Cloud storage nowadays is nothing new to us. There are many popular providers out there, such as Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive. They are cloud storage platforms for data backup and synchronization between multi-devices. Though these cloud services have widely been used, there are still a number of shortcomings:
They are expensive. If you need large storage space, for example, Google Drive will cost you $10/m for 1TB. It equals to $120/year if billed monthly.
The transfer speed becomes slower when you are not close to the data center.
Service providers have access to all your data. The company may use your personal information or data for AI training or big-data analysis. It is a big deal if you value privacy.
In response to the defects mentioned above, a young and talented team is developing a new generation of cloud storage based on our PPIO platform — It is called NextDrive. NextDrive encourages users to share their idle hard disks in exchange for free cloud storage. The exchange ratio is two to one. For example, a 10G hard disk exchanges up to 5G NextDrive cloud storage, while a 12TB hard disk exchanges up to 6TB NextDrive cloud space, and so forth. The more local disk space you share, the larger cloud disk space you earn.
Why does NextDrive provide such a free service? Doesn’t the company need profit? This is simply a business strategy to attract users. NextDrive is essentially a decentralized storage system, that says the more users on the platform, they more stable and faster it will be.
Another possible question is the exchange rate. Why the ratio is 2:1 rather than 1:1? Because they way NextDrive is designed is to utilize half of the hard disk to store your own data, at the same time it uses the rest to backup and accelerate another users’ files. The first half functions like a NAS. The other half acts as a decentralized miner node.
In exchange, NextDrive gives you a free cloud storage that usually costs you money. Moreover, you will enjoy two main benefits.
First. You will never lose your data. Your data is not be lost on NextDrive even the hard disks crash. PPIO technology guarantees that all data can be recovered from other users’ hard disks.
From a technical point of view, NextDrive is built on PPIO (https://pp.io) blockchain. Our technology makes a full copy of users data on its own disk and saves multiple copies of fragments of each file in several decentralized drives. PPIO’s algorithm can detect missing copies at the time users are offline. Then immediately makes an extra copy of the missing part to maintain the number of copies sufficient.
Second, You can enjoy fast data transmission speed just like BitTorrent. NextDrive takes advantage of the P2P data transfer technology of PPIO, which designed by the founding team of PPLive, a P2P streaming product that served billions of users before.
From the technical point of view, P2P data transfer is faster than the centralized data transfer. If you think of the transmission bandwidth as a highway, the data is the cargo carried by trucks. When we request the file, the traditional centralized data transfer technology distributes data directly from the data center. Just like all trucks carrying your cargoes that depart from the same station. What will happen if above millions of trucks are taking the same route and going to the same destination? Traffic jams. Because of the traffic, you’ll wait longer to have all your cargos. If you live far from the departure station, it takes even longer. But the P2P technology runs differently. It requests trucks to carry your cargo from several nearest stations, assigning them different routes, and schedule different departure times to maximum the efficiency. It is less likely that they will get stuck on the road. So you will get your cargo earlier. PPIO’s P2P algorithm chooses the data stored on the nearest nodes and schedule and assigns them to you from the fastest route. Therefore you can enjoy a faster upload/download speed.
You may ask a question — — Is the data less secure when stored in others’ hard disk? The answer is no. Your data on NextDrive is end-to-end encrypted, it is split into pieces and being stored in various hard disks. Each hard disk only holds a piece of your encrypted data, and only you hold the keys to collect them back. That says, no one else can access your original data without your permission. It is the same security level as the Bitcoin wallet.
You can share any of your idle hard disks. For example, your idle home computer, your idle laptop, or even a USB plugged into the router or TV set-top box. You can also purchase a home-specific hardware pBox from the NextDrive team to use NetDrive services. As long as you can keep them online, you are eligible to enjoy the NextDrive service.
I like the idea of NextDrive. Because the community is a significant part of the development of blockchain. NextDrive is built on a reciprocal network where every user enjoys a faster and private cloud storage service for free by helping the others achieve the same result.
Finally, make a comparison:
Google Drive
Price: $120 each 1T Year
Speed: The farther away from the data center, the slower the speed
Privacy: Google has access to all data and may be used for AI training and big data analysis at any time.
NextDrive
Price: Free
Speed: P2P transmission, everywhere is very fast, just like BitTorrent
Privacy: Data exists on your own hard drive, only you have your own key, bitcoin-level security
NextDrive is based on PPIO blockchain and designed by our partner NextDrive team. Its beta test is coming on Q1 2019. Want to get an invitation code for the beta? Register here.
It is indeed a service that is too good to be true. What are you waiting for?
Article author：Wayne Wong
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