In 2022, Protocol Labs started an initiative called Filecoin Saturn. The initial (v0) aim of Saturn is to:
Saturn is a decentralized CDN for IPLD, accelerating retrievals of media files from the Filecoin Network.
In its initial form, there are two “rings” of Saturn. The L1 cache nodes and the L2 cache nodes. The L1 cache nodes are the entry points to the Saturn Network from browsers. L1s will predominantly run in data centres with high availability and bandwidth.
The L2 cache nodes will run on Filecoin Station - an Electron app for the Filecoin Network. Station operators can download the Station app and run it on their desktops, just like any other desktop app. They can then set up a Filecoin wallet in the app and start earning FIL for providing lightning-fast media retrievals to the Saturn network.
By leveraging the unique properties of content-addressing, IPLD, p2p networks and decentralization, we hope Saturn will be able to compete with - or even outperform - traditional CDNs in certain dimensions, whilst rewarding anyone who would like to contribute to the network.
This groundbreaking interplanetary endeavor is looking for highly-skilled full-stack engineers and distributed system engineers to join.
The media for many millions of web3 assets is stored on IPFS and Filecoin, thanks to the amazing efforts of *.storage
. We would like to offer an even better retrieval service to the nascent and fast-growing web3 media market.
For v0, we should achieve the following goals.