I actually listened to the critique and modified my model to include both free and pay-for data storage. In the new model people can attack the free data storage as much as they want, and the network will still be running! And farmers are rewarded the same amount of safecoins for both the free and the pay-for data storage.
Well those are just fiat currencies, but that aside, it’s useless (and damaging to SAFE, I would say) to earn Safecoins which are created out of nothing. That’s the whole point why I started another topic. I’d rather see a short free-for-all period (which starts earlier) than start using production coins with a wrong economic model.
My claim is, in a test network, nobody cares because it’s all fake. It’s not realistic to test incentives and expect “real life behavior” when data can be destroyed and coins are fake.
Just above this comment I posted copies of old release plans in which there was supposed to be a beta with real coins and real data. I guess my v1.0 (no coins, real data) and v1.1 (real coins, real data, but no freebies) suggestion could be seen as a different take on the old “beta”.
To some extent yes, the idea is the oppostite. I explained what parts I see as major differences (free initially, and then (v1.1) completely non-free as soon as coin economics can be properly understood and implemented).
In your topic I claimed that coins created would be completely fake and cause chaos and unpredictable consequences. With a different take (that I present in this topic), there would be no coins generated or lost, and it is less likely that pricing models would have to be changed. What would be “lost” is time/money required to run the network until v1.1 (so, farmers would bear most of the cost).
I also have to emphasize once again, I am not arguing that v1.0 should run for gratis, but presenting another way to address some issues and support for a free v1.0 when the choice is between: gratis 1.0 in March vs. well-tested non-gratis v1.0 in June. Of course there may be other situations in which I would still be against a free use.
Tthere may even be a non-gratis v1.0 in March 2016. I would not be against a non-gratis v1.0 in March 2016 if someone could explain how the coin can be well tested by then.
Tell that to the bitcoin miners. Haven’t you understood yet that hashing power and data resources serve the same function of making the cryptocurrency work? With bitcoin it’s hashing power and with safecoin it’s data resources. Why do the bitcoin miners put in all their effort and money? And why would safecoin farmers put in their effort and money? Because the users are forced to pay for data storage? Nope. The farmers will farm because they will earn safecoins. And the farmers will actually earn more in actual value (such as in dollars) when they serve free data storage, because that will make the SAFE network more popular and thereby make the safecoin market cap larger.
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Bitcoin miners prevent double spending. The value of bitcoins they get for that work is the price of security provided.
There’s no such concept in Maidsafe since there’s no PoW and blockchain.
Farmers won’t be better off in your system, as I argued in your topic, because without any price for PUT, the farming (Safecoin-generating) mechanism would be exposed to manipulation. I mentioned that one venue to currency collapse would be uploads of garbage data which would get no GETs.
In my alternative to a delayed release with freebies, farmers wouldn’t earn anything, but that is better for MAID holders (they wouldn’t be diluted with farmed SAFE until mandatory payment in v1.1 kicks in) and probably for farmers too (depending on how reputation is organized) because they could delete vaults without losing reputation.
I also mentioned that in case PUTs were free, what good is to earn SAFE when (almost) nobody needs it? Paying for PUTs is the major (we don’t know, but I think it’s reasonable to say so) reason why people would want to buy SAFE. If you remove that reason, this could mean instant collapse of the currency (even before there’s plenty of farmed new SAFE). In my alternative to a delayed release with freebies, there is no new printing of SAFE during the brief transitional period from v1.0 to v1.1.
Have you considered that on Day 1 there may be (again, I say may because I haven’t been able to find out, although I’ve asked twice in recent weeks) over 400 million SAFE which is strange enough (if there’s say just a few PB of space at the same time), but if you also make farmers earn even more SAFE, how much would each SAFE coin be traded for? In my alternative to a delayed release with freebies MAID converted to SAFE does not get diluted by farming and in your plan it does. According to a [Maidsafe simulation][1] (which may be outdated, but that’s what’s available), network earnings could be 8 million SAFE per month (and up to 4.5x of that per year). With your approach farming would turn into a crypto version of the ECB.
8 million MAID is now worth around $150,000 so in your system the rate of dilution of MAID holders (currently around $6 million) would be at least 10% in Year 1 (on top of that, free PUTs remove 90% of reasons for buying SAFE in the first place). So knowing all that most MAID holders would likely sell MAID as soon as your plan became known (and even before v1.0 kicked off and SAFE appeared) and that would be game over.
At least in my alternative to your plan there’s no dilution and the promotion period is very limited.
[1]: https://github.com/maidsafe/Whitepapers/blob/master/Project-Safe.md
And the SAFE network doesn’t?
Spammers spam in order to gain something. Uploading a lot of files on SAFE would be just like uploading a lot files on BitTorrent. The incentive for just uploading garbage is small. And attackers would fail since in my new model the pay-for data storage is still available when the free storage runs out. So there would hardly be any incentive to launch such attacks because the network can handle them and the attackers would just waste their time and a lot of their own bandwidth.
When Bitcoin was launched the value of 1 bitcoin was low, but that was just because the idea of cryptocurrencies was so new that very few people knew about it. Today there is a lot of interest in cryptocurrencies, even when they are pre-mined, if they are good enough cryptocurrencies. And among the early adopters of the SAFE network there will be many who know a lot about cryptocurrencies. Farming will become very popular. People will in many cases start farming to hoard safecoins.
The SAFE Network is supposed to, but it’s not done by the farmers (and although they participate by proving resources, etc., they do not get rewarded for contributing to the prevention of double spending or the forming of concensus - that is done "for free’).
In case of SAFE with free PUTs there would 10% money supply growth per year, and little reason to buy them now or later.
I don’t know whether bitcoin can be compared to MaidSafe, but as far as I can remember when I learned of bitcoin I liked the slow speed of mining and the ability to spend it on real world assets (not many at the time). For SAFE (the coin) I think it should be used for PUTs and internal network applications (and less for real world assets), so if someone says PUTs should be free, that instantly removes 90% of potential demand (in my own opinion).
That’s just a matter of regulating the farmer reward. In Bitcoin the miner reward is halved over time. The total bitcoin supply is inflated all the time up until it reaches a maximum value and because of the halving the rate of new bitcoins is reduced (step-wise) up to that point. For safecoin a similar reduction can be used but instead of going to zero reward, the reward can go on with a lower rate than in the beginning.
In your scenario there is still little motivation to hold onto SAFE coins.
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If the farming reward starts high at the launch of the network and then goes down a lot say the first two years, then there will be a first-mover advantage for the early farmers. I think that can be fair for later farmers because the total value of the SAFE network will grow a lot, and that can keep the safecoin value up even after two years. And if safecoin becomes a really popular cryptocurrency, then the market cap goes to the moon. Could happen! And then a lot of new safecoins need to be generated to prevent too much deflation. So a dynamic regulation of the farming reward to stabilize the safecoin value would be good (if it’s possible to implement in practice).
To be fair that’s why the IP protocol was chosen over several other better ones - because it was usable first.
However, I believe in the network’s many other advantages dwarfing the other implementations’ benefits.
There are good reasons why Safecoin was incorporated in the network, and this is the first I’ve heard from anyone suggesting it be taken back out - and without addressing the most obvious reasons for its inclusion, such as to incentivise the provision of resources for the network, fund development through a crowd sale of the network token, to create a network that has a stand alone economic model for all parties (users, farmers, developers, content creators and publishers). There’s more of course, but I suggest adding those that should be the minimum to begin with.
One person suggests taking all that away so the network might launch a few weeks sooner, and pretends that there is no information on planned integration of the coin - when it is laid out in the roadmap and has been asked about and answered on the forum, not long ago.
It’s there anyone who takes the OP seriously?
If not I suggest we close this topic and await a more credible case than launching a bit sooner with a completely different product, and which no Safecoin holder was expecting to be investing in.
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Sure the topic can be closed, I’ve no problem with that.
It’s odd how “Using the SAFE network without money” (!) with devastating ideas so far mushroomed to 200+ comments and this one hit the wall at 30, although I didn’t even people that the coin be eliminated and have raised several questions pertinent to smooth rollout of the coin.
But that’s fine, maybe I will ask those “sub questions” in separate topics if opportunity arises.
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SAFE v1.0 without Safecoin? It’s a no for me. @Anders I’ll throw random carbage in the networks if it happens.