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I totally agree with you. The only Blockchain-first technology I got excited about was a system where people can put their free disk space for rent. They get pa

I totally agree with you. The only Blockchain-first technology I got excited about was a system where people can put their free disk space for rent. They get paid in some coin, and that is how the coin gets generated. Sure, you can do it without the Blockchain, but the tech has some real added value. Alas, for whatever reason, it never got deployed.

aspenmayer 5y ago
It’s possible you’re thinking of Chia, IPFS, or FileCoin, all of which are “live” and “deployed” currently.
- uncomputation 5y ago
  Filecoin is “live” only technically. There is no way for individuals to contribute, which seems to be intentional as the leadership is looking for corporate support first. It currently has no real use cases. I say this as someone who is also excited by the idea.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    Perhaps you can clarify the relations between IPFS and FileCoin? I was under the impression that they were related projects of Protocol Labs, with IPFS being a dependency of FileCoin.
  - shepardrtc 5y ago
    If you want something similar to Filecoin that is live and in use, check out http://siasky.net/ http://siasky.net/ Siacoin has been around for a while and approaches things differently. Plus its already being used by people.
- phire 5y ago
  IPFS isn't blockchain. and Chia doesn't allow people to rent out storage space, it just lets them mine with HDDs instead of GPUs. The other one I'm aware of is Sia.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    Arweave is the big one I know of
phire 5y ago
The biggest problem with this idea is proving data replication and guaranteed retrievability to the users in a trustless manner. With a traditional cloud provider, you trust them, upload your data and they deal with the rest, backing it up internally and guaranteeing retrievability with their reputation. But with blockchain p2p storage, it's really hard to provide the same guarantees. If you only upload the file once and let the blockchain replicate it, then a malicious (or greedy) entity can manipulate the blockchain and control all replicas (backed by a single disk copy). So your software must encrypt multiple copies of your data and upload seperate replicas with different encryption keys. But that still leaves you open to a very malicious entity going out of it's way to track all uploads from a node, and monopolising control over them, then deleting them when you try to download them. To actually provide the same guarantees that a cloud provider does in a trustless way, your local software will also have to continually download chunks to make sure they are still retrievable, and you might also need to use the tor network for all accesses. With all that extra complexity, there is a lot to go wrong, and a traditional cloud provider might end up being the cheapest option. I used to agree with you, but after trying to design such a system with these trustless guarantees myself, I've come to the conclusion that there is no good use case for blockchain, outside of exchanging value.

aspenmayer 5y ago

It’s possible you’re thinking of Chia, IPFS, or FileCoin, all of which are “live” and “deployed” currently.

uncomputation 5y ago
Filecoin is “live” only technically. There is no way for individuals to contribute, which seems to be intentional as the leadership is looking for corporate support first. It currently has no real use cases. I say this as someone who is also excited by the idea.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  Perhaps you can clarify the relations between IPFS and FileCoin? I was under the impression that they were related projects of Protocol Labs, with IPFS being a dependency of FileCoin.
- shepardrtc 5y ago
  If you want something similar to Filecoin that is live and in use, check out http://siasky.net/ http://siasky.net/ Siacoin has been around for a while and approaches things differently. Plus its already being used by people.
phire 5y ago
IPFS isn't blockchain. and Chia doesn't allow people to rent out storage space, it just lets them mine with HDDs instead of GPUs. The other one I'm aware of is Sia.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  Arweave is the big one I know of

phire 5y ago

The biggest problem with this idea is proving data replication and guaranteed retrievability to the users in a trustless manner. With a traditional cloud provider, you trust them, upload your data and they deal with the rest, backing it up internally and guaranteeing retrievability with their reputation. But with blockchain p2p storage, it's really hard to provide the same guarantees. If you only upload the file once and let the blockchain replicate it, then a malicious (or greedy) entity can manipulate the blockchain and control all replicas (backed by a single disk copy). So your software must encrypt multiple copies of your data and upload seperate replicas with different encryption keys. But that still leaves you open to a very malicious entity going out of it's way to track all uploads from a node, and monopolising control over them, then deleting them when you try to download them. To actually provide the same guarantees that a cloud provider does in a trustless way, your local software will also have to continually download chunks to make sure they are still retrievable, and you might also need to use the tor network for all accesses. With all that extra complexity, there is a lot to go wrong, and a traditional cloud provider might end up being the cheapest option. I used to agree with you, but after trying to design such a system with these trustless guarantees myself, I've come to the conclusion that there is no good use case for blockchain, outside of exchanging value.