Paid Retrieval

• Subscription services

  • Potential use cases
    • Browsing content on the internet
    • Browsing content from a content provider (in web2 world, this would be providers such as Netflix, WSJ, etc.)
  • Expressed in user stories
    • As a content consumer, I want to easily discover and browse content without having to make payments for each piece of data.
      • (MVP) IPFS gateways can make bulk payments for paid retrieval deals (could break this down into individual payments as well)
      • (post MVP) Enable content providers to take payment from consumers

• Pay per retrieval

  • Potential use cases
    • Research Institutions (Such as individual researchers needing to access highly valuable research datasets)
    • Retrieve one off specific datasets (such as reading a blog post or a news article)
    • Archival Institutions (cold storage)
  • Expressed in user stories
    • As a researcher, I want to easily search for, pay for, and view specific datasets that I am interested in accessing.
      • Users can easily search for datasets by CID
        • [Needs validation] Mapping between indexed content and CIDs - unsure how many users will know specific CIDs of data they are trying to retrieve
        • [Needs validation] Other ways needed to search for content?
      • Users can easily pay for retrieving
        • (MVP) Aggregators can quickly pay for retrievals such that it does not significantly delay retrieval time
        • (post MVP) The end user might pay with some credit card option via an aggregator (like web3.storage, nft.storage, or Estuary)
    • As a content consumer, I want to have the option to pay to view specific blog posts or news articles that I am interested in (without having to pay for a subscription to the content provider).
      • (MVP) IPFS gateways can make single payments for specific paid retrieval deals.

• Subsidized retrieval

  • Potential use cases
    • Advertisements (Ad agencies or advertisement providers pay some upfront amount)
    • IPFS gateways (PL subsidizes retrieval)

Free Retrieval

• Use cases
  • Verified deals
• Expressed in user stories
  • As a client with a verified storage deal, I want to be able to retrieve my data for free.
    • [Needs validation] Enforcement that verified deals serve data for free to the client who stored the data
    • [Needs validation] Consequences (reputation, but also potentially will need some monetary consequence) for not serving free retrievals for verified deals