The vast majority of Resource Credits are currently used for absolutely nothing
A while back, I heard someone mention the idea of storing binary data on the Hive blockchain. I'd like to discuss the idea here. While at it, I can shed some light on blockchain basics and hive.
A lot of work has gone into improving the scalability of Hive. Scalability is precondition to large scale adoption. It also helps bring down the cost of running Hive nodes. But it seems that Resource Credits conferred by Hive Power do not have much demand at present. The ability to scale is already there but little to no marketing has been done targeting developers potentially interested in creating apps on Hive. As a consequence, most users have an overflowing abundance of Resource Credits, which means that the utility value of Resource Credits does not lend any support to the price of HIVE at present.
Would using Hive as a decentralized backup storage for binary files be a workable idea?
Storing (properly encoded) binary files on chain would certainly take up a lot of capacity. There many are other decentralized solutions for that purpose. Some use a cryptocurrency to reward users for offering storage space on their devices for paying users. If Hive has an abundance of storage capacity available why not sell it to those who want an immutable storage for their binary files? The Hive blockchain allows for structured text (JSON format) data to be stored on it. The blockchain already has an internal pricing mechanism for transactions.
Currently, the blockchain has an upper limit of 64 kilobytes for block size. Most blocks are much smaller than that. They usually contain only a few of transactions. You can look at the blocks as they are added to the chain here:
https://hiveblockexplorer.com/
In decentralized storage systems the files to be stored are broken up into small chunks that are usually encrypted and redundantly stored on multiple locations on the internet. When a file is requested, it is pieced together from the small chunks it was divided into when it was stored and delivered to the requester. Decentralized file storage systems are typically very slow, which is why the decentralization is mainly used for censorship resistance. For a tolerable user experience, centralized servers that keep their data in sync with the decentralized storage layer are used.
Would someone really want to store binary data on a blockchain?
Usually, nobody in their right mind would use a blockchain for storing binary files because of the huge storage space demands. Normally, it is sufficient store the hash of document to a blockchain because the immutability of the hash is key when the authenticity of a document needs to be verified. The document itself can be stored elsewhere. A blockchain is more secure than, say, IPFS. I uploaded a train video to DTube a couple of years ago. The video is lost forever now. IPFS nodes are run by volunteers and the one hosted by DTube only stores videos for six months before deleting them. If one wants to store one's files indefinitely, that will happen only if 1) one stores them on one's own IPFS node or 2) they're popular enough to be downloaded often enough for the system to keep them. It might be fun to see how many RCs would it actually take to store regular a photo on Hive.