§ 01 / Hero2026-04 · testnet · v0

the delivery layeranyone can servepriced, not quoted.

the first bytes of a 14-gigabyte file posted in berlin reach a client in tokyo in under a second. the client streams from three peers at once, verifies every chunk with blake3, and pays per megabyte in usdc — whether the payload is a linux iso, a dataset, a game patch, a media library, or an ai model. deCDN is demand-shaped, locality-optimised delivery for large files at scale: supply forms around demand, cost collapses as regional traffic concentrates. the code is open. the network is open. the price is posted.

target price$0.01/GB
p50 latency50–100 ms
settlementper-MB · usdc
gas overhead<1%
§ 02 / Side by sidetraditional vs decdn · seven axes

information scaled.supply didn't.

the pattern repeats whenever something big ships: mirrors fork, cdns rate-limit, small teams burn tens of thousands hosting bytes they don't own. deCDN inverts every axis — supply forms around demand, not allocated to it.

axis
traditional cdn
decdn/ decentralized
price
$0.04–$0.20/GB
$0.01/GB
delivery
fixed provisioning
demand-shaped mesh
billing
monthly minimums, annual contracts
per megabyte, in usdc
operators
three hyperscalers
home labs to datacenters
integrity
trust the origin
blake3, verify every chunk
failure
pop dies, region 503s
peer drops, stream continues
scaling
gets more expensive
gets cheaper
§ 03 / How it worksprobe · swarm · settle

How it works

01
probe

in a single handshake, the client asks nearby peers who has the file. peers answer with what they've cached, their rate per megabyte, and how fast they can serve — the roundtrip averages under 100 milliseconds. the client ranks the answers by price, latency, and reputation; the best-priced, fastest, most-reputable peer wins, or several win in parallel for a large file.

02
swarm

bytes flow directly from the chosen node; for files over ten gigabytes the client opens parallel streams to several peers at once and aggregates their throughput — a 1 gbps origin turns into multi-gigabit delivery to the client. every chunk is verified against the blake3 tree hash the instant it lands; tampered bytes trigger immediate disconnect and a fraud proof against the node's stake. trust no node — verify every byte.

03
settle

you pay per megabyte in usdc, automatically, as the bytes arrive — no monthly invoice, no subscription, no whole-file minimum. pay for what you pulled, nothing more.

stack
blake3quicirohusdcevm
languagerust
transportquic / iroh
settlementchain-agnostic
currencyusdc · token
§ 04 / FAQfield notes

frequently asked.

How is it 90% cheaper?

Traditional CDNs provision for peak traffic and amortise that cost across long contracts, so a popular release gets expensive fast. deCDN is demand-shaped: supply forms around traffic, nodes cache what's hot, and bandwidth gets reused across many pulls. Cost per gigabyte collapses as regional demand concentrates — the opposite of how fixed-provisioning CDNs behave. Target price today: ~$0.01/GB, one cent, per actual gigabyte delivered.

How is byte-level integrity enforced?

Every blob is BLAKE3-addressed, so the hash the client is asking for is the same hash they'll be checking on the way in. Verification happens chunk-by-chunk, in flight — mismatched bytes are dropped and the next peer on the list is asked instead. Peers that send garbage lose staked TOKEN via a non-custodial Merkle proof. There is no central arbiter; the math is the arbiter.

Can content be gated or taken down?

Both. For gating: upload ciphertext instead of plaintext — nodes cache the encrypted blob without ever seeing inside, and your app holds the keys, handing them to clients over a separate authenticated channel. Subscription, paywall, whatever logic fits. For takedown: governance can flag specific BLAKE3 hashes as non-servable, and nodes that keep serving them past a short compliance window lose staked TOKEN — slashing is on-chain, not a human call. Both the key gate and the flag list are auditable; compliance runs end-to-end, from origin onboarding to peer-level slashing, governance-owned and auditable throughout.

Why does the network need a token?

TOKEN secures the network — operators stake it to participate, and they lose it if they misbehave. Payments, though, happen in USDC, because operators want stable currency they can pay power bills with. Thirty percent of protocol fees flow into a Balancer V3 80/20 TOKEN/USDC buyback, tying token demand to network throughput.

Can publishers pay on behalf of users?

Yes. Account abstraction lets a publisher fund a payment channel for their audience, so users pull content with no wallet and no subscription — same free-to-download experience as a public mirror, except the publisher pays peers per megabyte instead of one cloud's egress bill. Default flow is client-pays; publisher-pays is the flag you flip when you want to ship widely without per-user payment friction.

§ 05 / Contactopen source · open network

Contact

decdn

the network is open. so is our inbox. write us with questions, partnerships, or anything you'd run on a fleet of idle machines. we read everything.