Why Decentralized Storage Is a Necessary Infrastructure for Web3

One of the guiding principles of?Web3?is decentralization. It is currently tested and developed in De-Fi, Blockchain, NFTs, AR Cloud, Distributed Ledgers, AI, Machine Learning, and the Metaverse. So what does it mean precisely?

In its simplest form, decentralization means taking authority and power away from a central place. In Web3, decentralization is the distribution of data, computational power, and storage away from centralized servers and into the hands of users.

Decentralization enables new applications and services while also increasing the security and resilience of the web.

Breaking Down Decentralized Storage

It’s crucial to clarify what these solutions offer and how they differ from centralized platforms to comprehend the possibilities of decentralized storage better.

In centralized networks, censorship is pervasive and subject to change. As a result, they demand that users have confidence in the storage provider to protect their data. Unfortunately, there is no assurance that a centralized network operator will uphold the trust placed in them. Data removal may occur intentionally or unintentionally, for instance, due to changes in storage provider policy, hardware malfunctions, or outside attacks.

On the other hand, decentralized storage providers improve online versions by combining numerous individual devices, computational, and storage power. I.e. Supercomputer-like network can store multiple copies of data. As a result, the availability of information is independent of one server or organization. Furthermore, the decentralized version of the internet allows websites to remain online even if some nodes fail. Here is the crucial distinction between centralized and decentralized storage.

In?this article, Marta Belcher, president, and chair of the Filecoin Foundation put it this way:

“Today’s internet is centralized — right now, the majority of the data that make up many of the websites we use daily sit in data warehouses, owned by some companies. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.” are some of the companies in question. “We have often seen these companies suffer blackouts, and swaths of the Web go down for hours — that’s the problem with having single points of failure.”

Furthermore, data stored on IPFS offers three main advantages over centralized storage:

Reliability: Decentralized peer-to-peer networks are more reliable than centralized cloud storage since they don’t have a single point of failure. Data corruption or outages may damage several nodes, yet the network will still function as if all nodes are up.

Interoperability: Flexible interoperability is advantageous for data saved using IPFS. IPFS gateways and the data’s IPFS CID are given some assessments through web browsers without requiring authentication or specialized file access. In addition, it will enable additional workflows, codebases, SDKs, and tools to increase functionality.

Redundancy: Any node on the IPFS network can store and retrieve a file when its storage is on the network. As a result, several network nodes can store a file simultaneously. However, the user must pin the file to the web to guarantee that a node stores a file permanently.

How Do Decentralized Storage and Cloud Storage Differ?

In a conventional cloud storage system, a data file has physical storage on a solitary file server in the EU. A file is divided into portions and dispersed across a network of computers using decentralized storage — a large variety of places worldwide.

Therefore, once you upload a single video file using decentralized storage, it will automatically distribute to numerous sites. This way, sending it as a backup to multiple cloud storage providers would not be necessary.

Decentralized storage can absorb numerous losses at once and lacks a single point of failure. On the other hand, traditional cloud storage includes several single points of failure that can devastate infrastructures in the case of a breakdown.

If It’s Not in the Cloud, Then Where Is It?

Large data centers housing tens of thousands of data storage servers are typically called “clouds.”

Decentralized storage, on the other hand, uses P2P networks to access storage spaces that are largely utilized worldwide rather than data centers. These networks are composed of nodes, which are computational resources added manually to the network. They willingly donate their local resources, such as storage and CPU power, for the network to conduct transactions and store data.

This way, decentralized storage can be comparable to “the cloud.” Still, it differs from typical centralized storage because it is not generally accessible.

Decentralized Storage: A Necessary Pillar of Web3

The promise of decentralization in these three areas — consensus, storage, and computing — is the foundation of Web3’s success. Since this article focuses on decentralized storage, let’s examine why this architecture is essential for Web 3.

It saves money on data storage.

Decentralized storage solves the problem of expensive data storage. On-chain data storage is costly. Blockchains primarily preserve transactions because it is expensive to store data directly on a blockchain (or their results as state data). Additionally, it explains why smart contracts have as few lines of code as possible. Decentralized storage networks step in to store data that are expensive to store on the blockchain. Moreso, these data need to be permanent, irrevocable, and censorship-resistant. Once more, this is very cost-effective because it reduces storage needs and expenses.

Transparency and Total Control

According to?@BMANLead,?founder of ABCDE and business partner of Du Jun, the ex-CEO and founder of Huobi,

“Personal data needs to be stored centrally and made transparent and self-controllable.”

With decentralized storage, data is stored on a network of computers rather than on a single server. This distributed model is more secure because it is not subject to the single point of failure that plagues centralized systems.

The openness and self-control brought on by decentralization will require one’s data to be a valuable asset, just like money and NFT.

Decentralized storage is a requirement for Web3 because of this.

Censorship

Web3 sites and apps are more censorship-resistant than Web 2.0 ones because of decentralized hosting. In Web 2.0, for instance, a government or Internet service provider (ISP) may limit your website access by preventing you from reaching its servers.

On the other hand, as the Web3 servers are openly owned and managed, no centralized authority is in charge of the blockchain networks and associated DApps. As a result, no controlling entity has the power to limit access to these services.

What Are Some Examples of Decentralized Storage in Web3?

A few notable examples of decentralized storage in web3 have gained traction recently. For instance, IPFS, Filecoin, GhostDrive, and Sia are popular protocols built on the Ethereum blockchain.

Conclusion

Decentralized technologies are innovative and strive to provide new storage solutions. If these powerful new technologies stimulate and encourage innovation in the web world, they will also benefit other sectors.

The first sector to be strongly affected by Web3 technologies was finance (with the arrival of decentralized finance or DeFi), but others will undoubtedly follow. In addition, many industries can benefit in one way or another from the streamlined, automatic, and non-trust-based systems of Web3. From the supply chain to healthcare, insurance, real estate, video games, social networks, etc.