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General Discussion / Re: [DAC Proposal] Future Tech Farm
« on: November 11, 2014, 02:10:50 am »
This sounds interesting; I'm-a take a crack at wrapping my brain around it. Please let me know if I've got it right.
There's three-ish types of participant in this market: consumers, producers and delegates (some/all of whom might also be consumers/producers themselves).
Producers build/print/purchase/lease the equipment to grow food, which they then sell on the open market. In some ways, this is similar to how BitAssets are created / asks are posted in the BTS ecosystem now. Perhaps producers are even required to "back" their real produce with digital assets as well, as a means of promising quality to the consumers (similarly to how shorts are required to post collateral to prove their eligibility for a loan?), and of course the transaction fees would be payable in FarmShares as well.
[sidebar: I bet producers would also compete on having the highest quality grade given by inspectors (for which there would be a secondary market). There might also be opportunities for insurance DACs for dealing with cases where food is of worse-than-advertised quality, inedible upon delivery, etc.]
Consumers, meanwhile, place orders (bids) on the market, specifying the maximum price and minimum quality* that they are willing to accept. Logistics would be tricky, especially depending on how anonymous the consumer wants to remain, but I bet there are creative ways to solve that problem**
* "quality" would be slightly complex to calculate, as the inspector's reputation would also have to be considered and could affect the maximum price/quantity that would be accepted for sale, similarly to how a claims adjuster's reputation affects the amount of claims that he can authorize to be paid out in an insurance DAC.
** opportunity to develop a logistics DAC with autonomous drones that deliver food to stealth [mailing] addresses? Perhaps the delivery is handed off to several drones along the way — like an IRL Tor..
And then delegates would secure the network in much the same way that BTS delegates do today.
Is my understanding of the project correct?
There's still two things I'm not entirely certain about.
The first one is, "Why not just grow your own food and sell it for e.g., BitUSD?" Although, I could see some value in having a dedicated currency, especially if it is more efficient to use that over BitAssets to cover the operating costs of the market and equipment. And for sure, buying food would require a very different wallet (or at least, a very different GUI) than what you would use to buy BitGLD and such, so some kind of custom software would be beneficial.
[EDIT: Especially when I start thinking about futures contracts, this makes more and more sense..]
The other thing I'm still not 100% sure I understand is how the producers' equipment is wired into the network — or indeed if that is even necessary. If I want to run my own offline aquaponics farm and sell my produce on the FoodChain (jej), I've got the FarmShares to burn, and I've got a credible inspector to vouch for the quality of my goods, why shouldn't I be able to participate in the DAC?
Or, to use a (possibly obsolete) metaphor, why do I need ASICs to mine Bitcoin when I've got a perfectly good server farm at my disposal?
Not that the hardware aspect of it isn't awesome to contemplate; I just see that as something that would be separate from the DAC.
There's three-ish types of participant in this market: consumers, producers and delegates (some/all of whom might also be consumers/producers themselves).
Producers build/print/purchase/lease the equipment to grow food, which they then sell on the open market. In some ways, this is similar to how BitAssets are created / asks are posted in the BTS ecosystem now. Perhaps producers are even required to "back" their real produce with digital assets as well, as a means of promising quality to the consumers (similarly to how shorts are required to post collateral to prove their eligibility for a loan?), and of course the transaction fees would be payable in FarmShares as well.
[sidebar: I bet producers would also compete on having the highest quality grade given by inspectors (for which there would be a secondary market). There might also be opportunities for insurance DACs for dealing with cases where food is of worse-than-advertised quality, inedible upon delivery, etc.]
Consumers, meanwhile, place orders (bids) on the market, specifying the maximum price and minimum quality* that they are willing to accept. Logistics would be tricky, especially depending on how anonymous the consumer wants to remain, but I bet there are creative ways to solve that problem**
* "quality" would be slightly complex to calculate, as the inspector's reputation would also have to be considered and could affect the maximum price/quantity that would be accepted for sale, similarly to how a claims adjuster's reputation affects the amount of claims that he can authorize to be paid out in an insurance DAC.
** opportunity to develop a logistics DAC with autonomous drones that deliver food to stealth [mailing] addresses? Perhaps the delivery is handed off to several drones along the way — like an IRL Tor..
And then delegates would secure the network in much the same way that BTS delegates do today.
Is my understanding of the project correct?
There's still two things I'm not entirely certain about.
The first one is, "Why not just grow your own food and sell it for e.g., BitUSD?" Although, I could see some value in having a dedicated currency, especially if it is more efficient to use that over BitAssets to cover the operating costs of the market and equipment. And for sure, buying food would require a very different wallet (or at least, a very different GUI) than what you would use to buy BitGLD and such, so some kind of custom software would be beneficial.
[EDIT: Especially when I start thinking about futures contracts, this makes more and more sense..]
The other thing I'm still not 100% sure I understand is how the producers' equipment is wired into the network — or indeed if that is even necessary. If I want to run my own offline aquaponics farm and sell my produce on the FoodChain (jej), I've got the FarmShares to burn, and I've got a credible inspector to vouch for the quality of my goods, why shouldn't I be able to participate in the DAC?
Or, to use a (possibly obsolete) metaphor, why do I need ASICs to mine Bitcoin when I've got a perfectly good server farm at my disposal?
Not that the hardware aspect of it isn't awesome to contemplate; I just see that as something that would be separate from the DAC.