These distributed file systems are really interesting. I'm curious to know if there is anything in the works to also distribute the compute and database engines required to host dynamic content. Something like combining IPFS with Golem (GNT).
If I may ask, do those 4 cents include bitcoin's transaction fee? How well have bitcoin transactions worked for you so far?
I've been pondering starting a cheap service that accepts bitcoin (too cheap for CCs and not worth the hassle of paypal), but wasn't sure about the viability of relying on bitcoin as the primary transaction currency.
4 cents don't include transaction fee, however payments to the service can be slow and don't require inclusion in the first block so they can very very cheap.
Bitcoin transactions in testing have worked perfectly & the display is zero conf which means you can pay and see that the payment on the hash the minute.
Customer uptake has been lacking for my project, but I believe that's because I've created something that works really well for two very niche markets (which fortunately have a lot of overlap.) depending on what your project is, you can always add a credit system whereby people can dump $5 or something via credit card and you allocate that to them for them to spend as and when they need.
Thank you for the detailed response. I don't have any working knowledge on how bitcoin is practically used as a currency, so your comment provides insight that's very valuable to someone like me. Zero-confirmation transaction seem like the perfect solution for an infrequent, low value service that can sink more than a couple of fraudulent transactions.
You have my thanks!
A note on ipfsstore: while ipfsstore provides a very valuable service for those who know why such a a service would be used, the website provides no real information for those who don't already have that prior knowledge. What little information it has is tucked away on a separate page. I think if you clearly advertised the primary value that your service provides (offsite data redundancy/replication) on your landing page, you might see more uptake.
If IPFS and bitcoin ever hit critical mass, I think you'll end up with a surprisingly lucrative venture on your hands.
Thanks for creating and sharing this; I think it is really cool. I'm curious: what is your plan to deal with the possibility (inevitability?) of hosting copyrighted or otherwise illegal content?
I'm happy to comply with requests from legal entities as and when they arrive however considering how uptake has been I don't see that being a problem any time soon.
Distributed storage still works alright when everyone doing the hosting just has puny home-network connections (see: BitTorrent.) Trustworthy distributed computation is a lot harder if you want to include residential users; you end up having to do highly-redundant work to ensure correctness, like Folding@Home does.
I've considered a strategy like this where the host is "distributed" across thousands of commodity VPS providers, though. There would need to be VPS providers in the country in question for such a thing to work, which isn't always the case.
