[foopod]

S3 and blockchain have very different use cases right?

Blockchain being for small quantities of data made immutable, used in a p2p manner with as many copies as there are peers.

S3 generally being purpose built for short term (relative to blockchain) storage and price.

[mcculley]

Yes, they have different uses cases. But one can easily see an arbitrage opportunity here for building an immortal database atop S3 (and other cloud services) for a lot less money. For $12,000 USD, I could store the same data in S3 for (at the very least) 445,217 years. (Using the example above.)

That makes the value proposition of the Ethereum blockchain as a data store a lot less attractive.

[teawrecks]

This is so theoretical, I don't think it has any value. Meanwhile, consider the effort involved in destroying all data stored in S3 vs destroying the entire ETH blockchain. One is expensive, possibly only achievable by a national superpower, the other is virtually impossible without destroying the planet.

[mcculley]

I fully realize the theoretical advantages of blockchains. I can still store multiple copies in multiple clouds across multiple availability zones cheaper. The original question did not imply the destruction of S3.