<story><title>Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]</title><url>https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sharemywin</author><text>I still go back to this paper for questions about decentralized storage:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.dshr.org&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;is-decentralized-storage-sustainable.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.dshr.org&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;is-decentralized-storage-sustai...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>darawk</author><text>I think this argument fails even by its own standards. It applies equally well to Bitcoin mining, and while there is clearly some centralization there, it is still quite decentralized. At least, decentralized &amp;#x27;enough&amp;#x27;. Secondly, storage is fundamentally different than other commodities. The decentralized storage market is more like AirBnB, where you&amp;#x27;re consuming the excess capacity of capital. Most people have tons of storage already that they&amp;#x27;re not using. Extracting rents from that space is found money, and therefore they have inherently lower costs than anyone supplying storage in a commercial way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]</title><url>https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sharemywin</author><text>I still go back to this paper for questions about decentralized storage:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.dshr.org&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;is-decentralized-storage-sustainable.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.dshr.org&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;is-decentralized-storage-sustai...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>calafrax</author><text>There is another macro-economic issue here:&lt;p&gt;With a decentralized trustless system you have to assume a higher failure rate for nodes than with a central trust based system.&lt;p&gt;If you assume a higher failure rate you have to replicate data more extensively to achieve reliability.&lt;p&gt;If you have to replicate data more extensively then decentralized will always be more expensive than centralized.</text></comment>