Introduction

So you heard about Crust, but what is it? To start off with, in its most simple form Crust is a decentralized storage network that is a part of the Web3 ecosystem. As said in the Crust Wiki, “It is designed to build a decentralized cloud ecosystem that values data privacy and ownership”.

How Crust Works

Crust has three layers that work in conjunction to one another that help the system be efficient yet secure. They are as follows, along with the definitions of each from the wiki:

1. DSM (Decentralized Storage Market): “DSM allows storage users to place storage orders on the chain, and the files (IPFS CID list) specified in the storage order will be stored by Crust nodes. DSM also takes care of incentivizing storage nodes to provide retrieving service.”
2. GPos (Guaranteed Proof of Stake): “GPoS is a PoS-derived consensus protocol. Like NPoS, a user can vote to specific nodes (and we define the voting behavior as a guarantee process). The key difference is that each node has its own staking quota, decided by its proven storage resource and work. Therefore, GPoS encourages nodes to provide more storage resources to take more work, and improve the security and robustness of the network.”
3. MPow (Meaningful Proof of Work): “MPoW is a low-trust storage proof layer. The overall function of MPoW is to periodically generate trustable storage work reports and upload to the chain. A storage work report includes incremental information of data storage work on a particular node.”

The Crust Wiki also has a great info-graphic that helps visualize the process.

There are also very detailed info graphics that explain how each layer work in depth. Click here to see them.

Best Use Cases For Crust

Now that we have a general idea of how the Crust system works and why it’s secure, what are the best use cases for it? The Crust Wiki lists four different scenarios where Crust will really shine:

1. Severless DApp/website hosting
2. General off-chain data storage
3. Accelerated content delivery
4. Secured cloud storage

Who Is Already Using Crust?

Quite a few platforms are already taking advantage of Crust and this number is only growing, these include:

• DApp Hosting: Uniswap, AAVE, Polkadot, IPFS, and Liquidity
• NFT Metadata Storage: Switchswap, IPFS Scan, NFT Scan, RMRK, Kaka, Realy, and UniArts
• Encrypted IPFS Storage: Crust Files, Decoo, Socbay, CruTransfer, Crato, Syke Kiwi, Coldstack, Bluna, Sinso, Litentry, and Kilt

Crust Links

• Github
• Website
• Medium
• Twitter
• Discord
• Wiki