Path of Least Resistance

That would be abusive and deplete ID accounts.

So what is to stop people who are uploading public files from just opening a new account when their free runs out.

We discussed this in the thread about free everything and pay farmers. This was a modified proposal in an attempt to fix the free everything model proposed. It did not receive much support and a lot of problems

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That is the argument repeated many times, and yet systems still endure.

I asked Costco, why they have 100% refund policy? They said the amount of satisfied customers outweigh the loss compared to those who abuse the refund system.

Amazon, Google, Youtube, offer freebies in some form or another, and do well despite the potential for abuse. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I’m pointing out the benefit of happy users profits more than creating barriers.

I’d like to add this post to the topic for consideration as well.

"Microsoft announced late Monday that it would no longer provide unlimited OneDrive storage to Office 365 home subscribers and that it’s slashing the amount of free OneDrive storage it provides by a whopping two-thirds.

The reason for ditching the unlimited storage, Microsoft said in a blog post, is that “a small number of users” really went for it by backing up multiple PCs, entire movie collections, and DVR recordings to OneDrive. Microsoft says these users’ excessive storage usage amounted to 14,000 times the average. Unlimited OneDrive storage for Office 365 subscribers rolled out just over a year ago in late October 2014."

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I suppose it would heavily depend on how much free you give.

But does MS cutting back on the amount of free space they give indicate that some will heavily game the free system? 14,000 times the average for some of the biggest users of MS free storage.

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Yes, that is key, and was mentioned in the NSL thread. More storage available means a higher free amount. Less storage available means less free storage. The SAFE Network should react to the community of users (farmers and consumers).

I still think it would have to be low. Like a few regular images/documents try low. Otherwise a %age of people who want their digital libraries on safe will upload publicly using a number of accounts to do it.

Not much effort for each since it would take weeks to get their GBs of their library uploaded. say one account worth a night. Real easy and the kids spread the word quickly. Bit like what happened with MS storage, but this time its anon and safe from MS snooping for DRM/IP violations. And no need for a MS 365 account

Dropbox had a bounty system that rewarded the users with more free space for some task (like inviting others, or downloading and installing the mobile app etc.).
I think there are two things that would guarantee the gaming of the system isn’t bad for it, first it needs to include some way of supporting it, and second its result (more free space) should be untransferable and only usable as additional personal space. The first is done by making users do tasks that would contribute more value to safe network than it gets, the other I think could be done by considering account age, proof of other social identities, creating free space as different in kind, like making it store privately only, or impose further limitations.

Maidsafe needs to be better for the user in every regard, people don’t like to change their habits, even if its only 2 clicks that benefit them.

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That’s my favorite option. :smiley: I’m thinking of a somewhat different economic model where safecoin becomes like an ordinary cryptocurrency without recycling and with a flat inflation that goes on forever. And with a market cap that becomes larger than bitcoin, i.e. making safecoin the most popular cryptocurrency so far. People will start farming like crazy. And with safecoin being used as an ordinary currency, the demand for safecoins will skyrocket, keeping its value up, without too much volatility once the market cap has grown large enough.

This isn’t how it will work.

You give away free space to everyone that joins the network, you turn it into bit torrent

Right now the economical model promotes security of the network, if you wish to join the network you give up some of your hard drive space to receive tokens that allow you encrypted hard drive space on the network.

With the “old idea” that was considered over a year and a half ago, you have people joining the network, getting free space and not giving up their hard drive space because whats the point of using your hard drive resources when you keep getting it for free whenever you create an account.

You literally destroy the security of the network and incentivize people to not contribute their own resources to the network. The whole god dam point of the network .

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The security is the same. It’s just that safecoins cannot be recycled if all the PUTs are free. I’m thinking of Proof of Resource as an alternative to Proof of Work (PoW). The PoW computations are just there to secure the network. Similarly, the SAFE network could in principle just offer transactions of safecoins without recycling, like bitcoin, and the data storage would remain unused. And the safecoin market cap can still grow far beyond the value of the data resources used for securing the network. So safecoin doesn’t need to be related to data storage at all.

No it’s not . The more people connected to the network the larger the space and security of the network is .

Paying people that offer something to the network while at the exact same time giving away free chucks of the network to people that don’t need to offer resources to the network , reduces the amount of people adding space to the network .

No it won’t grow as much as you think, you have now turned it into bitcoin with a stupidly high speculatory effect on the network with no real inherent value, not actually having its value tied to anything.

so your idea is , path of least resistance, Make safecoin completely valueless , create a network that doesn’t have a real incentive to keep it alive, so it becomes another slightly better freenet , hope it advances beyond freenet somehow , without any real incentive to do so.

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@anders and @gohan00760 please go back to the original topic about the ‘path of least resistance’. The free for everyone model has been discussed here already Using the SAFE network without money, so please continue this discussion over there if you want to.

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A similar solution was suggested by @dallyshalla, using a very short game during the account creation. Here’s a link to his post.


IMO, an instant free NSL is still the path of least resistance.

Maybe I should make 3 details very clear.

  • Free NSL is not SAFE GB, because it cannot be transferred.
  • If 1 Safecoin buys 1GB, and the Free NSL amount is set at 1%, then new accounts get 10MB. It maybe easier to run a vault and earn Safecoin instead of creating 100 non-transferable accounts.
  • As the Network fills up due to heavy use or abuse, the Free NSL goes down. This mechanism is already planned for the farming rate.

From an autonomous network perspective, it adjusts the freebies (Free NSL) based on storage availibitlity.

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To establish checks and balances is great, but a balance between free space and network availability might not be optimal. The problem is that in the case the network needs more resources, its appeal to users is decreased, this is a negative feedback loop that can decelerate adoption. If instead when people hoard more free space, miners get more, the problem is that increased mining rewards would mean inflation of money supply of safe coin and would result in user’s decreasing buy power…

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This is why i don’t get your “idea”

There is no problem to solve

This non solution allows contribution of content to the network to be easier, while at the same time further complicates adding resources to the network creating less incentive to contribute resources to the network instead of content .

so making 1 aspect of the network less resistant , but increasing the resistance in other areas of the network… an aspect that doesn’t even have a problem in the first place and is perfectly fine as it is now.

Correct,
When storage availability goes down, the incentive to use (upload) goes down while the incentive to produce (farm) goes up. Vice versa happens as well. Are you trying to argue the farming rate?

I think we are going off-topic here.

I’m sorry you can’t see from my perspective.
There’s not much I can do to explain it any further.

I have already mentioned i can see from your perspective of making adding content less resistant , but that perspective makes other areas of the network more resistant.

Explain how it makes other parts of the network also least resistant and the idea might hold weight , but it doesn’t .

you are thinking of a singular aspect of the network, thinking of how to make this individual part of the network less resistant , completely ignoring the other areas of the network that need to function and promote security and use . making those more resistant to adoption and use.

The path of least resistance goes to Safe if what you are looking for is best provided by Safe.

For exemple: cloud storage. On a professional level I use Google drive because my colleagues have Google accounts and it’s handy. But on a personal level I’ll switch to Safe because I want to have my own little cloud where no one is bothering me. With Safe I can be sure the service won’t change and I can finally settle for good. So for me, Safe promise a stability that other companies can’t. On a professional level it’s probably gonna take a while before the switch is made.

Another exemple: credentials. At some point we are going to start to see a little widget all over the web to login into a website using Safe credentials. Just like Facebook or Google+. Most people will probably not care at first but as the widget spread around, more and more people will find it pretty awesome to only have one credential for everything, and a credential that doesn’t tie you with any company no less. So the path of least resistance to have only one login to all website will again lead to Safe.

So your initial comment about the path of least resistance assume all networks are similar and the only difference is the economics, but Safe is a very different beast with a very unique set of tricks. Of course if you don’t care about those feature you are right but as the network grow, more and more people will find some of these feature very appealing and naturally switch to Safe.

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