Do you really need a new cryptocurrency for this? I thought about how to build StorJ many times and at no point did I never need anything more than standard Bitcoin as it exists today.
You don't _technically_. But it is a very good way of funding a decentralized protocol economically. I personally think the ugliness to benefit ratio here is several orders of magnitude lower than something like proprietary software, mandatory fees or, satoshi cyber christ forbid, DRM.
I've thought about this a bit too, my idea for funding it would be to own most of the nodes at launch. So the developers start off with a monopoly, and as the the community grows, more competition is added.
Edit: obviously this would work better if you developed privately and then released the code at launch
I want people to use the node software for many different uses, and expand upon it. If I lock it up and have a monopoly, where is the innovation in that? The competition comes from people improving the base software, and running it themselves.
I always figured that
Of course it need not be this way.
RE chains: A chain produces a time-ordered sequence of events. That's not storage and typically you don't need to store actual data in a chain, even if you do need time ordering. You just store a hash, then the data may be stored and proven as needed in any fashion. One might imagine software and agents competing to determine the best replication methods at the lowest cost.
I agree. Will have to start brainstorming some better branding. - Agents would act as competitive peers in a market.
- User software would communicate with multiple agents, and replicate accordingly.
Of course it need not be this way.
RE chains: A chain produces a time-ordered sequence of events. That's not storage and typically you don't need to store actual data in a chain, even if you do need time ordering. You just store a hash, then the data may be stored and proven as needed in any fashion. One might imagine software and agents competing to determine the best replication methods at the lowest cost.