Decentralize to stabilize: How distributed data saves money, protects privacy, and boosts resiliency

On this episode of Connected Nation, we’ll explore how StorX is disrupting traditional cloud storage with decentralized, blockchain-powered solutions—in what they say is delivering privacy, cost savings, and resilience through a global network of thousands of nodes. 

Plus, we’ll discuss how it impacts everything from digital empowerment to the future of broadband infrastructure.

Recommended links:

• StorX Network website
• StorX LinkedIn
• StorX Twitter

Transcript

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Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (00:06):
This is Connected Nation, an award-winning podcast focused on all things broadband from closing the digital divide to improving your internet speeds. We talked technology topics that impact all of us, our families, and our neighborhoods. On today's podcast, we're talking with Murphy John, chief Growth Officer for Store X Network. We'll explore how store X is disrupting traditional cloud storage with decentralized blockchain powered solutions, and what they say is delivering privacy, cost savings, and resilience through a global network of thousands of nodes. Find out what that means, plus we'll discuss how it impacts everything from digital empowerment to the future of broadband infrastructure. I'm Jessica Desen, and this is Connected Nation. I'm Jessica Desen, and today my guest is Murphy John, chief Growth Officer for Store X Network. Welcome Murphy. 

Murphy John, Chief Growth Officer for StorX Network (01:03):
Hey, Jessica. Thanks for having me in the podcast. Really excited to be the part of it. 

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (01:08):
I'm really excited to have you. Um, I think it's really cool. We were chatting just a little bit before we started that You're all the way in Dubai, right? 

Murphy John, Chief Growth Officer for StorX Network (01:15):
That's right. 

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (01:17):
<laugh>. What is Dubai? Like? I have this image in my head that it's just this opulent beautiful place that it, that by ingenuity just came up out of the, uh, desert <laugh> is, am I pretty close? <laugh>. It, 

Murphy John, Chief Growth Officer for StorX Network (01:29):
It, it's one of the best, uh, examples of what human can create and, uh, what the vision is. So if you have a great vision, you can really build great things in the world. 

Jessica Denson (01:40):
It's, it's, it's really cool. Plus there's, there's been some fast and furious movies, <laugh> with some crazy stunts in Dubai. Uh, um, by the way, I'm in Louisville, Kentucky, so we are around the globe from each other, which is just another incredible thing about technology and the, the ingenuity of people. I think it's just very cool. So I really appreciate you. What time is it there for you? 

Murphy John (02:01):
It's seven right now. Seven three. Nice. 

Jessica Denson (02:06):
In the morning or evening? 

Murphy John (02:07):
In the evening. 

Jessica Denson (02:08):
Oh, well, I appreciate you staying after hours for me hours. It's a normal time for me right now. 10:00 AM So I appreciate that and I look forward to our discussion. So let's dive in. Um, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to store X. 

Murphy John (02:23):
Okay, so as, as everybody might been doing, uh, I, I've been working with store chi, uh, with store X as Chief growth officer for the past four years. Uh, we started a journey somewhere around 2021. And, uh, that's, that's when we, uh, thought that, uh, we were observing the, the, uh, the hyperscalers. Like all, all the data in the world are practically stored with only five, five hyperscalers around the world. That means 80% of the data, anything, any, any various store would reside on this, uh, hyperscale. And that, that's kind of very dangerous scenario because, uh, putting up so much of data in, in so few service providers can lead to, uh, something like monopolistic situation. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And these, uh, and the data is all to, because all of this then follow very standard protocol for storing the data across all the global, uh, network.

(03:15)
It becomes really difficult. And if any of the zones go down, it can create real havoc in a life. You must be aware, last year there were, there were pretty, a couple of times when Amazon went down, when Microsoft Azure went down, uh, life came to standstill. There were airports which were not functioning. There were government offices, which were down. There were private offices, uh, which had a lot of problems. So, so this, this basically, we were trying to see how we can remove this kind of dependency on few of the monopolistic powers. And what happens is if you have so much of power given to so few service providers, they can really, uh, dictate terms for, uh, for all the end users and that that's something that's really bad. So they can raise up the prices, they can give unwanted terms, which we have to accept.

(04:01)
And then, uh, that's how we started looking into better ways of storing the data. And there was a lot of abuse that was happening around the data. There was ransomware virus, which is, which become a major threat to all the organization in the world today. Then there was virus infection, there are data being deleted, data being hacked in. So we were really looking in like pondering in like, what's the better way to store the data? Is there something really better? And is there something that can guarantee you that the data will remain intact? Not by some brand names it, but the architecture itself. So that's when we, uh, started looking into ways how we can do, ensure that the data remains secure. And then the blockchain was just taking up, and since I was from the cloud background, uh, our foundry has been in the cloud background for more than, uh, 20 years now.

(04:50)
So we, we kind of started looking into it doing deep dives, and that's why we came into this, uh, this thing like we can, we can merge our expertise in cloud and bring in blockchain on board and ensure that the data remains really intact and private. So, so the promise that we are trying to make, uh, when we, like, we committed to the users, like whoever is storing any data on storage, it can never be hacked in, it cannot be, uh, accessed by any third party. It gives you one of the most robust, uh, privacy protection plus it enforces resiliency and robustness. So your data remains really real secure. 

Jessica Denson (05:27):
Secure. So is is you essentially, you're storage, uh, you store this data, but you're decentralizing. Is that what you're saying? 

Murphy John (05:35):
That's, that's right. So it, it's like, uh, we use blockchain mechanism and decentralize, uh, DT technology basically to ensure that the data remains distributed and never the complete, uh, copy of a data residing in any single place. 

Jessica Denson (05:50):
So, uh, when you talk about no nodes, am I saying that right? <laugh>, 3000 plus nodes, how does, without giving away any proprietary information, of course, explain what that is exactly and where that fits into this model. 

Murphy John (06:04):
I'll explain you, I'll give you the, both the perspective, how the hyperscale is work and how storage is different from them. Okay. And mostly, so traditionally, uh, with the cloud storage was introduced, uh, it was like, uh, most of data, if not all the data is stored as a single file in a single location. So what that means is if a hacker or if any others, any other, any other providers are able to access your servers, they can access your data by default because your data is lying unencrypted. Even if you're encrypting it, the keys would be lying with the service provider. That means they can always, uh, decrypt it and see what's there lying in your data. Okay. So what happens? So how are we different from this kind of thing? So when, when you're using storage to store your data, what we do is basically first we encrypt your data in your users' device itself.

(06:52)
So you are using a laptop, you're using a desktop to upload the data, to storage, the data gets locked in your laptop or desktop, and then the encrypted file is transferred to a platform where it gets broken down into multiple smaller fragments. And this fragments are then replicated, and then we distribute it across to all the nodes. So depending upon your file size, your file kind, this, uh, the, the software will decide how many pieces has to be made. It'll make those pieces, it'll replicate those pieces, and it'll send only one specific fragment to one node. That means your data is never lying, unin encrypted in any, any of the nodes. Even if the node provider gets access to the node, he's able to access and see what is the data. It would just be a fragmented, encrypted piece of data, which would not make any sense.

(07:39)
Now, for anyone to, to be able to decrypt those files and see the entire content of the file, he will need the access to other multiple files, multiple nodes, which are located everywhere in the world. So that makes it very, very difficult for anyone to hack into this part of it. And because we are encrypting it, it gives you a very high level of privacy because we are fragmenting it. It gives you resiliency and robustness. And because we have multiple copies, you don't have to worry about one zone going down or one node going down. Your data would still be accessible for all the uses. So this is something that is really very unique to the decentralized cloud storage platform. 

Jessica Denson (08:19):
So are you guys, um, all over the world? Are you in the US as well? 

Murphy John (08:23):
We are all over the world. So we have nodes located and, uh, almost all the continents starting from US, Europe, back, uh, India, Australia, Africa, we have all the zones and we have nodes, storage nodes, which are located everywhere. So your data gets spread across multiple continents. It is not residing any single continent. 

Jessica Denson (08:44):
Gotcha. So, uh, two things, A little bit of a curve ball, uh, beyond what we've talked about or what's in the script that I, I usually work on with you guys. Um, there's a lot of talk in the US about data centers and ai. Where do you think stor X fits within those conversations? I know there are two different conversations, so feel free to pick one or the other, and then we, I'll I'll remind you <laugh> about the other one. Um, where do you think it fits? 

Murphy John (09:11):
Yeah, so I'll, I'll give you, uh, two, uh, extreme perspectives that we are using. So we are basically a storage com. Uh, we are storage, uh, network. So anything, uh, we are an S3 compatible storage. That means anything, any object based storage that you want to store in our platform, you can easily store, like anywhere in the world you can use. It's, it's basically the S3 standards, which, which all the other, uh, storage providers use around the world. So we are then S3 compatible storage. So that means whenever you're storing your data, we adhere to the same standards which the hyperscalers are using. So that means you don't have to store, make any arrangement adjustment or any new changes when you are using our platform to store the data. The second part is, uh, because we are offering a very high level of privacy and security, people are using us as the storage layer for training that ai, like, like what happens is these companies and organizations around the world have huge amount of data, which is like very private, or which they don't want to put into any other, uh, data source because, uh, they don't want their data, the ai, the common AI to be training on that data because it has access. 

(10:20)
So what they do is they use us as a storage layer and they run their own AI models On top of that, they, they train the LLMs and then they use it for their own purpose. So that's how we've been working. And, and third use case, which, which users are primarily using us and which is our maximum use case, people are storing the backups because we are able to offer them a very high level of, uh, resiliency when they're storing the backup rather than storing it in the cloud, which they're stored in a single location. People are using us to store the da, uh, backups, important backups 

Jessica Denson (10:52):
That, so it has, it has incredible capacity too, then Yes. Because of the nodes. Got it. Yes. Uh, so, um, what about cost and efficiency? Is it more expensive? Is it, is it savings? Is it very efficient when they're trying to access those nodes? 

Murphy John (11:07):
Okay, so, so the cost factors, uh, so if you look at the storage cost, I am just, uh, referring to the storage cost because we just have storage. So storage is typically divided into two parts. One is the storage cost, this is the actual data that you consume on the cloud, and the other one is the egress cost. So what happens is egress cost is basically the bandwidth that you consume from the service providers, and they charge you for these two things together. So what happens is most of the time people end up paying more for the egress fees than the storage fees. Okay. And sometimes it is more than, uh, double or triple their storage fees. So what we are able to offer is, since we have a distributed cloud, what we have given us, we have given users very huge amount of egress free. So they can use this relatively, uh, higher amount of egress with us, and that translate them to like 60 to 90% of, uh, uh, cost efficiency for them on the long term. So we are, that's why we are comparatively cheaper for someone who is storing, accessing the data regularly, it becomes really very cheap. 

Jessica Denson (12:15):
Got it. And the, are there are the node, just so I understand, the node operators are, is that a, is that a separate entity or you guys actually operate the nodes yourselves? Store X does, 

Murphy John (12:26):
So, so, yeah, so, so we wanted it to be decentralized. Decentralized means uhhuh. It should be having components of users who contribute the space around the world. So we have a community of 3000 node operators, which are spread worldwide around the globe, and they pull in the resources and bring the storage from the, uh, from the spare IDC, which are spread across the world. So these are the guys who bring in the storage for us, and then they lease the storage to us, and we pay them for the usage. 

Jessica Denson (12:56):
That's interesting. So let me back up just a little bit. What is your role as chief growth officer? What does that entail day to day? Is it talking to people like me? Is it generally working to grow the company? What, what is, what is a day for you like and your role specifically with the company? 

Murphy John (13:14):
Uh, that's an interesting question, Jessica, and that I get asked a lot of time <laugh>. So, so being a chief growth officer, the main, uh, the main job is, uh, mind is to work with the partners and get onboarding them, get use cases to the project, because this is a very novel idea. So the problem is, uh, no one gets fired from the job for using any hyperscalers when they have to switch it to something like storage. They really need a lot of conviction. They need a lot of handholding, and we need a lot of support and, and understanding from our side, also from the, for the clients to migrate it. So I work with, basically, I work with bigger clients, enterprise clients. I work with them, I understand the system. I bring in my tech people, and we have meetings and we help them to onboard the project and see to it that the entire process goes on smoothly. So I basically am responsible, uh, for getting in more use cases, more branch to use our product. Jessica Denson 

(14:14):
That's, I your day to day must be different all the time. Then if you're, yes, if you're dealing with 

Murphy John (14:19):
All kinds, I I coordinate with a whole lot of team internal as well as external to get things organized. 

Jessica Denson (14:25):
Interesting. So, um, at Connect Nation, we're, we're very focused, you know, we're, we're a nonprofit and we're very focused on closing the digital divide. So I would be interested in how you see a decentralized storage, um, approach helping close the digital divide. Could rural communities or co-ops deploy these nodes to improve? 

Murphy John (14:45):
Yes. Everywhere around the world, everywhere around the world, we have a whole lot of people. Everywhere is like, we, it's practically impossible for an organization to have so much of notes, which is spread worldwide. It can only be done through community participation. And we are ensuring that we go, it's an open source. Everybody can come in, contribute to the storage and get paid as well. So that get paid in terms of rewards, they earn rewards for providing the storage and ensuring the storage remains, uh, like, uh, like always efficient and available for the users. 

Jessica Denson (15:19):
So the, they get paid as in for what? For just the amount of data that they're willing to share or how or hold or how's that 

Murphy John (15:25):
Work? Well, it gets, right now it's, it's fixed amount that they gave paid in, uh, but the only parameters is we have very strict quality parameters, so they need to adhere to those quality parameters, and then they get paid. So we, they have to ensure that the machine is up and running, they have to ensure the network is up, the latencies minimum, all those kind of criteria, which are built into the system. And that we do a check every single day, every single hour, to ensure that the quality of the network remains standard. So once, once they adhere to all those standards, they get paid every month. 

Jessica Denson (15:58):
I find it very interesting, and I've heard that it's part of a trend that others are looking at these possibilities. Um, DeepEnd, decentralized physical infrastructure networks, <laugh>. Uh, why do you think that is? Is is this a, an issue that stor saw early and others are now kind of seeing as well? 

Murphy John (16:17):
Yes. So, so basically, uh, so the whole idea when started it was with the mission, uh, with the commitment to people to offer something that is, that's like totally secure, safe, and privacy. And, uh, the architecture itself guarantees them that the data remains private and secure. And by the way, we are an open source project, so anybody can go into a source code and check in and ensure themselves that we are always, uh, we don't, we don't snoop into the data, we don't do any kind of processing of user's data. So that's, that's, that's the promise that we provide to all the users. 

Jessica Denson (16:52):
So give me some, um, real world examples of store X in action. Some things, some what, some things that stand out to you as success stories perhaps. 

Murphy John (17:00):
Okay. So I, I'll I'll show you, uh, two different stories, uh, two extreme cases. So, uh, what happened was we, we are working with the Canada based company. Uh, this company is basically into iot devices, and they do a lot of intelligence gathering around IOT devices. And then, then they provide this intelligence to the organization who can use them and use them to build on top of this and basically do some kind of analysis. So when these companies were actually doing, uh, the analysis of giving this service to the serv, uh, to the end user, they noticed one very specific term. They noticed that they are going to consume a lot huge amount of data because this, all these iot devices are sending some data to the servers, and then they're continuously uploading data. So what happened was uploading and downloading of data was not really a big problem, but it, it was supposed to incur a lot of cost.

(17:53)
So they came to us with a specific problem that we are going to incur a lot amount of bandwidth cost or the egress cost, uh, when we are going to deploy the software. And then we don't want to offer the services so expensive that people would not buy it because, because the cost has to ultimately be, uh, given down to the end users and they're going to pay the cost for the bandwidth also. So we were, we worked with them and we helped them to bring down the, as as I told you, our egress is very generous. So we were able to cut down the cost almost 70%, the 70%, the egress cost was to be cut down, and they were able to offer the services to the end users at a very cheap rate. And because we are giving them to, at a very generous rate, they were also able to offer them like a free tier program also.

(18:37)
So if there are the small users who just want to try it out, they were able to offer them that too. And this was not possible when they try it out with the hyperscalers, because every time, uh, a connection is made a device, the data is sent across, the data is downloaded, they have to meet those EG costs. So that, that's one example that we worked with and it was very successful. Uh, uh, this thing, uh, with the client. Uh, the second use cases about the healthcare records, now we had a client who is working with, uh, a specific government agency, uh, government hospitals, and they're processing in a whole lot of, uh, uh, data, MRI data, x-ray data using some AI data sets. So their requirements was, first of all, they came to us and because we are distributed and health record is something which has to meet a lot of standards like hipaa, SOC two, a lot of compliance around the data. And the data really doesn't have to move outside the country, it has to stay in the country. So what we did was we set up a private network for them based on the storage network. Now they're able to offer the services, uh, much more secure than the hyperscalers, and much more in an efficient way. Because what happens is the data doesn't go out of the country. We have set up all the nodes for them inside the country, and they're able to provide the service to the, uh, governments agency. 

Jessica Denson (20:00):
It sounds like you really are approaching it, or at least the organization is approaching it as, uh, what is your issue with, with data storage and what do you need and making it very specific to that organization. 

Murphy John (20:13):
That's right. 

Jessica Denson (20:14):
Yeah. That's, that's fantastic. So what's next for store X? Uh, what do you see as the future? Uh, new features, partnerships, or expansions, you know, where do you see it heading in the next year to five years? 

Murphy John (20:26):
So currently, uh, we, we are in the growth stage right now and we are doing a lot of partnerships, POCs, that's, that's practically my job. I talk to a lot of customers every day. We do a lot of POC, we sign up a lot of POC, <laugh>, major of them work. Some of them don't work because we have very specific use cases and very specific requirement. We are not like global, uh, like it is not a service that can be used by everyone and every, it's, it's specific. It has an advantage that I give you, like in the, in the IOT company and the health record companies. So, uh, we looking to grab the mind share of the people. So my, uh, the, my whole agenda, or my care I currently is to grab the whole mindset of the people. So they think us that this can also be used for commercial entities, uh, and commercial enterprises. 

(21:13)
Uh, till lately people were like open source freeware. That can be, uh, that is good for everyone, but that can not be applied for enterprises. But I see for storage and decentralized, the deep invest project, uh, that has been changing really, and people are able to observe the benefits that are being offered in terms of cost, in terms of reliability. And I, I'm, I'm the one who need to promote this to the users. So that's, that's, that's my care and we want it to be a strong, uh, mind share of people in the coming years. 

Jessica Denson (21:45):
Is historic, 'cause I know this is another, this is another side question, but are, are you guys looking at how to, to utilize AI as at, at all? I know every organization pretty much is, are there any thoughts you guys have on that? 

Murphy John (21:59):
So as, as I told you at the start that we, uh, organization are using as, as data sellers to store the data and train the personal and um, uh, lms. So basically they, if the company has proprietary data and they don't want to put it in the hyperscalers and they don't want that to be shared, or they, they, they believe that this data would be stooped in or something like that. So they can use our data silos, put in their data, proprietary data, and train their LMS on top of that. 

Jessica Denson (22:27):
Got it. Got it. So it's, it's been, I've enjoyed talking to you. You're a wealth of information. It's like, I can just let you go, which is awesome. Sometimes I have to prompt people, but you, you obviously know your stuff and I appreciate that. So what's the one key takeaway you want our listeners to remember about store X and decentralized storage? 

Murphy John (22:48):
I, I think, uh, see, uh, uh, to start with, uh, every organization should look in adopting this decentralized that, at least in some parts, so that they can store the critical data and ensure that the data remains accessible to them. Because we ha offering a very high level of privacy and security, it's really very important that, uh, people will explore this new way in which, uh, data can be stored and can be protected against hackings, against viruses against ransomware. 

Jessica Denson (23:21):
Yeah, I, I, that's a great place to leave it. So, um, uh, you, I know you said it was seven o'clock there, it's now, so about seven 30 there. Uh, you have any great plans for your evening <laugh>? 

Murphy John (23:32):
Uh, no, but, uh, it's, I'll go back to home and have dinner with my family. That's the 

Jessica Denson (23:36):
<laugh>. Oh, that, that sounds like a good night to me. If there's snow here, I bet it's nice and warm there, right? 

Murphy John (23:41):
Yes. So we, we are currently in our winter season, so it's still better. 

Jessica Denson (23:46):
Oh yeah. It's gotta be better than the snow that will not melt <laugh>. Yeah. Anyway, I really appreciate your time Murphy, John, and I'd love, as you guys have new projects or things coming up down the road to, uh, connect with you and see how things are going. 

Murphy John (23:59):
Sure, sure, sure. Andrew, it's nice talking to you as well. 

Jessica Denson (24:07):
Again, we've been talking with Murphy John, chief Growth Officer for Store X Network. I'll include links to the website of the organization and other helpful resources in the description of this podcast. So definitely go check them out. I'm Jessica Denson. Thanks for listening to Connected Nation. If you'd like our show and wanna know more about us, head to connect to nation.org or look for the latest episodes on all major podcast platforms.