What is the difference between Bacalhau, Lilypad & Expanso?

[DeveloperAlly]

Original Slack Question:

I was confused when I saw Lilypad and Bacalhau in the same Slack Channel. Is this the same project? But why do they have their own official websites, Github Repo and Youtube Channel respectively?

From the Lilypad documentation, I know that Lilypad is built on Bacalhau. So is this the relationship between the main chain and the side chain? Are they ready to be deployed on Filecoin IPC?

[DeveloperAlly]

Bacalhau is an open source p2p protocol (ie. not a blockchain) for distributed compute - like a library of modular code pieces. However, it does not run a public network nor are there any incentives for being a part of a public network. The idea behind Bacalhau is as an underlying OSS code repo kind of like the linux foundation, where all teams building on top of the underlying COD code would contribute back to Bacalhau OSS code.

Expanso is one such project building on top of Bacalhau. It is a web2 traditional tech project focussed on enterprise operations and compute at the edge - a distributed platform that offers commercial solutions and re-uses a lot of the underlying bacalhau code and specifications.

Lilypad is now also utilising some of the specification and thinking from the Bacalhau protocol and adding web3 incentive alignment and crypto-economics in order to create a global, permissionless, distributed compute network that unlocks idle processing power (ie pays compute providers to be part of the network and run jobs) while enabling internet-scale data processing - like AI and ML inference jobs to be run from multiple entry points. It operates on a EVM-compatible testnet currently.
It does not use Bacalhau in the sense of using a network, but more re-uses some of the code pieces 🙂

Lilypad currently operated on a geth testnet but will expand to IPC and other EVM-compatible networks in the near future - check out the roadmap on the website :)

A decent (not perfect) analogy is Bacalhau is to Lilypad like IPFS is to Filecoin.

IPFS is a file sharing network, however there are no guarantees on persistence or availability of data. This is what Filecoin is for (which uses CIDs - however is not the same).

You can see more about how Lilypad operates in this quick video