Great discussion. Just wanted to highlight this comment:
Whenever I bore my friends with my (very, very limited) understanding of this concept, they get stuck on the “it sounds too hard” part, before they even get to the “there’s money involved part.” On the flipside, the bit they seem to like is the fairness of “giving resources to use resources.” Maybe some granny-friendly automation of that is the marketable proposition? i.e. Never any mention of safecoins (let alone putting or getting), and only a simple graphic showing “storage offered versus storage used” or similar? I take the point that’s not quite how it works, but I wonder if that might be how the core idea could be communicated?
Yes this needs to be thought through very carefully. Its the chicken-n-egg problem. You need a coin to create an account to have a mailbox, but need to run a vault for a period of time to get a coin.
So we need rather a method to allow account creation for legit people and still prevent account spamming. When an account costs a coin then people won’t do account spamming because it costs too much. But if we create a way for accounts to be created for free then it will be abused too much.
Node aging and farming for a coin will not get a person a coin quick enough. Imagine you want a mailbox on SAFE so you do the “click me” then wait hours or days to have the coin to create the account to have the mailbox. Mailbox will cost at least a PUT and you need an account to associate it with.
One decent way is having a voucher APP that allows you to create a voucher (actually a wallet) with one or few coins that you can then send to your mate and do the “click to get SAFE mail” and that loads SAFE software and runs an APP to do the rest. All the person has to do is specify the account name their passphrase and enter (copy/paste) the voucher ID (which is the wallet private key). Done and dusted. The APP could also ask if they want to set up a node/vault and do it if the person responds with yes.
This I think is something we have to consider how to do it and make something like this happen.
Neat idea re: vouchers. Reminds me a little of the old AOL CDs, but updated to the “digital native” era. I understand they were widely viewed as successful at the time? Anyway, I’m excited to see how this pans out.
Exactly what crossed my mind as well!
I’m imagining seeing an iTunes style Maidsafe voucher next to the Lyca/Lebara Mobile Sim packs at the tills in the supermarket.
I used MSPaint which is why it looks so good, pretty seamless in my opinion… If the team want to use this in advertising material thats absolutely fine…
Would the voucher need to be a store of value rather than an actual MAID coin though, to eliminate the issue of coin ‘worth’ volatility?
I think ”sender pays” is a powerful idea, as in your example @neo where you send me an email which has a Safecoin associated with it so I can read it even without an account - and afterwards I do have an account!
It would be nice if all my emails had this option and only people who needed the coin claim it - so I can set a donation budget that I top up from time to time as friends/contacts use it up and join the network.
The same principle could be used by application developers to promote their Apps off network, to get people to join SAFEnetwork in order to use their app.
I’m not sure how to make it work, but it would be a useful way for anyone to help promote adoption of the network among friends, or anyone they want to encourage.
An email stamp - what an idea. On the safe network, to prevent spam, I would love to prioritize my email inbox. Only a small fee, one that would prevent mas spammers, and if they did, I’d get lots of coins - the sum of all those tiny fractions sent to my account.
The larger value of the stamp the higher priority it gets and works its way in to my current email inbox.
Option to white list friends and relatives would be good, for any minimum price.
Edit: marketeers would cut out the middle men… Google. Users who receive targeted advert emails would get the coins that AdSense would usually see. Providing more cash for safe users.
People sending mail on SAFE will have to pay to “PUT” the mail message. So mass spamming will be expensive anyhow.
The email @happybeing is talking of is the internet email and that by sending such an email the newbie can use that coin to open an account and read the SAFE mail (message) that was sent. To interpret it differently means we have a catch 22 you cannot receive a SAFE mail without having a SAFE account, but then the email would be useless. So that means the person receiving the email doesn’t have a SAFE account to receive a SAFE mail message.
Mm. The catch is still there, right? I mean an email is sent over internet, allowing a user to claim a coin and open an account on safe, but only after that can there be any safe-messages sent to that account.
The new account would need to send a message to the sender, announcing its presence, and potentially triggering the sending of the original email.
So:
Queue this original (safe)email, send a clearnet email with a coin and a token. Wait for a new account on safe to send me a “I’m here”-message with this token, send out the queued safe email to this account.
Ah hehe I think I get what you’re saying (or maybe not internet and text) I was just trying to make it clear to myself what the flow was. (and check to see if we meant the same thing).
Same here, not sure how it would work. Since it’s functionality not only an email app, but potentially all apps on the network would use… hmm… is it an app in itself? consumed by all others.
Here is one possible way and what I was saying before
create voucher - this is creating a wallet and transferring one or more coins to it and the voucher is a way to encapsulate the wallet private key. Typically as a QR code and as text. And the voucher has a link to the SAFE binaries
send this voucher to your friend by internet email or by a USB stick or as a paper document or …
your friend follows the link in the email to install the SAFE binaries
your friend sets up new account and when asked for wallet (with at least one coin) the friend supplies the voucher code (this is actually the wallet private key)
done your friend now has a paid up account and can then proceed to set up
mail ID
their own wallet ID
setup vault if they wish
transfer any remaining coins from the voucher to their own wallet and discard the voucher wallet.
Loving the voucher idea! It is actually nice to share this sort of thing with people, especially when the fee is low. It sort of makes you feel like you are doing your bit!
I agree, I think the voucher idea is great. Maybe we should start a community campaign for users to pledge 1%, or 0.1% of their coins for this purpose to quicken network growth after release. This could generate excitement and marketing material for Safe while not diluting coins already on the market.
Imagine the positive PR this could generate if a community is donating a lot of coins to jumpstart the network of their own volition. It would really be a win win for everyone, as positive PR and a larger user base means likely a higher demand for coin (aka higher price).
I’m thinking of simpler solutions - maybe instead of sending a voucher, just make it possible for my friend to register account for me? Or second idea - what about giving each account a -1 safecoin balance on register?
This is commonly referred to as a “Network Effect”, I haven’t seen anyone use the term, so I figured I’d give everyone something to read up on. A16Z have some great podcasts on this stuff, changed the way I think about scaling consumer style businesses.
This discussion has motivated me to finish the Behavioural Economics book I have on the shelf, I think we could probably solve many of these problems using more “realistic/pragmatic” ways of generating value for people, or at least, the ways we tell them about it.
Then you lose a degree of anonymity and have a link from them to your account. On a one person basis it might not represent an issue, but to make it a model of how to do things then unintended consequences from the huge loss of anonymity and security would only hurt SAFE.
Remember that if they create your account then they can preload it with anything and they have access to your account even if you change passwords. But that isn’t enough they have the potential to have copied all the private keys to your wallet, to your mail, to your … So even changing passwords does not stop them stealing your coins later on since they have the private keys to your wallet address.
Basically its a nightmare to scrub all your SAFE account so that you have all new IDs and keys. Except the most important key and that is to your account itself.
Paying for personal storage is probably what will get most people to want to get some Safecoins at first. Then popular public files will most likely entice people to share their comments, driving more people to get some coins. Slowly the network will grow and communities will emerge and more people will find values in acquiring Safecoins in order to participate.
And its not like you stop using the normal web when Safe comes out. You don’t suddenly need to pay for everything you used to get for free. Safe adds features that the normal web simply cannot provide and people will find value in using it at different point in time.
If all Safe does is become a pale copy of what the normal web is then I agree people won’t want to pay for it. But if Safe provides an unique experience they can’t get elsewhere, people won’t think twice about paying for it. Just like they don’t think twice about paying for Netflix or buying books for their e-reader.
And considering all you need is a vault to get some coins, it will soon become a no brainer.
internet and text) I was just trying to make it clear to myself what the flow was.