Decentralized Storage Alliance Launches to Bridge Chasm Between Web2 and Web3

AMD, Seagate, and EY form alliance to accelerate the adoption of decentralized storage by enterprises

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Protocol Labs and Filecoin Foundation together with other founding members, today announced the launching of the Decentralized Storage Alliance (the “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 200 zettabytes. 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.*

Decentralized storage networks enable more efficient, robust, secure storage – at a significantly lower cost than traditional data 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.”

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

• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of leadership high-performance and adaptive processor technologies, combining CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs and deep software expertise to enable leadership computing platforms for cloud, edge and end devices.
• Ernst & Young (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, a leading provider of data storage technology and solutions. A global technology leader for more than 40 years, the company has shipped over three billion terabytes of data capacity.

The Alliance will create a trusted 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 specifications and reference architectures that address the unique 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 the world’s largest decentralized storage network. In 2021, Filecoin 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 65,000 times. The 240 PiB of data hosted on the Filecoin network includes 8M active data transactions and enterprise customers such as UC Berkeley, The USC Shoah Foundation, University of Utah, NYC Open Data and many more. More than 1,000 unique clients & users have already uploaded their data to the Filecoin network, with 15% uploading more than 100 TiB.

“The Filecoin network is a decentralized storage system designed to store humanity’s most important information, and a foundational technology for the next generation 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.”

Disclaimer

The Decentralized Storage Alliance (the “Alliance”) may receive certain annual financial contributions in the form of cash or resources from Protocol Labs, Filecoin Foundation, Seagate, AMD, and EY. No statement made in this press release, on a website, or in any other public context related to the Alliance and/or Filecoin constitutes an offer, endorsement, recommendation, or other favorable report by the Alliance, Protocol Labs, Filecoin Foundation, Seagate, AMD, or EY, or any of their affiliates, or of any product or service provided by any of them, or of any other asset. Specifically, the Alliance, Protocol Labs, Filecoin Foundation, Seagate, AMD and EY, each expressly disclaims any liability related to any decision by any person or entity to buy, invest in, or otherwise support any asset.

Member quotes

“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 at 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 data storage markets is central to our mission at Seagate,” said Sai Varanasi, senior vice president of product and business marketing at Seagate. ‘We’re excited to be part of this alliance and working with like-minded organizations who are similarly passionate about the next generation of decentralized storage technologies.”

We are actively looking for more companies to join our ecosystem. If you are interested to join or learn more about the Decentralized Storage Alliance, visit dsalliance.io.

About Protocol Labs

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

About Filecoin Foundation

Filecoin Foundation (FF) 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

Filecoin, the world’s largest decentralized storage network, enables users to store, request, and transfer data via a verifiable marketplace. Filecoin’s advanced technology provides a robust foundation to store the world’s most valuable datasets. An alternative to costly cloud storage, the Filecoin network offers efficiently priced and geographically decentralized storage, minimizing financial barriers and allowing users to take advantage of its unmatched network capabilities. Filecoin is completely open source, enabling people from all over the world to participate. For more information about Filecoin, please visit https://filecoin.io/

*IDC 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.

Contacts

Anastasia Golovina

[email protected]