I am developing an application that will rely on the fantastic encrypted messaging feature of NEM. There is a problem though: The message limit is 1,024 characters - adding encryption reduces that to 960 characters. To send the 960 character message, it currently costs 1.70 NEM. This is without sending a single NEM.
This is too expensive and will severely impact the development of distributed data applications (similar to STORJ ) - it is just not scaleable. It needs to be in the fraction of NEM, where 0 NEM is being sent.
I don’t know what you’re application does but blockchains are not made to put a lot of data on them. You mentioned STORJ…they’re not doing that either.
The fees might be too high again because of the recent price increase but I do think you might also be using the message feature something that it simply wasn’t intended to do.
Would you be able to tell us more about your application ?
Many thanks for your prompt reply Memario. I appreciate that large amounts of data (i.e. file splitting) are not appropriate for the Blockchain. My application relies on the storing of the encrypted JSON of signature images. It is just that there are likely to be a lot of them in transactional terms. When NEM is at USD1, that is USD1.7 per signature, which is already not sustainable at current 200+ signatures per day (the transactions themselves at the App end are not expensive.) If it gets to a much higher price then, in common with many Blockchain Apps, clients will not sign up to something that has effectively no ceiling on transaction cost, as it would be impossible to budget. I believe that messages without NEM attached should be priced very differently to normal NEM exchange transactions. What do others think? It would be a real USP, just as the encrypted messaging is in my opinion and would assist in take-up of the technology.
Fees are an issue in most cryptos and the issue is always the same - when the price increases that were previously cheap are no longer. It’s an issue that hasn’t really been solved afaik, maybe something like IOTA is doing could be considered a solution but then that only really works for DAGs.
Here’s the thing, the network doesn’t actually care how many XEM you send. In fact, your kind of transaction is a lot more burdensome to the network then a tx without message would be, regardless of how many XEM are being sent.
So the balance between sending XEM and sending messages i.e. data is fine as it is imho. Storing more data should be more expensive. The problem that actually needs to be solved is automatically adjusting fees to make them sustainable without hardforks.
I know this doesn’t really help you. I’m just trying to make it clear what the real issue is and that it’s not specific to nem.
I wouldn’t hold my breath, waiting for a solution to this particular problem. If you’re able to tell us even more about your use case, like what problem the blockchain actually solves for you, we might be able to give you some hints.
Thanks for your reply Memario. Yes - that is a limiting issue for public Blockchains. But we are all here because we like a challenge. I have now found a way around this at the App. end, of the process, where I still get obtain public immutability for the transaction, but with much shorter/fewer (read cheaper) messages. I am wedded to the idea of using the NEM blockchain, so many thanks for your insightful feedback, which helped to focus on a workable solution, without wasting time. Cheers and seasons greetings.
