On 05/21/2017 12:32 AM, grarpamp wrote:
> Rewards seem nice, yet not everyone who wants to play
> can pay, or the math overhead is crushing, or it becomes
> centralized. Definitely worth trying, especially if it fits some
> usage model.
>
> Another form is to just let the network use whatever
> CPU, RAM, DISK, NET that you're not currently
> using, or give it whatever limits you want. In short,
> set it and forget it. Let the network figure out how
> to best use your node to support the network.
> Maybe it's a strictly filesharing network,
> or a general purpose network.
> That's on the "Hey I just want to donate
> this because it's cool like Seti@Home, etc."

Now I think you're describing Freenet.  How doth Freenet suck, let me
count the ways... massive computational overhead was the main thing,
last time I tried it which was ages ago.  It really needed its own
dedicated box to "just work."  But it does distribute files, increase
the availability of more popular ones (via increased redundancy of
storage), and is censorship resistant due to distributed storage of data
which itself is encrypted and anonymized.

I think a project that aims to improve on the implementation of the
basic ideas in Freenet could be a big winner.

:o)

> Users actual use of the network would
> be through different apps... be it submitting
> infohashes, or compute jobs, etc.
>
> Does eliminating all the reward tracking overhead
> provide substantial resources back to support
> free use.
>
> ie: Most people and their computer resources sit idle,
> probably more than enough to provide back whatever
> multimedia they want to consume.
> If true, all balances out, no need to bother track accounting
> with "pay to play" style system?
>
> I like "pay to play" as it offers at least some
> firm guarantee to the consumer offeror.
>
> But an accounting free system is more fun as in free beer :)
>
> Hybrids might work too.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exabyte
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yottabyte
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(data)
>
> 100M users donating 10GiB slack space is about 0.93 EiB
> of non redundant storage, excluding overhead.
>
> Example, at 4x redundancy, that probably easily covers
> lossless versions of all movies (at least 1080p)
> and all audio (FLAC), all wikipedia, all OS and apps.
>
> Approaching mini-NSA scale... not a bad start.
>