I’m surprised that it hasn’t been pointed out that assuming that safenet fulfills the promises layed out by the maidsafe foundation, safecoin being unprofitable to farm due to safenet users farming for peanuts could actually be beneficial to businesses. Because in that case, that would mean that software start-ups could buy the storage and eventually computation their software needs for pennies on the dollar relative to what they’re paying now, or they could even get their users to pay the safecoin costs if safecoin becomes that valueless as a currency. In that case, the inevitable safenet billionaire app devs could then build internet infrastructure with the money saved to better capitalize on the free-to-them storage and computation, thus providing the world with a better internet, probably for free given the above, while they get to make more billions. So yeah, please have safecoin be worthless.
I’ve been pointing out all along: if farming turns out to be unprofitable, there won’t be any. (Others say in that case the network would adjust the farming rate, so it’s impossible that there won’t be profit-making farmers).
It doesn’t take a lot of creativity to reach a conclusion that in the hypothetical situation you described everyone would choose to be a businessman.
And so, would you agree that the topic of safecoin’s value doesn’t have much value to it, given the win-win nature of both outcomes?
Could you track a reference, link and context for this? It does not sound right.
The best understanding I have as to plans for data storage is that whatever the initial price, the User buys a block of storage capacity, say 1 gb. Then, when the User goes to PUT data to the network, the amount of data in the file to be PUT is subtracted from his account limit. This continues until the User needs more and then buys another bunch (another gig or whatever) from the network at whatever price the network algorithm dictates. Then the cycle repeats.
I see a loss-loss outcome, if it wasn’t clear from my earlier posts.
How many of you actually donated to Wikipedia, archive.org or similar public infrastructure?
I see where you are coming from , and because some of the functions of the network are functions that are not explained fully yet or set in stone, some things just have a lingering question mark over them for the moment until the network is actually live and functioning so we can see it in action.
What you have to ask ultimately is , which type of people will be contributing the most, will it be the for profit farmers , or will it be everyday people .
If its everyday people then the level at which it becomes unprofitable for them is absolutely tiny , they have virtually zero costs , cos they would otherwise be using their computer and doing what they usually do. or having a small node like hard drive device hooked up to your wifi (in the near future) independent of their computer.
If it’s companies wishing to profit by solely acting as nodes for the network and that is the main backbone of the network then that does change things and means it requires a need to be profitable otherwise they leave. But i think the safenet would have failed if it relied by a huge majority on these for profit farmers
But i don’t think that the majority of contribution to the network will be in the form of these companies/farms for profit , and most likely will be everyday people contributing with very little cost to themselves, contributing and being rewarded with the ability to contribute to the network in the form of content, websites and other things.
I think the current torrent scene is a good indicator of the willingness of users to put their h/w to work for “the community”.
Of course, there’s a caveat: with torrents, 90% of people seed “for free” only because they want to download the file themselves. And once they’re done, the number of seeders drops to less than 200 or something even lower.
If you ask them to store and seed someone’s encrypted files so that others can store and seed theirs… well, guess how that would work out. 99% of users want the latter, but dislike the former.
According to RFC:
int cost_per_Mb = 1/(fr^(1/5));` (5th root, integer value)
Where 1 is a 1MB chunk. It is assumed the figure will alter under scrutiny of network testing, but this is assumption (based on usage increase (X10 pa total), price decrease (1/2 pa) etc. over time) as well as b/w usage, which widely varies across countries at the moment.
The FR is the local farming rate known to the
ClientManagerand may slightly vary through time across the network. This is expected and as the network grows the spread of cost will equalise as the binary tree balances.
And fr is calculated as:
As each sacrifical is stored the Farming Rate doubles (twice as hard to get a safecoin)
As each Sacrifical cannot be stored or is removed farming rate halves (farming more profitable)
So yes, the first 1MB. cost 1 safecoin. But, as long remain space, the MB per safecoin grows very quickly.
if I am not mistaken in calculations:
average chunks stored per node → MB/safecoin ->Farming rate
10 chunks-> 4MB/safecoin → 1.024 FR
20 chunks → 16MB/safecoin → 1.048.576 FR
50 chunks → 1024MB/safecoin → 11.258.9990.684.2624 FR
If we consider that the FR is responsible too for calculating the possibilities of being rewarded with a safecoin, potential profits increase greatly if a node provides continuous service and enough space.
That’s not really a fair comparison
Torrents are zero reward(financially or value based) and it is a single want, you want a single file , you download and leave.
yes there will be people who download something they wish from the network and perhaps leave , but not likely the large % that is similar to torrents, it is not a single torrent you are talking about here, it’s access to a ultra secure internet 2.0 . free from spying, free from mass advertising . the goal is to draw people to the network to regularly use and not just get a single thing, like a torrent file.
people will earn money , it just wont be something they can rely on to retire on or to make a decent income from, they can earn money or choose to create something on the network and thus be rewarded even more for providing content , which has cost them almost nothing because they earned it with their free space, giving them incentive to stay on the network even longer because they have contributed something to it, they will regularly add or observe it and they will be regularly rewarded depending on popularity.
The darknet might hold a better comparison to peoples willingness to contribute. But still not the same since rewards no matter how small will affect the %'s
Ha-ha, well thanks for helping out with that perfect example.
What you’re actually supposed to do is to seed at least 100% of the file size, and only then leave.
Great example of how things work in a freeloader “community”!
Torrents are free from spying and advertising (if you use the CLI or your own client, instead of crapware like uTorrent).
You conveniently skipped the caveat about almost no one wanting to seed a torrent file they don’t need, and how that compares with SAFE (in my opinion, it’s exactly the same situation - by definition you can’t know what you’re storing and “seeding” on SAFE, so for the majority the motivation is less - instead of seeding while downloading, here people are even less motivated to seed).
It also costs them nothing to seed torrents (say, free educational content that serves to make the world better, Linux ISO’s, etc.), but yet - and I checked just now - there’s only about 19 people in the whole world seeding Ubuntu Server 14.04 x86_x64 ISO.
That’s the whole point, the percentage and the earnings. But it appears both the percentage and earnings are unknown, so again there’s no conclusion that it can or can’t work.
Are you seeding copyright-free educational videos from your home - stuff that can help poor farmers learn how to farm better, or help the poor get better education? If not, why not?
The link:Questions about Farming and Safecoin
See also my question about it and the answer from @neo (Basically this halving occurs only during the network bootstrap)
I was actually agreeing with you and stating what the typical user of a torrent does. not what you are “suppose” to do
Again , you totally misunderstood , When i mentioned internet 2.0 and then said free from spying and free from mass advertising this is in direct relation to “the internet” and safenet which would be considered and has sometimes been named an internet 2.0
I missed it on purpose because like i said previously , the comparison of torrent to safenetwork is not accurate and a better comparison would be to the darknet.
But i will answer it then
So your understanding is the only difference from the safenetwork and torrents is that they don’t know the files they are storing with SAFE but torrent files and specific files?
you sure there are no other motivations to SAFE? to perhaps add into that equation ?
In any economic model “an action that costs nothing” and “an action that rewards the participant” are 2 completely different models that will effect the results in completely different ways .
The whole point was that trying to compare torrent directly to safenet is not the right comparison , it would be like comparing windows 10 to internet explorer , instead of internet explorer with safari , or chrome with firefox .
ask 1000 people 2 questions : Are you seeding copyright-free educational videos from your home
and
would you do so if you got money/value for doing so
Somehow i doubt the answers will be the same
Sorry about the misunderstanding.
I don’t see significant differences between the models. The both are skewed in favor of the downloaders.
The SAFE model seems to reward the uploaders (whereas the Torrent model doesn’t), that’s different.
Also consider Maelstrom (Torrent-based browser) - as far as I can tell it’s got 0 traction.
As you know, the proposal is that those providing storage are the most rewarded, receiving on average 0.25 x 90% of the reward for something they hold being accessed, while the uploader would receive only 10%.
Actual figures not finalised, and quite possibly adaptive rather than fixed percentages.
Well safecoin can only be profitable to farm or unprofitable to farm. If safecoin is profitable to farm, and again I’m assuming the project accomplishes the goals layed out, then of course the financial industry can make money by investing in farming safecoin. If safecoin is unprofitable to farm, then business can just offload all the server costs to the end users, and the financial industry can just VC the businesses with their never-lose-money hedge fund programs and make their bajillions that way. So, I still fail to see a bad outcome for the investors outside of if they spent millions on farming servers before the network had a chance to be tested by the market, and in that case then it’s their fault for being risky with their money.
Profitable in dollars or profitable in value??
There will certainly be a “I spend x on electricity per MB/served and get paid Y safecoin… Y is either greater or less the X”
But the value in using the SAFE network – nobody can hack my data, it’s always redundantly backed up etc etc… Is not at all insignificant… Even if Y < X, I would be spending most of X anyway if I have a significant amount of data. Y + the value the network provides could be much greater than X (Which I was probably going to spend either way)…
The main difference between the two - as you explain it - is that the first is value as seen by the farmers. They earn SAFE.
The second is value as perceived by the users. They spend SAFE (so they need to acquire it on the open market).
Obviously the first group hopes to maximize earned fiat-equivalent of SAFE. The second hopes to maximize the utility of fiat-equivalent of SAFE they spend. If the first group gets a crappy ROI, the second group doesn’t care (because they’d be considering only value they get in exchange for SAFE they spend). That is potentially a problem that I raise here: if the farmers don’t earn enough to sustain themselves, it won’t be sustainable.
You keep repeating this argument while ignoring the explanations of why this is not harmful to the network. If it happens that we don’t get pro farmers, then the design is actually a success. It was designed to discourage them while favouring resource exchange amongst farmer-users, and farming for other purposes by those with spare resources that are currently going to waste.
Repeating the same argument over and over while ignoring these points is not helpful.
How about doing some analysis of the amount of computing and storage that is online but not actually being used for anything, and considering what proportion of this might be needed to support various sizes of network? Maybe you can show that it is too small to be significant, or… you might find you have to stop with this particular line of FUD.
But social security’s goal is in essence wealth re-distribution, while this is not the goal of SAFE’s farming mechanism. Yes, it may not favour huge vaults, but one person running three vaults earns as much as three persons running one vault each, taken together (assuming vaults are the same size and perform equally well). The goal of SAFE’s managed distribution of rewards isn’t wealth equality, but an optimal balance of efficiency and security of the network. There’s no reason to assume that it will favour the poor over the rich.
The main difference between the two - as you explain it - is that the first is value as seen by the farmers. They earn SAFE.
The second is value as perceived by the users. They spend SAFE (so they need to acquire it on the open market).
You assume that two the groups are going to be different. I disagree in large part. Most people are going to Farm enough to offset the cost of storing their own data. They will be in it for the IT infrastructure not the $$…
The benefits of using SAFE are far and away payment enough.
I suspect that Farming for the sake of farming will be a losing proposition for most. Because hard drives are abundant and computers that are powered on are abundant – You don’t make a lot of money providing abundant commodities. But having data that is anywhere near as secure as SAFE is quite rare – The benefits
of storing your data on SAFE over your own hard drive are very big, and being able to do so is plenty of incentive to share your abundant resources