Topic: Obyte: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments - page 33. (Read 1234317 times)

So, when does the easily acquired wealth convert into a "skin in the game"? Do you have skin in the game if you buy a ASIC miners with that money or is it still "skin in the game" of the parents?
Does it convert into "skin in the game" after you have hodled it for 8 years? I mean, that's how we have Bitcoin millionaires today, some have been rewarded for not selling.
Do you have skin in a game when you have done physical or mental work in order to get those coins? What if you got paid in alts that were created from air and then converted to Bitcoin?
Or do you only have skin in the game if you invest into cryptocurrencies or its hardware with the work you got paid in fiat currencies?

OK, this is really agood quote - didn't know that.


The way you are making your points suggests me you are likely a programmer No offence intended, but to my taste a too schematic way to see things which eventually would make you in some cases miss the big picture. There is no real difference here between the expressions "no nodes" and "fake nodes", we are meaning exactly the same things just with different words.


Here we totally disagree. If you inherit a fortune from your parents, it's your parents skin in the game the one you end up holding. If you waste your inherited fortune you waste their life of savings, not yours. It did cost you nothing to get that fortune. This is why most people who are winning a lottery end up losing everything. It does cost them nothing to get the fortune - to buy a lottery ticket is not really a cost, nor a merit - and the "skin-in-the-game" value of that fortune is zero. When the skin-in-the-game value of something you are holding is zero your pain in losing it is infinitely lower than the pain of losing something where's a lot of YOUR skin-in-the-game. If you make a mistake which leads you to lose all the savings of all your life you are much more inclined to commit suicide than if you make a mistake which leads you to lose the saving of someone's elses life, which happened to be in your possession just by the way of luck because you have won it or inherited it.
In my Ivory Tower post I'm mentioning also modern politicians ruling without skin in the game. Of course if they make mistakes they have something to lose - their power, but they don't really have to pay the whole price of their mistakes, like it would happen in a distant past. The same applies to top bankers. It's not THEIR skin-in-the-game at stake. All those aspects have been widely and well described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "Skin in The Game". Understanding the meaning of skin-in-the-game is not limited to the concept of "having something to lose", but it deals with the true subjective value of what you have to lose in a game.

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.  That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server.  The design supports letting users just be users.  The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.  Those few nodes will be big server farms.  The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate. "satoshi" https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6306

At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware. A server farm would only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with that one node. "satoshi" https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014815.html

My point was that non-participants are not users/nodes at all, you classify them as "fake nodes" and you consider "real nodes" only those who have put real money into it? Same with telephone, just having it, but not using it doesn't make it you a node of the network.

As I understand "skin in the game", it doesn't matter what is the source of the income. If you play a lottery or you inherit fortune, you have earned it. You had to do something for these events to happen, even if it was as small thing as not to be an a$shole towards the people who raised you. After all, their trusted they fortune to you, not to some cats shelter.

Same thing with "GBYTE to BTC holders distribution", haven't you earned the GBYTE if you hodling Bitcoin and supporting that technology, without which Obyte would probably be here today. After all it wasn't just airdropped to all BTC holders, but just those who bother to link the addresses.

Same thing with Draw Airdrop, it just improved "GBYTE to BTC holders distribution", which back then already featured "GBYTE to GBYTE holders distribution". "Prince of Whales" rewards you for not having dumped your GBYTE and still having the "skin in the game". Even if the GBYTE is not that much worth in dollar value, winners of that draw increase their percentage of GBYTE holding compared to total supply. "King of Goldfish" is not just linking your address either, you have earn it for using Obyte features like "Real name attestation". Current strategy to win "King of Goldfish" is not just by loading up your address as much GBYTE as possible, the points and randomness from BTC block favors those who refer as many "Real name attested" people as possible and load up each of those persons address with optimal 10GB. In order they could get others to do the "Real name attestation", they probably use smart-voucher to refer them too. So, the amount of Obyte features they use, grows exponentially if you want to win with "King of Goldfish". So, what do we call those who use Obyte features? Users. Will they keep using Obyte after just linking to Draw Airdrop, signs say that they don't, they just hodl or refer more people who hodl. So, when calculating Obyte value by Metcalfe's law, they shouldn't be considered as users after they are done with the linking.

And as I understand from the Ivory Tower board, you consider someone who keeps updating their mining equipment (most probably with the BTC mining rewards) also "skin in the game"? So, if you would have changed you BTC into ASIC miners, would that have made you have "skin in the game". Or you only have skin in the game when you invest money that you earned outside of cryptoverse?

The "skin in the game" doesn't matter about the source of the wealth, but from the risk of losing it. Just that the value of you bags have gone down, doesn't mean that you have lost it. So, in that sense, had you bought ASIC miners ATH, you would have lost it, but your "skin in the game" would have been in the mining, not in the alts anymore.

They have skin in the game with the amount they have because their interest is that the asset doesn't loose value. They also can't sell their bags on exchange either because these amount would crash the market and they bags will lose value before they could even sell small fraction of it. The whole sell side of Bittrex Obyte orderbook is only 5k GBYTE while the top 3 whales have 60k, 40k and 20k GBYTE. If the sell it, they sell it OTC, by hiring someone to find the buyer first.

Well, I didn't express myself clearly on this point, as it also refers to my long post in the Ivory Tower. Most of today's skin in the game with Bitcoin is consisting in the huuuge expenses miners have to continuously fund to keep mining. I doubt that Nakamoto would have foreseen the rise of ASICS and the Bitcoin network swallowing more energy than entire countries like Ireland. That's so much more skin in the game than anyone had predicted in the early days.

Whaddayamean 'unintended'?!? The skin in the game aspect is the fulcrum upon which the entire Bitcoin ecosystem balances.

Most of your argoments are correct and they are not contraddicting mine, just fine tuning them. I don't pretend to state absolute truths, just want to draw attention to the complexity of the creation of value in crypto, where Metcalfe's law is only one of the agents in play, and it doesn't apply if the nodes are not real nodes.
But in one one thing you are not correct. If you have $1 million or 100 BTC which you've somehow got for free or super-cheap, you don't actually have any skin in the game. You have a lot of money which you didn't have to pay for, which means you didn't have to put your skin at risk to get it. What you have is a free lunch, which of course you wouldn't like to lose, but you could sell it any moment at any price and you would always be in positive territory, since it didn't cost you anything. Money that you had to work for you have paid it with your life - that is skin in the game. During the last bullrun a few years ago I got theoretically rich in FIAT terms because the alts I had got for nothing suddenly mooned - but I didn't sell and after the crash I am again just poor as before. But in real terms I didn't lose anything crucial, like thirty years of life or more which usually you would need to put aside such amounts of money - that would have been skin in the game - I've just lost an amazing free lunch, a Black Swan which has suddenly popped up in my living room and then has suddenly flown out of the open window.
People who instead lost millions of $ of money they had actually to work for - have eventually suicided, there have been cases. THEY had skin in the game, too much of it.
Whales without skin in the game who believe in the Obyte project can be good nodes all the same. But should they some day for any reason lose faith in the project they could easily quit the game at any stage with no real loss, just because of their lack of skin in the game.
Skin in the game is an amplifier of other causes, is what makes other factors of causes more real.

I can't comment on Ivory Tower board, but if you have $1 million or 100 BTC (doesn't matter if you inherited it or got it for cheap long time ago), isn't that a "skin in the game" too?
I mean, at some amount, large enough value would become a "skin in the game" because you wouldn't want the value to drop because you have too much "skin in the game" in that asset and you would lose more than those who have less of it.
Normally, you wouldn't see bigger TSLA investors talking sh!t about their cars. In cryptospace, you could see people talking sh!t about the alts they hodl, but that's probably because their bags are small, so they don't have enough skin in the game.

I think you got the Metcalfe's law wrong, it doesn't stop working when the tokens are airdropped. Wikipedia says: "Metcalfe's law states the effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system". Originally, it was not in terms of users, but rather of "compatible communicating devices", but the amount of "users" seems to be more accurate for it. If you airdrop to addresses without them having to do anything then they are not users. If you distribute it to users, so they have to claim it or do something else in order to get it, they will be users just for the time period they claim it, but if they dump it or hodl it after that, they are not users.

Metcalfe's law was about telephones and it still applies. I still have landline telephone number, but I haven't used it for over 15 years. It's even connected now to my TV, so if somebody would call to it, it would pop-up on TV screen. Is landline telephone valuable in my country? No, because nobody uses it, everybody just has it for legacy reasons and because it doesn't cost anything to keep it because it comes with the TV package (all landline operators pivoted to ISPs).

Metcalfe's law worked for Obyte case too, people had to take part of the "Bytes to BTC holders distribution", airdrop is a misleading name for it. The network value went up, people had to link their addresses by making BTC transfer or by signing the message, but since they didn't convert into users, the Obyte value game down again. That doesn't mean that Obyte whales doesn't have "skin in the game", but I don't know any whales either who is talking sh!t about Obyte, it looks to me that the 2 biggest whales on Draw Airdrop will do anything to increase their GBYTE bags.

The first law of thermodynamics, also known as Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another.

I too abhor the waste of resources by proof-of-work, but reality is not what is fitting our wishes, but what is fitting the laws of causality. As ethically perverse as it may be, proof-of-work happens to have this probably in the origins unintended feature of introducing a powerful deterministic skin-in-the-game variable into the mechanism. Once this principle becomes clear and acknowledged, it's up to the best minds in the crypto society to find out alternative ways to force efficient skin-in-the-game variables into less waistful networks as for example Obyte.

I second your opinion. Although I abhor the waste of resources by proof-of-work, I have to give it exactly this advantage.

Thumbs up from me for your post in the ivory tower, a good read and exactly my way of thinking.

when moon? Don't say me you rekt again, i just bought my 10th low
 

Good. Didn't know the numbers, thanks for the information, happy to hear lottery has been cut in half. I strongly approve all other methods of distribution. 

That's not the current distribution, it's one of the current distribution methods.

There are also:
* Cashback
* WCGrid https://wcg.report/
* Steem Attestation https://obyte.io/@JEDZYC2HMGDBIDQKG3XSTXUSHMCBK725
* Email Attestation https://obyte.io/@H5EZTQE7ABFH27AUDTQFMZIALANK6RBG
* Real Name Attestation with Jumio https://obyte.io/@I2ADHGP4HL6J37NQAD73J7E5SKFIXJOT
* Real Name Attestation with ID-card/Smart-ID/Mobile-ID https://obyte.io/@OHVQ2R5B6TUR5U7WJNYLP3FIOSR7VCED

and Draw Lottery distributes currently the same amount as Autonomous Agents Developer Contest https://medium.com/obyte/distribution-outlook-bb28ff0b91aa because they are happening bi-weekly, one week it is the Draw Lottery and then the other week is the AA Developer Contest. The burn rate of Draw Lottery was cut in half.

Obyte's model of airdrop distribution was based on the correct assumption that the value of a network grows according to growth of its nodes - as stated in Metcalfe's law.
However, as we've learnt reality is more complex than that and the only hope to grasp some of it is through a multidisciplinary approach.
One factor which was missing in this equation is "skin in the game", without which apparently a node in crypto is not a real node. I've written an extensive piece of this aspect in the Ivory Tower of this forum, and I'm quoting Obyte there too:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-is-giving-bitcoin-its-value-the-ultimate-answer-is-skin-in-the-game-5174190

Please those interested give it a read and let's realize that a node is not a real node if it doesn't truly share the "dangers" of the network. Obyte is an amazing tech, and in time most of those who are holding bytes - nodes - without any skin in the game will likely hand them over to players willing to put their skin in the game and this will finally cause the rise in monetary value we all are patiently waiting for. But to speed up it's rise we'd have to think at ways to increase the levels of "skin in the game" of the new players.
The currently distribution by a way of a lottery is even more silly than a fair distribution to holders because it's adding zero skin in the game to the system. Just waisted time and energies IMHO. High level bounties rewarding real value contributions by the community would surely be a much wiser approach. Other ways to add skin in the game could and should be imagined. PoW coins have miners who have to continuosly put skin in the game to run the show and which it's what's rapidly causing value in those networks. We don't need miners in Obyte - which is good - but we'd need to find other alternative sources of skin in the game. Let's realize that a monetary system is not only an algorithmic system, but also a sociological one, and let's act accordingly.

Some demos are already built, some demos will be built during next 2 weeks, hopefully these can be announced in September. There is already a wallet released on Play Store, which is focused on IoT devices and supports payment channels, but it's currently only for TESTNET https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ws.biot.wallet2

This is a serious way to distribute bytes. It motivates people to develop useful tools for Obyte. The lottery on the contrary is an un-serious way to distibute bytes. Instead of rewarding developers, the lottery tends to attract and reward gamblers, ie people who do things in the hope of winning lotteries, probably the worse sort of public. Much better to destine resources to people with higher standards, like in this case.

The winners of the 2nd round of the developer contest are announced:

https://medium.com/obyte/winners-of-the-second-round-of-the-obyte-autonomous-agents-developer-contest-c69e37dbf55

1st prize 140 GB and 422 GBB:
pmiklos — “Autonomous Subscription Service”

2nd prize 70 GB and 147.7 GBB:
Alvarlaigna — “EOS-like Crowdsale”

3rd prize 35 GB and 73.85 GBB:
hey_monkey — “The Attested Reputations Autonomous Agent”

Best tutorial 55 GB and 116.05 GBB:
Pmiklos — “Stateful Autonomous Agents”

The contest continues and the deadline for entries is August 29th, the winners of round 3 will be announced on September 1st.

Let's recap it, that Obyte:
- Don't use blocks
- Don't use miners
- Near-instant transactions
- No gatekeepers

Some usecases & advantages:
- Conditional smart payments
- Sovereign identity
- IoT Payment channels
- Supper developer-friendly
- P2P payments in chat
- Chatbox
- P2P betting

Source: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYAjbxT5zHfeTtXe_hr9Gxg

Reminder, Episode 1 of the Obyte Community Radio Show starts in 1 hour 20 minutes at 20.00 UTC.

It will be streamed live on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYAjbxT5zHfeTtXe_hr9Gxg