Questions about Farming and Safecoin

I was talking with @Melvin about some questions that came up over the last few days. We looked for some answers but so much has changed over the last couple of months that we got a bit lost :stuck_out_tongue: We decided to make a list of questions which we can probably use for the FAQ as well. Feel free to add more questions about Safecoin and Farming as a reply, but please let the answers come from the Dev-team ( @dirvine @BenMS @Viv @nicklambert @Ross @anon86652309 etc.) This will give us some clarity before Testnet3/BETA goes live.

  1. When I upload (PUT) a private file to SAFEnet I need to pay some Safecoin, who decides how many SAFEcoin I have to pay? Is that hard coded?

  2. When I upload (PUT) a public file to SAFEnet, do I have to pay Safecoins?

  3. When I share a private file with 200 friends, and they all open it. Can I make some Safecoin on that as a builder? Can I attach my wallet-address to earn 10% of the Farming?

  4. When I create my own videoclip (Letā€™s say Iā€™m U2) and I share it on SAFEnet, can I attach my own address and make 10% of the Farmed-coins as a builder?

  5. Does my videoclip has to be ā€œprivateā€ to make any Safecoin? Or can it make Safecoin when itā€™s public as well?

  6. When a youtube-like App uses my videoclip (again, Iā€™m U2) do they make any Safecoin on it? Or is it my file and do only I and the Farmer make Safecoin on it?

  7. When I create a website on SAFEnet with 2000 pictures of my cat. Can I attach my address to each of these pictures and earn Safecoin?

  8. When 25 other websites use my pictures on their websites, do they earn any Safecoin on it? Or are these files attached to my wallet (assume they donā€™t change the files) and do I still earn Safecoin while others use it?

  9. When I create an App as an App-builder (letā€™s say my program is 2,3mb. in size). Do I make 10% of the farming for all these 2,3mb when itā€™s requested by people (ignore cache for now).

  10. Letā€™s say my App allows people to share their video with others. Do I earn anything from these videos? Or only from the 2,3mb. of my App?

  11. When I have stored 300 Gig. And I payed to PUT it to the network, do I get anything back when I delete 100 Gig. (assume the files are not shared by others)?

  12. Letā€™s say that I create my own private App with 200 private videos on it. And I attach my wallet-address as a builder. Now I share it with 100 of my friends, and we all open these different videos files every couple of days. Can I earn Safecoin with my friends? Have we ā€œhackedā€™ the system in a way that we payed once to PUT a file but made more on opening it using the 10% of Farming?

  13. When I upload the same file as a builder, and someone else was 5 mins. in front of me doing the same thing, is he the only one who can make money on it?

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OMGā€¦fantastic list of questions @polpolrene and @Melvin ā€¦I will be watching the responses on this thread like a hawk!!! I have been referring to the paper on Safecoin for a lot of this info but I do believe some of the features may have been updated or not specifically addressed. Nicely done!

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Hope this helps safecoin will be large part of next sprint, right now we are building storage messaging and safecoin farming so different mindset at this mental pace. forgive any errors and grammar. I am 100% sure the network will launch before watermarking so we do not need to rush those issues (I fear an error if we did). Watermarking is very interesting and could revolutionise media industry. Lets fix data first though :wink:

Initially 1 safecoin, the network will reduce this over time and let you know when your account is low. You will lose this safecoin immediately to the recycle area and the account managers keep a note of the balance (micro transactions).

Yes at a rate of 25% of private data.

Private shares are not on current roadmap. So will be a few weeks out for sure. The network can handle branching and forking of data writes, itā€™s an area we are hoping to measure more when the net is live. The main issue is we can do this but apps cannot handle conflicts. Easy way is dropbox style, but itā€™s messy, we can do better.

Not yet, this is part of the artist rewards we have discussed. Watermarking is the key here.

n/a (At the moment)

App will make 10% of any successful farming attempt.

You will be able to but again itā€™s reward the artists and we have not got a final mechanism yet.

They would be watermarked to you, we have not implemented watermarking yet though.

No, only when they use your app. (neat idea though also watermark the binaries, do not see why not)

The data would be watermarked not your app. If other apps access the data they get dev reward.

No these files are there forever. We do not delete at the moment. The network does not count who is using data or what data, so cannot tell itā€™s unique. Watermarked private data may be different and certainly an option.

If the videos are popular enough the cache, if not you may stand a chance, but I doubt it. We need a view of an xor network to explain the distance between these chunks and farming rewards. So maybe if you put up millions and millions of copies and cycle slowly downloading them all continually you would get some safecoin from a dev perspective (for the app), but you probably clock your node from farming which would have earned 90% more.

As a builder you should really only be concerned about your app.

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Thanx! This is very helpful.

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Your welcome. Here for example is a watermarking idea I Can find no fault with (but have not thought about long enough for my liking).

We create a watermark type ā†’ immutable data + owner field
On store we select watermark type so send to data managers (via clientManagers)
DataManager strip owner off the watermark type and store with chunk name
On Farming request PmidManagers ask DataMaangers if there is an owner of the data

  • If true ā†’ allocate 10% of reward
    ā†’ if false ā†’ continue

It works and means extra rewards paid out, but perfectly OK as farming reward is already fixed in a supply/demand curve, so this is OK. It is not stealing from farmers as they will demand increased rate, so balance achieved OK!

This is a very quick example of a simple system that may work for rewarding content providers (artists etc.). I mention it as an example, it si incomplete but not obviously broken. I feel the answer is close to this model, but we need to hash it out fully after launch. Not a big concern, but a huge reward.

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Sounds good to me so far!

Getting this right would immediately revolutionize and drastically improve the music, film, book, etc etc industries all at once.

Wish I had a good idea to contribute!

In this way the data itself is not changed isnā€™t it? There is an owner marked who owns the data but not in the file itself. That looks to me like a very good option. Although people might ā€œfightā€ who is the first one to put that new leaked blockbuster from Hollywood online in the hope to make money. And at the same time, some might change 1 bit in a file and upload it themselves with their own watermark. But this will always be an issue on the internet.

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This is one of the problems of any rewards scheme, for Apps too. Slight changes, then upload, causing duplication of content that is not able to be de-duplicated, with no value. Yes, public data has a small charge, but much smaller than private data, so private data will subsidise this kind of parasitism, and the amount of it will depend on the level of rewards available.

This could be the worst kind of ā€œspamā€ on the SAFE network.

The best answer is probably for creators to embrace SAFE and develop their own trusted identities on SAFE. Generally people would rather use the original and reward the actual creators, especially when there is no cost incentive to use pirated sources. This can be made easier for creators and users by delivering Apps that facilitate content access with appraisal and reputation built into the app (for Apps & media). Like curated websites, I imagine there will be a number of competing Apps for each kind of content.

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This is brilliant, i was worried too about this potential problem.

But your solution makes perfect sense and Iā€™m sure will be what happens.

Iā€™d much rather make sure the person who made the content gets paid off of my consumption, any day

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@polporene:

Letā€™s say that I create my own private App with 200 private videos on it. And I attach my wallet-address as a builder. Now I share it with 100 of my friends, and we all open these different videos files every couple of days. Can I earn Safecoin with my friends?

I thought that public data, opened to all, wouldnā€™t bring the poster any SAFE, and that access to private data would have to be paid (for GETs). In such case you could access your own data and pay for it, but youā€™d earn only 10% of what you paid.

If app revenue is generated from public data too, then all hell will break lose.

You wouldnā€™t need to download your vids as you. Youā€™d just need to give people a percentage of their clicks and theyā€™d do the job for you.

Not viable if the bandwidth cost is higher than the data-popularity reward. Which it should be or, indeed, people will group up to exploit this.

Sophisticated manipulators are certainly going to use botnets and ā€œMechanical Turkā€ type of ā€œemployeesā€.

The bot net issue was discussed recently:

That being said, Iā€™m not 100% convinced that this concept of popularity rewards will work exactly like we want to. Iā€™m inclined to believe that due to the integrated nature of SafeCoin a tipping culture will emerge. Most people that have a reasonable income are willing to pay for things they enjoy.

Take for example recent game ā€˜The Witcher 3ā€™. The game company explicitly chose not to put DRM on it, because it is annoying for their legitimate customers. So everyone could download it for free using torrents or whatever. Yet they sold 6 million copies of the game in the first 6 days. I donā€™t know what the price was at release, but right now itā€™s about 60 Euros, so itā€™s not like itā€™s a cheap product.

The solution for piracy isnā€™t DRM or subsidies, itā€™s having a population with disposable income, combined with a culture where people appreciate each otherā€™s labor, and having legal distribution platforms with better services than the illegal ones.

Especially culture is often overlooked or dismissed. Probably because of post-modernist culture relativism, and/or a lack of faith in humanity. But culture is everything.

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Iā€™m not really sure about this. Yes, public data is free and open for everyone, but probably when the artist rewards are build in maybe someone could PUT public data that also gives a reward. There is money made on the Farmers-side, so why not? Record labels could upload all their videoclips (publicly) to the network for everyone to view and make some money on it. They can also add a button for tipping as well.

I donā€™t think thereā€™s a GET to be payed ever, so when you upload private data you pay 4 times as much as when you PUT public data. For structured data youā€™ll even pay more because youā€™ll able to change that data over and over again. The trick with with friends could be to create a movie thatā€™s 10 hours long and all play that file (starting at different times, say an hour apart) to avoid caching on the network kicking in. And than to Farm 10% on your own file with friends by just playing a video in a loop. But youā€™ll probably be better of when you just Farm and get 100% Farming when you provide Chunks.

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But I donā€™t have enough space or I do not want to upgrade my storage every now and then to keep up with networkā€™s averageā€¦ I this trick works one could do that on barebone PI2 or the likes of itā€¦

You can just buy some Safecoin and use it, no need to run a Vault if you donā€™t want to I think. Surfing Safenet will be free, so only to PUT data you need some coins. The rest is free.

That was hypothetical scenario. Anyways, I am against that 10% cut for producerā€¦ if that matters :smiley: thereā€™s other ways to get paid on the network if you value your work (publishing dapps, book stores etcā€¦) If thereā€™s a need there will be means to satisfy it imo

Yes, but nowadays youā€™ll watch youtube or some website and get bombed with ads. Would be way more easy for the Wallstreet Journal to post on SAFE and automatically get rewarded. That way no need to put up ads anymore.

Well thereā€™s only one WSJ and thereā€™s god knows how many ā€œme and my friendsā€ gaming this system by the method you yourself outlinedā€¦
I say theres SAFEtube or better yet WSJtube a simple streaming dapp where WSJ charges pay-per-view or monthly or any other way it finds appropriateā€¦

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Iā€™ll think a combination of different ways. People create a nice website, do some daily updates, moderate replies etc. Theyā€™ll make money of the 10%, theyā€™ll provide you a button to donate, etc. I also wouldnā€™t be surprised if a company like Netflix would provide you a discount when you use their service from Safenet. Would save them a lot of money on data.