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

As it has been mentioned before, and as you point out, caching doesn’t stop the problem, only diminishes it. There’s simply no reason to not run a script that continuously requests all of your public data. The more people does it, the better it works as caches gets recycled faster.

I know we all have been through this debate before, but just wanted to clarify as to not gives the impression that caching somehow fixes the issue completely. The network being stuffed by GET requests is still a valid concern for many reasons.

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And of course the diminishing returns of the persons power usage to get what is likely to be a lot less in rewards after caching.

But as you say its all been said above. I somehow think that people think this PtP is going to get them 100’s or 1000’s of coins a day. NOPE, its so small that it requires a world wide effort to gain anything like that.

Lets say framing rate is high at 10^-10 (can be as low as 10^-18) of a coin per get and PtP is 10^-11 of a coin per get that is not from a cache.

So then the person has to do like 100,000,000,000 GETs to get a full coin. How much electricity will that cost the person. And the argument of a bot net, then how much will the botnet cost to rent (real cost)?

It requires a scale that exceeds a person’s resources (or normal botnets) to gain any real amount, then the cost of it all will be so much more.

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But then isn’t that an argument against the futility of the whole enterprise? How many artists can claim to generate a billion views on their piece? Or even a million?

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It was never about giving an artist an income. But to offset costs, change the system and encourage content to be upload to SAFE. Content that people want to read/see/access. Lets face it if you get something back for uploading good content then you are more likely to upload that content that people want.

If a vid is 100 chunks then to get a million GETs on the content only requires 10,000 views.

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Let’s not add to this thread with stuff that has already been discussed to death. There’s a search function for those brave enough to dig into them, but the thread is already very long because discussion can’t resolve these questions in most people’s minds. Hence the resolve to test ideas more practically.

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Well a botnet actually offering storage for farming is not really bad and is still to safe normal behavior, whereas a botnet gaming ptp would be more malicious in my eyes as its taking advantage of the network reward program with no real value gain to the users of safe(Say I upload a picture of a parrot and just have bots look at that, nothing good came of that to SAFE), but a botnet providing storage, even if morally wrong to take advantage of some poor dudes haxed comp is still beneficial to SAFE.

If the reward per view is super low then yeah if they can’t pay the cost of the botnet or there are better things to do with a botnet than SAFE based on reward structure then its fine imo. I fully agree the network promoting quality content is a big + if done right. I don’t think of it as an MVP requirement though.

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???
Are you deliberating conflating BOT doing GETs and BOT farming. For farming the BOT would be accessing chunks stored in a vault so the vault earns more. Just as you suggest the BOT access the content. And the same for APP Dev rewards, you could simply access the APP by the BOT over and over again.

All three farming, APP Dev and PtP rewards all work off the GETs done and by your logic are all gamable

PtP is as easy as PtD (Pay the app Developer) rewards and marginally more difficult than farming rewards.

That is an interesting idea to explore though, regarding bots farming for rewards. Obviously, there is an ethical element to it, with resources being used without permission, but it could benefit the network in multiple ways:

  1. The bots who farm without authorisation add capability to the network.
  2. The existence of the bot net could actually publicise why the user should do their own farming instead.
  3. Overall, more capability and users are brought into the network.

Now, this wouldn’t be my preferred way of pushing the SAFENetwork, but I am sure someone unscrupulous will. If we all gain from their lack of scruples, then it isn’t all bad!

I’ve become more pragmatic about PtP the last couple of years. I don’t know ultimately what will happen with it (if implemented) … I do hope that the network is able to successfully balance safecoin creation PtP, PtD, farming, with puts. That’s going to be core to the network surviving. I think it’s going to be more difficult to achieve this balance with PtP … but likely not impossible.

I do believe the network would be great and do fine without PtP, but it may also be totally fine with it … and I will certainly take full advantage of it, if implemented.

Like happens with bitcoin. Those new btc coins push the price down

TAX means something else. No one is suggesting taking from farmer’s or dev rewards here.

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I would say that is short term thinking.

Let me tell you of another aspect of PtP. Both your view and mine could be true at same time (both or either could also be more or less false).

The network needs content to get clients, which pay for vaults providing the system securing services. PtP is an incentive to upload data of highest possible attractiveness. Most competitive would presumably be content that is not free or easily accessible on clearnet. Cat pictures and ‘stupid videos’ I would say are abundant, free and easily accessible on clearnet. There is not much reason for a clearnet user to go through the trouble of going to SAFENetwork to find that. Uploaders of course understands this.
So, they will upload viral content that is not found on clearnet, at least initially. If clearnet was to be replaced, then of course SAFENetwork would take over that content as well.

Anyway, regardless of content quality, the incentive to populate the network with attractive content, will lead to increased demand for storage, influx of users and a growing network, with all its ripple effects on use cases and economies evolving. I am quite convinced that will be orders of magnitude more beneficial for your personal bag of coin value, than whatever negative impact the PtP payout might have on it. All this given that it is resistant to attacks of course.

I would guess, not claiming to know, that if there is any decrease in value, it could be considered an investment to gain more.

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This is where you are incorrect. There are only 2^32 sc . Ptp rewards could be managed just like GET rewards for farmers, with the reward rate increasing or decreasing based on PUT costs/rates and current state of the network.
After a lot of thought on this topic… Imo PtP and/or PtD are genius.

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Yes, and the only way for PtD and PtP to work is if the network balances it like the farming go with puts and gets, which is how I assume it will work…

It would be part of the get reward.
Farmer provides a get to a client, part of the get reward goes to the farmer, a part goes to the producer of the data, and a portion to devs, a portion to X, etc.

I wouldn’t call it a tax personally, but I get what you are saying. Cryptocurrencies are voluntary, so it’s not a tax. However those who hold safecoin, but who do not produce content MAY end up giving some of the value of their holdings to those producers and it’s not clear that they gain anything in return (they might, but it’s speculative).

So for hodlers who don’t intend to publish and attempt gains through PtP, it legitimately can appear to be a shit deal.

Pragmatically, however I will accept whatever we get and will work with it as an entrepreneur to the best of my ability.

I’m using the term ‘value’ very precisely above … don’t confuse value with coin itself.

Valid point … 20 chars.

I understand the concerns related to value being taken from one group - like the bad view of taxes. But I don’t want to get into a debate about tax - I wish to say that while it is a point I understand, I don’t think it is relevant to liken PtP to a tax. I think it is being emotive, and we should focus on the behaviour, and the whole picture here rather than labels. If you rely on likening it to a tax, you’ve lost me I’m afraid.

As well as points already made in favour of PtP, here are a couple which make me want to test it out:

  • it is as simple to deploy as you can get - a checkbox on upload / publish. That’s it, if you can publish you can earn rewards, which I think is a game changer. This makes it accessible to all (a SAFE fundamental) without needing to provide an app or become part of a service run by somebody else. It is also gauranteed to reward, unlike donations for example which are generally only effective for popular well marketed/well resourced setups, or particular kinds of community. I don’t know of any other mechanism that is as easy and universal as this proposal. Anything else will therefore be harder, less decentralised etc

  • it is fundamentally decentralising - being so simple and accessible, it provides an alternative that we have never seen before, and I would like to see tested, because without it, content markets are inevitably going to be centralised IMO, and end up not much different from what we have now. The only way to stop that is to provide alternatives to current models of revenue generation that can compete without drifting towards being centralised. PtP is that. Donations are to some extent, paywalls not at all - because they encourage centralising/censoring in order to make it worth paying. Pay per access is also not as ‘good’ an alternative because it relies on scarcity (reducing access - another SAFE fundamental) again encouraging centralisation through exclusivity.

Just opinion of course. PtP may not work as I hope, but this is why I want us to test it and try to make it work. I think the benefits are important and among the SAFE Fundamentals.

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I still see your arguments as short sighted and irrationally egoistic if you may excuse my bluntness (addressing the arguments though).
I’ll make up for it with an explanation:

You will already be very wealthy if the network succeeds, it looks kind of greedy that you want to cling on to every single coin, and not accept that there’s something to be gained by the contribution. (Well, I do recognize that that has to be proven of course)
If the network fails it is not because of PtP, and so it would have failed anyway.

So why not try utilize some of the decentralised incentive mechanisms (like me and others here claim that it is) for the benefit of everyone? (you included!)

There will be no additional payout without the additional GETs. So I think it is quite evident that any additional payout comes with an increase in traffic which is beneficial for everyone holding.

The network lives and dies with its traffic.

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Hi everyone! Lurker here. While I certainly like the general idea of the SAFE Network, this particular idea is highly questionable in my eyes.

First some “facts” as basis for my argumentation (i.e. points that I think should be obvious to everyone and thus need not to be discussed or tested):

  1. Fact: It is simply impossible to automatically determine the quality of uploaded content in a sane / fair manner (it would require at least some kind of insanely advanced AGI to do this).

    (Side note: This is in contrast to the objectively measurable factors such as the available storage space of the network, thus this argumentation doesn’t apply to farming if I understand it correctly.)

  2. Fact: Each payment is a loss for someone (Edit: As pointed out by replies below, this is of course not true if the value of the currency increases thanks to this process.).
    A. If the payment is done by transferring currency, someone else will have less of it.
    B. If the payment is done by increasing the amount of currency in circulation, the value of the currency unit for everyone will be decreased.

  3. Fact: Demand for content and the content’s production cost are separate.

  4. Fact: If the system can be abused to gain currency with little to no work, this abuse is as good as inevitable long-term.

  5. Fact: If payments are not large enough to matter (at the very least via long-term accumulation), they by definition might as well not exist.

  6. Fact: Uploaders are paid, not necessarily the actual creators.

Now some slightly more detailed deductions based on these facts:

  1. Deduction: The payment will practically always be either too low or too high:

    A. If the payment is so small that content with the highest demand only receives a small but somewhat usable amount of currency,
    then content with only modest demand will get only an insignificant / useless amount.

    B. If the payment is large enough to provide useful income for content with modest demand and
    content with the highest demand will gain a lot of wealth, this promotes (possibly automated) abuse.

    C. If the payment does not occur when the data is already cached by some intermediaries,
    it exacerbates the already inherently unfair payment distribution.

    D. If the payment amount is profitable but progressively scaled down for larger demand quantities,
    this promotes artificially splitting / copying the content (with minor modifications to prevent automatic deduplication of course).

    E. If the payment amount is capped to e.g. only recuperate the cost of uploading the content,
    this still leaves the problem of fact 2.
    And the system could also still be abused to upload private encrypted data as public data for free,
    since the cost could be recuperated over time by abusing the automatic payment system through bots or by disguising the encrypted data as some other desirable content.

  2. Deduction: Various forms of abuse are likely especially if profit can be made (by a preferably file-size-wise larger quantity of content):

    A. Willful degradation of content (e.g. worse compression to increase file size or other intentional bloat).
    B. Low-quality spam (which could also be disguised as some higher quality content, i.e. clickbait).
    C. Piracy.

    All of which could be automated as well.
    And of course none of this abuse would be beneficial to anyone but the abusers.
    Securing the system against any of this is bound to be about as impossible as reliably juding the quality of content.

Conclusion: Thus the system would either
A. be useless for almost everyone due to too low rewards for anything but the most popular content,
B. or be completely prone to rampant abuse if the rewards were sufficiently high to be worthwhile.
I.e. “A.” means the system might as well not exist, or “B.” means it will lead to a ton of bad content long-term.

As stated by others before, it seems much more sensible to instead focus on providing a good decentral crowd-funding (base) system instead.
(Side note: Perhaps one where the “donors” can also share fixed costs, reducing the cost per person with an increasing number of “donors”.)
That would have almost none of the problems described above (well other than scams, which could of course still happen).

…or am I just missing something crucial? :slight_smile:

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Only if the printing of that money is not increasing value. PtP make the network grow and safecoin actually worth something. At the extreme no content then safecoin is worthless. Not suggesting no content but it might be 5 years before safe catches on enough to make safecoin worth something. PtP speeds that up and makes your coin worth something earlier. That is not inflation but growth.

AND I ask what do you think PtP is paying one coin per file per access??? No it is exactly the same equivalence as Pay the (app) Developer. So is PtD bad too???

What about farming rewards that is creating coin from nothing too by your logic.

Value increasing effect of each reward

  • farming increases value by storing the data and retrieving it
  • PtD increases value by attracting APP developers to make APPs to attract people
  • PtP increases value by attracting valuable content that attracts people to the network

Both PtD and PtP attract people to the network to use it and most people once using the network will upload and comment and other activities that all require PUTs to be done thus increasing the value of the network and a positive force on the price of the coin. So by claiming falsely TAX and inflation the PtD and PtP might the things that turn SAFE from being a geek fest into a global network within 5 years. And your coin from being cents to 10’s of dollars within 5 years, without both of them it could be dying in 5 years since its just geekville

@torss, I sorry I do not see those as actual facts. They are an option of what might be if this was not such a game changer that has not been done before.

When you claim that as fact that rewarding someone means others lose out does not take into account the increase in value of the coins due to increase desirability of the coins due to the increased perceived value of the network itself.

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It already is if you did not notice, all content is available elsewhere NOW. On P2P or NNTP

This I think is your real objection. SAFE will help the small guy over the super rich compared to the current internet. With PtP they have more of a chance. Without PtP the rich just set up their markets again and rake in the dough and the pirates will still rip every bit of content and make it available on SAFE or on clearnet. So in the end PtP gives the smaller guy/gal a much better chance. Like independent artists.

In the end - Lets test this out so we can know before going live a lot more about the good and bad of PtP

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