Beware of Centralized Storage in Decentralized Clothing

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All blockchain storage solutions are created equal. But some are more equal than others.

Decentralized storage services work in broadly the same manner, using InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) or a variant thereof. This distributed file system enables peer-to-peer sharing and storage of media and is designed to provide a decentralized alternative to HTTP for serving and retrieving content on the web.

The problem with such solutions is that they are only as decentralized as the servers used to hold the data. And in this respect, it turns out that blockchain developers face something of a quandary. On the one hand, they claim to love the notion of decentralization and the freedom to create innovative products that make use of IPFS. But on the other hand, they’re spoiled by the speed, availability, and low latency of web2 infrastructure.

This has led to some blockchain projects falling back on the crutch of centralized servers on which to host their “decentralized” data. It may sound oxymoronic but the practice is endemic throughout the industry. At one point, 70% of all Ethereum nodes were running on centralized infra with cloud providers such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft doing the bulk of the heavy lifting. Understanding why this is a problem calls for a reprise of how decentralized storage works.

In IPFS, files are addressed by their content and not their location, which means that each file is given a unique cryptographic hash that serves as its address. This allows files to be stored and retrieved from multiple nodes in the network, making them highly resilient to censorship