Protocol Labs and Filecoin Foundation Form Alliance

Protocol Labs and Filecoin Foundation together with other founding members, announced the launching of the Decentralized Storage Alliance.

The alliance is a first-of-its-kind, member-led industry organization to drive awareness and adoption of decentralized technologies, such as Filecoin, IPFS, and libp2p, and help enterprises in Web2 make the transition to Web3 through education, advocacy, and best practices.

By 2025, the global data market is expected to exceed 200ZB. Enterprise organizations account for 80% of total market demand, and over 90% of them rely on public clouds and other forms of centralized storage to store data, which is costly and not always efficient. Centralized players continue to consolidate the market, limiting pricing and data efficiency.

According to a recent IDC survey titled Why Decentralized Storage Based on Web3 Technology Will Ultimately Replace Many Public Cloud-Based Storage Services, almost 86% of organizations had a positive view of decentralized storage.¹

Decentralized storage networks enable more efficient, robust, secure storage – at a lower cost than traditional storage – while also giving more businesses the opportunity to participate in the data economy.

“With top-tier leaders across Web2 and Web3 coming together to explore the unrealized potential of decentralized technology, this Alliance has the power to transform the foundation of the Internet,” said Stefaan Vervaet, head of network growth, Protocol Labs. “Decentralized storage can provide assurances of data integrity, avoid data lock-in, meet data sovereignty requirements, and offers many significant advantages over traditional Web2 data solutions.“

Alliance aims to bring together diverse viewpoints from leading Web2 and Web3 players:

• Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) offers a broad portfolio of adaptive processor technologies, combining CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs and software expertise to enable leadership computing platforms for cloud, edge and end devices.
• Ernst & Young Global Limited (EY), the first Big 4 firm to commit to public blockchain, is focused on putting in place the tools, systems, and services that will be needed to help both public and private companies take advantage of blockchain technology to address the ecosystem’s most pressing problems – privacy, security, and regulatory compliance. As a trusted advisor to the world’s largest enterprises, EY’s ability to test and audit transactions in a blockchain environment gives businesses the confidence to transition from simply tracking on a blockchain to transacting across the complete business lifecycle.
• Seagate Technology Holdings plc, the company has shipped over three billion terabyte of data capacity.

The alliance will create a forum where enterprises and others can come together and collaborate around new technology to accelerate the adoption of decentralized storage technology.

This will include:  

• Developing standard specs and reference architectures that address the needs of enterprise companies.
• Providing access to education materials, technical resources, and best practices.
• Improving the process of onboarding data to decentralized storage networks and making it easier for new data centers to onboard to the network.
• Enabling the creation of impactful working groups that solve specific issues with the transition to decentralized storage technologies and Web3.

Filecoin is a large decentralized storage network. In 2021, it represented 1% of the total enterprise HDD capacity shipped, making it one of the fastest-growing storage networks in the world.-big enough to hold a copy of Wikipedia 65,000x. The 240 PiB of data hosted on the Filecoin network includes 8 million active data transactions and enterprise customers such as UC Berkeley, The USC Shoah Foundation, University of Utah. More than 1,000 clients and users have uploaded their data to the Filecoin network, with 15% uploading more than 100TB.

“The Filecoin network is a decentralized storage system designed to store humanity’s most important information, and a foundational technology for the next gen of the web,” said Marta Belcher, president and chair, Filecoin Foundation. “The Decentralized Storage Alliance will help more businesses realize the benefits of decentralized web technology.“

“As the global data and storage markets are accelerating, there is a lag in the adoption of decentralized storage technologies,” said James Canterbury, partner/principal, EY Blockchain. “As a company with a global SaaS blockchain solutions business, we see decentralized storage as an opportunity to diversify and add resilience to our data infrastructure. And we see the alliance as a crucial piece of this – enabling adoption of decentralized storage and cohesion across the broader industry.“

“Developing cutting-edge technologies for the ever-evolving and growing storage markets is central to our mission at Seagate,” said Sai Varanasi, SVP of product and business marketing, Seagate. “We’re excited to be part of this alliance and working with like-minded organizations who are similarly passionate about the next gen of decentralized storage technologies.” 

More about the Decentralized Storage Alliance.

About Protocol Labs
It is an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory that builds protocols, tools, and services to improve the Internet. Its projects that are designed to fortify and democratize the web include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p. A distributed organization of over 300 people globally, it Labs is dedicated to driving breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward.

About Filecoin Foundation
It is an organization that facilitates governance of the Filecoin network, funds critical development projects, supports the growth of the Filecoin ecosystem, and advocates for Filecoin and the decentralized web.

About Filecoin
This decentralized storage network enables users to store, request, and transfer data via a verifiable marketplace. Its technology provides a foundation to store the most valuable datasets. An alternative to costly cloud storage, the Filecoin network offers geographically decentralized storage, minimizing financial barriers and allowing users to take advantage of its network capabilities. Filecoin is completely open source, enabling people from all over the world to participate.

¹IDC white paper sponsored by Protocol Labs, “Why Decentralized Storage Based on Web3 Technology Will Ultimately Replace Many Public Cloud-Based Storage Services“, Doc #US49613522, October 2022