GLIF brings DeFi to Filecoin’s storage network

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews with Jonathan Schwarz CEO and founder of glyph here to talk about decentralized Finance decentralized storage file coin and much more John welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time thanks for having me on you're very welcome I know you've been heads down building

0:22hard uh and I've I've seen the filecoin uh system and and the token around for many years but I didn't know expansive the ecosystem has gotten and I think in part that's due to a lot of the code you and your team have written I would love to hear a little bit about your work what you've been uh building in the last few years and and what is glyph and then

0:44we can dive into all those details yeah absolutely um so I guess we could take you back to to your point filecoin when it was born in 2020 had no user programmable smart contract layer so developers like myself we couldn't actually deploy custom logic to the chain uh that that changed in March of 2023 bcoin launched the FM which is an ethereum virtual machine on top of fcoin

1:11and that's when glyph launched our def5 product and so uh that is sort of what we're most well known for today it allows filecoin token holders to deposit their filecoin tokens and earn sustainable rewards by lending it to a diverse group of filecoin miners who in the filecoin world are known as as storage providers because they take that filecoin and they pledge it to the

1:35network alongside with some real data and that helps grow both filecoin as a decentralized storage Network and also further secure the network and so the D5 protocol has been out pretty much since the FM launched in March of 2023 so we're coming up on two years now and we are just about to launch our glyph token uh which is why we're sort of opening up

2:01the conversation with a wider audience and and letting people know about some of the cool stuff that's been going on there that's very cool I didn't know there was a FM uh it's great to see more applications being built on top of the ecosystem can you tell me more about defi on filecoin is it unique uh or or different than you know what people would see defi on on

2:25ethereum yeah great question I would say today defi is still pretty early and young there are the sort of common building blocks so if you think of glyph as like the liquid staking protocol on fcoin it's kind of like a Lio or a goo but built specifically for filecoin there's also you know dexes so there's Unis Swap and sushi that are deployed on filecoin

2:49there's some lending markets that aren't super liquid quite yet but you know agna is deployed secured Finance is um has also deployed some some lending markets as well and secured Finance is also working on a liquidy like stable coin so there's kind of this the the Primitive building blocks of defi are coming on filecoin but when you think about filecoin filecoin is different from say

3:12salana or ethereum or you know the the world of layer 2os and in that filecoin is meant to sell storage and so it's not quite as useful for deploying just generic defi like there's both faster and probably cheaper train uh chains for Traders and so when you think about defi on filecoin it's interesting to think about it in the context of how does this

3:36dii primitive open up new types of storage protocols or compute protocols on chain that deal with the the hardware that filecoin has to offer and so that's where you get interesting kind of composable Primitives one one that I talk about a lot and a friendly partner project of ours is called lighthous and they basically allow uh their users to stake filecoin put it into you know a

4:01liquid staking token and use that yield to pay for storage deals and store the data and when you're done storing it you can unstake your filecoin and be on your way and eventually that data will will not be in fcoin storage deals any longer and so that to me is the really cool place that we need to do more defi work in and more exploratory kind of R&D yeah

4:24yeah it it's great to see that there's other applications like Lighthouse I did see Lighthouse uh I feel like people there's so many different things potentially that you could be doing with defi but I feel like you could break it down especially with filecoin as to something as simple as hey I have some file coin because I believe in the ecosystem this first part of defi just

4:48allows me to stake that or earn some kind of yield by taking the filecoin that I already have and just giving it to the the validators or the the miners that are helping with the decentralized storage and it's sort of as simple as that you don't have to be a a finance major and working out algorithms of high yields if you're just looking at passively holding

5:10fcoin 100% yeah yeah but with defi as well it's there's a lot of moving Parts um I know you have to have a wallet ecosystem um different storage I believe you were actually building some of these things prior to part going live can you talk about that a little bit yeah so I'll take you back to 2017 even I was a engineer at consensus working on

5:37a music crypto platform and at that time we were storing a lot of the music on ipfs are you are you familiar with ipfs Y for sure so for just in case any audience members aren't ipfs is a decentralized storage project that doesn't have any cryptocurrency involved with it and filecoin is built by the same company uh it's it's just sort of like an incentivized version of ipfs and

6:03you know when I first found out about these Technologies I I basically quit my job with a friend at consensus and started an ipfs focused development shop so I was working on a bunch of custom storage solutions for different Dows at that time this was like 2018 and eventually you know filecoin was going to launch and protocol Labs reached out and said hey you know do you want to

6:25build the wallet for file coins mainnet launch and I'm like absolutely that sounds amazing and then that went quite quite well and they said hey you know how about the multi for for you know cussing Ico tokens M hell yeah that sounds great and then these sort of opportunities kept coming and that was actually the birth of the glyph brand so prior to the defi stuff in 2019 glyph

6:49was a set of interoperable apps and tools that we built for file coins main net launch and continued to maintain up until today it has been both very difficult uh but very fulfilling to rebuild some of the crucial infrastructure for an ecosystem because you you really get a ground floor look at all the different parts and you get a special appreciation for going to

7:15potentially a different chain where you you have all these things that are made for you where on filecoin a lot of times we've had to build them again from scratch definitely and with the um with the defi part live um I know that you mentioned that the token is being launched what are all of the things that you can do prior to the Token being launched on the platform is

7:44there anything that's uh like available uh and then there's things that are just coming up yeah yeah great question so on the platform of course even without defi you're always welcome to use our wallet multisig those tools we still maintain so if you're just transacting filecoin or want to use other defi protocols you are welcome to do so and those have been

8:05around for quite some time in addition to like that on the defi side of things the defi protocol has been out for nearly two years now so if you have filecoin you can go right ahead to glyph doio and stake it or deposit it to earn some rewards and you'll also earn some glyph points which will convert into tokens when when the token launches and if you are a storage provider or a data

8:30Center definitely come talk to me uh that that we could get you hooked up and get you uh borrowing some fill from the pool for for mining MH and on the data storage side decentralized storage sounds like a great option you know compared to uh Google and uh you know Dropbox and these other more centralized Solutions at least for uh really techy people that they have a lot of data uh

8:56especially recording these videos you know they're huge um and you need somewhere to store them but I feel like decentralized storage is underappreciated where do you think decentralized storage is at as an industry and will it be picking up more in the near future yeah it's a great question I think being honest with ourselves we we still have a long way to go before

9:20decentralized storage is really at par and competitive with the AWS and Google clouds of the world for the same service tiers think uh you know decentralized storage is very important we we should be able to have options when we choose where to store our stuff some is maybe more private and we care to keep it in the hands of individuals or data centers

9:45that are nearby or ones that we trust more but maybe that charge more where others massive data sets we we care we we're cool with Distributing to a very large group of nodes over you know uh very cheap kind of trans and so I think where are we at today we're still in the phases of learning and experimenting and finding out the models that work we with

10:08filecoin specifically uh we're trying all sorts of different things and you know sales Cycles also take a long time to get like a big Enterprise customer that could be like 12 or 24 months and so the iteration Cycles are are slower uh and so it's all a learning experience I think for filecoin specifically talking About decentralized Storage I feel like we are

10:32in many ways the furthest along mainly because we've had a really far ahead start um but you know I think for the first few years of we focused on the Block chainy Parts which is hard on its own and in the last 18 months I would say we've been focused a lot more on building storage products that can compete with AWS and Google and actually charge money for uh for customers to

10:57store data there and and in some cases on Falon that's actually happening now which is a huge milestone and an inflection point and so uh hopefully to just my hope is to continue to see paid deals happening that is a really good sign of success and to scale those up at sort of a much larger capacity that to me is when we'll start to see decentralized storage grow in in sort of

11:22a much quicker way because in a lot of ways it will be a lot cheaper and for the amount of data that the world is producing in age of AI and and sort of where we're going there is actually too much data to be stored so you you need these networks uh and these shared economy models to support the amount of data that the world is going to produce definitely that's great insights

11:45John and it makes sense that in the first few years you really have to build out the blockchain infrastructure to ensure that this the storage is secure private cheaper um and it's hard to compete with these huge database uh Warehouse houses and where it's at right now uh obviously native companies uh or daps you know they have an incentive to sort of stick inside web 3 and then there's

12:11the Enterprise clients which obviously would also have huge storage um has on the on the business side you're talking about paid deals actually getting companies to store in filecoin has there been uh a huge uh demand from the actual web 3 compan companies um or Enterprises where exactly is that balance at right now yeah that's a great question I think

12:36when you when you examine the market in terms of volume of data being stored the web 3 originated data storage needs make up a very very small percentage of that I don't I wouldn't even say it's at 1% um so it's funny because a lot of us are terminally online in crypto we're potentially addicted to crypto Twitter and it feels like when you get a web 3

13:03customer uh it it becomes a big deal right but the amount of data that we're talking about is very very small so in terms of Landing Enterprise customers those are big big customers and and they're also really sticky customers like at a a certain amount of data the fastest way for me to get it to you is to actually put it on a boat and ship it to you right like the internet is not

13:25always the fastest rail to deliver data and um so I think when it comes to looking at the demand you also kind of need to understand what is the actual type of storage that the customer wants like we a lot of times we label decentralized storage as like one thing but like are we talking about Cold Storage that you don't want to access a lot are we talking about really hot

13:51frequencies like high frequency storage that's going to power a web application so filecoin is way better set up for cold archival type storage where the storage cost is very cheap the retrieval cost is slower and more expensive and for the the probably the the most success cases that we have are for customers that fit that fit that bill so

14:20they don't really need to access their data that much if ever they may just have a legal requirement or um they want the the daily proofs of having data sword um that filecoin offers and they don't it's not important for them that a user goes to a website and they can quickly download this file and and see the content that is the most I think frequent use case that filecoin succeeds

14:44on the retrieval fast retrievals and more modern uh storage service layer Agreements are sort of um they're being worked on at least in Falin in a layer two kind of architecture where there's other businesses that are built on FAL coin that are kind of interfacing with end customers that are offering sort of better faster storage for different types of customers a lot of those are

15:09are web three that's great insights to know about and people don't really think about that cold storage versus hot storage if you're pinging something every uh few minutes and it's an active application it's going to have different requirements than storing some files that you don't need for 10 years so um exactly that's great insights John and speaking of you know hot

15:32applications or or web through daps I'm I'm curious on the the need for interoperability with the overall blockchain ecosystem with filecoin you mentioned at the beginning there's the the fvm which could tie into the ethereum ecosystem I feel like that's uh enticing for overall blockchains to communicate with each other what do you think about the importance of

15:57interoperability um and being able to easily have web 3 natives move from other blockchains into filecoin and back it's a really good question and and one that I think teams throughout file coins history have have kind of attempted at and then have stepped back from and and it's interesting because within a smart contract on a blockchain it's actually

16:21very hard to get huge amounts of data in there right so like training AIS in blockchains for example like in an evm is is not yet uh doable right so like the composability in a smart contract runtime right now if it were possible would be would be very interesting but but there's not really a blockchain yet that I I know of that could support having a trustless ex execution

16:47environment to operate on say pedabytes of data so when it comes to Native interoperability between blockchains I think it will be extremely important once we can get to types of interactions where like you can run full training algorithms inside like a virtual virtual machine that is a smart contract that's all like transactions on chain that then then my my answers to

17:13this really change I think generally uh the nice thing about both filecoin and ipfs that is to me one of the reasons that I got really like bullish on this Tech in the beginning is uh called multi hasing or cids and what a CID is is it's a Content identifier that represents the actual content that you're looking for on the file coin or ipfs network and it

17:42can't change so if if I have a hash that represents this video file for instance after we're done recording if you change any bit of that recording the hash is going to change because it's now different content and so like these C Primitives uh they're they're much safer kind of fundamental primitive to build the internet and web on like I could go down a whole this this Library analogy

18:08that I use all the time that uses like you know it it really exemplifies the issues with location based data where instead of telling you hey this is the content that I'm looking for by its hash I'm telling you this is the content that I want by where it lives which has all sorts of issues with what if some other data now lives there or what if some you

18:28know anyways won't go on that side tangent because I I'll rant for too long but the idea here is that CS have created interoperability between um both ipfs and filecoin in that a CID representing a mutable data that you can go fetch on these filecoin or ipfs networks and they're used for nfts they're used in all sorts of different context and so I think we'll continue to

18:53see that area grow um in terms of programmability and cross chain interactions I think there will be but it's hard for me to know exactly what that looks like at that at this time um yeah yeah and I don't think uh the Enterprise clients you know as long as they're getting Quality Storage that's more secure cheaper uh it's another that's it's a whole another step when

19:19you TR involve multi- blockchain um let's get them into crypto first yeah yeah like foot in the door kind of thing yeah yeah I I saw that glyph is going to be at this year's eth Denver conference one of the largest North American conferences every year and there's a pool party which sounds cold for uh Colorado but then I realized it was defi liquidity pools um can you talk about

19:45that campaign with with glyph yeah yeah so we are as as a as a project right now one of our weaknesses is just like the the size of our community and the you know how many people know about us and the stuff that we're working on because we feel like we built something that has fundamentally done really well and found product Market fit in the filecoin ecosystem and

20:10now it's time to show more of the world uh about the project and so that sets the context for both like conversations that I've been having um online more and conversations like this and again thanks for having me on the show and asking great questions um the pool party is another attempt at uh meeting new friends in crypto and sharing success stories or learnings and we decided hey

20:35let's just try to have fun with it our our social team uh this is I I can't take credit for this I'm I'm not this creative um they wanted to have a pool party but of course like you said it's Denver is way too cold and glyph obviously is like a pool staking pool so uh we figured hey let's invite all friends who have any pool on Def they can all come and instead of swimming in

20:57a pool it's actually Billiards competition so like pool table um and it'll just be a fun time yeah yeah if you're in Denver definitely come through that's very cool John and so you know the glyph token you mentioned the release is is around the corner can you talk a little bit more about how the glyph token actually fits into the ecosystem absolutely so one of the

21:22things that we're really excited about is to build a loyalty program for glyph and so the way that I think about this personally is really similar like taking a lot of inspiration from say Airline mile programs or uh Chipotle rewards is one I'm a big Chipotle do you have you have Chipotle oh yeah okay okay good yeah like I never know some people do some people don't but like I'm I'm

21:47farming Chipotle points all the time right and I'm very happy with it because eventually I get enough points for an entree right or some chips and guac and like for glyph you know I think in crypto we we ride waves right we have good times and we have bad times and uh also how's my service maybe I should move a little bit looks good is it blur okay perfect so what I was saying was

22:16loyalty programs for me are a really good way to get away from the cycles of crypto that can drive you crazy right and and give people something that they can really benefit from with within the protocol and so just like you would have with United Airlines or Chipotle there's ways to earn rewards and there's ways to spend them to get benefits from that

22:39business and and that's exactly what glyph is going to do so there's ways to earn points through this loyalty program the first one is is like points have already been allocated to many of the to every LP and S and and storage provider on the platform and we're we're going this won't be available right at launch uh but there will be a sort of benefit

22:59Store where the the Loyalty Rewards people can cash in their points and get real benefits and you know that that to me is something that I'm really excited about because one I feel like it's a little different in that like like when when D5 protocols for a large part I would say not not all of them but a large part of D5 protocols when you ask them what can we do with this token the

23:24answer is normally governance and and that you will be able to do in in glyph as well but I feel like it leaves a lot of a lot of potential on the table for creating uh closer relationships with your customers and and you know to retain their usage and and reward them for for like interacting with your product so I'm I'm really excited to launch that because it feels it just

23:48feels like away from a lot of the speculation and hype around crypto like there will be real things that that you can do with this token and and that to me is uh so important uh for for our users and and also for the token as well like I think that will help definitely and you mentioned earlier about starting to get glyph points before the token launches do you need filecoin token to

24:14do that or can you get use stable coins in the Defi and and other crypto assets right now you need filecoin so you just deposit fcoin into glyph you'll receive Ifill which is like the liquid staking token of G and then just by holding Ifill you'll get at least some points before the the air drop comes MH okay that's great to know and is there any tentative road map

24:39for uh accumulating the points to the Token launch and then the product growth beyond that yeah so in terms of road map the the number one priority right now is just get to get the token out um just get it launched and kind of like how we were talking about earlier on this call uh some of the reasons that it's taken us a while is because we have to build a

25:02lot of infrastructure from scratch that fcoin doesn't always have right just like we did for the wallet and the multisig we we've been doing that again and again and so it's taken us some time longer than we would have liked to to get it out so for us just get it out then next step on the road map is launch the benefit store and the Loyalty program and those there will be several

25:21ways um to earn rewards whether you're a liquidity provider a storage provider or even just a a Community member uh we want to have a wealth of different options to to earn rewards and um in terms of Road mapping the the benefit side is also quite important like it's easy to to build ways to earn but we but the onus is on us to build products that are good enough that our users want to

25:46spend um right like for us that's a really important metric is to like how how well are our products delivering value to our customers well like if customers are not buying the products that we're selling with cpto tokens then we're not doing our job well enough so for us spending an enormous amount of energy and and care and giving a lot of love to our our future products that

26:08will be sold out of this kind of benefit store is uh is very important and and and that that aspect of the road map can can take us quite a long way I think and and uh I would be a fool to try and guess all the products that we will build on that road map and how long that will take for right now but the the last step of the road map is to figure out

26:28how can we take this model that we've built for filecoin which when you when you take a step back you see that glyph is a way to take a new type of collateral which is an actual like Hardware storage provider and and allow folks to get capital from that as collateral and and that to me is a model that can work for other types of Hardware involved in the

26:53AI world so gpus and different types of network that that allow you to kind of uh put down a deposit and rent out your Hardware this is something that we can potentially replicate with other ecosystems as well and so for glyph I think that's the the very high level road map is get the token out get the benefits shop going get a bunch of great products in there and then see how we

27:16can help apply this model to to other ecosystems and and help other Hardware providers benefit in the way that fcoin storage providers have definitely well it sounds very exciting John um looking forward to to seeing it all go out uh and we can save the second half of the road map for future videos I know there will be a lot to talk about um what is for having me on

27:37man you're very welcome man what what's the best way to get started on uh accumulating the points learning more about the the timeline for the road map and following along for the token release absolutely i' I'd say the best thing to do is just stay informed we're always making announcements so following us on Twitter at glyph iio follow me on Twitter I'm always chatting um you might

27:59not want to hear all of it but also joining our Discord that's where the community gathers and and if you ever run into problems with the product you can open support tickets we have you know moderation staff in there to help uh solve any of your problems you can also jump in our telegram which is more of just like a one-way announcements kind of Channel um but that's a good way

28:19to stay informed and again it should be as easy as taking some file coin depositing into glyph and just doing nothing like ideally we just want people to feel relaxed and chill and um yeah that that's the best way to get involved and and definitely give us a follow uh stay up to date we're going to be doing a lot of cool stuff sounds great Sean I'm going to leave those

28:39links in the show notes as well uh and I'm going to be following along for the launch of this I appreciate your insights into where decentralized storage is at and and where it's heading and I learned a lot about filecoin I did not know about this entire ecosystem um and I know that there's going to be a lot of storage demand especially as AI continues to grow and and I'm hoping it

29:01all goes onto the web three side because that is the future so wishing your you and your team all the best uh with the upcoming launch and Beyond thank you and thanks for asking such great questions man this was a this was a blast