Binance Announces Decentralized Storage System as Coinbase Cloud Bleeds Employees

Binance has released a whitepaper describing a Web 3 infrastructure project BNB Greenfield, currently under development by coders from Amazon Web Services, NodeReal, and Blockdaemon.

According to the project’s whitepaper, BNB Greenfield will allow BNB holders access to decentralized storage services using smart contracts.

BNB Greenfield to Charge Users BNB for Accessing Storage

Greenfield decentralized application developers can create tools to allow users to interact with the storage system or smart contracts on the Greenfield blockchain, the decentralized storage network, and Binance Smart Chain using their blockchain addresses. While user metadata is kept on-chain, bulk data is stored off-chain on a decentralized, redundant network dubbed Greenfield Core Infra. Greenfield’s consensus mechanism involves changes in the state of users’ metadata and their BNB balances.

Greenfield accepts Binance’s BNB token for gas fees and governance, re-minting locked BNB from Binance Smart Chain through a cross-chain bridge. Non-fungible tokens will govern data access privileges. In addition, the network will support other data storage and website hosting services.

Binance’s announcement comes hot on the heels of the alleged high-profile departure of two Web 3 infrastructure executives from Coinbase.

Joe Lallouz and Aaron Henshaw, co-founders of Web 3 infrastructure firm Bison Trails, reportedly left the U.S. exchange on Jan. 31, 2023, The Block reported. Before being acquired by Coinbase in 2021, Bison Trails developed staking infrastructure on more than 20 protocols and supported Coinbase’s Node stack. Coinbase Ventures was an early investor in the startup in 2019, with Bison Trails contributing infrastructure to Coinbase’s institutionally-focused custody services.

In Sep. 2022, Coinbase announced Node, a suite of developer tools to build “crypto computing services” on Coinbase Cloud, a Web 3 infrastructure division aiming to become the Amazon Web Services for crypto. Coinbase launched the Node stack to boost revenue after a brutal 2022 that saw its crypto trading revenue fall sharply. The Node stack initially supported development on Ethereum, with more blockchains planned.

Web 3 VC Investment Grows With Ethereum Optimism

While venture capital investment in the Web 3 space largely subsided after 2022’s spectacular crypto implosions, Bitcoin’s recent rally and optimism surrounding the upcoming Ethereum Shanghai upgrade have attracted growing investment in Web 3 infrastructure.

Multichain wallet developer Cypher recently raised $4.3 million from a seed investment round led by YCombinator. Gateway, a Web 3 infrastructure firm, recently announced a $4.2 million funding round led by Reciprocal Venture. Gateway’s decentralized credential service immutably stores a person’s accolades or characteristics on the decentralized storage platform Arweave.

A recent Huobi report on the outlook for 2023 predicted the introduction of programmability to decentralized storage systems. Filecoin recently introduced the Filecoin Virtual Machine to run smart contracts on top of its decentralized storage network. During 2023 and 2024, users can deploy customized FVM smart contracts, with support coming later for Ethereum smart contracts.

For Be[In]Crypto’s latest Bitcoin (BTC) analysis, click here.