Topic: [ANN] [PPC] PPCoin Released! - First Long-Term Energy-Efficient Crypto-Currency - page 104. (Read 684839 times)

Regarding block chain size, I observe there are a couple lines of possible development in this front:

1) Ultraprune in bitcoin (large downloadable checkpoint of unspent outputs)
2) Balance based ledger block (this approach seems to have been taken by ripple)
3) Relocating unspent outputs forward in block chain

I am favoring 3) because of ease of implementation. Overall I think the most efficient is probably 2) but it's a costly redesign for bitcoin.

Regarding block size limit, it was put in there to prevent premature growth of block chain size. As you said, people have trouble doing the initial download because it's too intensive on the computer. We need more time for average PC to catch up to the job, to raise block size limit before that happens is going to make average node feeling the pain. The hardware more suitable for future bitcoin full node is: Terabyte SSD to accommodate the active part of block chain plus entire block index. Internet access preferably 100Mbps symmetric. This will allow bitcoin to begin competing against networks such as paypal in terms of transaction volume without sacrificing decentralization.

It's a tough decision, we'll see what happens with bitcoin. There is speculations going on that if bitcoin delays raising block size limit then transaction volume is going to flow to litecoin because at the current limit litecoin can handle 4x the transaction volume of bitcoin (bitcoin needs to raise block size limit to 4MB to match litecoin). The problem is that litecoin would have the exact same issues bitcoin network has in this situation.

Glad to see how PPC keeps moving on right direction and learning from btc mistakes. Few can do that.
Any thoughts on how to avoid the absurd situation BTC is or will be in with it's massive block chain? Installing an official BTC QT client now days is not a small task because of the huge download requirements (and it's getting worst by the minute). I still believe that big files are fragile files. 
I only ask because I see the ugly trend in BTC, where the complete transaction data will be available for only the select few. Rest of us have to rely on bits of data made available via some "middleware" ("explorers"), controlled by those few... stinks like bank... hold on, *coin supposed to free us from the central control!

Cheers!

a wise decision.

It's much less costly to spam a new coin so I had to strengthen this part to counter certain class of spamming attack. Although people would argue that allowing tiny output value may open up to some good applications but in my opinion spamming is a serious issue so micropayment has to go.

Foresight or serendipity ? 

I think Misterbigg made a good point there that the 1 satoshi output is not going to be recycled because it cost more in fees to recycle them than their total value. I am not sure if this is what's happening on bitcoin, but there is a chance that the wallet consolidation would fail at the end, leaving thousands of those tiny outputs unable to be consolidated because there is not enough left to pay the fee, and then people just throw it away.

But anyways, ppcoin doesn't have this particular issue.

Right the code on the top is from bitcoin but I didn't remove it when I introduced the minimum txout value. The bitcoin logic you quoted is no longer used. Actually it's already obsolete when I enforced transaction fees throughout, i.e. ppcoin has no free transaction so nMinFee cannot be less than nBaseFee.

wow. so what you're saying is that the minimum amount you can spent with ppcoin is bounded by the transaction fee?

I think there are some unnecessary statements in the source code which are due to different policies overlapping.
E.g.

vs.

No in ppcoin it's enforced in block check that txout value must be at least 1 cent. If you create such a transaction manually it will fail CheckTransaction().

You're referring to the reference client behavior. However, (I didn't check it) I assume that those transactions are still valid and could make it into the blockchain, correct?

Yes. A more concise description is "economically unfeasible" outputs, where you effectively spent more on redeeming than they're worth.

I was aware of this issue so ppcoin has a minimum txout value of 1 cent. To think that such 'micropayment' should be supported on block chain is unrealistic in my opinion.

Although I think it's inaccurate to call it unspendable, it supposedly can be spent together with some other coins (txout), or combined when you consolidate the wallet due to fragmentation (too many small coins in wallet causing performance issues).

I am just going to drop a cross-reference here with respect to a recent heated debate in the bitcoin community with respect to the eternal cost of unspendable outputs, because ppcoin in principle is affected by the same deficiency:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/economically-unspendable-outputs-a-problem-on-the-radar-150493

If bitcoin doesn't come up with a solution to this problem, it may be worth investigating how ppcoin can introduce innovative features to accommodate the issue.

The incentive to include transactions appears to be of less concerns now as there is an adversarial mechanism that miners are free to drop small blocks while building on their own. ppcoin can have this mechanism because the risk of loss is very low, you don't lose much if your block fails to get into main chain.

QoS is provided currently through the same default miner policy from bitcoin of reserved block space for high-fee transactions.

Well as far as I know there is no QoS or even any incentive at all to include transactions in PPC.. so that needs to be looked at for sure. But not having to rely on the fees for security is one less constraint on the protocol and that's a step atleast.

Hi hamlet I am glad you brought this up.

First some bad news already pointed out by Jutarul above that as a bitcoin fork we have the same problem if ppcoin network gets popular enough. It's true ppcoin's transaction fee is not used to secure against double spending as in bitcoin's case, however that's only a problem for bitcoin long term (as in 20 years later). As you can see currently the most urgent problem for bitcoin is the block size limit, which would already bid up the transaction fees.

The nature of this problem is inherent with bitcoin's design. I have pointed out earlier in a different thread that block size limit is closely linked to the size of the block chain. They are like two sides of a coin. The modern PC and ISP speed can actually handle much more tps (transactions per second) than the current block size limit allows (you might need ssd and for miners also symmetric internet connection but they are both gradually getting there), but once the limit is raised, the block chain size could also deal enough pain to discourage new nodes to join the network. For me I would favor a plan to first be able to 'roll' the block chain before raising block size limit.

In the interim bitcoin's transaction fees would be bid up, of course there would be plenty of complaints because it lowers bitcoin's competitiveness against other payment networks, including altcoins. We will be able to observe the quality of service behavior originally designed for this scenario, like nodes dropping low fee transactions from memory pool and one has to resend transactions and so on. Bitcoin nodes by default try to send transaction with no fee. Those transactions would already see some pain. I have noticed this before ppcoin's release so ppcoin always requires transaction fee, so users won't be misled into believing that you can use it without paying fees.

As Jutarul pointed out, I am more flexible regarding the issue of hard fork, so we can certainly try more things than bitcoin. Meanwhile I will closely watch the decisions made on bitcoin's side.

So tell me, how do you establish QoS without transaction fees?

H@ml3t is correct, Bitcoin needs the fees to prevent spam AND more importantly to secure the network long term. PPCoin only needs them to prevent spam, and thus they can stay low forever.

ppcoin is subject to the same deficiencies with respect to transaction spam and blockchain bloat. It didn't innovate that problem away. The moment people "evade" the traffic and offload their transactions to alternate chains, the same problems will arise.

However, since ppcoin has a lower monetization, the network rules can be changed more easily, thus it has innovative flexibility, e.g. it may be able to change the consensus mechanism entirely to improve upon that point. I don't see that happening with bitcoin.

Hello all together,

I have been following PPCoin and this thread for quite some time. Now, with you talking about how to generate a higher adaption of PPCoin I think it is time for me to write something instead of just reading.

I think the main point in the slow adaption of PPCoin is that it, as of now, does not provide any benefits to end-users and miners (unlike ltc and nvc) compared to btc. I mean at the moment btc works pretty fine and the problems with deflation spiral and network instability due to lower mining reward will only come to an effect in the coming years.


Actually, there is a thing where a big cryptocurrency is inherently bad at, and this is the blocksize limit. In the last days the soft blocksize limit in btc has been reached and people are slowly starting to freakout, see this two threads of many:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/soft-block-size-limit-reached-action-required-by-you-149668
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/economically-unspendable-outputs-a-problem-on-the-radar-150493

This is already delaying transactions in the bitcoin network and the problem will continue to grow. Bitcoin is in a trap by design, from now on transaction fees will continue to grow in order to do a fast transaction. Bitcoin can't just fix this issue as in the future they need the fees to satisfy miners. On the other hand high transaction fees are contrary to the intention of bitcoin.

I see this as a huge chance for ppcoin as with pos fees are not needed to prevent >50% attacks in the future. As I understand it fees are only needed so that know one can dos the network for cheap.

I dont have much time now, I will outline some thoughts I have on how PPCoin could propose a good solution to this dilemma later or tomorrow. First of all I have a question, what is the current soft and hardcoded blocksize limit in PPCoin?

Best regards,
hamlet

To improve the liquidity in currency market it takes time. I think first getting more users to know ppcoin's innovations and start trying it, as interest grows the entrepreneurs would be more willing to take those risks.

I will do my part on the development of ppc, but I do need some of our supporters to take on the public relations front. I can only do so much alone so all your help is of course very important to the entire community. Since ppcoin's debut so far there is very little interest with the press. Nor did any independent journalist/bloggers ever contacted me. Jutarul used to say I am a public figure but I kinda of think that we are far from there yet because really nobody is interested.

I believe with some patience and effort together we could eventually grow out of the small technical circles that comprises most of our community right now. Yeah I think the future is optimistic.