Debates abound on the hosting of cloud computing within a centralized or decentralized network. For the moment, we only find niche cases.
According to Avivah Litan , Vice President of Gartner, blockchain opens up a possibility for decentralized cloud computing. This risks disrupting computational approaches and Web 3.0. But it won’t happen overnight. She also claims that for non-blockchain applications, decentralizing cloud computing can be attractive. If you think about it more closely, a move could reduce certain costs. Accepting this alternative would amount to operating a nebulous form of cloud computing.
Web 3.0: what advantages in decentralization?
The parts of cloud computing attached to Web 3.0 activities are not yet ready for such a change. Litan argues that for now, cryptocurrency fluctuations do not yet hog a large amount of data. However, when NFT introduces large objects, distributed type storage will be required. A first solution has been proposed: the IPFS (InterPlanetary File System). This type of peer-to-peer data storage within a distributed system, as well as the Arweave, will strengthen it in terms of security and reliability.
A first obstacle to the use of distributed systems lies in the abundance of functional problems . People interested in decentralization are those who want to set up their own node, or those who develop applications. And the latter require a strong capacity in calculation.
The best advantage of decentralization is the financial advantage it reserves. The centralized structure sometimes makes it seem impossible to move workloads from one location to another.
Decentralized cloud computing
The importance of the decentralized cloud certainly varies depending on user needs. Those most interested in the decentralized cloud are miners who benefit from lower-cost computing. Their objective being to be able to earn a little money on the edges. Which explains the need for a certain power in the cloud and therefore the need to pay AWS.
For the moment, when creating applications, developers prefer the most accessible cloud and still land on the main blockchain. This is where the execution of Ethereum or Bitcoin is smooth.
It can therefore be expected that decentralized cloud computing as well as blockchain will expand their activities in the future. But maybe not in the near future. This will increase when developers want to encrypt compute-intensive workloads while paying the minimum.
For non-blockchain applications , the decentralized cloud comes in handy. This allows greater control over the environment where they deploy, spend and control their activities.
