Hi, @nathanmartin.
We are not trying to exploit the NFT people. We just want them to pay for what they use. We are preparing them for bills which they should expect and, unfortunately, they do not.
I have a question for you:
- Do you really think NFT sites are just like any other site?
If so, I’m curious why you believe that. If you do me the favor of answering that, I’ll explain below why I think they differ.
First, this is the problem we are trying to avoid below:
- Someone that isn’t particularly experienced managing websites makes a new NFT site on Netlify.
- They announce a “drop”, which is a free give-away of some of their NFTs, to promote their NFT collection.
- People seeking to get the free NFTs during the drop create automated scripts to flood the site during the drop time window.
- To Netlify, this traffic is indistinguishable from a normal traffic spike (going viral on Twitter or appearing on Shark Tank on TV) so we keep serving the site.
- The site uses many terabytes of data transfer during the drop.
- The NFT site owner ends up with a bill that is many hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
- The NFT site owner says, “Oh, my! I didn’t expect that large bill and I won’t pay it.”
It is 100% predictable that there will be a huge amount of traffic for any NFT drop. Anyone with the least bit of experience managing a site would understand this. Any NFT site owner should plan and predict that data transfer in advance. Many of them don’t and that is the problem.
This isn’t someone saying, “I’m going to make a blog about onions.” and then getting a huge bill unexpectedly.
It is someone saying “I’m going to try to get rich with an unregulated financial instrument and let other people get free tickets to my lottery on my site” and then getting a huge bill. I understand not expecting your blog about a vegetable to get high bandwidth and not wanting to pay that bill.
However, when the entire point of your website is “we’re printing free money - get yours today” and you get a high bandwidth bill, that should be expected. It should be expected … but it isn’t. That is why we warn them.
I hope it makes the answer to this clear:
Can you provide more detail on how the “usage” of a static NFT site differs from a regular static site? and the “attacks” involved?
The two qualities which make NFT sites different are:
- There are many inexperienced, novice developers creating these sites.
- The NFT drop concept (NFT giveaways) almost always result in an enormous traffic spike.
The two qualities combine to result in people not wanting to pay for their site’s bandwidth. This is such a common pattern for NFT sites that we warn people. The NFT sites have caused tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars in bandwidth bills that no one is paying for, that is, no one except Netlify.
This “how was I supposed to know I would use this much bandwidth?” negligence is such a problem that we now warn anyone mentioning NFTs about the bill in advance so they cannot act surprised when it happens.
Again, we treat NFT sites differently because they do have qualities which make them much more likely to have huge spike in bandwidth and much more likely for the site’s owner to refuse to pay.
So, this is just wrong:
“Netlify see money and they want a cut”
It’s wrong both because that is not our motivation but also because NFTs are not a way to generate money.
If your wife thinks there is money in NFTs, I’d suggest she visit this website:
Also, this video titled " Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs" is 2 hours and 18 minutes long but also truly delightful in my opinion:
So, to summarize, NFTs site are being made and used in a way that often guarantees high bandwidth use. Many of the NFT site creators are novices (or pretend to be) that don’t expect or want to pay for the bandwidth when they use it.
The NFT people steal from us, not the other way around. We end up paying for their bandwidth and they just move their site to a different host. They use the resource and we end up footing the bill.
Now, @MrDeadCe11, I’m not saying that you are inexperienced or dishonest. However, some people operating in your industry are. That is why we have a boilerplate warning anytime a site is about NFTs.
Again, about this, @MrDeadCe11:
I highly doubt there will be a huge bandwidth usage.
We just warned you of the opposite. If you make an NFT site, popular or not, and if you have a coin/NFT “drop” or giveaway, there is almost certainly going to be large bills for bandwidth. Please don’t say we didn’t warn you because we have done so repeatedly.
@nathanmartin, I hope this makes it clear why we warn people. We warned @MrDeadCe11 and he still didn’t believe us. This just proves my point above that people making NFT sites don’t expect the bandwidth (but they should).