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What on earth does storage mean in this context: "Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain"?? It doesn't mean actually, "store thou

by rlucas 8y ago

What on earth does storage mean in this context: "Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain"?? It doesn't mean actually, "store thousands of messages, posts, and photos literally 'on' the blockchain" because that would get ridiculously unwieldy. So maybe it means, "store pointers to the above-mentioned data within a blockchain," which makes for a plausible organizing principle but doesn't actually do any storage (for which you'd still need technology and a business model to support it). I'm only a little bit being snarky here: is there a deeper / more robust meaning to the shorthand of "we can store [some kind of rich, lots-of-bits] data 'on the blockchain'" that isn't clear to the dilettante?

Jonovono 8y ago
Totally fair point. I don't intend to mean that blockchain works right now for storing all of this efficiently, but I know people are working on solutions to this. Steemit uses https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ which I am not super familiar with. http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html is another. Another possible solution is something like Torrent, not everyone needs to have a replication of every single file - it's spread out but decentralised enough. And then a non blockchain solution to this is: https://tent.io/ https://tent.io/ which from what I understand is more similar to an email protocol for social networks. I didn't go into too much depth in any of the points. I am not super invested in this space, nor up to date completely. It's just been an interest of mine since 2012 and i've been also trying to come up with real life use cases that blockchain could solve well.
- leppr 8y ago
  Filecoin, Bluzelle, Sia, Genaro, Arweave, are projects that try to solve trustless decentralized storage. Most use blockchain as the incentive and accountability layer only, files aren't stored directly on the blockchain. (Of these projects, only Sia is currently live)
jsutton 8y ago
Depends on how much censorship protection you want. Journalism of dangerous topics? Store it on a decentralized solution like IPFS, Swarm, Sia. Just want to store ownership records and transactions related to that data? Use AWS and store the pointer.

by rlucas 8y ago

Jonovono 8y ago

Totally fair point. I don't intend to mean that blockchain works right now for storing all of this efficiently, but I know people are working on solutions to this. Steemit uses https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ which I am not super familiar with. http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html is another. Another possible solution is something like Torrent, not everyone needs to have a replication of every single file - it's spread out but decentralised enough. And then a non blockchain solution to this is: https://tent.io/ https://tent.io/ which from what I understand is more similar to an email protocol for social networks. I didn't go into too much depth in any of the points. I am not super invested in this space, nor up to date completely. It's just been an interest of mine since 2012 and i've been also trying to come up with real life use cases that blockchain could solve well.

leppr 8y ago
Filecoin, Bluzelle, Sia, Genaro, Arweave, are projects that try to solve trustless decentralized storage. Most use blockchain as the incentive and accountability layer only, files aren't stored directly on the blockchain. (Of these projects, only Sia is currently live)

jsutton 8y ago

Depends on how much censorship protection you want. Journalism of dangerous topics? Store it on a decentralized solution like IPFS, Swarm, Sia. Just want to store ownership records and transactions related to that data? Use AWS and store the pointer.