Ben Golub: Decentralized Data Storage's Only Competition Is the Public Cloud

This is huge news, not only because of the anticipation following Filecoin's large token offering in 2017, but because creating a vibrant ecosystem of decentralized cloud offerings is an important step in the maturation of the cloud.

Ben Golub is the executive chairman and CEO at Storj Labs, an open-source, decentralized cloud storage provider.

Storj Labs, and a number of others are betting that a decentralized approach to storage can revolutionize public cloud in much the same way that a decentralized approach to networks revolutionized communications over the past three decades.

Rather than relying on expensive, capital-intensive data centers, we break data into small pieces, encrypt it and allow the data to be stored across 10s of thousands of independently owned and operated drives.

Decentralized storage and cloud must significantly decrease prices that end users pay.

Each of the decentralized storage players has its own unique areas of emphasis.

There is also increasing momentum for the use of decentralized storage for edge use cases, which aim to push data closer to where it is consumed.

As an increasing amount of data is collected, analyzed and distributed at the edge, it makes sense to store that data across a broad, globally distributed set of nodes as well, which improves performance, durability and data integrity.

To this end, decentralized storage and cloud must significantly decrease prices that end users pay.

Once again, a hearty welcome to the latest entrant to the decentralized storage space.