FluxDrive Decentralized Storage
99.999% durability across 3 regions with signed attestations consumable by auditors.
The challenge
Enterprise clients needed verifiable storage — not just reliable storage. The difference matters: reliable storage means your data is probably there; verifiable storage means you can prove your data is there, unchanged, to an auditor. Existing decentralised storage solutions (Filecoin, Arweave) offered strong durability guarantees but required developer ergonomics that enterprise teams would not accept: custom SDKs, non-standard access patterns, and no integration with existing identity and access management systems. They needed a storage mesh that gave them the durability and verifiability of decentralised storage with the developer experience of S3.
Architecture
FluxDrive is a storage abstraction layer that sits in front of a three-tier storage mesh: Filecoin for long-term verifiable archival (deals are renewed automatically), Arweave for permanent immutable storage of compliance-critical records, and AWS S3 for hot-tier access. The abstraction layer exposes a standard S3-compatible API so existing applications require no code changes. Every write operation is processed by a replication orchestrator: the file is stored in all three tiers, and a signed attestation bundle (hash, timestamp, storage provider confirmation, and deal ID) is generated and stored separately. Attestation bundles are consumable by auditors via a read-only API with no AWS credentials required. Self-healing replication monitors deal health across Filecoin and Arweave, automatically re-creating deals before they expire.
How we shipped it
The S3-compatible API layer and the three-tier replication orchestrator were built first, running entirely on AWS in week one through four. Filecoin integration (using Lotus and a storage provider network) was added in weeks five through eight. Arweave integration followed in weeks nine through ten. The attestation bundle system was the final piece, designed in close collaboration with the client's compliance team to ensure the bundle format met their audit requirements. We tested with 100TB of synthetic compliance data before onboarding real data.
Results
After six months of production operation: zero data loss events across 2.3 petabytes of stored data. Filecoin deal renewal system maintained 100% deal health with no manual intervention. The attestation API was used in four external audits in the first six months, replacing a manual evidence-gathering process that had previously taken the compliance team 80 hours per audit. Storage costs for cold-tier data dropped 67% compared to S3 Glacier.
What we would do differently
The S3-compatible API was non-negotiable — every attempt to introduce a new SDK would have added months to enterprise onboarding. The attestation bundle format needed to be designed with the auditors in the room, not spec'd by the engineering team and then reviewed by compliance. We revised the format twice based on auditor feedback before locking it.
Written by Mudassir Khan
Agentic AI Consultant & AI Systems Architect · CEO of Cube A Cloud · Islamabad, Pakistan
Free tools
Related service
Serverless Cloud Engineering
See scope & engagement →Related case studies
Want to build something like this?
Book a 30-minute strategy call and let us map out what is possible for your situation.