I find myself almost perfectly balanced between the two points of view on this subject. But I don’t necessarily think these are two opposing points of view at their core. I am probably more computer and crypto savvy than 99% of the general population. On the other hand I am at least in the bottom 10% if not the bottom 1% of those who frequent this forum. You are absolutely right. There is a lot of work left to do to get this project to the point where it is ready for the mainstream. Likely years of work. But I don’t think those supporting the interim token are necessarily disagreeing with that. My take is the ETH token seems required to get things going now for the 1% that are capable of operating in this world not the average person. This will bring resources, talent, and attention that is needed to advance the project. But until there is a token that someone can simply buy directly on something like Coinbase, for example, there won’t be widespread adoption of the network. I think that requires a native token and I’m like 99% on the side of it being a long-term requirement, but I don’t know that for sure. For privacy’s sake alone never mind speed I think native is a must-have eventually. The issue is how to best navigate from here to there. And that includes not just the technical, but legal and financial considerations. All of that said I could also see an ecosystem cropping up where small users earn enough on their own to pay for their own uploads. Perhaps only those moving larger amounts of ANT need to even worry about the ETH world? A simple app could probably hide all of that messiness from someone not needing to bridge to fiat. It also seems at least theoretically possible to have a bridge between ERC20 and native on the network. If that’s doable then a switch to native is easy as they are in essence completely interchangeable (the network itself could perhaps hold the unused balance of each). Just some thoughts.
And this is the conundrum the team are trying to solve.
@happybeing is quite correct on the strategic questions, however @Bux, @JimCollinson @AJ_MS et al have to deal with the daily tactical issues as well.
And so far I think they are doing OK. I doubt anyone is losing sight of the native token, but we have to accept that we have Other Stuff to deal with first. Hopefully we will look back and say the decision to go with an ERC-20 token as stopgap was genius and gave us breathing room until not just the native token was ready but the world was ready for the native token.
Agree! Perfection is the enemy of progress.
Right now, the network is already redefining what is possible. That’s amazing.
Can it improve? Of course! I’m happy we have launched with what we have already though.
The ecosystem will improve, more folks will get involved, more crazy new things will be built on top of it. Meanwhile the core will improve too, funded by these events.
While its true these random rewards could be used for other worthwhile stuff, remember these random rewards are only a part of their plans for building the network.
For my thinking to consider them the whole is crypto style of mindset. But when you consider they are just one part of the jigsaw then you realise that the foundation has many times more tokens than what will be spent on random rewards and emissions. Well emissions are a separate part already defined.
Think about it, by giving tokens to those running nodes they are building the ecosystem as a whole, more tokens for the markets, a lot more tokens for people to start uploading who did not have MAID or eMAID, and a few other things.
And it also ensures the network exists for testing. With nothing but a few people uploading a few files the network would be very small and at risk before it even starts going. Its kick starting the network if you will. Eventually in the next year we will want the network to be much larger than this. People with huge data sets will only look at Autonomi if there is the storage available. (Even if some is imaginary since once the uploading funds come in it will still grow to match)
With the many times more tokens the foundation has been said will be funding other programs like dev ecosystem development, promotions, and so on.
The random rewards are just a part of what I imagine is a much larger plan with many parts. Trying to make this one part the whole is in my mind short-sighted.
There are people who take advantage of the big rewards - this address, for example, has loaded many other related addresses and sells at every payment from the network:
https://arbiscan.io/address/0x23395b976b279735176dfc32f52613e2ff2f64b3
Here are 3 of the addresses, there are more:
He is probably running multiple VPS. At current liquidity, if he continues to do so, equilibrium will be reached at 6 million nodes or at a price of 4 cents per token. Equilibrium in the sense that it won’t be worth doing it and will start shutting down the VPS.
Of course, math is not my forte, so these numbers are probably different 
Check out the Dev Forum
Seen this happen to many projects where emissions are too high.
Lets see how it plays out.
I hope that I am proven wrong, but to me it is crystal clear, if the incentive is so much that we have 1.3 million nodes when we need a magnitude less, it is too high.
This will always happen. When there are things in this world that can be gamed then it will be gamed, it is just a matter of time and those who has the most resources will get even more resources.
Good and interesting findings. In a network like Autonomi were barriers to entry it quite low, example no ASIC or expensive special hardware needed, with high rewards, thoses network will go towards break even earnings and will favour those with ecample access to cheap babdwi,electricity and space. We had a fun little bubble here for 6 month or so were we got very high returns for running nodes, those days might soon be over.
I think we need a network that is at least between 1-10 million nodes for security of the network and to handle spikes were a few node runners turn off 10-100k nodes at the same time.
The rewards are doing it’s job to reach a large network.
Where will the buy demand for all these tokens come from in the short term?
When we need 1.3 million nodes the incentive should be there to provide 1.3 million nodes.
Do you think all those servers running these nodes pay for themselves?
When people start selling to cover costs it will be a race to the bottom
We are not ready for a network of this size.
I don’t expect much support for arguing against excessive rewards 
I am supporting what I think is the best for the network and the future. I don’t believe you are able to see all variables for demand and supply. We might get more demand soon because more people wants to try the network, new exchanges getting added and other factors. Rewards might become an issue but it is very difficult to know the answer.
I have no personal interest in high rewards, I don’t have the means to take advantage and competing with the whales. I just want a large network that reaches critical mass and also brings attention to the project. It’s up to the devs and the team to calculate what they believe is the best size and rewards for the network.
thanks again, very helpful. wasn’t really getting the depth of who shares common language, but it’s clear some don’t play well, or at all, with others.
and so it seems four distinct zones are in play:
on/off ramp
gas
trading tokens
investment/utility/working tokens
maybe a 5th broader zone regarding KYC(or not) and wallets and nuances of various phases of exchange
i think i’ll throw together a rought outline and shoot it over to the mighty and powerful @rusty.spork and see if he’s willing to flesh out a more verbose guide
cheers mate, thanks for the help
What is the total amount of coins that will be used to reward nodes and what is the emission rate?
I just wish that there would be a decent degree of decentralization at play too.
I suppose whales have kind of “one system”, that they tune to the max. And if any of them drop for any reason, that’s not very good for the network.
Hopefully there’s at least some variability amongst whales in what kind of systems they use. But I suppose that with time, many of them will find a way, and gravitate to the similar kind. Cheapest VPS, best connection, etc.
Just be mindful that the network itself is huge, self healing network, which can recover from disaster with built in redundancy.
In short, the network doesnt need ZFS, RAID, multiple internet connections, etc.
If it makes it convenient for you, by all means use them. However, if it is a cost/overhead, I’d strip it out personally.
Just so everyone is aware, the fastest and most user friendly way to aquire (or sell) ANT is to use: https://app.debridge.finance/ (its a dex)
You can swap usdc (any network), sol, eth, any coin basically directly into ANT
I don’t think it has been mentioned here
Off the top my head ~800k ANT per month. There is a document somewhere.
I am not 100% will need to find it.
I’ve been thinking some and I support that it would be good if the team recalculate the rewards until they find a good balance between size of the network and the supply of the token, to favor a healthy network and token economy.
if you find it, i’d be interested to know the total amount of coins emissioned for this purpose and timeframe.
I personally would have sold at least 50% of my emaid months ago if i was aware of this incentive emission rate. It seems an insane amount, especially if you consider initial investors from when omni maid was worth a lot more in .sats.
Back in the day if you held 10k maid you were considered a whale…
This is pure to incentivize network usage? as in free money to nodes without uploaders?