In the bad future, we will not compete with Filecoin but with a copy of Safe. If you have two identical software, which will support the social consensus?
Yes, we support David and the team, but can you be sure that other people will not prefer the larger Safe Network with more storage and security due to its size? The network with token pool for farming?
I’m not sure what they will prefer, so I want us to use these methods first or at least discuss how to use them if necessary one day.
I don’t see how any copy can be successful against the original. We’ve had this discussion before though and I won’t repeat it, but will simply say that nothing will replace bitcoin unless it is orders of magnitude better and hence attracts users at an order of magnitude greater than the original.
I believe the same will hold true for SN - perhaps even more so as established content won’t be easily or cheaply duplicated. So sure there will be copies, but they will likely be experimental private networks and won’t gain ground. Sure there may be ponzi versions of SN created as well … good luck, they will fly and then die.
I don’t expect you to believe my ramblings @Dimitar … it’s clear you strongly believe your position - just as I strongly believe mine … we will see what happens.
It is not a matter of faith. I look at what is happening in the real world: The original Ethereum is Ethereum Classic. The original SushiSwap is UniSwap…
Now that isn’t really true, at least not for Ethereum (I can’t speak for UniSwap as I haven’t followed it).
People followed the Ethereum team’s product. They made a decision to fork it, but it is still theirs. People followed them, as they felt an affinity to the Ethereum team. The fact that some folk tried to keep the old pre-fork chain alive, but have largely failed, also illustrates the network effect.
The Safe Network is designed to only have as many farmers as it needs. It literally throttles out new farmers from joining until they are needed. Having as much as is needed adds to the security of the network, as it prevents malicious nodes from flooding the network (in a ‘google attack’).
A much harder ‘attack’ to face off is a 3rd party who is willing to pay users to store data (or give data away for free) on the network, rather than feed farmers. Getting valuable data on the network, triggering the network effect, is a much bigger threat to Safe Network. Perhaps our focus should be on that instead?
Ethereum was hard forked, so no data lost (but some small amount of data altered on purpose. So the people who owned anything on Ethereum had value in both networks … same won’t be true for SN hard-forks. Secondly the leadership of Ethereum stayed with Ethereum, they didn’t move on to classic … and the following of the Ethereum “network” as with any network, is going to stick with the leaders of that network. So sure, if SN hard forks and Maidsafe swaps over to support the new hard fork, then you’d probably be correct … I don’t see that happening.
I’ve gotta admit I’m still really scratching my head on this…
Reddit has nothing about storage being expensive: newest submissions : filecoin
Filecoin forum has nothing either: https://discuss.filecoin.io/latest
It just seems like literally nobody cares to upload data to the network.
I would love to know what the filecoin foundation/company thinks of this. I would feel like we failed and would be going mad to get real users on the network.
Again, it’s hard to know the vision of some projects and nobody seems to publish fundamentals or similar. I feel all this lack will make Safe a roaring success or totally answer the question “do we care about data security, persistence and privacy”, I hope humanity does.
Add “currently” to this statement - “nobody cares to upload data to the network currently”
As a person who took to the streets to talk to people who are not in the crypto, I will repeat it again - people are interested in controlling their personal data, but not at the expense of their convenience.
Using centralized services is convenient.
That is why I think that we must plan and prepare for a process of imposing the Safe Network, not for a revolution.
Hence @JimCollinson and the team, a big differentiator for us is convenience and has been touted as such since day 1. Point and click, single-button install/uninstall and be up and running 
This part we must get right.
It may sound crazy, but I see no reason why Filecoin couldnt be prosperous coin without anybody using the data storage. Filecoins ability to store value may be enough utility for people to use it (same as Bitcoin).
It’s not crazy, I’ve been saying this for a long time. Safe tokens will store value in the same way, and because they are not meaningless, but there is actuall benefit from them, and because more people will be able to get them for free, they have a chance to replace Bitcoin. That is why I believe that the 112 Club is a completely real possibility.
Safe Network is so much more than that however … it’s like Monero for coin privacy, nano for transaction speed, dropbox/google drive for backups, Torrents for quick media availability, and ZeroNet/Tor-hidden-service for unblockable websites.
I don’t think many people care very strongly about the security issues of the clear-net, but data availability and permanence are going to be big wins and even though Maidsafe can’t advertise the token as the best privacy coin out there … it is, and the privacy-coin people are going to take notice.
I also think that focusing on the dropbox/google-drive replacement angle (plus privacy and permanence) could be a huge win. Setting up filecoin and IPFS is a game for experts, Safe Network is grandma enabled. People who like things like filecoin or storj or sia in particular aren’t going to tell grandma about them - they know it’s a waste of time. But if it’s as easy as a regular app install and boom, you can backup your files - that’s a huge app all by itself.
I believe that Safe Network is just at the beginning of what it can do. I’d like to see a whole OS built around it and built around the browser and WASM’d apps. Stripped down OS could be super fast. Repo’s on the network itself - unstoppable.
Just the beginning of an entirely new paradigm.
Yes! That is what I would want to see one day, shift from somehow connecting personal devices to personal OS running across devices.
Safe will not replace Bitcoin, that is too strong assumption. Imagine it like singers, when new star appears it doest mean people will stop liking or listening to others. Bitcoin only knows to sing, Filecoin knows to sing and dance, but it seems people are only interested in its singing. Safenetwork will be able to sing, dance and some other things, that is all we know now.
The posts on that forum don’t really inspire. It is mostly chatter about setting up nodes.
From a user perspective, some asked about a Parler alternative, with little more than tumbleweeds in response:
https://discuss.filecoin.io/t/any-chance-filecoin-could-work-for-parler/1818
Another thread that I thought may be interesting:
https://discuss.filecoin.io/t/is-filecoin-fully-decentralized/1476
“No, filecoin is not a network for decentralized storage, it is a decentralized network for single node storage”
Most threads have 1 or 2 comments. Maybe Reddit is where it is at?
RE: filecoin. I found this article interesting:
Filecoin: What is it and why is it so popular in China? By Angela Wang October 14, 2020
Excerpts:
With the popularity of cryptocurrency mining in China, it is not surprising that these firms attracted a minimum of $500,000 in sales in the first few days. In addition, data from blockchain explorers revealed that the leading storage miners on Filecoin are located in China. Cumulatively, these miners account for over 80 percent of the network’s testnet storage mining power at roughly 15 petabytes (15,000 terabytes).
The anticipation in China is so high that more than $15 million worth of Filecoin mining software and hardware has been stashed by mining pools waiting for investors and self-mining. Other large BTC mining companies like RRMine reportedly sold $15 million in cloud computing contracts “within minutes.” RRMine is also accumulating FIL mining hardware.
Unfortunately, it’s not the amount of free space you provide to the network that matters more, but the amount of sealed data. While accessing the FIL protocol does not require massive processing power, sealing data on a hard drive does.
The sealing can be done by harnessing power from a CPU or a GPU hardware. However, throwing a piece of specialized equipment in the mix makes it faster, allowing miners to seal more data in a day. In return, they also get more rewards.
Also, China’s rigid stand on capital controls has led Chinese investors to seek reputable cryptocurrency or blockchain-based projects that can facilitate financial interaction with the rest of the world. Filecoin’s association with leading venture capital firms makes it attractive to the Chinese community. Also, its storage mining tag makes it simple for retail miners and investors.
So perhaps the large amount of available storage on the filecoin network is due simply to the huge filecoin fad in China right now.
Isn’t that what Bitcoin does already?
Seems like a total bubble to me. When this cycle pops, I expect it to collapse.
Anyone here post this?! 
I added a comment there just now. But I didn’t write the OP.
EDIT: just found this:
In a series of recently published tweets, CEO of Protocol Labs, Juan Benet, highlighted two measures the team will take to fix the ongoing problems.
First, the miners will soon start getting 25% of the block rewards immediately. A corresponding improvement proposal, FIP-0004, was accepted on Oct. 18. According to the project’s official Slack, it will be implemented on Wednesday or Thursday this week.
Second, Protocol Labs will provide small loans to miners. The details of these loans are also expected to be published this week, according to Benet. These loans will be sized to ensure the network’s growth at a “healthy rate,” which again signals the team’s focus on long-term sustainability.
So seems that Protocol Labs is subsidizing the networks growth at this point. Doesn’t seem like a good model to me. I suppose with the funds they have and the large amount of tokens vesting for the company itself they can afford it for now. But seems very ponzi-like to me.
Lots of other nuggets in the source article: https://cryptobriefing.com/filecoin-miners-face-harsh-reality-behind-projectss-tokenomics/