Harnessing decentralized solutions can boost the safety and reach of academic research.
The invaluable data, the product of extensive academic research, is housed within various institutions worldwide. The centralized model of data storage, however, is causing concern among these institutions aiming to safeguard crucial information while ensuring its availability.
Senior Fellow at the Filecoin Foundation and the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW), Danny O’Brien, highlighted the potential risk of data loss in academic institutions due to centralized storage models. Supporting this concern, a recent survey by the Filecoin Foundation disclosed that nearly 71% of Americans have experienced the loss of information and records due to factors like broken hyperlinks or locked digital accounts.
Securing and Disseminating Data through Decentralized Storage
In response to these issues, some educational institutions have taken the initiative of adopting decentralized data storage models to protect their data sets. A number of top-tier universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, and the University of South Carolina are using Filecoin to archive, safeguard, and store their critical data via blockchain technology, noted O’Brien.
An illustration of this shift can be seen with MIT’s current collaboration with FFDW. The three-year project is aimed at investigating the potential benefits of decentralized technology for MIT’s Open Learning programs, including the “OpenCourseWare”, a program providing free online content from over 2,500 MIT courses, thus allowing global access to the prestigious university’s content.
The partnership with FFDW enables MIT’s Open Learning programs to use decentralized storage for cataloguing and preserving its OpenCourseWare materials. O’Brien noted that MIT will soon be conducting public seminars discussing the challenges and possibilities linked with the decentralized web. He added, “The shift towards decentralized Web3 data storage in education provides a cryptographic guarantee that data will remain available and unaltered over time, thus safeguarding their essential data indefinitely.”
Democratizing and Protecting Large Data Sets through Decentralized Storage
In addition to MIT, the University of Utah is using decentralized storage to democratize and protect access to substantial data sets. The university’s Center for Extreme Data Management Analysis and Visualization recently integrated a solution from Seal Storage — a decentralized cloud storage platform powered by Filecoin — to augment its existing centralized infrastructure, according to Valerio Pascucci, Professor of Computer Science at the university.
The decentralized storage model provided by Seal Storage enables the National Science Data Fabric (NSDF) to further its goal of developing new methods for easy access to scientific information. Pascucci believes that this decentralized approach has improved security while breaking down barriers to scientific investigation, especially for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), small colleges, and other disadvantaged organizations that traditionally struggle to access the necessary data.
Potential and Challenges of Decentralized Storage
Despite the growing adoption of decentralized storage models by universities, there remain some barriers to full-scale adoption. Seal Storage’s Chief Technology Officer, Jacques Swanepoel, commented that identifying specific data blocks on the blockchain is a complex task, requiring creative software strategies to accurately track customer data on the blockchain.
Still, the adoption of decentralized storage models by academic institutions marks a significant trend. Despite being generally considered slow to change, academia has shown initiative in adopting blockchain-based technologies, including decentralized storage.
This trend seems to be continuing, with the University of Utah and NSDF exploring additional use cases with different universities. As Pascucci indicated, despite the high-profile NASA use case due to its size and relevance to global climate change, they are already pursuing other use cases such as the experimental facility of the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, where data is collected and shared annually with thousands of scientists across the nation.
As the world increasingly shifts towards a digital landscape, the importance of secure, accessible, and sustainable data storage solutions cannot be overstated. The adoption of decentralized storage models by academic institutions illustrates a significant stride in harnessing technology to safeguard and democratize data. Furthermore, the move towards blockchain technology in data storage not only offers robust security features but also fosters a more inclusive scientific and academic community by ensuring that important data sets are readily available and accessible to all, regardless of their location or resources.