You can use the data field in etheruem for decentralized and permaenent storage (convert the file to hex ad then paste it) but very, very expensive .
Not with middle-out compression.
Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
21–30 of 123 posts
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
S3 has no durability SLA, only an availability SLA. S3 also explicitly says it is not designed for 100% durability, but for a certian number of nines (99.999999999%).
Blockchain has neither a durability or availability SLA.
I'm not sure that comparison makes much sense, it's like saying that HTTP has no SLA. AFAIU, Filecoin miners are free to offer SLAs for storage, and clients are free to enter into deals only with miners who offer such SLAs.
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#23As someone who just set up Storj to backup my Nextcloud installation, I am very interested in this topic. Storj was a cheap alternative to AWS S3, and, at least out of the box, zero-knowledge encryption was easier, though I know there are ways to achieve zero knowledge encryption with any S3 provider. I hadn't considered Glacier, but I may look into it. Edit: One thing I liked about Storj was that geographic redundan…
I looked into glacier pricing a while back it's..tricky. It looks super cheap up front, but gets extremely expensive if you ever need to get the data out of glacier.
Depending on how long ago you checked it out (relative to the ~9 years since Glacier was first announced) it might be worth another look.
It's still quite expensive if you ever need to retrieve data in a hurry, but it used to also have a complicated and unintuitive pricing model that made it extremely easy to accidentally spend orders of magnitude more money than you intended to. They redesigned the pricing structure in 2016 to make it a lot more straightforward.
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#24As someone who just set up Storj to backup my Nextcloud installation, I am very interested in this topic. Storj was a cheap alternative to AWS S3, and, at least out of the box, zero-knowledge encryption was easier, though I know there are ways to achieve zero knowledge encryption with any S3 provider. I hadn't considered Glacier, but I may look into it. Edit: One thing I liked about Storj was that geographic redundan…
Presumably the argument is that a storage host might dutifully provide proofs of storage, but refuse to actually transfer your data to you later. This is true, but it's also true of centralized storage providers. The difference is that traditional providers are typically bound by SLAs -- something that a blockchain can't really offer. Instead, decentralized storage gives you the ability to store your data with dozens…
The argument (of the second post) is that their behavior will be correlated because they all have (more or less) the same incentives and cost structure.
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#25One important property of decentralized storage is that it prevents data monopolies. For example, if you host your web app on Sia Skynet, then users own their data instead of being locked in by the app developer. It also enables a model where different apps can easily access the same data. The data is in the "cloud", but still owned by the user.
Do you know why Sia is overlooked so often? I see a lot of shills on forums and the founder seems to tweet bitterly about Filecoin, but folks seem optimistic about the tech. So what am I missing that makes Sia not get adoption vs. Filecoin?
They spent very little on marketing and focused on building something. That's starting to change now.
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#26As someone who just set up Storj to backup my Nextcloud installation, I am very interested in this topic. Storj was a cheap alternative to AWS S3, and, at least out of the box, zero-knowledge encryption was easier, though I know there are ways to achieve zero knowledge encryption with any S3 provider. I hadn't considered Glacier, but I may look into it. Edit: One thing I liked about Storj was that geographic redundan…
I looked into glacier pricing a while back it's..tricky. It looks super cheap up front, but gets extremely expensive if you ever need to get the data out of glacier.
[deleted]
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I looked into glacier pricing a while back it's..tricky. It looks super cheap up front, but gets extremely expensive if you ever need to get the data out of glacier.
Depending on how long ago you checked it out (relative to the ~9 years since Glacier was first announced) it might be worth another look. It's still quite expensive if you ever need to retrieve data in a hurry, but it used to also have a complicated and unintuitive pricing model that made it extremely easy to accidentally spend orders of magnitude more money than you intended to. They redesigned the pricing structure…
>It's still quite expensive if you ever need to retrieve data in a hurry
The real killer is the $0.09/GB egress fees. That dwarfs the $0.00099/GB/month storage fee and the $0.0025/GB bulk retrieval fee.
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#28I've noticed the debate around (de)centralization always seems to focus on purely technical issues, or on economic issues (which are technicalities of another sort). In other words, it's always the following two points that are debated:
1. Economies of Scale
2. Network Properties (robustness, scalability, latency, etc.)
It seems to me that a crucial element is missing from these analyses: organizational policy. All other things being equal (which they may not be), it seems like decentralization appeals to those trying to restrict top-down control. Historically, this has been an ideological thing (e.g. bittorrent's copyleft slant), but more recently I've seen mainstream endorsement of concepts such as "flat hierarchy", "distributed workforce", "collaborative work", etc. Interestingly, I don't see this discourse being picked up by decentralization evangelists, and I'm not sure what to make of that.
Off the cuff, it seems like decentralized storage tech has a compelling story to tell about small distributed teams, working in a loose, peer-to-peer organizational structure. In this context, my mind immediately goes to the functional centralization of cloud storage. In general, the Cloud tries to concentrate control over computing resources in a single department (i.e. the devops team). But what happens when a bunch of freelancers collaborate on a project-by-project basis? From what I've seen, either (1) they use cloud providers, but the account is under the client's name or (2) they use some kind of SaaS solution with support for sharing or other forms of collaboration. With decentralized storage, it seems like a "bring your own cloud" approach is possible in principle, where these freelancers would pool resources (storage, compute, etc.). Are there any pain-points here? Is there perhaps a business problem that needs solving?
The question for me is whether these new patterns of collaboration are really becoming a thing, or whether it's a fad amongst business-school graduates.
At any rate, this comment is an invitation for y'all to opine on the subject. I feel like a good analysis of organizational policy could help us decide whether a decentralized web is economically viable, but I'm kinda stumped.
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure it can provide an SLA. The code is the SLA. And is available for all to examine. Via opensource. And governance allows the community to change terms/accept code... moving forward.
That's pretty hand-wavy. Anyone can read the published code, but you can't read the code being run by each individual entity in the network. Any individual might change their server to not make the stored data available to those paying for the storage. It's not _likely_, as that would negate the usefulness of the whole system if it became an issue, and therefore negate the cash flow into the system. Ultimately what's…
In fairness, real-company SLAs also tend to be hand-wavy. People like to pretend it's "they'll never be down more than X" or "if they're ever down more than X they'll give us a refund", but it's usually more like "the service provider said that it didn't count because only one part of their service was 'degraded', and after we threatened to take them to court they threw us a $13 discount'".
Re: Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
#30Just for everybody to be in the same page. Blockchain is not used for distributed storage itself. Existing concepts like IPFS are used for this. Blockchain is used to confirm that someone is storing certain data and to verify it's integrity through an additional protocol. From ipfs.io about Blockchain >With IPFS, you can address large amounts of data and put immutable, permanent links in transactions — timestamping a…
You are corrent; I think the article is just clumsily worded, though. I think what he's saying is that IPFS gives you references to immutable data, which you are then free to commit to your favorite blockchain.