Safecoin composting/recycling

#122

Hahaha. No. Almost nothing have normal distribution. Human memory is far from it. Google forgeting curve. Original study was just verified in a new study.

Yes. I’m a long time lurker. I know these things. I think immutable data deletion was sensitive topic too. “You can’t delete your data. No matter if you want to.” Silly? Yes. But goes against “mantra” :wink:

You mention distributed compute. Yes it is a cool long term ambition. Not much work in that direction yet.

Please understand the main problem. Abandoning is never known for sure. I can guess. You can guess. Which guess is good? If it’s about which food is tastiest, who cares. If it’s about losing money, everybody cares.

They paid for it. Hidden benefit: “Mud in water.” All of that data goes around the network. If there is enough, it’s impossible to track any data. It is already very very hard. Maybe already impossible. Some mud always helps.

You forget safe network deduplicates. A lot of the big data is shared data. Movies and TV shows? We no longer have thousand copies, only handful. And some cached copies but only when necessary. Very storage efficient.

I think it is very hard to be banned on the forum :upside_down_face:

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#123

Look its ok to bounce ideas around and that includes questioning the stated goals. But when it takes 100+ posts of you trying to prop up the idea that in essence has not changed against concerted reasoning of why it is not a good idea then one questions the motives.

Then you drop the gem that you have not read up on what you are trying to change then that makes people wonder doesn’t it. Honestly you have to see that.

That is why I suggested you take time to read the design and blogs about the design and all the consequences of the design and see that a lot of thought has already gone into it by David and the design team. There is a reason for 1 coin==safecoin that goes a lot further than I’ve mentioned here. There is a reason for persistent data. There is a reason coins do not decay. And you found out about coins being recycled only recently. This is what I mean, recycling means that SAFE is not like other coins and lost coins in safe is even less a problem than for blockchains. But you need to understand the safecoin concept first and need to understand the RFC

Then come back with great ideas that question the status quo and you will then be speaking from a position of understanding and be able to cover in the initial post the issues involved. And of course then you might investigate the need first of such an idea. Is it needed, will it help reach the stated goals of the project and will it be simple to implement as is all the ideas the dev team have. Safecoin is actually one of the easiest modules. But your idea will make it perhaps one of the most difficult to prove correct and not able to be gamed or attacked.

PS. I won’t be banning you, and I would remove myself from such a decision if there were ever an issue. Basically spammers are the ones that get banned.

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#124

Nice point. I didn’t consider the mud aspect. This is probably the most convincing thing I’ve heard since we started this thread. All you had to do was say “mud” 3 days ago and this thread would have been over by now. :wink:

As far as them paying for it goes though, they did once. But now don’t costs go up as storage becomes more scarce in order to entice new storage to come online due a bunch of data nobody wants? Would it not be more efficient and less expensive in general if unwanted data was deleted, since there would be a more efficient utilization of the current storage resource. But mud is valuable, and the abandonment criteria is infeasible. So…

Have you guys considering paying a small credit back to individuals who voluntarily delete data they don’t really care for anymore? Perhaps the economics of it could work out so that everyone is happier for it. It is now human “composters” who actually own the data that decide to free up some storage and get rewarded, rather than a network decision. Perhaps the credit back is slightly less than what they paid to upload the data in order to add a little entropy. Perhaps you are kind and do the exchange 1:1. This frees up space in the short term and leads to reduced costs for others… etc… ?

Question about Storage on the SAFE Network
#125

There is a topic or 2 devoted to this

#126

I think that was mentioned. I can’t remember how it was in the end. Incentive to delete trash. I think it would be useful.

Storage seems growing fast. 3D storage will be new revolution. When it happens. It is not like CPU where limit is close. So when safe storage is scarce, incentive to bring new storage will always find enough.

This point is important. Need a way to reason about safecoin. It must be as simple as possible. When I think about the denomination or division ideas, that is my first point. If I can’t find a minimal solution, I start again.

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#127

@norimi and/or @neo :

I’m not getting in to the whole composting argument again, but one thing I was hoping you could point out was why network 28/32 consensus could not be used to assign a time or date stamp to a safecoin or data chunk.

EDIT: Looks like this is where this topic was hashed out a few years back… serves as a good reference for neo’s response below.

#129

What

Is this “taking SafeCoins away from their owners” idea still going on?

Who’s replying to this guy? Please stop feeding him

#130

No, the thread is complete. Ironic that it was a question posed by you which started it all isn’t it? I’m just a sucker for punishment.

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#131

Considering it is a bad idea.

There are a number of problems as well

  • The network does not keep time, too easy to manipulate to cause errors/hacking in operations. The network does not need it so why go to the trouble to try and keep it when its easy to be wrong and hackable. Although I am sure that at some stage some navel computers will supply time to the network somehow. But this is a service above the network protocols and not used by the core code. Time is a APP level concept really.
  • The sections are in constant flux with sections splitting or recombining at various times. So any metric you use to measure the passing of events/changes etc cannot be kept either
    • The sections on split might start from the same “event#” but the event count will progress at widely varying rates which depend on the particular activity the section performs.
    • The sections on join will pick one of the current “event#” to use from there forward
    • Thus the event# can jump forward dramatically or go back dramatically. So when one coin handled by section 0101010001 has event#1020 another coin handled by section 01001001011 has event#5023 and another section has event#56 and another has event#9432. So how do you determine a common basis for giving a network wide meaning to the socalled date-stamp when the only real measure of the passage of time is not only local to the section, splitting and joining can cause dramatic jumps in the value.
    • Thus why I said earlier when I explained this the real time could be as short os days or as long as decades when you really wanted 5 years
  • Another BIG problem is where is this value supposed to go?
  • How does the section know that they are supposed to add a timestamp to a data object they have which happens to be a safecoin? Scan the objects in their stores?
  • How do they decrypt the data section of the coin without the owners private key in order to stamp it?
  • Or do we throw out the security and allow anybody to be modifying (which nodes are) the data objects.
#132

Lol OK @neo wins thx :slight_smile:

Great news. Good job everyone.

New topics please :smiley:

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#133

I’m sorry @neo but THIS just made me laugh. We live in whole nations that have institutionalized theft. It’s called taxation. We have institutionalized fraud too, they’re called central banks. So not only do I disagree with your definition of theft, that composting safecoin would be considered theft, but I’d also disagree with your assessment of a “civilized” society. But thank you for being so funny. :smile:

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#134

No free rides. You want services, you want protection, you pay taxes. Only a question of whether it is reasonable, and that will ALWAYS be debatable. Don’t like the taxes you pay? Elect better leaders. Only way.

#135

I haven’t read all the thread posts thoroughly, but I certainly find the analogy of composting coins a bad one.
It seems only logical to me that one of the requirements of (real life) coins is durability, as long as possible.
I can’t think of historical coins who were made of a material that decomposes.
Look for example at the coin to the left of this text. I have one of these: 600 years old…
Ok it is worn, but not decomposing.

It is ok to look at nature for inspiration, but one can say human history and culture (=best practices learned over a long period of time) is also part of that nature.

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#136

I could live with this. It’s not the same, but it’s a decent way to compensate for the loss. I still think recycling the coins would be better but until we can think up a way of doing that that won’t make people like @neo start having kittens this seems like a decent enough solution in the mean time.

#137

And many of us in this forum abhor that institutional theft and we see it going on around us. So why do you want to duplicate it into SAFE? Not all tax is theft you know. Misused tax is theft.

Yes a compromise that simulates the effect of recovery of lost coins and does not require anthing of the network or the people to find these lost coins.

I still would like a solution that firstly is 100% positively finds any truly lost coins (lost by attacker trying to double spend). And secondly real simple like a few lines of code. The double spend attacker one might be possible and really up to the devs when programming SAFEcoin to investigate how.

recycling is not a good term for what you are saying seeing we already have recycling of coins built into the system

Also in other cryptos lost coins are a greater problem since the lost coins means that in the end there is only the max coin less lost coins to use. In SAFE, if being used to store data can have thousands of times the max coins issued over time. The recycling means that a particular coins can be issued, destroyed (buying resources) then issued again and so on unlimited times. In SAFE truly lost coins are only a minor effect on farming reward success due to minor extra scarcity. But the corresponding effect is that the coin is slightly scarcer when buying and traditionally this means higher price, so the farmers are still earning equivalent $$$ whether you recover those truly lost coins or not.

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#138

I don’t but then you and I don’t seem to define theft the same way. But since your solution seems to solve the problem, hey whatever works.

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#139

So the kiddies are fast asleep as sugarplums dance in their heads, Christmas gifts are wrapped and under the tree, which is lit, and the snow is piling up on the other side of the window. I just settled in to a nice ginger beer and decided to make a second attempt at a thread summary. Let’s hope to try and extract some usefulness from the discourse that took place, in addition to saving new and old a lot of reading. I figured it might also offer a good chance to save face with regard to what I now see as some ridiculous recommendations on my part. If I’ve left something out please post a follow-up and then let’s kill this thread for good.

Thread Summary

  1. The purpose of the thread was to consider the ramifications of the gradual accumulation of abandoned safecoins and whether or not it may (in the limit) lead to a deflationary spiral that could seize the network’s economic engine. During the discussion an “abandoned” safecoin (or potentially any data chunk) was described as belonging to one of two categories. The first are those held in long term savings by their owners and no longer circulate in the SAFEnet economy. The second are those “truly lost”, indefinitely, due to an owner’s inability or negligence when securing their account credentials in the real world.

  2. Two alternate points of view were presented based on the same observation
    that it is impossible to discriminate between either category. All data must be treated equally, and so @jlpell argued for some sort of consensus based temporal abandonment criteria that considered the frequency at which a user interacted with the SAFE network. For example, John Doe has not a single interaction with SAFE for over 15 years, so SAFE assumes he has abandoned the network and “composts” or recycles his safecoin/data back into circulation. The perspective at the time, was that even with the composting function, SAFE was still a superior offering to any other cloud service of present day. On first glance, as long as the virtual degradation was less than external degradation mechanisms in the real world that often lead to loss of the owner’s credentials (fire,flood,pests, etc…) the system would be provided with a defense mechanism and also remain equitable, but only approximately. The other perspective offered (passionately) by @neo was that there was no time based criteria that could be determined that could prove abandonment and thus it was most simple and safe to keep data forever. In addition to these concerns, the interrelation between deflation, divisibility, and scalability were considered.

  3. After a few to many good lashings @jlpell conceded. @neo was right on all counts. Special thanks to @norimi or pointing out and reminding one that garbage accumulation is a feature not a bug; a virtual “junk dna” that can aid obfuscaton.

  4. One idea that arose from the discourse was a solution from @neo for counteracting the effects of safecoin loss on farming rate based on approximation of their population size. This essentially solves one of the main concerns of @jlpell due to abandonment while also maintaining immortal ownership at the same time. While the effects may be negligible at launch, allowing for such a mechanism is one potential mechanism to maintain stability. While some argue that truly lost coins will never reach the same relative population size as Bitcoin, it is difficult to know for sure.

  5. Towards the end of the discussion the concept of “voluntary composting” arose as a means to aid network resources during times of strain. The basic concept is to allow users to choose which data they no longer want in order to add increased storage capacity to the network. In return some type of compensation mechanism is likely warranted, such as farming rewards that are split at some ratio between the voluntary composter and a farming node, or by some other equitable means.

Conclusions

These may have already been obvious to most of you, but let’s restate them anyhow.

  1. When @neo says a solution to a problem or methodology can’t be
    done, he more than likely means it should not be done, for good reason.

  2. Brainstorms and thought experiments will be better put to use in addressing methods for increasing and improving safecoin divisibility, which when taken to the limit, also solves the problem of abandonment. This would need follow-up by simulation.

  3. The solution provided by @neo to adjust farming rates based on estimates for abandoned coins that are “truly lost” needs further investigation and simulation.

  4. The topic of owners being rewarded for freeing up space on the network by deleting items they no longer need is a topic that has been addressed in the past. Perhaps these ideas should be aggregated to explore “Voluntary Data Composting” a bit further; suggestions welcome.

  5. Unless there is a strategic reason for not doing so, SAFE marketing materials
    might also want to tout the way in which the SAFE network seeks to immortalize
    an individual’s data. Current materials most readily accessible to new users
    focus more on anonymity of communication and secure network access. While it is suggested in an implicit fashion by mentioning that the SAFE Network keeps their data “safe and secure”, the goal of perpetual data and/or the concept of data immortalization may be a key differentiator when comparing to other projects. This concept is easy to gloss over in such a large project such as the SAFE Network. Slogans such as the “SAFE is for SAFETY!” (Storage Accessible ForEver To You) Or just “Storage Accessibility For Ever”. Another might be “Maidsafe, privacy, security and freedom, for everyone… forever.”

Apologies to all who were wearied

The thread was meant to be productive, but I’ll have to admit that my line of thinking fell victim to the politics of resource scarcity, rather than the politics of what is possible/attainable through human ingenuity. This is the same line of thought and reasoning I detest in those arm-chair elitists who promote population control as a means to promote sustainability rather than promote the maximization of human potential and planetary exodus to explore the galaxy. I had figured that it might be good for SAFE to have some sort of defensive mechanism in order to combat abuse by user abandonment and explored those ideas. Based on the feedback I was rather bewildered by the range of emotional responses encountered. However, I think I get it now. I see that trust in the network to ensure user control and data integrity, including safecoin ownership, is paramount. The solution I proposed was essentially cannibalism, which when taken to the limit converts a SAFEnet into something that is closer to resembling a Skynet of terminator infamy.

SAFE is a big project, which I thought I had a decent understanding of. But what I missed in my enthusiasm for the code was that SAFE is about empowering individual humans first. Through the empowerment of free individuals we will supercharge our shared humanity. Good will to all. To infinity.

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#140

… and beyond!!!

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#141

Seriously?

I think you have missed a lot if you truly think that.

Yes.

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#142

You have some sort of engineering degree right? I was a bit surprised by the way you approached the subject, by delving deep into a solution, without even a basic analysis of the assumptions the problem was based on.

It was the very first thing we learned at university, to estimate reasonability. This mindset is essential when solving problems.

Before solving the “problem” of for example, sand beaches being depleted, by sand grains getting stuck between the toes: doing some simple math to see just how many toes, for how many years would be needed to drain the beach of sand. As to first of all state: is this really a problem?

Yet to this point, I haven’t seen you comment the estimations I did, nor provide any yourself. It surprises me actually, as it is a fundamental part of engineering.

norimi was talking about things needing simulations. None of this actually needs simulations. You do simulations when it is too hard to model mathematically. This is quite trivial maths though.

It just seems to me you got obsessed by an idea, a solution you would have liked to see, then you got stuck in a pride battle. Now “saving face” what ever the point of that is :slight_smile:

I think if we are more concerned about facts, finding and solving real problems, and less concerned with ourselves and being the one having a good idea, discussions like these get more rare.

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