I just thought of this so i thought i’d post it - an effect of each data getting duplicated 8 times is that, for every 1GB stored, there need be 8GB of network space. Hence, for every 1 GB paid for, it pays for storage on a 8GB “hard-drive” so to speak, known as the network itself.
So let’s say 8 safecoins are paid by me to store 1GB of data(and assuming i was the only customers and the networks total capacity is 8GB), in theory, each 1GB contributed to the network by the farmers will receive 1 safecoins in return, so it means, if you store 1GB onto the network, you pay 8 more times than you’d make if you donate 1GB to the network. I think this can be improved somehow, because basically, being a farmer, just with the model itself, the profit isn’t a lot.
So say dropbox cost $0.1 to store 1GB for a year, how much would it cost on the safenetwork? 10 times more for forever? But each farmer will only get paid 1/8 of the payment anyway, even if the storer pays $1, if you divide that by 8, farmers basically get paid roughly the same amount as if they’d only store the data for a year, to store it forever. that doesn’t sound too lucrative, it also doesn’t sound too lucrative to pay a lot more upfront, many would probably see storing 100 GB on the safenetwork costing $50-80, but on dropbox for a year cost $10, they’d probably use dropbox! Now, i have learnt a little psychology(and still learning), so my knowledge is limited, but nevertheless, enough to know that many people would definitely prefer to pay little by little rather than a lump sum upfront, it’s consumer psychology(also the reason why phone plans are very popular). Pricing Psychology: A List of Tactics see section - “offer payments in installments”, this is simliar to that.
And if the safenetwork cost less upfront instead, maybe $20 or less for 100GB lets say(or double the cost of what other storage providers charge for one year of storage) that then becomes kinda OK for the customer paying for storage since safenetwork offers forever storage instead of one year, but the farmers will basically suffer, in that case, they will get paid 4 times less than what they’d get paid if they were Dropbox for a GB stored for a year, and they have to store it FOREVER with UNLIMITED bandwidth. Even PAID dropbox accounts have 250GB/day bandwidth limit on their files in public folders (What Are Dropbox's Bandwidth Limits?). So basically, it’ll seriously suck for the farmer. Remember, duplication of 8 times is only the BASE figure, for popular files, safenetwork offers not only unlimited bandwidth but it’s duplicated many more times too, taking up both the networks storage space and bandwidth, making profits worse for the farmer. Remember, dropbox is a big company and gets business prices for bandwidth, yet they still limit it, safenetwork is made up of users getting retail prices for both bandwidth and storage, yet receiving 4-8 times less the payment while having bandwidth being unlimited.
This goes along with my other post regarding concerns for sustainability(Safenetwork sustainability concerns - Bandwidth has an ongoing cost however Safenetwork is a pay once, benefit forever model - #299 by digipl), although this issue is a bit different in a sense that the potencial issue, if it does affect the network, it won’t get worse overtime, so it doesn’t affect ‘sustainability’ per say, but it does affect the expandability, as if the economical model isn’t too good for the network, or any network, it’ll grow less.
A potential solution is make the cost of storing forever higher while introducing a second option to have people able to pay 1%-5%(exact % can be decided later) of the cost they’d otherwise pay, but pay it monthly, they can pay a slightly higher than 5% for the first month to cover some initial costs, if any. This also solves the sustainability problem. Anyhow, thought i’d at least put it out there for the community to discuss, maybe it won’t be a problem at all but maybe it will and needs some good solutions from the community.