To those who responded, Thank you very much. Sericouscoins thats awesome that you would take time out of your busy schedule to have a chat with a stranger. I'm going to watch this project for awhile but don't have anything I can add or questions that can advance anything your are doing here.
But, I see where you are going with this. I like the name of the project. It has good marketability. And you are right features and gimmicks shouldn't sell a coin. Especially with features being open source anyone can borrow any concept to add it on, you just need a good community and dev to make it happen. It seems yall got that so congrats.
However with a name such as Bitcoinplus, you are kinda implying that it is everything bitcoin is plus more. So as a user I kinda assumed it had some nice new features as the name implied. And given the direction of "gen2" coins I was kinda hoping that this project might be something like a bitcoinfork with an 80byte op_return and coin join and decentralized escrow and all the other interesting things the bitcoin community wanted and the btf said no to.
One critque though might be, as tough as it is to avoid features and gimmicks bitcoinplus does seem to have some. The IPO, the Rareness ( 100,000 coins ), POS = enviromentaly friendly, and POS Wallet + multipool support. So try as this project might to over look them, you got some gimmicks. I'm also wondering if there is any great difference from blackcoin? (I'm not trying to be a negative nelly here)
If you take a look at the first generation of bitcoin clones you find the name ixcoin. Ixcoin is nearly identical to bitcoin and it has no special features. The only thing that makes it interesting though, is because it is merged mined, it has a crazy high hash rate making it extremely secure. How does the security of Bitcoinplus work being its POS? Is it more secure then bitcoin? I am having trouble finding the whitepaper that might have this info.
All in all I wish this project luck. And it has got me thinking, what would the bitcoinplus project have looked like if you kept the POS model yet took a snapshot of the bitcoin blockchain and used that as your distribution model, thus tying it to bitcoin?
Unfortunately, several aspects of Bitcoinplus have been implemented prior to our team coming in to pick up development. One of these being the distribution method, which was done through fair IPO; since coins have already been distributed to people in this way, we kinda have to stick with it. But the IPO distribution via Poloniex is fair, and thus we are okay with how it worked out. Another is the specs: POS and the coin cap were already a part of this coin, and we thought that the features merited enough benefits where we could safely support keeping them implemented (ex: POS + multipool has been proven to be successful, whereas other new protocols have not). As we progress into the future, we can of course make changes and forks to steamline the system and provide a "better" protocol per our community's vision for the coin.
As for POS security, the issue with an attack is no longer from mining power, but from "holding/balance" power, how many coins you are holding in staking. Similar to needing the majority hashing power in POW, you would need a majority of the staking power (aka staking balance) to do any sort of tampering. That being said, I think this does make POS much more secure than POW, especially when built upon a strong, large community because the coins will be better distributed and will make it harder for any single person or entity to gather enough coins.
Think of it also in this way: mining power is virtually limitless, thus there is always risk that someone will come in with a mining farm and tamper with your blockchain (ex: your network has 500mhs supporting it, someone comes in with a 1ghs rig and owns the majority hashing power). In POS, you would need acquire coins from other holders and get enough of them to the point where you own the majority staking power before you can do any manipulation. Now, given the rarity, POS, and strong community, it is very hard for a single person to consolidate enough coins to have enough power. Thus, the network security now lies solely in the community: larger community = better distribution = more secure. It is easy to buy mining power...but community power cannot be bought (at least not nearly to the extent as mining power).