How blockchain technology is paving the way for a new era of cloud computing

The cloud infrastructure space is on the verge of a revolutionary change with the advent of blockchain technology. Blockchain’s decentralized nature and exceptional fault tolerance make it an ideal solution for record management tasks such as financial transactions, identity management, provenance and authentication.

Blockchain technology offers improved network security, data privacy and decentralization; the cloud provides high scalability and elasticity. The convergence between cloud and blockchain has the potential to create innovative solutions that will revolutionize the technology industry.

Blockchain’s emergence in the cloud infrastructure space is poised to shatter the conventional model of centralized cloud providers. The decentralized model promises to transform applications and data hosting for developers and enterprises. Additionally, this development has the potential to significantly impact internet data latency, offering improved performance and reliability.

As changing business requirements drive technological developments, blockchain’s use in cloud/edge computing will play a crucial role in shaping the future of the digital landscape.

The need for a decentralized cloud model

Cloud computing has become an integral part of modern life, thanks to the internet, the digital revolution and advanced technologies that make our lives easier and more convenient. While cloud computing has revolutionized data management and storage, it has several areas of improvement that stem from its centralized nature.

“Having a central master server makes data easily hackable. And because of the monopolies of a few vendors, user data is easily accessible and can be manipulated for business purposes. Additionally, centralized data management is reaching its saturation point, leading to expensive data storage options for users down the road, Anantha Krishnan, CEO of Sarvalabs and founder of MOI, a context-aware P2P protocol, told VentureBeat.

These issues highlight the need for a decentralized approach to cloud computing, one where power is in the hands of users and data is not vulnerable to manipulation or hacking.

The rise of blockchain technology has ushered in a new era of decentralized cloud computing and storage, presenting a viable alternative to traditional, centralized architectures. Decentralized cloud computing promises to address these shortcomings and usher in a new era of data management and storage that is secure, transparent and accessible to all.

Unlike centralized storage systems that rely on multiple servers hosted in a centralized database, decentralized storage involves the distribution of data across multiple computers (i.e. nodes) connected to a peer-to-peer network.

Immutability and data provenance with blockchain

“Blockchain itself can also be used in a private ‘walled garden,'” Ian Foley, chief business officer at data storage blockchain firm Arweave, told VentureBeat. “It is a technology structure that provides immutability and maintains data provenance. Centralized cloud providers are also developing blockchain solutions, but they lack the benefits of decentralization. Decentralized cloud infrastructure is always independent from centralized environments, which enables companies and individuals to access everything they have saved without going through a specific application.”

Decentralized storage platforms use the power of blockchain technology to offer transparency and verifiable proof of data storage, consumption and reliability through cryptography. This eliminates the need for a centralized provider and gives users greater control over their data.

With decentralized storage, data is stored in a wide peer-to-peer (P2P) network, offering transfer speeds that are generally faster than traditional centralized storage systems. Additionally, the entire process is handled by nearby peers, rather than servers hosted in a physical location, enabling users to transfer and access their data with greater ease and efficiency.

“Instead of relying on today’s content delivery networks (CDNs), content addressability can be used to retrieve data automatically from the nearest peer in a large P2P network,” Krishnan said. “The Web3 sector is moving towards fast performance and secure interactions, which can vastly improve traditional sectors.”

Tackling AI security challenges through decentralization

Blockchain’s decentralized nature, which relies on a user’s private key rather than a cloud administrator’s, provides an advantage in terms of ownership and control of data. With privacy concerns at an all-time high, many technology enthusiasts are demanding a transition from today’s Web2 to the more decentralized and secure Web3. Through blockchain, Web3 offers consumers greater autonomy and data sovereignty, which will become increasingly critical as we enter the era of mass-scale artificial intelligence (AI).

“It’s easy to crawl social media and online data for use in training AI algorithms. With Web3, we envision licensing and permitted use being built directly into the data as it’s stored. This will enable users for example, preventing their photos from being used to transform into an AI-generated image, Foley said. “This feature is a significant step forward in protecting privacy, and it’s one of the reasons why blockchain technology for the cloud is winning out.”

Blockchain offers many other security benefits. The ledger system prevents anyone from deleting or tampering with data by creating an immutable record of the original source. This function is crucial to maintaining data integrity, and it is an important reason why blockchain-based cloud systems are adopted in various industries, from finance to healthcare.

A future with opportunities for decentralized cloud computing

Foley believes the rise of decentralized blockchain/cloud technology will initiate a transformative phase of consent-driven data exchange, further escalating the rate of innovation.

“With permissions and usage restrictions on data and content, as well as the breadth of data needed to avoid bias in future algorithms, blockchain-based decentralized cloud infrastructure is poised to explode with growth,” he said. “I absolutely believe in the vision of this new technology, and it comes from all the benefits of decentralization and blockchain data immutability and provenance.”

For his part, Krishnan said that blockchain-based cloud infrastructure is here to stay.

“Progress will be about creating million-node decentralized P2P cloud structures that are easily accessible. The real opportunity is the ability to enable the emerging digital society to be democratic, sustainable and fair. To empower individuals and let them controlling their digital experiences the way they want (instead of controlling as it is today) is exciting,” said Krishnan. “Blockchain-based cloud services enable this by creating user-controlled infrastructure and data management layers in a shared infrastructure.”