Incentives in Networking

[Rayservers]

On 11/24/09 00:25, coderman wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Rayservers <rayservers at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ...
>> I said price and I also said tokens on another node. It could be peanuts or oil
>> or music or whatever - perhaps donuts. Exchange value for value. At the end of
>> that chain... I go buy a donut.
>>
>> Sure, you can trade points, hashcash, torrentpoints... how do I, who run an ISP,
>> go buy a donut? tit-for-that. lol.
> 
> my apologies for focusing solely on the price/money angle. there is a
> good post about incentives on the Tor blog that covers similar ideas
> and discusses the complexities and pit falls associated:
> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/two-incentive-designs-tor
> 
> using loom for settlement is probably too much overhead for Tor but is
> aiming closer to what is needed.
> 
> my issue with money payment in particular is described in this paragraph:
> "On top of that are the social implications of adding money into the
> system. Nick keeps reminding me of sociological studies saying that
> rewarding volunteers with t-shirts makes them feel good about their
> contribution, whereas rewarding them with a small amount of cash makes
> them subconsciously start to value their contribution based on the
> cash you give them. So they're more likely to stop volunteering, as
> they don't feel their effort is properly appreciated. More details
> here[0], here[1], and here[2]. It's hard to say how right this
> research is, but it seems a rough set of variables to add in if we can
> avoid it."
> 
> 1. http://www.congo-education.net/wealth-of-networks/ch-04.htm
> 2. http://fiveandone.wikispaces.com/file/view/Why+Incentive+Plans+Cannot+Work.pdf
> 3. http://www.google.com/search?q=Effects+of+externally+mediated+rewards+on+intrinsic+motivation
> 
> sorry for the rash response. i too am anxious for the day when robust
> incentives in Tor provide a much larger, much more capable network!
> 
> best regards,

No, not rash at all. Its just the way things are today. Very few people can even
explain what a dollar is. The subconscious disillusionment with what passes for
"money" today results in the aversion towards anything to do with it.

One rightly feels that it should be possible to get by without this crap and the
attendant parasites and official scammers and terrorists. This is a true
statement - the worst crime against humanity is the "money| system as has been
practised in a few generations, the attendant theft of all the people's gold by
fraud and war and the virtual enslavement by the Identity State build on
monetized birth certificates.

Re: using loom for settlement is probably too much overhead...

One does not do a loom payment per byte. Once a day, say, one buys so many
gigabytes of transfer at a particular node which issues and settles its own
tokens all by itself. One does the same at a bunch of other nodes.

When one initiates an onion routed circuit or mixmaster message, one passes
tokens onion encrypted back to the node paying it in its own "bandwidth"
currency. That node does not have to talk to anyone else to settle it.

Think of loom as a two dimensional sparse array, 2^128 x 2^128. Its a DB with
2^128 "types" with 2^128 "locations". The node issues from a random location for
a random type it claims for its own bandwidth. That location goes negative. It
hands a random location with a certain number of tokens to a particular
customer... the sum of those 2^128 locations is zero. When a node "pays" by
revealing its location, the appropriate number of tokens is "moved" back to the
issuer location and "extinguished".

Paying that node for its tokens is revealing so many tokens of a particular type
on another node, that issues, say oil contracts in millilitres. A particular
mix/tor node may accept oil contracts from nodes O, I and L and Donut tokens
from D, O and N. Note a node could issue Oil, Donut and bandwidth tokens. No
shortage of types here.

The robotic market will soon vote the most preferred tokens by merely using
them. "Ithaca Hours" for street bums could be a currency. I just don't think it
would be very popular.

A node may be specific enough - "Dollar liabilities of BigBank, Littletown
Branch, Somewhere"; "Gold coins in ATM on 51st and 5th, NYC". People will soon
catch on that all "Dollars" are not equal. What if BigBank is rumoured to go
bust?...

Why not digital cash? Every digital cash issuer would need to maintain a spend
book DB... why bother. For high value issuance, perhaps we would use that. A
loom node may store a cert at a particular issue location and issue tokens
against that. This way many nodes could issue oil contracts without being an oil
company. Oil company may only issue large contracts in DBCs.

Why should tor engineers work for only T-shirts? In the future, there is no
reason why they could not be as rich as any Microsoft employee... just better -
self made men whose gross income no one knows.

An integration application that can talk tor, Mixmaster, SMTP, tahoe, loom,
trubanc etc... is needed. I'm planning one:

https://freedom.rayservers.com/Globalisles.net

Other neat stuff that should go viral and which inspired the name:
https://freedom.rayservers.com/Claim+of+Right

It is similar, no doubt, to the GSF project which I have had a lot to do with:
http://www.global-settlement.org/

Perhaps the word Global can be saved from the Globalists who have butchered many
fine words... such as "money", "profit", etc. What happens to a cow who does not
produce more than she consumes? DEAD BEEF.

Cheers,

---Venkat.