Why blockchains are the future of cloud storage | Hacker News Reader

Why blockchains are the future of cloud storage

blog.sia.tech

3 pointszherbert7 comments

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The article neglects to mention that there are already such services available.

https://storj.io

https://maidsafe.net

An interesting reddit (though aged):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2b4sl4/storjio_lik...

Having briefly scanned the above company's reddits I get the feeling that the motive for participation is primarily people hoping for another altcoin unicorn. Which begs the question, what will happen to the available storage (and your files along with it) once people get (inevitably?) disappointed and withdraw from the service?

I work for Sia (http://sia.tech) which is a third option. Decentralized storage isn't just for the general user – it's also for businesses. It has the potential to replace S3 and other backend cloud providers. General users (i.e. those who use Dropbox) wouldn't see a big difference since all these changes would happen on the backend.

Sia has come up with a really good incentive structure to ensure that hosts don't pull the plug. When a host and renter create a storage contract, both pay in. If a host goes offline then she loses her collateral.

>> Why blockchains are the future of cloud storage

> Having briefly scanned the above company's reddits I get the feeling that the motive for participation is primarily people hoping for another altcoin unicorn.

I didn't even need to that to know that the company is being stupid with this service. Blockchain is a document timestamping service, it doesn't fit storage scenario in the slightest. It would be much, much better to use DHT for storage, but DHT is not hype anymore.

Blockchains can be used to create a decentralized storage marketplace. Data is not actually "stored" on the blockchain – it is stored by distributed hosts – but the entire marketplace is managed by a blockchain.

And how does the timestamping that blockchain provides help in managing the storage? To me it still looks like a job for a DHT. The only thing I can think up is that the registry of files is replicated in the whole through the blockchain, but then it needs a ton of excessive work just to put a timestamp that will not be used, and the whole system would be better off with a gossip-based registry replication.

The blockchain is used to create storage contracts between renters and hosts, and send payments to hosts.

Oh, so it doesn't concern data storage in particular, is as relevant to storage as to distributing excess of turnip.

Thank you for clarification.

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