Yeah I think you’re right. The system is designed to prevent ever from being at the extremes (0% used and 100% used) at inception of the network you cannot prevent it though. But I think with emissions gone the network will reach 20% full fairly quick.
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The intention is to keep the data already uploaded and will get migrated to Autonomi 2. Although if we see masses of nodes shutoff with the cutting of emissions there could be data loss.
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Based on the ‘Quote Calculations’ on the whitepaper, there’s a pricing curve that means the cost of uploading is very low when the network is empty, and increasing when the network starts to fill.
This means the network likely won’t ever be full or space less than 10%. Once there’s a proper demand side to the network, the market should find a price that balances supply & demand, with deviations only lasting a short time before either nodes are spun up faster than the rate of demand increase, or vice versa.
People paying to upload data should be the only incentive system node operators need. If demand for uploading data is healthy, nodes will be well incentivised. If demand for uploading isn’t healthy, resources would be best used to boost demand (product improvements, marketing), rather than boosting node numbers ahead of available demand, which achieves nothing.
I think this suggestion would be significantly better than the outgoing system of incentivising unnecessary nodes to flood the network, but it’s still not a great use of resources ahead of there being user experiences that make people want to use the network.
Once high quality user experiences are available, people will want to upload stuff they value to it without the need for a subsidy. Perhaps then, using some emissions tokens for marketing purposes e.g. backing up popular YouTube channels to Autonomi to reach specific audiences, could be a good use of resources. For things like the internet archive, I wonder if a system could be made so loads of people could collaborate to get it all uploaded, spreading the cost and time required for upload?
Sticking up the internet archive onto a storage medium nobody can easily interact with adds little value. For this reason, it seems the most pragmatic to focus resources on building a thriving app ecosystem. Impossible Futures was a bit of a false-start on this, but with some resources re-directed from emissions, some seriously good progress could be made when the network is ready.
I like the idea of an ‘Autonomi app concept’ competition, where the highest rewards go to app concepts that address the biggest market opportunities that face the least effort to get to existing audiences (e.g. Autonomi integrations with existing products with validated markets, clear value add and strong marketing potential). The next round could be prizes for developers who build the already identified concepts with the best product-market fit possible.
I’m looking forward to seeing what is announced in February. I hope the resources are put toward tackling the biggest things holding the network back beyond the core tech, which I think is poor user experience & lack of product market fit.
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I guess a balance is needed where we can get some initial data uploaded so that these apps can use this content to market with. (music, movies, documents etc).
Impossible futures was fun, but I think the network just wasn’t developed enough at that stage for these apps to work in the right way (along with the data-loss). It also got delayed and looking back it wasn’t really worth it personally in terms of income vs time spent developing. But at least it showed us some of the issues that need to be looked at regarding latency and pointer stuff.
I do think we need to migrate the token to a network with an in-built community. Because until we are already visible to everyone, we will need some venue to market ourselves. Hopefully this happens, even if it’s delayed like the change to the emissions system.
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Thx 4 the update Maidsafe devs
Keep hacking super ants
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Sometimes it almost feels like we should’ve just called the network Maidsafe (as much as I’ve felt silly when having to explain it), that’s what the whole crypto world knew the project as. I’m only kidding really. I’m very happy with Autonomi. It just fits.
Anyone still interested in the privacy portion though? Anyone been watching XMR? 
Autonomi 2.0 gonna be sweeeeeet ladies and gents. The vision is about to be realized.
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i don’t think so:
The team mentioned on the Discord they’re looking to remove emission al together. It’s not yet determined what (or if) 2.0 will have for additional incentives other than upload payments.
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Rewards and emissions are separate things. Rewards will remain.
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What i read, is that emissions are removed in the interim (the interval period between v1 to v2) but may well be reintroduced in v2? I’m not native english so may have misinterpreted
This is also another blow to privacy/anonymity if IP addresses are being monitored for geolocation (which will requiring blocking VPNs etc also - not easy). I’d have thought removing emissions / financial incentives would largely solve the problem of bad actors spoofing gazillions of nodes all by itself. Unless my single node is filled to the brim why would I start another, the rewards won’t change.
These bad actors have made a fair few ANTS from emissions. Seems to me this change will still benefit to them, the value of those ANTS will go up due to lower storage supply. Removing the emissions is clearly a good thing, but the emissions bad actors have taken still get the most benefit. A more cynical person might think this was an inside job.
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Maybe they will ask for digital ID/credit card details to verify users and nodes? IP/fingerprinting is easily spoofed, it simply won’t work without major issues and that goes double in a decentralized system where there is no recourse to correct mistaken bans. I don’t know what the solution is but I hope autonomi does not sacrifice privacy and security to make the network usable.
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They said it is keeping to the goals, so ID info is off the cards. If they do require that they know there will be no one to run nodes.
Your IP is already revealed by simply connecting to another computer, so nothing new there, even with relay nodes your IP is known to the relay. Or VPN IP is known. Keeping to the goals means that your IP is only kept for routing and not given to any central location or database.
All the geo stuff would mean that the node your node connects to will limit the number of nodes in its routing table that comes from any geo location. Not much of a change, but if not done right or bugs then it will have unintended consequences (as do many other things)
We will just have to wait for the announcement to find out what method they will go with
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Once the node is full, and payment is received, what is the incentive to keep that node running? Do new node operators get paid automatically for replicating data from nodes that disappeared - like emissions? Where does payment to store old data indefinitely come from?
I have tried multiple times to educate that that is not how that works.
The node will only fill if the network fills up. The records are spread around and every node will have around the same number of records, within 10% of each other. (Random unevenness)
A node will not always have the same records as it did weeks or months before. The network moves the records around the nodes and based on nodes joining and leaving. Never static
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Thanks, still seems risky/flawed to use geo and IP monitoring still a privacy issue. So what happened to the anonymity aspect of the SAFE network in autonomi? Has that been abandoned?
Agreed there is some risk due to unintended consequences. But they can test and if not good, move onto another method.
Its not monitoring IP address in the sense of LEA or ISP monitoring IP addresses. Just an extension in the routing table to know the geo location of the IP address it keeps in its routing table. Monitoring implies recording and keeping track usually at a central location or multiple central locations.
The security for IP addresses originally was that the messages would hop from node to node getting closer to the destination. And maybe by using replay nodes. The IP address of your node was always known to at least a few nodes (relay and/or first nodes contacted). So the security is as it is now and in V2.0, not being “monitored” and is just used for routing purposes by nodes that need to know it.
So the real security was in obscuring IP addresses due to the sheer numbers of nodes and only really good when the network grew. Your IP in original plan, and now and in V2.0 is not reported back to central locations for monitoring
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Sorry, I have trouble getting my head around the economics of this, thanks for explaining again. I still don’t see much incentive to stick around unless you are earning significant amounts of ant - enough to cover the costs and profit of keeping your node running for a long time. What might it look like in practice for someone running a single 35GB node? Do I fill up a small amount say 2gb get paid say $2 and just wait for another 2gb and get another $2 and so on, at what point do I decide to drop out eg I imagine when I am 15gb full because it will get harder and harder to fill because the sooner it is filled the sooner I will be motivated to shut down the node, eg it might take me 5 years to gain another 20gb of payments before my node is filled and therefore won’t be worth the benefit/cost to stick it out?
Relays still know the IP addresses though, this is a problem as we can’t assume relays are not monitoring addresses. Nostr network has the same issue - any relay operator can geolocate posters easily. VPNs are a solution but they are centralised/costly and may be banned in some countries. I can see autonomi will have the same problems if people use VPNs, but now with added banning of nodes from people who use same VPNs.