Hi - I’m new to running nodes, so please correct me if I’m misunderstanding something.
How is running nodes long-term incentivised?
From what I gather, users pay only for new data. Thus, a node operator only gets paid for new data and not for existing data. Wouldn’t it then make sense for node operators to purge their older nodes periodically to free up space, since that wouldn’t affect earnings drastically?
Short answer, that is a waste of time to purge. Your node will just download existing data it is responsible for again. A waste of bandwidth. And if you just delete the data the other nodes will begin to shun your node since it will fail their audits.
Data moves around the network over time and each node will be holding similar amounts of data as well. The opportunities to earn is pretty even when your node has stuck around for enough time. Currently its about 24 hours before your node is trusted enough to store new data and be paid.
You need to grasp the concept that data is not stationary and as new nodes join the network or nodes leave so does the data shift to the new closest nodes to the data’s address. Since node’s address is fairly randomly distributed and data chunks are similarly fairly randomly distributed all nodes end up with similar amounts of data stored.
Alright, thanks for clearing that up!