Reclaim the Cloud, Onchain

The internet was supposed to set us free.

It promised an open frontier where anyone could build, connect, and create –– a network owned by all of us, not governed by the few. But somewhere along the way, we traded that freedom for convenience. Today, most of our digital lives –– from communication to code storage, AI training, and app deployment –– run on servers controlled by just three companies. When those companies decide who gets access, whose data stays online, or which APIs stay open, our freedom to build shrinks.

Our digital rights are only as strong as the infrastructure beneath them. We’ve already seen what happens when power concentrates: protests silenced by shutdowns, entire movements throttled by deplatforming, innovation gated behind opaque terms of service. When centralized systems fail, digital rights dissolve.

Today, hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud control 62% of global cloud infrastructure: a $130 billion dollar market. This means a handful of companies now decide what gets stored, changed or deleted, and who can access it –– all behind closed doors, with no transparency or accountability.

This isn’t just about technical resilience; it’s about control over the flow of the world’s data. This concentration of control threatens digital rights at a global scale. But it also creates real constraints. Builders who want transparent, auditable systems face an impossible choice: decentralization or usability, values or functionality.

The technologies shaping our future shouldn’t force us to choose between capability and conscience.

When we started building IPFS and Filecoin in 2014, we saw this connection clearly. Freedom, privacy, and access to information can’t rest on infrastructure controlled by a handful of companies. Centralized systems promise control, but create fragility.

That’s why we need a decentralized, verifiable, and onchain cloud. One where builders can see, prove, and trust that their infrastructure will stay online. One that treats open access not as a product, but as a public right.

The cloud has become a chokepoint, and it’s time to rebuild it on foundations we can trust.

Why Centralization Fails Builders

The cloud was meant to make building easier. Instead, it’s become a gilded cage. Hyperscalers promise resilience, yet outages, data loss, and lock-ins are the norm. Systems are built to serve corporate models, not developer freedom.

• Vendor dependency: Deep integrations become invisible chains. Switching providers often means rewriting your stack from scratch, a costly migration tax that kills agility.
• Closed systems: Platforms prevent customization and interoperability, while proprietary APIs decide what’s possible.
• Unpredictable economics: Costs shift without warning. Startups remain captive to billing models they can't control.

Now, as cloud giants become the rails for AI, they’re extending the same opaque control to models and training data: locking down code, restricting access, and demanding blind trust.

The result? Builders are trapped in systems that limit autonomy, creativity, and experimentation. The internet’s original promise — open, permissionless innovation — is slipping away. It’s time to take it back.

A Different Approach

Before co-founding FilOz, the Filecoin R&D team focused on core protocol development, I worked at Google, helping scale tools used by billions. I saw firsthand how centralized infrastructure can unlock extraordinary growth, but also how it concentrates control, stifles innovation, and limits what builders can imagine.

The infrastructure we need must combine transparency and usability — empowering developers with systems that are open, composable, and verifiable by design. That’s how we protect digital rights and restore true agency to the people who build and use the web.

Composable services. Open protocols make interoperability the default. Developers can finally build, mix, and extend services, not get trapped inside rigid vendor architectures.

Programmable rules. Smart contracts let builders encode their own logic: payments, access controls, storage policies, all without asking permission. Imagine training AI models on verifiable datasets, setting granular access rules for vast research archives, or running analytics pipelines in real time, backed by transparent code instead of opaque agreements.

Verifiable guarantees. Builders deserve cryptographic proof, not corporate promises. Onchain verifiability replaces “trust us” with “see for yourself.”

This isn't about decentralization as ideology. It’s decentralization as infrastructure: a new foundation where our systems are auditable, adaptable, and visible from the ground up. The next era of the cloud belongs to builders who can see, shape, and trust the infrastructure beneath their code.

Looking Ahead

Ten years ago, IPFS launched with a radical proposition: that the internet could be faster, fairer, and more resilient if built on peer-to-peer protocols instead of centralized servers. Five years ago today, Filecoin added the missing incentive layer to become the world’s largest decentralized storage network.

These milestones remind us that the internet we need — decentralized, open, and verifiable — is still under construction. The failures of the legacy cloud, and the consequences of centralization, only make this mission more urgent.

The internet's next chapter should be built on infrastructure that developers can verify, program, and trust. A foundation where ownership is shared, not rented, and where infrastructure serves builders, not gatekeepers.

The future of the cloud starts with all of us. Are you ready to take back the cloud? Join the waitlist at Filecoin.cloud.

Learn more about Filecoin Onchain Cloud at DePIN Day, co-hosted by Fluence and Filecoin Foundation, on November 18, ahead of Devconnect.