Can MaidSafe Decentralize the Internet?

[starspirit]

The network forked at Saturday and the main reason is still unknown.
If we keep ignoring the key problem that this project is facing , no matter how many blog posts , this project is not gonna survive the winter .
Our major competitors are having a field day every time the wallet fails .

Who's attention are you trying to attract , BM ?

It surely are not the existing investors and potential users who would really use the product .

At this point it doesn't matter if the blog is right or wrong  .

We don't even know the CEO of OKPAY ,  and yet millions of people use their product . Did you see his blog posts ?
They provide a sound product , people like to use it , period  . No one would use OKPAY just because of what their CEO think of .  Kindred spirit is hard to find .

Don't get me wrong , I like BM's vision . But as an investor and user , outsiders wouldn't want to invest in Bitshares further until it get some serious improvement . Just look at the account numbers , that doesn't lie . I only opens the wallet if I have too .

I agree, but it does also matter if blog content is any good, it makes a unbearably slow client even worse when one of the guys who's supposed to be fixing it instead writes badly researched blog posts, harming relations with potential allies.  Look at the complaints about the post (more towards the bottom).  The opinions of these guys matters. https://www.maidsafe.org/t/bytemater-bitshares-daniel-larimer-opinion-on-maidsafe/2902.  It could have so easily been a thread filled with positive replies, a strengthened BitShares brand and new interest from developers and investors.  Now those people are turned off forever.

I hold some maidsafecoin, and he's gone and soured that relationship.  Do I need to post in the forum that BM doesn't represent BitShares and is just some community member?  The problem could easily be solved by him stopping blogging.  Hate to bite the hand that feeds me, but someone's got to speak up about this.  It's like a deliberate attack on BitShares.  I'm sorry to say it but blogging is not BM's forte.  Why is he doing it?

There's a limited pool of crypto-people to appeal to, we finally have a great website, all we need to have good PR is for BM to stop blogging and to have occasional, professional announcements.  Except he'll have to now waste time writing more posts to push these maidsafe posts which are liabilities, instead of assets, down from the main page.

While it's easy to complain, sometimes complaints are justified.

Bitshares could instead be fostering an environment of collaborative creativity, by talking amicably with other developers with a genuine shared passion for helping each other to make a big difference.

[oldman]

BM has some very valid concerns, great to see them elucidated.

The biggest issue is economic incentive.

Bottom line is people are generally lazy, selfish and dumb. Sorry, but true.

So while Maidsafe may be the holy grail of decentralized internet security, if it isn't faster, cheaper, easier and more profitable than the status quo... the masses will not care.

I think that is the main issue with Maidsafe - techno awesome but perhaps the Linux of the internet.

[suwoder]

BM is  big SB 

[merlin0113]

Maybe we should make a strong product before go out to "judge" others. I'm ok with bm do blog, but please stop judging people, they just don't like it.

[xiahui135]

To the most of thing, If the product is good, I just use it. If not, i just leave without complaining or concerning what their worker said.

[btswildpig]

The blog is a good thing and is not suppose to be a tool for converting current alt coin holders. It's an encyclopedia of topics that could likely be used to help explain most questions NEW investors may have. Running everything through a "group think" filter is a bad idea and leads to vanilla and non thought provoking ideas. Plus he says it's his blog and thoughts and it doesn't necessarily represent bitshares as a whole.

yes , that's a bad idea in general , because carefulness can prevent potential disaster and keep investors confidence , it'll drive the price up in the long run . That kind of advantage is not good enough for carefulness , after all , it's just millions of  money at stake . It's no big deal . 

[xiahui135]

i have never read BM's blog, and i have no interest in it. I also do not concern what other CEO says when i use the product.

[lil_jay890]

The blog is a good thing and is not suppose to be a tool for converting current alt coin holders. It's an encyclopedia of topics that could likely be used to help explain most questions NEW investors may have. Running everything through a "group think" filter is a bad idea and leads to vanilla and non thought provoking ideas. Plus he says it's his blog and thoughts and it doesn't necessarily represent bitshares as a whole.

[btswildpig]

Claiming BM doesn't represent the project won't work .

People will know it's a lie .

[matt608]

The network forked at Saturday and the main reason is still unknown.
If we keep ignoring the key problem that this project is facing , no matter how many blog posts , this project is not gonna survive the winter .
Our major competitors are having a field day every time the wallet fails .

Who's attention are you trying to attract , BM ?

It surely are not the existing investors and potential users who would really use the product .

At this point it doesn't matter if the blog is right or wrong  .

We don't even know the CEO of OKPAY ,  and yet millions of people use their product . Did you see his blog posts ?
They provide a sound product , people like to use it , period  . No one would use OKPAY just because of what their CEO think of .  Kindred spirit is hard to find .

Don't get me wrong , I like BM's vision . But as an investor and user , outsiders wouldn't want to invest in Bitshares further until it get some serious improvement . Just look at the account numbers , that doesn't lie . I only opens the wallet if I have too .

I agree, but it does also matter if blog content is any good, it makes a unbearably slow client even worse when one of the guys who's supposed to be fixing it instead writes badly researched blog posts, harming relations with potential allies.  Look at the complaints about the post (more towards the bottom).  The opinions of these guys matters. https://www.maidsafe.org/t/bytemater-bitshares-daniel-larimer-opinion-on-maidsafe/2902.  It could have so easily been a thread filled with positive replies, a strengthened BitShares brand and new interest from developers and investors.  Now those people are turned off forever.

I hold some maidsafecoin, and he's gone and soured that relationship.  Do I need to post in the forum that BM doesn't represent BitShares and is just some community member?  The problem could easily be solved by him stopping blogging.  Hate to bite the hand that feeds me, but someone's got to speak up about this.  It's like a deliberate attack on BitShares.  I'm sorry to say it but blogging is not BM's forte.  Why is he doing it?

There's a limited pool of crypto-people to appeal to, we finally have a great website, all we need to have good PR is for BM to stop blogging and to have occasional, professional announcements.  Except he'll have to now waste time writing more posts to push these maidsafe posts which are liabilities, instead of assets, down from the main page.

While it's easy to complain, sometimes complaints are justified.

[btswildpig]

The network forked at Saturday and the main reason is still unknown.
If we keep ignoring the key problem that this project is facing , no matter how many blog posts , this project is not gonna survive the winter .
Our major competitors are having a field day every time the wallet fails .

Who's attention are you trying to attract , BM ?

It surely are not the existing investors and potential users who would really use the product .

At this point it doesn't matter if the blog is right or wrong  .

We don't even know the CEO of OKPAY ,  and yet millions of people use their product . Did you see his blog posts ?
They provide a sound product , people like to use it , period  . No one would use OKPAY just because of what their CEO think of .  Kindred spirit is hard to find .

Don't get me wrong , I like BM's vision . But as an investor and user , outsiders wouldn't want to invest in Bitshares further until it get some serious improvement . Just look at the account numbers , that doesn't lie . I only opens the wallet if I have too .

[xeroc]

From maidsafe forum:

"I really wish he would just come over to these forums and ask some questions first, rather than speculating on many points what MaidSafe plans to do. Because the result is that he often doesn't list the option that MaidSafe is going for, or he picks the right one and spends only one sentence on it."  - Seneca

"It doesn't look good that he's messed up on fairly well known (to many here) facts, and not come here to church his understanding first. I know next to nothing about bitshares but it doesn't inspire confidence." - happybeing

Outsch .. but valid points

[matt608]

From maidsafe forum:

"I really wish he would just come over to these forums and ask some questions first, rather than speculating on many points what MaidSafe plans to do. Because the result is that he often doesn't list the option that MaidSafe is going for, or he picks the right one and spends only one sentence on it."  - Seneca

"It doesn't look good that he's messed up on fairly well known (to many here) facts, and not come here to church his understanding first. I know next to nothing about bitshares but it doesn't inspire confidence." - happybeing

Could the sloppily researched blog posts please stop.  What happened to the 'screening' of blog posts by some of the marketing team before they are released?  Having to make corrections to posts is a complete facepalm, especially when the corrected version is still sloppy.  Openly pointing out that  'whatever is going to be said might be wrong and that is doesn't matter' is not seen anywhere else for a reason, because leaders and experts are supposed to get their facts straight before publicly saying anything.  You could have posted your post in the maidsafe forum to get their input first on all your uncertainties about their system and done some quality community building.  Instead it's another short cut, taped over mistakes and the weakness paraded around pubicly on stage.  Less is more.

All we need from the blog is a professional image that increases confidence in BitShares.  1 thoroughly fact-checked post per month would be enough, or 1 per week would be ok too, even if it took 5 times as long to write and was only twice as good.  You may get diminishing returns in traffic, but you get increasing returns in confidence! If it takes too long to research for it to time-efficient, then the answer is not to write anything at all.   

[CLains]

 

[bytemaster]

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/02/01/Thoughts-on-MaidSafe-and-an-Alternative-Approach/

[CLains]

Dirvine made a great post,

Interesting read. It may have some outdated info (pay to get etc.) and slight misunderstandings, but he was in contact well before BTC was known of. He is right it is a challenge and the reliable UDP protocol is a hard thing to get right (that is why Rudp is becoming a new project CRUX and headed for boost libraries). We have boost Engineers in the team working on it and Chris Kolhoff who designed asio did the initial Rudp, so it's not us doing it, it's us getting the right people involved as well.

I think issue of speed etc can only be measured, but there is a clear issue over the approach, even if every tx takes 1 sec (per group) and there are millions of groups then those millions of tx will happen in close to a second (say tx gets close to a million messages per second , per channel). Again measurement will help. Then if safecoin takes the integer route, it will be one message so ...

In terms of micro-transactions then the easy solution for us in the short term is as previsouly outlined. Pay in safecoin and the network will consume these in chunks as you put data (so you effectively buy X space at the cost at that time) This allows transactions to look like microtransactions as the manager group can say OK that is 10 million puts we have deducted a safecoin. Further testing and algorithm detection will make even micro tx simple, it is one thing I worry less about (we never used to pay a woodsman for every axe swing smile )

So the goal is to provide speed and privacy as well as decentralisation (speed does not require to be day 1, but its a factor and I believe there is no way a centralised system will keep up as we grow the logic out, not without huge security and privacy issues). The key is to decentralise every single algorithm and that is extremely hard (we have done this mostly). It is akin to factoring every equation to it's base algorithm.

I think it is like back in school you can have an enormous equation with many variables, that is generally what a program does, implements an algorithm. So you can grab nodejs or python and quickly implement the huge algorithm or take time and do it in c++ and they are both very wrong. First the algorithm needs reduced and you may find you have Z = 5X + 3Y as an example. People can code a massive version of that equation unfactored. This is the difference between fast to market and right. I prefer to factor as much as possible. No matter what the number of bugs is 3 per 1000 lines of code so less code == less bugs, but more importantly it means you have found the more core algorithm.

When you do factor down then another thing happens, people can look at the results and say, oh that is simple, simple code and very easy to work with. Then you win all round. If you do not ignore the market though, it is essential, so a fine balance of correctness verses speed (in our case testnet measurements tell us if we got the algorithm right no matter how un-factored [it's not even a word smile ]) and not coding yourselves out of upgrade paths and you are good to go.

This balance is the key component to viable product (minimal or not) and I feel we are there now with the network algorithms. We have simplified them down and our complexity is imagining the network running to see how they interact and these test-nets are key. Some things cannot be measured like ripples in the sea, if your system is design along natural rules then you create immeasurable outputs. So you need to step further back and look at the network as a human sees it when many other humans use it.

In the last 6-7 years I have not been able to get close to the code (running around begging for money to pay the Engineers time implement a dream without being able to speak much with me), since Aug/Sep I have and it is amazingly good as there have been some step improvements and reductions in the code and this week I intend to present even more. This happens in parallel with the testnets though as we balance launch and correctness.

tl;dr I spoke with Dan years back and more recently in person, he is very sharp and decent. I think he is more focussed on economics whereas I am more in decentralisation so we will differ in opinion (route to improve our world) but not respect and that comes over well and hope I re-iterate it here.

[hpenvy2]

Nice to have you with us.

[xeroc]

Welcome to the BitShares community and thanks for opening up this discussion with the maidsafe community! !

[dallyshalla]

Greetings,

Thanks for a great article regarding MaidSafe's endeavors, I am not MaidSafe staff, though a member of the community;

It has been delightful to read, and also; regarding:

" If I have gotten anything wrong in this article I hope those more familiar with the inner workings of MaidSafe will visit bitsharestalk.org and help clarify things. I truly hope we can work together to build a viable system. "

I started a thread on our forum regarding the blogpost from Bytemaster, and perhaps if you had some questions, there is a whole forum of members who are studying in real time this software: SAFE Network from MaidSafe


Sincerely,
Dallyshalla

https://www.maidsafe.org/t/bytemater-bitshares-daniel-larimer-opinion-on-maidsafe/2902