Overview of different crypto storage projects
Crypto storage projects have got some attention lately and since I have been following this field since 2017 very closely I thought that I could share my views on different projects and maybe someone finds my information valuable. Anyways do your own research and these aren’t investment advices but my own views.
Biggest name in the crypto storage field is obviously Filecoin but there’s more out there. Other projects that I’m going through are Siacoin and Opacity Storage.
Filecoin (#15 in coinmarketcap)
Filecoin is currently holding the biggest market cap in the data storage field. They got $275M in VC funding in 2017 and have used that funding to develop their platform and to attract new investments to the project.
Filecoin has a market cap of $9,545,173,359 but that’s not all. Since Filecoin has only a very small portion of their tokens in circulation what we want to look at is their fully diluted market cap which is currently at $293,886,214,384. That means that their fully diluted market cap is already about 50% bigger than Ethereum’s.
So what makes Filecoin 50% more valuable than Ethereum? I haven’t found a reason for that. They already have a working network with some proof of concept products but I have understood that there’s not real traction on those products yet. I can easily understand why it’s so difficult to get users for products built using Filecoin since Filecoin has it’s limitations inherited from IPFS.
Currently the most promising product built on top of Filecoin is Slate https://slate.host/. I have tried that product but it’s not realistic that I would use it as my daily data storage.
Limitations include 4 GB total limit for data storage and if you want to host more you can’t buy an account upgrade but instead you can pay one file at a time for pinning those files in the network. Problem is that you have to go through the payment process separately for every file that you want to upload and there’s also a limitation that these files have to be at least 100 MB in size. I understand that these limitations come from IPFS but I don’t see that it’s possible to get many users for products like this as there’s so many limitations that make it unusable for most of the users.
Siacoin (#84 in coinmarketcap)
Sia is already a big name in crypto storage and decentralized internet and they have a strong fan community. Sia’s market cap is currently $1,223,332,266 and their fully diluted market cap is the same as circulating supply.
Despite Sia being a familiar name in crypto storage and decentralized internet they are also at the point where they still don’t really have products with users. Their data storage solution requires you to run part of their network at your own computer to store your files to their platform. There’s also some ”proof of concept” -stage products built on top of Sia where you can pin your files to network without running Sia network’s node at your own computer but these lack usability and redundancy so far so same as with Filecoin it’s very difficult to get users for these products.
There’s also quite many concerns raised about Siacoin and here’s shot summary written by their former team member (full version available here: https://siasetup.info/concerns-about-sia-and-skynet)
- Sia: The product has many technical issues which make it unstable and unusable, issues which have persisted for years
- Skynet: It’s a poorly thought out extension of Sia which will never compete with the traditional Internet, and is more similar to GeoCities than Web3
- SC/SF: Sia’s original self-funding methods have failed, and no Siafund holders seem to want to admit it
- Sia Team: They have no direction and still act like a startup full of pretentious college kids which think they know better than everyone else
- Sia Foundation: A new money-printing entity funded by a large block reward, which may not really be separate from Nebulous or work in the community’s interests
- Sia Community: They idolize the team, can’t tolerate criticism, will push objectors out, and will go down with the ship
- Conclusion: Sia and Skynet aren’t going to work out on their current trajectory, and people have been banned for articulating why
Opacity Storage (#714 in coinmarketcap)
Opacity Storage isn’t yet a very known project but they have taken different approach than projects mentioned earlier. They have started their project by thinking about what users want from data storage product and what makes those usable. Then they have made working product and improving technology on-the-go. Opacity’s current fully diluted market cap is $44,061,586. There’s only 130 million OPCT tokens available and there’s no more tokens coming.
Opacity offers a working product which has imitated many usability aspects from traditional data storage options such as Dropbox and Google Cloud. Exception is that in Opacity all files are splitted into chunks and encrypted client-side so whoever is hosting the files has no way to know what they are hosting. Opacity has also built their platform focusing very much on user’s privacy on other aspects also. There’s no link to the user account from files so even if some file is shared publicly nobody(even the Opacity team) can’t know which storage account it belongs to. Opacity Storage isn’t collecting any personal information at any phase of sign-in or other processes. Opacity Storage offers a 10 GB free account which you can upgrade to 128 GB, 1 TB or 2 TB plan by paying with OPCT token. They also offer Enterprise plans if someone needs bigger storage. There’s an easy to use web interface and also some community developed desktop apps. They also have a mobile app with file syncing on their roadmap and it should be released during this summer.
Opacity Storage however has currently all files hosted in AWS but since their data splitting and encryption is so strong there’s no way that data could be accessed by AWS employees or any hacker entering AWS systems. Opacity have just released their updated whitepaper that is focused on decentralization Whitepaper is available for download in here: https://opacitystora.ge/SKUmgY
Some picks from the whitepaper:
“The Opacity Galaxy front end and orchestration allow customers to configure the type of storage and redundancy that they want to purchase, and then the servers on the network bid to become the storage nodes for that content. By default, multiple servers are chosen for different shards, and a minimum of two copies of every shard are stored within the network. Higher levels of redundancy are available according to the request and price the customer is willing to pay for the storage. Similarly, customers can choose geolocation or different levels of security and connectivity according to their needs for the data.”
SECURITY
● No spoofing (certificates required)
● Blockchain contracts are used to manage storage fulfillment
● Ensuring that all nodes on the network fulfill security requirements
PERFORMANCE
● Latency: Systems must respond within the latency requirements
● Satellites must have minimum space requirement for the data being stored
● Bandwidth requirements must perform according to the retrieval requirements
● Five-sigma uptime
REDUNDANCY
● File chunks and data on retrieval must be stored in multiple locations in case of offline Satellite or Guardian
● Minimum of x+1, with ability to add additional levels of redundancy for file storage as per the contracts
ROADMAP
● Airdrop of Opacity Tokens: December 2018.
● Launch of Opacity 1.0: June 2019.
● Release of Opacity 1.5: December 2019.
● Completion of Research of Decentralized Nodes: June 2020.
● Completed Decentralized Node Plan: January 2021.
● Mobile Applications : Q2 2021.
● Galaxy Alpha (Storage Nodes only): Q3 2021.
● Galaxy Alpha (Guardian Nodes introduced): Q1 2022.
Their working product is already available at opacity.io and they started open beta testing of their new web app called Opacity 2.0. Open beta is available at dev2.opacity.io
Personally I think that Opacity Storage has the brightest future in crypto data storage field since they have taken user friendly approach with their product and their current fully diluted market cap is still very low compared to Filecoin (6 512 times bigger than OPCT) and Siacoin (27 times bigger than OPCT).
What are your thoughts on crypto data storage? Are you still betting on Filecoin or Siacoin’s success or are you like me and see that Opacity will eventually take their place as #1 crypto data storage project?
