Maybe a stupid question: will users have to pay to access websites stored on the SAFE Network, or are all costs paid by the website owner?
I assume as more people access a website, the more the costs will go up as with conventional websites.
Conversely, I assume that I definitely will have to pay to access apps stored on the SAFE Network. Will any of that money go to the people storing the data, or does it all go to the developer who then pays to store the data?
You wonāt pay for accessing website, but you will have to pay for every information you are storing, for example, if you have an account on a website or application that require to store some information, you will pay for that (and also you will be in full posession of these files)
No, this is a big difference between SAFE and the current websites. On SAFE the owner of the website pays a small fee (in Safecoin) for the storage (letās say 25 mb. for the website) and the domain like safe://silverpin
Once that is done the website can be browsed by anyone on SAFE, even people that never paid anything at all and just use SAFE to download stuff and browse websites. The people delivering the chunks to the users will get paid in Safecoin as part of Farming. But when a website becomes popular these chunks will get cached over the network and less money is made on the chunks.
And the developper donāt store your data. You store and control your data in the network and only give permission to the App. to use, or not, this data.
Not sure itās clear from the responses, but the are no ongoing charges for the website owner.
Store once, pay once, no follow on costs if your website is accessed a little or a lot from then on (only for any new pages/data you want to create and host).
And as noted, visitors donāt pay anything to access anything. The only charges are when storing data.
Thank you, all. Those responses were very helpful.
How are domains going to be registered on the SAFE Network?
That happens through the DNS API, itās not DNS as you know it, but simply creating a very small data item (Structured Data) and storing it on the network. It cannot be switched off or blocked.
is there any discussion on pricing for domains and considering the price could be very low, how to avoid or mitigate domain farming from the early access adopters?
Wellā¦ We had a long discussion about this back in 2015. Iām still against the current DNS model but it is better than others right now. The domain prices is a free market solution. Itās up to the people to decide. safe://google domain could be priced for million dollars. Or low as 1 cent.
There are people in the community that supports no DNS / pet name system, so that there will be no more squatting.
āno ongoing charges for the website owner.ā
This is an interesting feature. Iām new to the platform so any links to background info would be much appreciated. A few questions and concerns come to mind. For example, how does one account for the ongoing bandwidth and electrical costs to vault owners maintaining the MAID? Transaction fees? Does the algorithm continuously move data around so that each vault has a balanced mix of hot and cold storage, so that transaction rates will be relatively constant for all nodes on the network? If so, who pays for the balancing? Is this where the farming aspect comes in, thereby the network protocol will issue new SafeCoins to cover these costs?
What if itās a dynamic webpage? For example, if a website allows visitors to register and create profiles, storing this would still require a fee, yes?
I think you answered your own question here. There are no transaction fees, and yes, farming pays for all this and the network automatically balances as part of the data distribution. If a vault doesnāt perform adequately it will be rejected and so data moves to where it is served effectively.
Yes, this is an effective ongoing cost but it is paid by the user not the website owner. The user owns and controls their data, so will pay a small fee when they post data (reply to forum post, comment on a blog, tweet etc.). But the benefit to them is their data is under their control.
So effectively, this means that users of dynamic websites will have to pay in order to use them. Not saying that this is a bad thing (the cost might be quite affordable), but it would be better if we could come up with a solution that doesnāt have this problem.
For example, it would be great if users could āpurchaseā a package that allows them to store up to X amount of data for the next year, or even for the foreseeable future. Or some kind of subscription basis. This would be like paying for using the internet (or in this case, the SAFE network).
my understanding is that by dedicating a certain amount of your disk space and bandwidth, you are ābuyingā your X amount of storage on the network Sort of a subscription, as your income will be recurrent. Buying Safecoins is another option, but youāll have to renew it once it goes dry.
@todor Iām not sure what you see as the problem that would be solved by buying in the ways you suggest. I say that because your suggestions for payment seem similar to how it will actually work, not identical, but similar certainly, and as @nice points out users can also earn to pay for their usage quite easily.
If you think Iām missing something about the āproblemā that you are concerned about, please explain it so I can understand your concerns better.
I donāt really think itās a big problem, but I think it would help with user experience if a more straight-forward and easy to understand way of using the network would be implemented. It doesnāt have to be built in the network though, it could be a solution on top of it.
Edit: Iām not saying that my suggestion is good enough, it probably isnāt, but that it might be worth exploring this further.
Sure, Iām not taking your points as negative, but trying to understand what you see as a problem given your suggestions, because as I say I think they are close to how it will work. Without understanding that I canāt take on board and think about the improvements you have in mind. Iād like to do that because if there are ways to improve things in all for it 
Wouldnāt it be safe to say that if you added a 1TB vault to the network it would cover the storage needs for your social media profile or cute cat video watching? The details concerning bandwidth costs are what Iām trying to figure out. Is it simply just the same scenario? You pay for your home connection, 50GB/month gets used by SAFEnet access to your vault by other people, so you get 50GB/month of bandwidth on the SAFEnet for your own consumption? I guess that will work as long as the ISPs donāt enforce a data cap.
I canāt put a figure on it, it could be much less for example. So I donāt know, but that is the principle.
Watching would be free. Free access to information is one of the goals of the SAFE network.
Remember though that adding space is not what earns you coin, but the successful retrieval of information when requested.