As the IT sector becomes bigger and more important than ever, in order to scale and grow, more storage is needed. Just where businesses put this data is the question. With big tech set to become even stronger, we should really be questioning if the typical, centralized companies that store our data (Google, Amazon, Apple, IBM) are really who we should be relying on.
The decentralization of things—in particular data storage—and the use of blockchain technology is something that could really help stop things from being compromised.
There are a number of companies wanting to change the way we look at data storage. Let’s look at a couple that do different things but have the right tools to work with each other and really revolutionize the way data is stored and accessed.
Bluzelle is a project that is trying to decentralize data storage by providing a secure and affordable alternative on the blockchain.
Following in long line of other blockchain storage projects, they are trying to take on the likes of the large database management incumbents such as Oracle and the like. Bluzelle is also trying to build a framework that fosters private data control and data syndication.
Bluzelle is a data storage blockchain, offering decentralized applications (dApps) a decentralized database solution. It is also creating a dual token economy, with an external token for investment and an internal token to power the network in a fee-free manner while also giving masternode owners an incentive to continue operating.
Bluzelle is building a blockchain based database service for distributed applications (DApps). While other projects focus on general file storage Bluzelle plans to focus on providing DApps with fast and scalable access to databases. Users can provide excess storage and computing power to DApp developers using the native BNT token. Those that provide their storage and computing are reffered to as “producers” while the DApp developers act as “consumers.” The project expects potential users of the service to include prediction markets, exchange protocols, and data streaming networks built on blockchain technology.
Data uploaded by consumers is stored across clusters, or “swarms”, of nodes, which are spread out in multiple geographies. This helps to reduce the risk of a single point of failure due to security breaches, human interference, or natural disasters. Distributed nodes also offer potential performance increases by making data locally accessible when running a DApp.
Bluzelle Technology
The idea was inspired by concepts introduced in sharding and NoSQL and it will allow Bluzelle to connect producers and consumers, where the consumers will be able to purchase excess computing resources (bandwidth, storage, memory and CPU processing) from the producers who create that excess.
To make it sound more blockchain, the producers are in effect miners who are lending their computing resources to the Bluzelle network in exchange for a reward. This producer economy is called a swarm of nodes in the Bluzelle economy, or a metaswarm.
Producers will be rewarded with either BLZ or BNT, which are the two tokens created for the Bluzells network. Bluzelle has also taken steps to collateralize the tokens for a more reliable and robust database economy. This helps to ensure producers will meet minimum standards for computing resources.
The consumer in the Bluzelle ecosystem will primarily consist of dApp developers who have a need for an immutable decentralized storage platform. They will be able to access Bluzelle resources and pay for them in BLZ and BNT tokens. The BLZ token is a publicly traded ERC-20 token, while the BNT token is a private token native to the Bluzelle network.
