Interview, Fireside Chat
Towards a Decentralized Storage Network for the Blockchain Computer
- Unused latent storage across computers, mobile devices, and data centers is anticipated to be leveraged to establish a decentralized storage marketplace via an open-source, neutral protocol.
- The predicted decentralized network offers improved fault tolerance, reliability, and longevity compared to centralized models, as file replication across independent nodes mitigates single-point failures and enhances censorship resistance.
- Future decentralized applications and blockchain systems like Ethereum are expected to rely on this infrastructure to prevent centralized weak links, while the footprint of proof-of-storage systems is projected to be utility-focused rather than energy-intensive.
- Economics suggest decentralized storage could compete with providers like Amazon S3, though the precise cost advantage remains uncertain, with proof of replication potentially serving as a barrier to entry for large-scale incumbents despite questions regarding ASIC resistance.
- Governance is expected to remain fair through a body of representative actors rather than a single entity, and the architecture may facilitate a separation between the blockchain consensus layer and the storage layer.
- Accumulators are projected to reduce blockchain storage burdens by eliminating the need for every node to maintain a full ledger of accounts.
- The network is designed to incentivize rational economic behavior from nodes while discouraging fraud through mechanisms that remove the economic incentive to under-report storage capacity.
- Potential risks include the theoretical ability of large entities like Amazon to interfere with consensus or double-span the network, although the cost of such an attack relative to current operations is considered difficult to quantify.
- The resulting "amorphous internet of connected devices" is expected to be more resilient against government censorship than centralized cloud providers, though the extent of ASIC resistance for proof-of-replication remains uncertain.