Questions about satellites and resilience

hi! I’m finding surprisingly little info in your docs about the specifics satellites. I want to know more about the following:

  1. if I’m a Storj DSC user, what happens to my data if the satellite I’m using goes offline and never comes back?
  2. what are the requirements for becoming a satellite?
  3. do satellites have any cryptoeconomic incentives for functioning properly?
  4. if I’m a Storj DSC user, how can I retrieve my data if the storj.io website becomes unavailable?

thanks!

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You can probably find all the information in the whitepaper https://www.storj.io/storjv3.pdf (Page 41, 4.10 Satellite)

As far as I understand:

  1. The satellite holds the metadata of the nodes and which parts of files they have. If a satellite goes down and never comes back up the files are on the nodes corresponding to this satellite won’t be retrievable anymore. Also, since the satellite keeps track of the transfers and related to that - the payment data, nodes will also loose their payment. So it’s in storj’s best interest to keep satellites at high availability, which they do.
  2. They are high :slight_smile:. The satellite is at the heart of everything. So it should probably be a distributed cluster of multiple Servers to ensure high availability.
  3. What means cryptoeconomic? You mean related to cryptocurrency? No, I think not.
  4. You can use the Uplink CLI or any other client (i.e Filezilla).
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Let me try and add a little to the already great answers from @tylkomat.

  1. While the impact of a satellite going down is large, this is very unlikely to happen. The satellite isn’t a single server, but rather a distributed set of services implemented on a muiltiregion cloud infrastructure. This means it’s resilient to failures of underlying systems and single or even some multi region failures.
  2. I think my previous info regarding how Storj runs their satellites gives you an idea of how complex running a satellite is. If you want to become a trusted satellite partner for Storj, this concept hasn’t been finalized yet, but you can assume requirements will be just as stringent as the Storj satellites themselves. If you want to be an independent Satellite, you can do that, but you will have to convince node operators to manually included your satellite as a trusted satellite. This will probably be very difficult to do as you would have to prove to them that it’s worth it and you actually pay them.
  3. While there is nothing enforced in crypto contracts, there are a lot of indirect incentives for Storj Labs to keep things up and running. Not the least of which that 60+ peoples livelihood rely on this company surviving. They also hold a lot of Storj tokens which will instantly lose value if the product implodes. I think those very real world consequences probably provide a stronger incentive to stick around than having direct stake tied to it on a blockchain.
  4. The network doesn’t rely on storj.io being online. As you can see when you log in, you are already redirected to the specific satellite for login. As long as the satellites are online, you will have access to your data with any method.
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