Can I track if users are seeding/leeching my service's content in particular, and provide rewards or disincentives accordingly?

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Hello! I’m new to IPFS and am considering beginning a project with it. From the whitepaper, I see that the BitSwap protocol provides built-in functionality to keep track of the overall seed/leech ratio for each node, and to prioritize content delivery accordingly. However, I would like to be able to give users of my site direct benefits for helping to host my site’s content for other users. Is there some way to more specifically query a node’s download and upload history for particular content? (Or, alternatively, if I’m asking the wrong question - would there be a better way to determine if a node or user account had been serving content from my site to other nodes?)

For instance, suppose I wished to run a semi-distributed forum, where a central server was responsible for maintaining a global index of threads and posts, as well as authenticating user identities, but hosting of the actual posts and uploaded files was ideally done by users to minimize server costs. A traditional forum might provide a way for users to help pay for hosting, and give users benefits for doing so in exchange; instead, I might wish to provide similar benefits to users who were taking on the costs of storing and serving content I would otherwise be shouldering. (Or to ban particularly egregious freeloaders from posting.)

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@MrEldritch. This is an idea I’ve been working on. I have 2 projects in progress.

I’m also not an ipfs expert. So there might be a better way to do this.

First is a webapp that allows a user to
1: post a hash they found and add some meta data to let other users know what the hash is about.

2: add files to your local repo / post to webapp + descriptions.

3: add a collection of files that can be managed / edited only by author.

This is hosted on firebase atm. I love the irony of using a centralized service to promote decentralized tech :slight_smile:

Though this will only be to get people interested. The real idea is the incentive for sharing that you are talking about. To achieve this , I’m building an electron app that uses Multichain blockchain, ipfs and DAT protocol.

With this app, users will be able to add files to ipfs or DAT and then post the hash to the blockchain. Blockchain will manage user authenticity and reward users for downloading/hosting content created by another users.

You can take a look at Beaker browser and DAT protocol. They have an elegant system to allow a user to share/host other people’s content.