The ultimate dream was being able to hook up a few spare hard drives and then earning enough tokens to host your backups for free. The problem is defending against malicious actors makes everything too complex.
And there is much to be gained.
Any type of centralized service provider is a SPOF. Some companies have vastly better customer service track records than others, but their internal operations are fundamentally non-transparent, and driven by a particular implementation of the profit motive.
Interacting with a centralized service provider requires you to expose yourself to poorly quantifiable risks - hacking, internal abuse, government interventions, datacenter fires - and in ways not strictly required by the task of data storage - such as a breach leaving your data untouched but stealing your CC number or other credentials.
A better candidate for "the ultimate dream" would be cryptoprotocol-based participatory networks becoming more flexible, more efficient, more resilient, and more accessible than traditional institutions. That's still far away, it seems - and Goliath won't give up without a fight anyway.