Hi there,
I´m new to twister and found it by looking for a decentralized Twitter
alternative. I am an active Twitter-user and find it extremely helpful to
build networks and exchange information, but I don´t like the centralized
data handling. I like the fact that Twister uses blockchain technology to
provide a decentralized solution. I have some questions and some ideas that
I´d like to discuss. While I have experiences as concept writer and
designer I am not a cryptographer and/or coder, so my two questions and
ideas may sound stupid to you, so please keep that in mind ;)
1. As far as I understood, Twister uses SCRYPT PoW to cope with power
distribution. Have there been thoughts to use PoS instead of PoW?
2. The other question is more or less answered by @mfreitas with regard
with using light wallets for mobiles and people who don´t want to download
the whole blockchain. Light wallets appear to me the only feasible solution
to bring a decentralized messaging service to mobiles - which (for good
reasons) is the native environment for most Twitter users. The common
question with light wallets is: who will run the (still necessary) full
nodes in case a major number of users catches up.
With regard to the second point I have a proposal and as I mentioned it may
be stupid and/or not feasible at all:
What if hosting a full node was rewarded same as mining is and this
internal currency is needed to send messages? I don´t think about this as
"solution" to a problem, but rather as a feature that could turn twister in
something more than a decentralized messaging service. It may sound odd at
first: if you can send messages for free then why would you pay for it
anyway. The point is, sending messages isn´t really free, particularly not
with commercial products such as Twitter and Gmail. We pay with our data
and that´s the reason why many of us look out for decentralized solutions.
However, as I pointed out, while some like the idea to run everything on
their own (servers or decentralized solutions such as fullnodes of Bitcoin
or twister), many people prefer not to do or just don´t get how things work
and then fall back to a "simple" solution provided by enterprises like
Google, Microsoft etc.
Currently there is a lack of payment systems in this sector: of course we
can turn to providers and pay for internet services that are not financing
through selling our data, but 1. this doesn´t exist for services like
Twitter and 2. even if it exists (like it does for email) it is still a
centralized service and based on trust. Paying for messages by using an
internal currency sounds to me the logical solution when we want to bring
together people who like to host a distributed network and people who just
want to use services but want full privacy.
The problem with an internal currency is, that it allows early adopters to
pile up huge amounts and then dominate the market as happened for most
cryptocurrencies. With most currencies it was important to distribute
liquidity to allow scaling up - and so it would be the case for a
decentralized messaging service if sending a message costed "money". I
don´t claim to have a simple solution here - actually it is kinda tricky,
but I believe using demurrage could help to provide a solution.
Demurrage is a kind of negative-interest that you pay on your money, so the
value decreases and provides an incentive to spend the money. Some of you
may know Freicoin, which implemented demurrage in its (Bitcoin based)
protocol. It´s not really a successful cryptocurrency for a simple reason:
most people who "buy" oder "produce" money don´t like the fact that the
value decreases. For many people money is serious business. However, this
doesn´t apply to services like Twitter, where "value" is generated through
relations and actions (like retweets).
- Let´s imagine to send one twist/tweet it would cost you *one unit *of
an internal currency + you could attach more if you wanted.
- If you retwist/retweet a message the currency is sent to the person
who posted the original twist and, this way, is kind-of paid for providing
content.
- Following a person works like a subscription, where you pay units on a
regular(!) (let's say hourly basis) with a minimum of 1 unit that can be
increased manually.
- People can generate this currency by running a client for a specific
time, say 1 hour. The difficulty to generate the internal currency is
directly related to the number of people taking part in the process, but -
unlike Bitcoin - difficulty decreases with the amount of transactions - and
it does in a way that it is always more or less the same power to generate
1 unit.
- This unit decreases X% in value/day if you don´t use it. This way
there should never be a problem of liquidity ("I can´t send a message,
because there is no way to get the money to pay for it") and there is also
no way to pile up the internal currency to be the only who´s able spam the
system. The value of the currency is directly related to the activity in
the network.
- The value that people collect this way is an expression of (current)
support
This is just an idea and the reason why I find this interesting is, that I
believe that this is more than a messaging service where the costs for
providing the services is distributed - it can also be turned into a system
where content providers are actually paid for their work. Currently many
content providers sell-out their time/engagement to receive attention and
then selling this attention to advertisers. Crowdfunding has been used as
an alternate model of generating funds, but it has a lot of issues, in
particular that they are hosted by services that take a lot of money just
for being the place to distribute money (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Flattr,
Patreon). Some time ago I wrote a concept that was supposed to work quite
different
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/17VkHe2DylwF7BDzixaqi_nTLW4wcu_f3xkpA33IiUOU/edit>
and
in a sense I believe that a decentralized messaging service such as Twister
would be a much more simple and easy to use than the platform I originally
thought about.
Ok, yaddayadda, I know this would probably need a entirely new system and
that´s expensive in terms of time and money. Anyway, if this sounds
interesting to you, I don´t see why this couldn´t and shouldn´t be
crowdfunded. I believe it could be really interesting for
content-generators. Let´s discuss sense and nonsense.
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