Renting / Hosting questions.

[RogueBrit]

I have known about and been excited by the idea of cryptos for a while but its only been recently that I have understood that beyond the coins, there is a wide range of uses for the tech
I really love the idea of Sia and the problem it solves but I have a couple of questions regarding the hosting side:

-If I as a renter decide to upload files, what stops the hoster who has my files, deleting them or just switching of?

-If I decide to become a hoster, am I held accountable if something goes wrong?

These may be really dumb questions that come from my limited understanding of this but I am genuinely interested and fully support the idea.

[maol]

It's all here on the homepage, so go read for more! This may be a good starting point.

• hosters commit collateral for each storage contract they accept, which they lose if they don't keep the file over the entire period
• all you risk as hoster is the collateral - and you can configure how much you want to risk (lower collateral will generally mean fewer contracts / less business, though)

[reinisp]

The answer to both of your questions is- a hoster risks his own coins (called collateral here) by not holding the uploaded data accessible for the renter.
There is no difference if the hoster deletes the files, turns off the hosting device, has technical problems or loses his internet connection for a longer period. If the files are not available for the file owner (renter), the hoster pays a penalty.

[bryan]

@RogueBrit The files are 3x redundant so I believe even if you lost one host you will still have the file at two other locations to download from.