Demystifying Decentralized Storage - A Critical Building Block of Future of Internet or Web 3.0

Abstract

In a parallel world, the contemporary internet ethos is being challenged by Web 3.0 (or Web3). The latter is a reimagined iteration of world wide web (or Web 2.0). The fundamental construct of Web3 is decentralization that would transform the very fabric of interaction over the internet. Today’s internet is centralized in nature; simply put the applications and data are hosted on centralized servers (or public cloud). This makes our ‘data at risk’ as it poses the classical problem i.e., a single-point-of-failure. The centralized nature of data ownership signifies that there is limited or no sovereignty. And there are several challenges or treats pertaining to the centralized data storage: namely lack of data ownership, data censorship, cybersecurity breaches, and outages. Last few years have witnessed growing incidents of these treats happening in different parts of the globe and impacting millions of users. The research paper titled “Demystifying Decentralized Storage – A critical building block of future of internet or Web 3.0” addresses this pertinent problem looming on humanity (individuals as well as businesses) i.e., how to protect our past, present and future data by leveraging Web3 technology? Is decentralization the solution to these data treats? Does Web3 storage provide economic advantage over contemporary cloud-centric (or centralized) data storage services? How do we solve the problem of data ownership and bring the empowerment back to the users (instead of few large IT giants who are hoarding data of the masses or enterprises)? Are there immediate challenges to store data on Web3? The research paper also brings to light the use cases (Artificial intelligence, IoT, Autonomous vehicles) that would be the early adopters of Web3 or decentralized storage.

Keywords: Web3, Blockchain, Decentralized Storage, Artificial Intelligence

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