Fleek and Polygon Labs Join Hands on Highly Performant, Permissionless Cloud Services

Sead Fadilpašić

Last updated:

June 6, 2024 09:12 EDT | 2 min read

Edge-optimized, on-chain cloud platform Fleek has announced a strategic collaboration with the Polygon blockchain developer Polygon Labs.

Per the press release, the two plan to build highly performant, permissionless web services and use cases on top of Fleek’s new on-chain cloud infrastructure, specifically geared towards the needs of Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK) projects.

Also, Fleek has announced Edge Functions – its first public testnet featuring CDN (Content Delivery Network) and Java Runtime services and the first use case leveraging these capabilities.

Fleek CEO Harrison Hines explained that most blockchains that provide traditional web services are not performant enough to meet the demands of modern developers and their end users.

He added that the goal of this collaboration is to “develop web services that provide real benefits from both a decentralization and self-sovereignty perspective, as well as from a performance, cost, and developer experience perspective.”

Eliminating Up to 80% of Cloud Costs

The press release explained that CDK-powered chains, like all other L2s and Rollups, require cloud infrastructure to operate.

Their options are to run the infrastructure directly on corporate cloud platforms like AWS or indirectly via RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service) providers. The latter still uses cloud platforms like AWS “under the hood.”

Using AWS and other corporate cloud platforms for L2 and Rollup infrastructure works – but is “far from ideal,” the announcement said.

One of the key issues is that it’s prohibitively expensive.

Additionally, there are issues with censorship, de-platforming, security, liability, and other concerns. These problems make building meaningful software on corporate-controlled infrastructure “more fragile than most realize.”

yet another prime example of corporate cloud nonsense. and it’s only going to get worse.

the future of cloud is onchain.

— Harrison Hines ⚡️ (@harris0nhines) May 29, 2024

Fleek believes it can help alleviate these issues, it said. The solution is a performant, low-cost, fully permissionless, self-sovereign, more future-proof alternative.

Fleek’s algorithmic operation of its global node network eliminates the human-related factors that typically account for 75%-80% of cloud costs.

It also saves time by providing developers with its out-of-the-box infrastructure without the typical DevOps and maintenance work required when developing on platforms like AWS, it said.

Speed Matters

The partners aim to offer an alternative to traditional cloud platforms.

During previous testnet performance trials, Fleek showcased that its infrastructure has the potential to be more performant than traditional cloud platforms, the announcement said.

In a simple edge function test, Fleek’s average time to first byte (TTFB)—a measurement used to indicate a network’s responsiveness—was 37.02 milliseconds.

This was 7 times faster than AWS Lambdas (274.22 ms) and 2.7 times faster than Vercel Serverless (103.09 ms) in global testing, it said.

The goal for Fleek Network is to build cloud infrastructure and web services that add value to all developers, regardless of the industry they work in.@harris0nhines went on the @coverageproved to get into the vision for Fleek and @fleek_net. pic.twitter.com/d8RMbon7Bk

— Fleek ⚡ (@fleek) June 4, 2024

Meanwhile, Polygon CDK is a popular modular, open-source software toolkit for blockchain developers to launch new L2 chains on Ethereum.

It is used by projects such as IDEX, WIREX, Palm Network, Immutable, Astar, OKX, and Fuse Network.

Moreover, there are “70+ other projects in the pipeline.”

“Leveraging the blockchain to better coordinate, align, and incentivize network participants and activity rather than relying on a corporation can lead to further efficiencies—ultimately resulting in better products for users,” the announcement concluded.

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