SAFE Network Dev Update - October 17, 2019

Super update, loved Jim’s video - very clear and well done.

So roadmap looks like we have three-ish things to go once node aging is complete - real BLS (part of secure message delivery I think); farming; and vaults from home !!??

At that point it’s a real solid prototype! At this pace Maxwell will also be done fairly quickly … and after Maxwell … we get full network WITH real safecoin!!

WOOOO HOOOO!!!

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Great video!

This is the second video I’ve noticed that’s unlisted and last week’s was the other one. Is there a reason this is being done?

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Great update again and I do like the videos by @JimCollinson Any chance of improving the lighting? A soft light box perhaps?

Sounds good, and I assume its encrypted at that stage.

So how would this work? You cannot send coin to a coinBalance that does not exist.
It seems that the friend is creating the coinBalance and then sending coin to it, how is it secured.

Sounds like the coinBalance address is generated offline and so the new person has to do that so might just be better to upload the account packet as in #3

Again the issue in #4 springs to mind. How do you get coin to an offline data object.

This is one I’ve suggested since it can be sold at supermarkets, newsagents, etc and part of the whole range of things like phone recharges, paysafecard, etc.

Basically a coinBalance that the user never adds coin to and throws it away once all used up.

Ya for the smart ones :wink:


No I have not watched the video yet so my above comments may have been addressed


This is the factory work end on the engineering cycle :grin: where you have the components at the ready and doing the fit outs fixing/building anything missing. Darn I make it sound like a IKEA product.

Forth by the looks :dizzy_face:

Hey good to see you around
Hope all is going well for you.

Thats what everyone says. Ducks for cover :crazy_face:

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Theres actually a massive soft box about 10cm from my face throughout… looks like I need to improve me exposure :joy:. I’ll get there eventually.

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Its more the one side of the face in dark shadow compared to the other. A soft box might be better in front further away, still only very slightly to one side (So glasses don’t reflect it back) and let the light balance (exposure) do the rest. Having it so close causes one side of your face to be in shadow.

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I’ve heard 3-point lighting has the best results.

Another great update Team MaidSafe—thanks as always!

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:partying_face::love_you_gesture: @maidsafe is full force! I’m loving the onboarding invitation scheme, thorough considerations and attention to detail. Very promising, and inspirational honestly.

Love these videos @JimCollinson thanks for making them. :pray:

Glad to hear the API is having progress because I know there are a lot of us itching for them.
How exciting is it that node aging and vaults (and it’s UX) are so close!!!? This is such amazing work. My hat is off to you @maidsafe

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Requiring a pre-existing balance to create an account sounds too unfriendly and a hindrance for adoption.

What about offering a credit just enough to get them a taste of the network, allow them to open an account, their balance becomes for example -0.12 safe and the first upload -0.20 for instance.
After that first taste, it could ask to enable the vault or enter an invitation code to top up the account to be fully activated with full privileges.

I think this would flow better for those curious who download the apps and to lure them in, instead of scaring them away.

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Account spamming. The network would be spammed by people getting a taste over and over again. One of the testnets was brought down by the same thing.

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Maybe try to hire a “media specialist” someone who could spruce up the video presentation just a little bit. I think this would pay for itself down the road. Or have an existing engineer or dev get some kind of training in this area.

Other projects have PoW, but in our case we have PoR.

If we would use both, new users will be less likely to run own vault?

Or 3rd. party App can use PoW to mine Monero and use profit to get SafeCoin :grin:

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New users we want to attract are the ordinary people who probably do not know or want to know how it works, just they want to join some social media site, or SAFE’s version of youtube or …

We cannot expect people to know to or want to run a vault or else we exclude 90% of people from the start. Some will obviously learn more later on and decide to run a vault.

PoR is only for farming. There is nothing for people joining the network nor do I think we should unless we want to exclude a significant proportion of the population. @piluso’s idea really isn’t appropriate and has been discussed before. The constraints for account creation excludes normal ideas for crypto currency and SAFE really isn’t a crypto project so that is expected.

As the update says the user runs a farm then creates an account when they can OR
the user is somehow given the safecoin needed (buy, gifted, whatever) by some method as the update suggests

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:+1:

I was wondering - will people always have someone to send them coins to start an account.
The above idea is a good one.

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Naturally. But as I mention in the video, this solution is more tricky from a UX point-of-view, especially on mobile, so it’s not one we are pursuing at the moment.

Yeah, the too approaches are pretty similar, but the mental modals are slightly different, as are the points at which a user creates their credentials.

But it tested so badly, we won’t be perusing it at the moment either.

This approach what actually where we started, prior to evaluation and testing. It’s pretty similar functionally to the invite scheme, but the difference being that the user would create there credentials up-front, and these are hashed again, and able to be passed as portable link via the clear net. When the benefactor hits this link, their account is debited. Then the next time the user attempts to log in with there newly created credentials, it sees the funds and the account packet is generated.

But this becomes troublesome and awkward across multiple devices/sessions, and there ends up being confusion about the ‘active/inactive’ pseudo-status of an account, with no real way to validate the account.

So really, the tweak in this case, is pushing the onus of the instigation of the account to the benefactor, they do most of the work here, having received a request (through what ever clearnet or IRL channels the pair of them are comfortable with) and only after the recipient has all they need to create the account, do we get them to choose credentials, and the account is created in a single sitting, on one device.

The research with users was useful to test if this process was understandable, and conformed to their expectations of what ‘invites’ might do, and how they might perceive the need for them.

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@neo the created balance would be offline in so far as the secret key isnt stored on the network. So the coin balance and key can be shared (encrypted if desired) but the key is not stored for the inviter.

Invitee can then access funds and create their own account packet/balance which inviter knows nothing about.

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Good stuff, hopefully all the devs can see a path with light at the end of the tunnel for an MVP.

Excited for the day when User X on the forum can load User Y’s safe site in a totally decentralized manner and even send em some test safe coins as token of appreciation for the dank meme cat gif or rick roll they will link me to :smile:.

Then from there we will work towards the official network, outstanding edge cases and vulnerabilities and network upgrades etc.

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So this is virtual virtual money? EDIT: I am looking for a more detailed set of events

Thus the person sends safecoin to an imaginary coinBalance. I say imaginary since its offline and the transfer went nowhere?

What I think you are suggesting is not the imaginary account but a coinBalance key pair is created offline and the the safecoin is sent to the coinBalance which the network creates but does not give the secret key to anyone. The new person has the private key already created offline. Is this more correct?

This is just temporary. As these initially began life as video community updates, they’ve morphed into something much bigger that we can share wider. The problem just now is, if someone stumbles across these, we don’t have any concise information of the App on the website (FAQs, etc etc) and would likely need to trawl the forum for information - not a great experience. So once we get all the content updated, we can then get these unlisted. This will likely happen in conjunction with one of the next iterations of the App as part of a bigger marketing push.

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The new user creates a key pair and sends the public key to the friend who generates a Safekey with some balance.

https://github.com/maidsafe/safe-cli#key-pair

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Basically what I thought. See 2nd half of post.

What I also wanted to know is that if sending safecoin to a coinBalance address of a coinBalance that does not exist that a coinBalance is created.

Doesn’t that create a problem where if someone tells another to send safecoin to an address but there was an error in the address. Lost coin