Will there be any reliable way to measure the aggregate amount of free storage available on the safe network? Since many nodes will be provided voluntarily, and the rate at which storage is needed will be arbitrary (depending on the types of data being stored by programs utilizing the network), how will we know when additional storage needs to be provided to the network?
As the network becomes more robust, this won’t be nearly as likely, but in early stages it could be significant and might slow the adoption of app developers that have nowhere to write their data (getting “disk full” errors). A case I’m considering is a backup application that stores thousands of users’ media collections into MaidSAFE storage leaving no space available for other content to be written until additional nodes and/or storage are allocated.
Measure, no, approximate extremely closely, yes.
Close groups will automatically approximate this for us and adapt the farming rewards and upload costs accordingly to aim for 20% free storage.
I don’t believe that will happen. A lot of people are already keen to start farming as much as they can afford to, there’ll likely be plenty of free space in the early days. Besides, uploading to the network’s maximum capacity would cost an insane amount of SafeCoins.
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The chunk of data (InmutableData) have two sub-types, Backup and Sacrificial. The space used by the Sacrificial Data will be available if necessary. If this happens the farming regard increases attracting new farmer with more space.
It could be said that, under normal conditions, the SAFE network always has a third of the space available to balance the network.
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Fair enough. (I know I’ll be farming, and there’s lots of discussion to imply others are making active plans for it.) Thanks for the well iterated response!
What about for the average user who only wants to make available what they use on the SAFE network? I.e. will the ratio between what I use on SAFE and what I provide to the network from my desktop be close to 1:1? This would include turning off the desktop at night and sleeping it a few times a day.
I’m sure new casual users would not want to bother to purchase safecoin just to try out SAFE. I think a 1:2 ratio is acceptable or even 1:3. Or would one need to leave their desktop on all the time?
And what will happen when I connect to SAFE for the first time? Will I be able to store data right away or would I need to wait to prove my desktop resources are reliable to the network in order to earn enough storage space?
It doesn’t work that way as it was implied by the early maidsafe videos, that your available space is proportional (or equal) to the space you “donate” to the network (many people still believe this). Instead, by “donating” space to the network, you will (on a statistical basis, depending on how much space you “donate”) earn safecoin. This safecoin you have to spend when you upload something to the network, and it will stay there forever, no matter if you stop donating or not. Download is also always free…
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…or even 1:3…
hehe at that rate network wouldn’t brake even if I’m not mistaken…at least 4 copies of your file will be stored across the network.