Will Space hosts have an exclusive period of time to earn SpaceFuel before DIY hardware is allowed in the Beta network?

Supporting SpacePorts is our first priority since they are our first supporters and actual customers. SpacePorts also provide the network with a controlled, reliable environment for infrastructure testing and customer support. We need to make sure they are set up and functioning well, before devoting any time or energy on DIY hosts.

Our other customers are the people paying to host their apps, so we will also need to make sure there is ample hosting power available to serve them. However, since we’ve sold over 2500 SpacePorts, we already have a surplus of capacity as those devices all come online.

Later, as demand for Space Hosting grows, and we have high performance apps (e.g. P2P YouTube) we do expect businesses to build larger data center installations to serve that market. Part of our contract with these larger providers will involve a requirement that they dedicate a portion of their system power to providing proxy services for normal peer hosts to ensure they don’t get squeezed out of the hosting market.

Because HPOS is an open-source project, we do expect we’ll see support from the community emerge to help people use their own devices, even if we haven’t been able to make that a priority for the company.