Quote from: lebek on April 11, 2012, 07:32:58 PM

Quote from: Meni Rosenfeld on April 11, 2012, 03:25:10 PM

I suppose the verifying node will itself need a copy of the file (or the part of the file it's verifying)? Then either the owner of the file will need his own node to store the files and verify (which somewhat defeats the purpose), or he will need to rely on other nodes to quiz each other. What incentive do they have for this, and in case of a conflict, who should be believed? What are the penalties for failure to verify?

The verifying node only needs a secure hash of the original (shares+ciphertext) for a file - a verify-cap is exactly this. To actually verify that whatever the other nodes are storing matches the original, all shares must be downloaded, hashed and the result compared with the verify-cap. There's no need for the sort of majority consensus protocol that I think you're suggesting.

This isn't clear at all. Is the ciphertext known only to the file owner? If so, does this mean that only the owner can verify? And even if everyone can verify, again - what incentive do they have to do this? I don't want a system where the owner needs to continuously operate a node to keep everyone honest. He should be able to upload, pay for storage for X period with Y redundancy, forget about it, let the system keep itself in check, and connect at a later time to download the file as needed. Is that really not a challenge?