Data Storage Market, Decentralized.

How does one review today’s decentralized data storage market?

Let’s jump right in and start with the stats.

According to Google, over 60% of e-mails exchanged through Gmail, one of the world’s largest e-mail services, are opened on mobile devices. Which means, people tend to use smartphones more often than PCs and laptops. Numerous world-leading IT vendors have already adapted ‘mobile-first’ strategy for their product development, but the biggest drawback of going completely mobile? That’s right, a very, vey limited (and expensive!) on-premise storage capacity. A few Gb difference in space for your IPhone can cost a pretty penny and you would still have only enough to store some of your work files and a few apps and music.

Cloud storage services such as Dropbox or Google Drive seem a liable solution and are still in high demand. But with the growth of demand, standards grow as well. Centralized cloud storages face severe data security and integrity issues, keep being bombarded by DDOS attacks, and more often than not users discover that their personal data is available to various third parties, some less harmless than others.

Blockchain-based data storage services present a very viable alternative in terms of data safety and stability, not to mention they can provide storage at a much cheaper price, as they don’t have to invest so much in cybersecurity.

The market of decentralized storage is still young and yet there are already a few prominent players worth noticing. Filecoin, Sia Tech, Storj Labs, MaidSafe, Crypterium and other lesser players are all in a competition to grab a bigger share in that particular pie. Each of these projects offers a different approach, has their pros and cons. While Sia, Storj, MaidSafe and Crypterium are all live solutions in various stages of beta-testing or running, Filecoin is a very prominent player yet to arrive. However, their ICO was such a grand success and the project is so well backed with funding, technological and human resources that there’s no doubt they can afford a most efficient acceleration to market and their arrival will be a thing to behold.

Storj offers the fastest user entry, as it operates on regular currency, a transition to cryptocurrency is in the works, which will also set their prices to a lower level. However, Storj is often criticized for its somewhat lacking functionality as compared to some existing popular cloud solutions.

Sia hasn’t gathered as much hype as its counterparts, but offers a more transparent client-host interaction pattern as it is smart-contract based and employs PoW approach. Thus, a host will still get paid even if the client quits, and can be held responsible for failing to provide services they have claimed. Although made clear, this transparency is ensured by a safe deposit made by each host and client when they enter a smart contract, which imminently makes Sia a more expensive service. Besides, Sia has the toughest client entry process. You’d have to trade your bitcoin for siacoin and only then start working with it.

MadeSafe and Crypterium both lay their money on being complete decentralized ecosystems with data storage being only one of their manifold of services. Crypterium is more focused on cryptobanking while MaidSafe’s SAFE network is not limited to file storage only, but also hosts decentralized applications and has its own market, where users can sell and exchange their native coins. However, it is often referred to as a project which just might have bitten a tad more than it can chew, with its very ambitions development goals, and that presents a certain risk.

Market.space is a newcomer to the field with its ICO starting in a matter of a few days. One of the curious things about Market.space is that, unlike the majority of its counterparts, it doesn’t aim for the broadest target audience possible, instead presenting as a niche solution for professional hosting providers and customers who work with large information arrays on a daily basis. It will also accept Sia and Storj native coins, along with its own cryptocurrency.

Let’s take a look at a comparative table for several existing decentralized data storage solutions and features that they offer.

So, it seems, the golden mean between high level of security and end-user accessibility, competitive pricing and functionality can still be searched for in the sphere of decentralized data storage. It can be fully expected that the market is going to grow, with more and more players entering the playing field.