When people talk about file sharing, most of them will think of online storage providers like Dropbox, Google Drive, or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing like BitTorrent and eMule. People who are close to crypto world may know InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), which creates a P2P method of “storing and sharing hypermedia in a distributed file system”. With so many similar solutions, why Authpaper Delivery will still stand out?

Authpaper Delivery targets on private huge data delivery. The difference in objectives creates big advantages of Authpaper Delivery over other solutions.

Image from NEC Global

The advantages of Authpaper Delivery over online storage like Dropbox, Google Drive and Network Attached Storage (NAS) are obvious : Privacy and Speed.

By default, data stored on online storage is not encrypted. It means that all files stored on Dropbox or Google Drive are known to them. It is actually good for searching and data analysis. But if a file is private, like source code of a commercial program, cloud storage is not an option.

NAS and share drives allow private data sharing in internal network. But the speed is very limited by the upload speed of the servers. The same limitation also hosts for cloud storage.

Authpaper Delivery provides unlimited download speed to deliver data as the data distribution is done by peers using BitTorrent protocol. It is much faster than getting data from an individual server. All delivered data is encrypted before sharing out to the network so that no one except the recipient can read it.

eDonkey2000 (nicknamed “ed2k”) is a famous peer-to-peer file sharing application, image from Wikipedia

The advantage of Authpaper Delivery over normal P2P file sharing is that peers have incentive to assist others

As discussed in previous articles and whitepaper, our platform issues new coins to pay peers for assisting data delivery in other swarms. Hence they are willing to join the swarms on the data they cannot read. Compare with using BitTorrent or eDonkey or BitTorrent Sync, this platform guarantee more peers to speedup the confidential data delivery.

InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Filecoin are very similar with this platform. Yet the incentive model and the method of handling data is much different.

Both IPFS and Authpaper Delivery uses BitTorrent to distribute the data. But what IPFS creates is a content-addressable, peer-to-peer distributed file system. Without going to the technical details, one may think that IPFS is a huge file system, everyone can download or upload data there. The whole file system is kept in a BitTorrent swarm, so peers can help supporting the IPFS by joining the swarm. As long as there is a seed, all data in IPFS will still available. The data in IPFS cannot be modified, if you would like to change a file, you are actually submitting a commit to the related objects.

Authpaper Delivery does not use a huge file system to keep everything, it keeps a lot of swarms. For each delivery job, a swarm is created. Peers join the swarm and assists the delivery. When the job is finished, all peers will leave the swarm for another job and hence the data will disappear on the network. Hence any data submitted to the Authpaper Delivery platform is only present during the delivery. After the delivery, only the delivery record is kept (on Blockchain). Peers in Authpaper Delivery do not need to have all the data, they just keep the data of some of the delivery jobs. Also there is no file editing or versioning. If a file is edited, it needs to be sent out again as a new file.

Comparing IPFS and Authpaper Delivery is like comparing a huge storeroom and a post office. In terms of secret data delivery, we have the following advantages :

No data in our platform is kept forever, only the delivery record is kept forever. Storage requirements on peers is much lower, as they only keep the data on the jobs they are doing. Each delivery job is separated with no chance of cross file contamination, with unforgeable delivery record.

Filecoin is built based on IPFS to provide a blockchained-based cooperative digital storage network. Peers join the network and profit by renting out their hard drive space. They have also created a Proof-of-Replication mechanism to make sure peers are really keeping the file.

Peers in our platform profits by joining a swarm to assist a delivery job. They only keep a data for a relatively short period of time. They have to keep the data otherwise they have nothing to deliver to the recipient, hence having no reward. They will distribute the data as much as possible to increase the chance of sending data to the recipient. And once the delivery job is completed (no reward is available anymore), they will delete the data to free up space for another job.

In terms of data delivery, our platform is better than Filecoin in the following:

Peers profits in a job-by-job basic, so they are more active and stay on the network for longer time. Peers with smaller storage can also profit a lot, as long as they are working frequently. Data transmission is expected to be much faster, as peers have incentive to join as many swarms as they can.

Filecoin is a really great cooperative digital storage and we believe it will replace Dropbox and Google Cloud. However, when it goes to data delivering and sharing, Authpaper Delivery has it own advantages.