Have you ever wondered where Steemit stores all the images?
If you know a little about blockchain, you would know that it is expensive to move data around. In the case of Bitcoin, you have to pay miners a fee. Similarly on Ethereum blockchain, you have to pay a fee known as gas. And any extra data added to the blockchain obviously increases its size. For example, at the moment, the size of the Bitcoin blockchain is a little above 150 GB. Now, you can imagine how much the size of a blockchain would be if it also started accommodating images.
So where does Steemit store images then?
To find this answer, I typed the following in google, "where does steemit store images", and got the link of this post, where @dantheman, who is actually Dan Larimer (the creator of Bitshares, co-founder of Steemit and now CTO of EOS), answered himself the following.
Images will be stored on IPFS, text will be stored on the blockchain.
In the future it is also possible to store text on IPFS.
Now what is IPFS? It is basically a distributed web, which allows to store media in a distributed fashion, just like BitTorrent. Steemit based apps like Dtube also use IPFS to store media files.
So who pays for the hosting of the images?
To be honest, I have no idea, how the cost of image hosting on IPFS is paid for on Steemit. Maybe some Steemit guru can answer that here. In the case of Dtube, its creator @heimindanger mentions in this post that for paying the cost of hosting the media files on IPFS, he created an account by the name of @dtube, which collects 25% of the author rewards.
Always wondered about that, thanks. But as steemit isn't making any money, it can be a bit confusing how they maintain the payment on the ipfs. Maybe the creators get a percentage of the block rewards??
Wonderful information thanks for sharing
Nice article on steemit trading platform sir🙂
I think there is Percent of the steem generated that is used to pay for the site. Like 10 percent or something. Dont quote me on that. Not sure what happens if steem value goes down to zero
If Steem's value goes to zero, then we would be in big trouble indeed :)!
I think the witnesses can get paid in steem dollars which are rising so that is good.
I was having the same doubt after creating my first post here on steemit.com. I went ahead and right clicked and opened the image in new tab to see the URL. You know what? it is coming from amazon's S3 storage. Let's assume that what you call this IPFS but thats not permanent and even considering that a distributed storage, it is controlled by a single entity. If anyone can put a little more light on that, it will be great. here is what my link of the image looks like.
and if by any chance you are interested in reading the post here is the link for that.
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
Hi! I'm a bot, and this answer was posted automatically. Check this post out for more information.
Hi,
Nice to read about you and you posts and views. I am into steemit from august 2017, I am interested in photography and I am also into crypto trading and investing,I have followed you so you can also follow me. Let us all join hand and work with one common objective to make steemit reach to great height.
Best Of luck
Teenovision
Sneaky Ninja Attack! You have been defended with a 1.26% vote... I was summoned by @hmushtaq! I have done their bidding and now I will vanish...Whoosh
You got a 0.85% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @hmushtaq!
Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support the development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!