APP Developer Rewards (Discussion)

I see the incentive on PUT like affiliate marketing done right. Farmers want people to put their data on the network. Developers create apps that incentive user to put their data in. Farmers are happy because they get more data and developer gets rewarded for putting the data in. Users get value out of using the app because since they are paying for each PUT request they would not do a PUT request that doesn’t bring them value in return. The interest of everyone align perfectly. It doesn’t require a reputation system, doesn’t require any proof of human or proof of authorship. It’s a simple and elegant solution.

Of course many developer and content creator won’t be able to make a living off this revenue alone, but for them there’s gonna be so many options to choose from. I think that once the safe network has launched, MaidSafe and the SafePod devs should concentrate, among other things, on developing all kinds of income scheme: pay wall, subscriptions, pay per time used, crowdfunding, patronage, advertisement (yes, yes), etc.

3 Likes

You do realise you just rubbed the Warren magic genie lamp more than 3 times just then don’t you? - just kidding Warren.

1 Like

Yeah, the “yes , yes” might be rubbing some people the wrong way, I shouldn’t have wrote it, it’s unnecessarily inflammatory.

Back on topic, I’d like to hear what other dev feel on the subject. PUT vs GET, which incentive is it most interesting to work with?

GET Incentive

  • Pro: The GET model is more accurate for measuring bandwith and actual usage.

  • Con: But the Network does not charge for GET requests, right now. There is a limited 10% Safecoin pool reserved. What happens when this pool dries up? This also creates a strong incentive to abuse the system as well as collect content from everyone else to monetize it.

PUT Incentive

  • Pro: The PUT model accounts for storage use on the Network. In addition, it creates synergy between the App Dev and the Farmer. Because PUT revenue is recycled, the pool is unlimited.

  • Con: Not all Apps utilize a PUT function. This causes pressure for the App Dev to find creative ways to “charm” users into doing PUTS, even when not necessary.


Content Creators

Ideally, they can upload all “watermarked” content on their public drive, then submit links to content aggregators. Consumers can “TIP / LIKE” them at any time from any site.

Content Aggregators

Ideally, they can offer a “non-aggressive” feedback system, where consumers: rate, comment, and upload content through their App… Youtube for example. IMO, they should be discouraged from piggy-backing off other people’s work. Taking it a step further, they could help content creators by sharing revenue.


Side Thoughts

I’m concerned about having many App windows on my screen. I would like Apps to plug into my web browser interface.

I would put a 0% - 10% SAFE Launcher cap if we use the PUT Incentive. If a hacker manages to change the App Dev Wallet Address, replacing it with their own, AND change the amount to 100%… they would upload for free.

2 Likes

I have two points that are not clear to me

regarding popularity of apps: this assumes apps are loading from the maidsafe network, so it can measure the usage? what if somebody caches the code of the app locally, or stores it on his own private maidsafe drive? maybe the usage of the app should be determined by the public (private?!?) drives it is accessing during runtime.

regarding content distribution: a probably very popular use case for maidsafe I have in mind is content distribution. somebody (say, the owner of the content in question) uploads it on his public (private?!?) drive, and there is some way he can charge people for viewing (listening to) his content in safecoin, using his app. Then nothing would really stop others from “reuploading” the content and let others view it for free, maybe even deduplication could be at work here. charging them for the upload (PUT) could decentivise them a little, and if the charges for viewing the original content are very small it could stop people from switching to “illegal” sources. anyway, the question basically is: do you pay for storing data, reading data, or executing the app (or having the app use the safe network, respectively).

One of the MaidSafe Devs could help you with the 1st point.

Regarding your 2nd point. IMO, copyright enforcement seems futile, which is why there are alternative solutions to realign consumers with producers. It is very likely content will be reuploaded and made available for free.

Currently, the SAFE Network does not charge for GETTING data: downloading, reading, browsing… etc. But it does charge for PUTTING data: making comments, sending msgs, uploading.

As for charging to “execute” an App, that could be another solution. I suppose if the SAFE Launcher already knows which Apps are being “executed” and how often PUTS and GETS are initiated, then it could apply a reward incentive to it.

See this thread.

Valid point, though there is a limit to what a developer can do to charm user into paying for a PUT request. Apps that generates PUT request of little value to the user will quickly find themselves with a bad reputation and people will not use them. This will create a kind of natural selection for the kind of app that we will find on the network. App that use the network to bring value to the user will thrive while app that can’t will not. And that’s ok, not all app needs to find themselves on the network. For those other apps, the network will still provide a very convenient micro payment framework they can tap into.

The network will still require a payment for every PUT request that goes through, all it changes with the incentive is that it will allow a part of the money to be redirect elsewhere. This percent must be set at the network level and not at the app level to protect against hackers. The worst a hacker could theoretically do is to get a 10% rebate on his PUT request. Also, there’s probably a way to add a feature to the PUT request to allow a dev to cryptographically sign his address so it doesn’t get modified by anyone.

2 Likes

It doesn’t work like that. The network doesn’t know if or how or where the app is executed. As long as you have an active connection to the network it will accept request from it, regardless of the app that you have running on your computer.

If the network wants to measure anything, it’s gonna be only based on the request it gets. How long the app has been running or from where it is loaded is irrelevant from a network perspective.

Love this thread. I’m glad somebody is thinking about this because I couldn’t think for one minute how one would make a profitable App on this network but this has relayed some insight into the inner workings. Thanks again guys!

3 Likes

I initially used to think that as well.

But in reality it will depend how popular it gets. You don’t want it to be too popular - although you can’t do anything about it anyway - because what’s popular will get cached and so the most popular chunks will make you exactly $0/day (in any currency you wish).

The ideal level of chunk popularity will be (something like) 1 requests every X+1 seconds, where X is the cache expiration timeout (assuming it’s going to be fixed). But as a vault owner you won’t be able to do much about it.

It seems to me there’s not much farmers can do about this, except perhaps - depends on how the economics of the coin will work out (or not) - kill “low yielding” vaults and generate new one until you “raise” a vault with some “good” yielding chunk(s) :slight_smile:
Supposedly this won’t pay, but we’ll see.

I was thinking about the above approach, and it seems it will be difficult.

  • Time investment needed to gain rank.
  • No guarantee that popular chunks will remain popular.
  • Most likely get a mix bag of chunks every time a new vault is created.
  • Some chunks that are not popular today may become popular tomorrow.

The time, energy, and costs, to “maximize” a high yielding vault maybe more costly than just adding more storage and bandwith. But we’ll see.

Silly idea of the moment:
I’ll make a horse race game like the one you see in themeparks. Each horse represent a vault I run and when the vault gets a GET request the horse goes a little further. And I let people bet on which horse will win the race :slight_smile:

7 Likes

First SAFE Network Gambling App!

I think you just found another killer App. Cause I really want that feature just for kicks and giggles.
Make sure I can name my “horse vaults” and let others bet their Safecoins on it. Haha!

@DavidMtl I think you should post that App idea here. It’s a fun way to see how my vaults are doing.

2 Likes

Lol alright, I’ll add it at lunch, with stats for horses and all that :slight_smile:

There

2 Likes

What if as a farmer and an app user you auto “support” apps you use more than others? Meaning the percentage that a chunk of data from that app ending up on your drive would be higher but not your own data somehow (maybe that is a moot point because no one knows whose data is whose. I have no idea if this makes sense or not. Just throwing things out.

EDIT: The thought process is that the app’s community supports itself. Then you can also go along and say app supporters who receive GET requests for the app transfer a portion of the (lotto ticket for farming rewards) to the app’s “owner”. What are the pros and cons to this? How could we game a system like this?

Is there a concept of shuffling blocks around even if your drive never goes down? I guess this would be counter to the whole caching concept which is good for the network. When more caching is done do old caching blocks go away and free up space for new content?

Yes its a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache

1 Like

I found the above comment from this thread LICENSING: Are you dead set on GPL3?

Collective App Store?

It would be convenient to have a Collective App Store. Small and Big developers can upload their App along with many others. This gives them more exposure, and consumers have a one-stop-shop to find Apps. We have talked about App stores before.

Credit to @happybeing hitting a sweet spot about sharing revenue.

I’m curious how a Collective App Store can operate. It should be explored further in this thread. Since you guys/girls are smarter than I… I was hoping you can help answer some of these questions.

Questions

  1. How would Apps share revenue?
  2. Would there need to be a Master App Browser that combines all other apps into itself?
  3. How would App Developers know they were getting paid honestly?

Im sure there are more questions, but I have a gut feeling this will become terribly exciting!

2 Likes

I’m guessing this could be handled with a smart contract system. Being part of the store would require apps to register a shared wallet for pooled income, and separate wallet for earnings taken from the pool for each author. As the pool reaches a threshold, the contract issues earning to all qualifying app authors. Participation in the store would need to be tied to this mechanism too. So if all that can be made part of the contract the maths would do the rest. Just guessing tho! :slight_smile:

1 Like

What if someone created a popular messaging app on the network and decided to increase the number of GET requests as a means to increase their safecoin earnings? Could that be a way to game this system?

Would the number of ‘downloads’ of an app be a beneficial metric when determining how this 10% is earned by the app creators? Is there any way that human ‘engagement’ (a hugely important metric) could be quantified and used as a means of app reward? Perhaps time spent by users on with the application open would also be a good metric - time after all is a finite resource… at least for humans :slight_smile:

I don’t think you’ll get farming rewards for simple messaging. If you share files as messages you need to spend safecoin on them, so that takes care of that. And then if you want to use an application that ‘GETS’ hugely on a single file that file will eventually get cached and no more farming will come from that file. You have to spend safecoin on files, or people need to spend safecoin on files. If they’re getting them back then that’s legit.

Key is if you target some one file eventually your app won’t generate farming for others and you won’t get app rewards. It’s better time spent making something useful than building to game the system. You’ll likely not get too far with that.

2 Likes