I’ve only just became aware of SAFE, what great idea, thank you to all who made it possible,
or newby like there is a lot to learn but I have some initial questions I hope you good people can answer:
If I develop an app in the form of a Mobile App (Android initially) to handle say a ridesharing taxi service similar to Uber in some ways, me thinking: Users download the app from the Play Store install it and effectively become Nodes/Vaults? would that work? if so what about resources? would an average moblie device with couple GB of memory be sufficient?
I have not had a chance to look through the documentation, what dev language/tools are needed to work with SAFE? would Python do for example?
Maybe you could post to the “Introduce yourself” topic
To answer one of your questions. Being a vault is completely separate from using apps or websites that use the Network. So a user can use apps or websites without running a vault.
There is an interesting post on user roles and how they interact with the Network, but i can’t find it. I think it was @JimCollinson
Welcome @seza, you can create apps using different languages including Python. Language bindings will be provided for some common languages, but most could be supported. Which is appropriate will depend on what you want to build as well as your preferences.
Initially I don’t think mobiles will be suitable for use as vaults but other kinds of app would work including what you suggest. Later there may be ways for mobile to provide resources and earn rewards though - that is the intention.
I think the primary thing to focus on, in this particular scenario, would be understand what the Safe Network could enable for users of a ride hailing app such as this, and what is missing from it’s existing clearnet counterparts. Namely things like:
Allowing a passenger to be connected with a driver, with no middleman involved, in a completely decentralised way.
Preserving both the driver and the passenger’s ownership over their own personal data, location data, and privacy. E.g. not having the passenger’s location continuously tracked, or seen by anyone other than the driver, and even then, only when they consent to it at the point of pick-up etc.
Allowing app users to retain their anonymity, or reveal only as much of their identity as they deem necessary.
Enabling passengers to pay, and drivers to be paid, anonymously, instantly without any fees or commissions etc.
Drivers being able to use a service that is entirely decentralised, to set their own prices, and not cede control to a 3rd party over their own business, or they way they work.
These, to my mind (after adminitedly not thinking about it for too long) would be the primary killer features of such an app, rather than having the app being a way to wrap a node to share resources to the network.
Offering compute, storage, and bandwidth resources to the network should really be entirely opt-in, and the network has its own built in incentive mechanism (farming rewards), so can happily be the preserve of dedicated apps. I don’t think the network will really need adjacent apps to wrap these features as background tasks in order to function. So in that regard, I’d focus on making some really kick-ass apps as the one you describe, that will have some life changing utility in and of themselves.
As others have said, initially anyway, mobile devices won’t be likely candidates to provide resources to the network, particularly for storage. This will be the preserve of typically ‘always on’ desktop hardware.
However, down the line, we hope to enable the ability for mobile and more transiently connected devices to be rewarded for providing resources more suitable to their nature, such as message relay, or transaction processing etc.
Many thanks - Jim for your comprehensive reply,
valid points indeed.
The payment point is probably the most difficult to deal with if we are
to enable FIAT currency at least in the early days of the technology?
It would be extremely useful to get a few low level howto’s going… For instance I’m playing with Safe Network App Alpha, installs fine, but can’t create an account so I can’t use or test it. Should it be able to create an account? If not how can I create an account? What should I be able to do and how? Would love to run a vault, is this possible at the moment ? if yes how in simple terms can I do this on a linux box?
Sorry loads of ???'s but for those like me who have followed this project for many years and would like to dip their toes to see how things are going its pretty tricky to re-engage…
[2020-04-28T12:53:51Z ERROR safe] safe-cli error: [Error] NetDataError - Failed to allocate test coins: Unexpected: Connection timed out when bootstrapping to the network - CoreError::Unexpected::{“Connection timed out when bootstrapping to the network”}
