Hello, I discovered LBRY these past days, and I wanted to say that I was pleasently surprised. I was expecting yet another ICO backed coin with a funny project attract investors, perhaps more successful this time, but instead I found something that may actually work and be an alternative (especially since some creators I followed on YouTube are moving to LBRY because of censorship, and PeerTube federation is at risk of being banned from the federation).
But now, I’m still wondering what will happen when LBRY Inc will run out of free LBC coins to give out to new users? Content creators will be required to buy LBC coins on markets to post a video they may be hosting themselves already. What will happen when the blockchain will mine the last LBC? These are all shortcomings of bitcoin based software where the first people coming to the blockchain will have an advantage over the last ones.
Also, a blockchain seems a quite complex tool with huge energy spending to compute hashes with an ever growing database that computing nodes will need to store forever. Yes it is secure, but is there any plans to simplify it over time?
I wanted to bring to your attention another project: Duniter that is a blockchain software aiming at creating a fair alternative money which has better grounds:
- energy efficient: each node as given a difficulty level, allowing raspberries to participate in the blockchain
- no reward from mining: money creation is not done by mining, mining nodes are just there part of the infrastructure and are rewarded separately through permanent crowdfunding
- fair money creation: money is being created by each member every day a small amount. Created money grows over time and ensures that late participants will have access to a fair proportion of the monetary mass. In 100 years time, the platform will continue to be attractive. There is no fixed limit on the amount of coins like in BitCoin, it will grow forever
- no requirement to spend money to make actions on the blockchain: transfers and other blockchain actions are free
This is all secured by a web of trust where each participant is certified by other participants to ensure no phony account is created and money distribution is fair.
I think LBRY could improve using this as an inspiration. Perhaps, even, LBRY could do away with LBC coins and work with a token-less blockchain. Rewards might be better given to content creators by integrating with another money system. Or perhaps, instead of creating new LBC coins by creating new blocks, LBC coins could be created each time a content creator published content, or has its content accessed by a viewer.