Just to clarify, would the above average storage and premium application costs be burned to the pool for farmers/builders?
I’m also generally confused about what premium vs. free applications look like. Aren’t builders creating these apps? What’s the incentive for builders to create free vs premium apps? Why not just have users pay builders directly rather than having it go through the protocol? It seems like the network is acting as a middle man for users to pay builders and I don’t see a clear benefit.
Also, I don’t quite understand what prevents users from creating a bunch of accounts to take advantage of the minimum free storage limit and I also think there should be some correlation to how many resources the vault linked to the account is contributing.
So Nick, end user will be able to store some data for free without providing any POR and that is important for MAID to gain some momentum, but we (you, i hope you don’t mind i use we. I really believe in this project and I will invest as much as I can to make it succeed) still need to protect somehow from malicious users, or big cloud players, that will make lots of free accounts (@ioptio - still ongoing discussion).
That is correct and I think it’s great you’re using the phrase ‘we’, the SAFE project is now the property of everyone! I know that in other threads the guys have been talking about proof of human and using voice recognition to stop machines from setting up lots of small accounts. I think the large cloud players would have better earning potential by actually providing their resource to the network rather than using small free accounts but we do still potentially need to protect from early malicious users. It may be that we start without any safecoin being required to join the network, but if this system is abused to the point where bad actors endanger the network we change the access to require safecoin.
Safecoins that are earned and then used on network services will be recycled (different from being burned as these can be spent again) and available to be farmed once more.
I am probably causing the confusion about premium and free services, my apologies. To be clear, the only ‘free’ (non safecoin) service that I’m currently aware of will potentially be for some (still to be determined) amount of network storage. On your next point, everything needs to run through the network, it is what connects end users and builders and I don’t see how these 2 parties could be connected otherwise.
On your last question, it is of more benefit to the user to actually provide resource to the system and earn safecoin rather than trying to fill the network with data then turning off his/her machine. Users trying to game the system in this way will be down ranked and there also been discussion that if they are down ranked significantly their data will become read only.
HI Paige, they can do as they wish really. The good point here is that open source or crypto only app devs can just burn in their wallet address and they have revenue if their app is used a lot by many users. These apps will be on a public share and the wallet address is immutable then. So devs get paid from creating good apps that are of value. I like this part a lot as OSS business or revenue models are to this point very hard and generally require the devs become business people and almost completely not developers. This was devs stay devs and get paid.
Popularity does not equal quality. Facebook is popular but is it nesssarily of high quality what with the censorship and spying? C++ is popular but that doesn’t make it the best programmming language, t’s just very widely used and adopted. Many things are popular and widely used but aren’t neesssarily better/
Pricing:
(storage in GB + bandwidth in Mbits + computing in IPS) / total number of safecoins = Price in (Resources/Safecoin)
From this we can get any price separately.
And like this market will dictate the real price.
No free ride, only in the beginning it will be possible to get some safecoins from the donations ( we will have sites and other mechanisms for that)
We just need to make functions, easy stuff for one who knows math
And as Snowden will say, Google, FB, and other is not free you pay with your privacy!
I don’t believe only in the beginning donations will work but things like safecoin taps, yeah that’ll only work in the beginning.
Something I’m thinking is if people are using your app, wouldn’t that be a lot of GET requests? Instead of thinking of developing apps as entitling one to a portion of farmed safecoins. Wny not think about apps and app usage in terms of farming, farm rank, and how the developer earns safecoins of their own in the first place. In short if you develop well used apps it gives you bonuses to how fast you gain safecoins from farming.
Hi Im new here, i invested 20 bitcoins in the crowd fund because i love the idea, however, I am concerned that you are missing a trick with not making safecoins backed by computer resource, like the dollar used to be backed by gold. If you give away storage, bandwidth, cpu usage ect ect for free and pay the farmers in safecoin then safecoin only has a speculative value (its worth what someone else will give you for it) Bitcoin has stolen the march on this along with 100 plus other alts.
If farmers were paid in safecoin and users could use resources paying in safecoin then safecoin has instant real value. In order to get mass adoption i understand the idea of giving away Xgb of free storage, however, if you want the system to grow beyond a drop box then surely resources need to be paid for in safecoin. Then imagine some of the potential. All computer resources would become available at cost or less. This would happen because any big purpose built farm would soon be undercut by someone with a computer that they would have bought anyway and just want to recoup some of their cost. Now we have computer resources at cost or less, imagine the impact on the third world, laptops could be built for peanuts and people could just connect to the network and pay as they go.
Am i missing something? This has to be an opportunity to good to miss?
Users of the network will be paying for resource and they will be paying it to farmers in safecoin. What is being suggested in the current proposal is that end users won’t have to pay for access and an initial and potentially small amount of storage, but will pay for every other service (apps, computing power and large amounts of storage) in safecoin. So I am not suggesting that all services are given away for free and understand and agree that this would be counter productive initially.
As safecoin (and initially only safecoin) provides access to apps, additional storage and computing power (for large companies) it will contain an inherent value as without it you will simply not be able to access these services. So, in essence, safecoin will be backed by computing resources.
Hi Nick,
Thanks for this update. I like the arc you guys seem to be taking on this.
One question mark with several attendant questions occur to me: If someone wants to get more storage, what is the mechanism that would be used to enable it? I.e., say I want to purchase x gigs of storage in exchange for safecoin. The safecoin could be farmed or purchased on the open market but from whom would the resource be purchased and what would be the method of passing that resource to the purchaser? Would the price be subject to market influence or fixed in the network?
Are we looking at having a POR token, as well, to give quantification to the other side of the equation?
I’m also interested in the answer to this, but, not being technically minded in coding its just interest.
I have an opinion on market fluctuation. Of cause there will be fluctuation because of speculators, however, i believe that it will quickly become a small fraction of the large jumps we see in alt coins. This is because safecoins value will be entangled with the cost of the resource it supplies.
I think we only need safecoin. And you will buy resources directly from the SAFE network (we still discuss exact math behind). Farmers and developers will be paid also by SAFE algorithm. SAFE is a middle man
They are going to be paid by the network… In safecoin. No need to mess with any sort of fiat conversion, let people do that on their own if they so choose. I’m not against fiat, but there are plenty who are. That’s just another added layer of, in my opinion, unneeded complexity.
I’m not talking about any fiat conversion. Any reference to dollars is to give reference to some external meter of relative value.
Resources have relative value. Safecoin will be used to pay for these resources. Safecoin can also be used to for other things of value, including dollars, yen, cattle, computers, etc. All these things have different values per unit, and those values are determined by the individuals involved in each individual transaction.
Network resources are something that has a value which is tied to the network very directly. If there is no way to quantify those resources other than in safecoin, safecoin becomes the unit of value of a very specific resource with a rather fixed useage.
For instance, let’s say that an extra 100 gig of storage costs one safecoin and that that value is fixed permanently within the network. If you translate that into current dollar value, what would it be worth to purchase 100 gig for life? Let’s say that $10 for the sake of argument would be a helluva deal, though that’s a market-determined value. That then values one safecoin at $10 (or an equivalent in whatever other meter you want to use) but that value is tied to 100 gig of storage.
Now let’s consider that happens if improvements in storage technology, software, etc., continue the sort of advances they’ve made over the last few decades and the relative value of 100 gig of storage gets to 10 cents when valued in dollars. That becomes a forced devaluation of safecoin by 1000%.
Safecoin has incredible potential as a means of storing and transferring value. It’ll be superfast transacting, anonymous, limited in quantity, etc. But if its value it tied directly to network resources its usefulness is severly handicapped.
That’s why I see a Proof of Resource token as being needed, to quantify the resource as a thing rather than a fixed price. That resource could then be paid for in safecoin at a market rate. Safecoin is then free to be a real unit of exchange for anything, including network resources.
Otherwise we’re likely to be confronted with the choice of using one safecoin to buy a car, or 100 gig of storage. That wouldn’t really incentivize providing resources to the network or be reachable by very many people. The result would be that safecoin, which could easily rise to that high value (or higher) would be hobbled to the low end of usage as a network resource token.
Maybe that’s what it’s destined to be and have another currency built on top of it. But unless these factors are handled, I’m pretty sure it will have to play out that way.
@nicklambert and @dirvine I’d really love some input here. Am I completely off base on this?
Sorry man trying like hell to get code done not easy.
There will never be a tie between network resource and safecoin at some pegged value over time (this is a little lie). The network will calculate all costs in as real time as possible. So i.e. like up to 2* NetworkAverage (or a proportion as @dyamanaka has outlined (great btw)). So safecoin will buy resources for sure, but not at any fixed price, it will alter through time.
This was part of the white paper, there are 3 main things in resources to consider.
1: Price of safecoin will increase (we all hope)
2: Price of a resource unit decreases (exponentially)
3: Quantity of resource increases (again exponentially)
So safecoin has to take these into consideration. The amount of resource will increase per person at a cheaper rate per unit of resource over time. So the network will calculate this based on a supply / demand of farmers. So if safecoin farming slows, farmers leave, if it increases farmers join. This should balance supply and demand, but I hope eventually that farmer nodes will be tiny and many devices can farm.
If you imagine this also from the perspective of resource requirements then the link between safecoin costs and resource requirements provide the same supply/demand balance.
Initially the costs will be hard coded (the wee lie), this will be algorithmically calculated as soon as possible though. Not to difficult, but too much for me at the moment It’s way simpler though when we get some network population results and resource requirements in place.
Then add in big data analysis and computation, these resources should also increase safecoin usage on the net.
So see safecoin as a currency perfect from buying anonymous reources on a private network, just like cash. I think this is the easy way to look at it.
not easy.
It’s way simpler though when we get some network population results and resource requirements in place.