On August 30, Tang Zhilong, member of the Trinity Tech Team, shared his perspective on the development status of Carrier, Hive, and Feeds NFTs at the online, “Elastos Web3 4th” event with the Chinese Community.

Tang Zhilong’s talk is translated below in its entirety:

Hello, everyone, I am very happy to celebrate the 4th anniversary of the Elastos Web3 with you. Today, I would like to share the development status of Carrier and Hive.

First, I will discuss Carrier.

Elastos Carrier is the decentralized data communication platform in the Elastos ecosystem which supports end-to-end, encrypted, and secure communication. On Carrier, both parties in a direct line of communication must become friends in order exchange messages and data. The Carrier network has integrated the WebRTC standard communication function and supports audio and video communication on both Android and iOS devices.

The current version of the Carrier network is complete, and we are now focused on technical maintenance and general bug fixes. Certainly, we have development plans for the future in the works as well. The Carrier network has been used in community projects like Feeds, HyperIM, and the decentralized ClubHouse.

Here’s what we have in store for Carrier:

Carrier currently requires a “friend” relationship to be established in order to enable communication and data exchange between two parties. Although secure, this model has one major setback: it lacks an integrated offline message storage and delivery mechanism, which limits Carrier’s use in other application scenarios beyond instant messaging.

To address this setback, our team has begun project development for Carrier-v2, which is now in the process of incubation. Carrier-v2 is logically divided into two layers. The bottom layer is the most basic Kademlia DHT communication network, which includes the decentralized offline message storage mechanism and NAT penetration service. The top layer is the message and data communication layer supported by Carrier-v1. Once a layered model of Carrier data communication is achieved, the DHT Permissionless network advantages can be better utilized for more extensive application scenarios. Elastos Hive will also implement a Layer 2 solution on the DHT network.

Speaking of Elastos Hive, here is where the technology currently stands:

Hive is a decentralized data storage platform in the Elastos ecosystem. At present, the decentralized storage technology supported by IPFS is relatively mature, and related storage vaults such as Filecoin are quite popular. But these decentralized storage designs focus on inactive cold data and are less useful in the realm of mobile applications.

Hive has integrated the Elastos DID 2.0 technology, and supports verifiable access to Vault data through Elastos’ DID technology. In terms of interfaces and functions, Hive provides superior service in mobile application scenarios. Hive not only supports access to file data, but also provides semi-structured data access similar to MongoDB features. A data owner can authorize other users to access data, and can also provide front-end interface support.

At present, the Elastos Essentials Super-Wallet application and Tuum Tech’s Profile application store the data using Hive. We are also in contact with the community project Elabox regarding efforts to increase the global Hive node count by embedding the integrated Hive nodes in Elaboxes.

Here’s what we have in store for Hive:

IPFS has its advantages, especially when it comes to file access. For this reason, Hive has integrated with IPFS nodes. The subsequent Hive nodes are composed of a Hive Node plus an IPFS node, and file data is transferred to the IPFS node. Via this mechanism, open data can be acquired directly from the IPFS Gateway.

Although Hive is live, it is far from complete. In the future, Hive must support front-end encrypted access to data, and the back-end must also support the encryption and hosting of private data in the IPFS network. In addition, Hive needs to support NAT service penetration so that users can operate Hive service nodes with a Raspberry Pi at home, thereby attaining access to vault data anytime and anywhere. As we continue to improve the Hive storage network, we also take into account tokenomic incentive mechanisms on Hive so as to help Hive become a self-sustaining, ecosystem service on the Elastos platform.

Now, I will talk about where we stand with Feeds.

Feeds is a decentralized social network platform. On Feeds, users can share content, authorize various rights to other users, and own and control the data they generate. Feeds will gradually target social platforms for channel-based content subscriptions.

Currently, Feeds is one of the leading applications in the Elastos ecosystem that integrates a variety of Elastos’ core technologies. Feeds uses Elasots DIDs for login functions, and facilitates data communication with the back-end Feeds Service through the Carrier network so as to protect the data ownership and control for users. What must be emphasized is that Elastos’ DID solution remains the most important core component in the Elastos tech stack. Users log in, manage their data and access rights, and interact with applications using DIDs.

Feeds v2.0 is based on the ESC (Elastos Smart Contract) Sidechain, and supports NFT features. Users can mint NFTs within the Feeds application and trade freely via the Pasar marketplace.

As NFTs are a rising trend, I would like to take a moment to address NFT features in Feeds.

First, users are welcome to experience mints and trade NFTs on Feeds. In comparison with the mainstream NFT mall, Feeds does not provide a perfect user experience, but our team is making improvements rapidly. And of course, users are welcome to submit suggestions for further improvements and new features. With NFT features, users can mint NFTs from their previously generated content, including pictures, audio and video data, and entire Channels themselves, and earn profits by selling or renting their data in the form of NFTs.

Feeds NFTs will also enable users to create a set of homogeneous NFTs, and will support features such as NFT auctions. Feeds Channels mainly focus on generating content and transforming that content into NFTs. The Feeds team has not ruled out the possibility of becoming a decentralized NFT trading platform, in which Feeds may provide NFT-related services to other applications.