Feasibility of small setups in the real network

Ant-Node (was Safe-node)
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Hello.

I’ve just had this thought. Autonomi advertises a model, where you can run a node to earn tokens, which you can use for uploads later. From what I see recently, this model seems broken. We have almost empty network, where hardly anyone gets any nanos for farming. If I wanted to get some nanos for uploads, there is no way to do it other than running thousands of nodes.

Do you think it will change in the real network, when beta rewards will be over? For me only way it could work is people shut down their multi-thousand node farms, so that network will become like 50% full and real economy starts working, and running even a single node could give me tokens.

Second thought – is it wise to switch from Beta to Release without resetting the network? Can it be, that we will end up with network full of Project Gutenberg books or other material, that nobody paid real money for, and then big node farms aimed at collecting beta rewards will be shut down, and network becomes full, or even breaks. With a real economy there could be a lot less data created, because it costs money. So no one is still getting rewards, thus people will shut down their rigs, until supply meets the demand. I’m afraid it could break already uploaded data.

Do I think right, that this is probably going to happen soon, as this Friday a wave1 leaderboard is going to be closed, so probably end of incentive for wave1 participants?

But, I cannot think of better way to test real economy, than actually start a network with real tokens and real money. Perhaps it could be reset later, with the same snapshots of bitcoin/ethereum blockchains?

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These problems possible in the early days of the network have been discussed and the solution to them was to change the design to allow an ever-growing network by adding nodes at any moment and creating a Foundation to pay for the initial seeding of data into the network. More details from the discussion here:

Privacy. Security. Freedom

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I’m not sure if I’m going to answer everything correctly, but please correct me if I’m wrong.

The first observation you make it 100% correct. But the incentives at the beta are different from the incentives on the real network. Right now, nobody cares about earning nanos, as nanos itself are useless. The rewards that are attached are the beta reward program, which causes an entirely different dynamic. The live network will reward people according to their contribution, if too many (as is now the case) fight over the limited (again, the case now) amount of data, running a node will simply not be profitable. When the network goes live and demand rises, more nodes will be required, and thus more will be paid for data when it is scarce on the network, therefor limiting the data people will put on the network (more expensive) and in addition incentivizing people to run nodes (more profitable).

To your second point, I believe (pretty confident) that the beta will not go over into the release. Beta will eventually end after which the live network will be released as fresh. Again, please correct me if I’m wrong.

Last, wave 1 leaderboard will (just like any other leaderboard) run for 12 weeks (minus the weeks they started later). Every week will snapshot the nanos earned and reward participants a percentage of the 1/12 price pool.

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The plan as stated by Jim is that the last functioning Beta will continue into launch with data intact and genesis occurring at launch nullifying the beta tokes since the beta tokens will not have the valid genesis. IE they will not validate

As to the low nanos. Well that is a condition that is artificial in this stage of beta.

At launch there will be over 400 million tokens becoming available for uploading. There won’t he the tiny number of tokens to squabble over.

Later in beta will be the testing of the exchange process which will release a good number of test beta tokens to use for uploads.

Jim has also stated numerous times that beta testers will also have the advantage of not only being in the rewards program but will also be able to upload and for the last beta have that data remain. Effectively free uploading for them. I guess the exchange testing will be limited too in that someone with 1 million tokens will not get 1 million test tokens to upload 10s/100s of TBs of data for free. Expect caps on the test exchange (my opinion here on caps)

The HUGE advantage of allowing us to upload and the partners to upload during beta with the uploads remaining is that there will be a more valuable network existing at launch due to the extensive data existing on the network making it more usable and appealing

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It’s hard for me to see how these problems are similar. In my opinion initial data seeding makes real network economy start harder, and the discussion you link to is about the assumption, that seed data makes the network more resilient to fork attack.

Can you perhaps link to specific posts? I’ve read only top replies, perhaps I missed something important?

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You have the following statement:

The Foundation will pay for data to be uploaded, which protects against all the potential problems in the early days - starting with a vampire attack and ending up with no one getting a nanos.

Privacy. Security. Freedom

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I’d say it will keep the upload price high artificially, so people still won’t upload, because it’s too expensive.

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This sounds to me like the argument that no one will pay for expensive bitcoin transactions when bitcoin is expensive. Historically, we see that expensive and cheap in crypto are relative things and depend on what people believe.

Privacy. Security. Freedom

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This is because uploads on the current Beta network are tiny vs the network size, which will absolutely be different in the real network, and likely also different later on in Beta. In the real network, people will have sufficient tokens to upload, meaning nodes will start filling up, earnings will be more plentiful, and an economy can develop.

The current stage of Beta is a first step of seeing how the network behaves at a larger scale than previously tested, but it’s not yet a fully fledged network, because normal users can’t easily upload.

I think there’s a possibility that some Beta nodes will shut down, and depending on how full these are, it could be a problem.

However, I think it’s unlikely that loads of nodes will drop out, because at launch many tokens will become available to a whole load of people who will start to upload stuff, which will incentivise nodes to stay online and keep earning.

If Beta nodes aren’t that full ahead of launch, I don’t think there’s much of a risk. It will be cheap to upload in the initial stages of the network, so early user data will quickly flood the network until store cost reaches a level that slows the flow of data and makes it worthwhile to keep nodes online. A few drop-outs will only help find this balance sooner.

But, if Beta nodes are very full at launch, it could be that store cost is so high that people don’t want to upload at that price. This would make rewards are rare, so some nodes might shut down, raising store-cost further. This could become a vicious circle that could wreck the early network if sufficient nodes aren’t started.

If this analysis is correct, it will be important to make sure Beta nodes aren’t too full ahead of a transition to the live network to avoid the threat.

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But Bitcoin’s transaction price is high, because there are people wanting to pay that much, and not because there’s a single entity with a bag of money creating transactions just for the sake of it.

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Here’s the logic - I turn on my node, I get tokens from the uploaded data from the Foundation, are these tokens expensive or cheap for me?

They are free to me, but the market may have given them a high price. Feelings will certainly affect how people act.

Privacy. Security. Freedom

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I expect the foundation will be sensible and not spam the network in the early days in a way that forces up the store cost excessively.

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They are not free. For some people it takes days to set up their nodes without success. This will change for sure, but still it will require some time, attention and a tiny bit of resources. Then it can take days until some data comes to my node if only Foundation is uploading, and I want to upload NOW! Another way is buying tokens, but the price can be too high, again – because it’s artificially inflated.

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Let’s hope there is a sensible middle-ground, that will keep the price low enough, but at the same time prevent the “vampire attack”, that @Dimitar spoke about in the other topic.

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I understand where your confusion is coming from. Token price and network price are two different things.

You can have a very expensive token and at the same time have a very low upload price.

The very low price is guaranteed by the second solution to the problem I pointed out to you - the ability to immediately add an unlimited number of nodes to the network (The original design was not like this - there was a waiting queue to enter the network).

If you have a high price of the token, people will want to add more nodes, which automatically lowers the upload price by reducing the number of nanos needed for uploading, without immediately reducing the price of the token, and equilibrium is achieved.

Privacy. Security. Freedom

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Here is an example with numbers. 1 nano is 1 billionth of 1 token. The @happybeing site which he is trying to upload right now in theory currently costs 500 nanos to upload, which at a token price of 10000 dollars would cost 0.005 cents. 0.005 cents for forever storage at 10000$ token!

Privacy. Security. Freedom

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I’d say it still is an equilibruim between how much Farmers want and how much the Foundation is going to pay. Which does not involve normal users.

So, they should stop uploading until the cost is acceptable to other users. Let’s hope it will still be acceptable for farmers to store already uploaded data.

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Jevon’s paradox

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Initial Seeding Rewards are essential, the new users are providing value upfront by joining, adding capacity and fighting through the bugs.

The Autonomi Network supporting foundation must issue rewards which are substantial enough to attract the new users they are looking for to also allow the new users to start uploading files by spending those initial rewards as well.

These “join” rewards to solve @JimCollinson 's need to get up to 1000 testers fast, can be branded as ‘Bug bounties’, for compliance to jurisdictional edicts, so its not just a free air drop, which as we know is banned in the USA by the SEC and govt authorities. tick tock, chop chop. :wink:

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We kinda do have this already though, if you look at the distribution curve.

But we do still need nodes to function like the intended design of the Network, so not just (the nodes themselves) being paid to fill up with the initial seeding, as that would be pretty gameable, and we might not learn what we need to learn.

I think we’ve got a pretty good balance of incentives at the moment… so we’ll see how it unfolds.

Slow start on the uploads, and some early teething issues have added a bit of frustration for sure. But that’s why we beta!

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