Building for Real World Adoption: Akave O3 & Protocol Updates

April marked a major step forward in making decentralized storage usable at enterprise scale.

In the last few years, we’ve seen two major trends reshape how organizations think about data infrastructure. 

On one side: increasing regulatory pressure. Data privacy laws and industry-specific compliance standards are tightening expectations around auditability, localization, and access control. On the other: rising cloud costs and a surge in high-profile security incidents tied to centralized platforms.

We believe in a future where decentralized storage isn’t just viable; it’s inevitable. A future where data is owned by the creators and builders, not centralized platforms.

And we’re doing the work to make that future real, starting with infrastructure that’s not only enterprise-ready, but built for developers to use today.

With the release of Akave O3 v0.2.69 and Protocol v0.1.3, we are delivering a more secure, resilient, and enterprise-ready foundation for object storage at scale.

Akave O3: Feature Parity, Without the Centralization

Akave O3 is the S3-compatible interface to our decentralized storage network; designed to make migrating from centralized storage fast, familiar, and frustration-free. The latest release enhances this interface with advanced functionality across five critical areas:

1. Strengthening Authentication and Access Security

O3 now includes:

• Full support for AWS Signature Version 4
• Presigned URLs for time-bound access
• Enhanced CORS middleware with robust OPTIONS handling
• Smarter rate limiting with abuse detection and failure backoff
• Removal of legacy components to tighten control boundaries

These improvements reinforce O3 as a secure and compliant interface for enterprise applications that require both internal controls and third-party data sharing.

2. High-Volume Uploads & Streaming Performance

New capabilities enable O3 to handle high-volume uploads and flexible data access patterns:

• More efficient multipart upload lifecycle with improved session handling
• Smarter buffer management and chunk size negotiation
• Support for ranged downloads and partial file retrieval

O3 is now engineered to handle high-throughput, latency-sensitive workloads, ranging from AI pipelines to media distribution at scale.

These benchmarks reflect performance from our first public release. While the results are already strong, we expect to see even greater improvements as the network evolves and protocol upgrades continue.

Here’s how O3 stacks up against other leading storage solutions today:

S3 Performance Testing

3. Enforcing Policy at the Protocol Level

Akave O3 connects directly to our on-chain access control layer. This release enhances the underlying IAM structure with:

• Stricter policy enforcement based on smart contract types
• Support for PublicAccessBlock policies aligned with S3-compatible semantics
• Real-time ACL validation against blockchain-based permission models

The new access controls establish a strong foundation for regulated industries that require audit trails, role-based permissions, and time-bound data access.

4. Reliable Replication and Operational Insight

We’ve unified sync flows for metadata and object replication, providing a more consistent operational experience across nodes. Developers and operators now benefit from:

• Consolidated bucket and object sync routines
• Improved logging and event capture
• Daemon-level monitoring enhancements

Recovery is faster, fault detection is sharper, and multi-region consistency is more predictable.

5. Flexible Deployment, Built for Any Stack

Enterprise teams need infrastructure that adapts to their stack. With O3, teams can now:

• Deploy O3 locally or within data centers
• Run O3 in Docker containers with dynamic environment variable handling
• Integrate with MongoDB replica sets for resilient backend coordination

Whether running on private infrastructure or hybrid environments, O3 adapts to meet enterprise integration and data sovereignty requirements.

v0.1.3: Protocol Layer Upgrades for Verifiable, Auditable Storage

While O3 focuses on interface and performance, the protocol layer continues to evolve as the backbone of verifiable, policy-aware storage..

Key enhancements in v0.1.3 include:

• Range-based retrieval via the blockchain API
• Integration of Proof of Data Possession (PDP) for active verification of storage integrity
• Contract-level improvements to support file size indexing, enabling precise data addressing and compliance with external access policies

The O3 and Protocol updates represent more than just technical progress, they lay the groundwork for a new kind of data infrastructure. At Akave, we believe data shouldn't live in black boxes, controlled by a handful of centralized platforms. It should be transparent, verifiable, and owned by the people who create and use it. With these foundations in place, we’re now focused on what comes next: expanding real-world use cases, deepening integrations, and pushing feature parity even further so more data can move on-chain, and be used more freely, more securely, and more intelligently.

Coming Soon

• Subnet orchestration and data zoning through Akave Oasis
• Enterprise-friendly SDK enhancements
• Smart contract-based marketplace, delegation, and policy governance
• Expanded support for verifiable retrieval benchmarks and PDP incentives
  
  

We invite our partners, customers, and developers to begin integrating the latest release today; and to explore how Akave can help secure and modernize their data stack.

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Twitter/X: @AkaveNetwork
Docs: docs.akave.xyz