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It's the most questionable to me. The ones that are "vaporous", it's obvious to everyone so not many questions need to be asked. But about FileCoin... How can

by hudon 9y ago

It's the most questionable to me. The ones that are "vaporous", it's obvious to everyone so not many questions need to be asked. But about FileCoin... How can they compete with economies of scale? And how will they prevent data centers of disks being created (centralizing forces)? If they manage to stay decentralized, how will the very public team defend all the illegal and/or illegitimate content that gets hosted on there? How will they defend against the FBI ordering them to shut it down? Why would people pay more for a slower or less reliable storage solution? It's very questionable that they were able to make bold claims and get millions of dollars from people who do not have a clue that FileCoin and "distributed storage on the blockchain" is DOA unless you want to store your 3d printed gun designs in the cloud. But in that case, the team building it should've been anonymous...

anonymous5133 9y ago
I don't use filecoin's network but I do use a competitor that is basically doing the same thing, storj. Also when I say I use the network I am talking about actually uploading and paying for data storage. To answer some of your questions, storj's network consists primarily of people who are renting out their unused hard drive space. Economic of scale doesn't really matter because the people renting the space are just trying to make a few extra bucks per month and they have already paid for the hardware. They have no way of preventing centralization of disks but the whole network is decentralized. The file you upload is being hosted on thousands of different disks. Like all companies, they will probably comply with FBI/DMCA orders to the best of their abilities. The issue for them and the FBI is that all data uploaded to the network is encrypted at the point of upload so it is impossible for the FBI/DMCA to find it. These decentralized file hosting systems don't allow public sharing of the download links/keys (yet at least). Also the reason I pay for storj over say google is because storj is cheaper and has higher redundancy requirements. I have files that I absolutely can never risk losing and storj allows you to pay for the service anonymously while other services do not. In the world of data breaches everywhere, the less information the company has about you, the better.
- hudon 9y ago
  > Economic of scale doesn't really matter because the people renting the space are just trying to make a few extra bucks per month and they have already paid for the hardware. OK so hypothetically, if this decentralized storage thingie made the sellers a profit, there would be at least 1 rational and greedy seller who would take that profit, invest it in more disks, and save on costs compared to other folks, right? In other words, if I have 100,000 computers in a data center with central cooling system, the total electricity costs will be less than the total cooling costs of 100,000 individuals each with their own 1 computer. Furthermore, the total bandwidth costs of the 100,000-computer data center will be cheaper than the total bandwidth costs of 100,000 individuals with 1 computer each (economies of scale). How can you say that "there is no way to prevent centralization" and then follow up with "the whole network is decentralized", when the cost structure obviously makes more sense for this distributed storage to all be controlled by a handful of resourceful entities? Then those 4-5 data centers just become an encrypted Dropbox, right? So like, SpiderOak?
  - gfodor 9y ago
    It's Airbnb for disks. Maybe not the perfect analogy, but I think the idea here is to just capture latent inventory that is otherwise being wasted. It's not about competing on margins, but activating latent resources that are sitting out there completely unused.
    - hudon 9y ago
      > It's Airbnb for disks I haven't made the analysis but maybe Airbnb works because it is actually more profitable for an entity to host 100 airbnbs then to have a regulated hotel with 100 units, in which case the analogy doesn't work because that's the crux of my argument. In the case of decentralized storage, this is not the case, as we've seemed to have agreed. Which means this: 1- The 4 data centers will host 99% of the available storage because it's so profitable for them 2- Because the supply of storage on the network is so high, the reward given to the hosters goes down (this is how FileCoin works I'm guessing, the reward needs to come down to close to the overall cost of the suppliers, like difficulty adjustments in Bitcoin) 3- Because the costs of the data centers which now have millions of disks all under centralized electricity/infrastructure is so low, the reward becomes lower than the cost of being an individual storage supplier. 4- At this point, the individuals with "latent resources" have no incentive to put these on the network, and actually are incentivized to sell the disks instead, because at least that way they'll make money. 5- Who is incentivized to BUY these disks? See #1 That's how economies of scale work and why they will make FileCoin useless.

by hudon 9y ago

anonymous5133 9y ago

I don't use filecoin's network but I do use a competitor that is basically doing the same thing, storj. Also when I say I use the network I am talking about actually uploading and paying for data storage. To answer some of your questions, storj's network consists primarily of people who are renting out their unused hard drive space. Economic of scale doesn't really matter because the people renting the space are just trying to make a few extra bucks per month and they have already paid for the hardware. They have no way of preventing centralization of disks but the whole network is decentralized. The file you upload is being hosted on thousands of different disks. Like all companies, they will probably comply with FBI/DMCA orders to the best of their abilities. The issue for them and the FBI is that all data uploaded to the network is encrypted at the point of upload so it is impossible for the FBI/DMCA to find it. These decentralized file hosting systems don't allow public sharing of the download links/keys (yet at least). Also the reason I pay for storj over say google is because storj is cheaper and has higher redundancy requirements. I have files that I absolutely can never risk losing and storj allows you to pay for the service anonymously while other services do not. In the world of data breaches everywhere, the less information the company has about you, the better.

hudon 9y ago
> Economic of scale doesn't really matter because the people renting the space are just trying to make a few extra bucks per month and they have already paid for the hardware. OK so hypothetically, if this decentralized storage thingie made the sellers a profit, there would be at least 1 rational and greedy seller who would take that profit, invest it in more disks, and save on costs compared to other folks, right? In other words, if I have 100,000 computers in a data center with central cooling system, the total electricity costs will be less than the total cooling costs of 100,000 individuals each with their own 1 computer. Furthermore, the total bandwidth costs of the 100,000-computer data center will be cheaper than the total bandwidth costs of 100,000 individuals with 1 computer each (economies of scale). How can you say that "there is no way to prevent centralization" and then follow up with "the whole network is decentralized", when the cost structure obviously makes more sense for this distributed storage to all be controlled by a handful of resourceful entities? Then those 4-5 data centers just become an encrypted Dropbox, right? So like, SpiderOak?
- gfodor 9y ago
  It's Airbnb for disks. Maybe not the perfect analogy, but I think the idea here is to just capture latent inventory that is otherwise being wasted. It's not about competing on margins, but activating latent resources that are sitting out there completely unused.
  - hudon 9y ago
    > It's Airbnb for disks I haven't made the analysis but maybe Airbnb works because it is actually more profitable for an entity to host 100 airbnbs then to have a regulated hotel with 100 units, in which case the analogy doesn't work because that's the crux of my argument. In the case of decentralized storage, this is not the case, as we've seemed to have agreed. Which means this: 1- The 4 data centers will host 99% of the available storage because it's so profitable for them 2- Because the supply of storage on the network is so high, the reward given to the hosters goes down (this is how FileCoin works I'm guessing, the reward needs to come down to close to the overall cost of the suppliers, like difficulty adjustments in Bitcoin) 3- Because the costs of the data centers which now have millions of disks all under centralized electricity/infrastructure is so low, the reward becomes lower than the cost of being an individual storage supplier. 4- At this point, the individuals with "latent resources" have no incentive to put these on the network, and actually are incentivized to sell the disks instead, because at least that way they'll make money. 5- Who is incentivized to BUY these disks? See #1 That's how economies of scale work and why they will make FileCoin useless.