Bitcoin Forum

Instead of rewarding transferable units for solving each block,a fixed data
space may be rewarded.This data record would be replicated at all nodes.

• There would be similar limit to data space,just like limit in number of coins.
• Data size reward per block would decrease over time.
• Tokens of authority of any data size can be transferred between peers, similar to transfer of coins.
• Permanence of data increases with increase in number of peers.
• This could be very useful for whistle-blowers to buy/mine some tokens and then release anonymously, any document which would be securely stored at thousands of nodes.

I've been thinking about something like this for a while, since the reward (disk space) has tangible value, and it gives the cryptocurrency a real world purpose.

I'd go further and suggest that you could create a currency that has a value which is loosely tied to an average cost per GB of a consumer level storage device, so no mining is needed at all, just some proof that the allocated data space is dedicated to that block... but that would give people with access to a lot of storage a huge advantage. This may not be an issue if the idea is to create redundant storage rather than speculate to make a profit.

How would a peer to peer system know average cost per GB of a consumer level storage device ?


For this to happen,the proof of existence of data had to be periodically checked, in a secure decentralized way. Otherwise the node can verify the block of data for once, and later delete it, and falsely claim existence of the data which it does not have.

Good point. I guess the clients could use a fitting formula based on historical data, with an update to the client required if there's any major change in projections versus real world values. The idea of buying a few TB worth of HDs rather than a GPU or ASIC appeals to me. :)


Yes, ongoing proof would be required, perhaps in the form of a unique challenge from a peer which also holds that block - what is the hash of the stored data plus <random_key>. I guess in this case the block chain would need to contain a permanent record of the result of those challenges, so that future rewards for the peer will decline as it fails more checks for valid data. A long term trust system (such as a gradual increase in reward) for new peers would also be necessary to discourage a peer from just periodically deleting data and starting over from scratch as a new peer. It would need to be balanced to ensure that in the medium to long term it's more cost effective to keep the data, rather than try to cheat the system.

NaMeCoin already provides storage. Just go ahead and store whatever it is you want to store in that. It does not restrict you to only storing information about how to find websites and such.

-MarkM-

How much data storage is provided in 1 Namecoin ?