Peer-to-peer is ruling everything it seems and I love the fact that decentralized cloud storage is even an option that we have. There are so many attacks that rendered centralized companies useless. So the idea of have encrypted information spread across thousands of computers and no central point-of-failure is priceless. However, how reliable is it? What happens if there is a black out it some part of the world or someone goes on vacation and power down their computer that hold 10 TB of encrypted info? We are at the mercy of Google, AWS, or Dropbox right now but we will still be at the mercy of foreign entities on a smaller scale.
Does this solve the problem or just shift the burden? I would propose the latter. I set up my computer to use Storj. I was so excited about the project that I decided to put it to test. First, I must say that it is agonizing to set up your computer to accept files. You definitely need a good bit of technical acumen to get the process going. Installing the software and allocating your drive is super easy but opening your ports on your computer and gateway takes a little experience. I finally get everything set up and realized that there are some issues to consider. There is a program that you need to install that helps keep your computer's time clock synchronized which I did. Well, my computer kept jumping out of sync even with the suggested program installed. And when this happens, you are not receiving or sending files. It really got me to thinking. This can be a major issue if I have to rely on the average Joe to access my files. Now Storj and Sia have some penalties that are set in place which will prompt users to make sure they are available but there are just so many things that can go wrong with the average user.
Mass adoption is another challenge. The software needs to developed so that it is easy to use for all and popular enough to accommodate the demand. If they really want to contend with Google, they need a lot of people to be in this space.
I would love to hear what you have to say about your experiences.