Filecoin, Storj, and PPIO are designed in different ways. There is no one better than the other, and I’m not writing this article to argue about the merits of each. Decentralized storage is a long-term commercial track, and it’s good for different teams to go in different little directions on the same track. No matter which project ultimately succeeds, it will be a victory for distributed storage in the broad sense. However, different ideas do affect the implementation method, and this article will highlight the differences in the implementation method and technology used by these projects.

A brief introduction to the three public storage chains:

  • Filecoin (Filecoin.io) is an open source public digital currency and digital payment system that aims to establish a method of digital storage and data retrieval using blockchain.

  • Storj (Stroj.io) is a decentralized cloud object storage system that is cheap, easy to use, private, and secure.

  • PPIO (PP.io) is a decentralized storage and distribution platform for developers, with cheaper prices, faster transmission speeds and better privacy protection as the ultimate goal.

Here are eight ways to compare these three projects:

> Value proposition

The biggest problem facing blockchain public chain projects is the landing scenario. The problem with most public-link projects is not technical problems, but the inability to make a popular product. In addition to some gambling games, there is no other phenomenon products landing. Storage and related services are one of the scenarios that have the potential to lead to landing phenomenon-level blockchain applications.

Decentralized storage is different from traditional digital currency projects. In the case of Bitcoins and Ethereum, both are computation-centric digital currencies with contracts at their core, meaning that whenever the network finds a node to execute contracts or package transactions, that node is a block-producing node. The consensus between Bitcoin and Ethereum is to select this block-generating node. But decentralized storage is completely different. Its essence is a sharing economy. There should be a demand side that uses the service and a supply side that provides the service, similar to Uber and Airbnb.

From a value perspective, decentralized storage actually has two dimensions: data storage and data distribution. Storage means putting data on the Internet and getting it back when it’s needed. Data storage may meet the following requirements: backup, multi-device synchronization, small-scale file sharing, and saving files that cannot be saved locally. Data distribution is to quickly push data to people who need it. The possible application requirements include: large-scale sharing, download, on-demand, live broadcasting, video conferencing, VPN, etc. Data storage mainly shares hard disks, while data distribution mainly shares bandwidth.

  • Filecoin is designed for both storage and distribution. Its storage miners are used for storage scenarios and retrieval miners are used for distribution scenarios, but Filecoin is more focused on storage.

  • Storj is focused on storage scenarios and all of its design is with storage in mind.

  • PPIO, like Filecoin, does both storage and distribution, but focuses more on distribution scenarios. PPIO will soon add streaming capabilities in the application layer to support mainstream on-demand and live streaming solutions.

> Technology hierarchy

In terms of technology architecture, Storj and PPIO are positioned in a similar way, providing services directly to front-line developers. For example, Storj and PPIO both support object-based storage interfaces and are compatible with AWS S3 interfaces. PPIO is also compatible with OSS interfaces and provides a better user experience of POSS interfaces, making it easier for developers to use AWS S3 interfaces. It can be seen that PPIO and Storj are productization ideas, they are to provide developers with a good, easy to develop products.

Filecoin only completes the storage and bandwidth layer functions, positioning is the infrastructure. Specifically, Filecoin is simply a storage marketplace where users can buy raw storage. If a first-tier developer needs to migrate from AWS S3 services to Filecoin, the existing software architecture needs to be adjusted. Even more simply, Filecoin provides the bottom layer of AWS S3. What might happen in the future is that AWS S3 buys storage space from Filecoin’s storage marketplace to replace its own machines, implements AWS S3 services on top of that, and then exports them to application developers.

Therefore, PPIO and Storj are the ideas of making products, which are directly toB products, realizing the full stack, and developers can develop simply and quickly after using SDK. Similar to Google’s Android operating system. Filecoin is an ecological idea. It’s about storage infrastructure. There will be other open source organizations that will improve every aspect of the ecosystem and eventually help Filecoin complete the stack. Filecoin is an analogy to the Linux native operating system. Android includes the Linux kernel, which is the difference between full stack and infrastructure.

> Quality of Service (QoS)

As mentioned earlier, decentralized storage is different from traditional digital currency, which is essentially a sharing economy. The sharing economy model is about providing services on the ground. Therefore, the construction of decentralized storage projects has to involve the discussion of quality of service, which is the QoS index from the perspective of development. Take Didi taxi as an analogy, if Didi always failed to get a taxi, or the car always detour or default, then people will use Didi? Its popularity has to do with the high quality of service it provides. The same goes for decentralized storage and distribution. The success of decentralized storage depends on whether the user experience of a decentralized stored procedure is better than that of a cloud service, or at least in one area. Decentralized storage is ultimately worthless if the user experience isn’t done right. A project is a disruptive innovation only if it can deliver a better experience than cloud services.

When I say QoS, I don’t mean TPS index, which is often mentioned in blockchain technology; But can be benchmarked against traditional cloud service QoS indicators. Examples include service availability, reliability, durability, and return tests, download speed, time to download the first byte, and so on. For real-time streaming media, it refers to the delay time of the program source, the time when the program starts to play, The Times and time of the delay during the playing process, etc.

Of the three projects, PPIO is the most quality-of-service focused, and all PPIO designs are around QoS. At the same time, PPIO has a perfect QoS service quality system, under this system, PPIO network can be continuously tuned and improved, so as to ensure that the PPIO network is more stable and reliable.

Storj also discusses core storage metrics such as Durability measurement in white papers and official posts, indicating that Storj has a certain degree of concern for QoS.

As far as Filecoin is concerned, neither the whitepaper nor the code mention any quality-of-service ideas. The team is still working on the infrastructure, but there is a possibility that Filecoin will do qos-related design in the future.

> Decentralization

Of the three storage public chains, Filecoin is completely decentralized and open source in one step; PPIO is gradually decentralized and open source. In addition to the fact that Storj’s Token is a decentralized currency issued based on Ethereum ERC20, the storage scheduling index system is still a centralized setup. It is uncertain whether Storj will be more decentralized in the future.

PPIO chose the gradual decentralization scheme for the following considerations:

  1. The proof mechanism in blockchain is very complex and needs to be tested for a long time before it can be secure and efficient.

  2. Quality of service needs to be optimized step by step, so its algorithm needs to be adjusted more flexibly in the optimization process.

  3. The economic strategy of blockchain projects is very important and needs to be tested, updated and iterated.

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#1 Search market (bandwidth market)

PPIO, Storj, and Filecoin all support user-to-user download transactions between the provider of the download service (Storage Node/Miner) and the consumer of the download service (User). The former provides data download services to the latter, and the latter pays the former for the download. Among them, Storj has the bandwidth market, but when downloading, must carry the Satellite signature. The service is billed through Satellite. But Storj does not have a CDN market.

#2 Match the market

  • Stor uses a market-maker model, in which clients/users pay directly to the Storj platform and receive the service. The service provider (Storage Node/Miner) receives tokens and rewards from the Storj platform. This transaction mode is a centralized transaction mode, characterized by high efficiency, but not enough decentralization and transparency.

  • Filecoin adopts a matchmaking model, in which all clients/users and Storage nodes/Miner trade freely in Filecoin’s market (including Storage market and search market), which is a completely decentralized model.

  • PPIO platform is more flexible, users and Miner can be matched freely under the chain, and third-party scheduling platform can also be entrusted for scheduling and matching. PPIO also develops its own scheduling platform to allocate resources and nodes.

#3 Proxy payment node

Users of traditional Internet products understand storage or bandwidth services as package mode, that is, users can pay a certain amount of legal currency in a lump sum to use a certain number of services within a certain period of time. For example, 40 yuan/month can use 5T storage space, 30 yuan/month can use 500G traffic, etc. In the blockchain world, all services are based on actual usage, and you pay for what you use. Service certification shall be used as the basis for charging fees. The two models are worlds apart.

  • PPIO innovatively introduced the role of payment gateway. Payment gateway can use economic actuarial means to transform the uncertain storage service on the blockchain into the more deterministic storage service (package mode) for users, thus reducing the migration cost and cognitive cost of users’ migration from the Internet to the blockchain.

  • Srorj accepts fiat payments directly and is not connected to services and settlement on the blockchain, so there are no user migration issues.

  • Filecoin addresses on-chain services and billing, but doesn’t seem to consider docking with traditional Internet products.

This paper analyzes the differences of the three projects from five aspects: value orientation, technical hierarchy, service quality, degree of decentralization and economic incentive mechanism. In the next article, we will continue to analyze the similarities and differences of these three projects from the aspects of blockchain architecture design, data transmission technology design and data storage technology design. Please subscribe to our public account PPIO for updates.