3.2.2 Decentralized Storage

Building an "Anti-Censorship Digital Safe"

Traditional cloud storage (such as AWS and Alibaba Cloud) is controlled by centralized institutions, and user data may be viewed, deleted, or leaked at will. However, the decentralized storage of DePIN, through "shard encryption + decentralized storage", makes data truly belong to users themselves:

• Technical logic: "Fragmentation" ensures absolute securitya. Shard encryption: When users upload data (such as chat records, personal documents, and private files), the system automatically cuts the data into 10-20 encrypted shards (each shard size is 100KB-1MB), and generates an independent AES-256 key for each shard.b. Decentralized storage: Encrypted shards are randomly assigned to different nodes through smart contracts (data shards of the same user will not be stored in nodes in the same region). Nodes can only obtain the shards they are responsible for and cannot splice the complete data.c. Incentives and penalties: Nodes need to stake a certain amount of AIS to participate in the storage service, and obtain rewards based on the storage capacity and online time; if a node is offline for too long or loses data, the staked AIS will be partially deducted to ensure data reliability.

• Core advantages: Combining "anti-censorship" and "permanent storage"Compared with Arweave's "permanent storage but insufficient privacy" and Filecoin's "sufficient incentives but vulnerable to regional supervision", DePIN storage achieves double breakthroughs:

  • Anti-censorship: Even if the regulatory authorities of a certain country require nodes to hand over the data of specific users, nodes can only provide the encrypted shards they store, cannot restore the complete content, and cannot locate the user to whom the data belongs (users and data shards are bound through Zero-Knowledge Proof, and nodes have no permission to query).

  • Low cost: Through "reuse of idle storage resources" (such as the idle space of users' home hard drives), the storage cost is only 1/5 of that of traditional cloud storage, and the monthly storage cost for 1GB of data is only 0.05 AIS.