I spent the past hour+ on trying to catch up with the PtP threads to see if anybody came up with this before; sorry if they did and I missed it.
The basic idea
There’s a mandatory flat fee for PUTs. It depends on the current network status yada yada.
If somebody wants to make money with their content, they can pay a premium.
The more they pay, the more of the farming reward they get.
Basically, farmers would get more initially if they had to give up some of it later.
I’ll use this formula:
A-P
R = ---------
A-P + M
Where:
R is the ratio of the reward that goes to the owner instead of the farmer
A is the amount the owner paid for the PUT (or added later, because we could)
P is our “flat fee”: the current minimal cost of a PUT
M is a hard-coded constant to set the diminishing returns and keep R under 100%
Example
Let’s say 1GB is P=1 coin, and M=19 to get 5% for double price (just an example!)
If I paid the minimum A=1 coin, I wouldn’t get anything: R = (A-P)/(A-P+M) = (1-1)/(1-1+19) = 0, which is 0% as expected.
But I want to get paid, so I pay A=2 coins instead. This way I get: R = (A-P)/(A-P+M) = (2-1)/(2-1+19) = 1/20, which is 5%
I pay 2 more coins, so now I have A=4 total: R = (A-P)/(A-P+M) = (3-1)/(4-1+19) = 2/22, which is about 9.1%
The price goes up, and now 1GB is P=2 coins. With my A=4 coins, now I get: R = (A-P)/(A-P+M) = (3-2)/(4-2+19) = 1/23, which is only about 4.3%
I pay 20 more coins because I want to get rich; A=24, so: R = (A-P)/(A-P+M) = (24-2)/(24-2+19) = 22/41, which is abou 53.7%
Not enough! 20 more! A=44, so: R = (A-P)/(A-P+M) = (44-2)/(44-2+19) = 42/61, WHAAAT? ONLY 68.9%???
Oh well, those diminishing returns
Random Extensions to the Idea
The extra coins could decay exponentially with time, and then discarded when a limit is reached. If you want to keep getting paid, then keep paying for it, basically. In effect, content left alone would revert to “free” (100% to the farmer) after some time.
It would be super lovely if GETs could cover for the premium. Free content (paid only the flat fee) would be free to get, others would cost the same the owner would receive. This would of course change the equation because no longer would it be necessary to keep the ratio under 100%
It’s likely this would reduce the mandatory fee if the farmers got extra profit from the premium that’s paid
The curve starts steep (and it could start steeper): with a little investment you get much of the benefits
If somebody thinks their content is so good that it’s worth paying more and more to get just a few extra percents, that’s fine. But you wouldn’t need to give up your dinner just so you don’t lose out completely.
Haven’t analysed this so my comments are probably half baked but doesn’t this just make it easier for those with more, to edge ahead of those with less, regardless of the actual merit of their content?
What problem are you trying to solve here - apologies if I missed it?
One can upload stuff for a minimum (smaller) price:
If they don’t care about payment.
If it’s not their content so they don’t want to leech off of it.
If they don’t expect enough traffic to get anything out of it to start with.
If somebody wants to monetize their content, they can pay a little more to get some. Or, they can pay more and more to get more (but less and less more, because the curve flattens); it’s their choice, is the point.
Farmers get extra at start if they have to give up on a few percents later. Or something like this; I’m not absolutely sure how the rewards are distributed, and if this is even possible
I don’t look at it as if it was a competition; do I miss something? To me it’s like, if somebody makes some, that’s more than if they didn’t.
With my setup, those who pay a little extra get a much better deal for their money (though a lower absolute amount) than those who pay more, so it works in favor of them and not the wealthy.
As for what deserves more merit, a content agnostic system can’t take such things into account; if we want to differentiate between one piece and another, that information needs to be put into the system some way, and paying for it sounds like something harder to game than solutions that don’t cost anybody anything.
Related, but different: I would love to see GETs cost for stuff that was PUT as premium content, and have that payment go to the producers. We would have an actual economy going that way, where people would pay for what the get, and decide if they want it based on what the producer decided the price is. This would come with downsides, I’m sure of it, but it would be by far the cleanest solution.)
I’m sorry, I still don’t understand that you are trying to achieve here, and I’m not saying the system can decide value. It can though measure and use factors such as popularity to determine rewards - merit is not the same as value. All the references to the system not being able to value content are a red herring, a straw man IMO.
Maybe my English is not that good Merit or value… Anw.
The idea is about choice. I may want to pay the minimum and not get anything, or pay some extra to get some. Maybe I want to pay a lot more to get a little more. It’s like a contract where I give up some money now in exchange for future revenue.
But the point is: it’s not a centrally decided “you’ll get 10% even if you don’t want it, and you can’t get more even if you wanted to pay” thing, but something I the content owner / producer have a say in.
Besides, the majority of the people, with our embarrassingly unpopular youtube home videos and whatnot, would be better off, because those willing to pay the extra would make the thing cheaper for us.
The idea is about choice. I may want to pay the minimum and not get anything, or pay some extra to get some. Maybe I want to pay a lot more to get a little more. It’s like a contract where I give up some money now in exchange for future revenue.
…because again I don’t understand what you are trying to achieve. The above is what you propose, what the system will do, but I’m not understanding why you think it is a good idea compared to not having to pay an extra fee.
BTW rewards are not automatic at the moment - you do have to “watermark” what you upload with a wallet address. So people who don’t do that will not receive PtP rewards, which I think addresses your objection below…
But the point is: it’s not a centrally decided “you’ll get 10% even if you don’t want it, and you can’t get more even if you wanted to pay” thing, but something I the content owner / producer have a say in.
How can anything prevent that? How can a one-fits-all fixed rate prevent that, or even make it harder? Our friendly priate adds a nonce to the thing, uploads it again, and now he has two revenue streams. Copyright can’t be enforced, or even taken into account, on a network where everything is untraceable; it is by design.
I have to admit I’m at a loss, because I can’t understand what it is that you don’t understand Maybe our thought patterns are so different, or maybe we both think we understand what the other one is saying, but in fact we don’t.
For one, this is not an extra fee, but a discount:
A) 128 uploads, everybody pays 2 coins => 256 coins
B) 128 uploads, half pays 1 coin, 1/4 pays 2 coins, 1/8 pays 3 coins, etc => 247 coins
The totals are about the same for both, yet with the flexible system half the people got a 50% discount compared to the flat fee.
In real life, the numbers would come from a power law distribution (or something similar), which could give us a higher or lower number than the “247 coins”, depending on the exponent. Sadly, I couldn’t find an estimate for that
Anyway, it is quite possible that with the higher paying “premium” PUTs much of the users could pay a lot less and the sum would still be higher.
PtP is a scam from the git-go … for those that have the money to pay for more advertising - ‘the haves’, they’ll earn more as they’ll be able to drive more traffic to download their content.
This community subsidy to elite content producers can then be put back into ads for their new content - hence holding new competitors down under a glass ceiling.
If PTP is a good idea, then so is money printing, so are regulations, so is taxation … they all serve to keep the little guy down and IN HIS PLACE.
This mod to PtP, while good in that it allows for those who don’t want to earn to lower their put price, just makes the whole of the problem worse.
If you want an EVEN playing field, then just get rid of PtP all together. The community should not have to pay for the content of elitists. … or else have to leave and fork the whole damn network to have use of it without bearing the cost of PtP.
Quite right, Tyler. People will pay for storage or some other tangible, or for a service, or because they have a gun pointed at them. They won’t pay for PtP, which is just a fantasy.
PtP is a scam from the git-go … for those that have the money to pay for more advertising - ‘the haves’, they’ll earn more as they’ll be able to drive more traffic to download their content.
This is just opinion, or would you like to produce some numbers that show that it will be profitable?
Your statement is self-detonating. If it weren’t believed to be profitable … then why do people want it in the first place? If it’s not profitable to anyone, then let’s forget about it and move on. If it is profitable, then it is right to ask the question who will benefit.
If you can drive a million downloads through advertising, then you are getting a nice advertising subsidy AS COMPARED TO THOSE WHO CAN’T AFFORD TO ADVERTISE.
So If the network pays the producer for their content … and the only way to do that realistically is to pay by popular content (otherwise you introduce other problems) … then you have a system that subsidizes elite producers more than poor producers.
You can deny it all you like, but you can’t alter the logic.
PtP can be the driver behind a lot of technologies that would cost too much for the provider without it.
Let’s say you want to provide an indexing feature for the community. You will need to create countless SD blocks for it to be useful for anyone. Without PtP, it’s simply not feasible. With PtP, however, you can monetize your service. You may become rich, or you may get just about even, as long as it’s valued by the community. If not, you’ll just stop – but you had a chance. Not without PtP.
There are many traditional ways to go about raising funds to start a business. So I have to ask … why are we fixated on PtP when it has a clear fundamental flaw that will assist the big fish to control the pool? – by keeping the little fish out of the pool.
You must be kidding. Raising funds for a search service (as in my example) seems like the tragedy of the commons: everybody wants to have it, nobody wants to pay for it. Honestly, I have no idea how Wikipedia is doing it (if they are) but Google sure never tried going that way.
EDIT: Starting a business is one thing, but a search service would have running costs, too.
What’s so wrong about making money by providing stuff that others are happy to use, by the way? It sounds to me like the sour grape problem, where you decide something is bad just because you can’t have it…
Anyway, let’s face it: there will always be inequality, and not having PtP is not the thing that will solve that
Ummm, except that we do have a good decentralized (as in everyone who uses it pays for it) search service - even with the regular internet – look up YACY - it’s real and it works.
Straw man attack - that is not my argument against it and you know it. You are being evasive.
Another logical fallacy. Of course their will always be inequality. The question is do we create a system that promotes and supports inequality or do we create a system that is neutral.
but doesn’t this just make it easier for those with more, to edge ahead of those with less, regardless of the actual merit of their content?
Here they come:
Maybe our thought patterns are so different, or maybe we both think we understand what the other one is saying, but in fact we don’t.