Storage Provider Economics
Let’s take a deeper look at the storage economics of BNB Greenfield.
Clients in BNB Greenfield have an owner address, also known as their "client ID", which is a unique identifier associated with the data they own. Each client ID has its own payment account.
Think of the client ID as the parent and the payment account as the child. There are three main categories of charges that run the data economy right now.
The first category is transaction fees, which are paid whenever a user sends a transaction to create/delete objects, change permissions, and call cross-chain operations. These fees will be paid by validators of the Greenfield blockchain (and relayers across chains) and their delegators.
The second category is the data storage fee paid by the user for storing the payload data stored offline by the provider. The fee is calculated using the "Stream Pay Model" based on the storage time and size. The primary storage provider takes most of the fee because it provides a full copy of the data and supports downloads, while the secondary storage provider takes the rest.
The third category is the data transfer package fee, which is the fee that users pay for additional download data bandwidth. Each stored object has a free download quota, but if the owner wants the data to be downloaded more times than the quota, additional fees must be paid. This fee is borne by the primary storage provider.
Validators, primary storage providers (PSPs), and secondary storage providers (SSPs) work together to provide services to end users and collect fees in a decentralized manner, which is the basic economics of Greenfield.
BNB Greenfield Data Economics
Once the genesis block of the BNB Greenfield chain is validated and a sufficient number of storage providers (SPs) are available, all clients will begin using BNB Greenfield’s storage services through a standardized process:
Clients can start using an account on the BNB Greenfield chain by simply generating a private/public key pair and a corresponding Ethereum-compatible address.
The client will upload a data object by selecting a PSP, which will automatically create its first bucket. This process will go through two stages:
Request Phase: The client will write (i.e. upload) the data to be stored, automatically create a request to accept the request, lock the fee on-chain, and then end the request. The fee is determined by the storage provider, which will vary depending on where and how the PSP chooses to store the data. The client must have a sufficient deposit of BNB tokens in the PSP of its choice in order to obtain storage service from its chosen PSP. Seal Phase: Once the request is locked, the client will establish a primary connection with its storage provider and verify the upload phase. The PSP signs the authorization and confirms the data transfer by syncing with its SSP network to seal or cancel the upload. If the upload is canceled, the PSP may be slashed. If successful, the data is sealed and the upload process ends.
BNB Greenfield's system automatically links the necessary accounts to the Stream Pay module for billing, which connects accounts on BNB Greenfield to a network of peer-to-peer (p2p) storage providers (SPs). This ensures that all parties involved in the data storage process are properly compensated. It is important to note that the SP has the right to revoke the upload operation and must pay the fee to successfully complete the data storage process.
Once data is sealed on BNB Greenfield, storage providers cannot share it without the client’s permission. Data can only be read and downloaded by the client by signing the corresponding transaction on the blockchain, either to a few specific addresses or to everyone. Downloading and reading data is free until a certain amount of data bandwidth has been used. Clients who want more bandwidth for lower latency or to store additional files will need to pay their SP for additional services. This is where we start to see some interesting data economics begin to emerge. One user can pay another user to share data. BNB Smart Chain dApps can also take advantage of this feature, as they can directly pay or receive payments from other clients to share or obtain data. If the dApp needs to change data permissions, users can profit in all kinds of interesting ways - again, the possibilities are endless.
Groups are a way for storage providers and customers to provide a higher level of access control to their accounts. For example, accounts within a group can have specific permissions, such as creating or deleting data, or executing data. There is a full list of permissions available that allow for a high level of control over the data owned by all parties involved. We can also start to introduce the idea of smart access control on-chain, as most of these permissions can be called by BNB Greenfield dApps that interact with data between the SP decentralized storage network and the BNB Smart Chain.
Whenever a client stores data on the BNB Greenfield network, they must pay a fee in BNB. Each transaction on BNB Greenfield requires a gas fee similar to existing blockchains, and validators collect these fees by submitting blocks for transaction settlement. The client's storage fee plus the bandwidth fee depends on the size of the data. But essentially, the rate is based on the cost per unit of time.
Anyone, including storage providers (SPs), clients, and validators, can earn rewards by issuing a “verification challenge” to BNB Greenfield storage providers to verify the integrity and availability of data. This is called a challenge proof check.
Challenge proof checks are an important part of the system to ensure that data stored on the primary or secondary storage network is intact and can be downloaded or recovered if required with the appropriate quality of service. This helps keep everyone accountable, and those who participate in the challenge proof process are rewarded.
To ensure that data is stored correctly, the system has two ways to trigger a challenge proof check.
Anyone using BNB Greenfield can submit a "challenge transaction", or a BNB Greenfield validator will randomly generate a challenge. After the challenge is triggered, the validator will check if the data is available in the storage provider network and submit a vote on the BNB Greenfield chain, either "yes" if the data is available or "no" if not.
Votes are submitted on-chain, requiring more than two-thirds of all validators to confirm the vote. Validators who submit the most votes receive the most rewards. (Validators are rewarded for “attestations,” meaning they have proven that the data actually exists).
If the data is confirmed to be "unavailable", the storage provider has a cool-down period to fix the problem and then challenge again. If the data is still unavailable, the storage provider will be punished.
Summary of BNB Greenfield's Value Proposition
Through smart contracts on the BNB Smart Chain, data can become a valuable asset for transactions.
As the data in BNB Greenfield becomes more valuable, gaining access to that data from clients or storage providers becomes more valuable.
If the cost of storing the data becomes too high, the data can be deleted or moved to a new primary storage provider with more attractive incentives.
Anyone can trigger a challenge regarding data availability and potentially earn a profit for a successful challenge.
Storage providers earn profits by storing and downloading data, while customers get to store valuable data that can be used for a variety of reasons.
BNB Greenfield is a decentralized smart storage network that values data security and privacy while creating a data economy through the use of smart code, challenges, and incentives.
BNB Greenfield Principles
fair
When using BNB Greenfield, you can choose from a variety of storage providers that provide the same basic services to all BNB Greenfield customers, such as developers and regular users who want to store their data on permissionless web servers.
What differentiates BNB Greenfield from other DSN protocols is that individual storage providers can offer unique incentives, customized permissions, and service licensing agreements that users can choose from. This approach allows for a more personalized and democratic approach to on-chain data management between users and storage providers. By allowing users to control where their data is stored, storage providers on BNB Greenfield promote a system that prioritizes user choice and autonomy.
Sustainable
On BNB Greenfield, data can be traded just like tokens on the blockchain, but BNB Greenfield goes a step further.
All information about the data on the BNB Greenfield storage provider network is recorded on the BNB Greenfield chain in the form of metadata.
BNB Greenfield interoperates with the BNB Smart Chain via a relayer, allowing developers to interface with data through BNB Greenfield dApps, enabling static data to evolve and be utilized through smart contracts on the BNB Chain. Now that transaction activity can occur on both tokens and stored data attached to token data, BNB Greenfield's network promotes a data economy rather than just a token economy. This is a more long-term sustainable option that is potentially more profitable for everyone who chooses to participate.
Finally, data can be deleted by choice rather than by force. For BNB Greenfield users, there are many incentives to prune data, which in the form of refunds helps reduce unnecessary and wasted storage space, which is a value-added point of the way DSN works.
transparent
BNB Greenfield's core infrastructure is designed to be simple and efficient, without consuming a lot of resources for verification. Like any strong blockchain system, BNB Greenfield is built on adaptation and evolution. The BNB Chain core development team is committed to the principles of transparency and open source.
All tools and technologies of BNB Greenfield will be open to the public, as we believe this is the most effective way to rapidly scale and decentralize the system. We encourage developers to utilize smart contracts in innovative ways to transform data in real time on the BNB Greenfield platform, which can open up endless possibilities for user participation.
evolution
We can’t expect the world to be free to take control of their data if the process is too complicated — we know it has to be simple and easy to manage. Permissions give users full control over their data and evolve over time, which can make it more valuable. But the most valuable aspect of BNB Greenfield is its ability to be improved by the community over time.
In addition, because BNB Greenfield is an open platform, we expect a data-driven economy to be generated by public co-decision-making rather than by corporations and centralized entities. BNB Greenfield is a step forward in innovation for decentralization and empowerment.
Learn more about BNB Greenfield
Read other BNB Greenfield articles.
Data Storage Network Overview and BNB Greenfield Introduction
BNB Greenfield: In-depth Architecture Overview
Data Storage Providers in BNB Greenfield
A Deep Dive into BNB Greenfield’s Use Cases
BNB Greenfield and the current decentralized data storage network landscape
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