What if safecoin or maidsafecoin gets lost in the void?

Okay what if maidsafecoin, like any other altcoin, gets lost due to password losses, data corruption, lost paper wallets and other unforseen tragedies. Okay users are out their money but what impact does this have on the network given that there’s a limited number of coins in existence? What happens if safecoin gets lost when the network launches? Say someone loses access to their account that’s loaded with safecoin? What impact does this have if any on the network?

First off they will never be converted to SAFE coin

So if 5% of MAIDsafecoin are truly lost then only 9.5% of SAFEcoins will be given out as a result of MAIDSAFEcoin conversion

Okay so worst thing that can happen is that a few more safecoin will need to be farmed the old fashioned way.

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Wait this needs some clarification.

If MAID is lost, and is not converted to Safecoin, those Safecoin addresses are not reserved permanently? They simply are never issued?

How will the backend system of the MAID->Safecoin exchange address work? It’s taking the MAID private it’s sent and it’s doing… what with it?

They will not be exchanged so no SAFEcoin given.

The details have not been finalised so no we don’t know if the coins will be pre-generated or not. In any case one would expect that some timeframe will be put on the opportunity to convert MAIDSAFE to SAFEcoin and after that time the unconverted MAID would be considered lost forever. I am guessing from what has been said elsewhere that the time frame will be generous and more than sufficient.

That has not been determined or we have not been informed yet.

But it is pretty obvious that unconverted MAID that is deemed lost after the timeframe will not be locked away but available to be farmed.

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That clears up a lot of my own confusion!

Glad I’m not out of the loop.

Thank you :smiley:

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Coins being removed from circulation causes no issue. It just means that those which remain absorb their value and life carries on.

Definitely true for the near future.

However, losing coins is a one-directional process; its effects will keep adding up, and not necessarily in a linear fashion. This needs more consideration than a hand-wavy “it’ll be fine.”

Let’s say 1% of the coins are lost every year. 25 years may count as “forever” in internet terms, even longer in digital currency terms, but let’s ignore that and conclude that by then we’ll have lost over 20%.

What that means is that scarcity will capped that much higher than its actual value. Will the dynamics of the farming rewards be the same just because the fewer coins “absorb” the extra value? I really don’t know, but suggesting a simple linear relationship for something this complex sounds naive; any math geniuses around here to prove or disprove this?

I believe divisibility is the real issue here, not supply. It will not satisfy the conditions of a scarce if you can randomly reintroduce coins back into the ecosystem.

But I was talking about farming, which is the basis of all things Safecoin. It works with the actual, whole coins; divisibility won’t change that.

Although it was mentioned that it would be considered. Either giving a fraction for each GET or choosing say 1/100th of a coin and thus the farmer receives 1/100th each payment, which means the farmer gets the same amount overall but paid more often

My apologies, I misinterpreted your remark. I am in no way qualified to comment on the math. Like you, I would like more input on this. I will say, however, that I believe that at some point the various major incentives are going to be such that there are a certain percentage of these coins that are not going to be lost. If divisibility is done right this system will sustain itself. That’s not to say that the farming rate isn’t equally important.

I had the impression that farming will work based on the probability of whether the semi-randomly selected coin ID (one of 4^32) is already allocated or not. If it is, the farming attempt was unsuccessful, if it isn’t, you get your coin. It’s an “all or nothing” scheme, so it may work very differently with 100 x 4^32 pieces that are worth 1/100th unit than with 4^32 pieces of full units. I don’t have proof, but it feels like those two cases are not as similar than you think.

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You are correct if I read you correctly.

If it were to change from whole coin based payment then obviously the method would change too. They just are not compatible.