Doldrums no longer.
The Crypto Storage recent Market Cap Uptick from Flatline Fever says its true.
Or is it?
Time for TK to do a deep dive.
The Politics of Bitcoin have seen BTC surge close to US $100K Market Cap and 'the market' whales have jumped in to reprice related assets, Ethereum et al, and even the Crypto Storage market segment has benefited as a whole, from these broad market automated re-pricing moves.
That aside, let's look at the Crypto Market 'Value Delivered' Fundamentals, as they are delivered to the consumers of the 'Main Street' Online Storage Value these crypto projects purport to offer.
First here is today's ranking courtesy of CoinMarketCap :
These listings first of all are 'just a bit' misleading.
Not all the real Crypto Storage players actually delivering real value to the Main Street Consumer are listed in CoinMarketCap's Storage Category (No fault of CoinMarketCap), and well some other players that also offer storage choose not to be listed in this 'voluntary' category listing, for their vision and actual set of demonstrated capabilities sees storage as only a subset capability of their total offering.
Take for instance ICP "The Internet Computer', Worldcoin, upstart Swarm and the Autonomi Network, the latter, likely the comeback kid of Crypto, given Autonomi was the first ICO EVER, first launched under the name Maidsafe, and now about to re-launch with it's Token Genesis Event January 25th, 2025, just 8 weeks away.
In the latter's case Maidsafe coin is still out there but so lightly traded, and its counter part eMaid, which runs as an ERC20 token same. The Autonomi Network is not just a re-branding exercise, its a technology pivot back to the original design, which now actually works, after exploring the posibility of using distributed Proof of Stack dPoS, only to find out a DAG with Proof of Work suited their distributed ledger needs @ scale much better.
You can find Maidsafe on CoinMarketCap in both forms buy you must know what you are looking for...
ICP on the other hand, is literally THE biggest Flatline Fever player in the Crypto Storage Market with a Market Cap of US$6.2B ranked #26 in CoinMarketcap.com. ICP also does 'Compute' and offers a bunch of other useful capabilities to the Main Street Consumer of crypto 'REAL' value. (we will get to what 'real' means a bit further on in the post)
Swarm is a little known player, ranked #849 with a very small Market Cap of just US$29 million, however Autonomi has them on their radar in their White Paper, so I must raise an eyebrow and ask 'Why'? (A bit more on SWARM later in this post)
# 56 Ranked US$2.5B Market Cap Worldcoin, unlike Filecoin ranked #35 at US $ 4.1B Market Cap, uses but does not come out and say they actually use IPFS 'Inter Planetary File System'. (Worldcoin do facilitate the use of IPFS to keep track of data via their network in their own way)
Filecoin is clearly marketed as a proximity storage value to the their customers, and fully monetizes IPFS with on/off ramp fees tracked in a publicly scannable Filecoin blockchain. Filecoin's own native Virtual Machine is called FVM equipped with it's own Smart Contract Language variant of Solidity. The Filecoin FVM can also run what Filecoin calls 'virtual EVM' (Ethereum Virtual Machine) on top of FVM, with some support for existing Solidity Smart Contract without change, which Filecoin says runs a bit slower. That means Filecoin runs transaction settlement via the ERC protocol with settlement consensus managed using distributed Proof of Stake.
REAL MAIN STREET CONSUMER VALUE: HOW DO THE CRYPTO STORAGE PLAYERS COMPARE
Ok, let's talk about real value the every day consumer on online crypto storage actually WANTS!
Let's first see how Autonomi compares everyone, since they have been around the longest in the Crypto Storage game and are veteran developers in the space albeit a sub segment of value they offer.
The Maidsafe team behind Autonomi (Yes Maidsafe and David Irvine are still going full blast), sees the value world of the 'Internet plus Storage' described as capabilities being offered to the Main Street consumer, per the column on the left, where each row label describes the value delivered by Autonomi and each of their competitors:
A Notable inclusion here is #67 Arweave with a MarketCap of US$ 1.6B, which was not on my Crypto Storage radar initially, when I started this market research post. Their website certainly says they are in the Crypto Storage game, so why not be categorized as such on CoinMarketcap? Hardly an oversight so worth a dig on my part. (More on this just a bit later in the post)
Clearly from Autonomi's perspective, Holochain, ICP and then Arweave have strong crypto storage offerings, if you like the whole idea of paying fees for uploading and downloading data. (I don't)
The item that caught my eye with Autonomi, was "EASY NODE EARNING". :)
So I did fully jump onboard this Autonomi project (Full Disclosure) about six months ago and started running a few nodes on my daily Internet Driver, a lowly i5 10thgen ACER Aspire running MS Win11 with 8GB of RAM and SATA SSD of 256GB of storage, my writing notebook.
So I am biased, really biased, toward Autonomi, because this crap machine now actually earns ERC-20 crypto DAILY in the Beta ENOUGH TO PAY FOR MY DAILY UPLOADS via MY ONETIME only tiny upload fee , where I can download for free, forever. It all just works and its easy.
My Keys (and Seed Phrase) my data. Forever.
In fact the Autonomi Beta and now Early Production Release safenodes I run, all three of them, in about 768MB of RAM consuming a fixed105 Gigabyte of storage used for storing Quantum hack proof encryption protected data chunks from other file uploaders on my 'beast' of a notebook has been working nicely the last two months, a full two months before Autonomi's TGE January 25th, 2025.
It took Maidsafe awhile to get this all working, the Autonomi Network I must say that. Multiple false starts after their ICO did not help. But they did use their Scottish frugality to sip on their 'measly' US $15M ICO windfall, the first and biggest of their type, made some wise trades and hires and now they are ready. It's been 18 years since David Irvine pre-conceived of Internet 2.0 BEFORE Bitcoin showed up. He and his small team have kept at it, despite the Omnicoin troubles and dPoS dead end detour.
Ok Enough about Maidsafe and their Journey, albeit an Epic one, becoming more epic.
DIFFERENTIATED, SUSTAINABLE Main Street Value is what all smart investors are looking for so which of these items in column A qualify, as listed by Autonomi, and are 'gamechangers'?
Here is my list of gamechangers:
(From a Crypto Storage USER perspective, as Main Street USERs are 'the market' for the differentiated value created by this online crypto storage market segment)
EASY NODE EARNING: What I earn pays for my upload spend if I run a few storage nodes.
NO TRANSACTION FEES: If I send or convert my tokens from my MetaMask Wallet I don't pay Fees
NO ONGOING STORAGE CHARGE- I pay once a small fee to upload, that's it
NO EGRESS FEES: This means data download fees, there aren't any (Speak English Autonomi!)
PERPETUAL DATA: This means my data is stored permanently and privately forever
So if this machine crashes and burns, the stuff I uploaded is always there
PRIVATE OR PUBLIC DATA: I get to choose what is seen by the public, I am in control.
NANO PAYMENTS: This means I can pay fractions of tokens peer to peer anytime.
EASY TO INSTALL/CONFIGURE/UPDATE (Not on Autonomi's list, but this is on my list)
Existing Incumbent Storage Market Vendors with Differentiated Value for Main St. Users
When Comparing Autonomi to Holochain, Arweave and ICP, I would expect the latter three 'AS IS' to continue their uptick strongly through the first half of 2025. So for me they are a short buy, then sell.
As for the other ones who did not make the Top four
#Filecoin, #Bittorrent, #Siacoin, #AIOZ Network, #Worldcoin, #Flux and #Storj, et al
as far as their Main St. End User Value in the Crypto Storage market space is concerned, they either lack the capabilities and/or differentiated value End Users want and need, as seen through my investor lens, moi, or they are financial instruments. So you are on your own, I can't help you here at these speculative casino tables. (If the CFTA gets their way, post SEC control per whispers I have heard in alt media lately about what the incoming US Administration is going to do, then these vendors may be in for a world of future hurt trying to prove they are utility tokens in their current state)
In the case of Autonomi, well I am in. ALL in. (This is my full disclosure)
Autonomi Network is not a big gamble anymore. Their tech finally works and its brilliant.
Autonomi has finally delivered a permissioned Internet 2.0 in which you are in control of your data and which is also easy to install, configure, update and easy to use. You run a few nodes on your desktop or notebook (and soon mobile device) and, Autonomi Network automatically load balances the uploads evenly across all safenodes operating and, if your nodes are responsive and stay online reliably, pays you token value you can then spend to upload your own private data saved permanently forever, free to download at any time.
Autonomi promises WEB3 features coming in time. OK their vision is in the right place, we will see when the first WEB3 apps start to show up, running on Autonomi Network.
Right now though,
the DAO "Distributed Autonomous Organization of the Autonomi Network pays you for keeping the network up and running by running a few nodes on your desktop or notebook, tokens you receive in your designated wallet post TGE, which you can use right away as the one time payment to upload your own files , stored forever, free to download as many times as you like, any time from any computer, provided you have the keys to those files.
That's good enough for me as an investor, because I can be actively involved with my investment in Autonomi, which is running a few nodes on my notebook, now re-purposed to store encrypted blocks and earn token value, tokens I created by Autonomi Network and sent to me for running my three safenodes so I can pay one time with these same tokens to store my private files forever on what is really Internet 2.0, the Autonomy Network.
A ROBUST, COMPETITIVE ONLINE CRYPTO STORAGE MARKET THAT PAYS YOU IS EMERGING FAST
With #ICP, #Arweave and #Holochain in play, plus Autonomi soon to have their IGE January 25th, 2025,
there is RIGHT NOW, a really competitive market emerging for Crypto Storage with four viable players to choose from, where the end user will make choices based on the mix of capabilities and value they receive from these vendors.
By comparing these four vendors differentiated useful Main Street value which in my opinion, is required to get wide spread end user adoption on Main Street, the differentiated technical value created by each needs to ALSO be in an easy to install, configure, upgrade and use, end user form.
For Autonomi Network, Maidsafe have created the above EASY to consume differentiations, and it is just the beginning of a long journey for Autonomi after their TGE,
upward to the Moon at some point.
For 'The Internet Computer', ArWeave and Holochain, these worthy crypto storage projects now have some real competition in the Crypto Storage space coming at them fast in Autonomi,
which is likely to get all three of them,
to improve their Main Street differentiated value User ease of use improved and,
also get the three of them to re-consider where they Host their Layer 1 chain operations, because they could easily also host their Node blockchain data on the Autonomi Network, at much lower cost than they are doing it now.
That means ALL three competitors could easily download and and run Autonomi Network safenodes, and earn #Autonomi Tokens to pay for their own Blockchain Storage.
As for #Swarm
Not much bzz, but it does sound sexy, it's after all consensual, another word for permissioned computation I am assuming with permissionless apps allowed to mount on their Blockchain?
Seriously, I need to do more homework, SWARM's link is in the pic above, which tells me at first glance Swarm bzz may be Ethereum centric. If any of my readers know anything about Swarm please hit the comments below and let us all know.
I hope this post, now long,
has provided some insights into the evolving world of Crypto Storage,
'for the people',
not the speculators. ;)
TK over and out.
P.S- There is some altbuzz out there about Bram Cohen making a 'financially engineered' comeback with CHIA. That is one imo, to watch, if Cohen gets a big load of cash from NYC and the blessing of the financial communities and Wall Street, where there is imo, if that happens, a 50/50 likelihood it will be successful because there are some big tech hurdles to fixing CHIA.
#CHIA at the moment is hugely energy and storage wasteful in both solving the nonce and securing blocks on that blockchain, so its sounds like maybe Cohen has remedied the problem by using the unused block space created, we will see.
I speak from first hand experience about CHIA having worked closely with a 'seriously seasoned' Linux tech who tried CHIA out on some OTS VERY Fast storage hardware. CHIA was tested, measured and found seriously wanting, but that was three years ago. Maybe Cohen fixed it, we will see.
*****
