Correct me if I’m mistaken (also only skimming this thread) but can’t an app be built so that it’s revenue can subsidize the app users storage cost of not cover it? It would have to be built in such a way to prevent abuse, perhaps from sub accounts but I think this could be an interesting upload for free model from a users perspective. If successful it would be highly competitive as a service.
2 Likes
There is some private torrent website(cgpeers.com) where you can’t download unless you seed, so let us say you contribute with seeding 10GB then you can only download 10GB and so on,
what if SAFE used the same method?
I am whiling to be a farmer without rewards only in exchange for valuable data/resources.
1 Like
I am not sure what you mean? If we demanded users have vaults, then there goes all the mobile devices, the people who want to just browse and we add in a barrier to entry. Then rework all the consensus algorithms and more, for what exactly? A private diaspora type hard to use network, at least in my opinion.
We need to make the process seamless and not mimic the current Interenet, that’s a huge mistake. We need to do much better than the current Internet, lower the cost of innovation and let the worlds brains go free to find the very best in applications etc. All without resource costs etc.
We cannot just jump around with mammoth changes to the network core, you would not believe the thinking that is in the background for even simple changes.
Of course we always need to prod at other ideas, but we need to be aware of the side effects or unintended consequences as well. That takes weeks of debate at best 
14 Likes
I think the majority here are happy with the current path forward…
6 Likes
The point of safecoin is to facilitate something similar via proxy. You host data and get safecoin, then you spend the safecoin on writes.
5 Likes
We all want to see SAFE a network for everyone and replacement for our current internet model and let people build services/apps on top of SAFE.
I am in love with SAFE as it’s now, let us say a file is publicly available on the network similar to bittorrent, I was just suggesting if possible to let users contribute to seed the same file they are watching or downloading, I don’t want SAFE to change the current path we are here because we believe in this amazing tech.
so this seem as what I am looking for. I do farming and earn safecoins and with this coins I can get access to write public(website) or private data?
what if I want to publish a forum website (discourse/safenetforum.org) do I have to pay safecoin for each new post//reply?
2 Likes
Depends on the app / site used. Default would be that you do, but you then retain ownership of that post etc. There are lots of ways though, see Project Decorum on this site for more info there.
9 Likes
A long time ago I was promoting the idea of storing date1 of latest payment of each stored chunk (Sacrificial data vs non-permanent data). If a local group runs out of space to store all the copies of a chunk, then the oldest paid chunks in the group would automatically be deleted to make room for the new ones.
A re-payment protocol doesn’t need to be implemented because simply re-uploading a file could do the job. There is no loss of anonymity and anyone caring for a specific piece of data could do it, not just the initial uploader.
All the people in this topic that think the safe network will sustain itself with the natural exponential growth of stored data wouldn’t have to make the such re-payments2.
But people who don’t want to take any risks can periodically reupload files, or maybe do it for specific files.
1: For anybody upset by the notion of date, this could be replaced with section version.
2: In their opinion this safety mechanism will never activate.
4 Likes
If this were to ever become a problem, though I’m not convinced that it will be, the obvious solution would be to add a small cost to GET data, just enough to cover the bandwidth, just like there’s a cost to PUT data. It would mean you wouldn’t even be able to surf read only for free, though users would generally have some safecoins from farming and the apps could perhaps give some safecoins to users to pay for the usage in some cases.
I remember that proposal and how I totally opposed it.
Despite the last proposed changes, which avoids most of the initial problems, I still think it is extremely damaging to the network’s reputation.
The network is based on the principles of “permanence” and “safety” and activate the principle of re-upload “just in case” only generates distrust.
If the designers themselves do not trust their product, how can they expect the public to do it?
4 Likes
Perhaps some technical understanding is missing here.
There is no such thing as unpopular data. Vaults and farmers treat chunks as equal. There is no ‘important vs unimportant’ or ‘private vs public’ or even ‘popular vs unpopular’ data. This is the principle of fungibility applied to chunks. Even if a farmer measures the rate of access on each chunk, that does not imply some data is more or less popular than other data (due to caching rules, unknown future demand, etc).
On a separate point, it feels like there’s an underlying assumption that economics drives value, when really it’s the reverse, value drives economics. Start with ‘what is valuable about the network’ and then ask ‘how can the economics be set’. This eliminates rent as an economic model because data destruction is highly damaging to the value proposition of the network. Same with paying for browsing.
15 Likes
Couldn’t agree more.
We are trying to get away from the “broken” web - 404 errors. And the current model will certainly help.
Rent or oldest chunk goes could even make SAFE worse than the current Web since random parts of files could disappear (oldest chunk goes) people who own their comments on social media, forums, etc will not pay the rent for older stuff or the oldest chunk removes a lot of comments.
9 Likes
Not with the GBGB idea. You just have some safe coins in your wallet which will be automatically deducted when your browse the data. It’ll be very very minuscule like 0.5 safe coin can make you browse for months
So you are saying that some data reading will cost and some won’t. Doubt people will use SAFE when they don’t even know how much it will cost to simply browse or view a file.
No need for it. If people are not paying for bandwidth then why charge others for it.
1 Like
[emphasis added]
I really wish this were more widely understood, brilliant statement. I could not agree more,
Value drives economics, by forcing us to have economic models that enable value creation and transfer (put a cost on a value). I think many projects look at this in reverse and imagine it’s all about the cash, when in fact that is like saying a car is all about the oil. Really good to see anyway @mav nice one.
11 Likes
Ok. Do you understand that all the safecoins you get from farming essentially all comes from people storing new data? It’s a huge paradox what you’re saying. By that means we all won’t have to pay to store any data. All can just turn on our computers and farm. Its impossible! You or someone else will have to pay to store the data!
Think from the very basics and essence of where the money comes from and you’ll understand the concern. It have to depend on the money coming from new data eventually and essencially.
But, just thinking about some of the other things that can fuel the network, i guess if a website creator builds a successful website generating renvenue in other forms they can pay for all the new data created on the website(referring to social media sites specifically but there can and probably will be others too). And so the growth of the network can depend on more things than the bandwidth costs, amount of altruistic farmers and the cost of storage in general.
But again not charging anything for bandwidth and infinite storage time may lead to abuse. Someone who wanted to spam the network can make millions of requests to websites and the whole network suffers. Its like a DDOS of the whole network. Governments can have the power to do this if they want to shut the network down for example
No it doesn’t. And I feel this is one point you don’t understand fully. Its not a pay to upload so farmer can be paid.
If nobody uploaded anymore then farming could be paid for perhaps 10-20 years before all farmers gave up. This is assuming no one uploaded anymore and before saying its impossible you need to see how it works. And still I think there is 1 in 10 billion change people would be wholeheartedly downloading yet no one uploads. That just goes against being human in the digital world. What would happen is that no one is using SAFE being the reason no one uploads.
This has been dealt with and there is a very large topic with all the reasons this will not happen especially as you portray. It is lengthily and difficult to give the reasons quickly. But caching and relay node bandwidth sharing would prevent this being a problem. Also when nodes are not paying for bandwidth as is the case for most if not all who decide to run node-vaults, then why introduce costly artificial costs to the network that put people off adopting SAFE.
4 Likes
Yes, it does. It is basic safecoin economy based on recycling.
Everyone states in this thread that the need for storage increases exponentially, so the only reason for people not uploading files anymore would be a scenario where there is not enough free space which would lead to a prohibitive safecoin price.
This will happen one day, because storage capacity of the network cannot grow exponentially forever, that’s physically impossible.
When storage capacity doesn’t grow fast enough, the only way to allow new data in the network, is to be delete old data. This is the basis of my proposal above.
There might be other solutions, like recurring fees proposed by @foreverjoyful, but the problem must be solved.
It must be solved. Though I don’t see any reason to rush. When nedeed the greater dev community will modify the network.
Compression algos might also evolve to allow for stale data to be highly compress at the expense of access speed. Nodes with fast computational capability could be partially responsible for serving this data.
The request is made, archive nodes pass the compressed data to fast compute nodes for decompression and they go to the client. Maybe requests for stale data could require a decompression compute fee? 
In the eventual case it does, but not in the near/medium case it is not tied.
Farming will continue for years and years without any recycling. It may not make for good farming rates in the end or good overall eventual economy.
But the fact is that paying for resources is disconnected from the paying for farming. The only connection is that Spare resources make up the primary input to the values set for payments and rewards.
If you delve into the actual economics and realise that is a whole lot more than pay for resources translates into paying out for rewards.
Again the network can pay out for years and years without any recycling. This to me is a major disconnect between payment for resources and rewards paid out. Obviously having healthy amount of uploads will encourage more downloads and thus more farming rewards there is a connection and obviously the coins needed for those EXTRA farming rewards will come from the coins paid to upload them including dups. Again it is not necessary to do so to pay rewards for farming. Obviously again rewards for farming will be better if uploads are done and paid for, the fact is that farming rewards would continue without any more uploads.
That is one scenario and is just one of a few.
The free space problem is probably the least of the possibilities. The most likely one is that people simply are not using SAFE anymore.
For the life of SAFE and communications as we understand it, storage can certainly grow. Do you think SAFE has a infinite lifespan? Same that massive increases in storage will not. But SAFE lifespan might be measured in decades to century, but storage increases will be measured in centuries to millions of years.
Its not until we know all things will the increase in knowledge will stop and we would need to do like the brains in Futurma where they have to destroy the universe to stop even more knowledge being created after scanning it all.
We know of many methods of storing data that we have not the physics yet, but know how to do it. Things like electron spin, atom placement, and numerous things that would exceed the 10x in 5 years growth we have experienced for the last 40 or so years, if those new methods are implemented in 100 years or more.
So to say that storage space growth is unsustainable is a strawman argument for the forseeable future of 100+ years. Barring war, natural disasters etc.
Thats like deleting 0.01% of data to fit the next days in. To recover enough space you have to delete everything from two or less years ago just to ensure enough space is kept. Data increases are massive and you need 30% free to cope at all times. So if what describe comes true where storage increases drop away then deleting old data will neither be enough or desirable. History is the basis of scientific growth. It would become a case where you delete 2 years ago when SAFE is 2 years old then at 5 years you need to be deleting 1 years ago and at a decade old you need to be deleting 6 months ago. No disk storage increases is not slowing down significantly yet, and methods of permanent storage is increasing rapidly at the moment.
5 Likes