What is Storage (Decentralized)?
Let's find out Storage (Decentralized) meaning, definition in crypto, what is Storage (Decentralized), and all other detailed facts.
The concept of decentralized storage entails splitting documents into encrypted fragments and delegating these fragments to multiple nodes on a distributed network. The servers are managed by people, instead of organizations. This gives it the ability to limit access to certain users and censor specific data. Users that engage in decentralized storage are perceived as trustworthy through smart contracts and they are encouraged by receiving tokens as rewards.
The idea of decentralized storage was created back in 2013-2015 by projects such as IPFS, Stroj, and Siacoin. The goal was to leverage the advantages associated with decentralized networks in order to improve privacy, security, censorship resistance, cost, and availability of storage systems.
The following are the main advantages of decentralized storage systems:
- Enhanced censorship due to the fact that there is no one body in charge of the network.
- Increased safety and confidentiality due to the deployment of alternative replicas of file fragments. Even if some network nodes get corrupted, data may still be recovered from the other nodes.
- Increased uptime since data download is possible from various network nodes, the majority of which are available at any time.
However, cloud storage, which is the remote storage of documents on servers managed by service suppliers (such as Google Drive or Amazon Drive) should not be confused with decentralized storage.
The information repositories of cloud storage providers are centralized, which means they might undergo outages or be targeted by cybercriminals. This results in poorer accessibility or even destruction of stored data. Besides, they are maintained by private organizations that tend to filter data and limit access to individual clients.