I think the price of storing gigabytes of data that you are never going to use ought to be high enough that you would choose not to do that… The price ought to be in line with what is expected for forever storage.
I don’t think farming for the sake of farming is likely to be a long term viability. Computers are on, and hard drive space and bandwidth are plentiful. People will farm because they like SAFE - not because they are going to get rich at it… Those that plan to get rich at it will likely be disappointed as most get rich quick plans turn out…
If you have a computer you replace it now. If you have a computer that runs SAFE you will replace that as well.
In short, I see SAFEcoin as an anti-spam deterrent more than a profit provider… Many will disagree, but investing in something that is abundant and hoping to make big profits off of it seems silly. The reward is Security, privacy, and freedom for all.
I think it´s a matter of calculation. One would need to take into account that storage usually gets cheaper. I used to have an archive of my personal files. First I had compilation of disks, that was quite a hassle. I had mostly games and several text files. When CD burners came into the markets over years I had any problems to store my files on one CD. Still mostly games, programms, small executables, etc. I copied new backups from disk to disk. Then, when things got bigger but CDs didn´t I stored them on several CDs. That was when I got to know Photoshop. At some point I owned a 60GB Harddrive and was so happy that I could store all my old backups on a small part of the drive. Then again Harddrives didn´t grow quickly enough for me. Today my archive is about 500GB and my notebook has 1TB, that´s not really cool.
I´m not fully buying into Moore´s law as a solution to your problem because a) it´s just a theory and b) it doesn´t really work out for people living under precarious conditions (where it doesn´t matter whether a 16TB hard drive exists but whether I can afford to buy it) and c) the personal use case matters a lot as the example above shows. Anyway it has to be taken into account that the garbage of yesterday may not matter depending on storage development.
But yeah, hard to calculate which growth would be needed to compensate the cost. I agree with @jreighley that in your case the cost would be high, so you´d rather not load your photo garbage to the network. But in the end we need to see how things work out when an actual network is there.
That´s the point. With slow growth or depression the prices of storage would rise or even skyrocket. A rise in price would (in a stable sydtem) cause cash flow since storage gets more expensive every day. Then again at some point price may concur with other projects that offer the same service, e.g. a SAFE fork.
I don’t think people will careless dump rubish to SAFE because it will be expensive to do so – The more they dump the more incentive the network has to grow.
I believe David has plans for “Archive” nodes to keep little used data…
I think you´re having a point since you are sketching up a potential instability. I think a stable system wouldn´t be existentially affected.
careless massive dumping causes the price to rise, because the coins are eliminated from the market until they get reissued. This means that if for some reason there is a wave of dumpers it will very soon become very expensive.
as long as the coin is volatile the chances that this volatility affects the stability of the network negatively is there imho, but likewise a more stable currency will also stabilize a sustainable use of the network.
Right, it´s absolutely possible that at the beginning 100 MB cost 10000 Safecoins while at a later point you may be able to buy 100GB for 1 Safecoin and have your personal Laszlo-Hanyecz-moment
P.S:: In this case you should try to be the first or most known SAFEr to spend a ridiculous amount of money for a ridiculously small storage, so you´d get some media coverage at least.
we all expect storage to get cheaper and cheaper so real world cost of a SafeCoin is peanuts
I dump a 15Tb of rubbish video, my pals do the same
economy gets bad
number of farmers stabilizes or shrinks
farmers incur real-world costs
number of PUT-s per year goes down or fails to grow
Would not the price of SafeCoins skyrocket scaring everybody off the network?
P.S. if the chargeable unit of service was “store 1Gb for 1 year” network would adapt perfectly. Rubbish data would be dumped. Price for service would cover the cost
you take money once but promise to store data forever
storing data costs you each year
so long as more and more data is added each year you’re fine
But
as soon as the number of PUTs/year fails to grow fast enough
you have a problem and start charging more and more
until you’re bust
Worse: in good economy everybody is optimistic and expects the Ponzy scheme to work. So the prices are cheap. This makes things worse when the economy goes bad.
I´d say: yes, same as deflation, it may have very negative results and maybe even lead to a collapse (if there are less farmer GB then storage to allocate). It´s just a system as others. It can fail under wrong circumstances. However, it really depends on the circumstances. You cannot estimate the outcome just by stating “economy gets bad”. How bad? Will energy suppliers shut down? Will unemployment be over 30%. And how quick does the change take place? All that would matter the stability of the system. To calculate that we´d need to assume some real values. I believe that at a very early stage the price of SAFE storage will be incredibly high and it will take some time until people start actually using it. At that point you won´t push 15TB of rubbish to the network. However, at a later point where it´s affordable to do so, the system would necessarily have reached a decent stability so small drawbacks won´t affect it.
As long as there is no free space policy…
PS It´s not a Ponzi scheme since there is real value at the moment when you store your files. Ponzi schemes are about getting rewarded at a later point. They are also belief systems, same as every collective system relies on belief, but that doesn´t make it a Ponzi scheme. It´s quite possible that the system may collapse at some point, but you failed to put the overall value of secure access into your equation. There will always be people to farm, even if that costs more than it gives to you.
But why would the price be high?
Farmers will be plentiful.
Available storage will vastly exceed the requirements.
It will be just a new cryptocurrency - it will star low will it not?
Futher initially people wouldn’t really believe it will last forever so they won’t pay much for an opportunity to store data. Reputation is to be earned and only then you’d get expensive would you not?
Initially people would farm just for fun, not for money. So even if it costs them they will still provide the service - at their own cost. This will make the coin pretty cheap, right?
So monewise your outgoings are same as if you were paying me each year, right?
you take money from me now
you promise to pay me back forever
Isn’t that a Ponzi?
Okay - we need to compare how fast your expences go down because of cheaper storage and compare that with an interest rate you could get on the money I paid you. But it’s quite possible that the calculation won’t be in your favour right? Suppose the HDD-s stop getting cheaper - because of a big disaster - then it’s surely a Ponzi, is it not?
That is an assumption. I don’t think the prices have been set.
1 TB drive runs 40-50 bucks. I would expect prices to be more in that range…
The network does save significantly because of file duplication. They charge per PUT, but if they already have the file, it doesn’t cost any more for the network to store.
That´s what I said: the price will be very low - on the flipside the price for storage will be high. Of course, I can´t see the future - my expectation would be as follows:
1.From start on there will be much more space than needed. Few Safecoin would buy you a lot of space.
2. This encourages interested geeks to store files on the network or maybe even screw around with the system.
3. Popularity stagnates at some point, people store faster than new farms are set up. Price per GB rises (Safecoin value goes down).
I don´t expect the whole thing to catch fire quickly. If SAFE provides feasible solutions many people will jump on board, but there will be a natural barrier that is mainstream. So after the entry phase and before SAFE hits mainstream I´d say storage will cost a lot of money so that at some point you might look back and laugh about the guy who bought a Safecoin Pizza for millions. But who knows?
Actually a Ponzi would be:
I take money from you now
I promise you to pay back more tomorrow.
There are crucial differences:
a) the promise is much rather: “I take money from you now and promise to provide safe storage as long as I can.”
b) In comparison to a Ponzi you receive something in exchange to your money immediately - even if the system crashes, you received a service before
c) even if there was a collapse, some people will keep the system up for the sake of the idea: “I don´t take money from you neither now not later and I still promise to provide you with safe storage as long as I can”
You can compare it with lifelong plans that some startup products offer to early birds. If the product fails after two years you paid in for nothing. However, if the product keeps up the next 30 years you made a bargain. Also the german retirement benefits work in a comparable way: you pay once you are young and earn money to seniors. Once you retire you receive payments from the then juniors. Currently it undergoes a substantial threat because the birth rate is low for decades and benefits drop. This is critical but doesn´t make it a Ponzi. In the end it´s a contract of solidarity - and not all people are solidly united in the same way.
You are tyring to make this a 1-1 correlation and it really isn’t.
The PUT does not pay the farmer. The PUT pays the network, and the network pays the Farmer based on GETS - in a totally unrelated transaction.
The price per GB is not going to be a fixed amount of SAFEcoin – The network is going to move that price up and down according to the market prices. So if the price of SAFEcoin goes up or down, it ought not effect the price of storage on the network…
In most cases the PUTs should bring in a lot more than the GETS. if 1000 people save the same cat meme, the networks still only stores 4 copies of it. but 1000 people pay for the PUT.
But you cannot leave the Security, privacy and freedom out of the equation. That is the real value in the system. I can buy terabytes of storage anyplace.
