RE: AWS is Down - This is Why We Need Decentralised Storage like Storj etc
I personally have a hard time understanding where the extra hd space and bandwidth should come. One problem with a decentralized crypto storage is that many files will eventually be duplicates, but can't be treated as duplicates, but as individual files. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you encrypt a file once, and someone else encrypts the same file in a different location it will not be recognised as the same file anymore, right?
The way I see it many of these technologies don't account for redundant files that hog up space, where as they could be identified as identical from the get-go and then replicated with the same identifier, so whenever someone needs that file, they don't need to go after their own copy, but they can use the same copy everyone else is. That would free resources for all; storage, bandwidth and the search algorithm.
MaidSafe actually already tackles this problem as can be seen here (https://maidsafe.net/features.html). I quote: "Once a file is uploaded, other users who upload the same file will be automatically referred to the original, limiting the number of copies and reducing the computing resources needed to store it."
Thanks for the info. I need to check out MaidSafe, I wonder if they are out of closed beta yet.
Edit: Aah, I see they are in Alpha. "*Data in alpha 1 may get lost or be wiped" isn't very assuring. Hopefully they'll release a production ready version soon.
Well, AFAIK the project has been in "pre-alpha" for about 10 years now. It's not trivial at all to build such a system and I also hope that they will soon release a beta version.
That makes sense to me but I am not an expert in cryptography - perhaps there is some way around it that a more intelligent and knowledgeable person can think of that doesn't also break the encryption.
Otherwise it would certainly seem to be a problem in terms of duplicating redundant information.
Very intelligent point thank you for bringing it up.