Local Data Storage 101
Storing data, like many topics, is best explained through analogies. So let’s use the analogy of humans storing themselves at night, or as some might call it, sleeping 🛌. When we store ourselves for the night, we put ourselves in our bed; or rather, “store ourselves locally”.
For data storage, when we want to save data, the bytes of information are saved to a computer’s hard drive. When you save data on your laptop, you are storing data locally.
Cloud Storage 101
As the travel industry grew, the need to store ourselves somewhere else grew too. The solution was hotels.
Similarly, as the internet grew, the need to store data somewhere else grew. Relying just on local data storage for growing enterprises meant expanding office spaces and dedicating significant resources to IT closets that hosted hundreds of computers and specialty servers. Managing IT resources burdened enterprises that were looking to scale fast with flexibility.
The solution was the cloud ☁️.
The majority of applications today store data in the cloud, which is simply a rented computer that allows you to save data or spin up applications quickly without being stuck with permanent IT infrastructure that might just be needed for a short-term project.
Today, cloud server providers such as Google and Amazon Web Services have hundreds of thousands of servers lined on metal racks in warehouses all across the world, utilizing every server as a hotel room for your data.
Decentralized Storage
As the travel industry continued to grow, we saw the rise of major hotel chains that dominated the market share by building larger properties in every city and squashing local competition. This created very few options when visiting a new city, and the lack of options created a lack of control. What if hotels decided to triple the price of a room overnight, steal your belongings, or tear down local spots to expand their hotels even more? As a solution to this, Airbnb created a decentralized human storage network by allowing anyone to be a hotel. This creates more choice and a better experience when storing yourself. Want to rent someone’s extra bedroom for a quick trip into town, or a mansion for your next college reunion?
Maybe you want to be a digital nomad and rent out your place for passive income while you travel. Decentralizing the hotel industry gives choice and power back to both renters and hosts alike. Just like the hotel industry, data storage has followed a similar path. A few key players such as AWS and Google Cloud Services have grown to dominate the industry, squashing our competitors and locking in users to features with few other options.
Like we’ve mentioned before, Lack of options = Lack of control. Skynet Labs gives control back to users by making decentralized storage available to everyone, whether you want to use decentralized storage as a personal backup or to deploy a dApp on decentralized storage. With Skynet, data stays in users’ hands. Ready to get started? Sign-up for your free account at skynetfree.net or check out our developer documentation to deploy your dApp on decentralized storage.