Why we chose IPFS & Filecoin & how this will benefit customers
Lomads is thrilled to announce our partnership with IPFS & Filecoin via Protocol Labs!
As industry leaders in data storage & encryption, we have integrated both to maximize user data privacy & security of off-chain data. This encryption and storage covers both customer data and Soulbound Token (SBT) metadata!
See below for more details on why we chose these technologies, why decentralized storage is important, and how you, the customer, will benefit from their implementation.
Centralized vs. Decentralized Storage
In today's data driven digital world the amount of data collected by social media media websites and internet browsers in mind boggling.
Sadly 90% of all web traffic data is centralized among top 5 companies and hence subject to their internal policies and rules. In Q2 of 2022, IDC (International Data Corporation) conducted a Cloud Storage Survey to better understand the drawbacks and limitations of the existing Web2-based cloud storage providers. The results were eye-opening:
With the vast issues centralized storage faces, decentralized storage has become the go-to solution for reliability, scalability, and security. As Daniel Norman, developer advocate at IPFS said,
Centralized storage is limited to a small number of providers, limiting pricing and efficiency, and very little interoperability, leading to consumer lock-in…storage is costly, and it is not always verifiable and immutable. This is why a decentralized, efficient, and robust foundation for storing information is needed.”
Web3 proposes a new “decentralized” model of data storage which promises to be more liberal and privacy-centric.
It aims to enable anyone to use digital services without having to reveal their personal data to companies that would monetize it, thereby putting control with the data owners.
The decentralized model transfers authority from a central power to a more localized and ‘liberal’ system by spreading the hosting of files i.e. storing data across multiple computers also known as nodes which are connected together on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network.
This helps in protecting the integrity, accessibility, and security of data. In addition to these positives, the cost of storage has proven to be beyond 95% lower on a per-gigabyte basis than today’s market rates for Web2-based public cloud storage providers (and can even be free in some cases).
Why IPFS & Filecoin?
We have chosen to use IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) & Filecoin via Protocol Labs, a leader in Web3 storage, to maximize Lomads’ decentralized data storage potential.
IPFS is a Protocol Labs project that has created a new way for storing and retrieving information on the web. Rather than using the traditional approach of location based addressing, (where is the data), IPFS uses content addressing (what is the data). This preserves the integrity of data and ensures long-term data persistence and immutability.
Filecoin is an incentive layer on top of IPFS; it works by rewarding nodes to keep data storage in perpetuity. By doing this, Filecoin has created a whole new economy around incentive based, decentralized storage through networking. Currently, Filecoin is able to reliably service over 1 billion weekly data retrieval calls.
With the dramatic improvements IPFS & Filecoin have in scalability, reliability, decentralization, and cost-reduction, they have solved many of the problems Web2 cloud storage faces all while creating a sustainable and profitable network.
Benefits for Customers
Lomads is using these technologies for off-chain data storage as we believe in privacy and security above all else.
IPFS & Filecoin gives us the ability to protect user data without compromising privacy and autonomy. Additionally, IPFS provides robust data backups to drastically reduce the chance of server failure and give customers peace of mind.
Specifically, we will be using IPFS to store the following organization data:
- Projects and Tasks
- Transactions (payments, salaries, transfers etc.)
- Soulbound Token (SBT) Metadata
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