Codex

Exciting Use Cases for Decentralised Storage in 2025 and Beyond

Nasrudin

Feb 13, 2025 • 7 min read

Demand for resilient, distributed storage is skyrocketing. Recently published research projects that the global market for decentralised cloud storage will surpass $4.5 billion by 2034, and global daily data generation now exceeds 400 million terabytes, signalling a demand for more efficient and durable ways to persist large volumes of data.

Decentralised storage networks like Codex are at the forefront of this shift, and with the public testnet now live, you can run a node to play your part in the development and growth of the network.

Offering a decentralised durability engine that enables immutable, censorship-resistant, and robust data storage, Codex allows files to be efficiently stored and accessed on a peer-to-peer network, improving persistence and mitigating the risks of centralised storage.

Codex aims to allow anyone to persist their data in a permanent and immutable record, from legal documents with robust security and privacy requirements to vast volumes of AI training data for public transparency and research.

In the recently published Codex State of Decentralised Storage 2025 report, we examined the key drivers informing decentralised storage trends for the years ahead and the developing and competitive landscape of infrastructure projects that will address this growing demand.

Read the Codex State of Decentralised Storage 2025 report.

Decentralised storage networks are primed to solve various challenges in data security, archiving, and censorship resistance. Below, we examine some of the most impactful use cases for decentralised storage emerging in 2025 and beyond.

AI Agents and Machine Learning Datasets

The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is driving an exponential increase in storage requirements. These technologies rely on vast, high-quality datasets for training and validation, making scalable and durable storage solutions essential.

In a traditional data centre model, the storage costs for this data can quickly become significant, making it prohibitive for anyone except the biggest providers to foot the bill of storing this vast and constantly growing volume of data.

Decentralised networks scale with every new node, which lets them meet the needs of AI companies far more efficiently than monolithic data centres, which are expensive to run, subject to the operations of a single company, and exposed to centralised risk factors like outages, data breaches, or mismanagement.

On a network like Codex, each new node adds dynamic storage capacity and redundancy, allowing the protocol to scale horizontally and improve the durability of massive datasets while offering low-latency access.

It may also be crucial for AI companies to make their training data available and transparent to regulators or users. This would inform the biases behind generated content and provide the sources of training data for accuracy and compliance.

Additionally, decentralised storage provides a robust use case for AI agents by enabling them to persistently store, retrieve, and share data autonomously in a trustless, censorship-resistant manner. This ensures that AI-driven applications can function independently without reliance on centralised infrastructure, enhancing their resilience and allowing them to offer transparent accounts of their configurations to the public.

By recording data transparently on a distributed storage network, AI companies can quickly achieve reliable traceability to declare the provenance of their training data.

Archival Storage

As the amount of global data generated increases daily, it becomes increasingly inefficient for the complete archive of this data to be stored by centralised storage providers. Distributed storage networks offer a way to store crucial archival information in a cost-efficient and scalable manner while reducing the risks of data loss or abandonment.

Blockchain networks like Ethereum generate immense amounts of historical data that must be securely stored for reference, validation, and auditing purposes. However, storing this data requires resources and centralises this information with a few providers.

Distributed storage platforms allow archival blockchain data to be stored on a protocol designed for resilience and persistence, ensuring that the historical digital ledger – transaction information, interactions, and other data – remains accessible in a scalable, durable, and future-proof way.

Read our previous blog post to learn more about how Codex can help to scale Ethereum’s historical archive.

Enterprises are also increasingly integrating decentralised storage alongside centralised cloud services like AWS and Google Cloud to improve their data redundancy and security, adopting a "hybrid cloud" architecture. This hybrid approach lets enterprises enjoy the best of both worlds: efficient cloud computing alongside immutable and censorship-resistant storage.

Redundancy has always been a requirement for enterprise data storage, which is why many businesses store duplicate data at multiple sites geographically distant from each other. Adopting a platform like Codex, which offers a new class of data durability, can more efficiently and effectively realise these benefits.

A platform like Codex enables businesses to durably persist archival data while leveraging cloud deployments for operational efficiency, providing a robust and cost-effective solution for long-term data preservation.

Decentralised storage networks enable seamless, censorship-resistant file-sharing across individuals and organisations.

For example, researchers can collaborate on open-access scientific data, journalists can share sensitive information securely, and artists can distribute their work directly without intermediaries.

Platforms like Codex build on the concept of established peer-to-peer file-sharing protocols such as torrents to create a robust, more accessible, and seamless way to share files while preserving censorship resistance and durability.

One of the initial goals of the Codex protocol is to offer a platform akin to ‘BitTorrent with persistence’, which allows peer-to-peer shared files to remain accessible even if the original uploader or a portion of the network is offline.

This approach will deliver a way to securely share files across borders without relying on centralised storage providers, fostering collaboration without restrictions or the risk of censorship.

Decentralised Identity and Document Management

From medical records to personal identity information, decentralised storage offers more autonomy and control over how sensitive data is controlled and shared. Traditional storage models expose personal and institutional data to risks like breaches, unauthorised access, and centralised exploitation.

This risk is evidenced by the thousands of data breaches reported each year, many of which expose personal information and other sensitive data by compromising the centralised operator responsible for its safety.

Centralising data storage also risks the misuse of personal data. In the Cambridge Analytica controversy, the personal data of more than 50 million Facebook users was harvested without their permission and used to direct political advertising.

Codex is a storage protocol, not a provider. As a trustless decentralised storage network, it offers a trustless way to secure your data while retaining control of where and how it is shared. It also ensures that this data persists in a highly resistant way against censorship.

With decentralised storage, individuals and enterprises can retain full sovereignty over their data through decentralised identity management, deciding precisely where and how it is shared while benefiting from end-to-end encryption and self-custodial storage models.

Decentralised storage also allows critical legal records, including legislative histories and verification proofs such as Know Your Customer (KYC) documents, to remain immutable and verifiable, ensuring their integrity over time. Public records can remain immutable and accessible to citizens, ensuring transparency and accountability.

This prevents the suppression or retroactive alteration of legal texts, preserving the authenticity of documentation and ensuring a reliable record of its provenance for later verification.

Decentralised Content Distribution

Distributing digital media, such as videos, music, and software, across a decentralised storage network will reduce the user-facing internet’s dependency on centralised servers and potentially lower the costs of accessing this content.

Hosting content on decentralised platforms and eliminating reliance on centralised authorities also mitigates risks of censorship, de-platforming, or unilateral deletion.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are already merging with distributed storage to offer a globally accessible content distribution model that evolves dynamically based on regional demand.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a distributed network of servers strategically positioned across multiple locations to deliver digital content efficiently and quickly to users. CDNs reduce latency, enhance website performance, and mitigate traffic spikes by caching and serving data from the nearest server, ensuring reliable and secure content distribution.

By merging traditional CDNs with distributed storage platforms like Codex, content providers can bring the data they serve to consumers closer to the edge, reducing latency and improving resilience to outages.

Decentralising CDNs would help alleviate data bottlenecks and content service outages while allowing content providers to resist third-party censorship or restrictions.

Internet of Things (IoT)

The rise of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is generating unprecedented data storage requirements. In many cases, these devices also need low-latency data access for critical operations, leading them to benefit from edge storage.

By connecting to distributed storage networks like Codex, IoT devices can retrieve data efficiently without central bottlenecks, reducing reliance on centralised cloud services and mitigating risks like latency and single points of failure.

The use of distributed networks enhances reliability, granting IoT devices continued access to necessary data even in cases of regional disruptions. Decentralised storage also helps lower the cost of data accessibility while improving efficiency and scalability for IoT applications.

By storing IoT data on a decentralised storage network, this data can also be secured and persisted privately, resistant to tampering, misuse, or exploitation–an important consideration for smart devices in fields such as medicine.

An example of this sector as a powerful use case for decentralised storage lies in connected vehicles, which generate massive amounts of telemetry, sensor, and navigation data that must be securely stored, transmitted, and accessed in real time.

Decentralised storage enables these vehicles to function independently, ensuring data integrity and availability without relying on centralised cloud providers. It also allows data sharing between vehicles and infrastructure without central points of failure, enhancing everything from predictive maintenance to autonomous driving capabilities.

DeSci

Scientific research depends on reliable, long-term data storage to maintain the integrity of studies, enable collaboration, and preserve discoveries for future generations.

Decentralised storage networks can support the principles of DeSci by facilitating open-access data sharing, ensuring data provenance and authenticity, and supporting innovative and democratic funding models.

The durability of decentralised storage means that critical and comprehensive data can persist well into the future, ensuring that scientists can fully understand and replicate studies for future generations.

From genomic research to climate studies, decentralised storage ensures that vital scientific knowledge remains accessible and verifiable, free from the limitations of centralised gatekeepers.

Join the Codex Decentralised Storage Network

Codex is building a decentralised durability engine and storage network that uses a peer-to-peer model to deliver true censorship-resistant data storage.

Want to defend against censorship, preserve history, and help secure the future of fair and durable data? The Codex testnet is now live, allowing anyone to install and run a node on the network.

By running Codex, you are playing a role in enabling and building a decentralised archive of durable knowledge. To get started, read our step-by-step guide on how to install and run Codex.