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Muneeb from Blockstack here. The Stacks blockchain is needed to anchor user identities in a system that is not controlled by any single company. The App Mining

by muneeb 7y ago

Muneeb from Blockstack here. The Stacks blockchain is needed to anchor user identities in a system that is not controlled by any single company. The App Mining rewards are incentives for developers to improve their app quality. I'd recommend this research paper to dig deeper in to the game theory behind App Mining: https://blog.blockstack.org/app-mining-game-theory-algorithm-design/ https://blog.blockstack.org/app-mining-game-theory-algorithm... The source of money is newly minted tokens, just like in Bitcoin the miners operating the nodes and processing transactions get the newly minted tokens.

justusthane 7y ago
On your website, it seems that the overview and documentation is targeted at developers. As a user, I would love an easy-to-understand overview of what Blockstack is, how it works, and why I should care. Edit: And here's a question maybe you can answer for me directly: If the user data is stored in a location of my choice, and the code runs on the client, what's the point of an app being powered by Blockstack rather than just being a local offline app that saves data to iCloud/Dropbox/whatever? Thanks!
- KevinNTH 7y ago
  As I said [1] I wanted the journal to be online so I can use the app from the laptop and then from the mobile. I will implement offline sync soon. Beside, I may want to implement social features in the future. There is so many things that can be done and I'm exploring some possibilities :) [1] https://twitter.com/pixelwerk/status/1159532787843706881 https://twitter.com/pixelwerk/status/1159532787843706881
  - justusthane 7y ago
    Hey Kevin, sorry for the confusion - my question was for Muneeb about Blockstack specifically. Your journal app looks great. I've created an account and look forward to trying it out!
- muneeb 7y ago
  The point is global coordination without going through a big company like Facebook. Take the Dmails app for example, you can email me there on muneeb.id -- this will not be possible with an offline app. I hear you on the developer focus for Blockstack. We might start a different brand that is consumer-focused. Right now the best page for consumer info is: https://blockstack.org/try-blockstack https://blockstack.org/try-blockstack
  - justusthane 7y ago
    Great, thanks. I'll explore it and try to understand it better! Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
vorpalhex 7y ago
> The source of money is newly minted tokens, just like in Bitcoin the miners operating the nodes and processing transactions get the newly minted tokens. Ok, so where are those tokens being minted? In the apps themselves? Who's buying them since they don't seem to be publicly buyable? Because my concern would be that my journal/calculator/paint app are running CPU intensive mining with or without code injection and connecting to a large amount of foreign peers just for the sake of storing my data in storage I own...
- KevinNTH 7y ago
  As a software engineer, I built Gekri with performance in mind (of course, there is always more optimizations to perform but I feel the app pretty quick by now). I will never allow this kind of computation on any app that I create. Think about App mining as rewards to developers from Blockstack PBC.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    We're caught in a circular trap here. Money doesn't come from nowhere (let's put aside actual fiat currencies for a moment) and the payouts aren't in tokens as far as I'm aware. 1. Who is putting the money into the system? An outside investor? Miners? 2. Blockstack is putting out significant amounts of cash and are a private company. How do they intend to profit off of this in the future? Selling user data? Injecting ads?
    - peternicky 7y ago
      Waiting patiently for answers; the responses are not comforting.
      - muneeb 7y ago
        See reply above. Thanks,
    - muneeb 7y ago
      The pay outs are in Stacks (STX) tokens. Only the pilot phase was in USD/BTC which came from a developer growth/marketing budget that Blockstack PBC funded. See this post for details: https://blog.blockstack.org/app-mining-plans-to-pay-blockstack-developers-1000000-in-stx-per-month/ https://blog.blockstack.org/app-mining-plans-to-pay-blocksta... Newly minted tokens as incentives have been in use since Bitcoin started 10+ years ago. We are using that concept for developer incentives.

by muneeb 7y ago

justusthane 7y ago

On your website, it seems that the overview and documentation is targeted at developers. As a user, I would love an easy-to-understand overview of what Blockstack is, how it works, and why I should care. Edit: And here's a question maybe you can answer for me directly: If the user data is stored in a location of my choice, and the code runs on the client, what's the point of an app being powered by Blockstack rather than just being a local offline app that saves data to iCloud/Dropbox/whatever? Thanks!

KevinNTH 7y ago
As I said [1] I wanted the journal to be online so I can use the app from the laptop and then from the mobile. I will implement offline sync soon. Beside, I may want to implement social features in the future. There is so many things that can be done and I'm exploring some possibilities :) [1] https://twitter.com/pixelwerk/status/1159532787843706881 https://twitter.com/pixelwerk/status/1159532787843706881
- justusthane 7y ago
  Hey Kevin, sorry for the confusion - my question was for Muneeb about Blockstack specifically. Your journal app looks great. I've created an account and look forward to trying it out!
muneeb 7y ago
The point is global coordination without going through a big company like Facebook. Take the Dmails app for example, you can email me there on muneeb.id -- this will not be possible with an offline app. I hear you on the developer focus for Blockstack. We might start a different brand that is consumer-focused. Right now the best page for consumer info is: https://blockstack.org/try-blockstack https://blockstack.org/try-blockstack
- justusthane 7y ago
  Great, thanks. I'll explore it and try to understand it better! Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

vorpalhex 7y ago

> The source of money is newly minted tokens, just like in Bitcoin the miners operating the nodes and processing transactions get the newly minted tokens. Ok, so where are those tokens being minted? In the apps themselves? Who's buying them since they don't seem to be publicly buyable? Because my concern would be that my journal/calculator/paint app are running CPU intensive mining with or without code injection and connecting to a large amount of foreign peers just for the sake of storing my data in storage I own...

KevinNTH 7y ago
As a software engineer, I built Gekri with performance in mind (of course, there is always more optimizations to perform but I feel the app pretty quick by now). I will never allow this kind of computation on any app that I create. Think about App mining as rewards to developers from Blockstack PBC.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  We're caught in a circular trap here. Money doesn't come from nowhere (let's put aside actual fiat currencies for a moment) and the payouts aren't in tokens as far as I'm aware. 1. Who is putting the money into the system? An outside investor? Miners? 2. Blockstack is putting out significant amounts of cash and are a private company. How do they intend to profit off of this in the future? Selling user data? Injecting ads?
  - peternicky 7y ago
    Waiting patiently for answers; the responses are not comforting.
    - muneeb 7y ago
      See reply above. Thanks,
  - muneeb 7y ago
    The pay outs are in Stacks (STX) tokens. Only the pilot phase was in USD/BTC which came from a developer growth/marketing budget that Blockstack PBC funded. See this post for details: https://blog.blockstack.org/app-mining-plans-to-pay-blockstack-developers-1000000-in-stx-per-month/ https://blog.blockstack.org/app-mining-plans-to-pay-blocksta... Newly minted tokens as incentives have been in use since Bitcoin started 10+ years ago. We are using that concept for developer incentives.