[Offline] 50GB Static Testnet

[tfa]

@stout77

@dirvine

Think like this, Adults are like disk drives in a computer. Store stuff there and let it be. In a section they are almost append only immutable data stores.

Elders have massive amounts of work to do and possibly too much. They take care (atm) of all mutable data, transfers (safecoin), client connections, Adult penalties and all network agreements/consensus.

I only go by what was said in the past, when the decision was taken to have Elders not to store data. Although, as others, I didn’t necessarily agree, I thought it made sense if the load was to much for Elders.
If the optimisations that have been put in place in the meantime allow to bring back storage to Elders, happy days. But frankly I believe it’s premature; churn has taken down elders in previous testnets way too easly even without that, and that’s even without splits.

I remember my opposition to this change in 2020 and I welcome MaidSafe changing their mind again and intending to bring back storage to elders.

This is what I replied to this post at that time:

@tfa

@dirvine

Elders have massive amounts of work to do

If adults work is lighter, then continuing it shouldn’t be a problem in that case.

@dirvine

and possibly too much.

So a very powerful device is needed to be an elder and I like that because an attack to get control of a section is harder to implement.

Furthermore, I would find unfair that any requirement for elders be less constraining than for adults. It could be storage (capacity and speed), cpu, download, upload, …

I wouldn’t be alone, and the risk is a perceived injustice damaging for the network success if the requirement could be lighter in one of the dimensions (say for example storage capacity).

The only way to ensure this is that elders work is additive to adults work. If the work is different we can’t be sure of that or at least it might be difficult to convince people of that.