RE: Proposal: Funding for anyx.io API Infrastructure Recurrent Costs
The hyper anarcho-capitalist mentality that often comes along to the crypto space seems to greatly take for granted the availability of public nodes and doesn't realize they are public goods. Then they download free wallets and expect them to work -- and since it works, no one questions how it works. Yet, these wallets are often reliant on some foundation or altruism. Cryptos often die when this support ends.
Should successful businesses run their own public nodes as well? Yes, absolutely, there should be more public nodes. Having decentralization means that services do not have a single point of failure. Though if you believe that private nodes for private applications means decentralization, I think you have the wrong model in mind -- this is not decentralization, this is a single point of failure (and a position where the application can censor its users however they like). For an application to actually be decentralized, you need to be able to use it in a permissionless way.
The unfortunate truth about steemd nodes is that the setup is dumb and the API is shit. Asking a business to begin by doing this and detract their focus away from what they are good at is a waste of resources (until they have resources to spare). So I think one would be misguided to think that startup businesses and projects "won't run their own nodes" if they get public service. It's more simple than that -- many businesses and projects "won't run, period" if there aren't public services.
The blockchain itself is indeed a public good -- but this means both read and write access should be. Consider a wallet as an application. How should the wallet read and write to the chain? Well, we could envision a model where the wallet is for-profit (say, purchased on the app store) and the owner is a business that also runs nodes for their wallet users. But, this means that the wallet is reliant on a single point of failure -- this business and their nodes -- for it to continue to work. This is not a decentralized application. This is not a public good. If all access to a public good requires going through privatized routes, is it still a public good?
A decentralized application is open-source and open-permission. Sure, it's something you can run your own node for should you choose -- and for purist decentralization everyone would indeed run their own node. But having a public API means you don't have to, having multiple public APIs means you have can even have trustless decentralization available to you -- you are not reliant on any one entity to use your wallet.
In my mind, a successful version of Steem has all witnesses offering excellent API nodes to the public for their use. Witnesses are not only the decentralized authority for putting information into the chain, they can also be the decentralized authority for providing information to the users, removing the need for all users to run their own nodes.
I just disagree this is ideological. I see it as mostly practical:
If Steemit wants to offer free node service, arguably on their own dime (though in reality subsidized by stakeholders accepting the ninja-mine), I can speak out about it being a harmful and broken model, which I have. If someone else wants to do it, and solicit SPS funds, I can still speak out about it being a broken model but also oppose the funding that would go to subsidize it.
As far as applications like wallets, the place where the investment should go is not more big nodes to become a point of failure and inefficiency, it is lighter consensus models which allow wallets to sync to the chain without downloading all of it, with a modest, but generally acceptable, increase in the degree of trust required (rough equivalent of SPV on Bitcoin). In the case of DPoS this means delivering a chain of witness changes. This doesn't exist afaik. It has been discussed for years going back to Bitshares, but nobody takes on developing it, and instead people just keep using API nodes with no decentralized validation at all.
That's because they aren't.
API node service is not at all a public good in terms of actual economics. It is both excludable and rivalrous. (The blockchain itself, by contrast, is actually a public good.) Wishing something to be a public good does not make it so.
You disagree that it's ideological, then you give an point that ignores my last comment entirely, then another point that is subjective and not quantifiable. It sounds to me like you have ideology at heart here.
I'll repeat my point in response to #1 -- I believe many more public nodes are good. I think others, especially businesses (whom have the skills) should follow along and build more infrastructure. I don't know how you've missed the fact that we align here.
For #2, sure, many developers aren't perfectly efficient because they are not immediately forced to optimize.
Yet you don't run a public node so I don't know how you can really comment on this being a problem; it's a subjective view and I have not seen any quantitative data to back up this being a problem. From my perspective, I haven't seen this as a problem on my nodes at all.
Lighter consensus models would be great, if you actually read my post I linked to, I talk about this -- but it requires 2/3rds of witnesses to provide APIs and signatures in order to be byzantine fault tolerant.
Finally, public good... in terms of actual economics, you are straight up wrong.
What is Rivalry? Can someone "use up" an API? No, it doesn't disappear after you use it. It's not like you can chop down all the trees so you can burn firewood and then I can't. I can use the API, you can use the API, anyone can use the API. All at the same time. It's just data, and data is replicable.
What is Excludability? Can you use it if I am using it -- absolutely, yes. Its parallelizable and effectively functions with renewable capacity. Can someone stop you from using it? Most probably not. Many public goods are like this, like roads or clean air. I can pollute the air or congest the roads, and make it shit for others, that doesn't make it no longer a public good, it just degrades the quality.
Could it be excludable? Yes -- if a node were to perhaps ban certain users from using it. But this would be visible (and I don't do this). Notably though, someone else can't stop you from using it -- only I (the provider) could do so. Roads are like this too -- a government may prevent passage for various reasons.
Wishing something wasn't a public good does not make it so. It absolutely does qualify. It qualifies in the exact same way that the blockchain itself also qualifies -- service can be degraded by bad actors, but it does not prevent the fundamental properties of being non-rivalrous and non-excludable. If I were to tell you "A blockchain is not a public good", consider how you would argue against that. Do you see how the same logic applies to the data access as it does to the data entry?
p.s., you're fine to criticize and oppose. I just wish you understood the larger picture here.
We will mostly just have to agree to disagree about what is best.
However, on this point I must clarify:
No I'm not.
Go look at what I wrote (I just went back and double checked). I did not say that "the API" is not a public good, I said that "API service" is not a public good.
The API (specification) itself is a public good of course. Anyone is free to use "the API", it can not be "used up", etc.
But a server providing API service (which incorporates bandwidth, processing, and storage) is absolutely not a public good. It is rivalrous in that people must compete to use its finite resources. It can absolutely be "used up", as you put it, in the sense that too much usage will degrade the quality of service to unacceptable levels. It is excludable in that access can be easily restricted (using, for example, API keys).
I'd suggest reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Examples for a good discussion as to what is or is not a public good in economic terms. The best examples are intangibles which share more with the abstract concept of "an API" and less with physical API servers:
I was mistaken. I was thinking of read access to a blockchain, which is a public good in the same sense as many of the above information goods. Write access to a blockchain is not a public good. Indeed any blockchain which tried to be such would be spam attacked (as Steem was being when it didn't implement sufficient measures of exclusion pre-RC) and fail.
The wiki page you link to suggests "... quasi-public goods because excludability is possible", which in my opinion fits the bill for both read and write access to blockchains. They can, in the same was as roads, be blocked to poor overall usage.
But you are absolutely wrong about rivalrousness. A server providing readable data is infinitely renewable. It cannot be used up because the information is not deleted after being provided. You are confusing this property with excludability. It is a question of quality of service (which falls under the excludability property).
In this case, I would correct my definition to suggest that public APIs and public Blockchains, like roads and public libraries, are both quasi-public goods. Could we agree on that?
Not infinitely, no. Only up to the point where usage of the server reaches capacity to provide an acceptable quality of service, and even before that point, performance will degrade with more users, though perhaps imperceptibly at first. Being able to sequentually renew (i.e. not "use up") is not enough as you can see from the wikipedia page on rival goods
Again, I'm not talking about the information. The information itself is unquestionably a public good. A particular server (such as those proposed to paid for by this proposals) is not a public good. It has rivalrous physical resources such as processing power and bandwidth, and people compete to use those resources.
The reason that roads have historically been considered to be a quasi-public good is that it has been (and is still largely) impractical to infeasible to restrict access to most roads, making them effectively unexcludable. You aren't going to put up a toll booth on every corner, and if you try doing it on some and not others (apart from specific chokepoints such as bridges are certain limited access highways), the traffic will just move around it, making the scheme again impractical. This is somewhat becoming less the case technologically (due to automated toll transponders, automatic license plate recognition, GPS, etc.) and we are indeed starting to see more methods of exclusion such as express lanes, urban congestion zones, usage-metered registration fees, etc., making them even less of a public (or more precisely nonexcludable) good.
Anyway, back to servers. It is very practical to restrict access to servers with API keys. As I said earlier, I would support an SPS proposal to pay for servers which are restricted to limited-capacity use for developers and perhaps other categories of cost-sensitive users where there is a clear strategic reason to do so. I think that is a better use of limited resources than subsidizing profitable businesses (which experience has shown are highly prone to use free servers if they are available), opening the general floodgates, and discouraging (via a carrot, at least) people who can easily do so from running their own nodes (which leads to at least unnecessary centralization and fragility).
Did you finish reading the wikipedia page you linked?
In contrast to the hammer,
Can you and I both use the API at the same time? YES!
There's also this:
Your argument against roads applies directly as a metaphor to IP banning. Its the same principle.
Funny enough, one could make the argument that more usage of an API node increases efficiency of the access -- this is due to locality and caching behaviour. When two people access the same resource, the server only has to prepare that resource once before delivering it twice -- making it faster access for the second user. This is an anti-rivalrous property. :)
It's also possible to blow up a road. This doesn't mean a road isn't a quasi-public good anymore, it means you changed the underlying properties and thus changed the good. If you don't use API keys on a server, its not restricting access. Sure, I could change it to be a private good, but I'm not.
I'm willing to meet you half way here, but I'm surprised you're unwilling to move an inch. It's quite clear to me that this falls quite high on the spectrum of "public goodness" while being obviously not a puritan perfect one. But very few things are puritan perfect ones -- even a beautiful scenic view is worth shit if overcrowded or polluted. I don't think that you thinking in absolutes is a good way to approach this.
If you think that is a reasonable argument then it ought to be clear to anyone why I'm not meeting you "half way".
It is clear that API servers (not APIs) are not public goods because they are easily excludable (without requiring explosives), regardless of silliness over whether a server is more like "the internet" or a hammer. To be considered a public good requires that the good be both non-rivelrous and non-excludable. API servers are trivially excludable. Therefore not a public good. End of story.
Furthermore my opposition to unlimited free servers wide open derives mostly not from any economic definitions, but from how I've seen it have a negative effect on this particular ecosystem, as well as experience with a variety of blockchain projects. The healthiest and most robust ones have people running their own nodes, at least once their usage reaches the point when it is feasible to do so.
So, like I said, I think there is good that can come from making easy and cheap or free access to API servers available to small developers, just not wide open broadly to everyone on the internet who wants to use it.
That is my position on this proposal or ones like it.
It was an exaggeration, and sadly you've latched on to that rather than actually address my point. A better example could have been parking a truck in front of your garage door.
Just because something can be changed to become excludable, does not mean that it is therefore always excludable. Just because I could in the future gate a public road creating a private road, doesn't mean that that public road road is right now excludable.
There's no "end of story" here unless you are a puritan for public goods, which is completely ideological as one can trivially concoct ways to have excludability in just about anything. That is just silly, pedantic, and simply detracts from the point that something can be provided in a non-exclusionary way to be a quasi-public good.
Your other point -- a subjective viewpoint that public API's are a detriment or have a negative impact -- well, we will just have to agree to disagree here.