Put Incentive Model (draft)

Development RFCs
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(EDIT)
Executive Summary:

This proposal uses the amount that APPs PUT data onto the network (on behalf of the user) to determine how much they will be rewarded by the network.

This is done for two main reasons (and others besides). Primarily because this cannot be gamed as any excess PUTting would be abhored by users due to the fact that it’s taking money directly out of their pockets for any PUT. This is instead of excess GETting, which they couldn’t really care less about.

Also, PUTting recycles Safecoin. This enables the circulation of the lifeblood of the network and is to be encouraged (see: Free GETs aren’t going to fly) This adds value to the network both in the form of currency, and of general information (information wants to be free - the more people have access to more information the better - yada yada yada)

Once an APP uploads to the network on the behalf of the user - it will initiate an action similar to a farming attempt - and either recieve a reward or not based on the outcome of that attempt.

There are further specifics that are up for debate, (APP Wallet, Notification of PUT on Behalf of User, Safecoin Divisibility) but these are the core attibutes of the proposal.

(/EDIT)

https://github.com/smacz42/Put_Incentive_Model/blob/master/README.md

PDF here

Tagged in the RFC:

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@smacz Thank you very much for your mention on my initial idea, nine months ago!!. Congratulations for your RFC, great work!

I’ve been disconnected from this project for a couple of months. This summer I proposed another RFC with other ideas but it was refused. Then, I decided to start my own project based on the Maidsafe network, but I don’t use any of the Maidsafe code and I’m not developing in Rust either. I’m working alone, but a good pace. Maybe I’m a little crazy. :mask:

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Feel free to make an “other projects” post about what you’re doing (if you want to share). I’m quite curious. And I think it’s great that SAFE is inspiring people to create their own project.

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Ok thank you. I’ll do it, but at the moment I prefer keep working on it alone.
It’s based on this closed RFC: SafeCoin market price by bcndanos · Pull Request #34 · maidsafe/rfcs · GitHub

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Wooow, that’s a very long read (and I did it). But can you explain the difference between your idea and the idea there is now in few lines? Another point I would like to mention is that you don’t upload data to an App if I’m correct. You upload data to the network and you allow an App access.

And another point to make about the fact there will be 100 times (a guess) more GET’s than PUT’s is to make the price to PUT depended on the Farming Reward. So if the reward to deliver a GET of 1MB is 0.01 Safecoin, the price to PUT is 1 Safecoin. And when the FR goes down because there’s to much space around. The price to PUT goes down as well.

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Interesting. Could you define how app does not require puts?

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Maybe a reader APP that uses a list of ebooks uploaded by some other APP

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Oh right. Wasn’t thinking correctly at the moment. A search engine for the people. Those who wishes to be on search engine, can do so by sharing their URI. The search web crawl like google is privacy invasivion unless there was a contract. Another plus side for safe, users who wishes not to be on search engines is set as default due to the security ecosystem. Web crawl is nearly impossible?

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Executive Summary:

This proposal uses the amount that APPs PUT data onto the network (on behalf of the user) to determine how much they will be rewarded by the network.

This is done for two main reasons (and others besides). Primarily because this cannot be gamed as any excess PUTting would be abhored by users due to the fact that it’s taking money directly out of their pockets for any PUT. This is instead of excess GETting, which they couldn’t really care less about.

Also, PUTting recycles Safecoin. This enables the circulation of the lifeblood of the network and is to be encouraged (see: Free GETs aren’t going to fly) This adds value to the network both in the form of currency, and of general information (information wants to be free - the more people have access to more information the better - yada yada yada)

One an APP uploads to the network on the behalf of the user - it will initiate an action similar to a farming attempt - and either recieve a reward or not based on the outcome of that attempt.

There are further specifics that are up for debate, (APP Wallet, Notification of PUT on Behalf of User, Safecoin Divisibility) but those are the core attibutes of the proposal.

^^^Added to OP

I’ll leave that alone for now because this doesn’t really deal with the price of the PUTs, just the way they are done. (…by APPs, on behalf of the user)

EDIT: I always write my drafts waaaaay too long (for everything in life). So thanks for sticking it out.

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I wanted to use this to go off on a slight tangent about an APPs usefulness to the network. There may be many APPs that don’t require PUTs. It’s not that the APP won’t be valuable…it’s just that it won’t be valuable to the direct economic advancement of the network.

The network gets paid every PUT. Therefore any APP that gives that value to the network should be rewarded. This is similar to a comission-based system as @Traktion pointed out.

In that case it can certainly persue another business model - hell, even if it is getting rewarded by the network you can still pursue another business model.

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Isn’t it “won’t be valuable to the direct economic advancement”

Because

“They can be valuable to the usability of the network” by making the network more useful to users and thus advance the network which in turn will result in more PUTs to the network by some of those helped.

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You hit the nail on the head!

I like that. I’m going to steal that. It’s mine now!

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Wait wait,

I forgot to put a PtP pay address on that :cry:

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Well, if you had put a watermarked wallet address in there, I would have tipped you before brain-robbing you!

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It occurs to me that the bulk of the RFC is written in an effort to appease content creators. I will have to edit this down as this should not be the focus of the RFC, but enumerated as a benefit of the proposed system.

That being said, an idea in another topic may help the efforts of some of the content creators:

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From here:

I will explore the well-known argument that Pandora and Spotify are still quite alive and kicking. I believe that it’s because they offer a service that toes the line between convenience and cost.

This example is especially relevant due to the popularity of torrenting music specifically. One might argue that end users would be “better off” just downloading the music illegally.

Well, perhaps not. Spotify and Pandora introduced a service - finding new music that matches the taste of the user. This could not be provided by simply torrenting, and users would otherwise be spending not money, but time finding new material.

This can also partially be attributed to a glitch in human nature - the fact that humans want to not be in control of listening to music when it’s in the background. Something along the lines of us evolving listening to the sounds of nature and taking solice in the fact that we weren’t in control of whatever was making that sound. I can’t cite this at the moment, but it is an actual phenomenon.

Now, would Spotify and Pandora have been as successful if they were 100% behind a paywall? Probably not. And I’d be surprised if there weren’t companies that went belly-up because of doing just that.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is two things. Primarily that if you can see a need, fill a need intelligently and conveniently, then there will be those who will agree to pay to have that need taken care of.

Secondly that content alone is not the entire story. Who goes to an artist’s webpage to hear music. Nobody anymore. They go to soundcloud, youtube, etc to be able to listen to these things. In the physical world, people don’t buy and have delivered famous paintings and wait for them arrive to admire them - they go to an art museum or they go to a festival.

My original point is that because the technology keeps moving, it keeps the tension alive between free and expensive, so it never stabilizes. In a sense this rewards the innovative and punishes those who can’t innovate or change rapidly.

– Stewart Brand
Forbes, “Information wants to be free…and expensive”, 2009

The SAFE Network is meant to be free to browse. Getting revenue for exposure alone only works in the advertisement industry. And even then the meaning of the word “works” in that sentence is warped.

A subsidation of technology - technology that is supposed to be being forced to innovate - is tricky to imagine, but consider this:

The content is content, and will have the potential to have value forever. With the passage of time, APPs can be easily superceded in both value and functionality - siphoning off precious end users - only now, there is a financial motivation for doing so. There’s now a race to the top - one that has no ceiling.

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Rich diff of changes made 11/8

https://github.com/smacz42/Put_Incentive_Model/commit/8db6f5613bcabe660fb0f075398f8e58f5fbae29?short_path=04c6e90#diff-04c6e90faac2675aa89e2176d2eec7d8

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EDIT

To quote from your draft:

Summary
The PUT Incentive Model is designed to solve many problems, and most recently many have come to the surface. Issues regarding:

APP reward mechanism
Pay the Producer
…
are all affected in some way by this proposal. This is intended to set
the stage for a fair network, wherein all who participate in their
various functions (Farmer, APP Dev, Content Creator, End-User) will all
have an opportunity to benefit and benefit from the network.
…
Once an APP uploads to the network on the behalf of the user -
it will initiate an action similar to a farming attempt - and either
recieve a reward or not based on the outcome of that attempt.
…
Reward Mechanisms
The assumption is that the rewards will all be pooled together to
eventually be split out to the devs and the content creators. The hope
is that this will incentivize community building as well as development
contributions in the race for a bigger rewards pool per APP.
…
5) Content Copying
This proposal does not aim to solve the problem of copying content by
slightly amending to or altering the file. As such it is still
vulnerable to any exploitation of copied content that PtP would be. This
is still an issue that needs to be solved. (Specifically both
Watermarking and Proof of Unique Human require further investigation for
a solution to be found).
…
For the time being, I would assert that this would be most
effectively done at the APP level, with some sort of decentralized
moderation technique. But that is beyond the scope of this document.
…
6) What if I want to move my content to another APP?
Well, that’s the thing about content, once it’s there it’s there (unless it’s copied - see above). It is then consumed.
…
If it needed to be formatted in a separate way in order to allow it
to be accessed by another APP, that may constitute a change such that
another PUT would have to be issued to resubmit it to the network
thereby giving credit to a separate APP. I’m not sure.
…
This is more of a technical question about the implementation of which I haven’t even nailed down yet.
…
Keep in mind though, content can be rewarded by any way that is made
possible by the system. The content itself is APP-independent. This is
exemplified in the ability for the information on the APP that submitted
the PUT on behalf to be destroyed once the data is PUT and the APP
Wallet credited.

Sorry and with all due respect. I think this idea is not well thought out and heading into that weird territory, just like all of the other PtP models that attempt to directly manage this.

Now listen I know you think this is not a PtP model.

But allow me to explain. Which I agree I should have done better earlier.

Before I do let me state it is not just this idea by the way. It is all of them. Any idea that revolves around the network attempting to involve itself in the rewarding of content creators OR app developers for their users content directly is just silly (I believe you called it ‘on behalf of the user’)

I agree we should reward app developers as I believe you do @smacz but it should be based on work that they do and transactions like downloads and maybe even reviews.

Keep it simple stupid (KISS).

It could be based on use, downloads or some other public metric which we already know works well a la iStore and Google Play.

But to think that we can possibly manage the rewarding of user-generated content to app develoeprs (I believe you called it content PUTS or something like that, correct me here).

You are talking about art, music, literature, photography, videography as if the subject is not already a complex mosaic of legal issues and now you want to attempt to manage that and make it even more complicated? And you dont think content creators will be upset?

Go for it.

If you can do it and it succeeds (it wont) it would be a world first and it would solve all of the worlds content, art, music, video and literature payment, ownership, copyright and legal problems.

App developers should be rewarded for their valuable contributions only. they built the app, they manage it, they get rewarded for that by the network and we all agree because it eventually benefits all of us with more and more people using the network.

But user-generated content on their sites is now a separate topic by default because you have introduced a separate entity - the user who generated the content in the first place AKA the producer.

Example of what process could get rewarded IMHO: App downloads, use and or reviews.
Potentially you could maybe go one step better and have it set on a timer or use counter but that would make it even more complex and open for gaming by app devs.

Example of what process should not get rewarded: the creation and upload of the app/site to the network because then you would have jerks uploading all sorts of useless crap. Certainly not based user-generated content uploads by the app because user content is user content. The relationship is between the user and the app developer and SAFE is a third party at this point.

So the question now becomes how do we decide to incentivise rewards for content generators who are not app developers?

One idea might be to rank the app by one of several potential ranking methods.

You could use a simple review ranking method where content generators are asked to rank the apps ability to reward them. If they review this as high collectively the app is ranked one metric higher than those that do not meet this criteria and therefore are rewarded at a higher rate based upon this second level.

Or you could rank it based on NETWORK authentication of the apps proof of payment.

I am thinking out loud here so forgive me.

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I think that is a noble cause and worth pursuing. There are three conceivable metrics that the network can use to base a app reward scheme.

  • Downloads/GETs
  • Uploads/PUTs
  • Reviews

I have stated why GETs would be a poor metric to use. Also, I am against the core network being anything other than autonomous (requiring user input) and you can read my post history regarding this. So that leaves PUTs. I have put forth how that is to be done (approximately) in this proposal. (which is hardly a new idea)

You seem to think that content uploaded to the network has different value. To the consumer it does - “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” - but to the network it doesn’t. Isn’t it true that the network receives a payment for all PUT requests, regardless if some may consider the content “good” or “bad”?

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So why do we have to think in simple terms?

Why not have a system that incorporates all three (even though I think basing off of reviews might not be the best idea) e.g. one Put requires at least 100 Gets to be rewarded?

[quote=“smacz, post:22, topic:5877”]
You seem to think that content uploaded to the network has different value.
[/quote] Uhh, trying super hard not to be rude on this one… so a platinum song is the same as something my four year old beats on her Xylophone is it?

[quote=“smacz, post:22, topic:5877”]
To the consumer it does - “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
[/quote]… and everyone and everything else on the planet. Charts, ratings, top 100, top 10, best of, most viewed, trending now… tell me when to stop.

[quote=“smacz, post:22, topic:5877”]
Isn’t it true that the network receives a payment for all PUT requests, regardless if some may consider the content “good” or “bad”?
[/quote] See this ^ this right here ^ is where you are getting confused. USER-GENERATED CONTENT is content that is not uploaded by the app developer. It is uploaded onto the app by the USER of the app.

To illustrate the point here are two websites. One of my favorite web comics The Oatmeal and This guy and his little website.

What would you say the difference is with relation to our discussion right now. Who gets rewarded for what?