Safenetwork sustainability concerns - Bandwidth has an ongoing cost however Safenetwork is a pay once, benefit forever model

hmhmmm - but the tricky part then would be how to determine the cost for such a data type wouldn’t it?

…on the other hand … if you just say 1/10th of standard data type and sufficient ‘time’ meaning network events … that would probably be enough that people might use it for ‘long term not really important data’ and it would vanish again after a while … (magic numbers are evil … anyway … i should sleep …)

Also interesting to think about a possible scenario, where all ingress/egress of national currencies into cryptos being outlawed and the subsequent ‘economic value’ or ‘inherent value’ of the tokens already in existence.

The network would need to stand on it’s own as a p2p value generating entity…which I consider a wonderful thing.

How then would you measure this value? Human advancement, breakthrough research…

Actual privacy…the implications are staggering (especially for the military complex) and worthy of a thesis on it’s own. A closed system of uncontrollable value is another mind boggler.

The OP has been a nice way to unearth facts, possibilities etc and is valuable input for the devs to chew on when that stage comes…personally I’m not at all concerned about ‘sustainability’. When something is awesome people flock to it and support it unconditionally.

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Yes maybe.

Some people want data to be forgotten and be willing to pay the same amount.

Guess we simply make the “PUT” balance 10 times what it would be for a safecoin and charge 10 for a immutable “PUT” and between 1 to 10 for the number of network events the temp data is to last for.

OR simply charge more for a immutable data “PUT”

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This thread is full of arguments about how the amount of generated data is growing and therefore the inflow of economic value into the ecosystem will be growing with it. But the costs of storing that data is dropping as well, so this part of the hypothetical equation might produce zero, because the PUT costs are derived from a single factor - the cost of storage. There are other costs however, for example bandwidth and electricity and other, that might push the economy into deficit. We will not know the outcome unless somebody produces a believable model of the system.

To @chrisfostertv I would reply that networks like SAFE could be self-sustaining only if it generated all of the inputs the network economy needs (chips, electricity, food for people…) internally. In this context it might be of interest to mention, that I have been watching this forum for years, as I have an economic theory, for which distributed network like SAFE is a natural fit. @neo might protest its name, but there it is used as an acronym. :slight_smile:

Nah, go for it. . . . . . .

All cost factors are included. As long as there is fresh data to store, there will be PUTs from users and payments to farmers.

SAFENetwork will not exist in a vacuum. People need to store their data somewhere and there is no reason to think that SAFENetwork will be proportionally more expensive than other storage solutions.

SAFENetwork also does not rely on falling prices. If prices were static, the market would increase the cost of PUTs, to meet the demands of farmers. If storage costs actually start to increase - for the first time in modern history, with all evidence pointing to the reverse - then new data costs could subsidise old data storage. This would be unsustainable in the long run, as SAFENetwork would be competing with solutions without such baggage. However, I cannot think why this scenario would occur, short of some sort of global disaster, ending modernity. I don’t think we can or should plan for that highly unlikely scenario - if it does happen, I am sure there will be creative changes to limit the impact at the time.

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farming safe is supposed to be on existing hardware and most people got unlimited internet access.

so people that farm can accept lower payments as they leave their machine farming everyday.

if you got internet that costs per mb or limits then I think you should not farm or test it as the network might be worth it.

electricity is minor as a idling system is not consuming much energy as the network does not “mine” like in PoW.

that said, i am gonna explain a bit the logic I think the network will work

there will be a rate of new uploaded data.

if the world consumes the same then the balance is equal.

if the world consumes 100x the rate of upload then the farmers get 1/100 of the income of the network

then it will be a design call by maidsafe creating an algo that will either: increase the price per put so the farmers get a better income or it will keep paying 1/100 the farmers.

now there is a choice by the farmers. they vote by staying or leaving the network (i was told this a long time ago when I was new here and it didnt make sense at start but I grew into it.)

so basicly if the network underpays farmers there will be farmers that stop their farming. that would be a measurement that there needs to be more incentive for farmers and the put price will go up!

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Data storage grows exponentially, from few MB as standard to now TB’s in general devices. At same time our need/want to store also rises, so old data will always become cheaper to store due to the improvement of data storage and how little % that old data now really is versus what newer hardware we can buy.

The fraction of old data will look so incredibly tiny (also goes for the bandwidth it needs) that the cost to keep it and serve it are becoming cheaper and cheaper. Now 100GB might be 10% of your HDD but in 5-10 years that might even be 0.01%, so there is very little cost involved in storing this old data and serving it!

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Are bandwidth and storage costs decreasing exponentially? I’m not sure they are, and I’m not sure how the costs will pan out in future. I don’t see how a buy once, and store and server forever model can work unless this is costed into the original purchase, which requires making technological predictions about future costs of both bandwidth and storage.

Bandwidth, as I understand it, follows Nielsen’s Law. Moore’s is 60% increase per year, Nielsen’s is 50%.

So while that might be seen as gating by itself, it’s only one parameter in the overall economy.

I’ll let better minds than mine extrapolate!

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Not sure that’s the right way to think about it… the future reward will compensate and the idea of storing data on network will be more attractive as the single location is a great attractor. So, the price might be squeezed but there’s enough parameters that can flex to see the costs reflect the utility. Also, bare in mind the utility is beyond just storage… a black hole does not care about exponentials.

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Moore’s Law has certainly slowed down. I can’t find much on Nielsen’s Law, but come to think of it, its a much more complex situation as it involves ISP, consumer demand and other factors.

Storage is a little more straight forward: HDD prices aren’t dropping much: Decline price per GB for HDDs comes to an end, however, flash drives might take over in the next 5 years and continue price drops: SSDs will crush hard drives in the enterprise, bearing down the full weight of Wright's Law – Blocks and Files

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I’m not sure I understand your point. Data storage providers won’t want to store or serve data unless they are paid for it. Even if storage and bandwidth costs continue to drop indefinitely storage providers will still need to pay for both, so the initial cost for storing the data must cover this. I don’t think anyone knows what this initial cost should be.

but they will be paid for in the NOW… and that activity, that utility could be the exponential that drives it.

Of course there’s a point to be proven as the network finds its stability but I see reason to doubt there’s a good chance it will work well.

Yes, you might pay a premium for storage of something that is a one off cost, rather than an ongoing but with data deduplication that might be offset to a point.

Even if it resolves to data that is valuable, rather than every bit of trash that no-one cares to pay for, there is a simple balance that can find itself.

I think there’s more merit in spending energy on what can be done, than worrying about proving the negative of what cannot… everything seems impossible until you try :wink:

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The unknowns are how fast the network will grow, its utility, and how much storage and bandwidth costs will decrease. However, I think we can map out the broad farmer/user cost dynamics. On reflection I don’t think storage and bandwidth costs aren’t important, because it assumes that SAFE doesn’t have any competitors for the same resources.

Lets say the initial users want to store 1TB of data and will pay 1000 SAFE to do that. The current farmers take the SAFE and store the data. However, why would the farmers hang around once the SAFE is paid? I see two main reasons:

  1. They hope that the users will want to store another 1TB tomorrow and the profit from that will pay for the continued bandwidth and storage costs of the first 1TB.

Over time, therefore, the relative cost of storage for the user goes up (minus decreasing bandwidth and storage costs) and it continues to go up the more data the network stores. Your point about utility comes into play here, because as users need to pay more for storing data, they need to gain more utility from it. Its all about utility, because as other storage methods/networks have the same decreasing bandwidth and storage costs it doesn’t provide particular economical value to the SAFE network.

  1. The network inflates the SAFE supply to pay for continued storage. This is a bit like block rewards in PoW/PoS schemes. In this case the value of SAFE decreases, but the cost of storage (in SAFE) remains constant. In this scheme earlier users pay for ongoing network costs, because initial users pay more per 1TB in real terms. This is unless the value of SAFE goes up due to network growth and increased utility.

Both scenarios require a growing network. If the network stops growing then the economics fall down and storage providers will switch to other networks which are either growing or have a pay as you go model. So, yes, I agree that if utility & network growth increase then this model may work. However, if SAFE grows too slowly or doesn’t prove to be very useful for many people then it will need to switch to a different model.

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Yes, but keep in mind the network is, hopefully, the world’s data. All of it. If that stops growing then Safe is the least of our concerns.

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It’s possible for this to happen without a catastrophe. Humans could decide to actively reduce their data hoarding, and therefore write over their redundant mutable uploads with other data instead of increasing the burden on the network. Maybe when the network becomes strained, people will do this by default instead of paying for immutable data uploads.

And, the world’s data will stop growing at some point, this is a certainty.

nothing is certain…
with Anti-Entropy anything is possible :wink:

Somehow I doubt that Anti-entropy — I can’t actually find a link explaining what this is in relation to Safe, only endless updates about it — will allow humanity to violate the laws of thermodynamics.

We should note that bittorrent and ipfs have no incentive mechanisms at all. It may be that Safe Network is less sensitive to financial incentives than first thought.

Either way, a network that isn’t being used isn’t very useful. Maybe it should just go away if its time has passed? I suspect it will live long into the future once launched though.

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