Qortal data storage will be utilized in a variety of ways. Public data (the initial type of data that will be released) can be used for any data that will be publicly accessible. It is also possible to utilize public data for private files by encrypting the files first, and this method will also likely be utilized for the building of certain applications within Qortal’s infrastructure. Web hosting is one of the main functions of public data and has already been demonstrated here: http://node1.qortal.uk:12393/site/QortalDemo. This is a copy of the existing Qortal website that is hosted on top of the Qortal development data node. Clearly the ability to host ‘complex’ websites is well within the realm of what Qortal’s public data system can accomplish.

The initial iteration of public data storage on Qortal, will require every file uploaded to be a ‘static’ file. What this means is that websites that are not ‘static’ (do not have ‘individualized content’ and other such ‘dynamic’ features) cannot be hosted on Qortal. However, this is not an issue for most websites as there are ‘conversion’ tools that will convert dynamic websites into static ones. Qortal will eventually have one of these conversion tools (or a custom one built by Qortal’s team or community) built into the Qortal UI, so that conversion of a complex website will be as simple as inputting that site into Qortal, and clicking a button. The site will then be converted, and hosted on Qortal data without any extra effort needed.

Until the time that a static conversion tool is built within the Qortal UI, a website wishing to be hosted on Qortal that is not already static, will need to be converted first. There will be multiple tutorials provided on how to accomplish this until the conversion tool is built into the UI itself. Eventually, dynamic content will also be supported directly on Qortal hosting, but due to the added security concerns and added development necessary to facilitate adequate ‘sandboxing’ for those concerns to be nullified, dynamic content will be something that is released at a later date.

Even with static content only, there are innumerable potential use cases and methods by which this static content can be used to derive websites and applications that are no different to the end user than ones that are dynamic. As seen in the above Qortal website demo, the visual and functional aspects of the website are identical to the original regardless of the fact that the site was converted to a static site. In most cases for user websites, blogs, and other such pages, there will be no difference to the end user between a site static and hosted on Qortal versus hosting a dynamic site on a centralized server.

Aside from the need for static content only initially, Qortal web hosting will be no different than traditional web hosting as far as the end user is concerned. The only difference is that the user will access it through a Qortal node or a Qortal node acting as a proxy (as the above demo shows). The end user won’t be able to see the differences that make Qortal web hosting vastly superior to any other. Those extremely exciting and important details are on the back end.

Qortal hosted websites will be ‘unhackable’ in the traditional sense, as the content on a Qortal namespace can literally only be edited by the account that put it there. Therefore there is no possible way for any other user to modify that data. The data will also be redundant based on how many viewers of the website there have been (who are also data nodes). Every data node that views a Qortal website, will become a peer for that website by default. Every data node follower of a website’s namespace will become a peer for that website’s namespace by default. Therefore the more people who view a website, the more copies of that website exist. This makes the content more redundant and faster for the content to be distributed to subsequent viewers. It is an amazing system that will be completely FREE to use.

The initial iteration of Qortal data will be completely free (Qortal is the only blockchain that offers completely free transaction types) including the hashing and placing of the data hashes on the data chain. The transaction for that will be accomplished utilizing the same transaction type as Q-Chat, which uses a memory-based PoW algorithm to submit a ‘nonce’ that is used instead of a transaction fee. This allows spam prevention as well as totally free transactions. Utilizing this transaction type will allow Qortal’s public data storage to be completely free. Anyone can make use of Qortal hosting without paying for anything other than a small transaction fee to register their name.

As development continues, the use of QORT on the data chain will be possible and then some sort of ‘pay per extra copy’ structure could be set up on Qortal. The creators who do not have enough followers or viewers, or would simply like a few extra copies of their data hosted, can browse a ‘data market’ with data nodes with an algorithmically defined ‘reputation’ and pay to have the extra redundancy of their data.

More info can be found on the Qortal Data Network (QDN) page.