• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    Its distrubuted so you don’t lose your content if something happens to one location.

    Right, but you’ll lose your content if enough people lose interest in the network. That’s absolutely a thing in the crypto world where things move fast. Relying on the network effect to secure your data sounds… sketchy.

    which is needed in some form if it’s distrubuted

    Sure, and the easiest way to do that is w/ public key cryptography, sign your encrypted stuff and you can always prove ownership. A blockchain gives you that, but it’s hardly necessary to have consensus around that.

    include credit cards

    It probably uses some cryptocurrency. Lots of cryptocurrencies work well for micropayments (e.g. LiteCoin, Monero, or even Bitcoin w/ the lightning network).

    I just don’t see the need for a blockchain here. Bittorrent has been doing content-based addressing for ages, and it doesn’t need a blockchain, you just ask for the data at a given hash and you get it. Or you can use IPFS. If everything is properly encrypted, you’re good to go!

    What the blockchain does offer is a way to pay for storage. So the more you pay, the more likely your data is to still be there after some time as people leave the network and nodes drop and whatnot. All in all though, it seems really risky to put anything important on it, and you might as well just pay for a storage provider from a legal entity that you can sue if things go poorly (and maybe two, so you’re not screwed if goes bankrupt or whatever).

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      I was looking at it more, and it does use IPFS for the data storage (files and the collaboration chats etc), as well as Arweave, which I’d never heard of until today.