Open Web Community Summit: The Future of Storage Capacity

Dystopia Labs recently hosted the Open Web Community Summit for Creators & Community, co-presented by NEAR Protocol and Gitcoin. The event mainly focused on NFTs and featured 50+ speakers and dozens of artists and creators from all over the world.

During the event, Protocol Labs Engineering Manager Mikeal Rogers joined Co-Founder & CEO of Pinata.Cloud Kyle Tut, Co-Founder of 3Box Labs Danny Zuckerman, and CEO & Co-Founder of SIA and Skylink Labs David Vorick for the panel “The Future of Storage Capacity; Storing Art for the Future.”

You can watch the full video here.

During the panel discussion, the group addressed the importance of NFT permanence, and why choosing a decentralized and permanent storage solution is important to prevent rug pulls and protect cultural NFT data long term.

One way IPFS and Filecoin addressed the rug-pull issue is through content-based addressing, where content is retrieved from the network of nodes on IPFS that collectively uphold and maintain a decentralized record of content. Most web-based solutions today use location-based addressing, which retrieves online information from specific locations on the web, like URLs. URLs can be changed or hacked, which is why a content-based addressing solution provides better security for data. IPFS and Filecoin actually offer a free storage solution, nft.storage, where individuals can store NFT data securely and resiliently.

The panel also touched on different use cases of NFTs beyond art, including with music, media, academic research, intellectual property, and even supply chains. This brought up the issue of maintaining data.

Said Kyle Tut, “The way we often talk about this is, ‘Is DaVinci responsible for maintaining the Mona Lisa?’ and the answer to that is, ‘No.’ The Louvre Museum now takes care of the Mona Lisa and so when you start looking at NFTs that way, you actually have to define who is responsible for the NFT files or data after it’s minted.”

This was an especially important topic for creators, who may want to consider how their NFT data will be maintained over the life of the asset. One way some are considering is through a data DAO, where members actively maintain NFT art like the Louvre, but in a decentralized way.

Other hot topics from this session included net neutrality, Elinor Ostrom’s idea of The Commons, how creators can use NFTs to involve their fans, and the idea of NFT mining. Watch the full video at https://www.crowdcast.io/e/open-web-community-summit/15.