Introducing Storage Hub: A system parachain optimised for storage

Ecosystem
6

Indeed, and thank you for bringing that up!There are a few key differences:

  • For starters, this would be a System Parachain. Therefore, DOT is used as native token and there is no CRU or similar. In fact one of the ideas here is to provide another demand driver or use-case for DOT.
  • It is my understanding that Crust provides a layer of incentives on top of IPFS. This solution aims to be a completely independent, i.e. it would provide its own network of Storage Providers. In fact it provides 2 kinds of Storage Providers with different business models, incentives and roles in the system.
  • One of our value propositions is to abstract users or dApp developers of the fact that they have to deal with two different blockchains when needing storage. Normally it is the dApp (the topmost layer of the stack) that connects the storage chain (like Filecoin or Arweave) to the smart contracts chain. We want to shift the paradigm, leveraging on Polkadot’s unique value proposition of interoperability. Storage Hub exposes its services to other parachains, and these, in turn, expose them to their users/developers. So now, as far as the users are concerned, they’re interacting only with the parachain they’re interested in, which under the hood uses Storage Hub for storing big files. We believe this highlights one of the key advantages of the Polkadot ecosystem.
  • This design is focused on providing the structure and incentives for storage solutions to a wide variety of use-cases, even those we don’t know of yet. And that is the reason behind the Main Storage Providers approach. If all Storage Providers in the system are required to provide the same service (for data retrieval), the system as a whole can, at most, serve the use-cases that the weakest Storage Provider can. Which means we either lower the bar on requirements for those use cases, or increase the hardware requirements for Storage Providers, essentially risking centralisation.

I hope this sheds some light on the topic. Very keen on everyone’s thoughts and happy to discuss further.

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