Thread by @GenesysGo

$SHDW Drive was a great start for what we're doing and currently there are 3.5TB of stuff stored by #Solana developers!

Truly, this is amazing! If it seems like we've been quiet lately it's only because we're full on heads down BUIDL in preparation for @SolanaConf

Our premium #Solana RPC network (which will replace our public free RPC network) is having the finishing touches put on it.

I know we said we were shutting down the free RPC network due to #NFT royalties drying up and that is still the plan.

However...

We also don't feel good about releasing $SHDW RPC to the #Solana ecosystem and taking away an amazing free resources unless the paid services are worth it.

So, we've taken some extra time to build greater customization for our future users. What does that mean?

First of all, @knox_trades has been cranking on the $SHDW RPC docs and they look absolutely amazing so far!

Could not be happier with the way Knox has hit the ground running and integrated with the team. I mean... he was basically already fam anyways but still 😅

Secondly, we want an incredibly simple pricing structure.

Some #RPC providers on #Solana aren't transparent. You're charged based on nebulous things like "compute units" or "method calls" and your pricing becomes variable because each API call could be weighted differently.

We'll be publishing a comparison based on real time average traffic shortly after the launch of the $SHDW RPC network.

We'll be publishing a comparison based on real time average traffic sholrtly after the launch of the access will be as it will be a fixed cost.

For those of you who remember, a flat monthly fee was how we did the billing for our paid #Solana RPC service before we launched the free public network back in November 2021. We launched at last year's @SolanaConf actually. 🙂

For those who are curious, the free #Solana RPC network we launched was meant to be as a thank you for the support of the #SSC #NFT mint.

To date, we've spent over $3.5m building and maintaining that RPC network for the ecosystem.

We also only promised to provide that network until the end of January 2022. However, we chose to extend because the #Solana ecosystem was seeing a massive influx of new developers and we wanted to do our part in making sure we were helping to facilitate that onboarding.

With luck, we'll have the network pushed live in the next few days. We wanted things like dashboards, global load balancing, HA failover, and a few other bells and whistles to debut with the launch of $SHDW RPC and so we're okay taking the extra week.

The last (and arguably most important reason) we're focused on is the fact that a good UX means many builders using our existing #Solana RPC network will choose to support $SHDW Operators by choosing to use this network.

Here's what "supporting $SHDW Operators" means...

It means that we've built out the mechanism to make sure that your monthly payment as a #Solana builder, 100% of it, flows directly into the pockets of the $SHDW Operator whose machine is servicing your project's traffic.

Remember, our free #RPC network is already the most performant decentralized RPC network on #Solana and performs on par or better than centralized RPC platforms.

However, we consider the fact that 100% of user payments going to $SHDW operators to be game changing.

This premium offering ensures that your monthly costs aren't going into the pockets of a centralized team bought, paid for, and low key owned by the VCs who wrote the checks.

Instead, monthly RPC payments are compensating $SHDW holders who are operating nodes directly.

To be a $SHDW Operator you have to stake $SHDW as a proof of identity for you and your server. An Operator's SHDW must remain locked in order to receive the monthly revenue paid by #Solana devs using the RPC network.

SHDW emissions under this model will be no more.

So, #Solana devs have the choice of supporting centralized entities and the VCs who own them... or, supporting their fellow builders and supporting the continued decentralization of a very centralized part of the ecosystem.

Doesn't seem like much of a choice to us 😉

P.S.

So, the size of the pie for the #Solana RPC is small relatively speaking. Small relative to say something like, the market share of the entire cloud compute space.

The same methodology that ensures trustlessness of payment to $SHDW Operators is the spine of $SHDW.Cloud.

$SHDW Cloud will show that existing decentralized cloud compute solutions are woefully inadequate in terms of their performance but also in terms of actually solving any real world problems.

A decentralized cloud just for the sake of it does nothing. Especially if it's slower.

Think about the size of the cloud marketplace as it exists today...

$SHDW.Cloud isn't trying to solve a tech problem... no, it's trying to solve a societal problem.

If SHDW Cloud captures even just 1% of big tech's market share and passes that through to SHDW Operators...

... $SHDW Operators who can contribute server resources, mobile phone resources, and even home computer resources by staking SHDW as a proof of identity? #Solana fam, run the numbers on that. That could change the world.

We're going to show that not only can a decentralized commodity cloud perform as good or better than a centralized cloud... which goes a long way towards legitimizing #web3... but more importantly, $SHDW.Cloud is going to close the wealth gap.

Because, at the end of the day, it's not centralized tech that makes us hate big tech cloud companies as much as we do. It's not the fact that all those servers are controlled by one entity...

If centralized tech were an issue then no centralized RPC provider should have users!

No, big tech is reviled because they hoard hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of dollars that enrich the lives of the already ultra wealthy while the rest of us have seen incomes stagnate for decades.
It's bc CEOs get multi-million dollar comp packages using your data!

Why has the GenGo team gone silent and is very focused on $SHDW Operators on #Solana? For the first time we're no longer a solution in search of a problem. It's trying to solve THE problem.

$SHDW.Cloud is being built to solve world's wealth gap problem... See you at @SolanaConf