Bible Pay

Poll

Which option would give BiblePay a chance at mass adoption?

Explore simplifying PODC (proof-of-distributed-computing)
14 (63.6%)
Explore Proof-of-Giving (POG)
8 (36.4%)
Explore Proof-of-Orphan-Mining
0 (0%)
Explore IPFS (Interplanetary File System) mining
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 19

Voting closed: November 28, 2018, 10:57:17 AM

Read 8645 times

  • Rob Andrews
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Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« on: November 21, 2018, 10:57:17 AM »
When voting please consider a non-technical investor who wants to mine- remember to consider a person that has a busy lifestyle that does not want to follow more than 1-2 steps before losing patience, and has no interest in learning any new acronyms.

With PODC - we would need to pull in developer resources to shield the user from acryonyms, and find a way to concentrate new user mining power to a boinc project with fair payment without exposing the user to technical terms and requiring them to monitor RAC on disparate sites.  We also have quite a bit of infrastructure to support PODC: supporter pools, diagnostic tools, help desk answers, forum posts, etc.  Consider the total barrier of entry and ongoing maintenance per user and for the codebase.  Also consider the risks if BOINC changes the code, the interface, breaks or gets hacked.

With POG - we would move back to our Proof-of-bible-hash style mining, on generally one machine per user (IE tither).  People would be rewarded with mining rewards in a "pool" depending on how much they tithe to the orphan foundation per day.  This solution would be more of a one-click setup, with the only decision needed by the end user to either manually tithe or set up an automatic tithe.  The maintenance should technically be lower for both user questions and the IT codebase.  There is not a chance of third party site being hacked or an oracle requirement.  The 51% risk appears to be low (the same as PODC or lower, as long as sleep capability is well designed).  One potentially large side benefit:  Being possibly the first crypto with an integrated pool - and not requiring third party pools.

With POOM - we decentralize our orphan sponsorships out to the individual miners.  The miners are rewarded with an amount of biblepay that is carved out of the heat mining budget in relationship to their monthly private commitment amount.  The downside to POOM is this requires a centralized API at orphanstats.com, and biblepay has the ability to log in and audit individual user compassion accounts.  The plus is its very green, and diverts electric costs over to orphan sponsorships.

With IPFS - we require each user to make firewall rule changes, run a flavor of an IPFS server, allocate a portion of the hard drive, and we have the sanctuaries grade each miner on file hosting quality.  The downside to this is:  IPFS is still volatile, sometimes crashing on the pool server, the interface may change, the setup for a miner would be complicated, and we have no documentation for this complete yet, and we haven't finished the proof of concept.  The positive side is its futuristic.

« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 11:05:25 AM by Rob Andrews »


Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2018, 06:13:13 PM »
So a few thoughts.

One: This poll needs another option of Change nothing

Two: In a healthy coin, the majority of users are NOT mining, so a more technical mining process to me is acceptable.  The guides that are out right now are decent, we could use a few videos and I think that would let 90% of non-beginner computer users mine without issues.  Beginner computer users are going to struggle with the notion of crypto, let alone running a wallet so I'm not worried about mining being too technical for them.

Three: Changing the way this coin works for a third time is likely to do more harm than good unless the new method is dead simple and someone massively increases our user base.  It makes our collective knowledge of how to troubleshoot out of date and requires an entirely new set of documentation to be developed or at least modified.

I'm not opposed to a change, but know another change comes with a great cost and there is little guarantee we'll see the price improve which would be the primary reason to change.  In fact, I believe eliminating PoDC would cause the markets to crash pretty hard as the staked coins would have basically three outlets, keep, Sanctuary or sell.  There is roughly 200M coins tied up in Stake, if even one third of those suddenly hit the market, we're at 1 sat or lower.  If most went to Sanctuaries, then you're looking at a potential to jump from 400 to 500 or more pretty much overnight (reducing our ROI to less than 40% annually, which becomes a tougher sell for investors).  So I don't see a lot of benefit to a new system unless it is so amazing we'd be insane not to do it.  And I just don't see that among the choices.


  • talisman
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2018, 07:43:15 PM »
So a few thoughts.

One: This poll needs another option of Change nothing

Two: In a healthy coin, the majority of users are NOT mining, so a more technical mining process to me is acceptable.  The guides that are out right now are decent, we could use a few videos and I think that would let 90% of non-beginner computer users mine without issues.  Beginner computer users are going to struggle with the notion of crypto, let alone running a wallet so I'm not worried about mining being too technical for them.

Three: Changing the way this coin works for a third time is likely to do more harm than good unless the new method is dead simple and someone massively increases our user base.  It makes our collective knowledge of how to troubleshoot out of date and requires an entirely new set of documentation to be developed or at least modified.

I'm not opposed to a change, but know another change comes with a great cost and there is little guarantee we'll see the price improve which would be the primary reason to change.  In fact, I believe eliminating PoDC would cause the markets to crash pretty hard as the staked coins would have basically three outlets, keep, Sanctuary or sell.  There is roughly 200M coins tied up in Stake, if even one third of those suddenly hit the market, we're at 1 sat or lower.  If most went to Sanctuaries, then you're looking at a potential to jump from 400 to 500 or more pretty much overnight (reducing our ROI to less than 40% annually, which becomes a tougher sell for investors).  So I don't see a lot of benefit to a new system unless it is so amazing we'd be insane not to do it.  And I just don't see that among the choices.

Dear West,

I wish I knew you in person, cause anytime you write something I think "OMG that makes total sense - the guy knows what he's talking about!"

I am not -yet- going to go into how unsimple POG is if you want to maximize your returns (which means the newbies we are hoping to recruit will soon start hating whales and the system might end up making rich richer - of course in terms of BBP, cause otherwise we are all going fiat bankrupt as we speak) . I will rather point to a fundamental relationship that governs corporate life, daily life and -to a certain  extent- religion: DEMAND vs SUPPLY. Here we are trying to sell something, right? I myself boil this to "the potential of doing good while earning (if one wants to)". There are many people on this world that are trying to help out the not-so-fortunate ones even without any returns. All we have to do is get some of these on board (increasing demand). With our decreasing monthly introduced supply, the equation will yield higher prices for the coin.

Now, my question is: "Are these good samaritans waiting for BBP algorithm/mechanics to get simpler to jump on the train, or are they simply unaware such a coin exists?" I tend to believe in the second part. If there are such good samaritans on the world (not only Christians), and if we are supporting orphans, and if we are able to prove it to anyone who considers donating, then the real challenge becomes connecting to these people - via worship places, opinion leaders, heck even politicians.

Assuming demand will be tapped into, may I suggest a burning mechanism that would decrease supply? In case donors are not interested in crypto or returns at all, then the cash coming in can be converted to BBP over the markets and then burnt. It sounds like destroying their money, but in effect, it will be increasing the coin price which means we will have more fiat at the end of the month when we are converting the orphan fund to USD  before transferring to charities. Sounds crazy, but mathematically sound (and morally proper as long as they understand how the system works their donations).


  • sunk818
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2018, 08:13:52 PM »
Why does a good samiritan want to join BiblePay when there are vehicles outside of BiblePay to give without expecting something in return? Its far simpler to put down a recurring monthly credit card or bank transfer than to deal with a crypto wallet. I guess you'd have to explain how to attract a crowd that would find joining BiblePay (even with PoG) far more difficult than just doing a recurring payment elsewhere.

@Rob - How is PoG going to work with recurring tithing? Is this going to be a superblock daily (e.g. 205 blocks?) and not actually a 24 hour day? The drift and 7 minute average blocks are not conducive to a 24 hour day y'know.
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  • Rob Andrews
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2018, 08:28:09 PM »
Why does a good samiritan want to join BiblePay when there are vehicles outside of BiblePay to give without expecting something in return? Its far simpler to put down a recurring monthly credit card or bank transfer than to deal with a crypto wallet. I guess you'd have to explain how to attract a crowd that would find joining BiblePay (even with PoG) far more difficult than just doing a recurring payment elsewhere.

@Rob - How is PoG going to work with recurring tithing? Is this going to be a superblock daily (e.g. 205 blocks?) and not actually a 24 hour day? The drift and 7 minute average blocks are not conducive to a 24 hour day y'know.

The Tithe appears to be one novel way of providing mining weight per distinctive user without revealing a users identity.  If you switch over to something that does not collect an accumulating donation, then you open the coin up to cat & mouse games again (IE exploiting multiple instances and a hashpower arms race etc).  Note that if everyone collectively only tithes a little per day, then everyone makes a large net profit.  It's only when big givers show up in every tranche where the days profit declines.

In POG, every 7 minute block would pay all miners in that tranche.  So at block 80,000 we may pay 50 miners in tranche 0.  On block 80,001 we pay 40 miners in tranche 1.  Etc...  I see no problem there.


  • talisman
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2018, 08:57:55 PM »
Why does a good samiritan want to join BiblePay when there are vehicles outside of BiblePay to give without expecting something in return? Its far simpler to put down a recurring monthly credit card or bank transfer than to deal with a crypto wallet. I guess you'd have to explain how to attract a crowd that would find joining BiblePay (even with PoG) far more difficult than just doing a recurring payment elsewhere.

@Rob - How is PoG going to work with recurring tithing? Is this going to be a superblock daily (e.g. 205 blocks?) and not actually a 24 hour day? The drift and 7 minute average blocks are not conducive to a 24 hour day y'know.

Why would people donate via BBP instead of just giving the cash to the needy?

It is simple: Biblepay is "leveraged good". It is an ecosystem that not only helps the needy, but also helps scientific research while providing a potential gain for donors who may wish a monetary return and feeding a bunch of miners for facilitating all that (call it creation of employment). This is why I am against removing the science part - that would reduce the leverage.

To make it simpler: donating $30  to the ecosystem will create good worth $40, $100, or even the jackpot - the cure for cancer! I am not looking at our electric bills only as expense items in our calc sheet. They are lottery tickets for the future of humanity. The cure for any disease is priceless. Converting those bills to donations for orphans has no leverage (i.e., no more lottery  tickets). Sustaining the ecosystem, on the other hand, I mean buying lottery tickets every month and keeping the nice decentralized community alive and also supporting our orphans, will be a great success story. One remembered for generations, perhaps ?


  • rastiks
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2018, 08:07:26 AM »
I tend to agree with West and Talisman. Making BBP easier to mine does not solve the main issue, the lack of investors who would buy and hold BBP as an investment. Yes, miners can eventually turn into investors and become part of the community, but we still need many more non-mining investors.

BBP has the potential to be very attractive for investors, if it was marketed as "By buying BBP, you are supporting charity + helping to find cures for illnesses, while investing at the same time". The main thing that BBP lacks now is PR and marketing.

That being said, the only new Proof-of-something that would make sense to me would be some kind of Proof-of-PR.
E.g. something that would benefit miners for sending unique IPs to https://www.biblepay.org/<ANYTHING>?ref=CPID_OR_BBP_ADDRESS
or some other referral system. I can see how this could be misused, but you may get the idea :)


  • Rob Andrews
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #7 on: November 22, 2018, 08:51:35 AM »
I tend to agree with West and Talisman. Making BBP easier to mine does not solve the main issue, the lack of investors who would buy and hold BBP as an investment. Yes, miners can eventually turn into investors and become part of the community, but we still need many more non-mining investors.

BBP has the potential to be very attractive for investors, if it was marketed as "By buying BBP, you are supporting charity + helping to find cures for illnesses, while investing at the same time". The main thing that BBP lacks now is PR and marketing.

That being said, the only new Proof-of-something that would make sense to me would be some kind of Proof-of-PR.
E.g. something that would benefit miners for sending unique IPs to https://www.biblepay.org/<ANYTHING>?ref=CPID_OR_BBP_ADDRESS
or some other referral system. I can see how this could be misused, but you may get the idea :)

When I hear your perspective it makes me think of all the charity junk mail I get at home that goes in the trash.  All the charities I gave to once and now they spend more on PR than on helping others.

I think of the mileage we got through our airdrop and through our google ads (we probably kept 3 users).

Then I think of the potential of organic growth, and what potential could we have if thousands of home users ran biblepay in the background, and how many of those would become investors, as compared to a costly PR campaign? 

Also, when I think of us becoming a science coin I cringe, because I didn't intend to turn a Christian community into a science based community.



Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #8 on: November 22, 2018, 10:25:40 AM »
The coin needs a bigger user base.  There are very few sure fire ways to do that, but the complexity of mining is partially due to a lack of users.  There are only a few hundred users that are doing PoDC it's unlikely a random new user will instantly know a "friend" that already does this.  I'd also argue that many of of PoDC miners are friends of current miners (which kind of goes against the previous statement until you really examine it).  But the main thing any coin needs is users, and we haven't seen much growth in our user base as of late.

Changing the way we do things again is likely to cause more confusion.  And while I thoroughly enjoy the system behind it, PoG is likely to be just as complex to a new user as PoDC is.  PoDC can be very deterministic whereas with PoG returns are going to vary wildly and probably end up negative for some users at times.  PoDC tends to move slower (RAC etc.) whereas with PoG there wouldn't be much consistency from day to day.

I feel like the abandonment of the Team Requirement and the removal of the blacklist, while supported by a vote, was like most other votes and only voted on by a small minority of the users.  Those two drastic changes (and the lack of a bonus for being on the team) have pretty much signaled the beginning of the end for Team BBP.  That means we are losing are ability to say "these users are at BOINC because of BBP".   Now, all we can say is there are a group of BOINC users that get BBP but we can't in fair marketing say we are the main reason for them.  And while it's still too early to say for sure, we haven't seen an immediate growth in price from an influx of other teams mining BBP. I'm inclined to think we'll see at best a modest bump from the Byteball and GRC community.  But all this talk of maybe switching how we do things should give those communities pause and reconsider trying us out.

Again, my vote is stay the course.  Continue to develop more documentation to make it easier for someone with basic computer skills to set up.  Accept that in a weak crypto market we're likely to have to reduce our orphan sponsorships again.   Don't concern with the possibility that BOINC could have problems down the road, so far they have a longer and better track record than we do.  If we can survive the crypto downturn, we'll be stronger for it.  The less we're changing, the less development time we need, the less documentation time we need, the more we can spend on PR or trying new things to gain users.


  • sunk818
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2018, 02:30:37 PM »
>  like most other votes and only voted on by a small minority of the users.

SmartCash allows voting based on your wallet balance. Not ideal, but we could certainly have a "poll" section in the QT wallet where one vote can be made per wallet for a question. I think GridCoin has a polling feature too which I like.

> Again, my vote is stay the course.

I'm in agreement here. I think PoG should really be focused on replacing proof of work (PoBH). Get rid of pool mining and just allow solo mining through PoG. That removes the headache of setting up proof of work mining. Once you replace PoBH with PoG, Phase 2 can consider reducing PoDC payout and migrating it to PoG. Its not clear how many PoDC BOINCers will also use PoG or just leave BiblePay altogether. Therefore, PoDC can have a slow transition of 80 days 80 PoDC / 20 PoG split becomes 0 PoDC / 100 PoG.

During the 80 days, you can have a strong marketing & PR push to recruit new people to BiblePay and you just have to explain PoG. PoG is still too complicated to understand, so the algorithm has to change or you have to rewrite it so you can ELI5 (Explain Like I'm 5).
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  • togoshigekata
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #10 on: November 23, 2018, 05:18:05 PM »
We are truly blessed to have so many options, you are amazing Rob

My vote is for exploring Proof of Giving (POG)

Further discussion: https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=319

As a masternode owner, I am totally okay with losing short term ROI for long term growth,

I also believe Rob's heart and mind are for POG

For the average user, mining becomes just buying some coins and donating a little every day
(time frequency dropdown and a BBP amount),
could even default these values to Daily and 10 BBP and auto start once coins are added to the wallet


  • Rob Andrews
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #11 on: November 24, 2018, 03:40:21 PM »
We are truly blessed to have so many options, you are amazing Rob

My vote is for exploring Proof of Giving (POG)

Further discussion: https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=319

As a masternode owner, I am totally okay with losing short term ROI for long term growth,

I also believe Rob's heart and mind are for POG

For the average user, mining becomes just buying some coins and donating a little every day
(time frequency dropdown and a BBP amount),
could even default these values to Daily and 10 BBP and auto start once coins are added to the wallet

Thanks!

The question is, if we take two scenarios, lets assume we actually do make PODC easier to use.  In scenario A, we have a power user running boinc, and being smart enough to check the RAC.  In scenario B, we have a grandmother who is smart enough to set up an automatic daily tithe with POG.  Will the grandmother set up and maintain the easy-to-use version of PODC?  I don't know.

Should we continue to try to cure cancer and overcome the current negative growth, or, should we free everyone up with POG and potentially spread the gospel?  Why do they seem to be mutually exclusive?  Because I feel that we are currently supporting a big infrastructure. 

What is the possibility of us adding cool new gospel features in?  I would say certainly high in either solution, because that is our job, but I lean toward POG giving us the ability to free up more resources to write those things we don't have.





Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #12 on: November 24, 2018, 06:19:24 PM »
My bottom line view is this.   Will changing increase our user base dramatically and be positive for the price in the moderate term?  I'll rate each of the scenarios independently in my view.

Most crypto users are somewhat computer savvy.  The entire crypto market is tough to explain to non-computer users, is somewhat frightening and is illogical to many.  Convincing Computer Jane to try crypto is far easier than than getting Joe Sixpack on board.  If we can make PoG, PoOM or IFPS one step simple, then we should be able to do that for PoDC just as well.  The fact we haven't been able to accomplish this for PoDC in the past six months gives me pause to think we'll have better results for any of the others.  I believe we're really only about two or three videos and maybe one or two re-writes away of having sufficient support documents that a competent computer user (not a nerd like myself) could follow along and PoDC.  I don't think any amount of documentation is sufficient to get the majority of people to try crypto.  The main issue I have with PoG is that there could (likely) be dramatic variability in the rewards from day to day which would put off a new user.  Even with equally well developed support documents, I see the pool of potential users to be gained by the technical gains as small and the price impact as commensurate.

Shifting to PoG/PoOM would likely benefit me personally, but it takes away an entire marketing arm (BOINC - research mining) and replaces it with an amplified Orphan/Charity support.  What users we'd be able to pick up due to this I question.  How many people have been telling themselves "I like this BBP coin, but 10-15% donation was too small, yet now 50% is enough for me to jump it".  I see the pool of potential users to be gained by marketing changes due to a change as neutral to negative, with minimal price impact.

In the end, there will be only a very small portion of users weigh in on this, and historically, unless there is near universal dissent, we follow the heart of our Developer.  Not saying that it is right, wrong or indifferent, but in the end, if our Developer wants it, that is what is going to be worked on...which has gotten us this far and will likely carry us down the road.  So ramp up it up in test net, let us try and break it, find as many issues as we can and make it as good as it can be.  But let's stop belaboring the issue.


  • Rob Andrews
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Re: Mass Adoption for BiblePay
« Reply #13 on: November 27, 2018, 09:02:54 AM »
My bottom line view is this.   Will changing increase our user base dramatically and be positive for the price in the moderate term?  I'll rate each of the scenarios independently in my view.

Most crypto users are somewhat computer savvy.  The entire crypto market is tough to explain to non-computer users, is somewhat frightening and is illogical to many.  Convincing Computer Jane to try crypto is far easier than than getting Joe Sixpack on board.  If we can make PoG, PoOM or IFPS one step simple, then we should be able to do that for PoDC just as well.  The fact we haven't been able to accomplish this for PoDC in the past six months gives me pause to think we'll have better results for any of the others.  I believe we're really only about two or three videos and maybe one or two re-writes away of having sufficient support documents that a competent computer user (not a nerd like myself) could follow along and PoDC.  I don't think any amount of documentation is sufficient to get the majority of people to try crypto.  The main issue I have with PoG is that there could (likely) be dramatic variability in the rewards from day to day which would put off a new user.  Even with equally well developed support documents, I see the pool of potential users to be gained by the technical gains as small and the price impact as commensurate.

Shifting to PoG/PoOM would likely benefit me personally, but it takes away an entire marketing arm (BOINC - research mining) and replaces it with an amplified Orphan/Charity support.  What users we'd be able to pick up due to this I question.  How many people have been telling themselves "I like this BBP coin, but 10-15% donation was too small, yet now 50% is enough for me to jump it".  I see the pool of potential users to be gained by marketing changes due to a change as neutral to negative, with minimal price impact.

In the end, there will be only a very small portion of users weigh in on this, and historically, unless there is near universal dissent, we follow the heart of our Developer.  Not saying that it is right, wrong or indifferent, but in the end, if our Developer wants it, that is what is going to be worked on...which has gotten us this far and will likely carry us down the road.  So ramp up it up in test net, let us try and break it, find as many issues as we can and make it as good as it can be.  But let's stop belaboring the issue.


Thanks for the positive support.

Although I think we possibly could have improved POG enough for it to work, I really didn't like the out-of-line high-tithe percentage potential it had (IE causing the monthly dump).

In light of the popular view, I'm going to shelve this technology for a while in favor of other endeavors.

I'll also add weight to prioritizing PODC easy adoption technical features.

Thanks for the exercise all, it was a net gain for our arsenal from a wisdom standpoint.