[User-Story] Payment and Upload with Postage Stamps

[nagydani]

Rationale

To impose a cost on uploads and efficiently allocate storage resources in the network, all uploads must be paid for. This is somewhat unusual for the web, so a novel user experience needs to be developed. The closest and most familiar metaphor is subscription.

User-Story

The user creates a subscription for a certain amount of time and storage (e.g. 1 month for 100 megabytes) and pays for it, according to a price she learns from her client software (similar to tx fees for blockchain transactions). Subscriptions are named, but these names are only meaningful locally.

When she uploads files, she also indicates which subscription to use, or the most recent one is used as default.

When checking her subscription(s), she is informed how much data has already been uploaded to that subscription and how much can be stored given the current price (e.g. 88/100 megabytes). Note that the second part can also change, if the prices change (e.g. 88/90).

If the first part is more than the second part (95/90), it means that her content is in danger of being garbage collected and she may want to top up her subscription, i.e. buy more storage until its expiration.

Epic links

#61

Acceptance criteria

1. Successful upload and retrieval of adequately paid-for content
2. Unsuccessful retrieval of underpaid content

Requirements

Work estimate

Related Issues