A good point on the forum at the moment about block rewards
https://forum.nemcoin.com/index.php?topic=2501.90Jabo38 and Alkaline reckon that some portion of unclaimed stakes should be put to use rewarding ' harvesting'
I think that this could be important at least in the early stages of NEM development.
What do you think? Anyone not registered on the Forum yet, please do and leave a comment.
The first thing that comes to mind is will block reward increase the value of NEM other than enriching the individual with a few more NEMs?
Is having 10 more NEMs that is worth, say, 0.2cts each better or having NEM that is worth 2cts. each.
I would use the NEMs to develop more applications that will enhance the value of NEM. If we leave NEM as it is, it will never fly. Real money is being poured into Bitcoin projects. Few ever wonder beyond that. If NEM is left alone, it will be like a feather coin reenacted.
What we need is a holistic offering that people cannot help but to use it.
We should spread NEM as much as we can. For this reason it would be better not to reward harvesting people by a separate bonus. The more we can spread NEM, the more people will trust NEM. And you all know that we need trust for our aim to establish a new economy movement.
So we could invest the unclaimed stakes for App-development ( like NEM Wallet, perhaps also some small NEM games like candy-crush, doodle jump combined with chat-function).
App-development like this for example will help to bring NEM into everybody's mind.
Just my 2 cents
Again I agree, I just hope that Nemsters dont get that ' whats the point of harvesting' attitude and was wondering if a portion of unclaimed stakes directed at harvesting in some way would give the network a boost.
The downside of giving money to harvesters is that it just looks like we are giving more NEM to the original stake holders as they will be the most likely to harvest and that this really doesn't actually help the NEM ecosystem, but that isn't exactly how I see it.
We are giving NEM not to just stakeholders, but to stakeholders that support the network. Generally speaking in life when people give support to a cause the expectation is that they get something out of it. What we don't want is people supporting the network and getting nothing for it. Many other coins are having lots of problems supporting their network because not enough people are running nodes. Bitcoin of course doesn't have this problem because miners are paid well. But in PoS like systems, no new coins are created and many people aren't motivated to protect the network because time after time the block reward is 0. We would like to think that all NEMsters will run a node just because it is the right thing to do, but if time after time they get no block reward, many will turn off their nodes. Ultimately people act in visible and measurable self-interest. Lack of nodes has been the rule with the other PoS like coins and it needs to be avoided in NEM. We need to be the exception.
My suggestion was to take a very small amount of the unclaimed stakes, like less than 1%, and set it aside for small block rewards. This would help bootstrap the system. The rewards themselves probably wouldn't even pay for the electricity that it costs to keep the computer on, so we aren't making the rich richer, but seeing those extra NEM tokens coming in brings an emotional satisfaction that will keep the nodes on. People will support the network if even small amounts are rewarded because they feel like they are getting something in return. The small amount of NEMs are visible and measurable. But if the block reward says 0, then people get emotionally turned off and turn off the nodes as a result. Few people do things that don't directly benefit themselves.
In the end, I believe NEM will be awesome and that people will be running nodes and will need no artificially created incentives because there will be real fees going towards the harvesters. But that is only after we have an economy, but to have an economy, we need a strong network. A small block reward will help bootstrap the network and therefore bootstrap the economy.
In the end, what we really need is for NEM to be so awesome people are using it a lot. But a high volume of transactions won't happen week one because we won't have many third party partners. Until then, I see a good reason to fake it until we make it. To me, one of the beautiful things about NEM is that we get to learn from the mistakes of other coins that came before us. Pretty much all PoS like coins are having problems getting nodes. We at NEM have the best distribution of any coin, but I am not sure if that alone is enough to beat the lack of node problem. Something needs to be done. I do think with our wide distribution and a very small block reward, we could have more nodes than all the other major PoS like coins combined.
I think being bigger than the rest combined would be a great selling point of NEM. We have a real chance here to say we have the strongest network and the most confirmed nodes. I think that being able to say something like that will help to attract investors that will make NEM more awesome, which will then really strengthen the network.
