Storage costs. Bitstream is designed to pay relays as they deliver data, bit by bit over Lightning. The file chunk itself is released as a preimage to settle the Lightning invoice. That should help with the increased overhead for relays.
Static monthly payments from users has many relays going out of business — they underestimate operating costs.
Replies (5)
Have you considered a scenario where seeding relays with illegal images could quickly undermine the entire network?
I actually think centralized services are great at handling media because they have more tools at their disposal to moderate for illegal content. I thought that having media live on relays could potentially put them in legal hot water so to speak. But with text only, there is a much lesser risk of being taken offline. That and it keeps relays leaner and easier to spin up. Or were you thinking only some relays handling media?
One problem is, books can be illegal in some places as well. If some text is illegal, the same logic can say that relay should not host text as well.
Therefore, whether relay should media is not a social/legal problem, it's a technology problem. Whether relay should exist a social/legal problem.
Data as the preimage. Damn that's a really cool idea.
