Why do you figure a poll only submitted by the cheerfull crowd is going to give you any legitimacy? The poll hasn’t even been posted in the farmer chat group, let alone the tokenomics changing every hour so to speak.
And the most important question, the origin of your 800M tokens is what bothers me most. Nobody seems to care, but if this project goes live you can rest assured others will, and that will instantly kill the project.
Blockchain initiatives are scrutinized in much greater detail because 80% of the population still regards them as scammer tools…
ThreeFold Tokenomics Discussion
Geert,
Love your way of thinking, really great post!
While we are making the comparison to Bitcoin, I think it is fair to say that the Bitcoin way of managing coins or tokens has been proven over the last 11 years. The big advantage being that the currency has a hard cap, and can not be inflated by anyone.
Note that mining as well will stop by 2140, and miners will no longer earn money by getting a block reward, but only by being paid for the transactions inside a block.
This is somewhat similar to farming and cultivating. Miners will still receive Bitcoin after 2140, but not any longer for block awards.
In the same fashion farmers would only get cultivation tokens and no more farming tokens. I think this is a good thing, the cultivation by itself should be profitable enough for a farmer to join the grid!
@aernoud: BTC is so much more than just a speculation tool, it is the first and only tool that allows transacting between parties without a trust relation between them. This is a unique invention that has the same value as the invention of the internet and the relativity theory of Einstein! Most people just don’t yet realize it’s value…
I think we are good with the tokenomics as they are described now, and having 2 billion or 4 billion tokens does not change that much in my view, the final value of 1 token would just change, everything else being equal.
It does make a difference for the tokens ALREADY farmed of course, because they will only be worth half if you go for 4B tokens…
It is true that early farmers will earn more, but that is a normal thing in my opinion, with Bitcoin it is the same thing, you used to get 50 BTC per block in 2009, and currently you get 12.5 BTC, soon 6.25.
That is a system that is commonly accepted and no-one will have any issue with it. The system proposed in the tokenomics also gives more farming tokens early on, but when the grid is starting and not many users are buying capacity, it is only fair that farmers investing in hardware get compensated that way, a server running while being used or unused does not make a huge difference in cost…
So to wrap up, I think the currently proposed tokenomics are OK, but again, the current amount of tokens in existence is not. If we say that every token is backed by hardware, and we have 800 Million tokens…, where is the hardware?
Agree largely with you post.
However, I feel you’re confusing Bitcoin with the Blockchain technology.
The Blockchain tech is all what you say, and its a marvellous thing with far reaching applications.
Bitcoin is just a proof of concept of this technology, with no inherent value, while the non-sensical mining industry does nothing other then to help destroy the planet.
I only mentioned BTC for the tokenomics side of it. Over the past 11 years, both the upside and the downside of BTC have become clear.
I agree that on the upside, it is the first store of value invented, and that is indeed a really big deal. It cannot be tampered with and allows to transfer value without intermediary. This is huge and cannot be underestimated.
Now, the downsides have become obvious as well, and show that BTC indeed is incomplete, a POC that needs to be improved:
- mining destroys the planet
- it can store value indeed, but the value generated by BTC is like an empty box. Unlike ex. gold and diamond, it has nothing else to offer than being scarce and imperishable. Gold, next to that, has value also for its conductivity, diamond for its hardness, and therefore also have economic value.
I don’t think that without these characteristics, gold and diamond would have that much value. Or at least, the value would be way more speculative, same as what is ongoing now with bitcoin. - to me, also the hardcap and especially the way it is distributed (early adopters had huge benefit) is rather a flaw than a quality, because it generates unequal distribution.
My post was a meant as a proposal to deal with the flaws of this unequal distribution, especially the unequality over time is something to be tackled I believe.
I will play a bit with the simulator to see at what point in time difficulty level will be that high that almost no new tokens will be created. Pretty sure that if we come to this 0.5% market share in the next few years, this moment will not be far in the future. Not with 2bio tokens and not with 4bio tokens. And that’s a worry that I hoped to tackle by increasing the cap over time. And the 800mio of tokens would then no longer be a big deal either.
Arnaud,
I completely disagree!
It is exactly the mining resulting in Bitcoins that makes the system so robust, and the price paid for the electricity (the gameplay where the cheater risks enormous amounts of money when trying to manipulate the chain) is exactly what is needed for this system to function.
Geert, the 800M tokens ARE a big deal, it proves that the blockchain can be tampered with, and that plainly destroys the whole blockchain story.
If we state (as we do!) say that every token is backed by hardware, then where is the hardware? We will not solve this by brushing it under the carpet!
Have you tried calculating the token value using the current grid value and divide it by 800M, taking into account that the difficulty value for farming was 8, so you would have to divide by 6.4B actually?
How did Bitcoin make this a better world? The costs outweigh the benefits IMHO.
But let’s agree to disagree. You might be completely right, but I still think BTC will disappear at some point (Blockchain is here forever of course).
These are strong acquisitions/opinions, but they should be easy for the TF team to address.
Erwin,
I never said the 800mio, at this moment, is not a big deal. I agree on that. We should avoid a reputation like the XRP one, which is like the most hated coin in the cryptospace basically because 60% of the coins are owned by the founders.
All I’m saying is that the dilution effect of a cap increase might soften the issue.
So you want to dilute a scam Geert? Is that what you are saying?
No that’s not what I am saying, because it is not a scam.
The total number of of tokens created over the last 2 years can be seen In full transparency on the tfchain blockchain explorer. In a way it’s normal that the number of tokens is that high, do not forget about 80 petabytes of storage and 15k cores were already connected.
But compared to 100bio of tokens, these 800mio do not represent a lot. Now, with the decrease of the max cap, it represents a % that is way higher : we go from less than 1% to about 40% tokens already minted. That is the side effect of the new tokenomics proposal that maybe should be adapted.
I agree @Geert every TFT is the result of farming (people or company’s connecting IT capacity to the internet and records are registered of every minting (farming) action on the Rivine TFT blockchain as a result of connected capacity. It seems reasonable to me that farming capacity connected at the start would connect at a much lower TFT price and very low difficulty factor. This would create more TFT per month than capacity connected at $0.10 last year on a difficulty factor of 8.
Michael,
This far from OK, no offense, but either you don’t understand it or you are not willing to see it! You can never explain the amount of tokens farmed (physically you can of course, but ethically you cannot), but hey, be my guest and try to convince the world. See what their reaction will be, and the implications it will have…
So you agree its not a scam.
Risk is getting rewarded, nothing new here.
Now lets talk about this idea to have total token amount grow according to some metric.
That might be more fruitful.
Guys, bickering does not help us forward, however brainstorming does. This conversation is a weird combination of both 
.
I believe we can come to a solution that takes into account different factors. I just wonder whether it doesn’t lead us further away from initial objective, which is a more simple model that can be understood by everyone 
.
A few more thoughts :
- Maybe the % of capacity that is effectively used is a better parameter than absolute figures on usage. It would even allow us to accept the current proposal of 2bio (or 4bio) as a hard cap, as we can consider for the coming month that capacity usage will be close to zero. So if we implement by end of May the current proposal (assuming usage is ex. < 10%) then we have some more time for implementing an add-on that takes into account a cap growth factor.
- The lower usage is, the lower the incentive should be to set up new capacity. By that I mean that minting will be rewarded, but the earned tokens will be lower than with a high percentage of usage, which is an indicator that there is a need for more capacity.
- Ideally we split up this indicator by region, that is also according to our values. For example, it would incentivize a farmer to connect more capacity in Africa, because there is a bigger need for local capacity there. This incentive is given by a bigger reward in the minting phase (because capacity usage is higher in this region). Only consideration around that is how to harden the fact that a farm is located in a certain region.
- @michaelww I understand what you want to say, but I also understand the remark of @TFFarmer : early adopters should have some advantage but not to the point that they can become whales. And our model should also still work 20 years from now (75% long-term vs. 25% short-term objectives, remember B. Lietaer’s theory). A balance is to be found.
- I think for a farmer, the token should remain a utility token and not an investment instrument. Because if price tends to go up too quickly, farmers will not release the tokens they minted and as a consequence there is no liquidity in the market anymore to pay for capacity. Farmers don’t want that either I think. So ideal is a steady, stable growth of the token price.
- I wonder whether we cannot work with 2 caps: a hard cap of 100bio (like in the current model), and a soft cap (per region?) which is currently 2bio but that increases when the capacity usage grows, indicating there is a need for more capacity.
These are just loose thoughts. Do they make sense ? Shoot! Happy with any feedback, positive and negative.
Geert,
I think, this is a GREAT idea! I am not sure aboust the last remark, but surely a regional capacity usage measurement and regulation tool would be exactly what we were looking for, and it would limit farming at the start of the project, because take this example:
The tokenomics start now and it takes say 2 years before a meaningful capacity is used, but in the mean time a hole lot of tokens will be farmed, with token value not rising (since no use), so new farmers are more and more reluctant to come on board because all they get is farming tokens, and that amount goes down…
If we could limit the farming by a usage factor, that would solve the issue, and if you make it regional somehow, you could tackle the unequal IT distribution as well…
I Like!
i like the idea too, can we still afford making changes now?
we’re kind of ready to start the marketing engine Monday
had tonight great call with serious influencers, they are waiting for our clarity around tokenomics before doing anything, its super important we resolve all of this kind of “now”
but yes we do miss a mechanism to promote distribution rather than hoarding.
do you guys wanna do a zoom call tomorrow to discuss?
or maybe we have to leave an opening in but for which we later will then have to find agreement, thats maybe not going to be easy?
It’s getting way way to complicated. It may sound easy enough in bits and pieces maybe (although I frankly am lost already) but when you need to explain this to the average outsider potential farmer or token purchaser it’s not easy to understand.
As launched with both a TFTA and a TFT at least a page is basically needed to explain each of the trading, farming and 3bot features and how it all works etc.
There are a 100 or so Ambassadors and staff I challenge anyone to find me 3 people that can explain all the above clearly and cleanly. I certainly can’t.
Point is your losing the message in the complexity. The call to action is not understandable anywhere imho so to change any of the mechanism further without really knowing/understanding how the mechanisms and elements currently work is like pushing a snowball uphill.
I think for a farmer, the token should remain a utility token and not an investment instrument. Because if price tends to go up too quickly, farmers will not release the tokens they minted and as a consequence there is no liquidity in the market anymore to pay for capacity. Farmers don’t want that either I think. So ideal is a steady, stable growth of the token price.
Tokens (like fiat money) will always have two uses; a payment instrument and an investment instrument. As a large portion of the income for formers is dependent on the growth of the TFT value, farmers will act as investors (which they already are as they invest in hardware).
What people do with their money (invest of spend) is something not controllable by any model, nor should we try to do that.
Like in the real economy, steady, stable growth is in the interest of all stake-holders. As the TFT economy will not have a central bank to accommodate this, the build in tokenomics need to ensure this.
So I agree completely with this point, but I feel its not a ‘issue’ to be addressed separately.
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