Thanks for the examples. All of them seem to use IPFS though.
I am willing to go as far as IPFS being an interesting technology, but AFAIK it predates the idea of web3 by quite a bit and can be used without it just fine.
As for being interwoven with Filecoin… yes currently it can be used without, but the venture capital funded company that is developing both IPFS and Filecoin is clearly aiming to use Filecoin as the preferred IPFS storage backend, meaning that if they succeed with establishing both, it will be nearly impossible to use IPFS without also using (at least in proxy) Filecoin.
most of these projects are separate from protocol labs, so if they seize to exist you can still be using these libraries/projects
and while yes, they are definitely going to be leaning into filecoin, i don’t see this as a problem: part of the appeal of ipfs is its modularity and flexibility, for example, there’s a theoretical google docs-like ipfs-based app, and they’re offering either p2p sync or sync to an ipfs node on your own server, or they offer paid backups via filecoin, it’s a perfect business model in my opinion… many ipfs based projects have already adopted this model
without its modularity and flexibility (purely restricted to filecoin) ipfs is nothing but a glorified storage solution, and would lose most of its appeal
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t IPFS have build-in replication of data to other IPFS nodes? At least using it purely on a single node on your own server seems useless (and p2p in general is too impractical to be of much use).
So as a result you as an IPFS user are likely to end up either using Filecoin directly or indirectly by using another IPFS node where someone else pays for the storage (more likely then not in Filecoin if Protocol labs gets their way).
Now, given that Filecoin is both an ecological disaster and primarily benefits some of the worst venture capitalists (due to extensive pre-minting for them), I would rather avoid this technology all together…
by default ipfs doesn’t offer any data replication guarantees
if you spin up a regular ipfs node and do nothing with it, you will get practically zero data flowing in and out of it, excluding a few kilobytes of metadata that is broadcasting your peer id to other nodes and downloading some distributed hashtable data about which nodes have what files
you can pin any file, and then your node will broadcast that it has that file and others can now download it, if they choose to do so, and that file will remain on their computer for a few hours until garbage collection gets rid of it
iiuc this is basically where “involuntary” data replication ends, so for your file to remain on ipfs you either have to pin it yourself, get others to get interested in it and also pin it, or pay a hosting provider to pin it for you, or use filecoin, but that comes with its whole separate api and other stuff
about the ecological aspect of filecoin i’m not really sure, but I thought they aren’t using proof of work, rather proof of space, which doesn’t carry much ecological consequences, other than the energy to run the drives and the computer they’re attached to, but since these drives are used for legitimate applications of storing data, it’s not any worse environmentally than any other cloud storage provider
primarily benefits some of the worst venture capitalists
was there some shady stuff going on? i’ve heard that filecoin has had some weird stuff going on, but never really paid close attention to it… in theory, though, filecoin should work against concentration of power in the hands of VCs and big companies, because even if there were one massive company that hosts 95 % of data using filecoin, there is no vendor lock in like there is with aws or google cloud, so anybody can come in and set up their filecoin operation, you only need to pay for hardware to enter the game and that’s it
Thanks for the clarification regarding replication on IPFS… but I guess you agree that a single node storage on IPFS doesn’t really have much positive advantage over just putting it on a basic http server?
about the ecological aspect of filecoin i’m not really sure, but I thought they aren’t using proof of work, rather proof of space, which doesn’t carry much ecological consequences, other than the energy to run the drives and the computer they’re attached to, but since these drives are used for legitimate applications of storing data, it’s not any worse environmentally than any other cloud storage provider
This is also what I thought until I looked into the actual hardware requirements of Filecoin, which require a hoster to purchase the very latest AFAIK Intel AMD based hardware (for the required cryptography). In addition Filecoin has a really high overall storage need Vs. usable storage, something like 100:1 if I recall correctly (edit: seems more like 20:1). This together means that Filecoin requires the replacement of huge amount of hardware and most of it is wasted due to the inefficiency.
was there some shady stuff going on? i’ve heard that filecoin has had some weird stuff going on, but never really paid close attention to it…
Something like 30% of the total possible volume of Filecoins was pre-minted and exclusively sold to accredited investors, which primarily included some really shady venture capitalist firms.
Edit: the problem there being not that they could control the network, but rather that they will get absurdly rich if Filecoin ever takes off.
but I guess you agree that a single node storage on IPFS doesn’t really have much positive advantage over just putting it on a basic http server?
same as with bittorrent? a single seeder isn’t much better than just setting up a regular http server, but if more people decide to download and seed it, then you have infinite horizontal scale in bandwidth and resilience, all in a decentralized manner, same thing with ipfs
it’s already been used for large scale backups by sci hub and libgen
This is also what I thought until I looked into the actual hardware requirements of Filecoin, which require a hoster to purchase the very latest AFAIK Intel based hardware (for the required cryptography).
i don’t really see a problem in that, if they are going to compete with enterprise grade storage offers then you need good hardware to run it
Filecoin has a really high overall storage need Vs. usable storage, something like 100:1 if I recall correctly.
that seems awfully high to have any semblance of practicality, could you provide a source on that?
Something like 30% of the total possible volume of Filecoins was pre-minted and exclusively sold to accredited investors, which primarily included some really shady venture capitalist firms.
yeah, pre-mining sucks, but that’s just how ICOs work, no?
For example, a 32GiB expands to ~480GiB during the sealing process.
Source.
(And yes I stand corrected and it is only about 10:1 on a single miner at least, but I think there is also some further significant network replication involved). Edit: also note the significant other hardware requirements. Edit2: now I remember where the higher ratio came from… typically commercial data-storage is done on Raid6 or similar, so storing something 10:1 on an raid system gives you the a even worse ratio, but maybe not 100:1.
Yeah, ICOs suck, but that is just how Capitalism works, no? /s
Thanks for the examples. All of them seem to use IPFS though.
I am willing to go as far as IPFS being an interesting technology, but AFAIK it predates the idea of web3 by quite a bit and can be used without it just fine.
As for being interwoven with Filecoin… yes currently it can be used without, but the venture capital funded company that is developing both IPFS and Filecoin is clearly aiming to use Filecoin as the preferred IPFS storage backend, meaning that if they succeed with establishing both, it will be nearly impossible to use IPFS without also using (at least in proxy) Filecoin.
most of these projects are separate from protocol labs, so if they seize to exist you can still be using these libraries/projects
and while yes, they are definitely going to be leaning into filecoin, i don’t see this as a problem: part of the appeal of ipfs is its modularity and flexibility, for example, there’s a theoretical google docs-like ipfs-based app, and they’re offering either p2p sync or sync to an ipfs node on your own server, or they offer paid backups via filecoin, it’s a perfect business model in my opinion… many ipfs based projects have already adopted this model
without its modularity and flexibility (purely restricted to filecoin) ipfs is nothing but a glorified storage solution, and would lose most of its appeal
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t IPFS have build-in replication of data to other IPFS nodes? At least using it purely on a single node on your own server seems useless (and p2p in general is too impractical to be of much use).
So as a result you as an IPFS user are likely to end up either using Filecoin directly or indirectly by using another IPFS node where someone else pays for the storage (more likely then not in Filecoin if Protocol labs gets their way).
Now, given that Filecoin is both an ecological disaster and primarily benefits some of the worst venture capitalists (due to extensive pre-minting for them), I would rather avoid this technology all together…
by default ipfs doesn’t offer any data replication guarantees
if you spin up a regular ipfs node and do nothing with it, you will get practically zero data flowing in and out of it, excluding a few kilobytes of metadata that is broadcasting your peer id to other nodes and downloading some distributed hashtable data about which nodes have what files
you can pin any file, and then your node will broadcast that it has that file and others can now download it, if they choose to do so, and that file will remain on their computer for a few hours until garbage collection gets rid of it
iiuc this is basically where “involuntary” data replication ends, so for your file to remain on ipfs you either have to pin it yourself, get others to get interested in it and also pin it, or pay a hosting provider to pin it for you, or use filecoin, but that comes with its whole separate api and other stuff
about the ecological aspect of filecoin i’m not really sure, but I thought they aren’t using proof of work, rather proof of space, which doesn’t carry much ecological consequences, other than the energy to run the drives and the computer they’re attached to, but since these drives are used for legitimate applications of storing data, it’s not any worse environmentally than any other cloud storage provider
was there some shady stuff going on? i’ve heard that filecoin has had some weird stuff going on, but never really paid close attention to it… in theory, though, filecoin should work against concentration of power in the hands of VCs and big companies, because even if there were one massive company that hosts 95 % of data using filecoin, there is no vendor lock in like there is with aws or google cloud, so anybody can come in and set up their filecoin operation, you only need to pay for hardware to enter the game and that’s it
Thanks for the clarification regarding replication on IPFS… but I guess you agree that a single node storage on IPFS doesn’t really have much positive advantage over just putting it on a basic http server?
This is also what I thought until I looked into the actual hardware requirements of Filecoin, which require a hoster to purchase the very latest AFAIK
IntelAMD based hardware (for the required cryptography). In addition Filecoin has a really high overall storage need Vs. usable storage, something like 100:1 if I recall correctly (edit: seems more like 20:1). This together means that Filecoin requires the replacement of huge amount of hardware and most of it is wasted due to the inefficiency.Something like 30% of the total possible volume of Filecoins was pre-minted and exclusively sold to accredited investors, which primarily included some really shady venture capitalist firms. Edit: the problem there being not that they could control the network, but rather that they will get absurdly rich if Filecoin ever takes off.
same as with bittorrent? a single seeder isn’t much better than just setting up a regular http server, but if more people decide to download and seed it, then you have infinite horizontal scale in bandwidth and resilience, all in a decentralized manner, same thing with ipfs
it’s already been used for large scale backups by sci hub and libgen
i don’t really see a problem in that, if they are going to compete with enterprise grade storage offers then you need good hardware to run it
that seems awfully high to have any semblance of practicality, could you provide a source on that?
yeah, pre-mining sucks, but that’s just how ICOs work, no?
Source. (And yes I stand corrected and it is only about 10:1 on a single miner at least, but I think there is also some further significant network replication involved). Edit: also note the significant other hardware requirements. Edit2: now I remember where the higher ratio came from… typically commercial data-storage is done on Raid6 or similar, so storing something 10:1 on an raid system gives you the a even worse ratio, but maybe not 100:1.
Yeah, ICOs suck, but that is just how Capitalism works, no? /s