Poll: Should MaidSafe implement PtP (Pay the Provider)?

Farmers are selling a commodity whose value is easily measured objectively - amount of storage, speed of delivery, availability.

Moreover, the safe network requires these properties to survive. It is the nourishment needed to keep the network alive, providing futile land for data to grow.

Safe net at it core is all about storing and serving data. It can survive with or without art of subjective value.

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There is still that intensive layer but yes, I agree with you completely; and if farming is the soil than PtD is the seed. PtP is just unnecessary fertilizer IMO because the ground is already rich.

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Exactly. SAFE has inherent value. There’s nothing like it on the planet, not even Storj. The developers will create apps regardless of the safecoin incentive because SAFE is too good to pass up. If it has high enough value (and SAFE will), it will be used.

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Another point not being discussed here is (I think) one of the main reasons PtP (and PtD) was originally proposed: to give creators an alternative to monetise, and specifically one that removes the value/need to sell advertising.

Either way, these ideas were not just about “fertilising” the network, they were about providing alternative revenue streams, dis-intermediation, democratisation etc

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These are all good things I think the most of us want. But this can be addressed better at the app level than at the infrastructure level.

There’s an even bigger risk and concern. Think about the valuation of safecoin as a financial asset and as a viable global currency. Would investors want their money fluctuating because the latest cat video went viral? Or if someone made billions off the next Snapchat app? Would I want my salary be paid in such a currency? Absolutely not.

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Yes, so ok, maybe we should revisit some of these off-topic threads such as this one:

https://forum.autonomi.community/t/building-a-basic-income-into-safe-beyond-farming/6936

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David has already said PtP and PtD are only a few lines of code (function call really)

I am concerned that at the APP level we revert back to the current system of production which is at the APP level, because the agents say they need promoting on SAFE and thus need a middleman. PtP is not the final key of the puzzle, it is there to provide some incentive to upload USEFUL content rather than junk. Also by having useful content we increase the adoption of SAFE. The network wins with PtP. More coins are released to the market for future uploads which enables the network further. If the balance is met then the network Wins, and content providers win a little too.

APPs can deal with allowing the artists to do their art full time with increased returns for their works.

At the moment many artists end up working full time while their agent/producers reap the profits and the artists are actually still in debt for advertising and production costs. The upload costs are like the record printing costs, but magnitudes cheaper.

Not really this is another matter. More like build the shops and they will come. The road taxation is paid to the ISPs, our data runs over the roads of the links.

The network is the one paying out to the producers for attracting more users. Uploading is a 100% taxation. SAFE is a 100% taxation system, you are paying da man for all uploads. Da man is the network.

The network gives and what it gives it receives (minus lost coins & silly life long hoarders) back as payment for uploading to the network. (Taxation since it is the system, the government of the network)

I think people should look at the pros and cons of both payment mechanisms PtP and PtD . It is important to incentivise the developers who build apps on the network because it is through apps and websites that producers can distribute their content. The Safe network being decentralised and freedom orientated should give the market to decide. My personal opinion would to allow apps freedom to chose their payment methods e it in app purchases of subscriptions. The network should have little role to play in the payment of apps but rather the consumers or users should decide the value of an app.

The network should not be concerned about paying the producer rather the producers should be free to decide bow they wish to be paid. It will be upto usersto decide if the content is worth it. Promoters are a stand alone industryi dont see how the safenetwork can by pass them .If they are offering a service and if the producers feel comfortble to use them, then its fair .

In short the producers pay the developers PtD (apps+websites) and consumers pay the producer CpP through the apps or websites. This does not entail middlemen simply because not evevryone can be a producer , a developer or a consumer.

Lastly i think the network should then pay the farmers PtF for data storage on their hard drives .

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PtP & PtD moves away from the user pays system which created the imbalance between artists and producers (media companies) and allowed the companies so much control due to competition for the users limited money.

It strives to allow the network itself to pay a small incentive for developers of APPs, artists, websites, even if the user never pays. As far as I know this has not been tried elsewhere.

It also increases the volume of the coin in circulation by generating coin to pay these small incentives. This is one point people miss. The coin will then change hands or not, then eventually find its way to be recycled back into the network.

It, in a small way, solves the problem of content being freely available to all, removes more barriers to quality content by allowing more people to self publish without requiring “user pays” etc.

I see it as an incentive, a reward, which is what it is called and not a wage, not a living wage, and helping to level the playing field.

To those that fear it will destablise the coin economy, preliminary simulations show that within limits the amounts of the rewards can vary a lot and the effects is like a rubber band, it just stretches more or less but does not break. Give too much rewards OR TOO LITTLE and the economy fails and the network loses support and dies. The trick is to balance it.

Does that mean we have to have PtP, well no but it does help the economy if not too high. Without it early on we may not see the quality content that original artists can supply and just see the flood of copied inferior content.

The pirated content will be put on the network with or without the PtP. If the pirates try to game PtP they compete with each other and in the end individually gain little of the share any particular work would get them, but they will have paid so much to the network that the network is the big winner.

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Developers are not after rewards man this is capitalism if thats the case as a developer i will be at the old internet. If the safe network cannot create billion dollar companies like google, yahoo, facebook then its prone to fail espcially considering projects like ethereum are paying handsome to developers and even content producers

I’m sorry, what? You’ll need to elaborate man. I’m confused.

That is the PtD reward paid whether you charge or not. PtD does not stop all the suggestions of being paid by other means, it is more a “thinkyou” by the network. It allows some small time APPs that REFUSE to charge the users to at least get something for adding to the usability of the network.

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Yes and while we might deplore advertising we shouldn’t prevent people from opting for it if they so choose. It might be unpopular but then again so is disco. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be allowed to get your 70’s grove on and put up those big shiny disco ball things.

Better to have the PtP and PtD at the app level to let people opt for it.

I think we’re leaving out a few details. Content providers are pretty much anyone who produces content. Content doesn’t just = music, poetry and art. It’s posts on social media, comments, cat videos, and quotepics too. It’s EVERYTHING posted to the internet more or less. And that’s something everyone is invested in. Your average facebooker might not produce quality content but they’d produce A LOT of it because they’d be on facebook EVERY DAY and posting, liking and commenting on a daily basis. So they’d be earning lots of little tips. It adds up. And with lots of people like that downloading the app you’d have more people contributing coin to larger projects.

Yeah this is pretty much where you go off metaphor for me. My safecoin does not go to my ISP, it goes to the SAFE network. So I don’t know what you’re talking about here.

Again what are you on about?

I repeat above question. What are you on about. Your metaphor totally doesn’t work.

I agree. Yes paying content producers and developers is important but it should be left up to the market and public at large on how they want to choose to do it. If they don’t want to do it then the results will be predictable. A failed network. Keep in mind the network already distributes the value of resources. If someone buys safecoin that value gets redistributed across the entire network because the value of safecoin then rises and everyone’s safecoin will be worth more. And since everyone can farm safecoin everyone benefits. So hoarding safecoin doesn’t really harm anyone. Moreover what with income being so easy to generate and safecoin being so easy to transfer would it be such a big stretch for people to transfer it to projects they value?

I agree developers need to be supported. I do not agree that because someone needs to be supported that people should be compelled to do so.

Why not just create a small app with two checkboxes and a little slider bar or text field or something? One for PtD and one for PtP. The PtD and PtP is only a few lines of code right? So why not just turn it into an app? If you want PtD check here, input the ammount. Done. If you want PtP click here. Input the amount. Done.

I agree the primary purpose of developers doesn’t seem to be profit. And if it is then it shouldn’t be funded via the network but rather the app level anyway. We don’t want corporate welfare. So if the goal of developers is to make profit and start their own Google then they shouldn’t be getting funded via a network level function in the first place.

Gratitude should be voluntary. A thank you means nothing if it’s said out of obligation and not by choice and true emotion. If PtD = Thank You then that’s even more reason for it to be at the app level.

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Its the autonomous network saying thankyou, not the user. So no obligation on anyones part.

You have to look at this from the networks point of view and not the users or how much they lose/gain.

Also you cannot view what the network pays out or receives as taxing the users. Because as soon as you do then really 100% of what people pay the system is taxation.

But that’s the thing: The user doesn’t pay the system anything save for what the pay in fair exchange for space on the network. I really don’t understand what you’re on about when you talk about 100% taxation because I don’t know where that figure is coming from at all.

  1. User exchanges computer resources for safecoin. That’s not taxation that’s an exchange. And one they have full control over to boot.

  2. User trades safecoin for space on the network. That again is not taxation that’s an exchange.

The only point the network does anything like taxation is with PtD. And yes I am aware it’s a ratio. So the user doesn’t actually lose any safecoin but still it’s hardcoded in. What if the user wants to offer more or less? What if they want to offer it some other way? Frankly network developers are just another form of content producers but the content they produce is the network itself. It’s like the job security of cooks, plumbers and funeral directors. Yep, they all produce content and provide a service just like anyone else but it’s pretty much guarenteed EVERYONE will use it. But great job security doesn’t mean they aren’t providing content and a service just like everyone else. So the fundamental question isn’t how do incentivize developers as opposed to content producers but how do we create an app that can be used to incentivize content producers and other services because developers ARE content producers, just with awesome job security.

Tanstafl. The “network” doesn’t have a wallet. If the “network” is paying out then where is the money coming from? Answer? Everyone! There’s where the “obligation” comes in.

It’s an algorithm dude. It’s a decentralized network. The whole point is the have nothing but the user’s point of view. But let’s think of it like the network paying in exchange for resources. Developers contribute code which is a form of resources. If that’s the case shouldn’t it be variable on how much demand there is for work to be done on the SAFE network? Just like there is for farming? Lot’s of demand = higher rewards. Less demand = lower rewards.

How would you measure such demand? Measure the number of bug reports, patch requests, RFCs, APP idea submits, etc etc. You’re devs I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Build a “request a tech” button.

But also the same principle could be applied to artists and other forms of creativity as well. Build a “Request an Artist” button or “request a writer button” or measure the number of times that one posts on social media or something. How urgent is it for social media sites to get users? Very. Maybe not so much for the rest of us. But they’d be hitting that “Request Social Media posters” button a lot. How important is it to your average teenager how the events of a soap opera might play out… not so much. But to a bored housewife it might be just the ticket. So my point is design a system to measure relative value. The majority of people will be whacking that “Request a tech” button hard and frequently. We know that, it’ll need to be made of industrial strength rubber. But there will also be other buttons people will bang on that can measure reletive value. And from there the network could measure how much demand there is for any given service. Then you take these various service ticks and feed them into apps and voila you have PtD/P apps.

The SAFE network can guarantee with near 100% certainty that data can never be compromised unwillingly because of the mathematics behind encryption and the algorithms that ensure pieces of the data are distributed so no one can decipher its contents. Attacks from hackers such as sybil attacks have been addressed by the way the SAFE network works and we have a high degree of certainty that SAFE can repel a good number of attacks.

But the same can never be said that would prevent gaming the system through generating intentionally useless content or creating gaming apps for the sole purpose of trying to generate safecoin. With farming, there is proof-of-resource. Bitcoin has proof-of-work. Peercoin has proof-of-stake. Counterparty has proof-of-burn. These are mathematically indisputable proof that gives certainty that coin can be rewarded.

There’s no such thing as proof-of-useful content or app. The proof is driven by the market. Who wants to use a network clogged with garbage where the incentive is to produce garbage for the hopes of generating safecoin? The SAFE network will quickly become of cesspool for hackers. Would I want to transact with such a currency? And the price of safecoin will plummet. That endangers the incentive for the farmers and that in turn threatens the safety of the network.

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No the network is paying out from its own reserve of unissued coin. No One has lost anything, the network did not take from everyone’s “wallet”.

The network generated the coin. It was the networks to give. If the network ever runs out of coin at a particular time then it doesn’t issue the coin. It doesn’t take from anyone, it does not raise the price of anything because it ran out.

The put cost does NOT account for the PtP or PtD coins it issued. Look at the safecoin RFC, so it does not take from anyone nor cost anyone. Hell even farming rewards is not “earmarked” out of the put costs. There is a disconnect between paying for a put and generating a coin to pay for services.

EVERY coin issued by the network comes back to the network.

From the network view, there is no loss, there is no problem.

Maybe this is why you cannot see. You do need to see it from the network’s need, treat the network as if it did exist as part of the coin cycle.

The real question is not if the network can support itself paying users for doing things for it. But to develop the methods/algorithms that do it fairly. No one has problems with paying the farmer for doing their part for the network, after all it is only the network paying rewards to the farmer. It has NO connection to the put cost either. The farmer getting paid is not from anyone “wallet” but the network generating a new coin for the farmer.

From the network side coins generated will find their way back to the network.

From the users point of view they are worried about what the coin they get is worth in fiat terms and that is a different issue, the network is not concerned.

Gaming the system well pirates will be doing that with or without PtP. Just being able to have secure storage for their pirated goods is worth a lot. Tell me how much is a pirate going to get once PtP is included. Well if what you say is right then 1000’s will copy each item which is 1000x the coin given to put that work once onto the network. And the PtP spread across the 1000 pirates. So once they game they get next to nothing. How long are they going to pay to make extra copies when they get back less than they paid because of all the others uploading the same stuff to make next to nothing. Yes some may get a little but it hurts the network nothing.

So you are saying because some will pirate some stuff and game the system, wasting their time/bandwidth to make a tiny amount if at all. That you should not give the real artists something by the network because they upload content and make the network more usable.

AND still have all the other good ideas to support and pay the artists that people think of. Have the APPs that allow the artists to sell, etc.

But from the network’s view PtP is encouraging more quality uploads, which is better for everyone.

BTW I really don’t see why you cannot understand the taxation issue.

  • If you don’t refer to any payments as taxation then its fine to see it as just paying for uploads. The network takes in coin and just deletes it. No earmarking some for farming and PtD, PtP or anything else it just deletes it. If you have coin in you wallet it also is not touched, no taxation.
  • but as soon as you refer to a portion as being taxation, then looking at the whole it is all taxation. Just like all the money you pay a government, 100% of that money is taxation. The network is like the government, it is the network it takes all the money paid to it so it is 100% taxation by the network, that governs the operations of the network.

Basically I am saying that referring to any of what is paid for upload as taxation for this or that then you have to refer as all of it being taxation because that is all the network does, take coin and pay coin out for services.

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You must remember that anyone trying to game a VERY low paying reward such as PtP or PtD incentives will be playing a forever diminishing returns game. The more they game the less the ROI. This was discussed earlier at length.

The reason why lies in the fact that they have to pay to upload all that material they try to game. The more they upload the more they pay, and the more they have to download to get 1/10 what the farmers get, They would be more profitable to just farm than get 1/10 what farmers get.

Then also if they try to get too often caching kicks in and they get nothing for all their efforts. They have to find a balance between speed of gets, costs of the uploads, their ability to download large amounts of data (even with a botnet).

Simply put the botnet is still going to be tiny compared to the network and caching will reduce the results even further. If one account gets a chunk, then gets it again soon afterwards the 2nd get gives them nothing because it is cached, and this is true for a botnet, but worse because maybe 1/2 the machines always get from caches, likely more.

So then lets make many chunks to spread the requests out to reduce caching. Still will have a lot of caching till you have say have more chunks than machines. By then you are going to lose any ROI because you would still see caching till there are so many different chunks for each machine to be able to cycle through them when the first chunk is flushed from the caches in the route to the chunk. By that stage the gamer has paid so so much in uploads that they are unlikely to recoup the cost within a month or more of gets. So lets speed up the rate of gets, oh no the chunks are no longer flushed from the caches.

For an artist the access will be from across the network from a wide range of people and not relatively centralised in a botnet from a set number of machines. If an artist is so popular that their work is cached across the network then that is also a balancing factor to boost the smaller Artist against the popular ones.

In any case the incentives are very small which reduces the effects of gaming. Testing will show if the gaming can even succeed on small scale or not. But as I pointed out before gaming on as small a scale as this can be will not harm the network and likely only gong to be a blimp on the exchange prices.

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That’s like saying “the network has not yet put coin into circulation yet.” Dude not having issued a coin does not equate to having a wallet. The network has a set amount of safecoin that will ever exist. Okay that’s like saying there is a set amount of gold that exists on planet Earth. Farmers farm safecoin just like you need to go dig gold out of a mine. And the only difference between the safe network and our current system is the SAFE network sensibly returns the gold to the mine (destroys it) after it’s spent to purchase computer resources that are used to “dig” it out of the “mine”. Or you could stick with the orginal metaphor of farming. You put resources into the land (computer resources) and harvest safecoin. Yes there is only a set amount of resources already in the planet so you need to replenish whatever you take out. That’s what the “unissued” safecoin represents. But arguing that “the network” is putting out coin is ridiculous. Look what would happen theoretically if all safecoin were issued, all 2^32 of it? What would happen to the price of data? Either you’ve got a network maxed out on farmers or you’ve got a sudden demand for farming. Either we’re talking wild price fluctuations or late game SAFE network. But if we’re talking late game when farming is no longer useful how profitable will PtD be and if we’re talking wild sudden fluctations how profitable will such things be? Not very. No. PtD and PtP really come in to play during early and mid game where people are still farming primarily to get safecoin. Because PtD and PtP work by getting a ratio of whatever is farmed. No farming, no PtD or PtP. If all the coin is already issued then this whole conversation becomes moot.

You have a set number of safecoin right? The cost of data is based on how many unissued safecoins there are combined with how many have been issued with how many resources there are. Like the network knows how many safecoins will ever exist, it knows how many it’s issued to farmers and it knows how many resources are needed, so it takes those numbers and plugs them in to calculate the cost of space right? My question for you is if all that is true how do you figure the network issuing new coins will not affect that calculation and will not cost anyone anything? Bob devotes x amount of resources to the network and in return gets x amount worth of safecoin. Fair exchange. But over here Fred gets y safecoin on top of what he farmed, x + y. So he spends x amount of cpu resources but also gets y safecoin for dev work or whatever. Does that not throw the calculations off a tad? The question of the day is what does safecoin represent to the network? The amount of computer resources? Or is it more abstract?

I’m not worried about this at all as it’ll be worked out at the exchanges and free market like everything else.

If you had been reading my posts you’d know I’m not concerned about THIS at all and am quite in favor of piracy. In fact I’m in agreement with you that the affects of piracy would end up being rather negligable in the grand scheme of things. So really this isn’t what I’m saying at all.

What I am saying is PtD and PtP should be at the app level so that users have freedom and choice. The freedom to opt in and out. The freedom to adapt the methodology to their liking. The freedom to change how donations are given or the amount given. All those lovely things.

Okay you just get further off base the more you go on. When did I ever say anything about PUTs being a form of taxation? In fact I explicitly stated:

I was talking about PtD where 10% of farmed safecoin (1:10 of every safecoin) goes to the devs. And you know what? I have less of an issue with a ratio than I do a percentage but given it’s hard coded instead of user controlled it’s still an issue.

Look if this is about how much the network values certain activities then what’s it saying?

  • It values cpu resources enough to pay for them at market value.
  • It values devs 1/10 the value of cpu resources.
  • Assorted content creators aren’t even on the radar.
  • It’s making a political statement of valuing technical devs over other content creators. (Which is something the internet shouldn’t do.)

@TungSvard:

These are all good things I think the most of us want. But this can be addressed better at the app level than at the infrastructure level.

This is your contention, or assumption, but the two approaches are very different.

Doing it at the App level is not very different from what we have now. If that’s what you prefer, then you might think it “better”.

I think what we have now is terrible, and I’m willing to try and devise radically different solutions.

Claims about Safecoin valuations without any justification is not helpful to clarify what the effect of these approaches would be.

If you want to argue why your statements have validity, please do, or why the points I’ve made are unlikely to deliver what I have suggested, please do. But just saying that doing it at the App level is better, or Safecoin investors will not like something you’ve not explained the reasons for, isn’t improving our understanding here.

I’ve made a case, you can address it if you want, but simply dismissing it without critique is pointless and wastes my time.

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