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tags: Ideas
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# Open-Source, Skynet-based Image CDN Service

## Problem

Services like Cloudinary allow developers to deal with full-resolution imagery and access thumbnail, cropped or `.webp` versions in an automated way.

Multimedia uploaded to Skynet cannot utilize this functionality automatically, such that all imagery needs to be pre-processed.

Many SaaS companys work in this domain - Cloudinary is one of the more prominent.

## Concept

An Akash instance running code that can accept Skylinks and write to a Resolver Skylink that is deterministically generated based on the Skylink. The Resolver Skylink points to a directory of resized-images along with a "manifest" JSON file.

These could be lazily generated by using a library which requests the thumbnail item from Skynet or the Resizer API.

- If the item already doesn't already exist on Skynet, the item is requested from the resizer API, which could respond with the requested thumbnail, while processing the pre-determined resize formats and uploading it to Skynet.

Note: for further functionality, maybe "Square" crops or collections with outher advanced options are each stored in separate resolver skylinks.

## Existing Work

- Either redsolver or DaWe do something similar with [SkyStandards](https://github.com/SkynetLabs/skystandards) Posts or SkyID profile images, but I can't remember which.
- There are of course libraries for image resizing (NodeJS has [Sharp](https://github.com/lovell/sharp)) but open-source services could be adapted for more advanced functionality like detection algorithms. See [thumbor](https://github.com/thumbor/thumbor)

## Benefits over a fully centralized API

- Different operators could run nodes as "fall-back" APIs
- Even if offline, all their previous resizing work remains available
- The original size upload may not be optimized, but can be loaded as a failover.
- "Private" instances could be spun up for batch processing for something like a Google Photos on Skynet that only deals with your Encrypted MySky files.

## Questions

- How do we minimize the painpoint of initial image creation?
- Can a client-side app pre-generate images to let a user then pin the generated Skylinks?
- Could multiple servers run this service, but check and see if other servers have created payloads before linking theirs? There's a trust propogating here, and the computation cost might be cheap enough that it doesn't matter.
- Can monetization work here? Does it need to?