ATTIS.IO Brown Paper

Attis was a Phrygian God who died in the winter so that his body could return to the ground and feed new crops in the spring

The problem

People have many cherished memories in photos on their phones and other devices, losing these memories can be heart breaking so there is a strong demand to backup these files.

There are many many cloud photo backup providers, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon ALL offer cloud backup services. The problem is that they charge a monthly fee which means that a user has to keep a recurring payment on file. If there is a problem with the payment, the cloud provider fails to look after the files, goes bankrupt or otherwise stops service then they will risk losing their memories. Customers would be recommended to use more than 1 cloud provider to ensure redundancy, this is both costly and difficult to configure.

All of the services such as iCloud are private backups of your photos. They contain photos which will eventually be shared on social media as well as some more private ones. Why do we need services such as Instagram AND iCloud, why can’t we just mark a file as public or private and upload it to storage?

Instagram has no interest in backing up your personal photos because they make money from selling your content. Apple have little interest in hosting your public snaps because Instagram / Facebook is better at selling it than they are.

Introducing Attis.io

Attis.IO will be written on the EOS platform and make EOS Storage available to people in an easy way.

Photos will be guaranteed to be stored forever for a fixed price per MB with no ongoing monthly cost, data will be bought in chunks and then used as needed.

Photos can be marked as either public or private and metadata optionally associated with them. Public files will not be encrypted and they will be browsable using a dapp or by any other third-party. Encrypted files will need the private key to be decrypted. Users would have the ability to create group keys and encrypt certain photos so that only members of that group can see them - or multi signature keys so that >1 person is needed to decrypt a file.

It will integrate with desktop PCs and all major mobile devices for automated backup. All of the features that we expect from current cloud backup and photo sharing apps will be possible.

Access to files will be controlled by a private key so they will be far safer than on a cloud provider. Security will follow a trust no-one methodology, private files will be encrypted on the device before being sent to storage. Private keys are stored on a device so these should be kept securely but they do not travel over the internet and are less vulnerable (or even invulnerable) to phishing or MITM attacks. Reading of decrypted images would still be possible with local compromise but this is not a problem that can go away soon, one repaired screen can mean that all the security is meaningless.

Attis will be a registered company with a bank account, it will pay taxes and file accounts like any normal company does now.

Avoiding crypto

Most people using cloud storage do not own or use crypto currency. As much as we would like everyone to be using it now - it is still a very niche market. Attis will accept FIAT payments with various merchants and then use a DEX to purchase EOS which will be locked in the storage contract.

Crypto users will be able to pay in EOS or any other currency and there will be no convenience fee for using the service, they will just use the storage and contract using the contracts and dapps already in use.

Attis will make profit in EOS, each FIAT payment will be fully converted to EOS tokens on sale (less the credit card fees) and then the required number of tokens will be locked for storage and the remainder will be distributed among the reward token holders. The real-world business will be a 0-profit company.

Pricing

The price for data will vary based on the price of the EOS token, the storage available, storage reserved and the CRR used. It isn’t known yet how much 1 MB would be and there may be a lot of volatility in the future. Storage will be sold in fixed FIAT chunks but with a varying amount of storage.

The ATTIS token

ATTIS tokens will be a proxy for locked storage tokens but will be based on the amount of data reserved not the number of EOS tokens.

When a user likes a photo, they will give up a tiny bit of their ATTIS tokens and it will be given to the owner of the photo they liked, like a tip jar. These will be converted to actual storage for the author, public interest accounts could appeal for donations to fund their storage and bandwidth costs. Once users run out of tips then they will have to purchase more ATTIS either from the contract directly or on an exchange.

The default tip amount will be 1 kilobyte of data and they will be referred to as “Ks”, as in “I gave it a K” or “Give me a K if you like this” and "look how many Ks I got”

A community project

Attis will be a community driven project with each contributor being paid in reward tokens. Each task will be assigned and developers, artists and content writers will be able to tender. Voting for winning projects will be done using a DAC.

Each reward token will entitle the owner to a future share of the profits from the FIAT convenience fee forever. The reward will be paid in EOS tokens. The votes for new projects will be cast by the existing reward token holders, they will be incentivised to research the project and the capabilities of the person delivering the project because their rewards will be diluted.

When there are tasks which cannot (or will not) be done by community vote then reward tokens will be sold to pay for them.

Open Source, Freedom, Decentralisation

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Open Source is a growing and very well supported movement, but it also comes with a lot of politics. I agree with the ideology of the purists but I also acknowledge that there is a role for business in the Open Source world.

Red Hat is the original Open Source supporting business, they were founded in 1993 when Linux and Open Source were still a growing community. They developed a business model of selling Open Source and offering support contracts and it has been very successful for them, especially among large businesses who require the guarantees they offer to run their critical infrastructure. Red Hat have been extremely influential in the success of Linux and Open Source in general, they employ hundreds of developers working on very important projects but that is only possible due to the business end which is a very traditional B2B model (the one with the largest per user revenue).

Canonical came along in 2004 with a mainly B2C focus, they took the underlying code and created the Ubuntu distribution which was designed to be user friendly and attractive to end users. None of this Open Source contribution would be viable without their business revenues.

I plan to create a new business model which is pre-programmed to die at a certain point and be replaced by a new type of enterprise which can work in alignment with the ideals of Freedom and Decentralisation. The key stakeholders of this system will be the people contributing to the creation of the product.

Once FIAT payments drop to a level where they are no longer profitable the gateway will be turned off and the legal business entity will close. At this point Attis will still exist but it will be in the form of a DAC which is owned and controlled by the stakeholders.