So far, we’ve talked about encryption and how Hivenet keeps your data private. But what about making sure it stays complete and usable—even when parts of the system fail?
That’s where data integrity comes in. In a distributed system like Hivenet, files are stored in small pieces (or “shards”) across hundreds or thousands of devices.
Devices go offline. People opt out. Connections drop. And that’s okay.
Because Hivenet is built with failure in mind.
Back to the puzzle analogy
Imagine you’ve cut a puzzle into 1,000 pieces and given 100 pieces each to 10 friends. But then a few of them lose some pieces.
Normally, you’d be stuck. But Hivenet adds “special” puzzle pieces—called redundancy shards—to each box. So even if a few are missing, you can still rebuild the full picture.
That’s the idea behind erasure codes, which we’ll cover next.
In short: Hivenet expects the unexpected
Files are broken into encrypted shards
Extra shards are created to replace any that go missing
You don’t need every piece to recover your file—just enough of the right ones
This means your files stay safe, even when individual devices or nodes go offline.
Up next: the magic behind this process—erasure codes—and how they keep everything resilient.
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⬅️ Decryption: encryption in reverse