Digital storage has come a long way since the early 1900s.

Back then, we used punched cards to store and represent digital information – stiff paper with information represented by the presence or absence of holes.

Flash forward a century – the world of digital storage has evolved from local offline storage to global online storage, with the rise of cloud storage services like Amazon S3 in 2006.

However, despite the increasing pace at which revolutionary developments have been achieved in storage technology, there hasn’t been a major revolution since the advent of centralized cloud storage.

Now, we may be at the dawn of the next big thing. In the past decade, we have witnessed the rise of blockchain-enabled decentralized storage networks, a kind of cooperative cloud storage.

Leading this potential storage revolution are the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Filecoin, with other prominent protocols like Sia, Storj, and Arweave also making waves.

Digital storage has come a long way since the early 1900s.

Back then, we used punched cards to store and represent digital information – stiff paper with information represented by the presence or absence of holes.

Flash forward a century – the world of digital storage has evolved from local offline storage to global online storage, with the rise of cloud storage services like Amazon S3 in 2006.

However, despite the increasing pace at which revolutionary developments have been achieved in storage technology, there hasn’t been a major revolution since the advent of centralized cloud storage.

Now, we may be at the dawn of the next big thing. In the past decade, we have witnessed the rise of blockchain-enabled decentralized storage networks, a kind of cooperative cloud storage.

Leading this potential storage revolution are the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Filecoin, with other prominent protocols like Sia, Storj, and Arweave also making waves.

To this end, we offer a primer to understand the nascent decentralized storage industry – its core technologies, economic systems, and ecosystem developments.

Click here to access the full report in PDF format

By The Block Research | Original link