[freehaven-dev] Re: [Freenet-chat] MojoNation

[Brandon <blanu@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

> I spoke with Jim McCoy a couple days before their presentation at DefCon;
> the 'financial rewards' you mention (converting mojo into US currency)
> are something they might do in the future if the basic architecture works
> out. It's not integral to the system -- the basic Mojonation design does
> not interact with any sort of external currency.

I hung out with the MojoNation guys for around a full day and a half (we
had late planes out of Las Vegas). They were very cool. I insisted that
they let me set up my own alternative bank and we came to the conclusion
that if the official MojoNation bank, in additional to acting as a hub to
keep track of transactions, also offers to convert mojo into dollars, then
my alternative currency won't won't be very popular.

Jim did point out one interesting quality of virtual currency that can be
converted into money, which is that if They try to flood your system, then
they're really paying you to be flooded. They pay you to store their data
and keep storing their data. You can say no thanks, I only want to store
data that I know is legit (as opposed to mindless spam), or you can stick
in an extra hard drive, knowing that the flooders will pay you for as much
space as you can come up with. People would be racing to get on the
network whenever they heard it was being attacked, which would in effect
dillute the attack, requiring every increasing cash expenditures from
Them. They will have to spend cash to buy mojo since the only other way to
get mojo is to donate resources, which is exactly what They are attempting
to stop. Thus, MojoNation the company gets the big bucks and all of the
users of MojoNation the network can cash in.

I think that's very clever.

Dammit, I really need to post my notes. I have lots of interesting stuff
to say. I'll do that tonight, hopefully.