This. The comparisons to S3 are specious. Filecoin is doing some interesting things such as their proof of storage and collateralized contracts, but there are significant differences between S3 and Filecoin: - Filecoin is 'cold storage' similar to AWS Glacier. Retrieval times can be really long and certainly aren't web time. - Redundancy is left up to the user (or the user's client). Sure, you can store your files with multiple providers, but good luck determining the reliability of your hand-rolled storage logic. - Retrieval prices are known up front with S3 and other cloud providers. Given that retrieval prices aren't part of storage contracts, costs of retrieval can vary widely (and change). A user's only defense against usurious retrieval pricing is to store with multiple providers. - Bandwidth available to users is largely unknown and likely pretty variable - Miners serve a 'dumb box interface' that will serve anyone any data that they are holding.

In the end, users are still writing contracts with individual storage providers, each of which has their own degree of experience, expertise and proven service history.

Obviously, the Filecoin community is working on improving many of these, but costs will certainly change as Filecoin evolves closer in functionality to s3 and other cloud providers.

> First of all, 63 PB is nothing in terms of cloud storage

Not sure why you would compare it to cloud storage, because it's not. Storing files in Filecoin is more like making deals with people who offer space on their hard drives (which as far as I know, doesn't exists besides Filecoin). It also doesn't make sense to compare it to something like S3 as again, it is not cloud storage.

I do think Filecoin is closer to cloud storage than 'free hard drive space'. The hardware requirements for miners (storage providers) are pretty significant and pretty much guarantee that miners are running dedicated hardware. While I'm sure some storage providers operate out of data centers, I don't think a server needs to be located in a data center to be called cloud storage.

> I do think Filecoin is closer to cloud storage than 'free hard drive space'.

But I never said it was "free hard drive space", I explicitly mentioned "deals with people who offer space".

No matter where the data is ultimately stored (in a data center or not), the method for you getting your files to X is not the same in Filecoin as in S3. With S3 you simply upload your file to S3 and you're done. With Filecoin you need to first make a deal with a miner, then you use that deal to store files within the deal you've made, which is vastly different.

What do you think cloud storage is? Its not literally storing things in a "cloud"; a cloud is just someone elses computer.

I suppose its the difference between going to a garage sale vs corporate dept store, but at the end of the day what is the difference in the product you are getting?

> What do you think cloud storage is? Its not literally storing things in a "cloud"; a cloud is just someone elses computer.

Yeah, of course, everyone knows this, no one thinks it's some magic storage. That's not what I'm talking about.

The difference is in the interface on how you get your files to some place. With S3 you simply upload the file, and Amazon stores it for you. With Filecoin, it's simply a protocol that allows you to browse everyone who is compatible with the Filecoin protocol, then you make a deal, then you use that deal to upload files. It's like there are many operators like Amazon providing a S3 interface, but first you need to find one you like, then strike a deal.

The workflow is vastly different.

Vs a cloud provider where there are many companies offering such services, you pick one you like, make a deal, and then upload your file via some standardized protocol (http, ftp, scp, etc)

Not seeing the difference.

"Making a deal" here refers to two people interacting in the terms of "Make a offer" -> Waiting time -> "Other party accepts offer" -> Waiting time -> "Upload files" while companies offering file storage is more like "Make subscription service people can sign up to" -> "Someone subscribes" -> "Upload files".

Cloud services regularly make deals with customers. In fact it would be considered unusual for a non trivial customer to pay list price.

The people who pay full cost are the customers who are so small that its not worth the cloud vendors time to care about.

Ok, if you don't realize the difference between subscribing to a service (S3) and making deals (Filecoin), then that's up to you. No one can say I didn't try. In the end, it doesn't even matter, people use whatever fits their use case, including you and me. I'll stick with subscribing to services, and you can continue striking deals, or whatever.

I think you've never used cloud providers at scale.

You don't just subscribe. You negotiate and haggle. Contracts exchange hands. Humans are involved on both sids. Its not like there is a fixed price you just pay.