From FIL to Shelby: The Evolution of Decentralization Storage

Storage has been one of the popular tracks in the blockchain industry, with projects like Filecoin and Arweave drawing significant attention. However, as the availability of cold data storage comes into question, the prospects of decentralized storage have also become uncertain. Recently, the emergence of Walrus and Shelby has brought new expectations to this field. This article will analyze the development paths of the four projects: Filecoin, Arweave, Walrus, and Shelby, and explore the future development direction of decentralized storage.

FIL: The Name of Storage, The Reality of Mining

Filecoin, as an early blockchain project, has its development direction centered around Decentralization. It attempts to shift centralized storage to decentralized storage, but in the process sacrifices certain aspects, becoming the pain points that later projects try to address.

IPFS: Limitations of Decentralization Architecture

IPFS is the underlying technology of FIL, aimed at disrupting the traditional HTTP protocol through content addressing. However, the biggest problem with IPFS is its extremely slow retrieval speed, making it difficult to promote in practical applications. IPFS is mainly suitable for "cold data" and does not have significant advantages in handling hot data. Nevertheless, the design concept of IPFS aligns well with many blockchain projects, making it a good choice for the underlying framework of blockchain.

The essence of mining under the storage cloak

The token economic model of Filecoin includes three roles: users, storage miners, and retrieval miners. However, this model has potential vulnerabilities, as storage miners may obtain improper gains by filling up with garbage data. The operation of Filecoin largely relies on the continuous investment of miners in the token economy, rather than on the genuine needs of end users. Currently, Filecoin aligns more with the definition of "mined coins" rather than "application-driven."

Arweave: The Double-Edged Sword of Long-Termism

The design goal of Arweave is to provide permanent storage capabilities for data. It uses Bitcoin as a learning object and attempts to continuously optimize its permanent storage network over a long period. Arweave does not care about marketing and competitors; it focuses solely on iterating its network architecture. This long-termism made it popular during the last bull market and allowed it to survive the market downturn. However, the existence value of permanent storage still needs time to be validated.

Technical Upgrade Review

During the upgrade process from version 1.5 to version 2.9, Arweave continuously optimized its network architecture:

• Version 1.7 introduces the RandomX algorithm, limiting the use of specialized computing power.
• The 2.0 version adopts the SPoA mechanism, optimizing the data proof structure.
• Version 2.4 introduces the SPoRA mechanism, requiring miners to genuinely hold data blocks.
• Subsequent versions further enhance network collaboration capabilities and storage diversity.

Overall, Arweave's upgrade path demonstrates its long-term strategy focused on storage, continuously lowering the entry barrier while resisting the trend of computing power centralization.

Walrus: A New Attempt to Embrace Hot Data

The design approach of Walrus is different from Filecoin and Arweave; it focuses on optimizing the costs of hot data storage.

RedStuff: Improved version of erasure coding

The RedStuff encoding algorithm proposed by Walrus is its core technology. It is derived from Reed-Solomon encoding but has been specifically improved:

• Split the data into primary slices and secondary slices
• The primary slice is used to restore the original data, while the secondary slice provides elastic fault tolerance.
• Reduced the requirements for data consistency, emphasizing "eventual consistency"

RedStuff has achieved effective storage in low computing power and low bandwidth environments, but it has also sacrificed some determinism in data reading. It is more of an adaptive transformation of existing technology rather than a disruptive breakthrough.

Collaboration between Sui and Walrus

The main target scenario of Walrus is to store large binary files, such as NFTs and social media content. It relies on Sui's high-performance chain capabilities to build a high-speed data retrieval network to reduce operational costs. The storage cost of Walrus is about one-fifth of traditional cloud services, although it is higher than FIL and Arweave, its goal is to build a decentralized hot storage system that can be used in practical business scenarios.

Shelby: Unlocking the Potential of Web3 Applications with Dedicated Networks

Shelby is trying to fundamentally address the "read performance" bottleneck faced by Web3 applications.

Core Innovation

1. Paid Reads mechanism: directly link user experience with service node income.
2. Dedicated Fiber Network: Provides high-performance transmission channels for the instantaneous reading of Web3 hot data.
3. Efficient Coding Scheme: Achieving high-efficiency storage with low redundancy through Clay Codes

These innovations make Shelby the first decentralized hot storage protocol capable of supporting Web2-level user experiences.

Summary

The development path of decentralized storage from Filecoin to Shelby demonstrates a shift from "existence is justification" to "usability is justice." Early projects focused on proof of concept and economic incentives, while the new generation of projects pays more attention to practical application scenarios and user experience. The emergence of Shelby marks a step towards "performance without compromise" in decentralized storage, opening up new possibilities for the industry. In the future, whoever can first address the real pain points of users may reshape the landscape of the next round of infrastructure.