More resilient and user-controlled than AWS: Colin Evran's vision for Filecoin

"Filecoin is more than just storage, it can be thought of as an Airbnb for cloud services."

As of early 2021, Filecoin was a relatively unknown decentralized peer-to-peer storage service with full network capacity barely making a dent in the digital storage space. Less than 2 years later, the Filecoin team claims that blockchain has exceeded 10% of the storage capacity of Amazon Web Service, the most popular provider in the cloud infrastructure services market. This includes the use of storage - by well-known blockchain companies such as OpenSea and Magic Eden - of some 239.03 terabytes of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), worth an estimated $26.6 billion in early September. .

NFT storage about Filecoin | Source: NFT.Storage

How did Filecoin become so successful? And what motivates its developers to grow the ecosystem? Colin Evran, ecosystem manager at Protocol Labs, which is the creator of Filecoin, said a big factor in his desire to join Filecoin was his disillusionment with how things work in Web2.

“It always goes in the wrong direction,” he said. “A handful of companies now control global data, in my opinion, without checks and balances in many ways. And I just thought that such levels of centralization over a period of decades would not be the answer for everyday users. .

"I fundamentally believe that if you zoom out 40 years from now, the answer is not like AWS is storing 100% of the world's data. I don't think that's good for society. I don't think that's what users really want," he said.

Evran has taken a few side steps on his journey into the blockchain industry. A 2006 graduate of Western University's Ivey Business School, he first became an analyst at McKinsey before moving into private equity. Then he returned to academia to earn his master's degree at Stanford Business School.

Colin Evran by Filecoin | Source: Twitter

After graduating, Evran founded a construction technology startup called "Yard Club". Four years later, the company was sold to Caterpillar, which...