Functionland with Ehsan Shariati | E240

Peer to peer cloud computing utilizing the blockchain.

On today's Fintech Impact episode, Jason Pereira will talk to Ehsan Shariati, CEO and Co-Founder of Functionland. The company is the distributed storage platform that allows you to store data on the blockchain but utilizing your own dedicated hardware. Ehsan articulates the cost difference in AWS like what kind of savings people are looking from a usage standpoint and what level of revenue could someone be looking in a return on investment from a provider or storage standpoint?

Episode Highlights

  • 0.33: In Functionland we are creating a decentralized Google cloud. Basically, like the cloud providers that we are getting services from like storage, backups, computation power and running AI algorithms on their servers, says Ehsan. 

  • 1.00: Ehsan's company is decentralizing the hard infrastructure so that everyone become a provider to others and they all can basically provide services to each other

  • 2.47: We have a can full of companies there that are providing most of the storage for the Internet at this point and all of the tools get built on cloud providers, says Jason.

  • 3.06: You have Amazon, Google and Microsoft controlling vast majority of data centers out there and it's great because it drops the price point, but it also creates centralization issues, says Jason.

  • 4.12: Five coin is focused on files, but we are focused on applications because most of consumers don't care about the files individually. They want applications that process the data, files and provide useful information, says Ehsan.

  • 6.37: Blockchain has given us the power of P2P transactions basically without any middleman and we used that power in the hard work, says Ehsan. 

  • 7.41: Ehsan says that they are utility token not a financial token and the token is there to support the utility of the ecosystem which is storage and computer and application providing.

  • 8.12: If you have the hardware, you can get all the basic things for free because the tokens are there to pay for it by itself.

  • 9.23: If someone comes to your home, steal your box, they still don't have access to your files because it's all encrypted. The only place that the file gets decrypted is your phone, says Ehsan.

  • 9.51: In our system there is no central key. You are the owner of your keys and no one else can access your files or decrypt except you, says Ehsan. 

  • 11.18: We connect your wallet, your wallet sends the request, encrypt the file with that signature and send it for backup, says Ehsan.

  • 12.01: Ehsan explains if there is a fair approximation that the things you are providing are a beauty play for people who have tremendous amounts of storage need or people who also are developers. 

  • 12.30: When the user owns their data themselves and the companies are not no longer liable, they don't need to pay AWS for server costs and they can focus on the product and giving the customers that experience that they want without worrying about like the data security, says Ehsan.

  • 14.00: If someone's looking for as a reason to meet on site external storage, you are becoming interesting viable alternative. They can get the same benefit while simultaneously being part of this network, says Jason.

  • 15.00: The vision that we had was actually to create a platform that monetizes open source. We want to create a direct channel between the creators like app developers, content creators with the consumers, says Ehsan.

  • 17.35: This year actually we have the chip shortage and it's very hard to get some parts of the hardware and that was the challenge we had, says Ehsan. 

  • 18.42: Enabling developers to monetize their creation, enabling content creators to monetize their creation without the middleman that's a challenging but interesting thing that Ehsan enjoys a lot.

3 Key Points

  1. Ehsan decided to create plug and play hardware that any user could plug into the Internet, and it became a DAB server. It gives you the power to own your own data.

  2. Ehsan explains how secure it is to have mine data stored on someone else device that could be sitting on their desktop?

  3. Ehsan talks about the entire fragmentation of the data and how that works. 

Tweetable Quotes

  • "We decided to create an alternative of Google photos when the news came out that Google photos are removing the free tier of their photos application and changing their terms, and this was the start of Functionland." – Ehsan

  • "We are a partner of five coin, and we work together on the protocol set that we have. But the approach is different because five coin is more focused on B2B business." – Ehsan

  • "If I have a large file like one terabyte video, there might be no other one device that can support this for me. So, we need to chunk it up. We chunk it up in small pieces and we then distribute these files to different boxes." – Ehsan

  • "We opened a per-order campaign for one month and the initial storage that we have when we go live by the end of the year is 2 petabytes and that would be start." - Ehsan 

  • "In blockchain industry and the crypto, there is a lot of focused right now on the software like NFTS, and there is less attention being paid to the infrastructure of it, and I want to change the openness to hardware elements." - Ehsan

  • "I have been at developer like for 15 years and the vision that we have that to monetize open source, that's something I know that it's very interesting for a lot of developers." - Ehsan

Resources Mentioned

Fintech ImpactJason PereiraFintech