There is an ongoing digital evolution sweeping across the globe which has placed so much importance on data management and storage technologies. It is now the era where high data storage capacities are needed not just in a highly efficient manner that allows use and convenience but also in a cost effective form.
Considering the various innovations, especially as it has to do with blockchain and other forms of emerging technology, storage options and application requirements are expanding. This goes to explain the consistent build up of applications where an updated version follows its outdated counterpart.
Recently, a report emerged of a crypto-based permanent data storage technology that is built in a manner that is easy to understand, use, cost effective and has unlimited storage capacity. Wow! Just as we want it. The mix here comes when we consider the distinction between “crypto technologies” and “cryptocurrency”.
Data Control and Flexibility
Danny Zukerman, co-founder at 3Box, explains to Coinstituency the benefits of these crypto technologies to cryptocurrency users.
According to Zukerman, crypto tech enables decentralized control of information, using encryption, content addressing (crypto hashing) and crypto-based access control to make it possible for users and applications to directly control access to their data. This is in contrast to today’s location and server based management, where big tech companies that run server farms are really the only way to manage data.
He went further to explain that what is important in crypto tech is how data is encrypted and managed and since data is basically managed by users, privacy is enhanced.
With crypto tech, the location of where the data is stored matters less, and how it is encrypted and managed matters more, and so data is logically managed by users. This is a huge boon to privacy as well as interoperability of data across apps and services (with user consent). This complements regulations and general pushes for data privacy, adding a technical solution to enforce a model that offers privacy plus convenience, not one or the other.
Reduced Cost
However, cryptocurrency on the other hand, enables new models for paying for data, because of direct payments and metering and micro-transactions. This therefore means that users could pay for their data online the way we pay for instance, Dropbox or iCloud now.
Instead of that just applying to our files and photos, it could also apply to all our generated data, giving us control and removing the cost from businesses — changing their business model and removing both the ability and need to monetize user data by selling or sharing it.
Zukerman also states that there are lots of data storage related technologies of which DID is one of them. In the long run,there will be a massive adoption of these technologies but it is most likely that it would come from the developers rather than from users.
With the trend of things, we might just be astonished as to the kind of data storage technologies that will be placed in our hands and before our eyes in the next decade because it will be as we have never seen or imagined.
A Solution For A Changing World
Considering the current challenges as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chao Cheng-Shorland, CEO and co-founder at ShelterZoom and DocuWalk believes that innovative data storage processes would have important roles to play. Cheng-Shorland notes that as more users take their operations remote, especially with the number of COVID cases continuing to surge in recent days, there’s a level of authenticity and security that blockchain provides when it comes to data storage and also data management.
According to her, users’ data is better protected and users’ confidence is higher, knowing that there is a level of trust being established. She identifies DocuWalk as one example of this since the data and document storage platform creates an all-on-one ecosystem that simplifies data storage and allows users to share important information with other users in a blockchain secure, virtual negotiating room setting. It also allows businesses to take their operations virtual and to do so in a more efficient way with documents being immutable and blockchain secure.
As regards the adoption of these technologies, Cheng-Soland reiterated that there is a need to show active adoption in the mainstream. She notes that when it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, there’s an assumption in the market that blockchain technology is only for cryptocurrency but in reality, it has limitless applications in real estate, government, insurance and all sorts of industries.
She concludes;
I think the adoption of such technologies relies on two things, awareness through educating the market and a catalyst that would facilitate that integration. We are already seeing that catalyst with COVID-19 as workers rethink their traditional office environments around the globe. The perfect example is what we’re seeing in Japan with the shift away from traditional paper culture and into a more digital landscape. Through that catalyst over time, will come that awareness, which we are already starting to see.