There are many qualities that are desirable when designing decentralized storage solutions – decentralization being chief among them. But aside from the obvious properties – see also security – there are three traits in particular that are desirable. In fact not so much desirable as essential if web3 storage layers are to be capable of powering the data-hungry dapps that are on their way.
These qualities, which combine to form what’s informally known as the blockchain storage trilemma, are as follows: scalability, random access, and smart contract integration. Taken on their own, these concepts might not make a lot of sense so let’s unpack them to identify the specifications and trade-offs that data layers must make when iterating upon incumbent solutions.
While blockchain storage may seem like a niche domain reserved for a particular subset of web3 geeks, it’s far more critical than it may sound. It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of blockchain is predicated upon the ability of data layers to achieve this trilemma. But doing so, much like achieving the original blockchain trilemma of optimizing for security, decentralization, and scalability, is surprisingly tricky.
Why Better Blockchain Storage Matters
The ability for dapps to access greater amounts of decentralized data is particularly important when it comes to supporting emerging use cases such as AI. Greater data availability expands the range of dapps that can be supported on Layer 1 blockchains, driving innovation and pushing the boundaries of what decentralized applications can achieve.
Artificial intelligence in particular is heavily reliant on large, diverse datasets to train models, make predictions, and drive intelligent decision-making. The integration of decentralized data with AI will create new opportunities for AI-powered dapps, enabling trustless, privacy-preserving, and censorship-resistant applications. The sort of data these dapps will consume is likely to be measured in the exabytes rather than gigabytes – multiples ahead of anything current data layers can deliver.
But even if AI wasn’t threatening to disrupt everything it touches, dapps encompassing other use cases will also consume vastly increased amounts of data in the coming years, requiring L1 and L2 chains to rapidly scale. By offloading data storage and querying functions to decentralized storage networks, while keeping only essential onchain metadata, blockchains such as Solana and Ethereum can support hundreds of thousands of new dapps without overburdening the core network.
Optimizing for Three Properties Simultaneously
The concept of the blockchain storage trilemma has been popularized by Xandeum, the Solana data layer that naturally believes it’s arrived at a workable solution. And to be fair to Xandeum, its vision for scaling Solana makes a lot of sense. By integrating scalable storage directly into Solana, it extends the network’s capabilities, making it a fully-fledged decentralized server that can access compute and scalable storage alike in exabyte quantities.
But Xandeum is by no means the only project chipping away at this three-pronged challenge: other web3 solutions are attempting to replicate the same feat on other networks with varying degrees of success. Regardless of the architecture of the blockchain in question, such projects always run up against the same three challenges that hold the key to mastering decentralized storage – scalability, random access, and smart contract integration. Let’s look more closely at why each of these attributes matters.
Three Pillars That Work as One
When we talk about blockchain scalability, we’re generally referring to speed and throughput i.e. how many transactions per second a network can support. While these qualities also matter in the context of blockchain storage, the real scalability issue here concerns storage. A scalable web3 storage solution should be able to support large and ever-growing amounts of data, ideally reaching exabyte-scale or more.
For blockchain-based systems, scalability must account for both the volume of data and the number of users accessing the network. This is crucial, as many decentralized applications require large datasets including media files, sensor data, and transaction records. Just as the 1 megabyte home computers of the early 90s couldn’t hold a single video file from our modern camera phones, the dapps of tomorrow will consume more data than incumbent web3 data layers can presently hold.
Then we have the matter of smart contract integration. For dapps to natively integrate into existing L1s, storage solutions need to be easily queryable, adaptable, and responsive to the logic of smart contracts. Data retrieval and manipulation must be fast, secure, and optimized for the deterministic nature of blockchain-based smart contracts.
Finally, we have random access, which describes the ability to efficiently retrieve any piece of data at any given time, regardless of where it is stored within a decentralized network. This is critical for dapps that need real-time data to function, such as financial applications that require market data or IoT applications processing sensor readings. Unlike archival storage systems designed for long-term storage, decentralized storage must provide live, interactive access to data, supporting frequent queries, updates, and interactions.
Building decentralized storage solutions that support scalability, native smart contract functionality, and random access calls for solving complex challenges related to data distribution, retrieval, and integration with blockchain frameworks. As dapps grow in complexity and data demands, it’s clear that default L1 and L2 storage provisions simply won’t cut it. Balancing the trade-offs between decentralization, performance, and ease of use will be key to solving the storage trilemma, allowing web3 to realize its full potential.
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