Altcoin Report - April 2023
A data storage platform that could boom
Imagine if anybody could store data on a network that’s never down, always serves the files you need, and can’t get hacked.
Now imagine you could access that network on-demand with no subscription fees, perfect privacy, and opportunities to monetize your unused storage capacity, services, and content you create with your files.
Today’s data platforms can't do that. They're great, but they all require a trade-off.
With cloud storage like AWS, you never own your data or any storage and networking equipment. While you save on infrastructure costs, you lose control over your data and your costs never go down, only up.
You can solve that problem with your own data centers or equipment, but that costs a lot of money upfront, plus you have to pay ongoing operating costs. It also puts all of the security risks on you. While your costs go down over time, you’ll give back those savings when you inevitably have to upgrade your equipment.
Distributed data storage platforms solve this problem.
You get ownership of your data and perpetual access to the infrastructure you need to store, secure, update, and distribute that data. When you buy and stake a token, you get a share of the bandwidth and storage capacity of the platform. You might even recoup your costs if the token’s price goes up or your data needs go down. You can sell your tokens or change the terms and price of your storage allocation as conditions change.
On the flip side, you can sell or lend your storage and networking equipment to the platform. Think of it like Uber or Airbnb for data storage.
Unlike Uber or Airbnb, you never have to worry about the platform going out of business, changing its fees without your permission, or forcing/keeping you from doing business with anybody who patches into the protocol. You can add or change providers as needed to increase distribution, resiliency, and performance. Or, save money with a lower-cost storage provider competing for your data—all without leaving the platform or relocating your data.
You get tremendous flexibility without the tradeoffs mentioned above.
In fact, both Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 may end up being a bunch of platforms built on distributed data storage networks, where the networks feed data and content into APIs, smart contracts, and L2 protocols that share and monetize that data.
Several projects are working on tokenized solutions. For example, Filecoin, Arweave, STORJ, Sia, and others.
Today's project takes a different approach than they do, with architecture that is hard to replicate and a structure that complies with GDPR regulations. It’s much smaller than those other platforms and early tests suggest it has superior speed, incentives, and network effects.
After five years of development, including input and testing from Fortune 100 companies, you have to assume the project has a strong technical foundation. It also plays in a space that could see huge growth.