Safecoin divisibility

[jlpell]

**TL;DR - SafeCoin Divisibility Notes : Part 4 (~2017)

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Proposal for SAFEcoin division - read datastructure topic first - please discuss
Summary: neo proposed his idea for introducing safecoin divisibility by way of a wallet balance datastructure. There appear to be subtle differences with the proposal of that introduced earlier by polpolrene. Any portion of a coin up to 10^-18 divisibility is possible to transfer from one wallet to another using a single transaction. Farmers can be paid for each GET served with minute fractions of a safecoin, rather than having a certain probability of earning an entire safecoin. Some edge effects and security issues/non-issues need further discussion/clarification.

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Divisibility of the coin
Summary: General discussion on safecoin divisibility and how it relates to farming rewards. polpolrene provided a set of 4 recommended reads when it comes to divisibility. drehb referred to a previous discussion about how divisibility will help farmers be paid more regularly. neo highlighted the fact that even without divisibility, PUT balance provides some flexibility.

@neo

In other words even without divisibility the coin is divided by the storage algorithm and storage subsystem. So you spend one coin and the network gives you a “PUT” balance. “PUT” is the term used for storing one block/chunk. And when you store a block/chunk the network reduces your “PUT” balance by the current price for storage. One coin usually will go a long long way when storing.

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Proposal: TransferValue - a transferable value system of SAFE
polpolrene proposed a method to create an general method for creating alt-coins within the SAFE network analogous to the OMNI layer for BTC. This approach would allow for the creation of lesser valued denominations with which to handle ultimate divisibility concerns within the network. The conversation transitioned to talk about transaction fees due to the datatypes used, but dirvine mentioned they could be minimized.

Highlighted Pros

@polpolrene

1 piece of mutable data for Alice her wallet and a group of datamanagers holding account of her balance. So it could be 10 million coins, 1 trillion coins, still just one piece of SD needed . That’s the idea, the transfer of value without creating a SD piece for each coin.

@4M8B

You are using bookkeeping nodes in your proposal then. Looks cool

@dirvine

The ledger type can relate to Private or Public data. So a full public ledger and public transactions, or private ledgers and private transactions. So just like the data types we have, the ledger can apply to any and give people the ability for public and private ledgers.

Hope that helps.

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Yet Another Safecoin Divisibility idea (YASDI - Network has a wallet)
Summary: wes presented an idea for giving the network it’s own wallet, and it was discussed how concept was similar to that presented previously by polpolrene in “Idea for divisible Safecoins”. neo described the reasons why he prefers a balance system to denominations. toa introduced the concept of multiple owners for a single coin as a means to achieving a crude but intuitive/natural binary divisibility.

Highlighted Cons

@wes

The main difference is credits vs. “hard money”. A strange concept for something entirely digital, however, I am inherently against the idea of IOUs.

@neo

For me the biggest issue with the denomination ideas is that the number of MDs required seem to far outweigh the elegance benefits. Even with the limiting and recombination, I still feel that the number of denomination MDs will be forever increasing and can it ever handle the 0.000001 denominations or as some want 0.000000001 and lower. As the value of the safecoin increases the requirement for smaller and smaller denominations increase.

@neo

The balance scheme is perhaps the least complex of the suggestions so far. Everyone who has coins will need something to store their coin addresses in for the coins they own. This is likely to be at least one MD, all the balance idea does is use a MD that is already needed and place a field in it for the balance. And then simply have a network wallet for the frozen coins.

Highlighted Pros

@toa

And all I’m saying is, you aren’t forced into anything new with multi owner safecoin. That is more of an implementation detail built on top of a division scheme. The concern isn’t new to multi owner, it is a separate issue in my opinion.

@neo

It is a small cost for ordinary usage and would typically be tons less than anything around the place it does add up for any attack using small amounts. And limiting part coin balances to created wallet data structures make attacks much more costly.

@neo

The balance idea I proposed is like a hard data object for the part coin amount.

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Yet Another Coin Idea
Summary: Tim87 proposes a series of denominations following the powers of 2, and that this allows for large and small transactions while retaining the concept of discrete coins.

Highlighted Cons

@happybeing

In order to freely exchange denominations, everyone had to be confident that they won’t become scarce. But if a wealthy group could capture a large proportion of the smallest denomination, it would cause problems for everyone else (and ways for the group to profit from that). So there is an incentive to do this which is not present with fiat money.

I think the key to any multiple denomination scheme is ensuring that denominations are readilly exchangeable at negligible cost, and the issue I’ve highlighted would need to be solved. Otherwise I’ll grab loads of the smallest denomination and force you to pay double if you want any.

Highlighted Pros

@Tim87

Well, you can’t ask for double because I would just use the next larger denomination instead

How would one go about collecting all the coins of a given denomination? It would take a lot of time even if it’s possible. Let’s not forget they should also collect the coins from at least a few denominations below the targeted one, or else people would use those instead, and then one or two denominations above, or else people would just accept the slightly larger rounding error than before.

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Safecoin divisibility / SafeNetwork potential market cap
Summary: piluso began a discussion that compared the degree of divisibility required to adequately account for real world fiat values. neo advocated for 18 decimal places. polpolrene advocated for freezing safecoins and issuing other units of measure up to the required divisibility. There was also confusion from others about safecoin object size and population size, which led to a discussion how brute force divisibility suffers from storage and performance constraints

Highlighted Cons

@neo

Mind you the 1KB is probably the overhead needed when storing a MD and then the coin info is on top.

But as you say in your edit, it is a lot.

For micro-safecoin (10^-6) that figure is now 421 PB

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SafeCoin Divisibility Idea
Summary:
Guybrows introduced in idea based on splitting the actual safecoin address.

Highlighted Cons

@neo

Even if you limited the number of splits of any coin and stored in the coin’s MD who owns what part (MDs are of limited size so number of splits is limited) then someone could overload the groups processing transfers with a very small number of coins.

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SafeCoin divisibility by ranges
Summary: semtexzv introduced the idea of treating a single safecoin as a range of “partcoin” addresses. Double spending and unique ownership would be checked against range overlap. neo counters that a balance method does essentially the same thing and is easier.

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YASDI - Bitwise Denominations
Summary: mav further expanded the idea about the use of safecoin denominations, without resorting to parallel currencies or exchanges, but by using the bitwise relative abundance of similar safecoin addresses for identifying a coin denomination. tfa expanded upon this by demonstrating a straightforward means for having 2^32 safecoin by using a total supply of 4.444E13 network objects which would require at least 46 bit addresses. His example met the ico requirement of maintaining a hard cap of 2^32 SC, while also allowing for enough denominations of 1SC to provide for all current MAID holders and MaidSafe shareholders. There was continued confusion in regard to increasing address bit depth, where people thought it would require a greater total number of coins, rather than just increasing divisibility. neo accurately pointed out that the true
divisibility of bitcoin is not 1 satoshi but rather 1500 satoshi (divisibility = 1/66666.6666667). (sidenote: Considering that there the safecoin hard cap is ~204x that of BTC, this shows that 1/1000 of a SC or 1mSC provides approximately 3x the divisibility of classic BTC assuming worst case scenario if ALL coins are “hoarded”. As it has been noted in other sources, the effective divisibility gets even better to the network PUT/GET farming algorithms and the general use of the SAFE network )

Highlighted Cons

@neo

Look at tfa’s table to which he was replying about.
greater than 4.4 x 10^13 objects needed

@digipl

The big problem with your idea is the conversion. If the safecoin price increase, as we expect to happen, the number of small denominations are extremely low and a shortage seems inevitable. This would seriously damage the reputation of the network.

@neo

Is the network now going to act as an exchange to exchange a 1.0 coin for 100 of the 0.01 coins? If so then it is going to have to create those 0.01 coins and destroy the 1.0 coin? This adds to the complexity and transaction cost.

Highlighted Pros

@neo

Although your system still helps with large amounts (less transactions to send large amounts)

@tfa

These objects won’t be created at day one, but progressively when safecoins are farmed. Later they will be a balance between destroyed and created objects, but I recognized that there might be potentially a lot of objects.

@edapa

It does seem like increasing the address space is a good idea. We are running out of 32 bit IP addresses, and I don’t see how a successful SafeNET would avoid a similar problem.