Distributed storage system (Dynamo like) for educational purpose?

I am a masters student and for my master's thesis. I was always interested in distributed computing, especially, when I learned about Dynamo, Bigtable etc. I decided to jump into it. When I started, I found there are many research papers, production level apps (Voldemort, Cassandra etc) but the initial learning curve was very steep. So, I decided to write yet another Dynamo like clone but, with simpler design, more pluggable architecture (to try out various modules, this way, it won't be restricted to Dynamo features but other algos/features can be plugged in), based on Java. What do you think about this? Your comments are welcome. Any improvements, additions, changes you suggest?