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Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

filecoin.io

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Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#61

Post by sharemywin »

calafrax wrote: post #54
zzzcpan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You achieve reliability with erasure codes, not with more replication. And failure rates are likely to be identical if not better, since incentives are the same as with hosting companies, but since it is decentralized there are a lot more availability zones.

> You achieve reliability with erasure codes, not with more replication If nodes are not trusted then replication has to play a major roll. It doesn't matter how you mix up the data. You still have to store it somewhere and if that somewhere is a random untrusted stranger you will need to copy your data to a lot of random untrusted strangers in order to have kind of reliability.

you could achieve some trust through a reputation system. the longer you've been reliable the more reliable you are.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#62

Post by zippoxer »

tyrust wrote: post #42
colejohnson66 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with Apple and Google, I know my data won’t go missing because the p2p network decided to stop seeding my file. Torrents die all the time due to lack of seeding.

Torrent hosts do not have a monetary incentive to host files. Filecoin (and other decentralized storage systems) provide monetary rewards and penalties for storing or failing to store files. This is introduced in Section 4.1.1 of this paper.

Exactly. As long as there's demand to keep hosting files in the network, there WILL be providers hosting your files. Even if a hosting company who hosts 5% of the network (that's a lot) decides to exit the and stop hosting, your files are spread between enough computers and you only need about half of them to be online to recover your files.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#63

Post by colordrops »

svara wrote: post #60

This sounds interesting academically, but what I don't understand (I have the same problem with Siacoin, StorJ and Swarm) is: You could build a Dropbox clone where users have the option of contributing storage to get rewarded with real currency. Why would anyone want to use the decentralized version instead, both as a user and as a contributor of storage? The decentralized version is going to be much harder to get ri…

Because once they do get it right, it's open source and no one can take it away. A centralized system can and most likely will eventually degrade and disappear. Also, privacy.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#64

Post by lgierth »

svara wrote: post #60

This sounds interesting academically, but what I don't understand (I have the same problem with Siacoin, StorJ and Swarm) is: You could build a Dropbox clone where users have the option of contributing storage to get rewarded with real currency. Why would anyone want to use the decentralized version instead, both as a user and as a contributor of storage? The decentralized version is going to be much harder to get ri…

Filecoin and IPFS assemble the world’s knowledge and data into one big content-addressed graph (Merkle DAG), and attempt to make it accessible to any device, anywhere. This is great because it allows for all kinds of use cases apart from just securely storing and sharing files. So the idea is not to build an app, but public infrastructure.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#65

Post by bjoveski »

hollander wrote: post #48
theschwa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with them being on random machines? I believe the purpose of Filecoin and other projects like Swarm is to incentives people to store the files long term and in some cases verify that those files are still being held.

What I don't understand is how this will guarantee the existence of these files. How do I know my files are secure? If my files are spread over several machines, and one or several go offline, are reinstalled, whatever. How do I know my files are secure?

The file is encrypted locally before uploading to the network. Then the file is sharded, and the shards are replicated among the nodes. Once a shard falls below a certain replication threshold, it will get copied to a new node.

There are other schemes that don't require a copy of each shard, allowing you to reconstruct the file if any subset of the nodes is online.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#66

Post by kyledrake »

strictnein wrote: post #14

Opening up my hard drive to store unknown materials? Imagine trying to explain any of this to a cop, judge, or jury.

No need to imagine. There's an enormous amount of case law here. It has repeatedly been upheld that hosts are not liable for hosted content published by others (at least in the US):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#67

Post by zippoxer »

hollander wrote: post #48
theschwa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with them being on random machines? I believe the purpose of Filecoin and other projects like Swarm is to incentives people to store the files long term and in some cases verify that those files are still being held.

What I don't understand is how this will guarantee the existence of these files. How do I know my files are secure? If my files are spread over several machines, and one or several go offline, are reinstalled, whatever. How do I know my files are secure?

I don't know how Filecoin strengthens reliability, but Sia splits your file to 30 small pieces and distributes them randomly among hosts. You only need 10 of the pieces to recover a file. So, in effect, you rely on 10 out of 30 random hosts to be online at the time of recovery. The chance of more than 20 random hosts that are holding your file are offline at the same time is extremely small as long as there's enough diversity among hosters (particularly many different hosting companies and many individual hosters in different regions, so hosting isn't mostly "centralized" to one region or company).

I think Sia's method would prove to be extremely reliable, but again, it depends on the hosters. If the largest single hoster owns less than a third of the capacity of the network, even if they suddenly go offline, you should be able to recover your file since you rely only on a third of the 30 hosts who hold your file to be online.

Also, I think that the number of pieces you need to recover a file can be tuned, so if 33% would prove to not be reliable enough, Sia/Filecoin can tune it down to increase reliability.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#68

Post by equalunique »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #36
leshow wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think Apple or Google does with your files after they are uploaded? Do you think they aren't encrypted and spread out over several machines?

But with Apple and Google, I know my data won’t go missing because the p2p network decided to stop seeding my file. Torrents die all the time due to lack of seeding.

>my data won’t go missing because the p2p network decided to stop seeding my file

It'd blame Apple & Google for not being p2p seeds.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#69

Post by hudon »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #45
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #20

I'm still confused why I would want my storage to be decentralized. No I don't want my files spread on thousands or millions of computers no matter how encrypted etc.

Trustless, distributed, scalable, redundant, anonymous cloud storage with a market-driven pricing scheme? Why _wouldn't_ you want that? For me that's pretty much the ideal cloud storage system.

"distributed, scalable, redundant" describes AWS pretty well, and if I can pay much less for a faster more reliable service but sacrifice "trustless and anonymous", I'll stick to it.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#70

Post by Ajedi32 »

zzzcpan wrote: post #47
darawk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this argument fails even by its own standards. It applies equally well to Bitcoin mining, and while there is clearly some centralization there, it is still quite decentralized. At least, decentralized 'enough'. Secondly, storage is fundamentally different than other commodities. The decentralized storage market is more like AirBnB, where you're consuming the excess capacity of capital. Most people have tons o…

Why do you think decentralized storage could ever work on excess capacity? I cannot imagine any incentive for it. It's either profitable enough to do it on a dedicated capacity, kind of like a hosting company, but without all the hassle and marketing. Or it's a burden.

The point is most people have a bunch of free space on their hard drive they're not using anyway. I've got a few hundred free GB on my desktop, and a couple more TB on my home server. The physical hardware for those drives is sunk cost, and I'm already paying for the electricity to run those machines all day. It doesn't cost me anything extra to merely have some data sitting on the unused space on my drives, so why not make some money off of it?

On the other hand, if I wanted to create a dedicated machine just to farm filecoins, that _would_ cost me extra for hardware and electricity.

This is why decentralized storage has an advantage in this regard. Unlike mining, storing files incurs almost no extra costs for the average home user, but does incur costs for dedicated storage systems.

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