Explainer: Decentralized Storage
This is a quick primer on how decentralized data storage works.
Why You Should Care
It’s Big Business
This business of data storage is huge. Currently, most of the world has access to digital devices and, according to a UN Report, 47% of the world now has access to the internet. This percentage is growing rapidly with the increasing industrialization in the most populous areas on earth in Africa, South East Asia, South Asia and South America.
As the world becomes more connected and tuned into digital devices, all the data being created and stored is increasing at an exponential rate. This is down to three factors:
- the new and multiple ways of collecting data emerging through IOT (internet of things) devices that can collect data on physical things
- the new data now available to be stored through more precise measuring tools being created by providers like Google available to businesses and marketers, and
- creation of data needed to conceal other data. This includes cryptography, hashes and storing of passcodes, mnemonic words and the data necessary to run concealment programs.
The cloud storage market alone is expected to reach almost $100 billion USD by 2022. Dropbox raised $1.7b in venture funding alone. Traditional data storage, cloud storage and now decentralized storage is going to be a major value area in the future economy.
Traditional Storage Isn’t All That Safe
With traditional centralized storage there is one point of failure. This means, if a platform fails, it can have serious effects on several clients. Equifax has an incredible damaging, causing more than 145 million people to lose their most important personal data. Amazon’s file storage system, S3, went down for 5 hours in 2017. The effect was many major sites were inaccessible to users and even the clients themselves ranging from Medium to Quora.
Additionally, due to a central control it is simple for powerful players to enable censorship. Powerful governments can pressure storage providers to censor users or even businesses from accessing websites or important services.
How It Works
The video above explains how decentralized storage works in practice. It solves the centralization problem by sharding and distributing files across multiple nodes, creates a competitive market for many providers to rent their space at variable prices (this means cheaper storage**), and makes data uncensorable.
Additionally, decentralized storage is needed for decentralized applications. If you build and use a dapp for security and anonymity purposes provided through the blockchain, it doesn’t make sense to store data that is produced by your application in a centralized and identifiable way. Platforms like Fast Access Blockchain . are connecting decentralized storage directly to the DNA of their blockchain network so that app development to storage is streamlined.
Many options are emerging in the market including Casper, Storj, and Filecoin.
