I am definitely interested in Kora's approach.
About the distribution:
What about: One stake per Human?
Is that fair? What does that mean, anyway?
I wonder if there is any way to do this without opening the can of worms that is called Biometrics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiometricsConsider this approach:
It has to be designed in such a way that it propagates itself, but does not reward the initial starting group. Any IPO process is inherently unfair, since it is occurring in a certain point in time, and everyone entering later, is at an disadvantage.
First create the coins, and the distributed network, similar to NXT or Qora, but do not "populate" them with owners. The coins only take on value, if they have "owners" and the owners get added in in such a fashion:
Start with an initial group: a network of humans that know, and vouch for each other.
Every person who has received a stake, can mature into a "banker" - that is an account that has the capability to identify and recruit 10 more individuals. "Mining" or "forging" occurs that moment when a new stakeholder has been appointed by an existing one. (just like current banks create the value out of thin air). Any stakeholder can do that only 10 times in his/her life. (One for each fingerprint?)
So the coins are "pre-created" but not "pre-mined". Mining or Forging occurs when new owners are populating (taking ownership of) the coins.
I think there are smart individuals out here, who can work out how many coins should be in the total pool, and how many should be in a stake, so that all the (future) humans on this planet can have an adequate supply of usable coin units.
The coins, once given value by being owned by new stakeholders, of course can be used and traded like any other currency.
But... this will not work, because nobody here can let go of their greed to get in on the original creation of value. Nobody will want to spend energy on something that might empower the ones that follow us. Nobody wants to be a 'banker' without getting rich through it.
Maybe we can have another three-letter-acronymn: PoP - Proof of Person??
Pentamon
Great post Pentamon, thanks! You raise some very interesting points. 'One stake per Human' is my goal for Kora, and I think for many people interested in seeing crypto currencies thrive and do good in the world, it is the high water mark for coin distribution. For me 'One stake per Human' *should* mean that I can register a stake for my children, and my elderly parents, and other 'dependants'. Please note that I said *should*, because I know setting up a system where people could register a stake on behalf of another person would be a red rag to a bull as far as sockpuppeters is concerned, so preventing abuse by multi-account scammers would become a major effort. I think it is possible to setup such a system, but very difficult without requiring people to upload identity documents. I believe eventually someone will propose a coin with 100% POS free distribution, and they will try to airdrop to a particular community based on 'One stake per Human' using some form of identity checking.
Many financial institutions are required already to collect identity documents for AML & KYC purposes, so I think eventually a big player will try and bootstrap a coin on a mass scale using existing document collecting & verification procedures. Many people in the crypto community NOW obviously value their privacy, so many would be against a coin that asked for identity documents, but I think it is almost inevitable somebody will do this, and they'll probably be very successful - 'free money if you upload 2 identity documents and install an app on your phone' - It is inevitable.
As for your suggestions regarding the problems with distributing all the coins at the beginning, I like the idea of issuing larger amounts to people who acts as 'redistribution agents', and then those people distribute to new people etc etc It has a lot of appeal.
I think the problem is 'trust' - how can you force the people to distribute and not hoard? It's the 'tragedy of the commons' (similar to game theory), and everyone has a strong incentive to NOT distribute to the next level, and hope everyone else does so the coin survives but they have more coins.
Many would argue that the best means of distribution is selling for profit by the first batch of stakeholders, and then as the price slowly goes up, new entrants sell/distribute to the next wave of users, and then the price goes up a little more so they sell to the next wave etc etc. I can see problems with both approaches, (i.e. distribute via selling for profit vs trusting the 'distribution bankers' to honestly distribute and not cheat), but the goal of saving coins for later distribution is very worthwhile.
I am a big believer in the potential of DACs (distributed autonomous corporations), which in my mind are software that has been programmed to perform all the functions of a business. Many businesses, especially ones involving money *could* be programmed into software without the need for human intervention. The functions of Banking, insurance, stock issuing, bond issuing etc could be fully automated one day, and eventually I think DACs will revolutionise many industries, in the same way the internet already has.
I believe in the not too distant future it would be possible to program a 'coin distribution DAC' that was capable of distributing coins over a long period of time using identity checking in some automated secure way, that would allow coins to be distributed slowly, so later generations of people could still get a fair share.
Instead of having people act in the role of 'redistribution bankers' as you called them, the DAC could be programmed to perform that function. If the DAC was programmed 'correctly' the coin distribution could happen over years, and it would not require 'trusting' anybody, and everything would be transparent on the coin's blockchain.
I think a DAC distributed 100% POS coin is the long term answer for crypto currencies - POW is flawed, but 100% POS coins have the 'how do we distribute fairly' problem. NXT & Qora had very poor distributions, NEM was better but still not very wide, and it doesn't allow for any distribution to late comers.
The long term fair distribution is obviously to use your suggestion and NOT distribute all the coins to the first wave of users so you can keep coins for later users, but who can we trust to safe keep the coins and honestly perform the 'One stake per Human' check? Answer, a distribution DAC!
Crypto is evolving. Bitcoin was like the first early human ancestor who climbed down from the trees in Africa. NXT is like the first human ancestor to use a stone tool. Qora, NEM & Kora can all make evolutionary progress, but if we're honest they're still basically hairy man-monkey creatures walking around - they're like homo erectus & neanderthals, and not the equivalent of a modern human. A 100% POS coin distributed by a DAC using identity checking would be very close to a 'fully evolved crypto' IMO
I've been doing some things with monero this week and the 18 million figure does became painful to work with in your head.