Web2 - stores exabytes of data.

Web3 - stores a few text files and rotten hyperlinks to jpgs of (if you're lucky) poorly-drawn apes and (if you're unlucky) rugs, while setting billions of dollars on fire.

I think, you should look into Filecoin and Arweave.

Your assumptions seem to be based on the (rather specific) use-case of art NFTs. They got quite some hype, but to be honest, I didn't get them either.

Why exactly would you trust random strangers with your critical data rather than use S3?

In the same sense I trusted my MP3 downloads on eDonkey before the records association played a foul game.

s/played a foul game/forced me to pay for what I’d been stealing/

FTFY.

There is one reason is that the protocol of storage is open. Doesn't mean the thing can't die obviously, but there is some hope that someone will continue to store the data - there is some incentive (crypto value, however low or unstable that can be) to do that.

Also, nothing stops you from storing the critical data in S3 too. I wouldn't bet what will last longer as a permanent storage.

1. Both the mindshare and marketshare of NFTs and similar garbage dwarfs any use of Filecoin.

2. Dropbox and Drive are cheaper and better. S3 is cheaper.

1. That's not really an argument. There is literally exabytes of data on Filecoin (https://stats.filecoin.io/d/z6FtI92Zz/filecoin-chain-stats?o...)

2. And gone if you stop paying.

> And gone if you stop paying.

Are Filecoin nodes all hosting files for free? I can put a terabyte of files on there and it'll never go away?

No. That is all a lie.

1. That's capacity, that's not usage. I don't care about imagined usage, I care about actual usage.

2. No, it'll just be gone if crypto crashes enough and the miners sell or turn down their hardware (Probably precipitated by some fraud in some other part of the ecosystem unwinding).

There's a reason nobody has built the next Dropbox on Filecoin. [1]

[1] I mean, you can do that, if you have Einstein hair, and your goal is to grift dumb VC money, but you're not going to put together a better product.

This. It is amazing to me that the cult members talk about the fiction as if their take on it is real instead of the reality.

Web3: your data is gone once VCs stop incinerating money into Web3 startups.

Yes, I think there aren't many chains that could live on without VC money.

> Either because it's permanent by default (blockchain, blockweave)...

https://coloradosun.com/2022/11/21/brush-eastern-colorado-se...

> Two school administrators on Colorado’s Eastern Plains were accused of possessing child pornography when they investigated a school sexting case last April. No one said the men were trying to distribute the images or had bad intent. The girl in the photos and her parents begged police and prosecutors to drop charges against the men. But one of them, 32-year-old Bradley Bass, is facing up to 12 years in prison and the possibility of being branded a sex offender. He’d have to give up his career in education, and wouldn’t be able to parent his toddler and baby boy.

> Bass violated a Colorado law that says even unintentionally possessing explicit images of kids is akin to having child pornography. Even parents could be prosecuted under the broad language of the statute.

That's not gonna be a fun collision between technology and the legal system.

Good god where has common sense in the police and justice system gone so far off the rails that this came to court and didn't get thrown out immediately?!

IPFS isn't Web3

It's in the Web3 picture in the article.

I met many Protocol Labs people on crypto conferences and they pretty much see themselves as one of the core web3 technologies.

They were very influential to Web3. That being said, it's like saying that BitTorrent is a Web3 protocol just because the general interests/end goals are shared between projects.

The creator of BitTorrent also sees himself and his technology as an important part of web3.

Which is a pretty solid proof that web3 isn’t a real thing.

How does that retention strategy scale?

A fundamental improvement in terms of what? The cloud provider provides a service conditional on being paid, whereas what you call "the network" seems to provide the service for free. Who's paying for the service?