Safe Chat — Friday 26th February, 9PM GMT

You can not. I’ve talked to thousands of people for 7 years. I went to exhibitions, handed out flyers on the street, pasted posters. People are ok with the current system. The only thing that makes their eyes light up is when you mention money. At least in the poorest country in Europe this is what happens…

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You can if you offer applications that are private by default, single sign on, integrated with other apps via linked data, allow very simple sharing etc - that’s the vision. Of course people’s eyes light up when you mention money cos they picture themselves in a Lambo (ain’t gonna happen by the way) but money is not the only motivating force.

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Perhaps in rich countries like the US, UK or Germany, people can afford to indulge in Privacy, Security and Freedom. But in most of the world, people are immersed in such a way of life, in such a struggle for survival, that they do not have time for it and use what is easiest for them (and “free”).

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I don’t think you can divide it that way at all. I know rich people who go on and on about money and are completely obsessed by it and poor people with no interest. And I mean really poor. There are rich people who don’t care what the world knows about them so long as their money’s safe, and poor people who really value privacy. And there are rich and poor in oppressive regimes who are definitely interested in keeping their associations and communications away from prying eyes.

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Everything you describe are the exceptions. There may be millions of such people. But the mass of people consider the crypto a pyramid and a scam. This directly removes 99% of those people. But in the crypto world are many who understand that the tokens with which the network will pay have value. Many of these people will be 3 in 1 - users, farmers and speculators.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Brazilian politics

Thank you for recording the session @JimCollinson, unfortunately I couldn’t make it myself but watching this back definitely got me excited for joining in on the next one.

@Sotros25 you did some amazing work putting this all together, can’t thank you enough!

When asked what inspires you most about the Safe Network I was looking for the button to raise my hand, which is quite stupid when you’re watching it all happen 12 hours after the actual event :stuck_out_tongue: but man, did I want to share!

When I first learned about the Safe Network I was quite worried. As a developer myself I’ve seen so many great products get thrown away because getting the community is actually the hardest part. Now looking at the Safe Network we got this amazing community already here before we even got the product out, that’s truly unique.

We got an amazing journey ahead of us, I’m sure with a few bumps in the road every now and then. But with this community, I don’t doubt for a second we’ll get through all that without a scratch on us. This is history in the making guys, and we’re all part of that. I love you all!

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Farming will be an exciting prospect for many, I’m sure, but you have to remember it’s not free money. It’s a trade. Trading bandwidth, electricity, storage space and investment in hardware, with people who want to store and use data on the network. They are the people on the other side of the equation: the customer if you will.

How you make sure that a commodity you have to trade is as valuable as possible in order to maximise profit? You make it useful, desirable and scarce. And by scarce I mean by having a healthy and expanding customer base.

So that is what we are talking about here. How do we make people aware of the farmer’s product, how do we make it useful for them, available to them, and how do we make it desirable over the alternatives —such as the clearnet?

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One quick question Jim, if you’ll allow me. Are you a farmer somewhere? Sia, Storj, Ethereum, any other token?

No, I’m not.

Thanks for the reply. I am a farmer in these projects and in many more over the years. I am a member of many groups of people who are farmers. As a farmer, I can say for myself that I accept all the tokens I have farmed as free. In this thread I have explained why:
https://forum.autonomi.community/t/do-you-see-the-blue-sky/33417?u=dimitar

I think many will think that and many others will think of it as earning something whereas others will possibly even do it because it’s right! That latter may be a small group, but I feel it will exist. I think though all are valid opinions on “why” folk will run nodes. Maybe there are others I am missing, but each of these groups will respond to different messages and none of these groups are invalid IMO.

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Of course. The question is which is the largest group? Ethereum is totally useless except for speculation. There is nothing valuable you can do with it, you can only speculate. But millions and millions of people are farmers. Those of them with whom I have contact do so only for the free money. There are probably other believers in decentralization who do it for the idea, but I don’t know any.

So I see two ways. One has proven to work. The other does not. The bad thing is that we have data even that the second way doesn’t work. Sia has over 180 decentralized applications, but only 1 million users and 300 farmers in one year.

I interpret this data as saying that there is no interest from end users at this stage, so I will focus my personal efforts on farmers and free money. Of course I will also participate in the promotion of all Safe apps, as I promised @Nigel, I will promote Jams with posters :dragon:

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I think people will rightly believe what they will and we will only know looking back, but as an anonymous network even then, we may never know :slight_smile:

Also largest when?

The question becomes who are the easiest to convince in early days? Crypto as we know is a tiny space, but active participants, particularly if it’s seen a money for nothing type scenario.

There may be a bigger group, I am not sure, SETI at home, folding, early skype (dramatic take off) and others. These depend a lot on the apps on offer. These are all because it’s right, skype perhaps because you get something from it (earning right to free phone calls). I think all of these were/are significantly bigger that crypto adopters.

Then we have hidden decentralisation, I mean here stuff like BBC Iplayer etc. where users provide resources to each other in a way that’s not noticed. Similar to bitorrent, but bittorrent is more obviously sharing for something (earning).

It’s a lot to think on. Folk may do it for free money, that may let the network take off, others will do it for other reasons.

I feel mainstream adoption will be app driven though.

Crypto community may be early adopters, but will they “sell” this to mainstream, because as you say they don’t so far, these folks are seen as weird and scammers by many. Is that a good way to “cross the chasm” ?

I have no idea BTW, just probing and asking questions.

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Freemium is enough. You give them free money and some of them will use the tokens as we design then to be used. Apps will appear from there and so on.

My only concern is that the network will not grow fast enough (because people will keep the tokens for speculation), this could give a vampire network a chance to gain momentum and attract our farmers and kill our network. That’s why I have proposed in the past a foundation to upload data to the network so that Safe can grow constantly.

Basically, what Storj does now with their network - they upload test data and have 11k nodes. But I think we can do better by uploading useful data. Of course, this is only for the initial stage of the network while it is a baby. Until it learns to walk alone (ie until people start using it - fake it till you make it)

If someone approached me and tried to sell me a product based on promises of getting rich, I’d suspect scamming, pyramid schemes, etc. I’d wonder what was in it for them, then expect to lose money by ‘investing’ in it. I really wouldn’t want to see the brand associated with any of that.

The network primarily needs users, not farmers. Many folks will farm for free to start with. If there was a desperate shortage of space, the reward rates would spike up and I suspect many here would spring into action to cash in on it. Coping with massive user demand would rarely be seen as a ‘problem’ in the business world - it is an usually a very fortuitous position to be in, especially if meeting that demand just means spinning up more nodes and generating more profit.

We need users to supply data to cause a demand for farming. Having an oversupply of farmers will not increase the supply of data - it works the other way around. It would be like pushing on a piece of string.

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Btw, if we really want to encourage uploads and don’t want cost to be a barrier to entry, giving users pre-purchased ‘locked’ tokens (non-transferable) would be much better. Just giving out transferable tokens would probably just see many sold on exchanges.

Given said tokens couldn’t be transferred, it would mean some folk would never use them. Other folks may just upload stuff that they wouldn’t have paid for too, but that may not be awful, as it may lead to them paying for stuff later (a loss leader). This would seed initial data supply and encourage more at a later date.

However, I don’t think we have a mechanism for non-transferable tokens at the moment (although it was discussed in a thread recently, IIRC). Also, I think this sort of strategy should only accompany a good marketing campaign.

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Who talks about getting rich quick? When Noia gave me free tokens for farming in 2019, their value was 2.5- 5$ per month throughout the year. Yes, a year later they cost $ 5,000, but that’s entirely speculative. No one can guarantee a fiat price …

The good thing about the crypto farmers / users is that everyone knows that what is $0.5 today may be $50 tomorrow :wink:

My thesis is that going to someone and starting to tell him how the Safe Network is secure and anonymous will be less effective than explaining to him that apart from all these nice things, unlike bitcoin, you can farm with a simple computer. I have never said that I will lie to people that they will become rich. Nobody knows that. As no one knows if the network will store data forever. Yes, this is the design, but it cannot be guaranteed and it is correct to emphasize this so that there are no deceived people.

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I suspect saying Safe network is … anything may throw folk to sleep these days. IMO we need to help folk where they are hurting right now.

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In my experience and opinion this is where the others have failed to get good traction. As @Traktion says it is no good to have all the storage but nothing to store and it is like trying to push string.

Promise of farming giving good returns would help get nodes online and they expect to be farming a plenty. But without that need for storage happening prior to that means having a heap of water tanks in the world without any water to fill them or people to use the water that does get there.

The best solution in my opinion. (read the lot before criticising)

  • do not push the farming aspect too much in the beginning but market the hell out of APPs etc that are available on the Safe Network to create some demand for farmers to be there.
  • Push the APPs and data storage. (EG bittorrent replacement natively with public files).
    • this means we need to encourage applications to be written prior and that the public files are permanent.
  • Now before anyone goes and sees this as black and white and I am saying no push for farmers, I said not push too much, meaning not concentrating on farming as being the Safe Network’s best feature or money making machine. Not yet anyhow.
  • So we balance it something like 80%-90% push for usability (Apps and storage w/- security etc) and 10% farming earning
  • Because earning tokens will speak so loud to those who like getting those things and those who suffer the love of wealth will hear that 10% push louder than any push for users.

In the end we will have as @Traktion says the demand for the storage and people initially who are happy to make the network work providing early storage then others wanting to earn tokens will join.

If you go 50/50 pushing farming and users then you will get that glut of storage then a lot of disappointed farmers who will not return unless we fluke getting big in spite of that mistake.

My opinion obviously

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