APP Developer Rewards (Discussion)

Autonomi Network Token (incl (e)MAID)
1

There have been several threads talking about how App Developers can earn Safecoin. I’ll try to summarize all the information and post links from other threads. People can read the discussions and get more informed about this topic. You’ll be surprised how most of it has been answered.

  • Q&A Section
  • Alternative Solutions
  • Links

Post (Question and Answers) in this section.

Why is the SAFE Network rewarding App Developers?

  1. From my understanding, we need to incentivize new developers, using Safecoin (10% reserved for this purpose). MaidSafe already has App Development planned… The App is LIFESTUFF.

  2. Open source code is easily copied. So trying to “sell” their App becomes difficult. MaidSafe proposed an autonomous solution, letting the Network pay the App developer instead of the consumer. This does raise several questions as to how it will be fair, gamed, hacked, stolen, lack of consumer feedback/input, etc.

Does this mean App Developers cannot directly sell their App?
Not at all. App Developers are free to sell their App in whatever currency they wish… although we prefer they use Safecoin. :wink:

Can an App Developer make their App FREE?
Yes, there is nothing stopping them from leaving the App Wallet blank. This means there is no payment address for the Network to pay. However, any storage PUT by the consumer through the app, must be paid to the Network.

How is the App reward (Safecoin) amount determined?
The current plan is to use GET request popularity. The more popular an App is “used,” measured via GETS, the more it earns from the 10% pool. There have been many debates about this model. Until we can see it in action on TestNet3, it’s hard to tell how it will work.

Is there any security to prevent malicious Apps from stealing Safecoin from my wallet?
Yes, just recently we put out a Safe Launcher, which is considered the “trusted” manager for other Apps. It removes the need to give/send your credentials through other Apps.

Post a summary of (Alternative Solutions) in this Section.

PUT Incentive Model
A recent discussion, suggested Apps earn based on what the Network charges, using PUTS. Basically, the farmer shares their income pool with the App Developer. Payment comes from the Network.

GET & PUT Incentive Model
This proposal suggest consumers pay for GETTING data as well as PUTTING data. So Apps have an opportunity to earn from one or both income streams. Payment comes from the Network.

ONE time payment
App bought from a store or website, charging once for a “key” to access the App. Payment issued by the consumer.

SUBSCRIPTION payment
App subscribed to a limited time “key” allowing access to the App. Payment issued by the consumer.

TIMED Micro payment
App depletes a specified amount of Safecoin, determined by the consumer. Payment issued by the consumer.

Post (Links) to other threads in this Section.

DONE (PS great post/topic!): @happybeing plz wiki this OP so others can add/edit things they feel are relevant to the discussion. It would be nice to collate all the information so we can see all the proposed solutions.

LINKS from other threads

(BrainStorm again) Incentivise Developers the MaidSafe way!!

App Incentive Pay Model

The SAFE Ecosystem

What’s in it for developers?

Is there a way to reward people for popular content?

SAFE Network Apps pass network rewards to the people

A proposal: A New, Fair Internet Model to Restore Economic Balance

SAFE App Launcher

Most wanted APP for the SAFE Network

9 Likes
2

Seems to me that some farmers are going to get darn lucky when a popular app lands in their bucket – Option one seems like a pretty good idea considering…

3

Personally, I want to TRY an App before committing to it. If the Network autonomously rewards the App Dev, it takes some of the pricing burden off my shoulders. It’s stressful to buy something (even with good reviews) only to realize, it sucks when I use it. But my money is already gone.

Consumer VS Developer

Some developers started: Free Trials, Ad Sponsors, Registration, and Data collection among other things. They even went as far as creating Malware, and Data Ransoming. :cry:

Some consumers started: forking, hacking, key generation, cracking and making available on torrents.

The developer doesn’t want to risk building a great product, and still fail to make money.
The consumer doesn’t want to be tricked by marketing hype, and feel ripped off.

You keep what you Consume

I like the idea of a consumption model because the spending/support is maintained by the consumer. At the same time, the developer still gets paid for the smallest usage AND has unlimited income potential. If the consumer is happy, they keep using the App, financially supporting the developer to innovate, improve, and support it… or pay their bills.

I know some Apps require way more time and money to develop than other Apps. High quality MMO Games are a good example. So there will never be a one-size fits all solution. High cost development will require initial crowd funding / investor support, in addition to Network Reward Incentives.

Here’s why I like the PUT Incentive

My ideal game experience is to try a F2P game with no gimmicks. I play it long enough to determine if I want to commit to it. And it asks me if I want to save my progress: character stats, items, map, quest journal, etc.

Saving means sending a PUT to storage, which is already charged by default. I never have to think about how much the game costs, or if I have to spend more to buy OP (Over Powered) items.

If there is a global cash shop, I can support the developer to make more game features. This could be a great opportunity for small developers that never see the light of day. This also makes me feel like I’m growing a virtual world, financially, and creatively. Imagine a game world started as a desert wasteland, and grew into a huge city with rival monster tribes on the outskirts.

If 100% of free players actually spend in this way, the pressure to whale hunt (catering to big spenders) becomes less relevant.

Isn’t this the same as a subscription? You’re only paying for the storage you consume. If you stop playing the game, a subscription will keep charging you every month regardless.

3 Likes
4

I see the incentive on PUT like affiliate marketing done right. Farmers want people to put their data on the network. Developers create apps that incentive user to put their data in. Farmers are happy because they get more data and developer gets rewarded for putting the data in. Users get value out of using the app because since they are paying for each PUT request they would not do a PUT request that doesn’t bring them value in return. The interest of everyone align perfectly. It doesn’t require a reputation system, doesn’t require any proof of human or proof of authorship. It’s a simple and elegant solution.

Of course many developer and content creator won’t be able to make a living off this revenue alone, but for them there’s gonna be so many options to choose from. I think that once the safe network has launched, MaidSafe and the SafePod devs should concentrate, among other things, on developing all kinds of income scheme: pay wall, subscriptions, pay per time used, crowdfunding, patronage, advertisement (yes, yes), etc.

3 Likes
5

You do realise you just rubbed the Warren magic genie lamp more than 3 times just then don’t you? - just kidding Warren.

1 Like
6

Yeah, the “yes , yes” might be rubbing some people the wrong way, I shouldn’t have wrote it, it’s unnecessarily inflammatory.

Back on topic, I’d like to hear what other dev feel on the subject. PUT vs GET, which incentive is it most interesting to work with?

7

GET Incentive

  • Pro: The GET model is more accurate for measuring bandwith and actual usage.

  • Con: But the Network does not charge for GET requests, right now. There is a limited 10% Safecoin pool reserved. What happens when this pool dries up? This also creates a strong incentive to abuse the system as well as collect content from everyone else to monetize it.

PUT Incentive

  • Pro: The PUT model accounts for storage use on the Network. In addition, it creates synergy between the App Dev and the Farmer. Because PUT revenue is recycled, the pool is unlimited.

  • Con: Not all Apps utilize a PUT function. This causes pressure for the App Dev to find creative ways to “charm” users into doing PUTS, even when not necessary.

Content Creators

Ideally, they can upload all “watermarked” content on their public drive, then submit links to content aggregators. Consumers can “TIP / LIKE” them at any time from any site.

Content Aggregators

Ideally, they can offer a “non-aggressive” feedback system, where consumers: rate, comment, and upload content through their App… Youtube for example. IMO, they should be discouraged from piggy-backing off other people’s work. Taking it a step further, they could help content creators by sharing revenue.

Side Thoughts

I’m concerned about having many App windows on my screen. I would like Apps to plug into my web browser interface.

I would put a 0% - 10% SAFE Launcher cap if we use the PUT Incentive. If a hacker manages to change the App Dev Wallet Address, replacing it with their own, AND change the amount to 100%… they would upload for free.

2 Likes
8

I have two points that are not clear to me

regarding popularity of apps: this assumes apps are loading from the maidsafe network, so it can measure the usage? what if somebody caches the code of the app locally, or stores it on his own private maidsafe drive? maybe the usage of the app should be determined by the public (private?!?) drives it is accessing during runtime.

regarding content distribution: a probably very popular use case for maidsafe I have in mind is content distribution. somebody (say, the owner of the content in question) uploads it on his public (private?!?) drive, and there is some way he can charge people for viewing (listening to) his content in safecoin, using his app. Then nothing would really stop others from “reuploading” the content and let others view it for free, maybe even deduplication could be at work here. charging them for the upload (PUT) could decentivise them a little, and if the charges for viewing the original content are very small it could stop people from switching to “illegal” sources. anyway, the question basically is: do you pay for storing data, reading data, or executing the app (or having the app use the safe network, respectively).

9

One of the MaidSafe Devs could help you with the 1st point.

Regarding your 2nd point. IMO, copyright enforcement seems futile, which is why there are alternative solutions to realign consumers with producers. It is very likely content will be reuploaded and made available for free.

Currently, the SAFE Network does not charge for GETTING data: downloading, reading, browsing… etc. But it does charge for PUTTING data: making comments, sending msgs, uploading.

As for charging to “execute” an App, that could be another solution. I suppose if the SAFE Launcher already knows which Apps are being “executed” and how often PUTS and GETS are initiated, then it could apply a reward incentive to it.

See this thread.

10

Valid point, though there is a limit to what a developer can do to charm user into paying for a PUT request. Apps that generates PUT request of little value to the user will quickly find themselves with a bad reputation and people will not use them. This will create a kind of natural selection for the kind of app that we will find on the network. App that use the network to bring value to the user will thrive while app that can’t will not. And that’s ok, not all app needs to find themselves on the network. For those other apps, the network will still provide a very convenient micro payment framework they can tap into.

The network will still require a payment for every PUT request that goes through, all it changes with the incentive is that it will allow a part of the money to be redirect elsewhere. This percent must be set at the network level and not at the app level to protect against hackers. The worst a hacker could theoretically do is to get a 10% rebate on his PUT request. Also, there’s probably a way to add a feature to the PUT request to allow a dev to cryptographically sign his address so it doesn’t get modified by anyone.

2 Likes
11

It doesn’t work like that. The network doesn’t know if or how or where the app is executed. As long as you have an active connection to the network it will accept request from it, regardless of the app that you have running on your computer.

If the network wants to measure anything, it’s gonna be only based on the request it gets. How long the app has been running or from where it is loaded is irrelevant from a network perspective.

12

Love this thread. I’m glad somebody is thinking about this because I couldn’t think for one minute how one would make a profitable App on this network but this has relayed some insight into the inner workings. Thanks again guys!

3 Likes
13

I initially used to think that as well.

But in reality it will depend how popular it gets. You don’t want it to be too popular - although you can’t do anything about it anyway - because what’s popular will get cached and so the most popular chunks will make you exactly $0/day (in any currency you wish).

The ideal level of chunk popularity will be (something like) 1 requests every X+1 seconds, where X is the cache expiration timeout (assuming it’s going to be fixed). But as a vault owner you won’t be able to do much about it.

It seems to me there’s not much farmers can do about this, except perhaps - depends on how the economics of the coin will work out (or not) - kill “low yielding” vaults and generate new one until you “raise” a vault with some “good” yielding chunk(s) :slight_smile:
Supposedly this won’t pay, but we’ll see.

14

I was thinking about the above approach, and it seems it will be difficult.

  • Time investment needed to gain rank.
  • No guarantee that popular chunks will remain popular.
  • Most likely get a mix bag of chunks every time a new vault is created.
  • Some chunks that are not popular today may become popular tomorrow.

The time, energy, and costs, to “maximize” a high yielding vault maybe more costly than just adding more storage and bandwith. But we’ll see.

15

Silly idea of the moment:
I’ll make a horse race game like the one you see in themeparks. Each horse represent a vault I run and when the vault gets a GET request the horse goes a little further. And I let people bet on which horse will win the race :slight_smile:

7 Likes
16

First SAFE Network Gambling App!

I think you just found another killer App. Cause I really want that feature just for kicks and giggles.
Make sure I can name my “horse vaults” and let others bet their Safecoins on it. Haha!

@DavidMtl I think you should post that App idea here. It’s a fun way to see how my vaults are doing.

2 Likes
17

Lol alright, I’ll add it at lunch, with stats for horses and all that :slight_smile:

There

2 Likes
18

What if as a farmer and an app user you auto “support” apps you use more than others? Meaning the percentage that a chunk of data from that app ending up on your drive would be higher but not your own data somehow (maybe that is a moot point because no one knows whose data is whose. I have no idea if this makes sense or not. Just throwing things out.

EDIT: The thought process is that the app’s community supports itself. Then you can also go along and say app supporters who receive GET requests for the app transfer a portion of the (lotto ticket for farming rewards) to the app’s “owner”. What are the pros and cons to this? How could we game a system like this?

Is there a concept of shuffling blocks around even if your drive never goes down? I guess this would be counter to the whole caching concept which is good for the network. When more caching is done do old caching blocks go away and free up space for new content?

19

Yes its a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache

1 Like
20

I found the above comment from this thread LICENSING: Are you dead set on GPL3?

Collective App Store?

It would be convenient to have a Collective App Store. Small and Big developers can upload their App along with many others. This gives them more exposure, and consumers have a one-stop-shop to find Apps. We have talked about App stores before.

Credit to @happybeing hitting a sweet spot about sharing revenue.

I’m curious how a Collective App Store can operate. It should be explored further in this thread. Since you guys/girls are smarter than I… I was hoping you can help answer some of these questions.

Questions

  1. How would Apps share revenue?
  2. Would there need to be a Master App Browser that combines all other apps into itself?
  3. How would App Developers know they were getting paid honestly?

Im sure there are more questions, but I have a gut feeling this will become terribly exciting!

2 Likes