There's a ton of potential real-world purposes for blockchain, but none are going to come to fruition for decades. There's one project I am still involved in, distributed cloud storage, nodes get paid for participation in tokens. It is not profitable, but I like keeping a toe in the water for a "real thing."
A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes.[1][2][3][4] Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain (compare linked list data structure), with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.
Yes they are. If you need an uneditable log, I guess? There are no uses on the blockchain for large file storage. Zero. It's a ledger, not a storage medium.
It's competing with Amazon S3, not Dropbox.
Distributed cloud storage sounds more like old torrents with partial seeders. But if you're using a chained ledger for that, sure. But like crypto, it's going to balloon out of control.
There's a ton of potential real-world purposes for blockchain, but none are going to come to fruition for decades. There's one project I am still involved in, distributed cloud storage, nodes get paid for participation in tokens. It is not profitable, but I like keeping a toe in the water for a "real thing."
Why would you want cloud storage to have an uneditable, append-only storage medium?
It's not uneditable, append-only. Backups, log storage, large file media storage and streaming. It's competing with Amazon S3, not Dropbox.
Yes they are. If you need an uneditable log, I guess? There are no uses on the blockchain for large file storage. Zero. It's a ledger, not a storage medium.
Distributed cloud storage sounds more like old torrents with partial seeders. But if you're using a chained ledger for that, sure. But like crypto, it's going to balloon out of control.
The storage isn't on a blockchain. The tokens are just used to compensate node operators based on storage usage, ingress, egress, repair.