@ktorn now this is starting to lean towards the staking thread . If I were to attempt to think like David I would say, entropy. Someone said earlier in the thread that random issues in connectivity, etc will affect node age and I agree. That may be rather simplistic of me but I think that randomness helps make node age as is, work pretty well. On the other hand in bio mimicry a nodes age should die. My fear would be if the death is predictable then that gives someone the perfect opportunity to sell to an adversary and capitalize. This is interesting stuff. So again I’ll say that magic word… entropy.
I’m just being cryptic and weird right now.
What if we had node age as is, plus random relocation of elders across sections, plus incremental staking. As a nodes age goes up they have more responsibility and so must stake? Spitballing atm this seems half baked but maybe will serve as inspiration to someone else.
Its the number of chunks that are being stored in your vault. If you been on longer then it is assumed you have more chunks and thus more opportunity for earning.
There is not any specifics for different levels of payments.
But since safecoin has not been fully fleshed out yet by the dev team there is no certainties,
I don’t understand why you would have much of a chunk difference.
What I am proposing is that if the farming rate is variable, then we can reduce the reward for bad actors + (just thought of this) we also incentivise better hardware (node stability).
Sounds good in theory but harder to implement and creates a class structure. For those who cannot stay online 24/7 there is already the lost of income since their node age is halved and may have to wait before they can be farmers again, and their vault cleared.
For those who stay online for longer they age more and when they go offline for some reason the halving will not cause their age to go to child again.
So in that sense the longer you are online the more ability you have to earn.
To then penalise them further with lower earning rate will make those who have to go offline more often never want to farm, but we need as many as possible to be nodes for the security, even if 8 hours a day. So in effect a tiered payment rate will reduce overall security. In my opinion
On the other hand, this provides more of an incentive for people to run 24/7.
I guess I wonder how many have no choice but to go offline for a period of time versus how many choose to go offline for a period of time (or who habitually do so and need an incentive to break the habit).
If payment is by chunk number now, then we have a linear growth (with age) farming rate, but if we add a tiered farming rate on top of that then it more of an exponential growth (with age) farming rate (overall).
I suspect this will be difficult to know unless we were to try both - as people’s behaviour changes with incentives/punishments.
Perhaps though something like this would be better:
elders == 120% fee * chunks
adults == 100% fee * chunks
children == 80% fee * chunks
but again, I think experimentation would be good here … or maybe if the network itself can be adaptive in these numbers to automatically provide the best incentive based on the networks conditions - so some additional A.I. code to enhance the networks healing and autonomy.
Sorry I’m doing so much editing while you are writing a response neo! I’m a pain in the ass I know …
We have to consider younger people whose parents will not allow computer left on 24/7 even though it might be on 18 hours a day.
We have to consider the growing mobile computing market (phones, laptops, tablets) that already exceeds desktops in shear numbers and soon the capable mobile computing devices will exceed the desktops.
We need to encourage 100% of the people to be nodes. We will never get that many obviously. But to add a barrier to being a node for upto 12 hours a day where they will basically never earn enough because of tiered payments means that the potential audience for being nodes is reducing year by year with the #desktops dropping and mobile devices increasing.
I think it pretty certain that mobile devices of necessity will be much less likely to be able to be on 24/7 no matter how much incentive there is. But we need them on as nodes even if for a few hours while charging or longer if laptop that can be on from 4pm to 8am
In my opinion tiered payments will dis-incentivise the mobile device world and only help as an incentive for those with desktops who can leave their computer on for 24/7. And in my opinion this is a very much small group compared to the rest (for average people). Obviously for the much small group who are technically inclined in this area will have SBCs as vaults 24/7
We would know quickly because if the one level sees more than expected nodes compared to clients then its obvious. If we see a good number then we can have confidence. But if few then consider tiered.
No because it all takes time to code test and test and then release and make sure it cannot be gamed. So in my opinion trying for the sake of an idea is not good. It has to have more than “perhaps it might help”
For the security. Less nodes from the random public is less security
Yes but most do not unlimited bandwidth and even free wifi hotspots limit usage. So the opportunity to be a node may only happen at home. Also the battery usage and at this time we will depend on laptops to be the bigger %age uptake for mobile devices and they are very limited in battery and again mobile quotas. You cannot expect people to be nodes at work or school because of the T&Cs of those networks and quota limits. (stealing bandwidth from a workplace is a fireable offence for most companies)
Phones - battery drain of a always communicating app is heavy.
BTW I had misbehaving APP the other day chew through 36GB on mobile bandwidth before flattening the battery (overnight while I slept)
Well what about a tiered system that just gives a bonus amount for adults and seniors - so same base amount for children? And/or alternatively what about this being left up to the network to decide automatically based on detectable signals of overall node age percentages?
I don’t know - maybe I don’t understand it - but if the rate is the same for all farmers, then what is my incentive - is it just to have ‘control’ through voting power or something? I am probably too ignorant to be proposing anything, but it’s helping me understand the system better, so thanks for your patience.
Ageing. A new node has to be a baby for a while then child then adult then elder.
The halving occurs when a node goes offline/reset.
So if old enough to be farming then going offline could mean one of two things
age is now too low to farm and the node has to wait (age more) to be able to farm again with a clean vault.
age is still high enough to farm so they can continue farming.
So if a node goes off line too often and not enough on time then they will be waiting to farm and when they do have to farm with a slowly filling vault. Thus earn much slower than older nodes.
Thus there is an incentive to be on as long and as often as possible. This is already a large disincentive for those who cannot be a node for too long and/or often enough in a week. To add a second layer of reduce earning ability is to de-incentivise a even large %age of people
As to the network security. If we make the reasonable/logical assumption that there will always be a fixed number of baddies (thus a fixed # of malicious nodes) then the more random public people we can have as (good) nodes the better the security. I think we need to do this even if it means (minor to none) incentivise of capable nodes that are not 24/7 rather than anything more to reduce their ability to earn. Ageing is severe enough in my thinking.
Okay, I didn’t realize there was a ‘baby’ phase that wasn’t able to farm.
But if I can go from senior to child and still farm - then is there no disincentive here? – or no incentive to push to go beyond child? I get that the network will push you beyond child automatically if you are a well behaved node … but if there is no incentive, then this is where I wonder why the baddies wouldn’t care if they got to senior stage, then disrupted something and got kicked back down to child (where they can still farm) - then rinse wash repeat. Perhaps the network can monitor this history as well and start kicking such nodes down to baby instead of child?
But if you stay online for too short then you go from adult (farming) to child (wait to farm) and then if you don’t reach age high enough before turning off then you will be at baby.
We only need people to stay online long enough to farm. They are then helping the network farming and security.
The network decides if a node is doing enough work and farming & node duties are enough to pay the farmer what he/she is worth and that is working.
The node halving is the network ways of dis-incentivising you from turning off, and/or not staying on long enough each time. Why should someone who has earned farming status not be paid for doing the farming (which includes node duties) There is a lot more to being a node than just becoming an elder. There is routing, hop passing on of chunks, caching and these+farming is arguably the most costly for a node to do. Being an elder is more responsibility but also has the advantage that restarting is not going to stop them from farming when they return and if old enough be able to be an elder again.
The incentive is to age far enough so that you don’t loose earning ability when restarting. As I mentioned above the most costly part for a node is farming+node duties and the elder duties while more costly has the advantage that they don’t lose the ability to farm immediately on restart. But if they do it too often (restart) then they won’t last long as elder and haivng immediate farming after restarts,
I don’t think a child can farm. In any case any delays in being able to farm will make it harder for those who restart too often and be on for too long. Those will be babies most of the time since they are continually knocked back to babies.
Is there anywhere I can find algebraic equations that show how this is ‘currently’ supposed to work? As it stands it’s too vague for me and hence impossible for me to analyse how to really improve (if possible) on the status quo.
. If I were to attempt to think like David I would say, entropy. Someone said earlier in the thread that random issues in connectivity, etc will affect node age and I agree. That may be rather simplistic of me but I think that randomness helps make node age as is, work pretty well. On the other hand in bio mimicry a nodes age should die. My fear would be if the death is predictable then that gives someone the perfect opportunity to sell to an adversary and capitalize. This is interesting stuff. So again I’ll say that magic word… entropy.
But didn’t see it anywhere in my quick search on the forum.