What makes 🐜 unique for consumers - a discussion for future marketing

Marketing
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Autonomi is the real deal the others seems like they are not.

Think Bux and the team got it covered. But we need more info from them before we know. If Autonomi does not get at least 10x valuation compared to IPFS, Storj and Arweave combined then something is broken with the world.

Auotnomi is the real deal and we shall make it work, we have not spent 10 years for nothing.

It feels important that compared to the other networks, that it easy easy to understand how the network works, how to buy storage, how to use upload/download. That there are a information on many platforms, web sites, youtube and so on. @Bux

It is good that you are trying to find ways. I get a feeling that part of the reply has to do with some projections from personal resentment. Until we get more info and get to test upload/download connected with some test Erc20 L2, then we don’t know what position we are in. I have hope that it will be good.

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22

How many well known artists are using https://music.gala.com/

And countless other crypto music clones?

My concern is that the current CEO of autonomi (who came from that company Gala) is too focused on crypto. And to me storj and arweave can be put in the same box as Gala - going nowhere. Most of the world doesn’t use or care about crypto, but more importantly most distrust it, recoil from it, or at best can’t be bothered with its complexities, tax rules and ‘darknet’ associations. People hate crypto. I believe ETH20 Crypto tokenisation is going to kill Autonomi fast. Not because of the technical problems (though they also exist) but because of the marketing problem of ETH20. The general public are not going to use ETH20. They won’t get past the index page on the Autonomi website - as soon as they see ETH20 they will close the page.

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Most people want things to be easy to use, they don’t care about the technology behind it.

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No matter what unfolds, IMO, the road ahead for a successful :ant: network is a long one. But we need to keep people interested in it in the short to medium term to simply have that road be maintained.

I don’t fully know what case you are arguing for @jane as we do need a token and people do need to be able to access some form of exchange to obtain it. Farming out a few nodes on a phone or home computer isn’t going to return enough to pay for much storage. The ERC route doesn’t look good to me though as previously discussed.

The token and exchange aside, there are many economic factors that I feel the team isn’t looking at very closely that are going to be a serious problem for :ant: after launch and I’ve detailed those in multiple threads over the past few months. If :ant:'s leadership @bux and @dirvine are going to remain fixed on the many issues with the economics of :ant:, then they need to have a really strong marketing plan and probably major parnerships in the wings to stabilize the token price after launch

If they don’t have that either … then IMO, we are effed.

I HATE being a downer here, but I am a realist in the end. I’ve hung on and and hope and loaned Maidsafe tokens a few years back and yet here we are now with compromises and no clear plan forward.

The major supporters here need guidance - so that we can help to move the community forward at launch. We also need to have hope in the future of the network … but all we hear are crickets and that’s not a good sign.

I’m hoping this will turn around. I’m hoping they will end their silence on these matters and start communicating on these issues.

I’m hoping they are listening and thinking on these topics. There is only so long a person can hold out hope though.

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We don’t really know this. It will prevent people just rolling up and buying storage en masse, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just a different expectation on rollout and how things develop.

It may well be better to start small and slow rather than betting the farm on a big launch. I don’t know, but I would rather that than what is being done for many reasons.

Reading the rest of your post we seem to agree that the current route is very high risk, and to me that is unnecessary.
I don’t buy the need for exchanges as most seem to. I don’t think they were ever explicitly promised, but something that would come as and when, and MaidSafe were committed to that.

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I’m just doing the economics here. We know it’s 5x copies, so if your are providing storage then even with ideal conditions you’d only get one fifth the storage capacity on the network relative to what you provide and we know that conditions in reality are never ideal either.

If there is no means to bring in move capital in and out of the network, then there is only a barter economy, but again 5x copies of every chunk … so there is no means for that to be sustainable (it’s literally, in function, a pyramid scheme) if capital can’t be moved in or out. In order to bring in those who will provide the large amounts of storage needed (who themselves won’t be demanding the same amount of storage in return), then they need to be able to earn value for the resources contributed and that can only happen if they can sell tokens.

As for who builds the exchanges, that’s another matter. As it stands now, it’s an Eth lvl2.

I created another thread the same time as this one to discuss an alternative to that:

And I’ve brought up using a fork of Bisq before, but that one has been waved away with a vague reason about it’s legality or risk.

Those topics aside though given where we are with many important aspects of the network now indefinitely on hold until sometime after launch, we need to come to a clear understanding of what it is we are offering at launch that will bring in token buyers. As we will definitely have many sellers and without buyers, that spells doom for the token value. How is the foundation going to fund further development if the token becomes worthless?

It may seem I’m being hyperbolic but I don’t think I am. It’s quite possible for the token to lose all value and so for no one to even want to use the network at launch.

Why would people run nodes? Who’s going to upload data to a network that’s offering what :ant: is offering? It’s only natural for those of us here who are supporters to say “ME!! - I WILL!!” … but of course we are all lunatics. What is the motivation for others? Who is our target market group?

Long run, with native token I think there are many possibilities, but with an ERC, I don’t see many use cases and that scares the crap out of me as it means no demand for tokens which then means the project collapses.

@bux @dirvine @JimCollinson show me my error in thinking? Who is our target market? How are we going to differentiate ourselves, how are we going to target our future users?

None of that should be a secret at this stage of the game - it should all be public … but I’ve not seen it. Maybe it doesn’t exist!! :cold_face:

We need leadership here. We need guidance. We need hope.

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I knew I liked you :wink: And you’re right - the answers to this should absolutely be public and shared, it will not only give confidence in the token - as - while Im sure a number of folks here will only want to use their rewards in the network as opposed to cashing those same rewards out of it, many will see being rewarded for their efforts of hosting the network separately to their desire and any payments for using it as an essential component to running a node in the first place and continuing to do so … and giving confidence in the token, is connected to providing the service that the network must standby - permanent data storage, for a one time fee - we don’t just need to sustain this network it must grow in order for all data uploaders to be able to benefit from that promise both now and in 50 years time … a fun and essential nut to crack … ahead of launch.

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The situation is very complex so I don’t accept you can make judgements based on the number of copies for example, especially in the early days.

There will be a lot of holders with tokens who want to both store data and help others do the same. So we should expect very cheap storage before crude economic models can give an indication of the cost and behaviour of the early network.

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I would note that while I was responsible for the ideation and technology deployment of the music platform, across nodes and with an experience based hook for fans, that I was not connected with the token launch itself as I left ahead of it. Like you I am skeptical about the validity of ‘crypto centred/focused’ (as opposed to value based) projects and initiatives.

Added to that I would also say that the purchase of token by an ‘every-day’ user, as opposed to someone running a node or using a CLI, or building an app, or caring about decentralisation for a number of (good) reasons, is only consequential if a barrier. Is it easy, is it worth it, is it working. By way of example someone could happily interact and pay for whatever the product or service offer is through a credit card, with the required token purchased and used to pay nodes by the application layer provider - they have zero hassle and the nodes get paid for hosting.

It is absolutely not ‘about’ token speculation but the reality for some/many might be that if it costs them more to run a node than the token they receive for the same, that the interest of running those nodes beyond this community might be limited - we have seen even with beta how important rewards are for folks. Now sure, they might choose to spend all those rewards back into the network as they have enough data to upload for that to be a valuable trade but others may want to take that token out into £s or $s and use that to pay for something else they need/choose.

I would also add that the network has always been tokenised - native or network, both are tokens, the standard is less important than the principle, while the network has come along way from the ICO, it cannot and doesn’t need to shy away from rewarding node operators and to an extent builders with rewards via tokens.

We are a ways away from attracting the public yet - they are likely as interested in hosting the decentralised internet and running nodes for token rewards, as they are in other highly technical or perceived hassle-filled/risky things. BUT that’s not so much the networks role to correct as the applications - attracting users through experiences not technology promises - the more applications the more folks will become interested and enthused about hosting them. Our node operators in the early days will likely be a more opened minded, technically comfortable group of people (including web3 folk who are currently hosting nothing but dreams in some cases), but over 1,2,5,10 years we can move way beyond that, with Autonomi feeling more like a utility for people to benefit from with applications being a good enough fidelity that they become the replacement for the centralised ones folks use today

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FYI the native token would be considered 99% closer to digital token than crypto. network token is considered a crypto token even though we are not using it that way. That’d be the distinction that people unwittingly pick up on

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Well it was you (OK the team ) that offered rewards - if there is an artificial temporary incentive folks will compete for it at that time… And that distorts the results.

And I KNOW you had to find a way to maximise participation. And it was likely the least worst of the feasible options…

The point Im struggling to make here is that the beta rewards were/are a distortion of the proposed (whatever the hell that really is) economy. We can learn a lot from the beta but not all that comes out of it is necessarily relevant across all aspects of the entire project.

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What crypto token isn’t digital, and what digitally scarce token doesn’t rely on cryptography (crypto)?

This whole ‘digital not crypto’ thing seems odd to me… is there any logical categorisation behind it, or just ‘crypto bad’ driving the distinction in some people’s view?

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Agreed - if I could remember how to ‘gif’ here I would, but in the interim please use your imagination (insert a ‘knowing nod of consensus’)

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LOL Cats are animals so all animals are cats argument.

Digital currency has existed for 50 or more years. Banks went to it when computerisation happened and also increased use when the money held by banks does not represent the actual money held. Gift cards are digital currency, egaold was digital currency. These all were not crypto just like the native token is not

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When you do a post there is a upload image/file button in the window OR you just link to the image on one of the gif servers. Right hand click a gif in discord and copy link then paste link in your post

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YOu know that, I know that, most folk here know that.

99.9% of Joe Public doesn’t.

and thats who matters, despite us knowing technically there is a big difference.


<— By jove, he’s right!!!

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I hear you, although I am a little surprised by that considering the group here and the vision - digital tokens can be super centralised and also can rely on traditional trust mechanisms/company frameworks - crypto is (to me) tied to DLT or blockchain because it’s decentralised - all crypto tokens are digital tokens but not all digital tokens are crypto tokens

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Honestly with that gif, you could have written anything and got heart eyes :wink:

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To note - we have no plans in communicating this in a crypto way anyway - this is a storage, data, future proof technology platform - the token, if you even know it exists (to my earlier example if you’re just using an application you might have no clue or care, not just about the token but even about Autonomi) is not the story - it’s just a way of rewarding those helping to build it

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The thing about crypto is that it involves actual “mining” to create coins. Doing crypto computation of hard sums or similar work/staking/proof of to achieve “decentralisation” but never really do because of the centralisation of the nodes.

Digital currency/tokens is just saying that there is “currency” held digitally. Upto now its been more centralised. eGOLD was not centralised except the gold was actually physically held in places.

But Autonomi gets its decentralisation by having smallish nodes all over the world run by as many people as possible. And the digital token (native token) is decentralised because of the decentralisation of nodes.

Whereas crypto gets partial decentralisation because of the multiple nodes held by a few unrelated entities. Crypto compared to Autonomi is centralised and crypto compared to banks/fiat is decentralised. Its all on a scale