I think I understand most of how the network works, but I was going over it in my head and got confused so I’m asking:
“Once you put data on SAFE, it’s free to keep it on there forever. You don’t keep paying as time goes on, But the farmers holding it keep earning SafeCoin for holding it.” right?
So where does that money come from?
Isn’t it unbalanced in that way, and could potentially drain all the SafeCoin if left going like that?
I’m sure there’s a simple answer here and I’m just missing something.
You aren’t paying to keep it there. You are PAID safecoin by the network for devoting computer resources to the network. The safecoin paid to farmers comes from the network itself, from the software. It does not exist until computer resources are provided to the network by farmers in exchange for it. When you upload data to the network the safecoin is destroyed and the cycle is completed.
Do I have that about right @dirvine? (just checking )
The coins are recycled – So when you spend to save that money becomes available to be issued again to the farmers. As the network grows, so does the value contained… Each user brings a certain amount of space bandwidth, redundancy etc… But they also bring content which can add to the value of the network… They also bring more people to transact with making the SAFEcoin more spendable and useful. So there are potentials for exponential growth in values.
In the end, the market will determine the worth… But if SAFEcoin is only worth subsistance and we have a Network that has security privacy and freedom baked in, we have been paid enough…
Basically I proposed that in the event that the network runs out of storage space first the sacrificial chunks are deleted and if it is not enough then the older chunks would be deleted. People could pay some safecoins to update the time stamp of their old files to insure they won’t be deleted. These payments would provide another source of recycled safecoins.
It was replied that this proposal was breaking the network and that the technological progress allows a storage capacity growth large enough to prevent this problem from happening. But I am still unconvinced that an exponential growth of the network will hold forever (IMO this kind of a growth is needed for the new data added each year to finance the storage of past years data).
hmhmmm - storage space is getting cheaper and cheaper as the time goes by … I thought about this one-time-payment-stuff also … and I’m really not sure what to think … When looking back in time i’d say storage is not really an issue … because drives get bigger and bigger … but of course with a growing network … and all the internet being stored in MS … some day it really might become a problem … and if I’m not getting coins back when erasing something I’d have no reason to delete something I uploaded once … it would become a huge data-dump …
But much of what we save is the same thing that somebody else saved… So rather than 1000 people saving that Cat Gif on a thousand different disks, will be saved a dozen times on SAFE run disks. All that excess 988 times disk space will be available for additional content.
All in all, I think it will work out to be quite a bit cheaper.
)