What is blockchain storage and why should cryptocurrency investors care? In layman's terms, it's a decentralized version of the traditional web's cloud services. Mostly used by developers rather than retail customers, the blockchain storage space is another segment of the Web3 investor universe that issues cryptocurrencies to investors who want to try their luck betting on the future of another digital assets growth story.
This month, Nubit (NB) raised $12 million with the bulk coming from Polychain Capital. Nubit builds decentralized cloud storage for blockchain AI models. They were the only notable storage investment from venture capital (VC) in the first quarter, but demand for decentralized storage infrastructure, especially in areas like AI, decentralized finance (DeFi), and data indexing is expected to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 22.4% over the next decade, according to business intelligence firm Growth Insights.
If Web3 is going to grow, blockchain storage is going to have to grow right along with it.
"Decentralized data storage serves the purpose of self-sovereign data owned by the users with strong availability, without relying on a single centralized entity," said Kenneth Shek, Project Lead of the newly launched Moca Network (MOCA).
Decentralized data storage ensures that data are available, interoperable, and verifiable by any apps, based on the users' own selective disclosure, with privacy further enhanced cryptographically making it very different from traditional clouds like AWS. Moca Chain's storage and privacy solution testnet is scheduled to launch only in the third quarter of this year. The token is currently only available for retail investors on the KuCoin (KCS) exchange.
"We have already seen the largest funds in the world actively searching for and investing here," Shek said. "As large mass data starts to be commoditized, private and verifiable data will become increasingly valuable." As will the companies that can provide that service and the backbone to making those services available.
Blockchain Storage: Web3’s “Cloud”
Blockchain storage is a decentralized way to store digital data across a distributed network of computers (or "nodes"), rather than using centralized servers like those owned by Amazon (AWS), Google, or Microsoft.
Blockchain storage serves a similar purpose —letting users save, retrieve, and share files—but with some major differences. Traditional cloud providers control the servers, access, and policies of how to use them, while blockchain storage relies on smart contracts and token incentives to store and verify data across multiple independent nodes. This makes it more censorship-resistant, harder to tamper with, and aligned with crypto universes values decentralization. Because these systems are still being built out, they are usually slower than traditional cloud storage and primarily only for people developing programs on blockchains.
Even cryptocurrency accounts held by retail investors are not plugged into "Web3 cloud" systems. Some exchanges, like GMX, use blockchain storage solutions for back end analytics not available to retail clients.
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The main market for blockchain storage solutions include:
- NFT marketplaces storing metadata and artwork off-chain
- DeFi and DAO platforms needing tamper-proof archives
- Web3 social platforms (such as Lens Protocol on Polygon) storing posts or identity data
- Some cryptocurrency wallets will use blockchain storage to store history or AI-generated content.
Mainstream users don't typically interact with these systems directly, but may use blockchain storage unknowingly—such as when owning an NFT hosted on Arweave (AR), a big blockchain data storage protocol.
Who Are the Biggest Players, and What’s Next?
Investors who like the blockchain storage story are likely owners of Arweave and Filecoin (FIL). But there are others, including indirect investments in start ups that offer solutions the blockchain storage protocols need.
Space and Time (SXT) is one of them. They currently offer investors 7.9% yield for staking. Coinbase, Kraken and Binance, among others, offer this token on their exchange.
"We are primarily a compute network rather than a storage network, even though we store data in a decentralized manner," said Scott Dykstra, Co-Founder of Space and Time. The California-based company works with Microsoft Azure and Azure OpenAI Service in the traditional internet markets and with Chainlink (LINK) and Polygon Lab (MATIC) in the blockchain space. Unlike predecessors who focused mainly on storage and struggled to integrate compute power, Space and Time has focused on verifiable compute, with storage being a necessary component to their business.
"Verifiable compute" is when a platform performs a computation on a blockchain —such as a basic structured query language (SQL queries) request that tells a database what data you want – they can cryptographically prove the result is correct without needing the user to trust the server that ran the calculation.
"Decentralized storage is important, but the real power behind them lies in running zero knowledge-proven computations over that data in order to deliver trustless, real-time insights to smart contracts," Dykstra said.
Like the traditional cloud, decentralized storage keeps the data safe and readily accessible. But that's not enough on its own. In blockchain ecosystems (like decentralized finance services and blockchain gaming), users need real-time decisions, including basic things like who won the game; or did this crypto wallet really make that trade; or what is the moving average of token trades in the last hour?
If a user can run computations on that stored data, and use zero-knowledge proofs to guarantee the result is correct, the user has now enabled trustless automation like using a credit card or a PIN-accessed ATM machine, which is what smart contracts need to actually act on.
Dykstra said investors should also look at Hyperliquid (HYPE) and ZKsync (ZK) as a potential blockchain storage play. ZK is offered on Coinbase and Kraken and Hyperliquid is mostly held by investors on the Hyperliquid exchange.
"I think Hyperliquid's building a great exchange, and ZKsync has arguably built some of the best rollup tech in the space," Dykstra said.
Storage platforms are increasingly being used in AI, data indexing, decentralized publishing, and blockchain scalability (e.g., data availability layers). The future likely holds more crossover with enterprise tech, particularly as token-based incentives prove more efficient for long-term or trustless storage.
Despite the VC deals mentioned earlier, the market for blockchain remains challenging as VC firms seem more focused on AI, and not necessarily blockchain-related AI.
Excluding a large Binance funding round this year, the first quarter crypto funding total ended up between $1.8–2 billion, a decline from Q1 2024. Deal count was less than half of that same quarter last year.
"We were fortunate to raise capital at a favorable time in early 2022," Dykstra said. "Getting Microsoft's venture fund backing us through the bear market gave a huge boost to our momentum."
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