How Decentralized Content Delivery Networks Will Shape Web3
Content delivery networks have emerged as the backbone of the internet since their first appearance in the late 1990s, ensuring netizens can access their favorite webpages, applications and services almost instantaneously, no matter where they’re located.
Those who began using the early Web will recall how browsing different sites was once a painfully slow experience, with dial-up connections constrained by low bandwidth and geographically distant servers. Together with the emergence of broadband, CDNs have helped transform the internet into the blazing fast, global network we’re familiar with today.
CDNs play a vital role in the internet because they make it possible for website assets like images and videos to load almost immediately. Essentially, CDNs are geographically distributed groups of servers that enable content to be cached closer to end users. When someone connects to a website or app, the CDN will identify their location through their IP address. Then, it will send a cached version of that website to the user’s device from the nearest server, significantly reducing latency. It enables a user in Japan for example to access an American website such as CNN much faster, going through a server based in Tokyo, rather than being served that content from its host in the U.S. Not only do CDNs reduce latency, but they also free up the internet from unnecessary congestion, making the entire network more efficient and faster.
Like most other web industries, the CDN industry has come to be dominated by a small number of providers. Two of the best-known players in the industry are Cloudflare and Akamai, with market capitalizations of $20.05 billion and $12.6 billion, respectively. Other big names include Fastly and Edgio, plus the big “public cloud” infrastructure providers Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
Centralized CDNs Are A Mismatch For Web3
This centralization of CDN is bad news for the emerging world of Web3, a new version of the internet that’s based on the concept of decentralized ownership. At present, the vast majority of Web3 applications use centralized services like Cloudflare to accelerate content delivery. It’s necessary to use CDNs because most users will not tolerate slow loading times. If an app doesn’t load instantly, the users will quickly go somewhere else.
The problem is that CDN centralization is completely at odds with Web3’s decentralized ethos. Decentralized applications, by their nature, should be independent of any single entity, with a permissionless and censorship-resistant way to distribute their content. That’s not the case if they’re reliant on a centralized CDN.
One of the most obvious problems with privately-run CDNs is that they carry the risk of a single point of failure. While downtime is rare, it is not unheard of, as GoDaddy discovered to its detriment recently, when it revealed that it had fallen victim to a multitude of hacks in late 2020 and early 2021. As a result of those attacks, the customers of numerous apps and websites using its services found themselves being redirected to malicious websites.
There’s also the danger of deplatforming. Web3 is meant to be uncensorable, but if a decentralized app is using a centralized CDN then it puts itself at risk of being shut down without any warning. Such incidents have happened in the past, with one notable case recently being Cloudflare’s shutdown of Switter, a service used by sex workers to connect with clients discreetly.
Building A Decentralized Alternative
The good news is that Web3 builders no longer need to rely on centralized CDNs, thanks to the birth of several promising initiatives. One of the most ambitious is Fleek Network, which is building out a lightning-fast CDN that’s designed for decentralized apps. It will be an incentivized network that allows anyone to provide bandwidth by running a node.
Fleek Network’s biggest advantage is that it’s “origin agnostic”, which means it can accelerate the delivery of content from any storage protocol or provider. It will be fully accessible and completely transparent, with its underlying blockchain providing a public record of its available bandwidth and what content is being served, in the same way that smart contracts enable financial transparency.
“Our vision for Fleek Network at its core, it’s a decentralized edge network where anyone can run nodes and provide resources to the network,” Fleek co-founder Harrison Hines told TechCrunch in a 2022 interview. Because anyone can contribute to Fleek Network, it should be able to match the performance of existing CDNs, with lower costs too, while staying true to Web3’s decentralization benefits.
A second emerging player in this space is Media Network, which claims to provide all of the benefits of a traditional CDN. Like Fleek, it's decentralized, fully anonymous and community-led. Media Network claims that decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are a perfect match for its CDN, as it will enable them to serve their applications without the risk of engineering attacks against administrators’ accounts and other hassles. Similar to Fleek Network, Media Network is based on a network of node operators, where anyone can rent or provide resources. Being a decentralized protocol, it will enable community members to vote on key decisions around its governance.
The Advantage Of Decentralized CDNs
There are reasons to believe in the superiority of decentralized CDNs beyond the main benefits of decentralization. For one thing, they may end up being able to accelerate content delivery much faster than any traditional CDN, especially for users who live away from major population centers.
Because anyone can participate as a node in Fleek Network and Media Network, they have the potential to grow far bigger than traditional providers. Cloudflare, for instance, might be the biggest CDN but its infrastructure is still somewhat limited to the world’s biggest cities. Building and running a big data center to serve content locally requires a substantial investment, which is why companies like Cloudflare have a minimal footprint in more remote locations.
On the other hand, decentralized CDNs won’t have this problem, as their network of node operators will stretch to even the smallest of towns and villages, enabling them to serve up content with much lower latencies. If the concept catches on, there’s no reason why Fleek Network could not eventually grow to encompass millions of nodes around the world, far more than any traditional CDN can boast. Someone living in Alaska could therefore be served content from a node located within their same town, as opposed to a large data center on the mainland U.S. or Canada.
Decentralized CDNs will also bring additional security benefits. Because the load is distributed across many more nodes, the risk of a breach resulting in the theft of data becomes much lower. Moreover, blockchain technology will enable content to be stored in an immutable way, with a clear audit trail that allows for the users of that content to be tracked.
As mentioned in the beginning, CDNs play a vital role in enabling the speedy internet services we’ve become accustomed to. Now, as the world begins to embrace Web3, the decentralization of CDNs will lead to even better internet coverage, with faster download times, incentivized participation and greater security for every user.
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