The Proof of Storage Consensus Mechanism
Proof of Storage (PoS) is a cryptographic mechanism that is mainly used to check the validity of a remote file. This is accomplished by transferring an encoded replica of the data to a server, which is then subjected to a challenge-response process to ensure the validity of the data. Moreover, this mechanism is typically employed when evaluating the effectiveness of a cloud storage server.
What Is Proof of Storage?
There are two types of participants in a network that uses PoS. One of them is referred to as a “prover,” while the other is known as a “verifier.” Provers are participants who are responsible for storing data, while verifiers “verify” whether the provers are storing data or not. Furthermore, verifiers assign challenges to provers who must answer with a proof based on the proof-of-storage mechanism in use.
There are a multitude of proof schemes that are derivatives of PoS, with each derivative having some key differences in their features. That said, they have a lot in common as well. Consequently, below are some of the properties that are more commonly shared among PoS schemes.
By making use of a secret verification key generated during setup, users can validate the data that is stored, i.e., make it privately verifiable. Likewise, data can also be publicly verified, but without the risk of being compromised or breached. This is done with parties making use of accessible public data (a public verification key, for example).
Without stored data, no information may be utilized to allow a prover to construct a legitimate proof. This increases transparency as it is helpful in decentralized storage networks since it eliminates the need for users to rely on other users or verifiers to produce secret keys. Also, verifiers can simply issue many challenges to provers and aggregate their associated proofs to extract and recreate the stored data.
Users can dynamically update externally stored data instead of having to create a whole new setup every time…
