RE: failures during the preparation phase (universal mode)

 

Hi Mark, 

Thanks for bringing this up: 

> The model of each node providing a bid for total cost to get required amount to the destination seems to work logically. The node has the incentive to find the cheapest route from self to destination, as that maximises their own possible profit while still minimising the senders costs, so aligning incentives

... and ... 

> As a buyer of the services of a node, I would also want some measure of current quality of service from that node as well as absolute price, to help me choose which of several bidding nodes to take. Not sure if the "Quality Of Service" is an appropriate term here, but the measure would allow me to make the trade-off between low cost and likely delivery quality. Sometimes cheapest is not always what I want.

Your terms of "bidding" and "quality of service" are, essentially, what
I brought up in my other post on this thread: "Competition" and "trust",
in other words. 

Except you say "I would want some ...". Not sure who you are addressing
with this request, but competition and trust are not going to just pop
out of the internet, for you to consume, just like that. In the end, you
as an end user will have to determine them yourself. And in this future
fast fluctuating world -- this is speculation on my behalf --, you'll
have to frequently re-evaluate the trust/competition scenario. You can't
just go with the supplier "that your parents always used", the way
people do banking today. 

So some IT that offloads this cognitive burden onto your Trusted Device
of Choice (tm) would be in order. 

-- Xav