Our Blog

Community

January 24, 2025

Turning Decentralization into Security

The Blockchain Trilemma

The blockchain trilemma — a fundamental challenge in blockchain design — posits that blockchain networks can only optimize for two out of three key properties: decentralization, security and scalability.

Major blockchains including Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to struggle with this trade-off, often sacrificing scalability to maintain security and decentralization. This has resulted in high transaction fees, slow confirmation times, and a limited throughput that hinders mainstream adoption. Others, like Solana, have chosen to sacrifice decentralization in the name of high TPS.

The Subspace Protocol, which underlies the Autonomys Network, takes a novel approach to resolving the blockchain trilemma in connecting decentralization to security through its proof-of-archival-storage (PoAS) consensus mechanism. The network will then achieve hyper-scalability through the implementation of our forthcoming scalability roadmap.

Decentralization = Security

Originally envisioned as the most decentralized blockchain in web3, Autonomys taps into the most accessible, commodified hardware resource on the planet — disk storage. Every consumer computer has some storage capacity. Leveraging that idle resource for network security (instead of expensive ASICs or inegalitarian stake thresholds) unlocks unprecedented decentralization, as well as access to expansive distributed data storage.

Rather than treating decentralization and security as separate concerns, the storage-based Subspace Protocol recognizes that the network’s security is directly proportional to how distributed the storage is across independent participants. In implementing a one-disk-one-vote system, Autonomys ensures that the network becomes more secure as it becomes more decentralized, effectively collapsing two sides of the trilemma into one.

Data: From Burden to Security Feature

What makes the Subspace Protocol particularly elegant is how it transforms what is typically seen as a blockchain’s greatest burden — storing the ever-growing history — into its primary security mechanism. Instead of viewing blockchain storage as a necessary evil that threatens decentralization, Autonomys makes it the cornerstone of network security.

Farmers (storage ‘miners’) create and store unique partial replicas of the chain’s history, with their ability to participate in consensus directly tied to their storage contribution. This means that the very act of securing the network also ensures its history remains distributed and available — a remarkable alignment of incentives that addresses both the farmer’s dilemma and the network’s need for robust data availability.

By reimagining the relationship between security, decentralization, and storage, the Autonomys Network offers a fresh perspective on scaling blockchain networks while maintaining their fundamental value propositions.

‍

About Autonomys

‍

Partnerships

January 21, 2025

Autonomys x Morphic: Securing Unstoppable Agents with TEE-based Private Compute

Autonomys is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Morphic Network, an Actively Validated Services (AVS) provider and specialist in private, distributed compute and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology.

Key Aspects of the Partnership

Private Compute: Morphic’s TEE-based confidential compute protocol could be integrated into Autonomys’ future marketplace for compute resources to enable AI3.0 developers to run scalable, privacy-preserving computation directly on encrypted decentralized data stored within Autonomys distributed storage network (DSN) for end-to-end confidentiality — ideal for sensitive AI workloads.
Unstoppable Agents: Auto Agent developers could combine Morphic’s programming language-agnostic TEE containers with Autonomys’ configurable domain chains for truly unstoppable, confidential on-chain AI agents.
Rollups & Layer-3s: Autonomys could utilize Morphic’s secure, TEE-enabled compute infrastructure to implement private and efficient rollup solutions for chain execution, ensuring faster finality and reduced latency, and empowering Layer-3 (L3) networks.

“Partnering with Autonomys puts hyper-scalable execution and permanent storage for deAI at developers’ fingertips. Together, we are redefining the future of decentralized AI, breaking barriers in secure, scalable, and autonomous computation.” Liam Ren, Co-founder of Morphic

“Partnering with Morphic Network brings cutting-edge TEE-based compute to Autonomys, enabling secure, private, and scalable AI solutions. Together, we’re advancing unstoppable agents and efficient Layer-3 networks, driving the future of decentralized AI.” Parth Birla, Head of Partnerships at Autonomys

‍

About Morphic

Morphic is a TEE-enabled appchain protocol for decentralized, privacy-preserving AI training, inference, dApps and agents. Morphic’s trustless AVS-as-a-service combines unprecedented security and instant finality and verifiability with Docker-based container-level programmability for efficient, customizable development and deployment. Morphic AI is its modular security layer of portals for the confidential verification of agent operations.

X | YouTube

About Autonomys

‍

Partnerships

January 16, 2025

Autonomys x Multiple Network: Accelerating deAI Data Transmission for On-Chain Agents with DePIN

Autonomys is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Multiple Network.

Key Aspects of the Partnership

High-Speed Agents: Autonomys developers building Auto Agents could leverage Multiple Network’s bandwidth DePIN to ensure their on-chain AI agents operate at high-speed, and in a privacy-perserving manner.
Low-Latency Training: Combining Multiple’s low-latency bandwidth DePIN with Autonomys’ distributed storage network (DSN) and decentralized compute domains would make large scale, private decentralized AI training more accessible.
AI3.0 Ecosystem: Multiple Network privacy-preserving bandwidth DePIN represents an important addition to Autonomys’ AI3.0 ecosystem as an integral component to the building and deployment of Auto Agents.

“Partnering with Autonomys brings a new dimension to decentralized AI. By integrating our privacy-preserving bandwidth DePIN with their robust storage and compute infrastructure, we’re enabling faster, more secure Auto Agents and making scalable decentralized AI training a reality. This collaboration strengthens the AI3.0 ecosystem and redefines what’s possible in on-chain AI.” Zeus Chen, Co-Founder of Multiple Network

“Our partnership with Multiple Network marks a breakthrough for decentralized AI, combining their low-latency, privacy-focused bandwidth with Autonomys’ storage and compute capabilities to power high-speed, secure Auto Agents and advance the AI3.0 ecosystem.” Parth Birla, Head of Partnerships at Autonomys

‍

About Multiple Network

Multiple Network is a high-speed bandwidth DePIN with data acceleration and privacy protection for enhanced decentralized AI data transmission efficiency and security. Multiple Network aggregates the bandwidth of distributed nodes to create a programmable peer-to-peer software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) that users can leverage for large-scale, private, low-latency encrypted data transmission via its API.

About Autonomys

‍

Community

January 16, 2025

Scaling Bandwidth with Near-Optimal Data Transfer

This document outlines the Autonomys Network’s bandwidth scalability designs for near-optimal data transfer, and briefly explains how the Autonomys Labs Research team evaluated and selected these approaches.

Scaling Computation & Bandwidth

In blockchain design, sharding is essential for achieving two critical scaling goals:

Computation: Autonomys tackles computation scaling through the use of domains and domain operators. Domains are similar to Ethereum Layer-2s, while domain operators act as decentralized sequencers. Implementing decentralized sequencing from the very beginning was an integral part of our network design philosophy.
Bandwidth: Autonomys addresses bandwidth scaling by leveraging verifiable erasure coding — a cutting-edge method that ensures data transfer at near-optimal efficiency. Below is an brief explanation of how it works and why it matters.

Scaling Bandwidth for Large-System Data Transmission

Imagine a blockchain network with 1,000,000 nodes, of which only 20% are reliable — staying connected and up-to-date, maintaining liveness, and contributing to the system. In order too manage data efficiently in this context, Autonomys applies erasure coding to domain bundles. This involves:

Encoding the Data: The original data is transformed into slightly more than 500 coded chunks.
Distribution: These coded chunks are distributed across nodes, one chunk per node.
Recovery: Any 100 coded chunks are sufficient to reconstruct the original data (as the size of the original data is equal to the total size of 100 coded chunks).

By distributing more than 500 chunks to the nodes, we ensure that at least 100 reliable nodes (of the 20% total) receive a chunk and can successfully recover the bundle. If fewer than 500 chunks are distributed, fewer than 100 reliable nodes are likely to receive them, making recovery impossible. This approach minimizes data transfer while maintaining robustness, achieving a near-optimal solution.

Autonomys’ Erasure Coding vs. Legacy Sharding

Comparing Autonomys’ erasure coding design with existing bandwidth scaling methods helps explain its significance.

In approaches without erasure coding, 1,000,000 nodes might be divided into 200 shards — each with 5,000 nodes — handling different bundles. However, this would require data transfer at a scale 1,000x greater than our design, as each shard would have ~1,000 reliable nodes, despite only one being needed to retain a bundle. Increasing the number of shards (e.g., to 20,000) might appear to offer a solution, but practical constraints, including dynamic shard assignment to mitigate adaptive adversaries, make this unfeasible. Most existing blockchains therefore cap shards at ~200. Even with erasure coding, dividing 1,000,000 nodes into 200 shards leads to data transfer levels that are still 1,000x higher than Autonomys’ design, as each shard has ~1,000 reliable nodes, and only one is needed to retain a coded chunk.

Autonomys’ near-optimal data transfer design — where the number of shards is unbounded — delivers throughput up to 1,000x higher than traditional scaling approaches. For every new bundle, a new shard is generated, consisting of more than 500 honest nodes. We eliminate the need for dynamic shard assignment by allowing for overlapping shards, and rely on mining and farming mechanisms to counter adaptive adversaries.

Conclusion

Autonomys’ innovative approach to scaling bandwidth through verifiable erasure coding represents a paradigm shift in blockchain technology. By combining minimal data transfer with robust recovery guarantees, Autonomys is setting a new standard for throughput and efficiency. Our design doesn’t just look good on paper — it’s built for the demands of the AI3.0 future.

Stay tuned as we continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in web3 x AI scalability.

‍

About Autonomys

‍

Partnerships

January 10, 2025

Autonomys x DIN: Scaling deAI Data Infrastructure