From CalDescent 8/18/22:

For anyone interested in checking out the progress, you can do so here: https://github.com/CalDescent14/qortal-data/commits/master

You will see that we already have a fully operational decentralized storage system.

The most recent feature introduces layering - similar to Docker - so that on-chain updates can be published to existing sites/resources without having to upload the entire file structure again. We can also now access sites via registered names (will demo this shortly).

From CalDescent 10/26/21:

The files are "grouped" by the transaction that they are contained in. So in the case of a website, you would have to download all files relating to a transaction (and potentially past transactions) in order to access any file contained within it. For example:

A user wants to view an image at /site/QortalDemo/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/qortal-logo.png (real image is here: http://node1.qortal.uk:12393/site/QortalDemo/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/qortal-logo.png)

In order to do this, they need to build the QortalDemo website resource.

The build system in the node gets notified that they have requested the file, and it goes and looks up arbitrary transactions for name QortalDemo with the service WEBSITE.

It may find just a recent PUT transaction, which contains the entire site, or it may find a PUT followed by multiple PATCH transactions.

Once it knows what layers are needed, it puts out requests to the network to retrieve the encrypted data files associated with these layers. For each file it checks against the hashes on chain to ensure they are correct.

Once it has all the files, it builds the website resource by decrypting+extracting each layer, applying the patches, and validating the hashes of the end result to ensure they match what was uploaded.

So the first time a website is accessed, it can take some time to build it depending on the complexity of the site. During this time a loading screen is shown which we can brand with the Qortal logo. Once built, the site is cached on the node so that subsequent accesses are instant (as seen in the QortalDemo and QortalWikiDemo).

From that point onwards, the node will be hosting a copy of all the files so that other nodes can request them and repeat the above process. They could optionally delete the files for some of the layers or even just a few chunks for a single layer, and they would still be helping the network by serving fragments of the complete site, in the same way it works with torrents.

I’m planning on having a “storage policy” setting with various different possible values such as following only / viewed only / following and viewed / all / none. Then we can default to following and viewed, and people have the option of increasing or reducing the scope of their storage. I’ll be working on this part in the next few weeks