As popular as it may seem within our circles, the word “ Decentralization” didn’t really find a soft spot in everyone's hearts.
And even though you may be thinking that I just invented that phrase to make my introduction more interesting, you can rest assured that I am merely quoting the stats Google gave me.
Blinded by our own excitement of bringing new tech to the people, we haven’t noticed that no one is actually paying attention to what we are doing here. In a time when we aren’t even capable of comprehending the changes blockchain will bring to our society, it seems that people just don’t care.
Why is that? you may ask. Well… If they aren’t involved in the development and have no monetary incentive to be involved in any other way, why would they care?
In their eyes, blockchain developers are just teenage kids sitting in a garage trying to create illegal money that is used for crack cocaine purchases exclusively.
And I know what you are thinking.
The title said this will be about IPFS. Wtf is going on here?
We are getting there. I just want to point out some anomalies that the tech guys can’t see with the naked eye.
- Consumers care about functionality and user experience only
- Is it free? NO?!?!?? Get off my lawn!
- They don’t want to learn a bunch of stuff just so they can use your app
- If it freezes two times in a row it will be uninstalled. They won’t even bother to give you feedback on why they did it. They will just select “other” and leave the comment box blank. No respect whatsoever…
- If it creates more free time for entertainment consumption and takes care of serious business for them they will make an exception. A monthly subscription will be fine. As long as it doesn’t have to be renewed manually.
So if you ever wondered how far are we really from mass adoption, I would like to present an image to you.
Red pill?
What you see (I am guessing you are from the space and know this stuff) is Claymore getting ready to process some transactions and mine some ETH.
What your potential customer sees is Claymore’s Dual ETH + DCR/SC GPU Miner v6.3 followed by a scene from the Matrix. At best, they will think it’s a virus.
Why is that?
Because they don’t fucking care.
How can we make them care?
It’s time to talk IPFS.
Of the future ^^
In case you wondered here by mere chance and have no clue about IPFS let me explain it as simply as I can.
Imagine that every member of your family gets connected through an app on your phones. What this app does is connect all your unused storage (this is adjustable) and lets every member of the family share it.
So if your phone had 5 GB of storage, now you have access to 5 times that much but only if your brother doesn’t fill everything up with porn and memes.
How do you solve this issue?
You don’t. You should have thought about the storage allocation before you got into that mess.
Now to the important stuff.
Why is the app unique?
Because it makes every file, that is stored via that app, accessible in milliseconds as long as one member of your family is in your proximity. More distance equals more waiting time.
You can literally store a photo in Japan, travel half the world with your Dad on a vacation to Spain and download or edit that photo in an instance. Opposed to sending a request to Google’s datacenter in God-knows-where, hoping it’s not overcrowded and that it is online and waiting for the file to come back to you.
If that thing dies, so does your data. That’s why we want to add “de” to “centralization”.
Now zoom out a bit and connect all the phones in the world and what do you get? A completely decentralized internet stored on our own devices. No spying, no stealing, no hacking. Why?
BECAUSE BLOCKCHAIN.
What about security?
They would literally have to hack half of the phones on the planet at the exact same time to even get a chance to look at your nudes.
You would require ideal conditions for this to become a reality but you need not be bothered with the details. If you didn’t get it just watch this video.
Now that you (hopefully) understand what IPFS is, my dear ordinary and everyday consumer, do you think that this is something you would consider using?
I am no psychic but I will take a pessimistic estimate that 70% of the population would accept the offer instantly.
Free storage, maximum security and a chance to earn some cash on the side by renting your own storage?
They would eat that offer up like candy!
And that brings us to the next important question.
Why doesn’t the average consumer know about this amazing new thing?
Because we never told them about it and we can all agree that some hype would be encouraging for every person working on this tech right now.
Now let me elaborate on how we came into this position in the first place.
Please examine Exhibit A
The inventor of the decentralized internet and the liberator of our generation.
The Boy Genius
What is our boy genius lacking?
- Social skills and general awareness of their surroundings.
- Social skills and general awareness of their surroundings.
- Marketing skills are kept at a bare minimum in case they are needed for “whatever” and “whenever”.
- <if>questions asked<run>detailed_answers_about_the_code_and_infrastructure.ppt
Exhibit A invents the technology of tomorrow but Exhibit A will never make it popular. No one wants to listen to nerd language. If we want mass adoption, we want to bring in the big guns.
Behold, Exibit B
Tom Brady of mass adoption and master of all creation
While exhibit A has the skills to create, Exhibit B has the budget to pay for those skills and focus on marketing. A pure genius and a prime example of an excellent businessman if you ask me.
So when is out Tom Brady coming? When will we bring our amazing new technology in front of the faces of millions and possibly billions?
No one can say for sure because our Tom Brady is unpredictable. Our Tom Brady scans the field, looks for open receivers and sees an opportunity in them. When the time is right and the receiver is wide open, he will throw that pass and make sure it all ends with a touchdown.
Right now, I feel like he is warming up.
A lot of great things are happening in the space. If you are feeling curious, here is a list of apps that utilize IPFS technology.
An interesting list indeed. Furthermore, Filecoin seems to be making progress based on the updates they are putting out on their blog.
Things are happening…
Another pleasant surprise for me was AXEL Go, a storage app that is running on IPFS technology and secured by 150 master nodes (last time I checked).
This thing is stunningly user-friendly and that is the only reason I think Tom Brady is almost done with that warmup.
Look how clean this app is.
As far as average consumers are concerned, this is more than usable.
In case you want to test it, this app is free, comes with a ton of free storage that is calculated in AXEL tokens and it has a built-in video player. Do I even need to mention encryption?
The reason I want to highlight this app is because it is published by a well-known company that also made a file-sharing app. It is downloaded over 1 million times on the PlayStore.
As an added bonus this company is all about privacy and their storage app is as private as it can get. A decent IPFS ambassador if you ask me.
Why is all of this important and why am I wasting your time here?
Depending on your profession and interests the answer may be slightly different.
For the tech guys — You already knew all this stuff but seeing your own products through consumer's eyes can make things a bit easier to understand when those user numbers start stagnating. We are close but not quite there yet.
P. S. UX is crying for attention.
For the marketing guys — This is the technology of the future and we have to stay up to date if we want to get all of that sweet money with zero involvement in the technology itself. Referral programs are going to be deployed on a mass scale and we want to secure the best seats for that show.
And you, my curious reader and an ordinary man with generic interests, you can start celebrating!
Soon, you will be able to sell unused space on all of your devices to unknown strangers to store and share files that you will never be able to view. As the tech evolves, new possibilities and functionality will be shared with you.
If you are a fan of Cloud Gaming and online multiplayer games get ready for a revolution in latency — there will be none.
Your curiosity limitations will be compensated for. For this, you will need a wallet and that wallet will have a key made out of 20 random words and if you happen to lose that key you will lose the coins as well because this time, there is no forgot password much? button.