Why Do We Need Decentralized Storage? 4EVERLAND’s Viability in This Industry
Our society is in the midst of an unprecedented information explosion. People create as much information in one day as the combined amount of information produced by mankind from prehistoric times to 200 AD.
With the advent of the digital world, data will become a major factor of production, especially on Web 3. And decentralised storage, one of the hottest blockchain use cases in the world, is not only one of the three pillars of blockchain technology, but also one of the earliest and most popular infrastructures in the Web3 industry.
With internet giants such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), a centralised storage provider, having virtually cornered the market and centralised storage services being mature enough to cope with the everyday use of the average user, what exactly is the point of decentralising storage?
How do we define decentralised storage?
Unlike a centralized server operated by a single company or organization, decentralized storage systems consist of a peer-to-peer network of user-operators who hold a portion of the overall data, creating a resilient file storage and sharing system.
A decentralised storage network has no centralised institution to back the storage system. A group of relatively independent individuals or groups contribute their own storage space to the storage network, thus avoiding the absolute power that comes with centralisation.
There is also a difference between decentralised storage and distributed storage. Simply, a system of distributed storage where data is distributed across multiple independent devices. Distributed storage means that the architecture is distributed, whereas decentralised storage means that the content of the storage is not controlled by a central organisation or individual. So decentralised storage is necessary for distributed storage, but distributed storage is not necessary for decentralised storage.
For example, you often use a cloud drive that is distributed but controlled by a centralised organisation, a centre of power that can modify, delete, and view your data at any time without your permission.
Why do we need decentralised storage? Moving to Web 3.0
The development of Web 3.0 will require a decentralised web content distribution system rather than a centralised one. The ultimate goal of Web 3.0 is to provide decentralised, censorship-resistant internet services that do not require users to relinquish control of their content. In contrast to centralised storage, decentralised storage has clear advantages in terms of
Safe and effective against single points of failure
In a decentralised storage network, data can be replicated and accessed across multiple locations, which effectively reduces security issues due to a single point of attack by hackers and reduces data loss.
Higher Liveness, the right to decentralise
While centralised service providers can always carry out services for their own businesses or development needs, ordinary users have no restrictions or claims on the actions of service providers, and this right flows in one direction. This has led to users storing more and more data with their "trusted" storage providers, resulting in more and more data being stored on several platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, which could result in the loss of a large amount of user data should one of these platforms have a data problem.
However, in a decentralised storage network, content is allowed to be stored decentralisedly and distributed across different storage spaces. Even if one of the nodes fails, the rest of the network has the ability to make up the shortfall. No one can modify or delete the stored content.
Privacy, protection of sensitive data
With the centralised storage model, once a user uploads all sensitive data, the user loses control of their data, passing the risk of data leakage to the cloud storage operator. Such private information is at risk of data loss, corruption, disclosure, or theft.
In a decentralised storage network, data is segmented and stored in full or in part on decentralised nodes. The decryption key for your files is safe for you. This means that even a node operator can not decode the data in the file. Even if he/she does, they will never be able to access all parts of the file stored on different nodes.
Disadvantages of decentralised storage and for whom?
Decentralised storage usually has the problem of node dependencies. Decentralised storage relies on storage provided by individuals or organisations, and securing its operation will be an important factor in node stability. If you don’t have a node nearby, the speed of accessing data will also be affected, plus there may be some problems with file previews, video streaming, data sharing, etc.
Different decentralised storage solutions feel different to everyone, but if you are an enterprise organisation or an individual who needs:
- A storage solution that is cheaper than cloud storage
- Secure storage of sensitive information
- Faster upload and download speeds (depending on the node)
- More security from cyber attackers
- 24*7 availability with zero downtime
- Better control of your data and personal information
Then you can definitely try decentralised storage！
A one-stop for building the perfect decentralised system, 4EVERLAND
Currently, the mainstream decentralised storage protocols are IPFS, Filecoin, Arweave, etc. Users with different needs usually need to match different platform protocols to meet their needs.
For example, IPFS in its full form is the InterPlanetary File System is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer (p2p) network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system created by Protocol Labs. It uses content addressing to uniquely identify each file, i.e. when we upload a media file to it, if the media file changes, the url changes too. But it is not exactly like blockchain. The data is not permanent, i.e. in order to maintain the data, we need to integrate services called pinning services.
In order to optimise IPFS, Protocol Labs has come up with another solution called Filecoin, which aims to provide a persistent data storage system. It follows proof-of-time and proof-of-replication to ensure that miners have correctly stored the data they have committed to storing. However, it does not support a one-time payment to store data, but only a system based on a monthly contract to store data. filecoin’s complex mechanism causes its use in the hot data layer to remain inapplicable, limited by its special data encapsulation, retrieval process, Filecoin storage currently meets more of the performance criteria of traditional warm or cold storage. Users pay for a network of nodes to store data in perpetuity, and it can also be untrusted to ensure that someone is there to actually store the data they say they are storing for an agreed period of time. These nodes are mostly single nodes and risks such as data loss remain.
Arweave introduces a new economic model to the market that has never existed before the advent of permissionless encryption networks: Permanent storage. But there are challenges in interacting with Arweave because we need arweave tokens to perform any operation, and these tokens are listed on very few platforms. And Arweave does not support mutable data. It is a permanent data store, so this means that it can not be edited. Also, in terms of affordability and storage efficiency, is paying for each file individually really suitable for universal users?
4EVERLAND is an unparalleled Web3 cloud computing platform that implements all of these models to complement each other and the possibilities are endless.
Through a unique set of cryptography and economic model design, 4EVERLAND organizes a series of IPFS nodes into a collaborative storage and gateway service, rewarding contributing nodes and punishing fraudulent ones, realizing a truly decentralized IPFS Swarm storage network.
At the same time, unlike the complex design of Filecoin, 4EVERLAND provides a lighter consensus mechanism based on Tee to achieve decentralised and trustworthy data storage. In the data layer, a global data synchronisation network is built based on IPFS, and the data of distributed network nodes are built and synchronised through the Swarm network to ensure global decentralisation and high availability of data. In addition, combined with the huge advantages of Arweave and Filecoin in permanent storage, data backup and cold storage, 4EVERLAND is compatible and integrated with these storage protocols, providing a more comprehensive storage solution.
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