How does decentralized storage resist centralization? Backblaze B2 costs $0.005/GB/Mo (vs. $0.021/GB/Mo for S3). No reasonable person will have hardware at home that can compete with those prices.
All it takes is a single person with a few unmetered boxes and a proxy to B2/S3/etc to effectively pressure the price down to cloud storage levels.
As a user, how can I confirm that my data is being replicated properly if there are few big users? One of them might have multiple identities backed by a single cloud account, and if they stop paying their bill and run off with the coins all the data is lost. This will be those darknet market scams all over again.
Aside from the oodles of money that the early adopters will make, what am I missing?
Edit: Thought of another issue. The protocol replicates data, so if we assume a cloud provider does 3x replication, your data will be replicated again by the storage protocol. The extra overhead means that once the economies of scale kick in, only big players that can manage B2 style racks themselves will be able to host economically, just like how Bitcoin mining has consolidated on large mining operations.
All it takes is a single person with a few unmetered boxes and a proxy to B2/S3/etc to effectively pressure the price down to cloud storage levels.
As a user, how can I confirm that my data is being replicated properly if there are few big users? One of them might have multiple identities backed by a single cloud account, and if they stop paying their bill and run off with the coins all the data is lost. This will be those darknet market scams all over again.
Aside from the oodles of money that the early adopters will make, what am I missing?
Edit: Thought of another issue. The protocol replicates data, so if we assume a cloud provider does 3x replication, your data will be replicated again by the storage protocol. The extra overhead means that once the economies of scale kick in, only big players that can manage B2 style racks themselves will be able to host economically, just like how Bitcoin mining has consolidated on large mining operations.