Decentralized Storage Services with Filecoin Foundation’s Porter Stowell

This is Textron tv. Hey guys. Thanks, thorough.

We're here with Porter Stowell, who is head of ecosystem and community for the File Coin Foundation, and we'll explain what that is in a minute, but we're talking about the rise of decentralized storage portal. Welcome to Shep Michael, pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

We are hearing a lot more about decentralized storage, especially in the age of, uh, Bitcoin and all those things that have come along. But there are, um, enterprise applications for this stuff and more people are using it, and a lot of it has to do with just, um, I guess we're trying to consume data closer to the point where it's created in a way that's cost effective, but pointer, explain what the first, what the File Coin Foundation does, and then what are we seeing here with decentralized storage? Sure.

So, uh, first and foremost, Filecoin is the global leader in decentralized storage across the world. I think we have the, the most capacity of any other decentralized storage network. Filecoin Foundation specifically is the stewards of the network again, so we're independent foundation and we are here to make sure that, uh, the file coin people interacting with Filecoin have the right growth governance, uh, and o operations to make, uh, sure the project is continuously successful over a long period of time.

And like to dive into your question on like, enter, uh, decentralized storage, it's, it's been an evolution, um, one that has taken, uh, multiple years. Uh, so Filecoin launched in main net in, uh, 2020. So we're four years into our, our journey.

Uh, and I always go back to like, I always love historical reference. Uh, and it really took, you know, AWS as an example, close to six years to really get to the AWS that people realize, well, you know, think of what they think of today. And so, like doing new technologies hard, doing it a different way is even harder.

And decentralized storage is meant to be an alternative solution to centralized storage providers such as A-W-S-G-C-P, Azure, uh, et cetera. And there's, you know, we think there's a great value proposition, uh, that's hard for people to understand. I mean, most people in the world are still trying to understand what Bitcoin is, and it can be really difficult to go the next level on something like storage and, uh, you know, to solve the puzzle for you.

There's not a lot of people who really care about archival storage. It is at the bottom of the tech stack. Uh, on the one hand that is a nice moat for us.

And on the other hand, stuff to get people to pay attention to it. How big is the network and how does somebody actually in both decentralized storage, because, well, it's storage that's kind of highly distributed, right? Yeah.

So I think we're at about four exabytes of capacity right now. It's really hard to fathom how much data is an exabyte. Uh, I, I don't have my good analogies off the top of my head, but just like a, a petabyte, it's like if you took 4,000 digital photos every day for the rest of your entire life, you probably wouldn't even get to a petabyte of data.

Like if you take all like Netflix, like movies, it's like, there, there's, it's really hard to get to a petabyte. So we have four exabytes, which is a thousand petabytes. One, one exabyte is a thousand petabytes of data.

So that's a, it's just a lot of data. It's a lot of hard work. And one of the fun facts is like people don't really realize that there's, you know, besides Bitcoin, Filecoin is easily one of the most, you know, some of the most hardware investments, uh, out of any protocol out there in Web3 today.

And so if I build an application and I wanted to use decentralized storage as an alternative to cloud storage, are there APIs that call? How does that work? Yeah, so, you know, again, when you're a developer, you're, you're looking for a user experience that's familiar with something you already know.

So something akin to the experience you get, uh, working with S3 on AWS Uh, and so what we typically recommend in those situations is you work with a software vendor in our ecosystem. So we have all types of players in our ecosystem, those who do storage, those who do orchestration, those who do software, those who pro provide services to make it work. You know, it's a very laissez-faire, niche driven economy within Filecoin.

So typically what people do is they work with, uh, a software vendor, so such as a cave racha lighthouse, where you can get that, that user interface you're familiar with, with I all having to deal with all the complications of how do you upload data to the network. So all the complications abstracted for you, and they're still giving you the same feature functionality, uh, value proposition alongside of ease of use. What are the benefits of using decentralized storage versus the cloud?

What is it that people get outta that? Both, you know, either technically or financially? Uh, I would say that the special sauce to Filecoin is verifiability.

So every eight hours, uh, when your data is uploaded to the network, there is a proof that occurs that says your data on chain is still there and is in the state that you anticipate it to be. And so, like that's, again, we're trying to go to the don't trust, verify, uh, era of, uh, building applications. So Filecoin is just doing that for your data.

It's like, don't, you don't need to trust that I have it and it's in the same state. I'm giving you a cryptographic proof every eight hours that it's exactly in the state that you left. Uh, and that, again, when you're storing data over long periods of time, has a lot of value.

So verifiability as a term and immutability as a term is really gaining a lot of steam in businesses because, uh, quality of data, trust of data, authenticity of data is really becoming more prominent as AI gets traction. But, you know, to put it in most of implicit terms, uh, you know, insurance or like you take like a sec security camera footage. So this is a real heavy footage.

01 seconds that is like relevant film, but you gotta store the whole thing 'cause you don't know what's relevant. So these security cameras, like they have to store all this data, it gets really expensive really fast. And not only that, they need to be able to get it in very niche cir circumstances, and they need to show that this video was uploaded for this time from this camera and hasn't been touched at all.

And that would stand up in a court of law, like you could say, I have on chain verifiability that this video has, you know, hasn't been altered in seven years since it was uploaded to the network. So you can think of like the legal ramifications, uh, when like there's a claim against you and you're looking, you're trying to find this video footage from years ago. Uh, you know, right now it's, it's like you can't find it.

Uh, it's too expensive to hold longer term, uh, all these different things. And like, you know, the, uh, financial in industry only saves your financial information for seven years. Uh, your medical record, your medical data is only saved for seven years, which is crazy.

So, um, again, if you had cancer eight years ago, the medical system check is not gonna know that. So they may see indicators of things that you've done in the last seven years, but they actually don't save your data. Or whether if you broke your leg in high school, uh, none of that data gets saved, it gets thrown out.

And that's not really good process. Um, and then like, you know, you think of something like your own medical records. I want, I expect my medical records to have everything that's ever happened to me because if I'm in a situation, I want my doctor to have full transparency of everything that's ever happened to me.

Um, and again, you're, you have a couple problems you need to solve to get to that state, you know, like how do you empower someone to store their own data? How do you make sure that the doctor has confidence that the data is accurate and authentic? So, and then how do I, uh, share that data or, you know, provide access controls on who can see it.

When you mentioned archival storage, um, are we also thinking about that in the context of backup and recovery? 'cause a lot of folks are anxious about ransomware attacks and they want some pristine copy of data somewhere that they can get to. Yeah.

Uh, it's a very common use case within file corn, and we see specific individuals coming from with web two backgrounds and disaster recovery, anti ransomware who are setting up practices and businesses selling nothing but, uh, those types of services, uh, with a Web3 backend versus web two alternatives. So you mentioned this Web 2 0 3, oh. Um, what types of applications are people building on this as a Web3 oh application?

What exactly is that in your head? Yeah, so, uh, so far we're doing very well with, uh, organizations that value verifiability, for example. Uh, we do very well in academia and research.

Well, and you think about that they have a lot of data. They're, you know, academia and research typically are not revenue generating operations. These are universities doing research projects.

Uh, and when you're not revenue generating, uh, you're just a cost center. So costs become extremely important. Uh, and also with, um, science, academia and research, try telling a researcher to delete some of their, their data.

It, it's the equivalent of asking a parent, well, which kid would you like to orphan? It's like, there's no, there's no right answer, no. Like, it's all important.

I can't get rid of any of it. Uh, and that's like, this is a very emotional issue for people in research and they want to keep all their data. So we, we typically do well in, in those organizations.

I, I, I'm also seeing like new use cases, you know, I talked about medical records. I think there's a lot of momentum there. Uh, and how can you use decentralized storage and data protection so people can begin to take control of their own health and medical data?

Uh, and how do you authenticate data along those lines so people can be empowered to have control, uh, and full control of other health data. 'cause in the US in particular, you know, if, uh, if you go from one health network to another health network, the robustness of that set is, could be entirely different. I'm also seeing things like commercial real estate.

Uh, you see, you may see like, well, commercial real estate, why do they need archival storage? Well, you know, not in the US particularly, but in the UK they have green mortgages. So green mortgages, uh, are like, I'll, I'll give you a 50 basis point discount on your loan if you can prove that you're a green solution and that your, your building is maintaining a green status.

So now you can put sensors in these rooms and buildings that will put, they'll store and archive that data on chain on something like Filecoin. And so now the banks issuing these green mortgages have full verifiability and provenance that, hey, this data was generated from, this sensor was stored on chain. So if a regulator keeps coming or anyone wants to challenge that bank on the greenness of their mortgage, they have a full active, robust data set to back up ci their claims.

And now that allows them to put all this capital to work in a way that's beneficial to the environment in, in these particular regions. So, you know, that verifiability, you know, you're getting someone willing to pay a premium for verifiability, uh, because other, without it, you know, that those pools of capital for green mor mortgages would never even get put in, put into the market. So have we reached a point where people kinda realize, well, all right, data has value and it's more critical than ever, but now we're kind of choking on the cost of it, so they're looking at alternative approaches.

Yeah, so there's a, there's a challenge with why and decentralized storage, you know, with Bitcoin, it, it was very easy. It's very, there's a lot of great data and very pithy comments on why Bitcoin, why now. And you know, again, you can look at with Bitcoin, it's M two money supply, uh, US fiscal deficits going out of control.

These are very sticky talking points for people to say, you know what, maybe I will take 1% of my portfolio and, and put it in a dis, you know, a decentralized, uh, store value like Bitcoin now that those are some real pain points. Uh, and decentralized storage doesn't have those sticky pain points yet. I, I think it's coming, but, you know, I think store decentralized storage will follow a, a path, uh, of Bitcoin where the narrative was, well, if I can I put 1% of my wealth in a decentralized alternative?

And I think Filecoin is looking for the same thing, can I take 1% of my data and put it in a decentralized alternative? Why would I do that? Uh, again, maybe you're just piloting it versus like a GCP or AWS or maybe you have a real reason because it unlocks a use case, or maybe you just want to take control of your data, like in the, the medical, your, your health medical records type scenario.

Uh, you know, there, there we're working on more compelling reasons why. So for ma people to take it seriously, the thing is with AWS, it works great. GCP works great, uh, you know, yes, you have a risk of being de platformed or censored, but you know, that's, it's a very small portion of the population.

Uh, and I think with the rise of ai, I think it's sh holding up the mirror on data proven ancy in this conversation on data ownership. And the bet is that over the next 20 years in particular, that conversation will change. Just like people say you wanna self custody your Bitcoin, I think there's going to be more of a effort to wanting to self custody your data, whether you're an enterprise or an INVI individual.

All right, folks, you heard me here. There's a lot to be said for immutable data and taking control of your data and making sure that, well, that one copy is the gold copy and nothing's been changed or messed with because, hey, AI models need some specific references, and you never know, you might have to go to court someday. And somebody's gonna say, well, how do you know that that data was the data that you expected it to be?

Hey, Porter, thanks for being on the show. Love it anytime, Michael. All right.

And back to you guys in the studio.