When visiting Scotland, I had the opportunity to spend time with David and talk about various topics with him. One of them being the likelihood of no default free space in the network. It just makes sense to remove the potential for folks to take advantage of this system and avoid having to force people into proof of human exercises.
We should instead be focusing on way to help others have easy access to safecoin and incentives for charity to those who cannot afford access. I am reaching out to a couple of cryptocurrency exchanges to support safecoin and @dallyshalla is working on a distributed exchange but it will be equally as important to get safecoin in the hands of as many people as possible and find ways to fund access for others.
The Ripple fork, Stellar had this process of linking a Facebook account to earn some stellar then send a certain amount of stellar to another person and earn the same amount you gifted back. But with that we run into the proof of human situation again. However, if the amount of safecoin necessary to get basic usage out of the network was minimal, I donāt imagine it would be hard to convince folks to donate small amounts if it was easy for them to do soā¦ especially if it would get others to join the network to interact with.
David mentioned in an email the concept of splitting creation and activation of accounts. Basically the idea would be that creating an account would be free to do and activation requiring a small cost (ie $0.50). Creating an account would allow individuals to farm safecoin so eventually they would earn enough to activate, even with the smallest device.
What other ways can we create incentive for getting more folks onto the network without giving default free space? Tip bots? How can we best encourage charity and gifting safecoin?
I would personally love to see charity projects focused on getting nodes out so others can farm safecoin and use the network.
Charity is already covered by @ioptio so Iāll add the mobile device angle.
Once an account is created it can receive donations and/or start earning Safecoin by running in Non-Client mode. I donāt think smart phones would be very efficient at providing mass storage, BUT I do think they will be able to route data as part of the Network infrastructure.
Cell Phone Scenario?
With the exception of certain demographics (social teenagers), most people are not on their smart phones 24/7. People usually charge their smart phone while they sleep. Thatās 6-8hrs potential for the Non-Client API to be routing for the SAFE Network. Iām not talking about running a vault, just data routing.
Obviously, this is most effective for those who have āunlimitedā plans. For those with limited plans, the trick will be to earn enough Safecoin to cover the Non-Client operation costs. That is dependent on Safecoinās fiat value and how much they earn per minute. With the growing number of smart phones, Safecoin distribution should not be a problem.
Iām not a smart phone expert. This is just speculation as to how we can make a workable system for mobile users.
Marketing slogan: āPay for your cell phone by running the SAFE Network API while you sleep!ā
Yes this is quite an area of research. @Viv is pretty much the closest we have to an expert in mobile in the office. There are a few issues to deal with. First the physical, battery, network etc. But the biggest issue is the App Marketplaces, Apple is particularly hard on apps, they impose an incredible amount of rules and take a lot of ability away (some app providers have just given up).
So there is a technical issue that is likely to be easily overcome, or will be very soon, but a larger more political issue with App stores.
I feel confident we can achieve this, but I am not ignoring the issues surrounding it. Like you @dyamanaka I am no expert in the mobile environment (I have run vaults and even CI runs on my phone with ubuntu live installed, just to check and it runs everything).
We will need to do some good research here as itās an enormous area of concern, that and small/old hardware. Particularly in remote, rural and poorer areas. @happybeing and his arm based solar powered tests are really helpful here, we need more people to come up with other crazy schemes.
So I feel, its possible, but will require dedicated research, which is hard just now as we are out of hours per day with launch. I think this will be an area we attack ferociously on launch (in Beta) and will need a ton of help.
In terms of battery life, having it plugged into the charger should mitigate power limitations. The reduced life expectancy on the battery itself is my concern. Cell phone batteries are still expensive. Iāve replaced a few of them myself.
BUT, if the user is able to earn enough to break even, or make a profit on their mobile device. OMG, can you imagine the adoption effect that will take hold? I am very optimistic as technology is constantly improving so our worries may solve itself over time.
Since using applications on the SAFE Network is mostly free;
except when performing PUTS to vaults;
Therefore apps can be turned into faucets.
For example a āPac Manā game that has a ton of popularity and is being rewarded by the SAFE Network App developer pool;
would allow people to use SAFE Network without offering much storage space; however bringing to the network GETs which would reward the farmers and create āeconomyā in the network;
Additionally, the āfaucet appā would put the activation safecoins into the peoplesā hands; the game of pacman is a proof of unique human;
+using the decentralized exchange which is a faucet for app coins to users; and also the distributed exchange of bitcoin to safecoin is proving evolutionary - indicated after having shown several individuals who work on exchange and transaction systems for bitcoin.
(I will also note that the app faucets should be looked into thoroughly and the systems to be incorporating the possible abuses of such applications in order to siphon off as much App developer coins as possible)
I always liked the idea of farmers choosing how much storage space they wanted to donate charitably. The network would then distribute free space accordingly.
How difficult would it be to create our own phone, a SAFEphone? Print out a case, stick in a speaker and mic in and then write voip and networking software to run via the SAFE network? Viola encrypted telephony chat with a āphoneā hardware interface. Would of course be better with a touch screen so you could do more but yeah.
I think the main issue here is that the networking geeks want to use the cell network to route data and such. But really if everyone is carrying a SAFEphone then you could theoretically build a mesh network on top of that mobile platform which would create a distributed decentralized network via all those mobile handhelds.
Instead of apps you could use HTML5 websites. Coinpunk.com is a great example of a online Bitcoin wallet that can be used on every smartphone. The platform specific building seems so boring.
I think having Maidsafe installed on these hardware could help us spread quicker:
