Isn't it integral to the way these dapps work however? Is there an other way to achieve the same results? After all eventually somebody has to pay the bill for there computations.
It seems to me that the big problem of dapps is not so much the fact that you need to pay to deploy them but that you have to pay so much to do anything meaningful. The system is extremely expensive compared to regular "not-trustless" distributed/cloud computing offerings out there.
For instance while browsing through the blockstack website I saw that the first such application was a "docs suite" (à la office/google docs) called "graphite": https://www.graphitedocs.com
That seemed interesting but my first thought was "man, if they store the files in the blockchain that must be absurdly expensive to use". They probably thought the same so, according to the FAQ at https://www.graphitedocs.com/faq :
>By default, your data is stored in a dedicated Microsoft Azure Blob. But you can and should connect your Blockstack Browser to your own cloud storage solutions (preferably multiple).
Oh. So that makes sense but doesn't that destroy the whole point of it? What if I decide to, say, use OpenOffice on my computer, encrypt the files using GnuPG and then upload them to dropbox, spideroak and some AWS bucket, wouldn't that effectively grant me the same privacy and control over my data?
I'm going to sound like a naysayer but it just looks like yet an other example of using blockchain for the sake of saying that you use the blockchain.
But of course it's just one dapp out of many. Let's see the next one, "stealthy": https://www.stealthy.im/
It's a "A secure decentralized communication platform". Now storing small text messages in the blockchain would still be very expensive but it might be acceptable, especially if you worry a lot about censorship or your message remaining available "forever".
>By default, your data is stored in a dedicated Microsoft Azure Blob. But you can and should connect your Blockstack Browser to your own cloud storage solutions (preferably multiple).
It seems to me that the big problem of dapps is not so much the fact that you need to pay to deploy them but that you have to pay so much to do anything meaningful. The system is extremely expensive compared to regular "not-trustless" distributed/cloud computing offerings out there.
For instance while browsing through the blockstack website I saw that the first such application was a "docs suite" (à la office/google docs) called "graphite": https://www.graphitedocs.com
That seemed interesting but my first thought was "man, if they store the files in the blockchain that must be absurdly expensive to use". They probably thought the same so, according to the FAQ at https://www.graphitedocs.com/faq :
>By default, your data is stored in a dedicated Microsoft Azure Blob. But you can and should connect your Blockstack Browser to your own cloud storage solutions (preferably multiple).
Oh. So that makes sense but doesn't that destroy the whole point of it? What if I decide to, say, use OpenOffice on my computer, encrypt the files using GnuPG and then upload them to dropbox, spideroak and some AWS bucket, wouldn't that effectively grant me the same privacy and control over my data?
I'm going to sound like a naysayer but it just looks like yet an other example of using blockchain for the sake of saying that you use the blockchain.
But of course it's just one dapp out of many. Let's see the next one, "stealthy": https://www.stealthy.im/
It's a "A secure decentralized communication platform". Now storing small text messages in the blockchain would still be very expensive but it might be acceptable, especially if you worry a lot about censorship or your message remaining available "forever".
>By default, your data is stored in a dedicated Microsoft Azure Blob. But you can and should connect your Blockstack Browser to your own cloud storage solutions (preferably multiple).
Oh. Nevermind then.