Reference
Costs and limits
Numbers measured on the Portaldot V3 testnet, and the questions people ask most.
Numbers
| Retention | 100,800 blocks per store or renew, about 7 days at 6 s blocks |
|---|---|
| Max per store | 8 MiB (MaxTransactionSize). PotDrive blocks are ≤ 1 MiB |
| Max stores per block | 512 (MaxBlockTransactions) |
| Block length (normal class) | 14,942,208 bytes |
| Fee | ≈ 0.1135 tPOT per KiB, ≈ 104.87 tPOT per MiB (linear; measured 17 Oct 2026) |
| Renewal fee | The same as storing the same bytes |
| Existential deposit | 0.1 tPOT |
| Registry deploy deposit | ≈ 224 tPOT (refundable code deposit) |
| Drive upload size | 64 MiB per file or folder; the CLI has no cap |
| Gateway response window | 32 MiB; larger files are served as ranges |
FAQ
Is this permanent storage?
No. Portaldot keeps data for a rolling window that someone has to renew. Validators are paid to keep and prove data for a known time, and keep-alive automates the renewing.
Can an IPFS node fetch my files?
The CIDs are standard. A Portaldot node started with --ipfs-server serves them to IPFS peers over libp2p bitswap. The public testnet node exposes the bitswap_v1_get RPC, which is what PotDrive reads.
What if potdrive.anshverma.tech goes away?
Nothing is lost. The data is in Portaldot, the CID is in your link, and the SDK or CLI can fetch and verify it from any Portaldot node.
Why is storage expensive on the testnet?
The transaction length fee dominates. PotDrive can't change it, which is why it chunks by content and dedupes against the chain. Re-uploading an edited file usually costs a few percent of the first upload.