How GYOC is demonstrating the rise of novel business pathways

The hallmark of a lasting innovation is when businesses outside of its immediate industry leverage that technology as a core component to their customer offering. Consider when companies adopted telephone at scale by outsourcing customer service to call centres. Or when physical retail started selling goods with e-commerce as a channel. That technology became irrevocably woven into those businesses.

We're beginning to see startups from non-web3 industries become web3 native - folding blockchain into their core business. Grow Your Own Cloud (GYOC) is one such example. GYOC is a fascinating case of a business operating at the intersection of a few different, seemingly disconnected fields.

This post will use GYOC to illustrate a trend that could define the next generation of businesses and value creation. We’ll cover what GYOC is solving, how we’re solving it, why existing funding models don’t work and how web3 opens up new possibilities.

Data storage, but not as you know it

Grow Your Own Cloud is a green biotech company that stores digital data in plant DNA, building clean data storage solutions by working with nature as a technology.

What do we mean by storing data in plant DNA? Consider that DNA stores our genetic data. In fact, it’s the highest density of data storage in the known universe. DNA is a thousandfold denser than flash memory. In theory, a mug full of DNA would be able to store all the world’s digital data. Which is a lot - about 10 trillion gigabytes worth has been created by humans, with an increase of another 2.5 million gigabytes per day.

This volume of data becomes a problem because to store that data, massive data warehouses are needed. These are facilities that house nothing but servers. It’s estimated that there are 7,500 data centers in the world, with the US running 2,670 of those. They’re enormous in size, cost upwards of $1 billion to build and maintain. They also require huge amounts of energy. Exactly how much is debated, but estimates land around 200 terrawatt hours per year. That’s more than the energy consumption of many of the world’s nations, including Iran, South Africa and Argentina. The warehouses also produce more C02 than the entire aviation industry annually. In addition to energy consumption, the water usage is remarkable. For one single facility in Texas, Google requires 1.46 billion gallons of water a year.

With the rapid expansion and adoption of various digital tech, it’s not that surprising that we’re creating a lot of data. However, the future projections are really quite alarming. Considering an increase in high definition digital experiences (e.g. Generative AI, VR, metaverse, 8k video), exploding population growth and higher rates of device usage, you can imagine how these projections might come to be.

When we compile all of this context, the outlook is bleak. Especially in the face of climate change. The GYOC founding team sought to tackle this problem from a different angle, bringing the challenge back to first principles. Could there be a better way to store data? As it turns out, yes.

GYOC’s purpose is to make the exponential increase in the world’s data positively contribute to the environment. A world where storing data isn’t extractive, where it’s more than ‘sustainable’ — it’s regenerative.

It’s a lofty ambition and perhaps one that doesn’t have an immediately clear pathway, if you aren’t familiar with what GYOC is doing. So what does it look like in practice? It starts with storing data in plants and trees — limited amounts at first, then scaling up large. The ultimate objective is to transform data warehouses from carbon creators to carbon absorbers: replacing server farms with data forests. There’s a long road between now and then, but at GYOC, we’re not playing by traditional rules.

It’s already happening

The first question most people ask is “is that even possible?”. The answer to that is a strong “yes”. We know that, because we’re already doing it today, although at a modest scale.

Here’s how.

Digital data uses binary code: sequences of 0s and 1s. As you might remember from your high school biology class, DNA stores everything in 4 molecules: A, T, C and G. The key to storing data in DNA is a translation between the two binary digits and the four DNA bases. Once the translation is set, strands of DNA molecules are created that match the binary sequence.

At a high level, this is the way it works. The process includes encoding (uploading) digital data in plants and decoding (downloading) digital data from plants. DNA sequencers like Nanopore MinION are important for this process. The Nanopore is just a small piece of hardware that looks like a hard drive and is connected to a computer via USB. To decode data that’s stored in a plant, a sample is taken from the plant, some DNA is extracted and then read via the DNA sequencer. The sequence is translated back into 0s and 1s and then to the required file format e.g. a JPEG or MP3, accessible on your computer. Et voila, you have access to digital data in plant DNA.👌

If that wasn’t cool enough, this is where it starts getting really interesting.

An evolving landscape

Hard problems take a long time to solve. Deep tech, pharma, biotech, quantum computing - you know the types. The playbook until now has been for deep pocketed VCs and institutional investors to front up with a fat cheque to give the team an extremely long runway. The team then go behind closed doors for a number of years, (hopefully) reappearing with a working, market-ready solution. But in today’s market landscape, this playbook is starting to change. Some LPs are demanding earlier returns in their standard 10-year funds. Investors are becoming more risk averse, eager to see revenue and value accrue earlier rather than waiting for a big risky bet to materialise. For GYOC specifically, DNA data storage doesn’t have a tried and tested process to rely on (like pharma, for example) and the time horizon is long.

At GYOC, we’ve seen a glimpse of a better future, so we’re finding a way to make it happen. Web3 is how.

From Web3 to WebTree

Web3 is showing that we can disrupt that traditional model by building evolution into the product roadmap. It’s not just about sourcing funding from the community, it’s about opening up new revenue streams and growth opportunities.

For GYOC, it starts with a DAO. A community of diverse, engaged and incentivised professionals working on a shared mission. For attracting talented community members, it certainly helps that the company’s purpose is a lofty one, leveraging new technologies in a creative way. The DAO structure allows GYOC to access talent it wouldn’t otherwise be able to attract as a traditional startup.

In addition to the mission, the incentives for contributors are rewards through social tokens and NFTs. The DAO also infuses GYOC with community direction from day one. The DAO has different layers of involvement, from active contributors to supporting members who are less involved in the day to day. The community will be NFT-gated, meaning that to gain access to discussions and benefits, you’ll need to have minted or purchased a GYOC membership NFT.

With a functioning DAO in place, next comes the evolution of products that GYOC can create. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t start with the data forests mentioned earlier… Not for a decade, maybe more. So what then? This is where GYOC starts to leverage web3 as part of its core business.

NFPs: Non-Fungible Plants

It’s fair to say that NFTs have entered the mainstream awareness, but they’re riddled with accusations of scams (fair) and adverse environmental impact (also fair). GYOC has a fresh take: NFPs.

NFPs are plants, encoded with a digital file within their DNA. NFPs come in the form of plants and seeds (that can be grown).

What data goes into NFPs? For that, GYOC is tapping the creator economy, working with high caliber and globally renowned musicians, artists and brands (an exciting announcement will be coming on this soon, so stay tuned!).

Each collaborator will launch their own ‘collection’, consisting of physical plants & seeds, each of which are paired with digital NFTs (environmentally friendly, naturally). These collections live digitally in an ‘NFP garden’, essentially a community-centric platform that houses all the collections, connecting the various collaborators to their fans.

The content within the plant is created bespoke by these collaborators, especially for the NFP collection. It’s a unique creative exploration for creators and one where they can share handsomely in the proceeds.

The beauty of this business model, is that it leverages the inherent scarcity in the number of NFPs we can create and the inherent scarcity of storage volume within each plant. As multiple collections will be dropped each year, this gives GYOC a recurring revenue model, reaching a new audience of highly engaged fans with each collaborator.

The roadmap is a fascinating one, with different dynamics at play. The maturity of the tech today is rudimentary — we can store single files. In five years, that should increase to storing megabytes. In ten years, the expectation is gigabytes and with DNA data storage we’re talking petabytes eventually. All this is helped drastically by decreasing DNA synthesis costs and an evolving acceptance of the technology by various customers.

As the technology develops, different revenue streams become possible. For example, through partnering with flower and houseplant retailers, customised offerings can be made available to a wider, non-crypto base:

• Imagine storing a photo album or video in a seed of a loved one who passed away, which you could grow in your backyard into a magnificent tree

• Or encoding a couple’s wedding song within the bride’s bouquet

• Or for corporate partnerships, a brand with a rich heritage could archive their treasured data in plants (this has happened already with LVMH)

A workhorse revenue driver, this business model plans to fuel R&D for the long-term objective: building a clean data archival service at the intersection of DNA Data Storage and Carbon Capture. AKA Data Forests.

The future will be a remix

It’s fair to say that without the aid of web3, GYOC would not be able to generate revenues for a number of years. You could make the argument that such an endeavour would be unfundable and therefore impossible to realise.

In the world of data infrastructure, creativity and design are foreign. But creativity has been a necessary element in thinking different about data storage and fundamental to how the business will grow. Grow Your Own Cloud will be one of many startups that look at completely new ways to go to market in surprising industries. Companies may start to breach the boundaries of what’s easily defined and categorised. It’s through that remixing that we’ll see some great strides forward for humanity.

If you’d like to join our mission as part of our WebTree community - you can get early access at our Discord server here: