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The inherent security of distributed storage

When your data lives in many places, it becomes much harder to break.

Thanasis Karavasilis avatar
Written by Thanasis Karavasilis
Updated over a week ago

At Hivenet, uploading a file isn’t just sending it from your computer to a cloud server. It’s more like putting your file through a digital blender—with some serious safety features.

Here’s what happens:

  1. Your file is split into chunks

  2. Each chunk is encrypted (we’ll cover that in more detail soon)

  3. Those encrypted chunks are compressed and scrambled

  4. Then they’re distributed across the network—hosted on different devices contributed by our community

No single device ever has the full file. In fact, most devices just hold tiny, encrypted fragments that don’t mean anything by themselves.

Think of it like a puzzle

Imagine breaking a photo into 1,000 jigsaw pieces:

  • Each piece is sealed in a tamper-proof envelope

  • They’re shuffled and sent to different people around the world

  • No one can see the full picture—even if they open their envelope

Now add encryption to every piece. And compression. And the fact that people don’t even know what they’re storing.

That’s how distributed storage works. And that’s why it’s incredibly hard to break.

Two bonus benefits

  1. Files are hard to reassemble without permission
    Even without encryption, trying to track down and piece together all the fragments would be nearly impossible.

  2. Bad files can’t hurt contributors
    Even if someone uploads something malicious, contributors only store a tiny, encrypted, scrambled piece. It’s completely harmless on its own.

Before we even talk about encryption or redundancy, Hivenet’s architecture gives your files a strong layer of defense—just by design.

Up next: how encryption adds another layer on top.


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