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

Features
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Here’s my baseline:

What contributes to the direct economic advancement of the Network?

In laymans terms: What isn’t just “paying the Network” but providing ways for the Network to be paid?

  • Farming - provides space and infrastructure for data to be PUT
  • Apps - provides users with the ability to PUT meaningful data
  • Content - PUTs data onto the Network

With farming, vaults are rewarded in proportion to how much data they store & successfully retrieve on demand. When done right, this enables the ability for the Network to generate revenue.

With the PUT Incentive Model apps are rewarded in proportion to how much revenue they generate for the network via PUTs. It’s “affiliate marketing done right”. (credit @DavidMtl)

PtP is the exact revenue that the Network is looking to generate. PtP coming from the Network is ludicrous. Why don’t we just reduce the price of PUTs while providing the same amount of service?!?!

FWIW walletmarking is an all-around solid idea and should be implemented in the core Network code as it is PtP done right simply because it is based on user (human) valuation

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227

See above post re: Put Incentive Model. And read the paper while you’re at it.

LMAO. Yeah…so was M-Pesa

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228

‘Dilution of value’ of something you hold is not the same thing as theft. That’s a ludicrous statement. Just because something you hold has less value does not mean you have been robbed.

Every dip of a stock/share is robbery?

229

Who is Amazon? That user doesn’t exist on the forum. Please provide a link to the post you are referring to.

What is “professional farming posts”?

Gaming is certainly bad when it jeopardizes the security of the system when hackers can render the system inoperable.

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He’s talking about using Amazon Cloud for farming. He’s saying that farming as an enterprise instead of just using “spare space” on your own computer is “gaming” the system.

If it’s economically justified, I just call it adventurous vault implementation. It’s nothing that would jeopardize the security of the system. In fact, I would not call it gaming, just using the system in one very possible way.

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Yes the computing servers, renting their services. I did not give a link because there has been so much discussions it seems silly to try when a simple search would give you plenty. But actually I thought it would jog your memory.

Getting economic advantage by amassing computing/storage is gaming. Some say botnets to game ptp (which is bad) and can apply to using masses of servers with their storage high bandwidth to gain advantage in farming rewards is also gaming, but more neutral, not bad, but really not good.

Some of the discussions discussed using the masses of storage to harm the network by cornering vaults/nodes to game that way.

So some of the cloud computing discussions were for maximising farming rewards and some was discussing the potential for harming the security.

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232

The arguments against PtP have now shifted to saying it would be gamed, and that wealthy entities would be able to exploit the system. That, is a massive assumption which you need to justify, and in any case would just leave us where we already are.

@TungSvard contradicted me by saying PtP isn’t about disintermediation or democratisation, when that is exactly why I support it. This relies on it not being gamed like the current system, I agree, but I maintain this position because I have not heard any convincing argument to suggest it can be gamed in that way. In the very way which is rampant today.

If you believe it can be gamed, you are making assumptions that the level of reward will be greater than the cost of gaming it. You need to think that through and present a case for how it can be gamed this way. Saying they can promote their content assumes the returns will be enough to cover the costs of uploads, promotion, developing centralised control and infrastructure etc. All costs that individuals watermarking their content can avoid or keep to a very low level if they are not attempting to game the system. This is the AFE of SAFE (Access For Everyone).

Current IP enforcement and distribution models allow gaming like this only because they allow the content and the creators to be captured and controlled. Those in control are able to create artificial scarcity, a very small number of highly promoted products controlled by an even smaller number of centralised entities (previously EMI-like and Hollywood-like, increasingly Spotify-like). These entities control and corner the market. This is the gaming you speak of in action, but they can only do this because they control both sides - production and consumption.

With PtP you cannot control things in the same way because network flattens the reward curve making it hard or impossible to game to this extreme degree. Gaming may exist, but as we know, some will always find a way - that’s evolution - but I see gaming of PtP as insignificant rather than defining the system. Because so far no-one has explained a scenario that shows that those with spending power will be able to spend their way to profit at scale.

People just say it will happen, and that isn’t adequate because IMO gaming of this kind on SAFE with PtP is not IMO scalable! For example:

  • spamming content (spamming GETs to gain PtP rewards for my content) is useless due to caching, so…
  • instead they pay to upload lots of copies to reduce caching and increase the hits per copy. Er, can you see why this doesn’t work! Because you are paying the network to PUT, and that is where the rewards come from. Also, the rewards are designed to be small (and shared - so gamers can only take more of a small pie). The PUT costs are kept small, but enough to pay for the network’s resources and for the cost of PtP (that’s in the proposals if you dig them out of the discussions), but given you would be chasing a bigger portion of a small pie, rather than getting others to put their money into making a bigger pie for you, gaming is a zero-sum game and you lose by trying it. Beautiful :slightly_smiling:

If you disagree, please attempt to demonstrate how this system is game-able. Don’t just say it is.

Caching, and keeping the rewards small (too small for those big inefficient wealthy parasitic organisms to sustain themselves) and spread widely among lots of indpendent creatives who are not necessarily able to live off them, but who are helped and empowered. Liberating creative people from highly controlled and centralised distribution routes will lead to new structures and models we haven’t imagined. This is what I mean by dis-intermediation and democratisation! :slightly_smiling:

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If the metric is to provide fast, cheap, storage then this is what will be rewarded. The only reason Amazon will have a hard time competing is because home users have spare capacity being wasted (making any return desirable, no matter how little).

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I did. Here it is again.

And here.

And here.

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And I think you will find that it has been repeated over and over that the gamer’s cost is not the same as for the dev and content producer, and the reasons for that. Even @happybeing 's post you quoted mentioned some reasons and I have too. Like having to upload so many times more content to prevent caching, etc, The fact that gamers have a limited number of nodes, compared to all users of the network. etc etc etc.

But you say just because the dev and artist can make money the gamer can. But you ignore the very reasons why that is not true. You take one fact and treat it as if that is all there is to consider, without providing considered reasoning behind the statement of superficial fact.

Yet you mention in the 2nd quote of yourself the reason that your reasoning is actually wrong but present it as support for your invalid reasoning in the first instance. Generating useless content reduces ROI, people have to then click it. People get very used to programmed useless content and spot it a mile off and not click it. It costs them coin to put all that useless content onto the network.

And break even, Seriously really. Spam etc at least looks for more return than potentially 1 in 100000 clicks for a return and when they succeed they could get 1000$, not 10 microcents. If you got 1 coin returned for every click then I’d agree with you, but PtP and PtD is nothing like that, if FR is good at 1 coin in 1000 gets then PtP & PtD is 1 in 10000 gets. Break even is unlikely with all the uploading you have to do and forever reducing click rate because people spot it easily. The gamer would make a 1000 fold increase to just have his expensive botnet farming. Yes botnets cost the gamer money, they are rented out. Costs a lot of time and effort to build those botnets up.

Malicious, use ptp & ptd for malicious attack. That is scraping the barrel, there is far better ways to attack. ptp & ptd will only give them a marginal amount of coin, and what do they do, sell it or use it. Either case the network gets it back. What attack was that? The network did not suffer.

236

This sounds similar to like Pay-per-Like except more complicated. Correct me if any of this is wrong.

Priocoin’s purpose is voting for priority?
Supporters spend Safecoin to buy Priocoin?

If that is the case, why not just donate safecoin directly to the project? People clearly see projects with more Safecoin get priority. See this hypothetical example below.

  • SAFE feature ZERO vault… raised 238,346 Safecoins
  • SAFE feature SAFE GB… raised 135,250 Safecoins

I know they are both my ideas, and I don’t want to upset anyone by adding a fictitious value to their ideas.

237

Why not use tipping and charity instead of PtP/PtD or your idea of pay per like? People like redistribution based on democractic prioritization. I have no problem with that so long as it’s voluntary. Hence the priocoin idea.

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On this we are in agreement. :wink:
Depending on what they find more useful (easier to use) will gain more popularity.

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The problem PtP/PtD is that content is valued subjectively. Priocoin allows people to turn a subjective value into an objective value measured via an altcoin, priocoin, which the network can then evaluate as a value for farming prioritization.

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People have presented far more carefully reasoned attacks on this forum, which has then enabled them to be discussed and evaluated. If you want “attacks” or “gaming” to be a convincing reason not to implement PtP or PtD etc, then I think you’ll need to present a solid reasoned case. If that’s the strength of your reasoning, again this is a pointless discussion.

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241

You’re view of attacks and gaming is not considering basic economic and an incentivized principles. Thus, you are in the opinion that the arguments are pointless. You yourself have not presented a “solid reasoned case” against them.

242

You misunderstand my view. I agree that these are vital components that have to be considered and evaluated.

However, what you have said doesn’t provide a basis for such discussion - your essentially say they will happen without explaining what the fundamental underlying economic and incentivising factors are, or why they will overcome the obvious disincentives and hurdles that have already been pointed out. Unless you can present a case for an attack that has these, there is nothing for me to refute because I can’t refute opinion.

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243

Did I ever argue against this statement? No. Because cost doesn’t matter to a hacker if he can break-even which is the worst case scenario. He’ll never lose money (on the network). The hacker’s reward is bringing down the system or making it inoperable.

You’re assuming costs of launching an attack is less than a producer launching content. Producing garbage will always be easier than producing quality content. Duping consumers to click garbage content will always be easier than convincing them to click on new content. How is anyone to know where certain content came from on the SAFE network in the world of cut-and-paste? Everyone is anonymous on the network as well. Build more safe-guards into the infrastructure?

Who doesn’t care about costs? The NSA, the record companies, the movie industry, the FBI, the Russian government, the Chinese government, etc.

And I love hearing this argument:

Of course the network suffers. It suffers in the price of safecoin when it gets dumped onto the exchanges. Who cares about the price? The farmers – the ones who support the network. If safecoin dies, the network dies. This is why it’s important to separate content incentivization from the network.

Separate infrastructure from use of the infrastructure. Separate SAFE infrastructure from the use of the SAFE infrastructure which are apps and content. Separate the roads from the cars. Separate the power lines from the dishwasher, the microwave, the light bulbs. Separate the internet from YouTube, Facebook. Separate Microsoft Windows from business software.

The roads don’t pay the cars. The power lines do not pay for the dishwasher. The internet does not pay for YouTube or Facebook. MS Windows does not pay for business software written on its operating system.

The roads can still be used without cars. Power lines can still function without the dishwasher. The internet still functions without YouTube. MS Windows is still useful without business software.

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Nope. If safecoin price is at zero, the network will still function. Safecoin is a complementary protocol on top of the network. Here is the thing, safecoin is a proof of resource. Since it is finite, the value of the coin will always be above 0. But… (I got this awesome/crazy idea last year) If the safecoin becomes worthless, it is still functional. It is basically a encrypted packet inside of encrypted network. SafePacket.

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Because as a content creator you stand to gain much more than the price of a PUT… (with popular content)

Because by giving out small rewards, it actually incentivizes PUTs. You’ll get more of them.

To me PtP comes down to this:

Given two forks of SAFE, one with PtP, one without, where would you upload your content?

Given two SAFE networks, one with a lot of PUTs, one without. To which would you sign up as a farmer trying to earn SAFEcoin?

I’ve read nothing on here that indicates PtP would in any way jeopardise the network. So given the above situation, all else on the networks is equal.

So given this ‘free market’ choice, which network would you invest in?

All of which is not considering the more amazing prospect of creating a new way of valuing content and rewarding its creation. An ad free internet is not something to be balked at.

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