What Is Tardigrade (Storj)? 

Tardigrade, launched by the Storj (STORJ) platform in March 2020, is an S3-compatible decentralized cloud storage service.

Cloud storage is a technology that allows for the storage of digital data – text, image, audio, video files and more – “in the cloud,” i.e. on a remote server operated by a dedicated service provider. Using cloud vs. local storage offers a range of advantages, such as the increased efficiency of server setups (resulting in a lower cost of storage per byte) and the ability to access stored data from anywhere in the world.

Many companies use cloud storage services to store and access digital data, as well as serve it to their customers – and the S3 application programming interface (API), first released by Amazon Web Services in 2006, serves as the industry standard for interfacing with files in the cloud. Most established cloud storage providers are compatible with this standard, which allows for a great degree of interoperability across the industry and makes the migration of data between clouds easy.

Tardigrade, named after a resilient microscopic animal, is a similar S3-compliant storage service, albeit a decentralized one – instead of employing large server clusters situated in dedicated data centers for its operation, Tardigrade relies on a distributed network of small-scale storage nodes.

The files stored on Tardigrade are broken down into as many as 80 parts, which are encrypted and sent to multiple storage nodes on the network. Only 29 of these parts later need to be retrieved from the nodes to reassemble the file – such redundancy is implemented to make the system resilient against possible downtime — or complete shutdown — of individual storage nodes.

The fact that files are split into multiple parts and spread across many storage nodes also prevents both individual nodes and the protocol at large from unauthorized mining of uploaded data. According to Storj, Tardigrade was the first decentralized S3-compatible cloud storage solution to enter operation.