Content Delivery Networks or CDNs are an integral part of today’s internet. Since their inception, they have played a key role in enhancing the internet user experience, by increasing the availability and reducing the latency of rich content-based internet services like streaming. CDNs improve the performance of the websites by strategically distributing the content across geographies with the help of a network of proxy servers and data centers. By doing so, they reduce congestion at the source by moving the supply of internet services closer to the demand.
The CDN infrastructure has effectively increased the capacity of internet services and lowered the load time. These improvements are quite evident to the users when compared with the performance of the same service a few years ago to that of now. However, the content distribution networks aren’t a simple affair anymore. As most of these networks are based on centralized infrastructure, they come with substantial upfront costs, which also affects rapid expansion to meet growing market demands.
According to statistics, the data streaming demand for video content is close to 225,000 petabytes per month. It is set to go up as the number of people with decent to high-speed internet connections are growing at an astounding pace, thanks to easy access and highly flexible, and affordable data packages. Yet, in the current scenario, people are becoming increasingly frustrated about the long buffer times and loading speeds.
A quick glance at the industry and usage trends shows further increase in demand in the near future, driven by the rise of AR and VR content, live 4K videos among others. It will inevitably place a great deal of stress on the current internet infrastructure. Marlin Protocol offers a potential solution to this problem by leveraging blockchain and smart contracts technology to enable decentralization of CDN ecosystems for enhanced quality internet services.
Efficiency and Economics
Marlin is a decentralized CDN solution that seeks to enable the ease of processing, storage, and delivery of content, at a lower cost than the current solutions. The platform manages to achieve it by utilizing the spare bandwidth and hard drive space of internet users, in exchange for the network’s native LIN tokens.
The decentralized and peer-accelerated infrastructure can be used to eliminate risks, reduce congestion, and bring supply closers to demand by utilizing idle resources which are located closer to the end user. Marlin can massively reduce the operating cost of CDN services by about 90%, bringing it down from the existing $0.17/GB to $0.015/GB, without compromising on the quality of services or reliability of the accounting systems.
The smart contracts implemented in Marlin blockchain based CDN infrastructure enables publishers to cater to the global audience without worrying about the technical feasibility in the remotest of areas. The flexible pricing and auto-scaling features implemented in Marlin ensures that customers, irrespective of their usage requirements can efficiently implement the systems without worry about the costs or quality. Big or small, all users on Marlin stand to get the same level of service at the lowest price.
The implementation of micropayments enabled smart metering system will ensure that the peers are fairly compensated for their contribution to the ecosystem, and the publishers aren’t overcharged. The distributed ledger keeps a record of transactions and can be verified by the users. Meanwhile, protocols like Proof of Availability and Augmented Proof of Storage Time conduct audits of the ecosystem to ensure the integrity and security of the data while holding the peers accountable for their services on the network. The Global Reputation Consensus system further enhances the reliability of the decentralized CDN platform.
Further, publishers can rest easy by monitoring the effectiveness of their content by keeping tabs on the analytics data accessible on the platform.
For Individuals
Marlin’s hybrid architecture and P2P infrastructure setup allow people to join the network without any specialized hardware. They can contribute the existing excess bandwidth and storage to the network and get paid in LIN tokens. Pay-outs for their contributions will be decided by the platform’s smart metering system, which keeps track of the individual’s bandwidth and storage utilization.
LIN Tokens
The Marlin blockchain ecosystem is driven by LIN crypto-tokens. Publishers can purchase a range of products and services offered by Marlin against LIN payments. Similarly, the contributors on the network will be rewarded with the same token.
Learn more about Marlin Protocol at – https://www.marlin.pro/
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation for any tokens, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory or other services by Marlin Labs and the author.