Author: Alex Xu, Research Partner at Mint Ventures
1. Introduction
Recently, the Web3 comprehensive cloud service provider 4EVERLAND, which has been established and operated for over 4 years, finally conducted its TGE. Starting from decentralized front-end hosting services, it has gradually expanded to Web3 gateways, custom decentralized storage solutions, RaaS (Rollup as a Service), blockchain RPC, and AI RPC services, forming a product matrix around Web3 development needs.
In this article, I will conduct research on some key issues of the project to provide readers with an intuitive impression of the project, including:
Core products and business content of the project, main customer groups
Business data situation of the project
Financing, main partners, and token model
This article represents the author's stage thoughts as of publication, which may change in the future, and the views are highly subjective and may contain errors in facts, data, and reasoning logic. Criticism and further discussion from peers and readers are welcome, but this article does not constitute any investment advice.
The following is the main text.
2. Overview of 4EVERLAND's Business
4EVERLAND is a Web3.0 cloud computing platform that integrates storage, computing, and network core capabilities, making it a relatively typical TOB project.
The underlying resources of 4EVERLAND are the needs for computing, storage, and bandwidth that various developers require, integrating these resources into various tools and APIs that are convenient for developers to use, significantly lowering the threshold and cost for developers to independently connect to complex resources.
From the products that 4EVERLAND has already launched, there are Dapp hosting services and storage services based on decentralized infrastructure, as well as AI RPC services based on traditional internet technologies such as AI development. In addition, 4EVERLAND has built the 4EVER Network, which coordinates a series of resources (storage, computing, and network bandwidth) between supply and demand, specifically:
Dapp Application and Website Hosting
Websites built on centralized servers face many challenges, including censorship resistance and single points of failure (for example, after Tornado.Cash was sanctioned by OFAC, it was almost impossible to find a front end that could be accessed directly). 4EVERLAND's hosting services can help developers host websites and decentralized applications (DApps) on multiple protocols, including IPFS, Arweave, ICP, and BNBchain's Greenfield, allowing developers to freely choose which underlying protocol to host on.
In addition, 4EVERLAND's hosting service also provides some advanced features and capabilities, such as advanced caching (to improve the performance and response speed of websites or applications) and CDN functionality (to enhance the access speed of websites and applications across different global regions), as well as automatic SSL certificate management and other security features, gateway services that adapt to hosting protocols, and so on, reducing the maintenance costs for developers on the product front end.
Currently, Dex syncswap on zkSync, the leading lending platform Venus on BNBchain, and Astar are all using 4EVERLAND's hosting services.
Storage
4EVERLAND can provide distributed storage services based on protocols such as IPFS, Arweave, and Greenfield, and its storage services greatly simplify the way developers adopt distributed storage services. The 4EVERLAND API it provides is compatible with traditional cloud services such as AWS S3 API.
Currently, well-known decentralized voting governance platforms such as snapshot, decentralized identity protocol SpaceID, and Rollup project Taiko are all using 4EVERLAND's storage services.
RPC
RPC services can be simply understood as a 'bridge' or 'communication interface' between programs (such as wallets, DApps) and the blockchain. Its role is to allow programs to communicate with the blockchain, retrieve data, or send commands. 4EVERLAND provides RPC services for most mainstream chains, allowing Web3 developers to interact with various chains through APIs without needing to run their own clients.
Everpay, permaswap in the Arweave ecosystem currently adopts 4EVERLAND's RPC services.
RaaS
The Rollup Stack of 4EVERLAND uses the OP Stack and Polygon CDK, and also introduces Arweave data availability (DA), supporting Perma Blobs archival services.
4EVER Network
Compared to the modular services mentioned above, 4EVER Network is a system that aggregates resources on the supply side. This system consists of two parts:
One is the DePIN Aggregator, which directly faces existing mainstream Depin networks, such as IO.NET\Akash for computing power, Arweave for storage, and Fleek\Menson for bandwidth, aggregating these network resources for developers, which has already been launched.
Currently, even the leading Depin network protocols have a large amount of network resources idle, and even among networks providing similar resources, their standards are not unified. The role of the DePIN Aggregator is to provide a unified Depin resource interface for a large number of developers, offering customized, low-cost, and immediately available services, while delivering business demands to various idle Depin networks.
Another part of the 4EVER Network is 4EVER Node, which directly aggregates various resources idle by users, including computing power, bandwidth, and storage, providing resources for developers. This part is still under development.
AI RPC
In addition to hosting, storage, RPC, RaaS, and the 4EVER Network, 4EVERLAND also has AI RPC services, providing a unified interface that connects to major mainstream AI models, making it easier for developers to access cutting-edge AI models more efficiently in their business.
Business Model
The business model of 4EVERLAND is relatively simple, meaning that users pay for the protocol by using various services offered by 4EVERLAND. Currently, users have a certain amount of free usage quota, and after exceeding that quota, they need to pay according to the amount of resources used.
3. 4EVERLAND Business Situation
3.1 Number of Users
According to official disclosed data, as of now, 4EVERLAND has registered and generated resource consumption for over 250,000 users.
In addition, developers will associate their GitHub accounts within the 4EVERLAND system, and when code updates occur, requests will be pushed to 4EVERLAND, which will automatically help build and deploy new versions of the website.
Currently, the daily active number of updates linked to 4EVERLAND's GitHub accounts is approximately 30,000+.
GitHub developers' update push flow in 4EVERLAND
3.2 Storage
4EVERLAND is currently one of the top data storage service providers for Arweave and Greenfield.
On Greenfield, its data storage amount in the past 7 days is 1.2GB, ranking 4th.
https://dappbay.bnbchain.org/ranking/chain/greenfield?sort=totalStorageSize
On Arweave, its 7-day Bundle storage volume is 397.6 MiB, ranking 8th.
https://viewblock.io/arweave/topStats?tab=bundles&time=seven
3.3 Protocol Revenue
The protocol charging situation of 4EVERLAND has not been open-sourced yet. According to information obtained by the author from the team, 4EVERLAND's monthly revenue is currently between 40,000 and 50,000 USD.
4. Financing, Partners, and Token Model
4.1 Financing Situation
4EVERLAND has conducted two rounds of public financing, the first round in August 2021, raising 1.5 million USD, with investors including Distributed Capital, FBG Capital, Bixin Ventures, Mint Ventures, etc.; the second round of financing was in December 2023, raising 2 million USD, with investors including Arweave, Waterdrip Capital, Bing Ventures, Arweave SCP Ventures, GTS Ventures, Web3.com Ventures, Hillstone Finance, Forward Research, etc., none of which disclosed specific financing valuations.
In addition, 4EVERLAND has also received multiple official grants from BNBChain, Polygon, Optimism, IPFS, Arweave, and ICP.
4.2 Partners
In the ecosystem partner map listed by 4EVERLAND the day before yesterday, in addition to some representative projects mentioned in the business summary, many public chain or L2 projects also have in-depth cooperation with 4EVERLAND. Through the services provided by 4EVERLAND, developers can be more efficient and convenient in project development and maintenance on public chains. Some public chains and Rollup ecosystem participants also directly purchase 4EVERLAND's services, such as Taiko, which is using 4EVERLAND's gateway services and using storage services to manage project NFTs.
4.3 Token Model
4EVERLAND announced its token model on December 9, with the following details:
The project has a dual token model, where Land is the payment token, priced in USD, used to pay for various resource fees and to buy back governance token 4EVER; 4EVER is the governance and utility token.
The total amount of 4EVER tokens is 10 billion, issued on Ethereum.
The specific token allocation is as follows:
Node rewards 40%, community funds 15%, operating funds 10%, user rewards 5%, the remaining portion includes token sales 15%, core team and advisors 12%, and initial liquidity and market-making funds 3%.
According to the current secondary market price (December 16), the FDV corresponding to the 4EVERLAND project is only about 60 million USD, and the current circulating market value is only 4.8 million USD.
5. Summary
As a Web3.0 cloud service platform that integrates storage, computing, and networking core capabilities, 4EVERLAND aims to provide convenience of resources and tools for Web3 developers. In addition, its constructed 4EVER Network is a system that aggregates resources on the supply side, matching the developer demand with various types of Depin networks that are currently underutilized, while also providing developers with lighter, cheaper, and diverse comprehensive Web3 resources. With the further advancement of the Web3 industry and the expansion of the developer community, the resource demands on the Web3 D side will also expand, and 4EVERLAND will benefit from this.