Yes but how many PUTs does 1 safecoin buy? If 1 safecoin = 1 PUT = 1 MB then 1000 safecoin = 1 GB and 8 safecoin is equivilant to a $5 or $10 8GB thumbdrive. Which is a better investment for my storage? Safecoin or the thumbdrive? Safecoin = Puts = MB = physical resources = cash amount or those physical resources. If it costs more for safecoin than it does for a physical hard drive or external storage people will simply start storing their crap on external hard drives instead of the safe network and stop farming for safecoin. Thus reducing the resources devoted to the network thus bringing down the price.
Can you think of a way to make some sort of pool for farmers? That would be interesting imho.
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I believe the storage costs for the SAFE network should be at a premium to the cost of using an external hard drive. Obviously there is utility in network accessible, completely private, offsite, zero maintenance, zero power, redundantly backed up storage, that an external hard drive does not provide.
The network will adjust it’s PUT costs, based on available storage. As PUT costs increase, people will need more safecoin to store on the network, and this drives up the price of safecoin, rewarding the farmers and increasing the incentive for more people to farm, which gives the network more storage. All is good.
The issue I am concerned about is that if safecoin goes up for other reasons, such as it’s use as a crypto currency, then we end up with farming centralization, because if the cost of safecoin goes up to the point where you must wait a month or two months or three months to win one, then non-farmers will have a very long slog to get their first safecoin that allows them to use the network.
If you make the casual user wait months for his first payout that will allow him to use the network, it’s a non-optimal user experience.
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I believe that depends on the network utilisation percentage and is flexible. I don’t think that is an issue here.
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It doesn’t matter how much food I give the dog, after I have already starved it to death.
It’s not only a matter of how many PUTs does 1 safecoin buy, but also how long before a non-professional farmer gets his first safecoin. If it’s too long, there will not be any non-professional farmers and you’ll have more centralization then originally hoped.
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Well perhaps this is what testsafecoin and Beta is for.
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I only see two obvious solutions here.
We could take the total number of safecoins closer to the limit of what the network can handle… could it handle 10x and 45bn? Then we trade in 10:1 maids for safecoin. Not a very pretty solution really and what happens when even those hit $10 each in a few years?
Or, we find some way to award fractions of safecoins to farmers with whatever divisibility mechanism we use.
Really, the second solution is the only one that fits with a truly scalable network that is accessible to everyone. If it replaces the internet Safecoins would be worth thousands and you’d be lucky to win one or two a year, so no casual user will be able to get on board without being able to buy fractions of a safecoin on exchanges.
Given the investment potential for the network currency, there is a good chance it will surprise people with a very high value even before it is being used much.
I don’t doubt this issue will get cracked, but it is a problem if we want to maintain a large, healthy decentralised network. Even at a few bucks this will be an issue, and we’ll probably hit that before real SAFEcoin even exists.
As others have said though, David and the team have cracked way more complicated challenges than this already. This won’t be a problem as long as we solve it properly. I’d really love to see a divisibility solution that allows farmers to be rewarded with fractions of a coin. And it needs to stay really simple and user-friendly of course. I like the idea of farming pools or something, as long as grandma doesn’t have to have any idea that this is what is happening and it is all kept super obvious and simple for her.
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I would argue that just having more currency to start with is a sane and simple first step. It may buy a few years until it is a problem. By that point, there would be plenty of time to develop something more flexible. Just IMO, of course.
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Ok I’m a spaz… why is having 10 times more coins less of a strain than the current amount divisible by 10?
Surely it’s not as simple as just deciding to change the crowdsale agreement.
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[quote=“Josh, post:30, topic:12848”]
Ok I’m a spaz… why is having 10 times more coins less of a strain than the current amount divisible by 10?
[/quote] Ha ha! Thanks for saying what I expect (or hope, cos it would mean I’m not the only stupid one) a lot of us are thinking. This seems to be a ‘how many angels can you fit on the head of a pin’ type of debate.
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Better start working on safecoin divisiblity soon as its value might even rival that of bitcoin’s when it goes live…
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Safecoin is not inherently divisible. To divide them required another layer of software, preferably at the farming reward (this thread is about) and the consumer end (people spending them on storage and other stuff).
However, as each and every coin needs to be moved to transfer it, if a safecoin is worth very little, it means lots of transfers need to be made to represent a small amount of value. On the flip side, if the safecoin are worth a lot, then you can only transfer large values, but you do so very efficiently.
So, the sizing of safecoin is important. You want them small enough to facilitate small transaction, preferably micro payments, but big enough so as to not cripple the network when large payments are made.
This thread has raised the concern that farming reward size is critical for adoption and each safecoin may be worth too much. There has been talk of dividing at the consumer end, but not the farming end, which is why it is interesting/important.
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If a user can’t get either a whole safecoin, or a bit of a safecoin on day 1 that they start farming, then I think we have a problem tbh. I don’t think it’s the end of the world, but it would certainly hamper adoption from the impatient mainstream, which is what we are all hoping for. However we do it, the user needs to have some coin to use on day 1, at least while the network is relatively small and the incentives to get involved have not yet developed enough to justify users patiently waiting several days with their pc left on to get their first bit of safecoin.
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Yes, absolutely right. TBH, within hours would probably be better still. A trickle of micro payments (every few minutes) would be perfect.
I know this would all be extra load on the network, but surely this needs to be the case. How else would we get mobile devices or occasional home users involved?
IMO, the network needs to be very inclusive in terms of farming. It will reduce centralisation and encourage usage. The burden of moving more coins is surely worth it for this.
Longer term, alternative tokens, grouping/splitting coins for fast transfer, etc, are all going to help. From day one, I think we need to consider the simpler approach of just multiplying the number of safecoin (with exchange rate from maidsafecoin increasing proportionately).
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Let’s say that after 3 months of testsafecoin we’re almost ready to go live for the real coins and farming rewards.
One can imagine the crypto ecosystem will have grown even more by then. SAFE is a multi-trillion dollar value proposition, much like Eth. It is not at all unreasonable to suggest that it would be at or above the current Eth Market cap (around $4bn) at that time. With supply at 450M this means almost $10 coins. If my resources are worth $10-$20 a month as a casual farmer then I’d say we need safecoin supply to be somewhere between 10-50 times greater than it is. And that’s just at the start. What happens when it hits $40bn and is still fairly small (like btc), how does it cope with the jump to $400bn that it gets with mainstream adoption?
However it plays out, we need farming rewards to be fractions and for the network to reduce them as the fiat value of those fractions increase. That seems like to the only sustainable and long term move here. Anything else would be disappointing.
Agree, even if they start tiny and increase as the vault becomes more valuable, it is very powerful for people to see it works and that they are getting coin and should leave their pc on. That incentive needs to be visible really. Minutes would be ideal and the faster it comes the more people will be persuaded to farm as soon as they try it out.
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I would compare changing from the agreed, promised and widely advertised 1for1 MAID to SAFECOIN exchange no less of an terrible idea than forking Ethereum to solve a problem. DISASTER. not good.
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Meh, it shouldn’t make any difference, everyone has exactly the same value and % share etc. IOTA did it and it didn’t cause any real issues. They went from an ICO of 999M coins to a supply of like 2.8 trillion. Our stake was all worth the same in BTC/fiat either way.
I do think fractions as farming rewards is much better though. It’s the way forward if it can be done.
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I’d have to disagree here. Firstly, I see no real breach of the terms ,as the value effectively remains the same - it would be a rather pedantic complaint and spurious argument I think.
I suppose, however that if the reasoning is that it will slow the network down, then yes the complaint would have some legitimacy - is this what you mean?
Secondly, I would also say that looking at Etherium’s market cap, we could do with some such “disasters”…lol
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It could be. It is not about value of the token but value and honor of the company doing what they said they would do in a sales agreement.
It’s a moot point really, Maidsafe are very quiet on the divisibility topic. Once they broadcast their views we can all start the argument in earnest.
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hmmmmm…I’d say they promised to exchange “pound for pound” so to speak, so given as 100 pennies instead is within the promise. This whole divisibility thing does not seem to have a clear answer though, possibly insoluble without really complicating things or impacting performance. It is an interesting problem indeed…
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