How to Use Gaia Storage With Blockstack

Final part of a three-part tutorial

In part two, How to Connect Blockstack to your Backend API, I show you how to create a user object in your API after logging in with Blockstack. In this tutorial, we’ll build a form that sends public information to that API and a separate form that sends secret/sensitive information to Gaia Storage.

Blockstack applications use the Gaia storage system to store data on behalf of a user. When the user logs in to an application, the authentication process gives the application the URL of a Gaia hub, which performs writes on behalf of that user. The Gaia hub authenticates writes to a location by requiring a valid authentication token, generated by a private key authorized to write at that location.

By using Gaia Storage, the decentralized way of storing information:

• Your data is more secure than traditional storage systems, which have one or a few central points of vulnerability.
• Millions of encrypted copies of your data are spread across the world, constantly verifying each other for changes made without your authorization.
• A hacker would need to compromise 51% of the blockchain in order to access your data. This would require more computing power than any known entity possesses.
• You own your own data, your information will be safe and no one can access it, not me, not Blockstack, not even the president.

Prerequisites: Knowledge of setting up your own API. We’ll also be using React.js.

Coming from part two of this three-part tutorial series, this is what App.jslooked like: