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Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

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Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#161
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great points gtsop! We have a very similar understanding of decentralization. My co-founder and I are passionately working on making sure that we eventually reach that goal where Slik keep going, even if any one actor falls down. Here were our goals when we started this out - - Prove and implement the encryption technology [completed], - Switch over from centralized storage to decentralized storage [completed], The a…

Thanks for the detail, yes now I really look forward to that :)

super! :)

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#162
post #42

I haven't really understood how the "decentralized" comes into place. My notion of decentralization is the existence of multiple instances managed by unrelated people, such that the service keeps going if one actor falls down. From what I see here, the decentralization lies in the fact that the central service stores the data across multiple servers. So it's not technically speaking a lie, but i would say it is a bit…

I understand it this way. Say, you are a nuclear terrorist and store atomic bomb schematics in S3. The FBI learns about that and tells Bezos (or whoever is Amazon CEO these days) to delete your files or go to jail. Bezos obliges. That's the centralized service.

Now if you store your atomic bomb schematics in Storj, FBI can't delete it because it's distributed across thousands of computers whose owners don't even know what they are storing.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#164

The website and demo look cool, I like your clean and simple design. The supposed whitepaper however doesn't go into any details at all. It says in addition to Storj the files are also stored directly on "the blockchain". What blockchain? It's not even named. There are no technical details on the encryption process or anything else either. I'd love to like this because imo decentralized private storage is an importan…

That's some great feedback, trompetenaccoun. Slik's file storage is powered by Storj and Filecoin. About encryption, would love to hear what part you find missing in the 3 protocols for backups, sharing, and multi-device support, mentioned in our WhitePaper. We're constantly improving our WhitePaper to provide as much clarity as possible about our systems and algorithms. We had set lifetime storage for 10 years, and…

> Slik employs authenticated symmetric encryption. We use AES block cipher in Galois Counter Mode (GCM) with 256-bit key for all of our encryption operations

That plus the high level overview of the algorithms seems fair enough for a whitepaper

Although I don't get what additional security is gained from using an additional symmetric sharing key in protocol two. Isn't the key gonna be encrypted anyways with the temporary public key from Bob? Also which protocol is used for the asymmetric encryption?

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#165

The website and demo look cool, I like your clean and simple design. The supposed whitepaper however doesn't go into any details at all. It says in addition to Storj the files are also stored directly on "the blockchain". What blockchain? It's not even named. There are no technical details on the encryption process or anything else either. I'd love to like this because imo decentralized private storage is an importan…

That's some great feedback, trompetenaccoun. Slik's file storage is powered by Storj and Filecoin. About encryption, would love to hear what part you find missing in the 3 protocols for backups, sharing, and multi-device support, mentioned in our WhitePaper. We're constantly improving our WhitePaper to provide as much clarity as possible about our systems and algorithms. We had set lifetime storage for 10 years, and…

> We had set lifetime storage for 10 years, and have clarified it on our website to prevent it from being misleading.

If you say it's lifetime and then have to explain it as being 10 years, it's still misleading. Just take out the word 'lifetime'.

The chances of me trusting a technology company, especially a startup, especially especially one doing anything on blockchain, to provide a lifetime service is effectively zero. Annual pricing is fine; if you want to go crazy offer two or three years.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#167
post #42

I haven't really understood how the "decentralized" comes into place. My notion of decentralization is the existence of multiple instances managed by unrelated people, such that the service keeps going if one actor falls down. From what I see here, the decentralization lies in the fact that the central service stores the data across multiple servers. So it's not technically speaking a lie, but i would say it is a bit…

Yeah, I was thinking if you really wanted decentralized something like Syncthing would be the direction you would want. Each individual computer manager who/what it shares with.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#168

Web3 noob here. Is there a guarantee that IPFS and Storj won't go down or delete a file in the next 10 years? How do you ensure that the files are always stored?

Part of the core motivations of ipfs is to make files last forever. The idea is similar to bittorrent (or any p2p file sharing system). There's no guarantee, but it's more likely that a file will be hosted by one of millions of people, over a handful of corporate servers.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#169
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't git decentralized?

In theory, but who uses something other than either Github or Gitlab? Obviously I know some people do, but I've yet to work on a project that doesn't just stick with the one.

I've heard of companies that pass their git repo around on a USB disk? lol.
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