Decentralized Storage

Decentralized storage by example

For the sake of this course, we’ve mostly focused on IPFS since it’s easy to visualize what’s happening, but there are a number of players entering the decentralized storage space, and each of them has chosen to accomplish this goal in slightly different ways. Generally, the framework for a decentralized storage network can be summarized as shown below. If you would like a deeper dive into this decentralized storage technology, check out our full course on IPFS.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN STORAGE WORKS: A: Data; B: Shards; C: Encrypted Shards; D: Hashes; E: Blockchain Ledger; F: Distributed Nodes with Synced Ledger; 1: Shard Data; 2: Encrypt Shards; 3: Generate Hashes; 4: Replicate Shards; 5: Distribute Shards; 6: Record Transactions.
Because blockchains must be stored on all nodes of the network, data on them is expensive. As a result, hashes are used to represent an image of each piece of a file, and the pieces can then be safely distributed to storage nodes without risk of substitution of compromise.