Unigrid CEO Evan Green: "Participating companies can tap into an additional source of income without significant effort."

© Unigrid

The aim of Unigrid's decentralized cloud solution is to network a large number of European data centers and thus tap into a practically inexhaustible reservoir of previously unused storage capacity. "Thanks to blockchain node technology, users only pay a small fraction of what they used to, with maximum data security and reliability," says Unigrid CEO Evan Green.

The biggest hurdle for such a decentralized cloud solution to date has been the initial outlay for participating companies. Unigrid has developed a plug-and-switch approach that drastically reduces the changeover and implementation time; for example, there is a dedicated interface to the AWS API Gateway. This increases acceptance on both the provider and customer side.

The system is organized by an intelligent blockchain application, which also ensures secure data encryption. The upcoming Cosmos integration will also enable an exchange between different blockchains and thus offer extended application possibilities. Cosmos is a decentralized network of independent, scalable and compatible blockchains. It thus forms the basis for a new token economy.

European alternative to US corporations

Unigrid says it has created the basis for a European alternative to the major US providers that dominate the market. "Our solution is fault-tolerant, efficient and cost-effective," says Adam Waldenberg, CTO at the Swedish Unigrid Foundation: "In the long term, we see ourselves as a real alternative to providers such as Amazon AWS or Google Cloud. In any case, many technology managers expect blockchain to fundamentally change the cloud industry by guaranteeing the permanence of information."

Billion-dollar market in our sights

Unigrid's decentralized cloud service: The load-balanced network is equipped with advanced security features such as sharding, data striping and parity blocks.

© Unigrid

According to Evan Green, the market launch is planned for 2023: "In the first phase, the focus will be purely on the storage business. However, there is almost unlimited storage and computing capacity available in Europe. In the near future, this could also enable demanding use cases such as virtual reality, augmented reality, 8k HDR streaming, encryption or AI training."

The potential is huge, as the global cloud market already has an annual sales volume of more than around 600 billion US dollars. According to estimates, annual sales could exceed the one trillion US dollar mark as early as 2028. "Even with a modest market share of 0.1%, we see sales potential in the mid-triple-digit million range," says Evan Green.

Revenue model for small and medium-sized companies

There are currently more than 600 nodes in the Unigrid ecosystem. This number is set to grow to around 10,000 in the near future. CEO Green believes this goal is easily achievable, as participating companies can tap into an additional source of income without significant effort. The business model developed by the Unigrid Foundation is not based on token sales. Those who provide storage capacity can also receive remuneration in euros or US dollars. The responsible strategy consultant and Valuex CEO Kruegel considers this to be an interesting source of revenue for smaller or medium-sized companies too.

After successful community financing rounds in the last two years, Unigrid is currently finalizing the financing for its market entry. The company is very optimistic as it has already secured part of the necessary financing.