This is a useless and meaningless comparison. Also useless and meaningless is any discussion of growth of aggregate stats within Filecoin… it’s kind of like attempting to say that there are 800 million oranges in the world, so that means that a given orange tree is doing well.
As you stated in 2020… The large Filecoin nodes get the most rewards. That will continue to be true into the future.
Several posts back, I requested clarification on the definitions of key components and stats on Filecoin. Now that you’ve answered those requests and provided a bit more information on the Filecoin network, I understand better what it is that I’m looking at…
From what you’ve indicated, there’s no method to compare Filecoin in aggregate with Storj. Filecoin is a network of independent operators and clients setting prices and terms of agreement for services rendered. Storj is comparable to one Filecoin “node” - let’s say for the sake of simplicity - which includes encryption and automated error correction and file repair. There’s currently no fully operational “node” for that service via the Filecoin “directory of providers”… for simplicity’s sake.
I’m glad you make plenty of cash running your Filecoin hardware. It’s always good to have neat things to play with… I’m fairly certain that most SNOs will not be running off to figure out how to run a Filecoin node. I know I don’t have that kind of time myself.
What you are describing is geofencing, and yes, Storj is working with customers on a case by case basis to accommodate their needs for geofencing, when ever possible to guarantee data resilience, as a minimum number of storage nodes would have to exist in the desired geofenced region in order to be able to successfully store and maintain availability of their data in the long term, according to our SLAs.
We are in the early stages of developing and implementing geofencing capabilities, please stay tuned.
So, goes the Entirety of this thread. What is claimed as “Filecoin has” is not actually Filecoin as a network. Searching through the choices of data storage providers might yield what one is looking for, or might not.
There are storage providers that include that as part of their service based on the requirements of their customers. So plenty of fully operational nodes if that is what a customer wants. I think you miss the point of an open network that allows customers and storage providers to customize their services as needed. Not everyone needs encryption, but it is nice that it is a native option to a system, which is on the roadmap, as far as I know. It makes sense that Storj offered this.
You are taking one broker service [Estuary] and conflating that with the whole network. Today you can go to other storage providers or brokers and get guarantees for location. There are a few online reputation services for Filecoin storage providers that provide other details about storage providers. I think you are trying too hard to disparage something you have minimal practical knowledge of. What you seem to demand is a highly centralized authority that makes everything universal rather than an open system that allows different providers to customize services as they see fit.
I’m saying that it makes no sense to discuss Filecoin as a singular entity providing a service.
So, statements like “Filecoin has…” are conflating the network with a particular storage provider on the network.
It is literally true that Storj could exist on the Filecoin network as a service provider. So, the whole thread attempting to compare and contrast Filecoin and Storj just makes no sense whatsoever.
If you’d like…
Storj would be the largest, and probably the most successful, operating Filecoin provider.
The more I read this very interesting thread, the more I’m wondering if STORJ should consider that?
I do agree that Storj would make a great Filecoin provider, quality wise ^^
That is not a claim anyone has made nor is it relevant. Filecoin is a decentralized ecosystem with many participants. Core specifications are clearly defined and modifications are proposed through the community by way of FIPs.
Storj could be a ‘service provider’ as the network is open. As far as large… well time will tell…
I need cloud storage that keeps my files around for at least a year without any corruption or missing files. So can you please implement a repair service on your filecoin node? How would that repair service work?
My node uses ZFS and I run regular scrubs, so the likelihood of data corruption is low.
I also maintain an ‘unsealed’ copy of the data primarily for fast retrieval.
Other storage providers also offer offsite backups of all data sectors for fast restore.
You also have the option of storing multiple replicas of your data with other storage providers around the world. As mentioned earlier, there is a pilot right now with restore and repair services which will be part of the Lotus software feature set. Today that is done on an ad hoc basis.
As a customer, all of this is transparent to you, you upload your data and it is around as long as you wish (having multiple replicas is your decision however).
Cool so why are customers on filecoin complaining about lost files than? Did they wish to lose files?
Filecoin has an issue to solve and as long as they haven’t they will lose customers. I am not willing to risk my data and just wait for the repair job to get implemented.
Well, you told us you got paid handsomely and you’re telling us most of it is free. That seems incredibly out of balance. If nobody is paying into that system because of the product value it offers then your income came from investors and speculators. And since filecoin has had a major hype cycle, there have been tons of those. In the crypto world coins can ride that hype cycle for a long time even without a promising product underneath. So I congratulate you on your timing of investing in this. But it does very little to convince me the product is sustainable. You’ve made way more money than it would ever be reasonable to pay for the service you actually provided.
When I see almost no money going in and tons of money coming out, I don’t care if that’s hidden by crypto hype around the coin, that bubble’s gonna pop one day.
That doesn’t seem very efficient and in fact quite costly
When I looked at their FAQ a few days ago it still said this wasn’t the case. Just checking… yeah
Automatic repair of faulted data is a feature we’ve pushed off until after the mainnet launch. For now, the way to ensure resiliency is to store your data with multiple storage providers, to gain some level of redundancy
That seems pretty clear to me. Do you have any link I can check with info about this audit and repair that their own FAQ is unaware of? Never mind, saw your links where you say you expect something to become a standard feature. So, it’s not yet. And I can also not find any evidence that it will be. Also, those links literally talk about significant file loss events. That’s not exactly putting my mind at ease.
Not just that, Storj actually has access controls instead of everything being publicly available. Filecoin doesn’t implement encryption or access control natively. And especially for a lot of data regulations, it isn’t allowed to just encrypt and be satisfied that no one else can access the data. Encrypted data leaks are still considered leaks. Which basically makes it impossible to use filecoin for many use cases.
It’s only technically true because you don’t choose your nodes on Storj. Though I don’t see why that would matter.
Only if your definition of “real data” is just… data. I believe the question was about actual customer data. Viability isn’t determined by test data or incentive data pushed to a network.
This isn’t as strong an argument as you think it is… Gmail was a viable product ever since it entered that beta phase. And it started making money for Google very quickly. If filecoin were in the shape gmail was when it first opened to the public, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Relying on storage providers acting rationally is not a good way to protect data. They may just take the penalty. If you don’t ensure data is redundantly stored and frequently repaired independent of individual storage providers, your data will slowly erode.
Again, then where does your earnings come from if not from paying clients? You must see this is a big problem?
They’re implementing a feature for this just now, yeah.
Right, you worry about all of that. Individually vetting all storage providers and having to trust that you did that right. I’ll take a satellite that ensures file availability and reliability and speed at a set rate over that any day of the week. How are you even able to reliably vet those storage providers. Choice without information is pretty useless. Having no choice of nodes on the Storj network isn’t a downside because you are never relying on individual nodes to begin with.
That first sentence really isn’t part of this quote, but I wanted to include it for irony’s sake… The entire filecoin network stores 33PiB and you claim there are 100PiB clients working with filecoin providers. I’ll just leave it at that.
Just drop the word real please… it’s meaningless and even misleading (real suggests it’s actual customer data). This is total data in both cases. For Storj we know that there is 3+PB of actual customer data. For Filecoin, I don’t think anyone can even provide that stat… So we’ll never know. At this point I’ll just call that a wash since we have no idea.
It would be interested if the going prices were anywhere close to acceptable market rates. If not, you’d just be running that node at a loss.
And more importantly, how would I as a prospective customer even know you’re not just telling a pretty story to make it sound reliable. Does any provider on Filecoin offer SLA’s?
Again… this doesn’t put my mind at ease at all. It just makes it impossible for me to know whether you will be storing my files reliably.
Right now the block rewards are incentivizing low to free storage pricing. That is very common in the Web3 world. In the cryptocurrency world miners get paid for Proof of Work or Stake, in the decentralized storage world we get paid for Proof of Storage. There is plenty of research and documentation into cryptoeconomics available.
That is real data and actual customers. See this as an example: Slingshot data. I am not sure how much test data is stored on Storj, I know that when I first stood up my nodes that was the majority of data. In Filecoin ‘test’ data is just called Committed Capacity (not counted as real data).
I think you are simply unaware of the customers lining up today. Filecoin is viable but lacks certain features that are in development, just like Gmail. I think the reason you want this discussion has little to do with facts.
I think history disagrees with your statement. Taking a huge financial hit is a proven motivator.
Some clients pay and even without charging (pricing is at each storage provider’s discretion) there are significant block rewards especially in the early years of a block chain based system.
I knew there was discussion about this for Storj, So can I as a customer choose which SNO or which country my data is stored in?
You really don’t have a choice, do you? I can choose FC storage providers based on any criteria that is important to me including data center certification, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 270001, country where data is stored. For very large deals this is a basic requirement and the the storage providers will happily provide any information needed.
In context someone claimed this was not possible. That is not true.
I know of clients that are planning on storing hundreds of PiB in the near future. You don’t need to believe me, you can just wait and see.
Thanks for clarification, 3PiB of real data on Storj and 33PiB of real data on Filecoin.
Yes, they do. The SLA is with the individual storage provider not a central authority.
One simple test is to store data and then retrieve some of it randomly. Some storage providers offer audit dashboards to show the status of each file.
There is no need for a customer to be able to choose a particular SNO to store their data on, and as you probably know, this is not how node selection with Storj works.
Customers can indicate a region they want their data to be stored in, and once geofencing is implemented, Storj will provide them with the guarantee that their data will only get stored on nodes inside that region. If their desired region does not contain sufficient number of nodes to make this feasible, the customer will be informed that at this time we cannot offer geofencing for them and comply with our SLAs. It may be offered at a later time though when we see there is great demand for geofencing in a particular country/region. Storj may even provide incentives to attract more SNOs from that region in the future.
Yeah, so are massive bubbles. Unlike most blockchains filecoin is purpose built for the storage network, which means we can actually have a fairly good idea about the value it provides. Currently there is a complete imbalance. I mean, great job profiting from that, I can’t fault you. But what’s left when the dust settles? Current payouts are clearly not sustainable.
I feel like I’m going to ask this frequently, but please provide evidence that a lot of it isn’t random noise pushed on the network to pump up value or test or whatever. I’m really curious how you think you know all this data is actually meaningful. By your definition the Store network doesn’t have test data at all.
If you think that, how about you enlighten me instead of dismissing me.
I think you start using ad hominems when you run out of arguments. Shall we stick to the arguments though? That keeps the conversation friendly.
Or at the least be specific so I can respond to what you’re accusing me of.
I don’t think you want to be referring to history, since filecoin has a history of lots of complaints of data loss. Clearly it wasn’t enough of a motivator.
Some clients pay… Sure, but you cited super low amounts too. So it’s basically all block rewards then? That income flow is going to dry up. And what is left then?
Region, yes. SNO, no. But you really don’t want the latter anyway. Trusting individual SNOs is a recipe for disaster.
No, I don’t have the choice I don’t want. Strangely I somehow don’t miss it… Wonder why that is? Ah, right, I didn’t want it!
Can you point me to a file coin storage provider that has these certifications for the filecoin service they provide? Or one with an SLA at all? Because you’re right, that is essential to many large deals.
I tend to not believe what I haven’t seen evidence for. You could change that or keep dancing around it like you’re doing. I’m fine either way.
Now you’re blatantly making a false comparison. If you call all data on filecoin real you must call all data on storj real as well. Or prove that all data on filecoin is actual useful data.
Where can I find your SLA?
Oh yeah sure, that proves it’ll still be there 5 years from now…
Talk about undocumented statements. You are making weak arguments without support. I have yet to see anything quantifiable around “lots of complaints of data loss”. On the other hand we see more data and more customers who are quite satisfied.
Not false at all. You can read the links I posted and my answers above.
I don’t offer one. Every storage provider can offer whatever they want, the enterprise class storage providers do, that is how they land contracts. My set up is a personal system set up as a hobbyist.
I’d like to point that you linked to a Press Release disguised as an article. It doesn’t seem that Holon is a Filecoin provider at all, but rather an investor of some sort in Protocol Labs…
I can’t seem to locate Holon’s description of their hardware on their website. Can you point me to the detailed information on their hardware? Or better than that, what is Holon’s short Filecoin ID? How can I locate them in the Filecoin market place?
I’d really like to point out that Storj has data integrity built-in to the architecture. This architecture is coded in the software, which is open source. So, there’s really no need to have something like a market place of various providers… since all Storj clients know, for sure, that their files will not be ‘lost’ by the network or by any given SNO or even a relatively large percentage of SNOs.
I like the idea of Filecoin, in a similar way that I like the idea of IPFS. However, Filecoin seems unnecessary as a market place forum. It seems to add complexity and cost to tracking ‘deals’ without much benefit to the client.
I think what you’re missing in the discussion is not that “We” don’t trust “You” to store data securely and safely… rather it’s that there’s no actual Proof that the generalized Filecoin provider isn’t going to simply drop off the face of the Earth taking the data with them.
Some Filecoin providers may be honest actors, and some may be dishonest. The timed micropayments are good in that a client’s data loss isn’t something they will continue paying for after the loss … in FIL that is. However, the loss itself can’t be prevented or repaired unless the client has chosen very carefully.
It’s also important to note, that IPFS itself has no method to repair the datastore. So, any add-on repair service is going to need to be inserted before the files are added to an IPFS datastore. And then checked again when retrieved from the datastore. My guess is the repair service would function something like Par files and Usenet. That would work fine for most purposes, unless the datastore is totally corrupted by the filesystem it’s sitting on. In that case, the repair service will depend entirely on the filesystem.
I really like IPFS, but I would never subscribe to an IPFS service with the expectation of avoiding bit rot or with data that is mission critical. If the data is mission critical, I would either use my own IPFS… which I can trust, because it’s mine… or use something like Storj.
Holon is a large investment firm that has built out a large working Filecoin storage provider operation as part of their portfolio. I am sure you can contact them and get information. The guy that runs the operation is Jonathan Hooker and you can message him on the Filecoin slack channel.
The Filecoin collateral system is more than adequate assurance that a provider will not disappear, a problem mitigated by either due diligence or using multiple replicas (which some brokers automatically do for you).
