Bluzelle Is Launching Its R2 Storage Solution on Mainnet to Decentralize NFT Storage

Key highlights:

• Bluzelle is launching its R2 decentralized file storage solution on mainnet
• Many NFT owners are not aware that the media their NFTs are referencing could be gone within a couple of years
• Bluzelle's R2 is looking to address this issue by providing permanent and censorship-resistant storage for NFTs

Bluzelle launches R2 to bring decentralization to NFT marketplaces

Decentralized storage project Bluzelle is launching its R2 (Replication and Redundancy) file storage solution on mainnet, with the primary goal of providing an alternative storage option for NFT platforms.

NFTs are blockchain-based tokens with unique identifiers that are typically used to represent ownership of objects, whether they be digital or physical. The most common application of NFT tech is to represent art and digital collectibles in the form of pictures, videos, 3D animations, audio, text, and other mediums. 

While the NFT tokens themselves live on immutable and decentralized blockchains, the same cannot be said for the media they’re supposed to be representing. For example, it’s not viable to store a 3D animation directly on the Ethereum blockchain – instead, the NFT representing the animation points to a file that’s hosted at some other place on the internet.  

This creates some obvious problems. NFTs are supposed to provide a trustless and immutable way for someone to prove ownership of a certain object. But what if that object is stored on Amazon Web Services or another centralized provider that can alter or even delete files on a whim? Owning an NFT that points to a dead link doesn’t seem like a very attractive proposition. 

Bluzelle's R2 is being adopted by several NFT marketplaces

To address this issue, many NFT issuers are now using decentralized file storage options like the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to host the media associated with NFTs. This is more in line with the ethos of immutability and censorship-resistance that’s behind blockchain technology and subsequently, NFTs. 

With its new R2 file storage solution, Bluzelle is looking to provide a new option for NFT issuers that are looking for decentralized and reliable storage. Bluzelle is trying to differentiate themselves from existing decentralized file storage options by providing improved performance and faster speeds enabled by the R2 solution’s peer-to-peer architecture, which is similar in design to torrents.

With Bluzelle R2, the media represented by NFTs is stored across a decentralized network of nodes, providing redundancy in the even that one (or some) of the nodes fail.

Bluzelle’s file storage platform has already been adopted by some NFT marketplaces, most notably Mintable. According to the Bluzelle project, there are multiple platforms currently testing the technology, and will be integrating it in the near future. 

Zach Burks, the founder and CEO at Mintable, commented on the pitfalls of storing NFT-related media via IPFS, and why Mintable opted to go with Bluzelle instead:

"Most people are not aware that most NFTs will disappear in a year or more once either their website is taken offline, it gets censored, or if it's on IPFS, it will just get deleted from lack of use. With Bluzelle we have a permanent file storage that is decentralized across the entire planet for your NFTs - so in 50 years, they will still be around and valuable. All without even needing to pay gas costs using gasless minting on Mintable."