[HN Gopher] Filecoin: Proof of Storage Systems
___________________________________________________________________
Filecoin: Proof of Storage Systems
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 49 points
Date : 2020-08-19 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.coinlist.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.coinlist.co)
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > We created Filecoin because the amount of data humans generate
| is exponentially increasing, and we need more efficient ways to
| store and access it.
|
| I don't think Filecoin can be MORE efficient than some of the
| larger, current systems.
|
| I actually think this statement is misleading. It should say that
| Filecoin's goal is to offer storage options that are distributed
| (hence redundant), protected from censorship, and possibly
| removed from absolute control of a single large corporation.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| Almost by definition, it simply can not be more efficient.
| rjeli wrote:
| Assuming the FIL storage market is efficient, if the cost of
| CPU time and energy to run PoRep is less than the premium
| charged by commercial providers, it's more efficient. That
| seems plausible to me.
| TylerE wrote:
| That's an awfully tall and teetering stack of assumptions.
| geek_at wrote:
| it can, if you're using microsoft storage spaces as software
| raid
| rudolph9 wrote:
| There are a lot of nuanced ways a trustless distributed system
| can be more efficient. The article is pretty light on details
| but consider the content addressing mechanism. The data can be
| securely served by any device and independently verified by any
| recipient. The minimum latency of reads is theoretically much
| lower than the sever/client infrastructure commonly used today.
| It's like edge computing with any device that can connect to
| one another. Obviously a lot goes into ensuring the data
| existing on a low latency connection to the distributed-client
| but the there are a number of somewhat nuanced theoretical
| efficiencies that can be achieved by making content addressing
| the core of a distributed system (caching, [as mentioned]
| fault-tolerance, parallel computing, etc).
| acdha wrote:
| > The minimum latency of reads is theoretically much lower
| than the sever/client infrastructure commonly used today.
|
| This is an oversimplification: it assumes that discovery is
| very low cost and that there's a peer with a copy enough
| closer on the network that it's faster than talking to
| server-class hardware in a data center with a high quality
| network connection. Given the number of assumptions which
| need to be true for that to be a net-positive I'm skeptical
| that it'd be easy to hit anywhere close to the best-case
| theoretical scenario.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Is this really an advantage of the fact that the system is
| trustless and the ownership of storage media is distributed?
| You can an imagine a system where Amazon owns all the hard
| drive but still distributes/duplicates files across many
| different hard drives, matching the theoretical performance
| characteristics of Filecoin. In fact storing data on S3 from
| my cursory understanding already distributes data across
| multiple drives based on their durability claims.
| fsflover wrote:
| It can be more efficient if you are using thousands/millions of
| hard drives which otherwise would just be unused.
| Taek wrote:
| This story falls apart a bit with Filecoin because you need
| to attach them to 128 GB of RAM and a high end graphics card
| to do their storage proofs.
|
| Secondary markets for drives may appear to close the gap a
| bit though.
| mdaniel wrote:
| By chance, I saw a relevant article over on r/ipfs:
| https://www.axios.com/filecoin-blockchain-delay-3b5e6b9a-bcc...
| wmf wrote:
| Discussed yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24199595
| cgb223 wrote:
| How is Filecoin different from Sia coin?
|
| I remember a while ago hearing about both trying to decentralize
| storage but never kept up with it enough to really suss out the
| difference
| Sargos wrote:
| Sia seems like a Dropbox/OneDrive replacement whereas Filecoin
| is an incentivized storage layer infrastructure for apps to
| use, especially dapps.
|
| If you wanted to build a decentralized SoundCloud you couldn't
| use Sia but IPFS/Filecoin is the primary building block of such
| a dapp.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Sia released a new version of their product called Skynet[1]
| which provides exactly the functionality of IPFS+Filecoin
| today. Part of Skynet is a group of SDKs[2] which you can use
| to integrate skynet storage as part of your application. I
| believe that they are even adding the ability for developers
| to get kickbacks if they build on Sia[3].
|
| If you do want something like Dropbox that is built on Sia,
| there is Filebase[4].
|
| I am not associated with Sia at all. I've just been following
| their twitter for a while.
|
| [1]: https://siasky.net/
|
| [2]: https://nebulouslabs.github.io/skynet-docs/#introduction
|
| [3]: https://twitter.com/SiaTechHQ/status/1291441690008592384
|
| [4]: https://docs.filebase.com/
| olah_1 wrote:
| My 2 cents is that they just have different methodologies
| driving them. Sia is shipping a working network early and
| updates are arriving often.
|
| Filecoin seems to be taking an approach more like Holochain
| stuff. Meaning they are shipping early and often but only
| internally and you'll get to see it when its ready(tm).
| mifeng wrote:
| This article seems like it was written in 2017, not 2020.
|
| Filecoin raised over $200m and hasn't shipped anything that I'm
| aware of in 3 years. Maybe it will be revolutionary, but the
| crypto industry has long moved on from white whale projects that
| don't ship.
| wmf wrote:
| https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus
|
| https://docs.filecoin.io/how-to/install-filecoin/
| hinkley wrote:
| Going from zero to a positive velocity takes a certain kind of
| person who doesn't let doubts stop them.
|
| But to build a team around a project? You can hack a lot of
| stuff together than only makes sense to you, crippling any of
| your would-be collaborators. Certain kinds of doubts should in
| fact stop you, or at least slow you down. It's a difficult
| thing to balance, and most of us struggle to pull it off.
|
| I tried to help out with Freenet years ago. The code was in a
| language I had quite a lot of deep knowledge about, I should
| have been able to help quite a bit, but I ended up sticking to
| specs and architecture.
|
| Bluntly, the code was not the output of an organized mind. Even
| though most of it was written by one person. It ping-ponged all
| over. The prototype was already full of esoteric optimizations
| that sacrificed clarity (and thus correctness) for a little
| more speed. Major rafts of functionality were still being
| designed, and it was already work-hardened.
|
| When I see a team ramp up and get wedged, my first questions
| are about code quality, practices, and team dynamics. About
| cohesion. Too often the old guard can't delegate, even if they
| want to. With enough tribal knowledge, your coworkers just
| start to get interesting, and then they move on to a new job,
| and you replace them with another person who struggles to
| accomplish even simple things.
|
| Or even worse, they made a promise that Information Theory says
| they can't keep, and they've been bargaining the entire time.
| It's a terrible place to be.
| mdaniel wrote:
| That is not what matches my mental model of a "deep dive," but
| was interesting enough to warrant an upvote
|
| For example, the phrase "decentralized marketplace of storage
| providers and choose the one" was just glossed over -- through
| what mechanism does one choose a storage provider? Is there an
| API that (for example) a container storage interface provider
| could consume? like that kind of "choose a provider"?
|
| I also would have enjoyed more hyperlinks for terms such as zk-
| SNARK, and "a storage miner" which is similarly glossed over
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we'll swap a prefix for a suffix of the title above.
|
| (Submitted title was "Deep Dive into Filecoin".)
| momack2 wrote:
| You may enjoy this HackFS Workshop from Juan Benet (creator of
| Filecoin) that starts pretty high level but gets much more into
| the details of how the Filecoin network works:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P28aNAdZDi4
| ironchief wrote:
| This hardly meets the definition of brief description, let alone
| a "Deep Dive".
| hacker_newz wrote:
| That's par for the course working with filecoin.
| zepearl wrote:
| General question:
|
| when somebody will push into Filecoin some "bad" files (anything,
| from docs needed by the mafia to children being sexually abused,
| to fake videos/claims/whatever about you, to any other bad things
| you can think of), how can that be detected and then deleted?
| (ignoring here the theme related to accountability)
|
| Question based on https://docs.filecoin.io/introduction/why-
| filecoin/ :
|
| _Filecoin resists censorship because there is no central
| provider that can be coerced into deleting files or withholding
| service. The network is made up of many different computers run
| by many different people and organizations. Faulty or malicious
| actors are noticed by the network and removed automatically._
|
| In this context I'm not a believer of "automatically".
| yorwba wrote:
| In this context, "faulty and malicious actors" would be those
| who interfere with the operation of the network, e.g. by
| deleting files they consider "bad".
| acdha wrote:
| I generally phrase this as "How is this safer than running a
| Tor exit node?". If someone uploads illicit material to Amazon,
| they have enough lawyers & clout to have the FBI send them a
| letter demanding client information. If this is a peer-to-peer
| service, you have a non-zero risk that the SWAT team is going
| to show up at your home/office and demand you prove that you
| weren't aware of that content. That's going to deter a LOT of
| people.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-08-19 23:01 UTC)