Rewarding aggregation points

[Jeff Burdges]

We can reward node operators with "secret shopper" cover traffic built by staked node using VRFs, but rewarding storage over an extended period sounds much harder. But @oskarth raised the issue:

How do we incentivize aggregation points?

As users actually have an account with their aggregation points, we could make users fund those account using an anonymous payment scheme to pay their aggregation point.

Could we have tiered service where aggregation points bill their users for storage but some minimal level remains free? Aggregation points who want more users could advertise limited free storage perhaps.

Is there any mechanism to force aggregation points to provide some free service? I think yes: If storage duration gets shorter, then "secret shopper" schemes work better, so the "free tier" could be that users cannot go offline for very long, and the aggregation points must provide this to advertise themselves.

We still have payments though, so we could do these payments using my idea for currencies that semi-staked users earn from their cover traffic, where they "semi-stake" consists of the user providing their phone number to a centralized contact discovery system. In that way, the normal user experience remains "give your phone number", "get all your contacts", and "the system just works", and even pays you something, but users who do not want anyone to find them through their phone number must pay something.

It's quite complex to do this semi-staked thing though, so we need an initial design in which aggregation points likely just do not store any messages all that long. Initially, we could skip doing any "secret shopper" scheme, and simply trust nodes to behave correctly. In the beginning, we'll have idealists who want decentralized messaging, so if the packet rewards suffice then initially nodes might provide some temporary storage just to encourage adoption.