> If that is true for your security model, then encryption is always pointless for you
I don't think that is true.
If your first line of defense is physical security that doesn't mean you don't use crypto. The person who can break your physical security can't necessarily break your crypto. Even if the crypto isn't perfect it may be good enough.
The point is that no one in the real world relies on crypto only. Everyone has a physical security layer and then crypto. That is just a fact of how corp, gov, and concerned individuals manage their data.
A distributed network with untrusted peers would radically change the accepted security model and in a way that I don't think any qualified decision maker would accept.
So maybe you can get consumers to use the network for the same thing they use Backblaze for, but Backblaze is already hella cheap, and I am pretty sure the distributed network will be more expensive, so where is the value prop to the people who don't care or aren't knowledgable about security?
I think we have some conversational difficulties (using words differently, perhaps different understandings of what's going on) that is making it hard to have a decent discussion, so I'm going to conclude with where I think we agree.
Some system roughly like this has potential use cases, even if it may be unsuitable for others. While I wouldn't expect a public company to store their financials in it, there is a lot of data that is held less tightly out there.
And more speculatively, "The street finds its own uses for things." Who knows what obvious-in-restrospect thing emerges. Maybe after 10 years and some evolution, commercial software and data systems live in a system like this and purchases are ledger operations, so the user-base of a given product becomes the distribution platform.
I don't think that is true.
If your first line of defense is physical security that doesn't mean you don't use crypto. The person who can break your physical security can't necessarily break your crypto. Even if the crypto isn't perfect it may be good enough.
The point is that no one in the real world relies on crypto only. Everyone has a physical security layer and then crypto. That is just a fact of how corp, gov, and concerned individuals manage their data.
A distributed network with untrusted peers would radically change the accepted security model and in a way that I don't think any qualified decision maker would accept.
So maybe you can get consumers to use the network for the same thing they use Backblaze for, but Backblaze is already hella cheap, and I am pretty sure the distributed network will be more expensive, so where is the value prop to the people who don't care or aren't knowledgable about security?