OPUSFLUKE1

When file sharing is enabled, who will pay the cost of bandwidth, and how? (For example, the situation where a renter shares a file that gets 1 million downloads.)

Firstly, thanks for such thoughtful and in-depth responses to all the questions posed today!!

Regarding this question: this seems like a very important area to nail down. Very glad you guys are thinking ahead, to clients such as Youtube (with potentially hundreds of millions of downloads/views video files).

What’s the timeline (and technical roadmap, if you can share any of that without compromising state secrets) for recovering both coins AND files with one’s wallet seed?

Until then, Sia is simply remote data storage. (Albeit one with nifty bells/whistles.) Because users must still backup important data in some other way/shape/form, e.g. on a local hard drive, Dropbox, etc.

What concrete steps are being taken to attract 3rd party developers to utilize Sia?

Are there any open source tools under development, to ease the learning curve of Sia’s “quirks”: dealing with the wallet, siacoin and btc, contracts, full_node requirement, etc etc?

When storage contracts are formed, but the rented space is not actually used, what happens to the coins? I would think they are still paid to the host (who has kept disk space free, in theory) but various comments on Sia Slack have made me believe that refunds are granted, at least in some circumstances? Can you clarify/explain if/how hosts are paid for storage space that is reserved, but not actually utilized, by renters?

Related question: if host A contracts with renter B to rent a certain amount of space, does host A have to prove (periodically) that they actually have CAPACITY available, even if it’s never fully utilized by B (or even utilized at all)?