Ethereum update: Taxing storage?
The current protocol allows users to store their data on the blockchain, and once entered the data can then stay in the contract forever.
This seems economically inefficient to me:
1) This approach doesn’t incentivize people to delete data once it stops being useful
2) It charges contracts that store data only for a few days as much as those that leave their stuff on blockchain forever
Constraints 1) and 2) inevitably lead to high storage prices.
One can imagine an alternative protocol where every block a contract gets charged proportionally to the amount of storage it consumes, and in the event of insufficient funds all memory gets wiped. This of course would introduce some pain in ensuring that contracts don’t accidentally die, and add some (probably minor) computational demands for mining, but on the plus side it can improve scaling and make short-term storage-intensive applications economically viable
Has something like this been discussed in the community? What would be the biggest problems in making this work?
About Ethereum
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.
Author: PlayingChicken
Score: 5
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