I was just reading through the primer (fantastic work Maidsafe team by the way!) and quoting a section on mining from the Safecoin section:
When a user of the network requests some
data, for example by browsing a website,
a number of things happen. First the client
software makes a request for the required
data chunks. This message (a GET request) is then propagated across the network, and when the chunk is found there is a competition between the Vaults in that Section to deliver it to the network where it will be routed back to the requester. The rst Vault to deliver will have a chance of being rewarded with one Safecoin. This process is described as a Farming Attempt.
Will it be possible to mine fractional safecoin? I know there are some challenges around making divisibility happen but given there will only be 2^32 max safecoins I feel it is pretty essential to encourage decentralisation. That being said I guess worst case scenario we’d probably have pools forming to split out the rewards as and when they happen like how we do with other cryptocurrencies today? That would discourage anonymity though I imagine. Interested to hear if much thought has gone into the mining aspects. Mods please feel free to close this and merge into an existing applicable thread if there is one.
At this time though the plan is NO. People will farm whole SAFEcoin.
One issue is the mechanism for scarcity control and that is the farming reward attempt looks to see if the coin address selected has been issued or not. If the coin already exists then there is no coin farmed and if the coin does not exist then the coin is created and rewarded to the farmer.
The reason for this is to slow down rewards as the number of existing coins increases.
So initially when 10% of coins exist the reward attempt success rate is 90% (9 in 10 succeed to create a coin)
And when 50% of the coins exist in about one decade then the reward attempt success rate will be 50% (5 in 10 attempts succeed to create a coin)
That being said - anything is possible. If you read my proposal for division from early last year, I mention that it could be possible by that method at a later time.
The thing of importance is scarity control in the issuance of safecoin and at the moment the only way to achieve that is by issuing whole coins.
It’s probably a good idea to put a label on a fractional Safecoin offer and also quickly claim the name for a Safecoin fractional currency in the copyright statement of code being published on Github, if there is that possbility later on. This has been discussed before with a number of suggestions.
Here is a new label suggestion “Safebits”, being 1/millonth of a Safecoin, which is fzactional currency needed for micropayments & micro smartcontracts dealing with the billing of flows in the real time IoT space.
What about in a few decades when SAFE is popular and a lot of coin is in circulation? Will farming be pointless and people just stop devoting resources to the network? Remember farming reward has to exceed the cost of running the node, that includes the cost of electricity.
Also the number of coins in existence is not related to popularity. Rather the other way around if anything
*** as its more popular the higher the price one would expect. So getting 1/2 the coins for the same “work” probably nets the farmer more $$$s or more bartering than it did at 10% existing
Ok here’s a question: What happens when you have large populations like China and India farming for safecoin? Will a) There be enough to go around? and b) Will relative value of safecoin drop relative to the massive number to available farmers?
If you you’ve got masses of people who only run a vault because they’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of making a safecoin (which is still essentially the same concept of how many minimum wage, or even slave wage jobs work) and keep their vaults running because they’ve got nothing to lose (their computer would be on anyway and again is in line with labor markets which rely on people to choose between shitty wages and no wages at all) then will this cause enough of a void in demand to cause a raise in safecoin value OR will the network simply run on millions upon million of people idling their computers but making no notable profit while those who DO want to make profit and participate in the economy abandon the network?
It’s a market so I can’t predict who will farm or any other details.
Those who are happy with the rewards will farm, those who aren’t will give up, and the network will adjust the rewards up or down so that it has enough farmers, but not pay so much that it has more than enough.
If we had coin denominations (like this), where value of coin depends on ID of coin, farming could select range of IDs where average coin value is the desired farming reward.
Mechanics: As master nodes select coin ID for farming attempt, they discard if it’s not in the right range, try until one is in the right range. They can use a serial number (like a nonce) for generating the hash for the coin ID to make the search deterministic.
Thing to notice: Value of denominations follow geometric series. With exponent smaller than 1: Total sum approaches finite limit. (Less than 0.01% over 2³²)
This doesn’t depend on number of denominations. Add another, add a thousand, or infinitely many: Still no inflation.
So: If you think we have a shortage just print another denomination. (Add 1-2 bits to accommodate new addresses.) More individual coins in new denomination, but smaller value. More coins in circulation, but no inflation. Sounds like good thing.
of SAFE anything