Network Functionality
How does the Verida Network operate?
The Verida network is a self-sovereign “user-pays” model, whereby users pay for their own storage needs. In this way, “access to user data” is not the product, rather the product is the “security and protection” of user data.
Node operators must bond (i.e. through single-sided staking) VDA tokens to make their nodes discoverable. It is intended that the storage market self regulates itself through competitive forces as providers set their own storage prices.
Verida enables a “self-sovereign” data network, so it’s essential that all stakeholders have control and choice. Users can choose which storage nodes they want to use for storing their data, while storage node operators have the choice to not provide their service to a particular user.
You can read more about Verida Storage Node Tokenomics here:
Verida Storage Node Tokenomics — Part 1: Storage Node Economic Model Overview
What is the Vault, how it differs from the Verida Wallet?
The term Vault can be found in different places in our documentation and our mobile application used to be called Vault, so a clarification is needed.
The Vault is a private storage space on the Verida Network for each Verida Identity (account). It stores data about the identity such as the profile (avatar, name, …), the inbox, the received Verifiable Credentials, the history of login, etc, as well as other settings and technical information. These are data not tied to a particular application context.
The Verida Wallet is the mobile application allowing users to manage their Verida Identities and data (stored in their Vault on the Verida network). It holds the private keys of the Identities and have access to the Vault’s data in order to provide user-friendly features such as updating the Identity profile, or supporting Verifiable Credentials. In addition to being an Identity manager and data wallet, the Verida Wallet provides a multi-chain crypto wallet.
In summary the Verida Wallet is the user interface to manage the Identity, while the Vault is the storage space holding the data of the Identity.
How is Verida different from other decentralized storage solutions?
IPFS, and many other decentralized storage solutions, store unstructured blobs of data such as images, videos or PDFs.
Verida stores structured data in a document database that can be queried, indexed and replicated. See the DbStore answer above.
Other structured and database decentralised storage solutions do exist, but they typically reside on-top of IPFS and public data and not suitable for private, encrypted data.
Please read our deep dive article to get a better understanding of the differences between other storage systems and networks:
Revolutionizing Web3 Storage: A Deep Dive into IPFS and Verida DbStore
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