> Today there’s a lot of work going into decentralized distributed storage keyed on blockchain indexes; Storj, Sia, Blockstack, et al. This is amazing, groundbreaking work… but why would an ordinary person, one already comfortable with Box or Dropbox, switch over to Storj or Blockstack? The centralized solution works just fine for them, and, because it’s centralized, they know who to call if something goes wrong. Blockstack in particular is more than “just” storage … but what compelling pain point is it solving for the average user?

Ryan here from Blockstack. Our goal with storage is to allow users to bring their own storage (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, etc). We believe in re-using the best infrastructure out there and not reinventing the wheel.

The key is that Blockstack delivers a thin layer on top of all of these storage providers with a common interface and end-to-end encryption, reducing them all to dumb drives. This (1) removes the potential for vendor lock-in (2) puts pressure on all the providers to be more competitively priced (3) enables greater data security.

Additionally, Blockstack isn't just about storage. It's a full stack for an entirely new kind of internet and a new way of building applications. Developers can work with a new blockchain-based domain name system (BNS), a new user-owned identity system, and a new BYOS storage system. The dream is for developers to be able to create a decentralized twitter by simply publishing a bundle of html, css and JS. The app folder runs as a single page application in your browser and can exist and replicate and live beyond the developer without the need for server or database maintenance. Servers could be relied upon for push notifications and feed aggregation, but they wouldn't be critical for operation and they'd be throwaway.

All this represents a pretty massive shift away from the model today. Instead of users revolving around applications, applications will revolve around users.