IC method upload_chunk costs

Developers
1

The documentation about the IC method upload_chunk left me with few questions open:

Notably, the following mention:

The storage cost of each chunk is fixed and corresponds to storing 1MiB of data.

What does this mean? If I upload the maximum of 100 chunks of 1MB, do I pay for 1MB or 100MB?
How much does it actually cost?
Are the chunks available forever? Are they ever cleared, or do I need to pay indefinitely?
When I upload new chunks again, do the previous chunks get overwritten?

2

The way I read it:

  • every chunk counts as 1 MiB of data, no matter if the chunk is the full 1 MiB or just 3k, so make sure you make the chunks as large as possible
  • standard storage fees apply
  • chunks stay available until you call clear_chunk_store
    and you keep paying while they are stored
  • new chunks don’t overwrite old ones
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3

Thanks, your summary is much clearer than the documentation :wink:.

It seems like using this approach for a wasm module < 2MB could potentially cost quite a bit more than a standard installation. In dfx, did you implement this method for all installations, or do you check the size of the Wasm module to only use it when necessary?

4

dfx only chunks when necessary

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