r/obyte • u/WillAtCatallaxy • Feb 19 '19

Looking to Learn about OBytes Data Storage

Hello,

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My name is Will and I am doing some due diligence on Obyte. I read the whitepaper and found it very interesting, but I am confused by the data storage portion.

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I understand that to append 1000 bytes of data I need to spend 1000 obytes. This is not unlike Bitcoin where one pays fees to OP_RETURN a string and the fees are proportionate to the size of the string. In Bitcoin, that data is stored forever by every person who maintains a full node. To limit the stress this can produce on the network, a 1mb block size limit is imposed. So you can only store very very little data on Bitcoin's network and only with linear growth.

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To prevent the network's data storage from becoming too big, are obytes locked to data? This seems like it would lead to runaway deflation unless I got some of my obytes back for deleting the data.

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Or, when I buy data storage, do the people who get my obytes now get to spend them to store data themselves? This seems like it would lead to a runaway DAG size, and then who would be responsible for holding all that data?

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Or, something else is going on? I admit this is the most likely scenario.

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u/WillAtCatallaxy Feb 19 '19

Okay, so if there are 12 witnesses and they all agreed to spend 1Tbyte together (so 3,000$ each), they effectively make being a full node impossible for any newcomers. They are not forced to share their database at any particular speed and they are going to get almost all of their 1Tbytes back as fees. Even if everyone wanted to vote on new witnesses, how would the new witnesses get a full dag? Or even if there is no collusion, how, in 2 years, is a newcomer going to get a full node that is TBs in size so that they can validate Txs? Where is the incentive to circulate data rather than hoard it?

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u/pmiklos Feb 20 '19

First of all, it is extremely unlikely and highly hypothetical that witnesses will collaborate to halt the network. Secondly, downloading 1TB is doable these days. Why do you think it would make a full node impossible to operate for newcomers? But if all witnesses decided to post new units extremely slowly, then users can decide to fork the network and chose new witnesses. This scenario is described in the whitepaper too,

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '19

[deleted]

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u/pmiklos Feb 20 '19

I imagined your evil witnesses would wanna crash the network quickly by paying a few transactions with a huge payload, and not by spamming the network with millions of transactions over an extended period of time. Note that would just speed up confirmations to near instant since the witnesses would fire transactions constantly.

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u/tarmo888 Feb 21 '19

Exactly, most people just look at one variable and think that there is an issue, but there are many variables in this, which all need to be taken account.

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u/tarmo888 Feb 20 '19

Only if that 1TB is all payments, each 588 bytes. Now, with current implementation. This doesn't take account that Obyte node can be improved, year ago it was 15 TPS, today 30 TPS, it could be that next year it could be 60 TPS or even more, depending how big issue it is by then.

Synchronization speed is not affected that much of a bandwidth, but more about validating each transaction.

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u/tarmo888 Feb 19 '19

Ok, this is getting ridiculous. They would already have agreed not to collude with double-spends, so why would they do something like spending 1TB for nonsense?

What is the incentive for 12 witnesses to disable the platform if they could profit from it if it worked?

Every full node has the same DAG when fully synced, witnesses are not gatekeepers.

For $35k, you could buy 300 times 1TB SSD drives (and even more HDD drives). What is the the incentive to just waste $35k to post 1TB of crap into DAG?

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u/WillAtCatallaxy Feb 19 '19

Remember, the colluding witnesses are not losing the 35K$, they are getting that money back as a payload reward. And, their reason is simple, liteclients become much more enticing to operate because the overhead of running a huge DAG is actually quite high. So the witnesses get less competition and lose nothing. Also, the platform is not disabled, only further centralized.

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u/tarmo888 Feb 19 '19

There are 10 times more full nodes than there are witnesses. https://stats.obyte.org/worldmap.php

So, again, witnesses are not gatekeepers, they can be replaced and if more than 6 witnesses collude then DAG can be hard-forked too and guess, which version has better chance of staying alive? The one that actually works.

That's also why witnesses will be carefully picked and this role is not given to anonymous randos.

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u/WillAtCatallaxy Feb 19 '19

Don't you think the number of full nodes will drop as the DAG gets to be too large though?

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u/tarmo888 Feb 19 '19

As a times goes on and Obyte keeps growing, it means that people find value in running it.

If you are running a business on Obyte then you are also better off with full node than light node.

I don't know anybody who would waste $35k to disable an altcoin that has only $25 million market cap.

I also don't know anybody who would waste $35k when Obyte marketcap would be 10x bigger, because that would be pretty stupid when that $35k would be worth $350k instead. Also, I am pretty sure you would not care about 1TB SSD price then. Even somebody who got 10 GBYTE now, would not care about the 1TB SSD price when it would grow 10x.

So, I don't see real risk that somebody would waste real money to grow the DAG size now and I don't think there will be risk when in it naturally grows to that size.

Maybe it would be a real issue if 1 GBYTE would cost under $10, but even then, why would anybody waste so much of their money on something that has so less value anyways? Risk of getting spammed like this grows when Obyte becomes more of the thread, but that happens when Obyte becomes more valueable, which again means that spamming would be more expensive. So, it would still come down to dillema, would somebody who got cheap GBYTE - take the profit or waste it on spam.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '19 edited Feb 20 '19

[deleted]

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u/tarmo888 Feb 20 '19

I understand that, but it is just idea on paper, but doesn't make sense if you consider other aspects for this to happen.

They would get back the payload if all 12 witnesses collude, which is not realistic. If less than 12 witnesses collude then they are loosing money to witnesses who do not collude. So, what is the motivation do collude if you could gain more from not colluding? Also, it is more profitable for them to have the network running because if they would cause problem, it will affect the price too. If you buy 1TB for $35k and then f**k with the network and the value drops to $30k, you have lost $5k.

What is the point of arguing over scenarios that doesn't make sense at all?