It has been a while since I've read about IPFS Filecoin, MaidSafeCoin, Storj, and so on, but my memory believes that each of these have some sort of store-your-data-for-a-fee that feeds through to the storage providers for the network.
Creating "plots" to get paid is fine, but at some point, someone needs to pay to store actual data or the scheme will collapse and blow away.
@geniusmusing At that point, it is probably easier to run ceph and start a "cloud storage" provider than to spend $12K+ and hope that whoever is funding this does not run out of money before they get paying customers.