For the current incarnation of this site: I uploaded something and am able to download it. Cool.
My question is: Who is paying for it?
My question is: Who is paying for it?
Uploading files to Skynet is free, but without a user account, most portals will store your files for a minimum of 3 months. Storage expenses are paid by Skynet Portals, which use a cryptocurrency called Siacoin on the Sia network. Portal operating costs are paid by operators, but we encourage users to support portal operators, developers, and content creators by signing up for a user account.
Like many crypto currencies the current operation is heavily funded by subsidy from minted coins.
Right now portals pay for the hosting of the files as a charitable service to the community. In the future, portals will charge users directly for extra features (with U.S. dollars!)
Some portals may be operating less out of charity, and more out of a desire to build mindshare about their portal in hopes of translating that mindshare into future revenue via subscriptions.
Thanks for taking the time and eating the costs to provide a portal even temporarily.
Are you still interested in the project? Any thoughts on other storage coins?
No problem on running a portal! It was fun to be part of it for a while. I may run one again in the future once it's a bit more sustainable.
I'm still interested in the project - I think we still haven't scratched the surface of what something like Skynet is capable of. That said, I'm a little less optimistic than others. I think it's going to be a long road to relevance.
They already do! https://account.siasky.net/ - paid plans starting at $5/mo giving you access to higher speeds and long term pinning.
SkyTransfer was built in the absence of any devops. No costs to the developer, no servers that need to be run by the developer, and users can perpetuate the service after the developer leaves without having to do any devops themselves.
SkyTransfer also gets to leverage the identity and authentication infrastructure of the Skynet ecosystem. Building an equivalent service off of Skynet would probably take 5-10x as many developer hours.
I'm not sure why you think building it off Skynet would be much harder. It's basically a web form going to an encryption function to upload to link generator (and a download path handler). On the backend you either buy local storage or pay for an external service which supports pre-signed S3-style uploads. Neither sounds like a lot of work.
Buying local storage and paying for an external service both cost money, and the costs scale as your app gets more users. There's also maintenance overhead, you can't just deploy your app and completely forget those things exist. As a Skynet dev, you have no bills, no maintenance overhead, and it's truly a deploy-and-forget sort of thing. As the dev, you don't need any sort of Skynet account or signup.