Poll: Do you want ERC20 MAID?

No this will not necessarily be required and can be left upto the exchange I doubt Maidsafe would need to get involved outside responding to extra requests for liquidity and exchange fee’s for extra listings that some exchanges require. In general It does not appear to be how exchanges have dealt with other dual or multiple token projects. Some projects have started with ERC-20, built their custom blockchain “mainnet” then launched their own native tokens. Other than the projects that specifically shut down their ERC-20 token, exchanges have either ignored the mainnet launch as it is still niche and continued to just support the ERC-20. Some adding support for the new mainnet token right away and other exchanges much later as the native token slowly takes over and builds volume. In many cases exchanges just dual list and let the market sort it out on it’s own. What is interesting is that some dapps require both the mainnet native token and the ERC-20 to bridge networks and I suspect this will be the case for the Safe Network if MaidSafe do decide it is worth minting Safecoin(ERC-20) tokens for us to invest in and trade with.

The two exchanges that continue to support OMNI will probably continue to do so as not everyone would move over to Safecoin(ERC-20), especially right away. Then they may dual list, but may more likely just leave the Safecoin(ERC-20) version for other exchanges (both CEX and DEX) that are more ERC-20 and Uniswap orientated to pick it up and list it via the magic of decentralised liquidity pools.

Will also take opportunity to post this 1 year old overview of Uniswap mainly for the following quote (emphasis mine), which IMO highlights a strong benefit for going this route:

So what is so great about this style of exchange? In a nutshell, the pooled liquidity smooths out the depth of the order book. There are no more large holes or large bid/ask spreads. This is preferable for small traders who don’t want to have to deal with limit order books (the Uniswap UX is one of the slickest we’ve seen in all of crypto). No more having to make bids or offers or doing heavy calculations. Liquidity providers can also “set it and forget it.” There’s significantly less overhead in terms of management of orders and positions. It’s an incredibly passive way to provide liquidity and earn some fees.

Maidsafe can:

  • Provide decentralised liquidity in Safecoin(ERC-20) at the centre of the ERC-20 ecosystem
  • Enabling other CEX/DEX exchanges to pick up and list the token as it is a decentralised liquidity pool
  • Not have to worry about a few whales buying out all the liquidity shutting down the market
  • Collect fees on the liquidity they provide
  • Not have to bother wasting precious time and resources chasing and paying for exchange listings for the foreseeable future.
  • Provide a SafeCoin(ERC-20) bridge for investors and developers to move between the current most vibrant decentralised project ecosystem, to the future one that will be on the Safe Network.
3 Likes

I really admire you for all you’ve ever done here and this is something that no one would ever know. I’ve always known deep down that you have sacrificed a great deal of life and riches for this project and many at Maidsafe have likely taken their own amount of sacrifice in honor of the vision. I know I would be in a much better place to support this project now if I had just followed the heard back in 2014 instead of following what I believe in, yet here I am. Do I regret it? In a way yes but only because I could have done more for SAFE today had I taken the more obvious path. Regardless I will remain. I hope you and others at Maidsafe feel comfortable enough with the situation or a path that is easy enough to make you comfortable. JAMS web app is just waiting for API’s to be Fleming ready to wire up the backend and a Mobile MVP should be about 6 months out.

I hope no one disregards the fact we have massive progress and still do have runway. I know I was very outspoken but it is only out of concern and frustration that others in this space get hyped about centralized and bloated bullsh*t that’s been rebranded or forked ten times. It’s like they don’t remember why any of this space is disruptive, transformative, or interesting. I’m getting in rant mode so please excuse me. I could keep going but it isn’t helpful so.

Just know David and others on the team you have my unwaivering support.

18 Likes

I think the Zok is on to something here. It’s proof, substance, and an easier way for exchanges to list and people to invest. Maybe not blow the top off but I think it will see far more interest than an Omni token that currently doesn’t have a working proof of a fully autonomous distributed network running on home computers/in the wild.

Ideally we wouldn’t need the erc20 token at this point and could just have a safecoin which would be even bigger news but I don’t know if safecoin will only come AFTER the farming algo stuff is worked out but that would be my guess so. Till then a erc20 MAID would likely help get the hype and liquidity up while Maidsafe figures out the farming algo and network balancing.

5 Likes

I don’t mind if they need to do some auctions to keep things moving in the short term. In the like medium term though I need a exchange to trade on to invest. I mean even if we do absolutely nothing we would prolly keep most hardcore long term HODLers. This delisting mostly effects people that flip at least semi-frequently. If we want to keep these peoples money supporting the project we simply NEED a liquid exchange of some kind.

I say this AS one of these people. I am not interested in just HODLing while I do other stuff. I make my bread and butter from daytrading and can’t afford to have significant amounts sitting around just waiting for years to make a trade.

2 Likes

Let’s talk about the risk and potential cost. To get the pool working you have to provide liquidity in both sides as price is calculated by deviding the two sides. How much would you risk of losing to arbitragers. How long before the fees cover the liquidty you provide because you are not getting paid in any other way for that liquidty.

Let’s make an example. To get 100 000 MAID liquidity it will cost you 100 000 * $0.09 = $9 000 + $9000 ETH to balance the both sides. If one person then buys 10 000 Maid they will raise the price on uniswap 10% until arbitragers level the price again. So the pool needs to be very big, lets say 1 000 000 MAID to facilitate one order of 10 000MAID and only raise the price 1%. As arbitragers gains money, liquidity providers lose and the only way to get paid is with the fees. How long before the fees cover for example 1 000 000 MAID + 1 000 000 worth of ETH?

The Uniswap solution seems like it could be lot of work and expensive for Maidsafe.

3 Likes

Thanks @tobbetj yes I agree Uniswap does come with its own set of risks, trade-offs and any returns on providing liquidity is very price and market movement dependent. If the motive is only to make profit it would probably not be the best option. Providing liquidity already comes with all these risks on top of some extra of course, but unlike managing orders on a traditional order book it is certainly less work on Uniswap in that respect (see references below). Also remember that ERC-20 exchange service providers are now integrating Uniswap as one of their liquidity providers so we would be saving time vs approaching each of these exchange services individually avoiding having to divide limited liquidity between many exchange services and all the time and expense managing each of their order books separately. Example: Binance trust wallet integrates the kyber network which in turn uses Uniswap liquidity. These kinds of integration’s are on the rise.

These articles explain the benefits and risks for Uniswap liquidity providers, warts and all, much better than I could including worked simple examples you were looking for plus “what if” charts. Also see this publication An analysis of Uniswap markets for a more formal review.

4 Likes

I’m with @sotros25. Pretending like this will all go away will not make it so. Fleming is obviously top priority and negativity will get us nowhere, however, neither will fantasyland or bootlicking. It’s time to goddamn serious about protecting this project.

11 Likes

I will try to read some of the examples when Christmas gives oppportunity. There are alot of questions marks about this approach and more questions follows.

An exchange liquidity provider gets paid when someone buys the coins. To lock up huge amounts of coins in a pool seems ineffective. In the immediate short term I can’t see this as a good option, Maidsafe have a very defined limit on resources like time and money. It is different for companies like Binance who have “Google” money and can try alot of new things without it affecting them regardless of resultat are good or bad.

Companies with relative limited resources can’t risk betting on something that might become big in the future, they need to go primarily with what works today and maybe dip one or two toes in what might become big in future.

Just to mention that some exchanges like for example Bittrex manage their own liquidity for coins. I don’t think Maidsafe have put alot of time managing liquidity on exchanges but anyone is free to correct me.

In general things tend to gravitate towards centralisation because it is often an superior alernative when it comes to cost/effectivness/ease of use and so in. In a few areas decentralisation have the ability to shine like when it comes to trustless decision making like a ledger (Bitcoin) and when it comes to trustless data managing/storing consensus (SAFE). Exchanges and ledgers with information could also be good candidates, there might be others as well. But I will argue that centralisation will beat decentralisation in majority of cases, the more complex something becomes the harder to make it decentralised.

This is just some initial thoughts from logic conclusion, I will try to get back later when I have read some more of your references.

2 Likes

Lots of commits, reviews and merges going in today, even on Christmas Eve. A good few devs must be working today. I don’t see any sign of complacency, but lots of evidence of hard work and dedication. For some perspective, I worked yesterday and I was pretty much the only dev in my wider team who did.

At this time of year of all times, thanking people for their efforts should not be seen as a negative, imo. The pressure and community exposure must be great and I suspect they are driven by a similar goals to David too.

27 Likes

Well said Traktion, you speak for many of us on here. It’s due to the hard work and dedication of the entire dev team that the traders can obsess about how best to take profit from other peoples work.

23 Likes

I don’t disagree that getting added to another exchange due to the polo delist would be a prudent backup. I understand why some folks might think Erc20 is the fastest way to do that but disagree as it takes focus away from what is important. I also regret mentioning the auction idea since there is a better alternative already in place via Omni. The forum needs an Omni expert to find or write a simple turorial.

6 Likes

Is the project still viable under the existing market conditions?

Yes I think it is viable, these are the calcs to show why:

USD

There are 18 people listed on About Us | MaidSafe. Take an average salary of, say, USD 60K (which I guess is very low but let’s just use it in this example).

That makes 1.08M USD =18*60000 annual spend on salaries.

To fund salaries maidsafe must sell approx 10.8M MAID per year (at the current price of approx $0.10 USD/MAID). The 20M MAID loan would last about 1.85 years.

To generalise, sustainable price P = T*N*S/L (USD/MAID)
T years of work
N workers
S salary in USD per year
L loan amount in MAID

For example, to fund the project for 10 more years with 18 staff at 60K USD salary by using the 20M MAID loan, the average price for the next ten years needs to be =10*18*60000/20000000 = 0.54 USD/MAID.

The average price for the past year is USD 0.1506 (source data) and for the entire trading history since 2013 is 0.1709 (source data)

/* Calc average daily USD price on coinmarketcap historical-data page */
x=[]; document.querySelectorAll(".cmc-table-row").forEach(function(e,i) {x.push(parseFloat(e.querySelectorAll(".cmc-table__cell--right")[0].textContent)) }); y=0; for(i=0;i<x.length;i++) { y += x[i] }; console.log("Avg USD price: " + y/x.length);

A price of 0.16 USD/MAID would fund about 3 years of salaries from the 20M MAID loan.

Bittrex

Average daily MAID volume on Bittrex is 18408 MAID per day (last 90 days).

Average daily BTC volume on Bittrex is 0.255 BTC per day (last 90 days).

Bittrex source data

/* Calc average daily volume on bittrex ticker page */
key="V" /*V=maid volume; BV=bitcoin volume*/; days=90; x = JSON.parse(document.body.textContent); y=x.result; t=0; for (i=y.length-days; i<y.length; i++) { t=t+y[i][key] }; console.log(t/days);

Selling 20M MAID over 2 years is approx 27K MAID sold per day. This would more than double the average daily volume of bittrex.

Compared to poloniex

Average daily MAID volume on poloniex is 322444 MAID per day (last 90 days, 17x more than bittrex).

Average daily BTC volume on poloniex is 4.48 BTC per day (last 90 days, 17x more than bittrex).

Poloniex source data

/* Calc average daily volume on poloniex ticker page */
key="volume" /*quoteVolume=maid volume; volume=bitcoin volume*/; days=90; y = JSON.parse(document.body.textContent); t=0; for (i=y.length-days; i<y.length; i++) { t=t+y[i][key] }; console.log(t/days);	

Selling 20M MAID over 2 years is approx 27K MAID sold per day. This is 8.4% of the average daily volume of poloniex. Or to put it another way, 8.4% or more of poloniex volume moving to bittrex would cover the needs of the loan for funding maidsafe.

The question is, how much volume will move from poloniex to bittrex? Only time will tell.

An interesting question to ask is what needs to happen on the markets? Maintaining a price of at least 10c seems important. Creating liquidity so maidsafe can confidently sell the loaned coins seems important.

Adding new markets might be good because it might add more liquidity, however is no certainty. It’s possible that just a single exchange could provide most of the liquidity (historically this has been poloniex) and things will still work. I think bittrex could certainly step into this role and I don’t think there’s any urgent need to create an erc20 token.

Are there any historical precedents for omni->erc20 to learn about a) number of new exchanges adopting the coin and b) change in overall daily volume traded and c) change in liquidity (especially bids)? Even if anyone knows of examples (even without numbers) I’d be happy to dig around for some precedent and expectation for uptake of erc20 conversion.

My feeling on erc20 (just a feeling, not based on facts, which I would love to see more of as per above request) is not to pursue it. The cost of complexity and confusion and effort required probably would not offset the benefit of listing (which may not actually attract additional demand; it’s the creation of demand I mostly doubt and want to research further). And I also feel bittrex can fulfill the required needs until launch.

If the erc20 contract could be designed such that omni can be burned for erc20 and then in reverse (erc20 burned back into omni maidsafecoin) it would be good to pursue since it wouldn’t require any maidsafe involvement. Maidsafe could continue to do the original omni->safecoin transition and erc20 be this side thing. When safecoin is launched people with erc20 would need to convert to from erc20 to omni then to safecoin. But if erc20 is irreversible then I fear it creates additional complexity for safecoin which takes resources away from the primary goal of delivering the network, both now and at launch.

My key takeaway from this analysis is a) hopefully 10% (or more) of trading moves from poloniex to bittrex and b) hopefully they put orders on the orderbook to try to maintain at least 10c when maidsafe sells their loan (since 10c ensures 2 years more development).

25 Likes

Storj migrated from Counterparty to Ethereum, if you remember. And they are in quite a few markets:
ERC20 Storj price today, STORJ to USD live, marketcap and chart | CoinMarketCap
Counterparty Storjcoin X price today, SJCX to USD live, marketcap and chart | CoinMarketCap

Many people think that people will exchange theirs Omni Maid for real SafeCoin. I do not think so.

The main problem is that the real SafeCoin is completely anonymous. This will be a big problem for the exchanges who want to comply with anti-money laundering / terrorism laws.

So I think some part of all MAID will stay in Omni forever… That being said, it would be good to have a cheap alternative like ERC20 to store, transfer and trade on exchanges…

5 Likes

Because of this problem, I predict that MAID will be at times more expensive than SafeCoin. Because the farmed SafeCoin will not be traded on the exchanges…

Why would the redeeming of safecoin for their MAID go through exchanges. This is totally not needed. The fact is that it is easy to do the issuance of safecoin from a person’s MAID.

They use say omniwallet.org and send the MAID to a specified address and the issuance occurs from there.

5 Likes

I say that people will not exchange MAID for SafeCoin at all (obviously not all people. Some will exchange it) and the exchanges will continue to trade in OMNI MAID and not in SafeCoin…

Of course there will be decentralized exchanges. But companies that want to run services on the SAFE Network and need SafeCoin will have to buy MAID (and not SafeCoin) from a centralized exchanges…

1 Like

Not saying it’s not the best solution I’ve heard so far, but, I think that could cause problems with peoples faith in wanting to buy safecoin.
I would not want to buy coins, given that if the network failed, they could be returned to the original owner leaving me out of pocket.
It could also encourage large current holders to sell all after conversion and collude to attack the network.

Edit. I think this topic probably needs it’s own thread, I imagine there will be much debate to find an acceptable option.

4 Likes

Do not underestimate the significance of this issue. The need for exchanges to be able to maintain privacy will continue to be squeezed by global powers. I do not know how this will play out for SafeCoin, Monero and the like

4 Likes

unfortunately, yes … If it’s a big percentage of your MAID write me to help you, komşu…

1 Like

Interesting example @Dimitar from the Omni(Mastercoin) fork Counterparty. Also illustrative of the amount of exchanges and liquidity levels available to ERC-20 markets for tokens.

Two way conversion sounds like unnecessary complexity right now. The script to convert X to Safecoin would just need to accept the amount to be converted, and that amount could come equally easily from the Omni burn or SafeCoin(ERC-20) burn script. I do agree that later on a two way conversion would be useful but between SafeCoin(ERC-20) and Safecoin to create a bridge between two active communities allowing investors and developers to cross and build cross chain services with minimal friction.

This is a fairly strong statement to make right out the gate. If we take just the community poll numbers at face value the majority of just active forum readers appear to be expressing interest in participating in Safecoin(ERC-20) markets. How much that translates to actual demand (from just existing forum members) is hard to quantity. Some of us are unable/unwilling to participate in existing two Omni exchanges for the red flags raised previously and in the very limited cases I personally know of it is not an insignificant amount of monthly income streams/xmas bonuses that will be now cut off from MAID. We will have a better idea of the bigger picture in a few months I am sure.

Complexity wise there are a few older mostly pre-Ethereum projects that transitioned to ERC-20 token (many more have jumped from ERC-20 to Tron and EOS) without apparent user confusion so I am not sure why you think it would be different in our case? Your initiative to study similar transitions like @Dimitar StorJ example is really great. It might also be very useful to quantify the range of exchange service options available to the similar caliber projects at least from an active development yardstick. Here is a list of potential ERC-20 projects ranked by development every month. Just eyeballing the number of exchanges available to trade over on coinmarketcap I would guesstimate an average of 5 exchanges for actively developed projects. I may have a biased opinion but the Safe Network project has way more potential and is of a higher caliber than most of those projects and yet is seriously lagging on the exchange front. The Omni effect.

2 Likes