An idea about the problem of storage of Steem community content
An idea about the problem of storage of Steem community content
The Steem community is organized from it's beginning around the idea of sharing and the theme of decentralization.
I see a problem with the current arrangement of hosting images outside of the Steem community in third party sites like Img Safe https://imgsafe.org/ or http://zippyshare.com/ and others. Since these sites are free I have to ask the question 'Why are they doing this? What's in it for them?'
I can only conclude that if we aren't being charged anything then We are the product.
At img safe I logged in and could not find a terms and conditions page. What I did find when I looked at page source in my browser was this line near the bottom:
(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga') Maybe we are being data mined by Google? Just saying... This may be the case with other storage sites as well.
Another concern is what happens to old posts from months back and what about the state of these posts in the distant future? Will the images in these posts be available for those posts then? We have no contol over what those sites do with the images once uploaded.
Maybe I don't know enough about the technology but even if they are available without limit do we want our personally created images on an external site?
How about integrating them into the Steem community with storage on the member's computers and getting paid to do it? Using the storage capacity of members hard disk space in a decentralized network, encrypted and always available it would be in line with the direction this community is working toward.
Storj Share https://storj.io/share.html has made a gui for their platform for blockchain cloud storage making it palatable for most of us who can't for a number of reasons deal with the technology of implementing it ourselves. They pay you for renting out drivespace to their network.
from their blog http://blog.storj.io/
"Today we are happy to announce we have reached a major milestone for Storj with 1 PB (1,000 TB) of data stored on our network! The total supply of available storage is around 3 PB, being supplied by ~4,700 farming clients. Even more impressive: most of this data has been uploaded since October 11th on the back of the v4.0 upgrade."
What if in our wallet section there was an option to delegate drive space to store images or whatever for the community. Is there a way to pay users in an integrated gui?
We already can interact with ethereum in the wallet, is that a viable solution? I am a newb when it comes to this stuff. Can images be uploaded through an interface inside of Steem and stored transparently in the blockchain?
I propose this to the developers.
All I know is that I would be more comfortable with my data encrypted in the Steem decentalized network which is then futureproofed.
i hope this becomes a reality. thanks for suggesting it i was actualy wondering about the same thing.
Storj isn't a web server which is required to display images across the internet.
right that's the point it uses computers all over the place to store data in, hence decentralized
In order for an image to be displayed here on Steemit, there's more to it than just having it stored somewhere. The place where the image is located needs the ability to respond to basic web markup like href and img. You'll need an apache or iis web server to facilitate that. Plus the bandwidth, which is what's yankin these image hosting companies crank so much. Storj will let someone download the image, but won't respond to the http call, in it's current format. Unless they've implemented something like that I don't know about. Steemit could easily do what you're saying, ala Storj like. We would just have to pay for it is all.
Plus there's the part about encryption/decryption. Everyone around the world would have to be running whatever would do that so it would display in their browser.
Actually, this would solve a huge problem. Currently I use Img Safe to upload my photos, what happens if down the road they shut down? Every photo link I have on my blogs would disappear leaving gaps...in just the short amount of time I've been here, replacing them would be a huge amount of work. I wonder how many people this has occurred to? My husband is into crypto currency and I know he's a host sharing his hard drive for compensation in coins. So if steemit offers steem for compensation? That would definitely work and make me sleep better at night.
Storj will not display your image here on Steemit. It's usage is for storage of files, which it encrypts for security and then spreads pieces of it across multiple local computers that have installed their software to do so. It's a great business model and I commend the author for recognizing it, but it won't solve anyone's image hosting issue. You need a web hosting account and a domain name for that.
Namecheap.com offers .88 cent domains and basic hosting for 9.88 for the first year, $3 a month at the second year. You'll get a reliable cpanel hosing account and can do all the image hosting you want for just over 10 dollars.
But cloud storage isn't going to serve up your pictures for display across the internet on a separate website. You need a web server for that.
You're correct, if the free image service you've been using goes under, or simply adds steemit.com to an exception list, then images wont be displayed here and the blue "image cannot be displayed" icon will be in it's place. Trust me, you'll sleep better knowing you have your own web hosting that you control.
thanks for the heads up on the webhosting for the forseeable future. Heh it seems its easy to develop bad habits no matter what you are doing.
No, I wasn't suggesting we use storj, I was saying that steemit could do what storj is aready doing. There's a formula for it, storj is using that formula, why can't steemit come up with a similar platform? I would be willing to lend my hard drive space.
I'll take a look, is this like MAIDsafe ? They seem to be ahead
yes from what I gather it has the features of decentralization, encryption of data and compensation for your dedicating hard drive space to the network. I am not sure if or how the steem platform interfaces with it or even if it's possible though
I love this idea of decentralized storage around the globe. I believe I first heard about it from Andreas Antonopoulos in a presentation a couple years ago.
the very fact of the deveopment of blockchain technology shows this is the right direction. It's coming!
One of the big dogs gave me a link, (How knows him a bit, they've spoken in trading) while it doesn't solve the problem because it is also a site that could tank, it's a huge step up from what we have been using. dirtyimg.com nothing else, no web address. Whatever you upload is wiped completely in fifteen minutes, it doesn't store it. Very cool.
Okay, I voiced my concern to him and he said the site was created by a steemian for steemit users and apparently it will stay in steemit, so long as steemit is running and that's really all we care about anyway. So if that's the case, problem solved :)
They make it very easy to create a blog via Softalicious too. You could blog about your crypto experiences and link back to Steemit every chance you have. That will benefit the site quite a bit down the road when we want to raise the pagerank and visibility of Steemit.