Distributed storage protocols often claim that even if 1/3 of the nodes fail or act maliciously, data security can still be guaranteed. However, this mathematical model has a prerequisite that is often overlooked—the 1/3 nodes must come from completely independent entities.

In reality? A large cloud service provider or organization may already control 40% of the nodes in the network, and these nodes might all be running in the same data center and the same availability zone. In this case, the so-called decentralized fault tolerance capability is greatly diminished.

If you need to store highly sensitive data that is resistant to adversarial attacks, simply counting the number of nodes is not enough. You need to perform "entity auditing"—use blockchain explorers and network analysis tools to check which nodes your data slices are assigned to, whether these nodes have IP address clustering, or if their staking funds come from a single source.

Once you find that the data is "concentrated" in the hands of a few large holders, you should re-upload or adjust configuration parameters to trigger data redistribution mechanisms. In plain terms, the security of a distributed network is not hardcoded into the protocol but is determined by the actual degree of decentralization. For users who do not care about the geographic distribution of nodes, such protocols are not much different from traditional centralized cloud storage, and may even perform worse.