to many open-source projects including jQuery, Linux Kernel, HHVM, Polymer, WebComponents.js, UIkit, ownCoud, fabric.js, SimpleImage, HybridAuth, Plupload, PulseAudio, TinyMCE, WebTorrent, Emscripten, lodash, Cerebro, Budgie Desktop, Redux, and more.

Financing

Subspace Labs was established in 2018, initially funded by the National Science Foundation and the Web3 Foundation.

In 2021, it completed a $4.5 million seed funding round.

In 2022, it completed a $32.9 million strategic funding round at a valuation of $600 million, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com, Alameda Research, ConsenSys Mesh, KR1, Hypersphere Ventures, Stratos Technologies, AVG Blockchain Fund, GSR Ventures, and Eniac Ventures.

Ideal Blockchain Solutions: What Problems Does Subspace Solve?

Subspace protocol fundamentally resolves several significant issues in the blockchain industry, showcasing distinct advantages and features.

Eliminating Blockchain Bloat

Blockchain bloat refers to the phenomenon where blockchains become increasingly centralized over time, especially during expansion. Each full node must store the entire transaction history and execute state, leading to increased storage burdens.

Subspace uniquely combines the strengths of Ethereum, Filecoin, and Chia, developing a storage-based consensus protocol, a permanent distributed storage service, and a scalable off-chain execution framework, thus addressing blockchain bloat.

Solving State Bloat

State bloat refers to the increasing storage needs for state data on the blockchain as it grows.

Subspace introduced a Decoupled Execution Framework (DecEx), where Farmers only confirm transaction availability and provide sorting, while secondary network staked execution nodes perform transactions and maintain the chain state. This separation allows different node types to have different hardware requirements, lightening Farming and providing a foundation for vertical and horizontal scaling of execution.

Expanding Block Space

The overall execution throughput of a blockchain is limited by the block space bandwidth, i.e., the space available to run code or store data.

Subspace achieves optimal scalability through Orthogonal Execution (OE). OE first horizontally expands the block space of the base data availability layer, then vertically expands the transaction throughput of each domain. This method incorporates ideas from Stanford University’s Tse Lab, including the Prism protocol for vertical expansion, the Free2Shard protocol for horizontal expansion, the Semi-AVID-PR scheme for distributed data availability, and the Ebb-and-Flow protocol for flexible finality.

Adjusting Incentives for Optimal Scalability

Subspace introduces a novel algorithm that dynamically adjusts the cost of block space based on supply and demand changes to economically secure the network in an open environment. This adjustment mechanism ensures that the incentives for Farmers (data storage providers) and Operators (computing power providers) are compatible, promoting the provision of storage and data availability bandwidth.

Subspace created the first bilateral block space market: on one side, Farmers provide block space bandwidth by storing blockchain historical data; on the other side, dApp developers and users need block space to deploy and run their applications. Subspace’s market algorithm adjusts the block space cost received by Farmers based on real-time supply and demand. When demand is high, costs rise, encouraging more Farmers to join; when demand is low, costs decrease, preventing overinvestment in storage. This dynamic adjustment process is transparently conducted on-chain through protocol rules.

Detailed Explanation of Subspace’s Technical Architecture

Overview

Subspace is a modular blockchain network, divided into a foundational layer consensus chain (core protocol) and an almost unlimited number of secondary execution chains (domains). The core protocol is responsible for consensus, data availability, and transaction bundle settlement, while each domain handles execution operations, supporting various state transition frameworks and smart contract execution environments. The Subspace system includes a consensus layer, domains, a distributed storage network, client applications, and development tools, providing an open, scalable, and interoperable blockchain infrastructure for future decentralized applications and services.

1. Permissionless Peer-to-Peer Network

Subspace is a permissionless peer-to-peer network where any node can act as a Farmer to store data and propose new blocks, or as an Operator to execute transactions. Different roles communicate and exchange data through the network, ensuring system decentralization and data availability.

2. Consensus Layer

The consensus layer is the foundation of the Subspace network, responsible for achieving consensus among all nodes, ensuring the uniqueness of the blockchain state and the immutability of historical data. Through the Dilithium storage proof protocol, the consensus layer ensures data availability and distributes blockchain data among all Farmers through a distributed storage network (DSN), ensuring load balancing, fault tolerance, and efficient retrieval.

3. Decoupled Execution Layer

The Subspace network achieves consensus and computation decoupling by separating transaction execution into independent domains. This design allows for parallelization, optimization, or even sharding of the execution process, enhancing scalability. Domains are operated by Operators who stake hardware and collateral to execute transactions within the domain, earning execution fees (similar to Ethereum’s Gas fees).

Each domain can support any state transition framework and remains neutral to the execution environment. For example, the first execution domain, Nova, supports running Ethereum smart contracts and transactions, providing higher throughput, lower costs, and better scalability for Ethereum dApps and DeFi protocols on Subspace.

4. Application Layer

The application layer is the interface for dApps to interact with the blockchain. dApps can send contract calls, which are executed in the flexible decoupled execution layer. Developers can build and deploy applications without focusing on the underlying execution and consensus details, significantly simplifying the development process.

Transaction Process

1. User Submits Transaction: Users directly submit execution transactions to Operators.
2. Operator Pre-validation and Packaging: Operators pre-validate transactions and package them into transaction bundles through a staking election process.
3. Farmer Confirmation and Sorting: Farmers verify the election proof and ensure data availability, package the transaction bundles into blocks, and perform deterministic sorting through a PoAS-based secure cryptographic shuffling algorithm. This process helps mitigate the impact of miner extractable value (MEV).
4. Operator Executes Transactions: Operators execute transactions according to the order and generate a deterministic state commitment (execution receipt).
5. Farmer Records State: These state commitments are included in subsequent transaction bundles, forming a deterministic receipt chain tracked by all Farmers.

Subspace’s transaction execution process achieves efficient and secure transaction processing and state maintenance through its decoupled execution framework. Its unique design not only enhances network scalability and lowers the barrier to entry but also flexibly supports various execution environments, providing a robust infrastructure for decentralized applications.

Innovative Consensus Mechanism

Structure, Operation, and Advantages of Dilithium Consensus

The Subspace network is driven by a lightweight and secure consensus mechanism called Dilithium. Dilithium is an eco-friendly, permissionless, and fair consensus protocol based on a storage proof mechanism (Proof-of-Archival-Storage, PoAS).

Composition of Dilithium

Dilithium is the second-generation PoAS consensus algorithm, combining various advanced technologies, including erasure coding and KZG commitments, used for distributed archiving. Additionally, it incorporates several technologies:

1. Polynomial Coding: Used for data storage and verification.
2. ASIC-resistant Storage Proofs: Ensures system decentralization and fairness.
3. AES-based Time Proofs: Used for plotting and extracting block challenges.

This protocol design aims to enhance the security and user experience of the Subspace network and is SSD-friendly, further improving energy efficiency and decentralization.

Operation of Dilithium

The core of the Dilithium consensus mechanism involves three major phases: Archiving, Plotting, and Farming.

1. Archiving Phase

During the archiving phase, all nodes prepare blockchain historical data for Subspace’s plotting protocol. This process includes:

• Error Correction Coding: Using Reed-Solomon coding to ensure that even if some data blocks are not stored by any Farmer, they can be recovered through other data blocks.
• Commitment Scheme: Using a specific type of polynomial commitment to make it more convenient for Farmers to prove they have stored certain historical data during the Farming phase.

2. Plotting Phase

During the plotting phase, Farmers create their unique storage plots. This process involves two steps:

• Selecting Historical Data Blocks: Farmers select blockchain historical data blocks to store based on a deterministic algorithm, ensuring even data distribution and reducing the possibility of data loss.
• Masking Data Blocks: By generating unique and verifiable masked data, each Farmer ensures that their stored data is unique, preventing cheaters from sharing the same raw data.

3. Farming Phase

In the Farming phase, Farmers check their stored blockchain historical data to determine their eligibility to generate blocks. When a Farmer wins a challenge and generates a block, they must simultaneously present the original data and masked data. These challenges are drawn from a secure random beacon that updates every second, with the beacon’s randomness provided by a time proof component embedded in the blockchain history.

Advantages and Features of Dilithium

As an advanced PoAS consensus mechanism, Dilithium has the following notable advantages and features:

1. Eco-friendly and Energy-efficient: Based on storage rather than computational power or wealth, reducing energy consumption with very high energy efficiency.
2. Decentralized: Utilizing widely distributed disk space resources, avoiding the centralization of computational power typical of traditional PoW mechanisms.
3. High Security: Combining multiple technical measures to enhance the system’s resistance to attacks and the reliability of data storage.
4. Fairness: Allowing ordinary people to participate using idle disk space without the need for expensive hardware investments, lowering the barrier to entry.

Dilithium consensus mechanism achieves the original white paper’s vision in a more optimized manner, bringing enhanced security, decentralization, and user-friendliness to the Subspace network.

Comparative Analysis of Storage Solutions

Subspace, as a PoC public chain, has unique advantages and features compared to other storage projects like Spacemesh and AO.

Subspace adopts a modular and open architecture, decoupling consensus from transaction execution by storing useful blockchain historical data and using a decoupled execution model. Its consensus mechanism allows Farmers to earn block rights proportionate to their storage capacity, possessing strong decentralization capabilities. Subspace supports specific application blockchains through domains, addressing data bloat issues, ensuring data integrity and availability, and providing a broad market potential for decentralized identities (DID), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), and virtual economies.

Spacemesh uses a PoST consensus mechanism, primarily storing useless data to verify storage space commitments. Its architecture is simple, with low participation barriers, making it easy to form mining pools. However, since the stored data lacks practical application value, Spacemesh’s competitiveness in the decentralized storage market is limited.

AO is built on Arweave, using an Actor Oriented architecture to achieve parallel computing. Its model supports high concurrent processing capabilities, mainly used in low-trust applications such as instant messaging (IM). However, AO faces challenges in ensuring transaction order and global consistency, with its market applications mainly concentrated in areas that do not require strong trust. As technology further develops, AO may show potential in more application scenarios.

From Subspace to Autonomys: Upgrades and Outlook

On June 15, Subspace Network underwent a significant brand upgrade, officially rebranding as Autonomys Network. This development aligns with its roadmap and represents a comprehensive evolution in technology and vision.

Originally, Subspace focused on solving the “impossible trinity” of blockchain by optimizing PoC algorithms, achieving a low-energy, highly secure, and scalable decentralized storage blockchain. As technology progressed and market demands evolved, Subspace began to develop into a broader decentralized AI (deAI) ecosystem, integrating distributed storage, distributed computing, and decentralized application (dApp) suites, ultimately forming the new brand Autonomys Network.

Autonomys Network is committed to becoming the infrastructure layer for the integration of AI and Web3, driving human and artificial intelligence collaboration into the era of autonomy. The new brand not only reflects the network’s technological evolution but also highlights Autonomys’ innovations in decentralized identity (DID) and AI agents.

Autonomys Technical Architecture

1/ Consensus Mechanisms

• Proof-of-Archival-Storage (PoAS): Community Farmers contribute storage to secure the blockchain and receive rewards.
• Proof-of-Stake (PoS): Node operators provide computing power (execution) and earn rewards through a proof-of-stake mechanism.

2/ Layered Architecture

• Distributed Storage: Ensures data integrity and availability, suitable for storing large amounts of AI-related data.
• Distributed Computing: Provides scalable and secure computing resources for AI training and inference.
• dApp / Agent Layer: Deploy and develop AI dApps and agents, integrating Autonomys ID (Auto ID) for secure and verifiable interactions.

Autonomys Network addresses several key issues in the blockchain and decentralized AI sectors. Its core component, Autonomys ID (Auto ID), offers privacy-protected decentralized identity verification, allowing humans and AI agents to seamlessly establish and verify identities. Users can prove their humanity and create unique identities on the blockchain without invasive biometric scans. Additionally, Auto ID establishes a trust and accountability system by assigning human-controlled identities to AI agents, ensuring that AI agents adhere to human-defined safety and ethical boundaries.

In terms of control and permission management, users can control AI agent permissions and conduct complex transactions within a rules framework. Additionally, users can authenticate AI-generated content, ensuring the traceability of generated content and maintaining control over their and their agents’ digital footprints.

Recent Developments

Along with the brand upgrade, Autonomys also made significant changes to its team composition. Labhesh Patel is the new CEO, bringing extensive experience in AI, Web3, and identity and access management (IAM), and will continue to lead Autonomys in advancing AI3.0 and the Auto ID protocol. Former CEO Jeremiah Wagstaff and co-founder Nazar Mokrynskyi will continue to provide guidance in research and development, addressing further expansion and AI integration challenges.

To expand the community and ecosystem, Autonomys Network is actively engaging the community through its Gemini 3 testnet and the upcoming Stake Wars 2 event, encouraging participation to further test and improve its network. Additionally, Autonomys is planning various incentive policies to attract developers to build dApps on its decoupled execution environment, Nova EVM, enriching its ecosystem. These initiatives will help Autonomys continually refine its technology and ecosystem, driving the integration of decentralization and AI technology.

Conclusion

Subspace, through its unique technical architecture and innovative consensus mechanism, addresses several key issues in the blockchain industry. Compared to other storage projects like Spacemesh and AO, Subspace demonstrates significant advantages in data storage, market applications, and scalability. By storing useful blockchain historical data and using a decoupled execution model, Subspace separates consensus from transaction execution, ensuring efficient, secure, and decentralized systems.

Subspace’s infrastructure, particularly its robust distributed storage and computing capabilities, is highly suitable for developing AI-related businesses, providing a solid foundation for the integration of AI and blockchain technologies. Based on this, Subspace continues its roadmap while adapting to market demands, evolving into the new brand Autonomys Network. This upgrade marks an important step in Subspace’s evolution from a foundational protocol focused on storage and computation to a broader decentralized AI ecosystem. Looking ahead, Autonomys Network will continue its mission to advance AI3.0, leveraging its technological strengths to foster the development of the decentralized AI ecosystem.

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