I’ve been reading the forum posts, following the rationale behind the Staking by Magnitude and the Staking by RAC debate and I think it would be good to 1) consolidate some of the major questions that have been raised and also their answers 2) analyze the pros and cons of each situation, and 3) propose another solution to get us thinking.
Given that BBP is now a PODC coin for a worthy cause, it is my opinion that this coin has the potential to achieve a level of adoption that few other cryptocurrencies can. The decisions made now, especially with regards to Staking by MAG vs RAC have the potential to affect the future of coin in an enormously significant way. Therefore, I think that before we proceed headlong into binding ourselves to one path, we should lay out as clearly and concisely as possible as much factual data as we can regarding the pros and cons of any chosen path. As information and discussion is scattered over testnet threads and buried in pages on this thread, I want to try and put as much as I can into a single place to try and get everyone together on the same page. I’d appreciate any intelligent, well-thought out and civil responses to this.
I will do this in question and answer format.
Is an increase in the number of miners or the price of the coin a good thing?
With regards to the growth of the coin, I think we can all agree that an increase in either of these categories is a win.
#1: Miners. The enormous potential for global impact – If more miners come on board and put their computing power towards this project, the amount of research for curing diseases that can be achieved increases and society benefits immensely.
In 2014 in the USA alone, 73% of households have a PC with internet access. Given that there are 126 million households in 2017, it means that there are 92 million PCs that could be used to mine BBP. If BBP were able to reach just 1% of the PCs in the USA (~1 million), each with a lowly RAC of just 1,000, this would give a total of 1 billion RAC put towards disease research. Now according to Forrester research, there are probably over 2 billion PCs in the world. If just 1% were tapped to join BBP, that would be 20 million PCs. With an average RAC of 1,000, this would give a total of 20 billion RAC put towards disease research.
Given that Rosetta is currently at about 40 million RAC worldwide, an adoption of BBP mining by just 1% of the world’s PCs at a lowly average rate of 1,000 RAC/PC mining would result in a 500-fold increase in worldwide computing power that is currently being allocated to a cure for HIV, malaria, cancer, and Alzheimer's through Rosetta.
In short, widespread adoption of BBP has the potential to single-handedly benefit the world we live in by funneling an enormous amount of computing power into scientific research that will directly improve the lives of people around us.
#2: Coin Value. Twice the price, twice the children fed.
As 10% of the emissions always goes to charity, any increase in the price of the coin means a linear increase in the number of children sponsored through Bloom, Compassion, etc. If the price of the coin doubles, so does the number of sponsored kids. That this is a win is a no-brainer.
If BBP were to trade at $0.10 during 2019, then it would have a market cap of just over $176 million USD based on a total emission of ~1.76 billion coins by the end of the year, placing it at about #80 on CoinmarketCap in today’s figures. Out of the 700 million new BBP minted that year, 70 million BBP or $7 million would go to charity. If BBP were to trade at $0.25 instead for that year, it would have a market cap of just over $441 million placing it at about #38 on CoinmarketCap in today’s figures, around where DogeCoin, SiaCoin, and Status are. Out of the 700 million new BBP minted that year, 70 million BBP or $17.5 million would go to charity for the year 2019. At a rate of $450/year per child at Compassion, this would result in ~39,000 kids being sponsored through BBP.
Wow! OK, I want BBP to moon! So… how can we increase the coin’s value?
There are multiple ways including advertising, improved UI, etc. but I will simply focus on the Staking based on Mag versus Staking based on RAC debate. In a nutshell, implementing staking in some form to mine should increase the value of the coin as miners have less reason to sell, decreasing the available supply, which in turn will drive up the price.
So how do we control the supply?
#1: Sanctuaries. At ~110 masternodes with 1.5 million each locked up, this means that currently, 165 million of the total 460 million coins in circulation (36%) are not on the market. I think that it is fair to say, that the arrival of sanctuaries has had SOME effect on increasing the price from pre-Christmas 2017 of ~10 Sats to now ~30+ Sats.
#2: Staking to Mine. By linking staking benefits to mining power, more coins are removed from the market, decreasing supply and driving up the price.
A) Staking based on BBP/Mag
According to Rob’s proposal of staking based on a 1000 magnitude point scale at 10,000BBP/Mag (the current leader on the poll) would result in a static lock up of 10,000 x 1000 = 10 million BBP (2.1% of the current total supply and decreasing over time as more coins are minted). If the rate were 50,000 BBP/Mag (the highest on the poll and in 2nd place), then the lock up would be 50 million BBP (10.8% pf the current totally supply and decreasing over time). Let’s split the difference and use 30,000 BBP/Mag (6.5% current total supply and decreasing over time) just so that we can use real numbers.
The benefit of this setup is that a new miner entering with a Core i5 that gives 2,000 RAC would have a Mag of 2,000 / 2,000,000 * 1000 = 1. At 30,000 BBP/Mag, they would need to stake 30,000 BBP. At $0.003 USD/BBP, this is a $90 investment to mine at 100%. Now if the total RAC were to quintuple to 10 million say at the end of 2018, the same individual would only have to invest 1/5th of the amount of BBP to continue mining, which would be 6,000. If the BBP/USD were to remain at $0.003 USD/BBP, it would cost only $18 to mine at 100%. Now, if 64% of coins are not locked up in masternodes, and we remove an additional 6.5% of the total current supply, we have engineered a ~10% removal of the coins not currently locked up in masternodes (6.5%/64%). This should drive up the price initially say, 10 – 30%. But over time, it would come back down as the total supply continues to increase at the high emission rate of these early months and years.
Therefore, the cost of joining BBP mining would decrease over time (encouraging more people to join) if nothing changed, however, the price would struggle to also rise with such a large amount of supply available (decreasing interest in people joining). In summary,
PROS: Easier entry requirements for new miners as time goes on and potentially more casual users joining us.
CONS: A larger supply of BBP is still available leading to potentially lower or stagnant prices until the emission rate drops significantly. Low prices for extended periods of time might be perceived as a lack of growth, hampering efforts to hire more devs, staff, and overall increase adoption of the coin.
B) Staking based on BBP/RAC
Let’s now analyze aikida3k’s proposal to stake say 20 BBP/RAC.
A new miner entering with a Core i5 that gives 2,000 RAC would require 20 * 2000 = 40,000 BBP to mine at 100%. At $0.003 USD/BBP, this is a $120 investment to mine at 100%. Now if the total RAC were to quintuple to 10 million say at the end of 2018, the maximum lockup for 100% mining would grow from 40 million to 200 million BBP (18.5%) out of a total supply of 1.08 billion. Let’s say masternodes continued to be purchased and remained at occupying 36% of the total supply. Then the total lockup would now be 55% of the 1.08 billion total available coins by the end of 2018. This would most likely drive prices even higher.
However, if prices were to double or triple, so would the cost of the initial investment to mine at 100%, going from $120, to $240 or $360. The problem only increases as the value of the coin increases and eventually it would be out of the hands of the average person to mine, and only individual who got in early, or those with loads of capital to play, would be able to participate.
Trying to drop the BBP/RAC as times goes on to decrease the entry requirements might help initially however, it will reduce the total lockup as well, leading us back to the same situation as the staking BBHP/MAG. Also, without a well thought-out formula for how to decrease the BBP/RAC, this could engender a great amount of fighting within the community as time goes on as people argue over what the appropriate amount of BBP/RAC every time a decision to drop it needs to be made. I fear that this would be detrimental to the image of the coin.
In summary,
PROS: BBP/RAC scales as the network grows larger and does a good job of decreasing the supply and driving up the price of the coin.
CONS: Small increases in the price would discourage new, average people from setting up their computers to mine the coin and further decreasing the chance of widespread adoption of the coin.
So, here’s the million dollar or 400 million dollar coinmarketcap question: #1) HOW do you continually INCREASE the amount of BBP that is locked up in a fair, logical way, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME #2) keeping the entry requirements LOW enough to encourage the average user to join BBP?
Any solution that is able to do BOTH is going to push prices higher, incentivize the average person to join us, and give us a chance of being a $400 million coin. And if this happens, we’re going to feed more kids AND increase the amount of research done for curing diseases.
What about making power users with a high RAC pay more than little guys?
A formula that favors little guys over big guys is susceptible to exploitation. A large miner could split themselves into numerous CPIDS and pass themselves off as multiple small miners just to maximize their profit. This would in turn affect all the “little guys.”
What about not having staking at all?
There are at least three difficulties I can think of and that others have already noted:
#1: Botnets. In the past, we have suffered from botnets plaguing us. By requiring some kind of proportional staking, botnets aren’t able to so easily overwhelm the network.
#2: Increasing supply. Without natural buyers, it will be difficult to increase the value of the coin and we will be stuck until the emission rate drops significantly as miners must constantly dump their coins to pay their bills.
#3: Uniqueness. We will have less to differentiate us from other coins. It was a big plus to have a 10% charity block and it is an enormous plus to now have PODC. If we are able to solve this problem and implement a unique system that is simple and fair, we have the potential to boost the intrinsic value of this coin even higher and to increase our chances at widespread adoption.
Now, it is true that if the coin enters the mania phase of asset bubbles we might be able to significantly lower the staking requirements as the public will naturally soak up supply, but we can build a new bridge when we get there.
What about a UTXO_Percentage that is a multiple of your daily reward that you stake?
This is a clever idea. This would discourage big miners from dumping their wallets, because their earning power is directly proportional to what they’ve taken in. But I’m at loss as to know how one would go about developing the formula for this. I’m not sure what would happen if you sold a fair amount of your coins on the market, hashed for a day at say 50% power, staked what you had, would you then return to close to 100%? I simply don’t have the brainpower to figure this one out…
My Proposal
This proposal is certainly flawed, but I write in the hopes that the summary I have given above and my proposal below will supply others with A) consolidated information to think through the problem that faces us, and B) a faulty solution to smash, and perhaps in the process find THE solution.
Given that the two solutions already proposed are linear, and that a simple linear solution is less likely to be exploited.
My solution has two parts.
Scaling BBP/Mag – First, if the main issue is control of the total supply of coins, then the amount of BBP required to be staked should be a function of the total available coins. So, if we have approximately 500 millions coins available at the moment and we wish to lock up 10% of them, we set BBP/Mag to be initially 50,000. Then we create a linear function to increment BBP/Mag based on the total number of coins available. So, by the end of the year when we hit 1 billions coins, the BBP/Mag would’ve climbed to 100,000. So now, imagine if the total RAC never increased, it would require miners to increase the amount of their stake in order to maintain their UTXO at 100%. If the RAC were to double by the end of the year, then each of their magnitudes would decrease by a factor of 2. The end result, would be that they wouldn’t need to change their stake amount, but the amount they would need to stake wouldn’t drop as drastically as in the scenario with a fixed 50,000 BBP/Mag. So, the benefits of this are:
1) A fixed percentage of total supply coin lockup. Unlike fixed BBP/Mag which has a fixed stake that doesn’t grow, and RAC/Mag which will vary based on total RAC and need to be changed at steps which could lead to fighting, this algorithm scales and helps control the total supply. If the community decides that a 20% lockup of total coins is better, then we simply change our initial conditions to begin with 100,000 BBP/Mag.
2) A fair algorithm for changing the BBP/MAG that is evident to all and simple to calculate. An adjustment of the staking formula that is not determined mathematically now, but subject to community votes runs a risk of tarnishing the image of the coin lending credence to the belief that perhaps certain key individuals or accounts will control its direction.
In conclusion, a fair scaling algorithm coupled with a decrease in total supply should drive the price of the coin up. This answers part #1 of my 400 million dollar question.
Fixing initial entry of 25% UTXO_Percentage at 20 USD/machine not BBP.
I’m aware that this part of my solution is probably the most full of holes, but I hope that someone smarter than me can fix this and come up with something more brilliant. I’m certain it’s open to exploitation, but given that we have ARM devices mining at 100% without stake, I think it’s far to try and implement something to help the average Joe get involved with BBP. Remember, if we can leverage the power of the average Joe in the world to want to throw their computer towards BBP by giving them some incentive, we can drastically increase the amount of computational power put towards curing diseases.
So, in order to make mining BBP attractive to people, we need to fix the cost of entry into the market say at $20 USD (except for ARM devices which will operate at 100% without a stake). So, if the coin is worth $0.003 USD/BBP, then they would require 6667 BBP to mine with their PC. If the coin appreciates to $0.01 USD/BBP, then they would require only 2000 BBP to be able to mine. We can dynamically calculate this amount every week perhaps.
So, for average Joe’s, no matter what the price of the coin is, they will always be able to mine at 25% capacity and earn BBP. Even if they don’t make much from it, they will think of themselves as donating their electricity/computer to feeding children and curing a major disease, while at the same time earning some BBP that might appreciate in the future. Fixed entry cost means entry is easy at any point in the life of the coin. This will also serve as a huge marketing tool. Imagine being able to tell anyone. For a $20 USD stake, you can help cure cancer, and receive a limited portion of the rewards.
By making it per machine, it discourages botnets who will have to stake more money for each low-powered machine they commandeer. So, if someone grabs 500 machines, they’ll need to stake at least $10,000 USD. Also, splitting your machines up is not helpful as you have to manage multiple wallets and each would still require a $20 stake.
Now, if you want to increase your UTXO_Percentage, you will need to mine or buy more BBP and stake it at the current BBP/Mag. Note that you will never fall below 25% and it might get expensive to buy more if the price rises, however, at least you will always be earning something and in due time, might be able to slowly increase your stake by just mining yourself. Note that your initial $20 stake counts towards increasing your UTXO_Percentage, however, you’ll never drop below 25% as long as you have a minimum of $20.
So the benefits of this are:
1) Fixed price entry at any point in the life of BBP for the average Joe. A $20 investment to cure cancer could be a huge marketing tagline/pitch. And by keeping the coin accessible to the public, we increase the likelihood we will be able to tap into the vast computing power of the general public.
2) Basic reward for even the smallest players. No matter how small you are, you can earn some BBP. You might even be taking a loss because you’re paying more for electricity, however, people can take comfort knowing that their computing power is going to curing a disease, and that the little BBP they do own, might have the chance of surging in value, paying them back potentially for their donation. As for the big players, they will not be satisfied staking only $20 to gain an immediate 25% UTXO_Percentage. With enough 100% stakers, the break-even for electricity costs/profits will lean towards them. So unless, those at 25% want to take a major loss on their electricity bill, they will have to buy up to 100% to stay on par.
In conclusion, this answer part #2 of my $400 million question.
My Thoughts
I write this knowing that no matter what the proposal is, it is likely going to price me out of the market. I started mining in January, but the rewards have been meager due to the “botnet.” Either way, I would like what is best for the coin. If my solution above or my work is simply a waste of time, please disregard it. I just hope that in some small way, I might contribute to this great project.
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