Hi all, I’m new to SAFE but have read the documentation and wikis pretty thoroughly. I have a question about preventing App developers from trying to game the system. Would it be possible for an app developer to create a super basic app of no real value, and then pay people some small amount to “use it” solely for the purpose of generating safecoin reward? This would not be that different than paying people to click ads online to show that many clicks were generated, but really the clicks are of no real value since there is no chance of a sale - but the clickers would get some small fraction of the $$$ generated from the click. Is there some simple way to avoid this that I am missing?
Welcome @howevilweare to the forum
This has been discussed at length in a few topics. As you read the forum and delve into the topics you will see this question come up from time to time. I tried looking for the topic I was thinking of but alas cannot find it right now.
But it is also related to the proposed Pay the Producer and people coping content to “profit” from it.
In essence the reward is for the health of the network and to attract developers. One line of thought is that the best APP will get the followers, and so the developer has incentive to keep improving their APP.
Dunno how the App developer could earn enough to do that. Each Get the APP causes only (on average) gets a small amount. Then the APP developer has to give the users an even smaller amount. Yes it could be done but you would have to have one interesting APP for it to be worth the time & effort the developer puts into it. But yes it would work and advertising where you pay the viewers will certainly be a possibility and preferable to the current “push” advertising we now have.
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you might find these topics of interest
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Hmmm I see - thank you for the reply and the interesting links. I think it will be interesting to see how things work out since the goal seems to be maximize the rewards to legit developers who create great apps while at the same time minimizing the attainable rewards for the fakers.
Hopefully the small size of the reward that you mention will disincentivize the fakers and will not deter the real devs. I think one of the threads you sent mentioned something like ~1 safecoin/1mil GETs. As an app developer that doesn’t sound like much of an incentive, although I guess the fact that there is any chance of making profit at all is maybe what I should be focusing on, since in the current web pretty much everyone out there is spending money on hosting w/o the chance of any sort of comparable profit. But it does seem like these apps that can generate mid-range traffic may need to supplement their income somehow with subscription/usage fees or something like that. To me the question seems to come down to “Is the small amount of potential safecoin profits enough for me to spend a bunch of time and resources developing a free-to-use tool?”
From reading some of the other threads it seems like the network will have some built in features to prevent this sort of thing, although it does sound a bit complex to a beginner with a much more high level understanding of the functionality.
Yea well, that is an unknown and will vary a lot depending on the current farming rate at the time. It can be as low as 1 coin per 2^60 (1 with 20 zeros) gets
But like any great idea there will be copies and that is human nature and in a decentralised system there is not much that can be done since it really takes the human element to police it. As long as the original can be recognised and supported by APP stores and continuing development then the copies will fit amongst themselves for the uneducated user who chooses the copy over the original (& often better). The more copies the less rewards each of the copies get
Cool man thx for the input! Looking forward to keeping up with these boards and progress on the project. I played around with the Launcher/Demo App/Safe Browser and deployed the legacy version of my small biz’ website on it.
A few javascript errors in the browser but it was pretty amazing to me that with only very minor mods to my frontend code - it was able to load up from the safe network. If I wanted to contribute in some way to the project, what would you say is a good starting point? I’m decent w/ Python/Javascript/Linux/Git and Java. Thanks again for your responsiveness!
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Probably best to leave that question till you get a little more familiar with the concept and implementation.
You can find a few APPs already being developed and there will be some ideas in those topics for how you can help or create your own. When you are looking through the forum and the project there will likely be things you see where you maybe able to help the project directly. Some are doing translations, some are writing APPs for SAFE and some are doing graphics for the project and a number of other things.
It really depends on your passion, your abilities and what you see that you can help with.
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Welcome to the community. This question is the appropriate response for anyone who starts to get their head around what’s being done here imo, good on you! 
There are so many amazing use cases for SAFE. There’s no end of great APP ideas that could be built to help the public get the most out of their new-found digital freedom when it finally appears.
As Neo says, do some more reading and then either start your own project or jump in to help someone else with theirs. If you need any support or help you’ll find this community is enthusiastic, focused and committed, so you will get a lot of help if you ask for it.
Also don’t forget to check out the developer forum for more detailed technical discussions.
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@howevilweare as @Jabba says, lots of opportunities, so hang out and join in as you wish.
Some of us are blending our own pet project with trying to help others get going. Some are more working in the background, others contribute to the core and earn bounties etc. Non-coders help out in other ways such as translation, feedback, testing, brainstorming etc. It’s a great community!
If you are interested in joining another project and like the idea of building something to help others build or migrate websites, maybe take a look at http://safepress.org which is my baby, but seriously understaffed at the moment. Lots of opportunity there.
There are regularly people around wanting someone to develop an idea into a product as well, and often willing to pay. So it is very much up to you how much and in what way you can get involved.
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