New Wiki entry: Safecoin Issuance and Distribution

Continuing the discussion from Clarifying safecoin distribution percentages:

I posted the above topic last week when sorting out some of my confusions about safecoin percentages, etc. While valuable, it didn’t really sort out the whole topic and needed more work.

I wrote the following article and worked it over with @dirvine to ensure it was an accurate representation of what actually happens. It is now posted in the SAFE Network Wiki here.

Hope this helps give a clearer view of safecoin’s overall distribution, etc.


Safecoin Issuance and Distribution

The total number of whole safecoins which can exist on the SAFE Network is 2^32, or just under 4.3 billion. 5% of that number have been allocated to compensate early investors who have backed the network over a long period of time, and 10% were sold to crowdsale participants in early 2014, in the form of MaidSafeCoin–a blockchain-based token which will be exchangeable one-for-one for safecoin when the network is live. These safecoins will be available to their designated recipients soon after network launch, at which time they will circulate and be recycled like any other safecoins, at the discretion of their holders.

Beyond that, safecoins will come into and go out of circulation in a continuous flow, according to the following description, which has been made as non-technical as possible.

All new safecoins are generated as a part of the farming process and distributed to Farmers, App Builders and the Core Developer pool according to their individual algorithms, as described below.

Safecoins are distributed as the product of a successful “farming attempt.” The sequence leading up to a successful farming attempt starts when a Farmer’s Vault accurately delivers up stored data when the data is requested. When this is successfully done, the Vault seeks to qualify for a farming attempt. The chance of gaining a farming attempt is regulated by the network Farming Rate (FR) which prevails at that moment, and adjusts the ease or difficulty of gaining a farming attempt, depending on prevailing network conditions (availability or scarcity of storage resources).

–Farmers qualify for farming attempts at 100% of the Farming Rate (FR) (as modified by Vault performance ranking).
–App Builders qualify for farming attempts at 10% of the FR.
–The pool from which Core Developers are rewarded for their contributions qualifies for farming attempts at 5% of the FR.

Thus the relative rates of qualification for farm attempts (and therefore, ultimately, successful awards of safecoin) are: Farmers - 87%; App Builders - 9%; Core Dev pool - 4% [percentages rounded]. (100+10+5=115 therefore 100/115=86.9% 10/115=8.69% 5/115=4.3%) [This paragraph is inaccurate. Please disregard. --fergish]

When a farming attempt is qualified for, the Vault queries a random safecoin address (deterministically computed) to see if a safecoin exists in that location. If there is a safecoin there, the attempt fails. If no safecoin currently exists at that valid safecoin address, the network creates a safecoin and enters the public safecoin address of the successful requestor, whether it be the Farmer, App Builder or Core Dev pool.
The recipient of the safecoin then holds, transfers or spends it as they choose.

Ultimately, when a holder of the safecoin wishes to use it to purchase network resources, such as the capacity to write a certain quantity of data to the network (or computational services, which will be implemented later on), the safecoin is recycled (erased), leaving the address open for farming when a new farming attempt is made to that address. In this fashion, safecoins come into and go out of existence in response to the needs of the network and those who contribute to maintaining it, and the End Users who ultimately benefit from using the network.

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What happens if the core dev becomes corrupted? Like blockstreamcore bitcoin devs. How do you propose a system where we can not pay 5 percent to corrupted devs, and pay 5 percent to honest dev to fix the problem?

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The Core Dev pool of safecoin goes to the MaidSafe Foundation. The Foundation pays the Core Dev awards for code contributions. I don’t know the internal policies, but the foundation is a regulated charity which has to be accountable. Core Devs don’t all have to work for the company MaidSafe. The idea is to have widespread participation in maintaining and improving core, much like Bitcoin does currently. The Foundation pays the bounties for beneficial code commits.

That’s my understanding, anyway.

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Excellent description. I just flipped from thinking of SAFEcoin as oil, to thinking of it as Geothermal energy.

The coin is born from ‘energy + technology + sharing’ (hot rocks) …does useful work on the network (steam driving turbine) and is returned to the pool (cold water injected back)

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Okay. What if maidsafe foundation becomes corrupted then what?

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Dunno. What do you think?

Sorry to anyone who read my replies and fergish’s responses to them but we deleted them to restore the topic so its clean.

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You made a good point though! Why delete it?

So it is in the clear now?

It was getting too confusing for most, including me. We agreed to reboot and sort it out when I had enough stark.

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Not quite, but its more a conceptual way of viewing it and difficult to work through, but if anyone really wants the posts we can copy them elsewhere, but its mostly a rehash of what I’ve said elsewhere

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To be honest I don’t remember about 5% support term (for long term investors) during initial crowdsale. Could you point me to original terms?

If you google Maidsafe whitepaper you’ll see the original crowdsale paper, it’s in there.

EDIT: Here :slight_smile:

To reward investors and developers involved during the early stages of this project, it is proposed that 30% of all safecoins will be injected into the network on day 1. Up to 10% will be available for purchase via the crowd sale, 5% for the existing MaidSafe investors, 5% for the SAFE core development team and 10% for the general developer pool.

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@Melvin Got it :slight_smile: Just wanted to be sure

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So does this mean that PtP is officially of the cards now? :frowning:

If so, this makes me very sad. PtP was one of the most exciting things about SAFE for me.


When was that decision made? (I see it’s still a hotly contended topic around here, but I wasn’t aware it was taken out of the SAFEcoin plans…)

Anyone have a link to a relevant topic / post (to the decision for it’s removal… not PtP debate) ?

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No

Just setting up the Wiki with the most certain details of the upcoming MVP. David has said he may wait a little to see how the system is running, since there are a few vocal voices against it.

I believe so too, but only if workable. It certainly is a paradigm shift from the old ways that is really a mess.

David is still all for implementing it. He saw it as a way to attract quality content to the network. Without content there is not much for the network to do. And PtD and PtP were 2 ways he saw this happening quickly

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Rad. Thanks for clarifying, @neo.

@joshuef I think the concerns expressed about PtP are valid and need to be thought through in the context of the whole picture. By which I mean also considering the potential benefits of providing an alternative model for people to be rewarded for providing content.

IMO the debate has not achieved this so far, so I support David in getting the essentials sorted and working, and then revisiting this. I think the potential is far too great to dismiss because it has some flaws, when the existing options are so flawed already.

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Keep the original vision, and run it. If it operates perfectly then it can be left alone. It would be nice to a “test” network, where we can implement ideas such as ptp and see how it operates.

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Here is an interesting analogy that I was encouraged to post

Imagine SAFE as an Apple tree that can survive as long as it is used. It can keep producing apples forever and slows down when more and more apples are out in the world and not returned to the ground to mulch the tree.

  • FARMERS: The farmers are the ones providing the land, water, and other resources needed to grow a tree. They do a lot with their land/resources, but allocate a portion of it to the SAFE tree, the rest they do whatever. That is, the disk/bandwidth/CPU is a portion of what they own

  • Core-Devs: they are the tree surgeons, they keep the tree healthy.

  • PtD: They are the tillers of the soil around the tree keeping the soil vibrant and ensuring microbes etc are there. The microbes are the users of the network and search for goodies to digest (read/view)

  • PtP: They are also tillers of the soil keeping the soil vibrant and ensuring microbes etc are there. And they attract more of the apples/manure to be returned to the ground for the tree to continue growing and producing more apples

  • USERS:

    • GETTING: By searching through the soil they are like the earth-worms and every GET is like a little beneficial work done in the soil converting the manure to food for the tree
    • PUTTING: By uploading they are bringing in the manure to the tree

So the tree is a little magical, it can last forever while the activities of each group continues.

  • The Farmers are given apples according to the farming rate

  • the tree surgeons (Core-Devs) are given apples according to 1/20 the farming rate

  • The tillers (PtD & PtP) are given apples according to 1/10 the farming rate

  • The microbes benefit from all the good stuff provided when the apple/manure is returned to the soil.

  • The people who wish to partake of the tree can provide apple/manure to the ground.

And Farming rate is the amount of work done by the microbes enriching the soil. (GETTING)

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SAFE Network insurance and have everyone pay a percentage into that.