Lets say raw data storage on the SAFE network is 2-3X the cost of storing data on an old-school cloud like dropbox or something. Would you guys still prefer it for it’s additional features? Would you prefer it for sensitive data but stick to the cheaper solution to store all your video game playing recordings? What’s the most you would pay relative to legacy cloud storage systems?
Now of course it might be cheaper. That’s not the debate I want to spark here. I more want to ask “what if” to see how valuable the extra features of the SAFE network are to people.
It’s a bit weird, since on the safe network you pay once, while on current clouds you pay every month.
If you mean 2-3x the price to store it for one month, hell yeah!
(google drive is 2$/100GB, so 0.06$/GB to upload to the safe network)
Though some quick math’s brings me to a price of at least 0.10$/GB, using similar vault and bandwidth numbers as the tor network, it may go below that, but I honestly may be happy with like 5x that.
We are talking about decentralised, basically immutable data which can be either public or private.
(also you can be cheeky and check if public files have already been uploaded, then simply take those instead of uploading your own, cutting costs.)
ya the waters do get a bit murky when you try to compare a monthly cost to a 1 time cost. I mean the only way to really do it is ask what is the lifespan of a file. If it’s like your family photos then I would say its lifespan is at least your entire life making the total cost to pay monthly quite high. I guess you really have to ask what type of data we are talking about. Lets think about video game playing recordings. I would say those are relevant for 5 years tops so the cost of storing them would be 6$/GB. Would you pay 12 bucks to have them on the SAFE network with it’s additional features?
There are other cheap and secure options like Sia.
The price matter, but you will get most secure storage, accesible from anywhere and no more worries when to move your files or pay annual fee.
Today price per 1TB around 1500MAID is OK.
And if you count that to share your files around world you do not need to pay any bandwidth fee, the price is very cheap than.
Edit: The price match with cheap option available on Internet, but with download limit 1TB and lower security.
How that would work?
First I thought that SafeNetwork will safe lot of space if each file will be only once with all copies, but same file uploaded from different user make uniqe hash and is not shared with others if is private.
But if you will find some public file, how you will make own copy without download/upload?
Ah right, a few plans got mixed up, it should still work fine using immutable public files, though I’m not sure how to add it to your account, that’s simply because I don’t know how that works.
For all the editable filetypes I’m not too sure, too many changes too quickly, can’t keep up…
However let’s assume people will find a way still, you may not be able to edit it yourself, but it’s still uploaded to the network and presumably saved as a version so forever accesible.
edit:
Oh right, the file is simply a map to find the chunks, you check the chunks and not the file-map, the chunks are based on the content of that perticular MB, not who uploaded it, theyre all unchanging.
Then simply write your own file-map while pretending you just uploaded the chunks.
Short answer is that I would potentially be happy to pay more if I knew it was my data, safe, secure, no third party, etc etc etc…
Problem is that I am not necessarily the target audience.
I dare say most people will not want to pay anything because they’re used to not paying anything. Google storage is free, youtube free, drop box free etc… all large companies offer a free version of their service.
The sell will be to companies, partners, business people, potentially even government and other organisations. Perhaps Joe Public eventually will change his tune, but not yet.
oh we are totally on the same thread of thought here. I figure the best way to sell my big blob of SAFEcoin from the MAID exchange is to pitch the SAFE network to companies/governments.
ok so I guess maybe the question is would you pay something for the SAFE network when these other services are free. I do agree the way to get ANYONE to buy into it is to get them onboard with the safe/secure/ect features that these other services don’t offer and see if they would now be willing to pay something for a more “premium” service.
I’ve spoken in here about offering physical SAFE devices. A small NAS type device for the family home or business. You can put a bit of space into each of them and then offer redundancy storage by up uploading to safe. Have it all preset. If you get even just 1% of your customers to do it that is a lot of space.
I am wondering how much hard drive churn an active 6TB vault will have? Will it really be feasible to have a large amount of the network running on “spare” space or would dedicated equipment be required/desirable (my OmniCore wallet grinds away like crazy 24/7)? Thinking ~$1400 for the computer and drives (6TB RAID) plus another $1000 for electricity, peripherals, internet connection, etc. This puts the total cost of this high-performance, dedicated setup at $2400. Let’s say this lasts 4 years before replacement. With a 2X markup to promote investment (i.e. profit) that works out to ~$0.20/GB. This is what a farmer would have to make per year to justify jumping in and buying new, dedicated equipment at full-price. Most people could do this for much less if they have spare capacity, don’t splurge on the best hardware, etc., but is not a bad number to keep in mind maybe. If people think of data storage for ~25 years as “forever” then that would work out to a PUT cost of $5/GB for each copy stored. I think I heard there are going to be 6 or 8 redundant copies so maybe $30-$40/GB cost. That seems like an upper bound that no one could argue with for being self-sustaining. In all likelihood, the PUT cost would be more like $10-$20/GB as I was very conservative in my assumptions. That doesn’t seem unreasonable given all the benefits of network storage.
All excellent points that underscore that my numbers are likely very much on the high side (and how hard it is to put a number on this right now). Even 20 year old stale data needs to be stored, which has a cost. There needs to be some incentive for farmers to hold old data and that can only be paid by new PUT cost. But I agree that HD space is a small fraction of the total cost of running a farm (maybe 20%). I guess ideally that a farming rig won’t be grinding away all the time and it would be possible to add some really large array of drives without making the computer unusable for other activities or overwhelm it if it only farms. As old data won’t take up much bandwidth that may work out nicely.
I would appreciate it if we can avoid going down this rabbit hole. I mentioned in the OP I did not want to start a debate on IF the price would be lower or higher or what it would be. I wanted to ask WHAT IF it is higher then other options. Would you still pay more for the additional features of the SAFE network and how much more? Lets keep this conversation focused on the demand side and discuss supply side in other threads. thanks
I don’t store data anywhere other than locally.
If I did, I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t mind paying 24 months of regular cloud service.
To me it would seem a bargain, 24 months of charge for lifetime storage.
I only store data locally at the moment, but my reservations with cloud storage aren’t about cost, but about security and longevity. I would be very willing to pay $5-$20+ / GB to store a fair amount of my most important data on a system that I felt was truly secure and safe for the long term. That probably amounts to around 10 GB, so $50-$200 seems quite reasonable to me for this peace of mind. Whether I need the data in 25 years is very debatable, but there is something psychological about knowing that I will lose my data the minute I stop paying the monthly/annual fee that I don’t like about cloud storage (besides the security concerns).
When thinking about it I would probably have a different approach than previous replys. I would probably load my account with $30-100 a year and see how far it goes, if it gives 1GB or 100Gb then I would adapt to the situation.
shouldnt someone make an app for safenetwork that offers some free storage… but there creates a question how can that be either economically neutral for the one who offers that or even profitable or even if some organisation can do it out of philanthropy or human rights so if someone needs free storage on safe network for a cause he can just upload as much as needed, like a documentary about a really bad stuff happening!
interesting angle. Maybe the question is how much would you pay so someone else can upload publicly valuable stuff to the SAFE network. I don’t have like gobs of data that needs a home but if someone was building some kind of public library I might donate to the cause.
