Filecoin, StorJ and the problem with decentralized storage (2019)
I&#x27;ve noticed the debate around (de)centralization always seems to focus on purely technical issues, or on economic issues (which are technicalities of another sort).  In other words, it&#x27;s always the following two points that are debated:<p>1. Economies of Scale<p>2. Network Properties (robustness, scalability, latency, etc.)<p>It seems to me that a crucial element is missing from these analyses:  organizational policy.  All other things being equal (which they may not be), it seems like decentralization appeals to those trying to restrict top-down control.  Historically, this has been an ideological thing (e.g. bittorrent&#x27;s copyleft slant), but more recently I&#x27;ve seen mainstream endorsement of concepts such as &quot;flat hierarchy&quot;, &quot;distributed workforce&quot;, &quot;collaborative work&quot;, etc.  Interestingly, I don&#x27;t see this discourse being picked up by decentralization evangelists, and I&#x27;m not sure what to make of that.<p>Off the cuff, it seems like decentralized storage tech has a compelling story to tell about small distributed teams, working in a loose, peer-to-peer organizational structure.  In this context, my mind immediately goes to the <i>functional</i> centralization of cloud storage.  In general, the Cloud tries to concentrate control over computing resources in a single department (i.e. the devops team).  But what happens when a bunch of freelancers collaborate on a project-by-project basis?  From what I&#x27;ve seen, either (1) they use cloud providers, but the account is under the client&#x27;s name or (2) they use some kind of SaaS solution with support for sharing or other forms of collaboration.  With decentralized storage, it seems like a &quot;bring your own cloud&quot; approach is possible in principle, where these freelancers would pool resources (storage, compute, etc.).  Are there any pain-points here?  Is there perhaps a business problem that needs solving?<p>The question for me is whether these new patterns of collaboration are really becoming a thing, or whether it&#x27;s a fad amongst business-school graduates.<p>At any rate, this comment is an invitation for y&#x27;all to opine on the subject.  I feel like a good analysis of organizational policy could help us decide whether a decentralized web is economically viable, but I&#x27;m kinda stumped.