Filecoin Orbit Lagos in partnership with Ethereum Nigeria on Friday, June 17, 2022, hosted the FIL Storage Provider Meetup for developers and Web3/Blockchain enthusiasts in Lagos.
Facilitated by Chukwuemeka Enoch Mbaeibe, Ambassador Orbit Community Program Lagos, the meetup which saw both physical and online attendance saw industry experts discuss the significance of storage in the present-day world of technology.
According to Chukwuemeka, the event aims to promote the storage ecosystem here in Africa and there will be similar subsequent events in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
Opening the session, Stuart Berman, CTO of PIKNIK and Program Director of ESPA, discussed the topic, How to Become a Storage Provider and Why You Would Want to
PIKNIK storage cloud is built on Filecoin and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) and according to Stuart, PIKNIK is the largest and oldest storage provider in North America, currently at 39 petabytes of data sealed
PIKNIK pioneered Web3 storage in North America when it signed up USCShoah Foundation, storing up to about four or five petabytes of data.
The platform has also partnered with Protocol Labs, AMD, Seagate, Supermicro, Intel and others to provide the enterprise storage provider accelerator a way for businesses to scale up for large-scale storage with, either companies or large organizations, universities, and governments.
Stating further, Stuart said that storage providers are an integral part of the Filecoin community and by storing data, you can get paid in FIL (Filecoin) while helping to create a more resilient and decentralized web.
Explaining what Filecoin is, Stuart said that it is an open set of protocols that everybody can see and inspect.
“And it powers at least one public blockchain, what we call the main net, there are other versions, like a test net and calibration net, and some other networks for development and testing, that don’t cost any tokens.
Then you could even build a private version, in your laboratory or between yourself and others that are strictly private, but it’s the public version that we call Filecoin.”
The Filecoin according to Stuart is a decentralized blockchain and protocol because it enables storage providers to set the pricing and the terms with data owners and clients.
Stuart concluded by mentioning the Enterprise Storage Provider Accelerator Program, urging interested potential storage providers to apply.
Also speaking at the event, Abimbola Adebayo, one of the winners of the Inaugural Filecoin Lagos Hackathon discussed the Benefits of Using IPFS/Filecoin,
He discussed the forms of storage, with its advantages and disadvantages. According to Abimbola, Filecoin is a leading storage provider because it is a decentralized storage network designed to store humanity’s most important information, as each Filecoin node operates as an IPFS node. They make sure that your data are made easily available to requesting clients.
Taking the final discussion, Stefan Vervaet, Storage Providers Lead at Protocol Labs. According to Stefan, data is exploding over the next 5 years, as data reports show that 175 Zettabytes of data will be generated by 2025. Furthermore, enterprises will need 13 Zettabytes of storage in 2025, which represents 80% of total market.
Stefan also mentioned that more data is stored in the public cloud today than in traditional data centers as enterprises are pivoting to storage that incorporates public clouds, however, service providers are getting squeezed.
Today the market opportunity is massive in the storage provider ecosystem as data point shows that by 2025, over 80% of all data will be classified as archival. On the other hand, the $11 billion NFT market is at risk because Ethereum lacks storage, NFT assets are not stored on-chain, and there is a significant risk of loss and manipulation.
According to Stefan, solutions to these challenges include; the scalability of decentralized storage, a foundation for NFT asset insurance and tamperproof.
Watch the full session here.
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