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

This doesn’t matter. PUT and GET prices are only loosely coupled and controlled directly by Safe based on network conditions. The asymmetry will be balanced in SC.

Ptp is not inflationary. In general the discussion about PtF, PtD,and PtP is a discussion about how Safe should allocate it’s own money, not yours or mine. Safe is an autonomous agent, we are discussing how it needs to operate in the world in order to maximize growth and thrive.

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No, that is called growth. Inflation happens when there is increased money supply but no increase in the supply of real goods. A 10x increase in network size for a 2x increase in coin supply leads to reduced prices (in SC). This says nothing about the fiat markets that are external to the network, which may see costs per PUT decrease by many orders of magnitude due to this network growth.

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I haven’t opined here yet so…

I feel like the way this entire thread has gone shows that pay-the-producer and pay-the-developer should NOT be network level algorithms, because (as im sure has been stated 100 times by other people) these algorithms UNLIKE the farming algorithm have the fatal weakness in their flowchart that is human input. PtP is based almost entirely on human input, whereas the storage distribution and payment for farming is not. PtP is a popularity contest, and yes we can talk about 100,000 ways for the rest of the year how to try and hold off the people who want to game the system, but in the end this algorithm is in fact DESIGNED to be gamed because the human element is built in and critical at its base level.

PtP should be an App level thing that people decide to join into, or maybe a check box when you run your vault that you want to contribute to producers or something else that is not built into the base functionality of the Safe Network and is not turned on for everyone by default.

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So the autonomous network can get what it needs from us for its survival? :thinking: We humans are pretty simple. We might try to game the system but only later realize the system we were “gaming” was still just gaming us :exploding_head:

We need the trifecta to please our autonomous god, man.

+1 for PtP
Viva La Resistance!

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Sorry for the long winded post.

I personally believe we should implement PtP. I have no doubt some people will find ways to game the system, that’s just life. People find ways to game every system. The fact is, most people follow relatively good ethics in their personal behavior, particularly when it comes to something like stealing money.

Even digital pirates don’t really steal money, they steal goods, and not even “real” goods, but more an ethereal good, as there are infinite copies of said goods. I think most pirates would be adverse to actually stealing money from a system. Most are just young people that simply can’t afford things so they resort to piracy because it is either experience it that way, or not at all. PtP would give an opportunity to make money off those people. Not to mention, gaming a system like this would be a lot more technical than simple pirating. Not many people would even have the ability to pull of something like this.

I completely agree with the people siding with PtP that the enticement for content creators is worth the potential downside of “inflation” of coin supply, as content will drive the network, not farmers. I would be interested to see what the real world value PtP provides in SafeCoin based on the 10% reward structure. It clearly can’t be close to what YouTube offers (somewhere in the neighborhood of $3K USD per 1M views), but an app with a clear donation system could ultimately garner them more money, anyway. Take Twitch as an example. Despite many streamers having substantial subscriber bases, and some even have outside sponsors, people still donate large sums of money to them. Perhaps the gaming community is unique in that, but I doubt it.

Again, enticing content creators should be the number one focus at the beginning of the network. I think with the user base that is aware of the network, combined with what I assume MaidSafe themselves will supply, I think there will be substantial free data storage space.

I’m not going to engage in a political debate here, and I am not saying I endorse his views, but someone like Alex Jones could bring a huge user base to the SafeNetwork, and he currently has nowhere else to go. In fact, the entirety of the conservative minded content creators would probably jump at the chance to abandon places like YouTube, as many of them just got demonetized for no reason (see Steven Crowder), and this will likely continue as mob mentality pressure has caused large companies to capitulate to them. They should be the first people to reach out to when the network goes live, as it could draw millions of people to the network overnight.

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On the subject of incentives / fairness / manual control I just posted this simple crowdfunding idea here: https://forum.autonomi.community/t/crowdfunding-with-dynamic-donations/28874
Doesn’t have anything to do with GET request rewards directly, but IMO it would be quite a good feature / app for incentivizing content production, especially if this kind of crowdfunding could be facilitated in a cheap decentralized fashion on the SAFE Network (instead of requiring a company that would take their cut of the donations).

I was thinking of throwing the idea of PtP being a separate coin out there, but when you mentioned app level, it occurred to me that this is basically what Brave is doing. It is sort of an automated tipping system, where it tracks how much time you’ve spent on each site and suggests allocating your tip allocation accordingly. They even did coin giveaways, at least at first, so it is fairly similar to an app level PtP.

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Great point and love the way you put it.

Yep every reward will be gamed, even the fiat is gamed. Should we not try it? No lets test it all out and bring in a revolution in the economics of the internet.

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All the reward algorithms are based on, and in reaction to, human input.

For example, If there are not enough gets (human input), the network will need to increase the farming reward rate to keep farmers happy so they stay online (human input).

The other thing is it could do is raise PtP and PtD to entice more content creation. The results in more PUTs (human input) that will balance the increase in farmers reward outflow.

Now the network starts to see more GETS due to greater interest in popular content (human input). Without continous PuT income from content creators, GET rewards will need to decrease.

There will likely be a net benefit to farmers by having an optimum ratio of PtP to PtF rates due to the increased put and get volume/growth. Yes, plenty of speculation here but it is a nonlinear controls optimization exercise to find the answer and the only way to do that is test test test. If setup correctly the network could optimize the ratios within the farming rate algo itself based on real-time conditions. At times maybe it’s 25% PtP other times the optimum shifts to only 2% etc. All the different reward rates (PtF,PtD,PtP) could potentially fluctuate base on current network conditions to maximize network stability and achieve optimal growth.

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Incidental VS Intentional…

the farming algorithm incidentally involves human input, and nearly all effort is put into it not being gameable. You can not choose which vault you store chunks to and which vaults you retrieve chunks from, so gaming the farming reward by constantly paying yourself to store in your vaults and then constantly retrieving from your vaults to get new money from the network ideally should never work…

On the other hand with PtP at the very base of it intentionally requiring human input (as a popularity contest) bad actor can create his click bait or whatever you like, and then have a few hundred thousand accounts use and like his content and the network can’t distinguish this bad behavior (or at least I can’t see this kind of inately human problem being solved until long after the network should’ve been live…

The base Safe network should be at it’s heart a very simple truely p2p and e2ee storage network, able to be expanded with anything via apps or layers on top of that, so I absolutely don’t want to see the network delayed an exta year and made psychotically more complex just for this purpose.

I also think people are reading my original comment wrong, I never said I was against PtP, I like it and am for it… just NOT in the base network. 2nd layer, yes. App, yes. Seperate coin, yes.

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But you can determine the address of the chunk in your vault by a couple of methods. Once found “You can not choose which vault you store chunks to and which vaults you retrieve chunks from,”

Thus it is possible, maybe a little harder but 10 times more profitable once done.

As I said before it is possible to game each reward and farming is the best to go for. So we need to either remove all rewards or Test them

I’m interested to see the team’s response to that. I would think you don’t know what that data is, so how do you go on the network and use whatever app or site it is that needs that chunk and then request it such that it absolutely comes from your vault everytime… I dunno, doesn’t sound as easy as you make it sound, on top of that the rediculously sibil nature of PtP still stands, along with not being an essential piece of the network function.

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Your node can watch the chunks as they are stored and watch the requests to the section your node is in and see which come from your vault. That would be one way. Easier if you get to be an elder

But its considered a very low sum game because of caching and all the resources/time/costs to attempt to break even. This has been discussed in a few topics. And very much accepted that attempts will be made and rather like DDNS people get bored of it and due to low if any returns not worth the time and effort since there are better ways to make a buck.

And in that its still more profitable to game farming than PtD ot PtP

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Just logistically I can’t see how that would possibly be true. Not that it even matters since without testing it with test safecoin and whatever distribution scales are chosen, we can’t possibly say one way or the other.

Besides that you didn’t answer the fact that, sure you know there is a certain chunk in your vault, great you can see it be stored in your vault, and you can see your section requesting it but… you still don’t know what that data is and which app or site to use to request it…

Whereas again, with popularity contest you know you have your click bait and you know where to point your bots to continually 24-7 use and like your content to continually get paid out.

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Who cares about that info. Only need to write a script that requests that particular chunk.

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Seems like such a major and obvious breach in protocol, that I wouldn’t have even thought this was possible to do and have the network pay for it. Would love to hear from the team if this is indeed possible, and not being worked on to be fixed before testcoins come around.

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It is how all chunks are retrieved - by address. The datamap is a list of chunk addresses that are retrieved from the network to read a file. Its just how the network works. Even have a URL format to access by chunk address. Its a core aspect of the network.

It is the client code running on your computer that does all the assembly and decryption of files.

Now in the gaming of farming there is no need to decrypt the chunk, just request it.

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I just meant that I didn’t think a specifc vault could request a chunk from a specified vault… and especially constantly…

Yes correct there are eight chunks but you could modify your node’s code too.

Now since you are closest to your node then yours to be the preferred vault has a head start over the others. And if you request 100 times there is a good chance your vault will be the one rewarded in a good percentage

You make it sound a bit too easily gameable, and I don’t know all the technicalities, so I would like to see someone like @dirvine 's opinion on gaming the farming to that degree…

But at any rate we are off topic in this thread, the question being should PtP be implemented?
I say Yes.
Should it be implemented in the core of the network?
I say definitely not, because it is far more easily gameable than farming seems to be.

And really I’d like to see some good in depth explaination as to why it NEEDS to be in the core of the network as opposed to a seperated second layer type thing, or an app (possibly installed and enabled by default that people can turn off), or preferably even a seperate/secondary coin.

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