# The Problem ### Centralized Storage is Broken The global cloud storage market is projected to exceed $390 billion by 2028, yet it remains dominated by three companies: AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. This concentration creates fundamental risks: #### Single Points of Failure When a centralized provider experiences an outage, millions of businesses and users lose access to their data simultaneously. AWS outages alone have caused billions in economic damage across industries. #### Censorship & Data Control Centralized providers can — and do — remove, restrict, or hand over user data based on government requests, policy changes, or business decisions. Users have no sovereignty over their own information. #### Privacy Erosion Centralized providers have full access to unencrypted user data. Even with encryption-at-rest, the provider holds the keys. This creates a trust-based model that has repeatedly failed users through data breaches and unauthorized access. #### Cost Inflation Cloud storage pricing follows a vendor lock-in model. Once data is uploaded, egress fees and migration complexity make it prohibitively expensive to leave. Prices are set by oligopoly, not by market competition. #### Existing Decentralized Solutions Fall Short While projects like Filecoin and Arweave have pioneered decentralized storage, they face challenges: * Complex user experiences that limit mainstream adoption * High costs for permanent storage on some networks * Inconsistent retrieval speeds compared to centralized alternatives * Limited developer tooling and integration options ### The Market Opportunity With global data creation expected to reach 180 zettabytes by 2025 and AI infrastructure driving unprecedented demand for data storage, the need for a reliable, cost-effective, and decentralized storage layer has never been greater. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://stonest.gitbook.io/stonest-docs/the-problem.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.