Decentralized storage: Tailwinds and open questions

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Speaking to Storj about its new model made me interested in decentralized storage. On the one hand, there are components that would assist enhance its adoption. On the opposite, it additionally appears at odds with different tendencies, resembling sovereign clouds. Right here’s what I realized. — Anna

Slashing cloud payments

The amount of information generated by firms appears to be ever-increasing, however issues about cloud prices are rising, too.

Earlier this month, we realized that AWS’ year-on-year income progress dropped into the mid-teens in January as prospects sought to scale back their spending. “As we glance forward, we anticipate these optimization efforts will proceed to be a headwind to AWS progress in not less than the following couple of quarters,” Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky stated in the course of the firm’s earnings name.

Whereas this preoccupation reignited the naked metallic debate, it additionally creates tailwinds for an additional possibility: decentralized storage. Represented by gamers resembling Arweave, Filecoin, Internxt, Sia and Storj, it provides a less expensive different to hyperscalers.