So this took me all day to write, sorry for all mistakes, English ain’t my first language and I won’t pretend I would make less mistakes in my native one 
. I could have created a new thread but it seems relevant to what as been discussed in the video so here it is.
Here’s what I think about the App Incentive model, like I said before I appreciate the intent but I think the implementation is flawed. I hope you folks don’t mind that I take a stab at it, I just want to raise my concern and see how they can be addressed.
Little disclaimer: I discovered this project very recently and even though I read quite a bit of posts and watched a bunch of videos, these following points might have been already discussed and addressed, I apologies in advance if I make you repeat yourself. You can just link to a forum post if you spot something that’s been covered, I’d love reading it.
With that said here’s what I see as the drawbacks of the current implementation:
GET Request per hour becomes THE thing
TL;DR: This will pigeon-hole developer into making GET heavy apps.
While the goal is to bring an income to app developers who create useful app, what will happen in reality is that only app that generates a lot of GET request will really profit from this. And this is a problem because if your app doesn’t require a lot of them it doesn’t mean your app isn’t useful or popular, it just means it offers different feature that don’t requires it. And when you think about it, it’s actually a good news for the network because this kind of app help increase the perceived value of the network without adding much load to it.
So it puts the developer in a dilemna: figure out a way to increases his GET request to please the network or find another mean to get value for his app, which means he is back to square one. Over time, I think generating more GET request will become the name of the game. Devs trying to get the most out of their app will try first and foremost to think of ways to increase it even if it doesn’t make much sense for their app. In the end, I think this will alienate devs who refuse to change their app to follow the trend, divert the intent of those who decides to follow it and creates an unnecessary load on the network that would not be there without it.
Rewarding the middle man instead of the content creator
TL;DR: This will incentive people to develop app that aggregate other’s content and reap the reward of their work
Since generating GET request becomes the name of the game, having a lot of stuff to get becomes a viable strategy. So you’ll see whole catalogs of other people’s work available. SAFE Library with all possible book you can think of. SAFE Theatre with all movies. SAFE Warez for apps and games. Of course you need to pay to put the data in but once it’s there you can reap the reward forever. Should these aggregator get paid for their trouble? Maybe, maybe not, it’s a moral question and I would rather see the user make the moral choice than the network.
How to game the system
TL;DR: Create an app that auto-gets all files you put in and send the safecoin from the get request back to you
People will naturally have a bunch of file on the network, photos, videos, app data, etc. If you run an app that request all those file and watermark the get request with your own address you’ll get the reward for having requested your “already there” files. The amount of safecoins will probably be very small but it’s “free” money and over the long haul it adds up. Once the files are all cached you just need to wait and run it some other time to get more safecoins.
Now what if this app becomes popular, after all, who doesn’t like a free lunch? The network gets flooded with GET request, caches gets recycled faster which allow people to use the app even more often because their files doesn’t remain in the cache as long as before. The more people use the app the more safecoin people will be able to generate from it, now that’s quite an incentive to share this kind of app.
In this scenario, the poor dev building a very popular calendar will have a hard time trying to get its share of the safecoins generated for developer.
Now of course there is the bandwidth to consider, but people just have to use the “auto-getter” app when they have the bandwidth available to do so.
Is this scenario possible? I don’t know, I think it would to a certain extend, but I only had a day to think about it. Now consider what the world would come up with when the network becomes mainstream. Legit dev will be fighting a losing battle against people gaming the system, and they will be back to square one, find another way to generate a revenue.
The PR nightmare
TL;DR: The network paying off morally wrong activity is harder to defend than if a user makes the decision to support them.
The SAFE network can be joined by anyone on the planet in a anonymous way, so we are going to get the whole package, bullying, vandalism, cannibalism, terrorism and everything in between and beyond. These people or communities might, and some will most likely, create an app to showcase their “work”. People consume the content for different reason, voyeurism, morbid curiosity, boredom, etc. The network reward the author of the content. Next morning on the news you can read: “Making a living out of raping baby koalas? Now it’s possible with the SAFE Network!”.
This will happen whether or not the network automatically reward content but it makes us all complicit if it’s the network that does it because we are the one running the machines. If the burden to support these behaviour is only on the shoulder of the users then they are the only one making the decision and they are making it only for themselves. The network should not speak for us. In other words, It’s a “vote with your wallet” kind of thing.
We don’t need it
TL;DR: We’ll pay.
Last but not least. With the SAFE network you succeed on achieving a lot of things. A completely private, anonymous, decentralized ecosystem with a global currency that anyone can produce and use with a single click. That is huge. And it’s gonna get crazy huge. People will get on board, a huge ass mass of people, developer will program the hell out of it, no incentive needed there.
People are already paying for a lot of things on the internet. Kids on Twitch makes a living out of donation playing online games. Gamers spend a massive amount of money on free-to-play games. Itunes sells tons of music, netflix’s got a huge subscribe base and even produce its own content. Card games gets millions out of crowd funding. Open value networks and all sorts of cooperative model. Adverstising, I know, I know. The point is, there’s so many different model to get value out of a product or get the funds to get things done that the network doesn’t need to try to find a way to do it. With a frictionless currency that we can produce, we’ll pay, I’ve got no worries there, the safecoin economy will be thriving.
Closing words
TL;DR: Do it anyway.
With all the negativity, you probably didn’t expect this one. I do think the moral responsibility of supporting any content should be exclusively on the shoulder of the users. I also think creating a robust “proof of usefulness” system requires more consideration than simply adding a safecoin address to a GET request. But do it anyway. Who knows right? Worth giving it a shot and this is what a beta is for. Just get that kill switch nearby in case everything goes kaboom and you need to kill the beast.
Alright it’s getting late and I’ve spent enough time on this, if you read it all, fist bump to you. I wish you all a good night.
