Let's fork the SAFE network

Cooperation, like bartering is an even older model than money. We need to evolve the model, not revert it back to some old sharing economy.

A cryptocurrency when good enough has tremendous real value. I think Bitcoin has largely failed as a general currency yet it’s still a pretty impressive achievement.

Sure, there are lots of pre-mine-pump-and-dump crapcoins but my idea of the fork is that it will be zero “premining”. 100% of the reward goes to the farmers.

The idea is that the fork coin will dethrone bitcoin with a market cap much larger by being a better cryptocurrency for general use. That’s a pretty tall order, but it’s best to aim for the stars so to not undermine any potential.

It’s better if MaidSafe makes one or more forks to prevent other forks from outcompeting the original SAFE network. Forks by others may still outcompete MaidSafe, but by at least covering some of the bases (possible alternative networks) they reduce the risk.

No that is a bad idea.

You sound like someone wanting to use other peoples money/resources to do what you want.

Ever heard of divide and conquer. That idea will divide resources and be the downfall of the project. Unless you are offering your efforts & $$$ resources to do it yourself & hire other people to do the forks.

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Yes, MaidSafe should focus entirely on the current implementation of the SAFE network, but as a next step it will be fairly easy for them to launch a fork. Because others will probably fork the code and compete with the original SAFE network. So the divide and conquer will still be there in the form of external forks. By launching their own fork, MaidSafe reduces the risk of some other fork becoming dominating.

The risk is being reduced by not wasting time on ludicrous ideas and losing focus from the original plan (which is also incomplete as seen in various current discussions related to farming and coin modeling).

There is only one supporter of this idea, you. Show us the money!
(And while I’m on this commitment topic: have a funny feeling that you’d also be too busy to share your own space for free).

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First MaidSafe needs to focus on the original SAFE network implementation. But after that they can launch one or more forks. Why? Because I think the network can be made more competitive. And consequently others will have an opportunity to launch competing forks. Greedy people will fail because that will compromise the competitiveness of the fork. In order to be optimally competitive the network will have to have 100% farming reward and free data storage.

@Anders Creating something out of thin air has no value. That’s exactly why fiat currency has no value and why we should abandon it: it’s created out of thin air and yet we are paying intrest on it. P=P+I which is unsustainable. Uploading to ANY network is not free as you have ISP costs, computer maintainance costs, and many other costs. Mining is not free as again there are costs for maintaining hardware and paying for electricity. Therefore this idea of having a network where all PUTs are free doesn’t make sense as where is the money coming from? You keep citing dogecoin but dogecoin DOESN’T have value for the simple reason that it doesn’t have much value BECAUSE it’s so easy to mine. You might as well be citing monopoly money or hyper inflated currency from Zimbowae. (I apologize for the spelling errors.)

You also don’t seem to understand that the whole 90% to farmers and 10% to devs thing is a RATIO not a fixed distribution. That is the network values the contribution of farmers 9x as much as that of devs, as in a 9:1 ratio. Farmers DO keep 100% of their earnings, so do devs, and so will content creators for that matter. The network doesn’t get some lump sum of all the safecoin and then divvy out 90% to farmers and 10% to devs and then someone needs to take a cut if we add some third party. No it’s everything is calculated in proportion to how much the network values farming. So if the farming rate is x and the network values farming 9:1 of your position then you are paid 1x/9 (Please correct me if my math is wrong.)

Clearly you have no understanding of economics if you’re saying something like this. Money = barter. Currency = barter. Anything tradable can be utilized as a currency. You could use couches as form of currency if you wanted but they’d be hard to transport BUT you could do it.

Why must a currency be easily transportable? So that it can change hands easily?

Why must a currency be backed by real value? Because if all you need to do is write a note on a piece of paper you start trading debt not value.

Why not give someone a piece of monopoly money and call it real? Because no one in their right mind would give it value. You could get a piece of paper and write numbers on it. Would it be of value? No.

But wait what if you wrote on that paper that someone owed you a measure of work for services rendered. That is what if you wrote out an I.O.U. Now you’re creating DEBT based currency. But we already have that, it’s called fiat currency and we’re trying to get away from that. If money only has value because it represents a portion of purchased debt then your currency is based on usury. And you can have an infinite amount of debt whereas there is a finite amount of resources available on the planet. Debt based currency is not sustainable or realistic.

The only currency of value is that which is backed by a resource of value of some kind be it gold, oil, water, energy, time, or in the case of safecoin energy * information * hardware * time. But at the end of the day safecoin is still a resource backed currency, just like gold or water. And the more you would try to make it “free” the more you would depreciate the value of the currency.

Why would you assume all this, especially with your model where there is nothing to generate income for farmers? How are the farmers getting paid? Where is your coin coming from? Why on earth would you assume many, or even most, early adopters would be cryptocurrency or tech savvy? Maybe they’re just privacy conscious or want to make some easy money or heard about some new way to store their data. Why are you making assumptions?

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A flat inflation rate is much less in the long run than the exponential inflation of fiat currencies. I think it will also make the coin fairly stable in terms of volatility when the network is large enough. Even if the coin fails or that free data storage will fail, the cost of making a fork is minimal so there is essentially no risk involved. I think it’s interesting at least as an experiment to try.

The farmers earn coins like for example how Dogecoin miners earn dogecoins. The value of the coin is determined by exchange services. If the coin is good, and becomes used a lot then the market cap will skyrocket.

Dogecoin is based on litecoin which in turn was based on bitcoin. You are proposing forking the safe network which has entirely different mechanics, most notably the absense of a blockchain. Also you are incorrect the value of even dogecoin isn’t purely a product of exchange services as you don’t get any dogecoin without mining it first. What is the incentive to mine your forked corn? What would be the reason to buy your forked coin? Why should I buy or mine your coin when I can just upload my entire porn collection to your network for free? Why should I spend my money or time on you?

In short what is your coin used for? Why do I want it or need it? What practical purpose does it serve?

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In the beginning it will mostly be about hoarding and trading the coin. Even when the coin has very little value in the beginning the early farmers will have a great first-mover advantage since each farmer will grab more of the total flat coin production. When the network is large each farmer will get fewer coins but the idea is that the value of the coin by then has increased a lot. It’s really tricky to provide an accurate mathematical model for this I guess, but the idea is that the coin will increase a lot in value, so you would want to buy or farm coins early. Then later the coin will be used for things like ordinary shopping, tipping and buying services etc. Or if the coin fails miserably, you will lose your investment and even the whole network may die, so the early phase is for speculation, experimentation and evaluation. If you want to be safe you need to wait a while to see if the coin becomes successful and the fork takes off and network becomes big enough to invest in.

I must say it - but don’t take this as an attempt to discourage you from posting and discussing this stuff here - this is truly pathetic.

You’re spending literally hours on this forum asking others to commit their time and/or money without being willing to commit anything from your side. If you got a part time job at McDonalds for $5/hr and worked just two weeks, you could have earned enough to start a crowdsourcing campaign along the lines of what I mentioned above.

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Yes but you haven’t explained how coins are awarded nor have you explained what they are used for on the network. Remember this isn’t bitcoin based and there is no blockchain. The general public does not know how many coins exist or have been awarded.

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Very good questions.

The coin can be used for anything. A very tiny fraction of Bitcoin is “required” for mining fees. But a huge majority of it’s value (purchasing power) comes from chasing other products and services… and speculation.

Keys to Adoption
~> If a currency is easily acquired, people have something to spend.
~> If people have something to spend, the currency can be accepted as payment for goods and services.
~> Demand increases as the currency chases more goods and services.

Most people think limited supply creates value. It’s actually demand that creates value. If the demand is higher than the supply available, the supply is seen as being scarce. If the demand is less than the supply, the supply is seen as being abundant.

If you want to make a currency valuable, make it more useful than the alternatives.
If you want people to spend that currency, make it more accessible than the alternatives.
If you want people to hoard that currency, make it store value better than the alternatives.

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Why would I trade goods and services for it if it is otherwise easily acquirable?

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The same reason merchants accept fiat… That is what people “have” to spend. This is the point @Anders is making about Dogecoin. People were actually “using” it for things because they had it.

Easily Acquired doesn’t mean FREE. The farmers still need to provide resources to generate it… the same way a person has to work 8 hours a day to earn their fiat.

It´s not demand that creates value - it´s always both, demand AND supply. There is no privilege.

Of course SAFEcoin may have a value even if not tied to a useful ressource (storage), But is that really likely? Safecoin would have to compete with all (nonsense) altcoins that have some nicer specs, but are basically any different with regard to availability.

The development of use cases (goods and services) need at least one USP - currently that´s the relation between a useful ressource and the currency. What would that USP be in a all-free version? Would it be really unique and innovative enough? People do not even care for the transaction time of Bitcoin. There are hundreds of currencies that are quicker or less bloating and still even popular coins like Dogecoin have to fight for acceptance.

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Oh, I mean that the farming reward in the fork will work in the same way as the in the original SAFE network, with two differences: 1) the inflation rate will be flat without a cap, and 2) no recycling of coins since both PUTs and GETs are free. Let’s say that the inflation is 1 billion coins per year and in the first year there are 1,000 farmers and then two years later there are 1,000,000 farmers. The early farmers will earn much more coins than the later farmers. However, the value of the coin in the beginning will likely be very small. The bigger the network is the larger the coin market cap will be. So even when there are many farmers the farming reward will still be high enough hopefully.

Compare with Bitcoin during the period 2012-11-28 to 2015-07-29. During those years Bitcoin had a flat inflation rate (because it halves only every four years). And the bitcoin value increased a lot. Of course, the value of bitcoin has also dropped much and been volatile but I believe the flattening of the bitcoin market cap is because there has been too little acceptance of bitcoin as a general currency.

My point is… Demand is the driving force.

You could have 1 World Coin, with no demand and therefore it’s worthless. As long as the demand is higher than the available supply, the value goes up. Vice versa, creating a lot of supply with no demand to follow decreases value… hence inflation.

I was just pointing out, that you are saying the same thing twice. You said “Most people think limited supply creates value.” and it´s exactly that way - it´s only another way to say “the demand is higher than the available supply”. There is really any difference.

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@Anders, having a free version of SAFE sounds awesome, but strips the main incentive to share resources with the network. If I am an individual (I wont even address the corporate aspects) and can upload all the data I want for free, why on earth would I share my resources at a cost to me when I don’t need to? This is going to crush the supply of available storage on the network…

Even if I do share my resources and get coins, they would not be needed to buy storage, so now what do I spend them on? Shopping? This would seem to be closer to a website token like Amazon Coin than an actual viable currency…

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