Blockchain always get talk like it is future of decentral internet, but when you look close, there is one big problem ppl dont like to admit. Data storage. Everyone hype AI, RWA, fully onchain apps, but nobody stop and ask simple thing, can blockchain even store real data today or not.
Many ppl say “you cant store big data on blockchain”. This line get repeat everywhere. It not fully wrong, but also not full true. You CAN store data, but problem is how painful and stupid expensive it is right now. So in practice, nobody really do it.
Most blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, even Bitcoin, they was not made for storage. They was made to record state changes, tx, balances, logic. Not photos, files, models, documents. When you try force them to do storage job, things break fast.
First big issue is cost. Storage on chain is crazy expensive. On Ethereum for example, storing 1GB data can cost over 100k dollars in gas. That sound insane but it real. Every byte cost gas, and gas price go wild. So even small image or pdf on chain become joke. Normal users cant afford, even projects avoid it.
Second issue is fake “onchain” apps. NFTs is best example. Ppl think NFT image live on chain, but no. Most time only link is on chain. Actual file sit on IPFS or some server. If that server go down, NFT broken. Ownership feel fake then. Same thing for games, AI data, documents. Smart contract just point to offchain place. That not real onchain ownership.
Third problem is speed and access. Blockchains are not database. They are slow for reading data, bad for query, bad for structured fetch. Even if you store data, getting it back fast is hard. For AI or finance, delay kill usecase. So teams go back to centralized API because they need speed.
This create big question. What even point of Web3 if data not there. We say decentral, but data live offchain. We say trustless, but storage depend on someone server. We say ownership, but file can disappear. That contradiction hurt whole space.
If blockchain cant store meaningful data, then AI onchain is fake. RWA onchain is half truth. Fully onchain apps is just marketing word. Storage is foundation, and foundation is weak today.
This is why some new ideas start focus on storage first, not last. Not just pointing to IPFS, not just index tricks, but rethinking how data live on chain in compact, affordable way. Smaller data, smarter encoding, native storage logic.
Vanar talk about this problem directly. Instead of ignoring storage limit, it put it front. Idea is not store raw big files, but store compressed, meaningful data that machines can read, verify, and use. If that work, then ownership become real, AI become real, RWA become real.
So fact check is simple. Today blockchain can store data, but barely usable. It too expensive, too slow, too fragile. Until storage get fixed, Web3 stay incomplete. Next evolution is not faster tx only, but real data on chain. And when that happen, whole game change.
