A proposal to specify a defined term for FIL+ data cap allocations, independent of storage deals, so that deals can be extended indefinitely without FIL+ power boost being forever.
<aside> đź’ˇ This is very much work in progress, not a coherent solution yet. While attractive, it may be unreasonable to attempt the goal of fixing the QA power spreading out at the same time as this. There may be a simpler stepping stone. Possible alternative approaches:
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Terminology
Allowance: data cap provided to a verifier by the root, or to a client by a verifier.
Allocation: data cap allocated by a client to a specific piece of data.
Term: period of time for which a sector/deal/allocation is active or valid.
Claim: a provider’s assertion they are storing all or part of an allocation
A FIL+ data cap allocation doesn’t have any intrinsic term. An allocation is currently bounded in time only because (a) allocation claims are made via deals, (b) we don’t support deals longer than a sector’s life, and (c) a sector has a maximum lifespan . When we decouple FIL+ from the market actor or enable renewal/extensibility of deals, data cap will be forever. More detail in FIL+ Forever.
On the assumption that this is not what we want, this proposal is a mechanism for adding explicit term limits to data cap allocations. Additionally, the current QA power mechanism for FIL+ consensus power and rewards introduces many Challenges with QA Power. This is an opportunity to resolve them in a simpler way than ‣.
These ideas build on the Architecture for programmable storage markets. That structure removes the market actor from intermediating use of FIL+ data cap because we want alternative storage markets to be able to broker FIL+ deals, but can’t trust user-programmed contracts to enforce any network policy (like how much QA power some data is worth). In doing so, it breaks the linkage of the verified data to the term of the deal negotiated by the client. So even before actually implementing deal extension in a market, the FIL+ data cap would have unbounded term.
We need FIL+ data cap to have a term that is independent of any deal for a client to pay for a particular storage period (because we want that to be indefinite).