Phala 2022: Year in Review
TLDR
2022 was quite a big year for Phala. We have made significant progress, including the launch of PhalaWorld Soulbound NFT, Phat Contract development and the completion of several phases of Phala Network upgrade. We’ve also made massive strides in partnerships, community, and our ecosystem. In this end-of-year review, we bring you the highlights of our journey so far and the potential Phala has yet to explore.
Phala has become more decentralized — this is everything. We launched the computation provider ecosystem and tokenomics, and both Phala and Khala removed Sudo. Moreover, the on-chain democracy governance is mostly controlled by a diverse group of PHA holders and the Hashforest team only has less than 40% influence over it.
A year of innovation. Our groundbreaking work of two game-changing products: Phat Contract and PhalaWorld are helping shape the future of Web3. Phat Contract exhibits unprecedented composability and removes the all usual limitations faced when using smart contracts. PhalaWorld introduces the SBT(Soulbound Token) concept as well as NFT customization.
“But does it come in purple?” Phala’s utilities have been expanding. We also noticed the need for DeFi in the ecosystem, so we launched SubBridge in the middle of 2022. It’s an aggregator with both EVM to Substrate bridges and also Khala to other parachains. It is important to note that SubBridge is the first cross-chain router in the Substrate ecosystem.
Consensus has become stronger. We rebranded Phala from a privacy provider to a computation provider. In addition, we expanded our reach even further-from Polkadot & Kusama to EVM, from Web3 to Web2.
Decentralization
Phala is controlled by the people
Phala operates on a decentralized, community-driven model, where most decisions about Phala are made by the DAO rather than a central authority. Khala and Phala share one council, council members execute the right to participate in Phala/Khala on-chain governance, and represent the community’s interests. The number of Khala Council seats was increased from 5 to 8 in September.
The council dealt with a significant amount of on-chain governance affairs, and approved numerous treasury proposals and tech upgrades. You may be impressed that our council processed 154 motions this year, which is the most among Polkadot & Kusama!
An Incredible and decentralized cloud
Phala presents a very powerful decentralized cloud. The computation nodes around the world in 50+ different cities and countries have been running steadily for well over a year now. In 2022, Phala’s decentralized computing cloud service has exceeded 18k+ online servers and can provide 142k+ vCPUs.
After the Gemini upgrade, the number of servers increased by 264%, and the total delegation grew by 360%, exceeding 209 million PHA.
Innovation
Technical Innovation
The Phala team has always been tech-driven. Through hard work and dedication, we’ve got some exciting breakthroughs this year:
- Key hierarchy management: This makes Phala one of the most secure projects in the Web3 world
- Phat Contract + SideVM: Innovatively introduce off-chain computation to the Web3 world
- Phat Contract UX Improvements: Including developer tools, documents, and the cross-chain interoperability solution Off-chain Rollup
- Experimental JS support in Phat Contract
As of the 25th of Dec, there were 1,434 commits and 408 PR submitted to GitHub. According to the statistics on electric capital’s analysis, Phala’s development activity has been extremely high in the past 2 years.
In addition, Phala Network just completed one of the biggest and most complex on-chain upgrades of the year, along with the launch of StakePool V2 and Vaults to maximize users’ staking yield. The amount of data that was upgraded was phenomenally huge, including 18,735 online worker migration and 20k+ delegation NFT generation.
Phat Contract
Phat Contract is an innovative decentralized off-chain computation model that can help crypto projects achieve true decentralization. It is trustless since it inherits the self-enforcement nature of smart contracts. With its core feature of HTTP support, it can easily provide computation for any chain and smart contract with low latency and privacy.
Phat Contract also introduces a user-friendly payment model “stake-to-compute”, via its new tokenomics. Phala Network offers a low-cost and high-performance computing cloud, despite high computing power being scarce and expensive. Users can stake PHA to obtain premium computing power and withdraw at any time if they decide to opt out.
Pioneer for NFT & Metaverse
We’re innovating, not forking. PhalaWorld is a digital representation of a user’s progression on the Phala Network.
PhalaWorld uses a unique soulbound non-fungible token (NFT) system. With soulbound NFTs, players can possess unique items and characters that cannot be transferred. There are two parts to the soulbound NFT system: Spirit and Shell NFTs.
After users purchased their Shells, they entered Incubation, which allowed them to gain energy by completing different interactive tasks. Energy could then be used to unlock items and customize every aspect of your Shell during Dress Up. At the end of incubation, you could finalize all your item choices and see what your first Shell NFT will look like.
Utility
The 4 major applications are extremely important to the growth and success of Phala. We have more applications in the pipeline in the near future.
1. Phala App
Phala App is a multifunctional app hub for developing tools for the Phala ecosystem, such as SubBridge, Delegation, and Farm (previously ‘mining’). Phala’s community also utilizes Phala App as a wallet, as it supports Polkadot.js, Talisman, and SubWallet.
Phala App 2.0, launched on 22/12/2022, is an evolution of Phala App 1.0. Ideas for v2 upgrade came from users’ feedback and needs. It includes a brand-new UI design and 2 new features — StakePool v2 and Vault. The dashboard also displays users NFTs and assets, as well as balance and total delegation of PHA.
2. Phat Contract
Phat Contract, the core product of Phala Network, completed its brand refresh in September. Phala announced the new product name of “Phat Contract”, and revealed the brand identity for the first time.
In November, we launched Closed Beta and have 10+ teams participating. Phat Contract supports complex computation with low latency and cost, backed by Phala’s decentralized computation cloud with 142k+ vCPU running. We make the impossible dApps possible.
More releases in the short term:
- Open beta
- Official tokenomics
- A more user-friendly version
3. PhalaWorld
As the pioneer of “play to build”, PhalaWorld has now implemented the following features:
- Support for multiple types of NFT systems, including sellable and non-sellable NFTs such as Shell & Spirit;
- DID identity with a visual link to on-chain and off-chain data;
- A unique incubation system that allows for dynamic user interaction through the feeding of their original NFTs;
- A leaderboard system;
- NFT customization.
PhalaWorld finished its Shell NFT sale and incubation in 2022, supporting NFT customization and a new way of playing by feeding each other energy points. 1,171 out of 1,511 went through the incubation process. 114,978 energy points generated, which is equivalent to 38,326 feed events. A total of 1,171 first generation Survivors will enter PhalaWorld in the future to save the wasteland.
PhalaWorld will also launch its marketplace and enable Shell NFT trading in the near future.
The NFTs in PhalaWorld are based on the RMRK 2.0 standard pallet, which are composable. During Dress Up, each Shell NFT is composed of many slots(e.g. arms, legs etc.) After incubation, Survivors were able to unlock different equipment(items) for their Shells’ slots using the energy points they gained.
With the unlocked items, they can then customize how each part of their Shell looks, which is a super enjoyable and interactive experience. We’ve seen a very high participation rate for Dress Up because of this.
With this unique combination of PhalaWorld NFT and RMRK pallet, we believe we can easily extend such standards to make other parachain projects more interactive and fun.
4. SubBridge
SubBridge is the first cross-chain router in the Substrate ecosystem, using “XCM + ChainBridge cross-chain protocol” to implement cross-chain transmission of assets and information. It also bridges parachains with EVM and other chains. SubBridge enables the transfer among Phala, Khala, and Ethereum. Users only need to pay a few PHA as gas fee and can swap Phala’s assets ERC20-PHA, K-PHA, and PHA. There are 12 parachains that have opened HRMP channels with Khala/Phala at the moment.
Consensus
Community — we’re ₱hamily
Phala is building a global community with more than 23k+ Phamily members. Now we have 18 ambassadors from 11 countries, who are helping to build Phala and making us even stronger. Thanks to their help, Phala’s community made a great impact not only in the Dotsama ecosystem but also in the overall Web3 space. At the time of writing, we have received over 400 applications for new ambassador positions.
We have been working on a new ambassador program with different departments for ambassadors to participate in order to maximize their advantages. We will also introduce head ambassadors, an achievement system and a league table in 2023.
Globalization Impact Increasing
- Global footprint
Phala’s global footprint has significantly expanded in 2022, with a total of 141 events held in 14 countries and 18 cities worldwide, reaching over 230,000 people and totaling over 620 hours of activity. 15 of these events were organized by the Phala community. We also participated in 10 hackathons and workshops, receiving 6 advanced submissions and 33 beginner submissions.
2. Growing social media presence
Phala saw significant growth and interaction on its social media platforms in 2022. Some highlights include:
- Followers from all continents, with a particularly growing base in the US and Europe;
- Over 3.2 million total Twitter impressions
- More than 39,000 mentions of Phala Network on Twitter
- Phala Network’s LinkedIn account’s engagement rate was up by 3000%
- 329 new topics and 644 new posts on Phala forum
3. Diversified partners, expanding global business cooperation
In 2022, Phala continued to expand its partnerships with outstanding organizations in various fields. For example, Phala joined the Polkadot alliance, and became a Corporate Gold Member of the Blender Developer Fund to provide Web3 rendering services for Metaverse.
These partnerships have greatly increased Phala’s global presence and influence.
Phala in 2023
For 2023, we will further improve our competitiveness, continue to expand the influence of the Phala brand, and we are inspired to become the top choice for Web3 application builders who build off-chain programs.
Key Goals & Milestones
➤ Phat Contract Growth
- Agile development for Phat Contract
>>> Lower barrier for developers:
- Improve the usability of Phat Contract
- Support for various programming languages including JavaScript.
>>> Offer component for smart contract builders on EVM blockchains (such as Ethereum, Polygon, BNBchain…)
2. Achieve massive adoption for Phat Contract
>>> Build closer relationships with Web3 application developers
>>> Expand partnerships within the top Web3 ecosystem
>>> Propose a Phala grant program to support innovation
➤ Increase decentralization of the whole network
- Allow users to customize their own Phat Contract Cluster
- Reduce reliance on centralized services, such as by supporting more manufacturers like AMD
➤ Continue to evolve our brand to truly communicate the unique value of Phala
- Launch a new website with new UI
- Develop a clear and straightforward slogan for Phala
- Clarify the position of Phat Contract within our brand
- Increase the global influence of the brand
➤ Build a more global, powerful, and active community
- Continue to promote the growth of new ambassador (AMB) program
- Host more local events around the world
- Become well known within top developer communities worldwide
About Phala
Phala Network tackles the issue of trust in the computation cloud.
By organizing a decentralized network of computation nodes around the world, it offers high-performance services without relying on any cloud vendor. Phala workers run the programs in Secure Enclaves, a privacy technology already embedded into modern processors, enabling versatile and confidential execution. Together, this creates the infrastructure for a powerful, secure, and scalable trustless computing cloud.
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