Category: Blockchain

Why Cryptocurrency and Computational Storage?

Marty Foltyn
Our new SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage webcast focuses on a hot topic – storage-based cryptocurrency. Blockchains, cryptocurrency, and the internet of markets are working to transform finance, wealth, safety, digital security, and trust. Storage-based cryptocurrencies had a breakout year in 2021. Proof of Space and Time is a new blockchain consensus that uses storage capacity to secure the blockchain. Decentralized file storage will enable alternatives to hyperscale data centers for hosting files and objects. Understanding the TCO of a storage system and optimizing the utilization of the storage hardware is critical in scaling these systems. Join our speakers, Jonmichael Hands of Chia Network and Eli Tiomkin of NGD Systems, for this discussion on how a new approach of auto-plotting SSDs combined with computational storage can lower the total TCO. Registration is free for this webcast on Tuesday, February 15 at 10:00 am Pacific time. Click on the link to register and see you there! https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/663/526154 The post Why Cryptocurrency and Computational Storage? first appeared on SNIA Compute, Memory and Storage Blog.

Non-Cryptic Answers to Common Cryptography Questions

AlexMcDonald
The SNIA Networking Storage Forum’s Storage Networking Security Webcast Series continues to examine the many different aspects of storage security. At our most recent webcast on applied cryptography, our experts dove into user authentication, data encryption, hashing, blockchain and more. If you missed the live event, you can watch it on-demand. Attendees of the live event had some very interesting questions on this topic and here are answer to them all: Q. Can hashes be used for storage deduplication?  If so, do the hashes need to be 100% collision-proof to be used for deduplication? A. Yes, hashes are often used for storage deduplication. It’s preferred that they be collision-proof but it’s not required if the deduplication software does a bit-by-bit comparison of any files that produce the same hash in order to verify if they really are identical or not. If the hash is 100% collision-proof then there is no need to run bit-by-bit comparisons of files that produce the same hash value. Q. Do cloud or backup service vendors use blockchain proof of space to prove to customers how much storage space is available or has been reserved?    Read More

Standards Watch: Blockchain Storage

Olga Buchonina Leave a comment

Is there a standard for Blockchain today? Not really. What we are attempting to do is to build one.

Since 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto’s White Paper was published and Bitcoin emerged, we have been learning about a new solution using a decentralized ledger and one of its applications: Blockchain.

Wikipedia defines Blockchain as follows:  “A blockchain, originally block chain, is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree).”

There are certain drawbacks which are significant in today’s applications for Blockchain solutions:

Read More

Why is Blockchain Storage Different?

J Metz
The SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum (ESF), specifically ESF Vice Chair, Alex McDonald, spent Halloween explaining storage requirements for modern transactions in our webcast, “Transactional Models & Their Storage Requirements.” Starting with the fascinating history of the first transactional system in a bakery in 1951 (really!), to a discussion on Bitcoin, it was an insightful look at the changing role of storage amid modern transactions. If you missed it, you can watch it on-demand at your convenience. We received some great questions during the live event. Here are answers to them all: Q. How many nodes are typical in the blockchain ledger? A. As many as are required to ensure that a single node or small number of nodes can’t crack the hard problem that gives you the right to add your blockchain as the next. There are estimated to be more than 11,000 Bitcoin nodes right now (see https://bitnodes.earn.com/), but not all blockchain systems have as many nodes (or such a hard problem to crack!) Read More