With centralized systems, you are putting your data in the hands of one service provider. This gives them considerable power and influence over how much control you have over it. With these types of systems, if your service provider disappeared for any reason you will not be able to access your information.

Millions of companies, both startups, and Fortune 500 companies too, rely on safe storage solutions for their data. This is because cloud storage has always been vulnerable to external attacks and data breaches of any kind. However, many offer reliable decentralized solutions that not only protect your data but also give you the ability to take complete control over it without having your information stored with third-party vendors.

What is a decentralized cloud storage system?

A decentralized cloud storage system is a file storing platform with an open and distributed architecture that does not require multiple servers in order to store, retrieve or replicate data. Distributed systems employ the redundancy of files on different nodes to ensure the integrity of data. The aim of decentralization is to enable more people around the world to have faster access to the same file, hosted on a far-reaching network of interconnected machines. 

Here is the list of the best decentralized cloud storage systems:

1. Storj

Storj is a decentralized cloud storage system, meaning that it relies on the power of many people's computers to store the data rather than just one server. This not only discourages hackers from gaining access but also provides faster download and upload speeds than traditional cloud storage. The process is encrypted, and Storj periodically makes files more secure by re-encrypting them with its own key.

Storj is a platform that lets users rent out their extra hard drive space for use as "storage nodes" on a blockchain-powered cloud storage service. Storage nodes can be set up with just one click from the desktop app and have no load time, so files can be accessed quickly and securely

2. Filecoin

Filecoin is a blockchain-based decentralized storage network that uses p2p technology to store data on multiple devices. Storage users can then rent out the storage space that wasn't necessarily advertised as shared, but it was going to waste. One of the best features of Filecoin is that sharing unused storage space earns incentivizes nodes with Filecoin, which in turn makes them more active and robust because they're also earning money.

3. BitTorrent

BitTorrent is a decentralized file system, more specifically a global one. For this reason, it offers one of the most secure cloud storage systems on the market today. In practice, this robustly distributed nature works much like BitCoin and therefore requires certain considerations to ensure security and privacy.

4. Sia

Sia is an encrypted decentralized cloud storage platform. It's not like traditional cloud storage, which stores all of the customer's data on a single centralized server, and charges you to use it. Sia users build storage platforms out of a swarm of disk space that becomes more robust as more people subscribe. Prices are represented in dollars-per-gigabyte rather than dollars-per-month, which makes Sia a very economical solution.

5. Swarm

Swarm incorporates Ethereum smart contracts to provide distributed storage, identical to Bitcoin's block storage. Uploads to the grid are encrypted, so nobody knows what you're uploading or downloading. A key difference between Swarm and other cloud storage systems is the ability to transfer large amounts of data in parallel.