Decentralized storage: tailwinds and open questions

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Talking to Storj about their new release made me curious about decentralized storage. On the one hand, there are factors that could help boost its adoption. On the other hand, it also seems at odds with other trends, such as sovereign clouds. Here is what I learned. — Anna

Reduce cloud bills

The volume of data generated by businesses seems to be constantly increasing, but concerns about cloud costs are also growing.

Earlier this month, we learned that AWS’s year-over-year revenue growth dipped in the mid-teens in January as customers sought to cut spending. “Looking forward, we expect these optimization efforts to continue to be a headwind to AWS’ growth for at least the next two quarters,” said Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky, during the company’s earnings call.

While this concern has reignited the bare metal debate, it is also creating tailwinds for another option: decentralized storage. Represented by players such as Arweave, Filecoin, Internxt, Sia and Storj, it offers a cheaper alternative to hyperscalers.