So… You would get the safe coins based on how much HDD space you allocate, but what if you just delete that space and allocate it again to the maid safe network to get more safe coins? What use is the storage aspect now for the people that want to store their files?
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This is a question asked every so often 
The coin is only earned when the vaults serve up the data stored. The system uses crypto to ensure the data retrieved is valid data.
So the situation you asked about cannot occur
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So the coin is earned when the network requests the data? Ok. How much redundacy is there?
Actually when your vault is the first to serve up the data. Request does not earn the coin, but being first to serve it up (and validated)
There is 8 copies kept and when any one goes off line the network copies the data to ensure there is sufficient copies kept. Also data republish will mean that when a vault comes back on line the data it holds can be validated and usable. This helps out in large outages to ensure data is not lost.
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ok - @neo was way faster 
maybe you want to read Redirecting...
or listen to Stream Ep18, SAFE Network School, Class One by Technology & Choice, and SAFE Crossroads podcasts | Listen online for free on SoundCloud (there are other episodes too - but you maybe have to search for “safe network school” … i didn’t find the link for a playlist right now - sorry ; )
on youtube there are excellent explanation-videos by madisafe too (of course a little bit outdated but the rough plan did never change)
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Thanks for the explanations. “When the vault serves up the data…” does this just mean when it is requested by the original file owner or when the network requests it for any reason?
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when some user requests it (e.g. a public website/app and private data) no win by data-replication afaik
What happens is that someone requests a file. This is anyone, the system doesn’t know the owner for immutable data, it is not stored with the chunks (data) of a file.
Their PC requests data from the network
The network goes to the vaults holding the data and requests the vaults to retrieve the data.
All vaults serve up the data to be sent to the person
Only one vault was the fastest and the data is sent to the person’s PC
It is the vault that actually was the first to send the data that gets any coin. NOTE: the request can be sent to 8 vaults but only one can earn any coin and that is when they are first to send the data into the network for delivery to the person’s PC
Thanks for the help. One last question. Lets say someone requests their file more than once on different days. Will a vault only get paid for the first time?
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Every time the data is retrieved (& first to deliver) from the vault
If the same data is retrieved often then the caching aspect of the network will deliver the data without anyone getting coin. Just what constitutes often is dependent on caching size and network usage
If you search and read the forum you will find a number of topics discussing what happens and why it is possible to afford and desirable to work the payments this way. It is a quite in depth discussion and not quick to answer.
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That’s interesting. I don’t think I’d quite absorbed how that would work. So how will the network avoid being monopololised by a few users with very fast connections?
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Location, location and location.
Also lets face it a 1 Mbit/s link is not going to fair as well as a 1GBit/s link (with quick computer). But there will be times that the 1MBit/s computer is closer and beats the fast one.
Also remember it is the first packet that will determine the 1st to serve since the chunk is itself split into packets in order to send it over TCP/IP
Also the chunks are spread (almost randomly) across the vaults so the fast computers/links are not going to hold all the data are they
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Just thinking of the investment problem. Since storage is getting cheaper all the time. And the things people want to store are getting larger. The coin value might be always falling since they will be easier to obtain?
There is quite a lot of dynamics when it comes to coin growth.
Each time the network goes to reward the farmer it calculates a coin address to reward the farmer, but if the coin at that address already exists then the farmer misses out that time. The farmer only receives a coin if there is no existing coin at the calculated address. This means that as more coins exist the rate people receive coin decreases.
Also there is a algorithm that also limits the rate of attempting to reward farmers a coin so that as farming is more abundant the rate decreases and when the farmers reduce the rate increases.
Then the coins are destroy as people pay for resources. The the coins in existence will the increasing and decreasing depending on the number of farmers and the amount people are uploading to the network.
And it is quite in depth and best to continue reading the forum and getting a feeling for how the network is meant to work and how the coin fits in. Ask when needed though. There is a lot to read though.
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Good explanation @neo
One point to remember- at the moment it is planned there will be a “sweet-spot” in terms of farming income for farmers who are providing ~20% above the average vault-size. BUT that advantage drops off when the vault size is >30% of the average. So there is great incentive to provide just a bit more than the average but not to get greedy and provide petabytes of storage.
Basically Joe Punter is incentivised to provide decent amounts of storage but Dave the Datacentre owner is not. Thus we try to provide a very large number of decent sized vaults in many many locations.
Naturally as the network matures these figures (20 and 30%) will be subject to change as the market and network grows but the basic shape of the earnings/supplied vault size curve will remain the same ( is it a sigmoid curve? something like that)
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@pewpew I’m glad you’re here digging in. I’d like to encourage you to keep going because I think once people go past a certain point of understanding, appreciation of what this network could do expands hugely. The potential goes so far and wide beyond just data storage. The more people who understand, the better!
How did you end up looking into SAFE?
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I was into bitcoin so I saw it was one of the currencies listed on coinmarketcap.com
This one doesn’t run on top of Etherium does it?
It sounds promising so far but i will want to dig into it more in the near future.
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The network is not based on any of the other cryptocurrencies or platforms. Unlike many on coinmarketcap, SAFE doesn’t even need a blockchain.
Aside from data storage and safecoin, another thing the SAFE Network will provide is a new, better version of the internet. Secure, private, no central servers and many other advantages…
This is the only the tip of the iceberg!
edit: to clarify, I’m not suggesting SAFE aims to duplicate the content of the world wide web, but rather to be a new independent platform, redesigned from the ground up to enable SAFE’s core ideals (including Secure Access For Everyone)!
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What’s still not really clear to me, is what happens if I fire up 1000 freebsd jails/solaris zones on a single server with thin provisioned storage ?
Your bandwidth per vault will be so poor that all you will do is waste electricity. The network will “grade” your vault on disk space, CPU power and bandwidth, also uptime.
In your scenario, the bandwidth will be so low that it is unlikely that any of your vaults would be accepted onto the network.
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