While ScPrime’s final product will look much different then the UI we use today, it is one of the goals of the project during this time of active development, to build out a stable and robust storage network. The current UI allows users to not only store their SCP (as discussed in this guide), but also to host a storage node and/or rent storage. Please note this guide is being written using the new supply precision, so it is best to be using the ScPrime UI version 1.4.1.3 to get the most out of it.

This guide will help ScPrime users upload and store some data on the ScPrime network. Why would you want to do this? First of all, it’s cheap to store on ScPrime right now and this low cost ‘archival’ storage is available to you through the UI. Secondly, if you’re a supporter of the project, then it’s a great opportunity to easily help the ScPrime network grow.

Here is the ScPrime UI and we have the ‘Rent’ tab selected. There is 0 contracts, and 0 SCP allocated and spent so far. To be able to upload some files, we need to setup our renting allowance.

In the renter’s tab, click on more and then on Modify Allowance

In the Allowance panel, you will want to click on Advanced and you will see the screen above. This is my current settings on this UI for renting. These numbers are for me to store 1TB of data on ScPrime’s network for 1 month. By 1 month, I mean that’s is your rental term, not how long you plan to store for.

Let’s break down what these all mean.

Allowance Funds- This is how much SCP from your wallet that you are allocating per month for your rent. I will explain how to figure out how much to allocate shortly.

Expected Storage- This is pretty self explanatory. How much storage do you plan to use.

Period- Your rental term in months

Hosts- This is the number of contracts you want to get with ScPrime storage providers. 50 is a good number. You normally need around 30 to be able to start uploading files.

Renew Window- This is how often your contracts are renewed. The default is about 2 weeks. It is important to understand that the contract renewal makes new contracts with a total duration of contract duration PLUS the renew window. So, If you have set the allowance to duration of 1 month and renew window 2 weeks, the renewed contract will be one month and two weeks in total. Because it is formed 2 weeks before the expiration of the existing contract, and the renewed contract will expire a month after the existing expires. So, 1 month and 2 weeks in total.

Expected Download and Upload- These sections are where you set your approx. bandwidth based on how much you plan to upload or download per month. Since renters mainly use ScPrime currently for archival storage more then ‘on demand’ storage, it makes sense that the download setting may be lower then the upload, but really it is up to each individual renter.

Rental Formula

Above is a rough, but simple way to figure out how much SCP to allocate towards your storage rental per month. Here’s how to use it.

First you take your Period (1 month for this example) adding in the Renew Window (2 weeks, or .5) and multiply it by 1/10th of your Expected Storage (1TB). Multiply the number from step 1 (0.15) by the amount of contracts you set (50). Multiply the number from step 2 (7.5) by the current price of storage (at the time of writing this guide it is 10.98 SCP per TB per month) rounded up to a whole number (11). To get the current storage price, visit here, and scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the appropriate box. Multiply the number from step 3 (82.5) by 3 (the layers of redundancy) Take the number from step 4 and add 10% to cover any unforeseen bandwidth or excess storage charges. I then usually just round up to an easy whole number (example being 272.25 to 275).

Current SCP storage price at time of writing

You now should have all the data you need to get started. Hit OK on the Allowance panel and your UI will start to look for contracts. This can take a little while. You will want to see around 30 Contracts Active on the Renter tab before you start uploading.

On my Rent panel above I have 35 contracts now. I did some test uploading already. Let’s upload some more stuff for this guide. Click on the ‘Create Folder’ button.