Stream-for-sats: Why centralised "seed boxes" if we could pay per byte for hosting?
210 sats \ 9 comments \ @moel 4 Jul 2022 bitcoin
Imagine running your BTC and Lighting client over a VPN [1]. The Lighting routing fees are not "all that".
How can we earn a few extra sats?
Well, what if someone would build a system whereby you become a "seeder" of one or more Linux ISO files and you were paid value-for-value style, per seeded byte?
A system of web torrents [2] exists today and that same team made it into an instant streaming product as well [3]. I have no idea how much work this would be, but I just think it's a great idea.
Any comments on this?
[1] I keep hearing good things about Mullvad. https://mullvad.net/nl/
[2] see https://webtorrent.io
[3] https://instant.io
write
preview
related posts
57 sats \ 4 replies \ @om 4 Jul 2022
Something like this has been tried with FileCoin / BitTorrent Token (careful, Justin Sun) / Sia / Storj / MaidSafe / Arweave / etc. Paying with sats to download would be better than paying with shitcoin but it seems that people really hate to pay for downloading.
reply
10 sats \ 2 replies \ @AncapHodl 4 Jul 2022
I am fully confident that people can and would pay small fees for quality and reliable downloads, the kind of small fees that paying in sats enables. In fact I'd go as far as to say I'm almost certain that something roughly along the lines of what the OP has described will be developed into a viable protocol on lightning in time.
reply
52 sats \ 1 reply \ @moel OP 4 Jul 2022
Currently, you can listen to a podcast and pay by the minute in Sats.
My point was that these podcasts still have centralized hosting and therefore can be blocked in certain jurisdictions.
We haven't "fixed" the hosting part yet.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @premitive1 4 Jul 2022
i'm a big fan of what's going on with podcasting 2.0, but still think the hosting is a big target for censorship
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @random_ 4 Jul 2022
Personally, I hate paywalls, but I hate advertisements more. If free and open access to information is not sustainable, I'd rather make a micropayment that has a direct benefit rather than worry about my own data being monetized. Perhaps this would encourage people to be their own archive as well.
(I'm thinking of lib-gen/sci.hub/wikipedia/archive.org, not just torrents.)
reply
1 sat \ 1 reply \ @thrown 4 Jul 2022
i would rather pay on a monthly subscription basis. the “pay per X” model gives me anxiety.
like imagine if what you downloaded turns out to be bad and you wasted all those “bytes” lol.
when bitcoin hits $1 million, one sat will be roughly $1. $1 per byte? ouch.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @EnormousPony 5 Jul 2022
When BTC hits 1$ million we can simply pay 1 sat per Kb or more
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @premitive1 4 Jul 2022
This model only makes sense to me for files that no one wants to share. If people want to share/seed a file, then what need to inject a monetary layer? Money should incentivize action.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @premitive1 4 Jul 2022
Thinking on this a little more, I think it's very important to global human innovation that we encourage as much free information/data as possible. Pricing schemes should reserve themselves for strict supple/demand scenarios, which do exist with data sometimes, but not always. Without scarcity why try to impose a fee mechanism? This presents another reason I enjoy the value4value model in podcasting 2.0.
reply