The Decentralized Storage Alliance was born Tuesday — promising cooperation between major technology players to facilitate the transition between Web2 and Web3. The major thrust of this initiative, indicated by its name, is in evolving decentralized storage, driving awareness of this technology, and promoting its adoption. Major technology partners include AMD, Seagate, Ernst & Young, Protocol Labs, and the Filecoin Foundation.
Seagate is a well-known provider of physical storage technology, and has been even before the days of Web1. Its solutions range from home users to businesses and even to the cloud providers (Web2), which this newer technology hopes to displace. It's wise for Seagate to get onboard and be a guiding member of this alliance from the beginning if — as expected — decentralized storage does take off one day.
Investments and accountancy firm Ernst & Young will take on the role of guiding and developing secure blockchain technology for storage, to benefit its customers.
The above trio, alongside alliance founders Protocol Labs and the Filecoin Foundation, aim to set up a widely-adopted foundation for decentralized storage by embarking on the following tasks:
- Developing standard specifications and reference architectures that address the unique needs of enterprise companies.
- Providing access to education materials, technical resources, and best practices.
- Improving the process of onboarding data to decentralized storage networks and making it easier for new data centers to onboard to the network.
- Enabling the creation of impactful Working Groups that solve specific issues with the transition to decentralized storage technologies and Web3.
Why would you be interested in decentralized storage? This storage technology promises a Web3 version of the cloud — offering great efficiency and robust security, as well as a "significantly lower" cost. Its decentralized nature means that uses of this storage tech aren't locked in to a provider — they will meet data sovereignty requirements, and will benefit from other advantages inherent in the blockchain.
Filecoin is the largest provider of this type of service: Filecoin says it hosts 240 PiB of data, which is approximately 65,000 Wikipedia's worth of data. Its customers number in the thousands, and include UC Berkeley, USC's Shoah Foundation, and the University of Utah. It seems like the Decentralized Storage Alliance is off to a good start.
