I thought 3Speak was using or was planning to use the SIA network for storing the content. Maybe they are using both blockchain and centralized storage services to deliver a better user experience?
Wouldn't the use of the SIA network for storing content qualify as a decentralized alternative?
They are not currently using SIA and have not for quite awhile. The only current storage they are using for videos is the wasabi cloud service mentioned above, and there is no backup.
I know they said they are working on decentralized ways in the future, a challenge we all should be wanting solved.. as it would be amazing for Steem. I hope it comes to be.
I did not know that. Thanks for the information and detailed explanation in the post. 3SPeak FAQ section still says this though:
Our system uses blockchain to store the content, meaning it cannot be arbitrarily removed.
Using the same logic, we probably can't say Steem is decentralized either since images are also not stored in the blockchain. Hypothetically speaking, if the storage providers or Steemit Inc delete all the Steem images that would break most of the Steem blog content.
We could have images stored on IPFS, and have only its hash referenced on post article body (no URLs), then interfaces can interpret it as an image and use the hash to load the file from an IPFS gateway (can be selected by the end user).
In theory, you probably could encrypt the files cut them to smaller pieces and store on Steem in custom_json. Then UIs could put the pieces back together as a file, decrypt, and serve to their sites.
Alternatively, someone could build this software and UIs could use the services. Probably will require a lot of RC and may have performance/speed issues.
Cutting up images or videos and storing them on the Steem blockchain would work in theory, but not in practice. The capacity of the blockchain to store data is very limited. If someone tried to do this they would find that the cost of RCs would go up and it would become cost prohibitive, if it weren't already from the start (and I believe the latter would be the case for any real app trying to do it with, say, videos).
That is too bad that
It can be so tough from a
Practical standpoint
- joeyarnoldvn
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
That would be blockchain spam as storing the actual file on the blockchain is unnecessary. Storing the IPFS hash is more space efficient (more than the entire image URL) as the https://domain part is omitted.
For example:
can be detected as an image stored on IPFS, and it can be used to load the image from any gateway (at user's choice).
We could say that pictures are not stored decentralized on the chain for sure.. as they aren’t stored at all. There is someone who stores the code and then has a program that displays the image.. but that’s above my head.
But yes, I don’t think we should go to individuals whose photos are being censored and say “come to Steem because your photos will never be able to be removed” this would be absolutely false of course.