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Comment by trompetenaccoun | Hacker News Reader

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 important issue that urgently needs solutions. But how can you convince people this is better than trusting dropbox when you don't even tell them how it works? And how do you guarantee lifetime storage through a small one time payment? Surely Storj disk space providers aren't going to host files for free.

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If a quantum computer gets good enough to crack common encryption algorithms, what are the consequences for decentralized storage? Could some hostile nation state just collect and store the data until such time they can decrypt it?

We'll have much bigger fish to fry than worrying about decentralized storage.

Sure, that’s true. However, I would personally like to know whether “all my files being out in the open forever” is a thing I need to worry about in addition to all the default problems

If encryption gets cracked by quantum computing, everything digital that's connected to the Internet, is "out in the open" until quantum-proof encryption becomes the norm.

The only way to be sure would be to physically self-host with the option to air gap the storage from the Internet.

That's a great point. However, in Slik's case, the data is first fragmented into small chunks and then distributed into a decentralized storage. Thus, for a bad actor to pose a problem, they'll also have to collect all the encrypted chunks, before making any sense out of it.

Okay so the chunks are distributed, a follow up question is are they duplicated to multiple copies per chunk? I ask because if one chunk is lost then the data would be unusable wouldn't it?

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 have clarified it on our website to prevent it from being misleading. Thanks a lot for your inputs! :)

> 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?

> 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.

"lifetime" meaning "10 years" makes no sense at all. It makes your company seem incompetent or badly intentioned. Just say "10 years" if that's the time period.

Thanks for the great feedback Gary! We'll work on it. :)

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