Today we will start reviewing Storj network.  This was initiated to address scalability and increase decentralization.  It is a distributed cloud storage network and removes the notion of a centralized third party storage provider.  The decentralization not only helps mitigate traditional data failures and outages but also supports new workloads such as from blockchain. Blockchain is a distributed ledger. There is a high degree of privacy for the individual whose transactions are maintained in this ledger. It does not divulge any personally identifiable information and can still prove ownership of entries. The ledger itself is maintained by a community where no one actor can gain enough influence to submit  a fraudulent transaction or alter recorded data. Therefore Blockchain opens up new possibilities in many ecosystems and Storj network facilitates its security, privacy and data control model. In production storage, peer to peer networks were not popular as data because data accrues based on popularity not on utility.  Storj network introduces a challenge response verification system combined with direct payments.  In addition there is a set of federated nodes that alleviate access and performance concerns. Storj network also brings client side encryption.
Cloud storage is used heavily by large storage providers who act as trusted third parties to transfer and store data. Client side encryption improves data security while data integrity will be maintained with a proof of retrievability. Storj network introduces a network first design where peers are autonomous agents and there is a protocol to enable them to negotiate contracts, transfer data, verify the integrity and availability of remote data and to reward with payments. It provides tools to enable all these interactions. Moreover, it distributes the storage of a file as shards on this network and these shards are stored using a distributed hash table. The shards are themselves not stored in this hash table, rather a distributed network and messaging facilitates it with location information.