I think the decentralized web pieces are starting to fall in place: decentralized file storage, decentralized domain names, decentralized communities and streaming, decentralized payments, etc.
I wouldn't declare it "failed technology" just yet.
Just because something doesn't work in the first attempt doesn't mean it never will (see various attempts at ecommerce, online news, streaming video, or just general computer-network-for-the-masses attempts from the 80s and early 90s).
It does work, that's the problem. Because even though it's working, few people are actually using it for anything other than speculative trades (and its been working for ~11 years).
Seems they recently launched late last year [0], some of the miners went on strike seeing the actual mining deal worse than they expected in several ways [1], and current price is going up a bit in the last few days, but consistently down vs BTC [2].
They may be having some success on their original purpose, having just passed 2.5 billion GB on the network, i.e., 2.5 exabytes, and 1300 miners, 200+ projects and 5900+ GitHub contributors [3].
Do you know if they list the price of storing/accessing 1 GB on Filecoin compared to say AWS?
It's obvious that people who own Bitcoin would want to use the system in order to show usefulness, demand, however I'm wondering if there's any use of people who aren't financially incentivized (like early adopters who have the most to gain).
Good question, but IDK. Current price is around $37/Filecoin, falling from $45 earlier in the week, but I have no idea what one Filecoin buys in terms of storage. Let me know if you find out more, and I'll do the same
Will do. It's always been odd to me that that is never listed prominently - as price is always the main competitive factor for anything, and even if it's 100x more expensive than similar solutions - at least people get a frame of reference to then see if the multiple is worth the value of storing in the Filecoin system; and with whatever risks may come with that.
I just don't get the logic behind going for PoW for Siacoin than going PoS. If people have to invest in hardware already, then why make them invest in even more unrelated hardware.
I wouldn't declare it "failed technology" just yet.