Decentralized File Sharing

You may have seen the word "decentralised file sharing" tossed around if you're new to blockchain technology. It's a term that should be familiar to anyone who has downloaded a torrent file in the last 20 years.

Blockchain is a game-changing invention that not only brings new ideas to the table, but also improves on previous technologies. Blockchain, like other software and computing protocols, takes file sharing as we've known it for years and takes it to the next stage by making it decentralised.

Decentralized File Sharing

The internet has run on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, for the past two decades, allowing users to exchange hypermedia documents. It also allows web browsers and web servers to communicate in order to send large amounts of data and files.

All of this data is stored on centralised servers, and its availability is contingent on the servers' availability.

When you visit a website, for example, you receive information that the site stores on a centralised server. This data transfer and communication between you and the server is allowed by the HTTP application protocol. If the server goes down, you won't be able to access the website's content.

HTTP, which revolutionised the internet when it was first released in 1996, is slowly becoming obsolete in the modern blockchain era. Since the protocol relies on centralised servers, service providers may censor information and prevent data transmission.

By storing data on multiple servers (nodes) connected to a network, decentralised file storage replaces the single-server format. In this case, the information on both of the servers is identical. Even if one goes down, the data is still available, and the network can still share and transmit files.

If you've ever used a torrenting network, you'll be familiar with this scheme. Several computers there, among other things, have access to massive audio or video files. Unfortunately, people who volunteer to share data are behind certain computers (nodes), and if they decide to stop, the torrent file they were sharing becomes unavailable.

By incentivizing the nodes, or rather, the people that make up the network, blockchain technology brings decentralised file sharing to the next stage. Multiple servers can access the network's resources and data to exchange digital rewards like cryptocurrency tokens on strong, decentralised platforms.

What is the Mechanism of Decentralized File Sharing?

We now rely heavily on centralised servers to access the internet. The procedure for extracting information from the internet is straightforward:

You open a window as an internet client and type in a file, which can be anything from a URL to a search engine query.

Your request is routed via the HTTP protocol to a centralised server, which holds the relevant data.

The server gives you the data or files you've requested using the HTTP protocol.

While this method of communication is simple, it has a number of drawbacks. To begin, you rely on a centralised server to provide you with the information you need. Second, depending on the performance and bandwidth of the server, receiving the request can be slow or impossible.

This model is replaced by a stronger one known as peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing in decentralised file sharing.

The files or data that you request are stored and spread through various network servers (nodes) in this case. A unique cryptographic hash identifies each file, which is monitored across the entire platform. When you submit a request, the system immediately locates the nodes that contain the most important unique hashes to your query and gives you immediate access to them.

Pros of Decentralized File Sharing

Everyone benefits from decentralised file sharing, from developers to content owners, service providers to everyday internet users.

Some of the advantages of decentralised file-sharing include:

• The data stored on multiple decentralised servers is still available.

• The bandwidth is never clogged, allowing a large number of users and channels to simultaneously access the same data.

• A decentralised network's data is encrypted, making it extremely resistant to censorship and oppression.

• One of the main features of Web 3.0, the next step of internet evolution, is decentralised file sharing.

Thoughts

When an authoritarian government determines that it "benefits the country," our rights to freely access information will vanish in the blink of an eye. This type of censorship control, which is still accessible via centralised file-sharing protocols, should not be reserved for a single individual or a small group of people. Fortunately, decentralised file storage on the blockchain is a feasible alternative.