Topic: [ANN][CLAM] CLAMs, Proof-Of-Chain, Proof-Of-Working-Stake, a.k.a. "Clamcoin" - page 280. (Read 1151252 times)

Yes I think CLAM will be able to survive 2-4 months. Eventually we'll reach a short term equilibrium. And if people believe in CLAMs and JD long term they'll realize that CLAMs were undervalued during this period and they'll buy in.

Also 10% per day price drops for the next 2-4 months is an exaggeration.

Regardless, you end up picking two "sane" points and drawing a line or curve between them - which is arbitrary.
No more arbitrary than drawing a line via block height and charging a 100% fee to outputs prior to that block height, a.k.a. Removing claims.

It isn't perfect - but, if done right I think it would work.
It is an alternative I was writing up a proposal for - and certainly not agreed to as a plan.

That makes it fundamentally clay, which can be molded and polished by more refined ideas.

1. It is still an externality because the suppliers in your model are not the ones incurring the cost.

2. How do you also meet equilibrium between current supply and costs (bandwidth, processing, block space if finite, etc.) and current demand.  The current fee is closer to the this (as opposed to UXTO storage supply). I'm not sure it is possible to do both, but even if you did you still have a problem with #1

The concept revolves around attempting to estimate supply.

That is where equilibrium (and the possibility of blocksize, which I was trying to avoid) comes in.  
The amount that should be charged is the amount that the market is willing to bear.  

For any given level of supply (or demand) there is a point on the opposing demand (or supply) curve at which equilibrium is reached.
Where the amount suppliers are willing to supply at a given rate is equal to the amount demanders are willing to demand at that same rate.

If we set a window adjusting supply(block space) inverse to demand(which is in turn the inverse of fee) we reach a point at which the fee charged is the point of equilibrium between the amount demanded and supplied at the given fee.

In short, market/tx demand decides the block size.
Demand is influenced inversely by fee rate.
Block size and fee rate increase in tandem until demand == supply.

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At least that is the best I can explain the idea after 36 hours or so awake.

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EDIT: There also a few alternative possibilities, such as coin-days-destroyed.  In which case, a modulation of coin-days-destroyed would be used to measure network demand for transaction space, adjusting fees accordingly.

I don't think a idea of a time-based-fee is bad but there is a major problem with deciding what it should be. I mean you can just make up any number you want, but if you are going to bless the idea what the economic holy water of eliminating externalities it should bear some relationship to the actual cost and I don't see any way whatsoever to do that. (Otherwise you are just adding an externality, possibly larger than the one you eliminated.) For one thing the actual cost depends on the number of nodes that are storing it.

As far as there being a cost for waiting longer to dig, that already exists. It's called staking and is a very large cost right now. Over time it will get somewhat smaller. A page or two back we roughly estimated it at about 4% per month. I don't know if that is actually very accurate.

Estimated altcoin inflation or total supply over the next 10 years?

The information is needed for http://alt19.com/19/cryptocurrency.php

Thank you.

Let me get back to my initial premise. We KNOW he s not going to stop dumping for at least next 2-4 months, based on his previous behavior. Knowing that, why would I or you or anyone else buy a single CLAM until we re 100% sure he and others like him are done? There s no point buying if you know bottom s not even close.

If you think CLAM can survive these 2-4 months, suffering this 10% per day price drops, OK, you know much more about CLAM mechanics then I do and I ll accept that. However, based on my previous experience, I have not been able to find a single coin which was dumped from high price to extremely low price and then recovered. Once the community loses hope and leaves, they do not come back. Look at Paycoin. The price was $15, pumped and pumped, the community was huge, then they lost trust into the coin, due to that scammer but they lost trust. Now, under new and honest management, the price is 2 cents. People simply do not come back.

I m just afraid CLAM might suffer similar faith. On the other hand, I m certainly not going to argue about it, being a relatively new CLAM community member and I ll leave ti to more experienced ones. I m out.

I do not, personally, believe this is an existential issue.
The process of re-adjustment during this period of increased supply will be painful - however.

I do not believe CLAM is nearly as fragile as some have claimed during this issue.
That said, again, this is painful.

In the end, the only way that CLAM "dies" is if every single user stops using it.
Possible? Yes.
Likely? I don't believe so.

The question is:
Can we get some common sense changes implemented without sacrificing our ideals?
How strong is the community and how well does it survive this temporary haircut?

In the end, preserving ideals and the promises of the network while simultaneously supporting users is a problem of creativity and labor.
Problems of creativity and labor are solvable.

Even if it may change the original hopes of how CLAMS would be distributed :

The best course of action that would most likely appeal to the majority of investors, traders, users, and anyone that ever holds CLAM for any reason is to slow the emission of new coins to the point where it can support the network but end the fear of massive and unpredictable increases in supply.

How it's done is up to the community of course.

You will probably find those focused on digging will be against it and those who primarily hold or use the coin for any reason will be for it.
Just remember that all these coins are experiments that are powered by real money. So it's best to consider protecting the value of any coin as probably one of the highest orders of all.

Don't be afraid to change.
Investors will reward the right decision.

Well, this is an option, for sure.

However, CLAM s been one of my 3 favorite PoS coins and I would not like to see it die, especially not cause the whole point of CLAM dying s to let 1 single guy fill up his pockets. If we let do that, what does it say about us, the community? What does it say about CLAM devs? My entire life I have followed a simple logic, if something s broken, let s try to fix it. If not, don't fix it.

If I am the only one from the entire community being upset about this development, I wont mention it anymore. I don't want to be the only one who s been rocking the boat. As I say, I ll survive my personal loss but I would rather not to reduce the list of favorite PoS coins from 3 to 2.

Why?

Perhaps it is better to just move on. You know, like a bad relationship.

If you think CLAMs is mortally wounded by this digger (and potentially others like it) then just LET IT DIE.

Have you read Antifragility? Failure of components is absolutely essential to a larger healthy system. Trying to bail out bad ideas with any sort of desperate measures is not helpful, it is harmful. Let the experiment run its course and learn from it.

There are thousands of coins, hundreds of them are somewhat active. I think there are good things about CLAM and I've said so, but if it dies because the distribution turns out to have been fatally bad, then life will go on and, then we all learned something valuable from it. The knowledge of which ideas seemed to be good and which bad will live on.

The "nuclear" option has not been ruled out - I have simply offered an alternative (which I think should be implemented regardless of any other changes that are made).

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I will be sleeping soon, but if you could be more specific on what you would like elaborated: I would be glad to try my best.

No need to thank, and certainly no need to refrain from posting.
You have contributed here in the thread multiple times over a long period of time.

There was no intent to offend and the comment wasn't deleted for good reason.

It is a valid opinion, as most are, which is why it wasn't deleted; I just want to keep this thread focused on coming to consensus for CLAM itself.

Perfect I just might take you up on that offer --- Thanks
I deleted my "off topic comments" and will refrain from posting here again

Could you elaborate a bit more on this solution? How would this be exactly achieved?

Cause let us be clear, he s not going to stop. Since he s at under 30% now, he s got a lot of CLAM to sell. Knowing this, it s futile setting a single buy order when you know tomorrow the price ll be even lower. So, I personally expect 10-20% price drop per day over the next few months. I fully understand it would be extremely unfair to change to rules now when people ve been promised something, free dig and free coins.

HOWEVER, if this promise threatens to destroy the entire CLAM network, which it does, then I feel any and all changes to prevent this not only justified but also necessary.

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Before We Begin


Unless I have missed an important memo, it is quite agreed upon that any changes will need to meet a preponderance of wet-ware consensus.

The CLAM network belongs to the community; thus, we will attempt to shepherd CLAM, in all situations, toward the consensus of the community it serves.

The last I checked, dooglus, xploited and I were in agreement on this concept.


Conversations about other networks/coins are off topic for this thread; sorry.

If you were interested in creating your own network - please feel free to stop in to #clams on freenode IRC.
We would be happy to help you along when you run into problems in implementation.

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War or Pacifism

We are sitting at a crossroads.  Either the chain, and original promises of the network are sacred; or they are not.  But, even beyond this, the situation is nuanced.  

If we do nothing, the price will almost certainly go lower.  At a lower price, less demand(BTC) will be required to absorb the supply(dumps).  This means that eventually there will be a balance/equilibrium.  It is possible that the price falls and at this lower price demand is capable of completely liquidating the digger's CLAM.  At that point, if the digger is paying attention, they could choose to liquidate much more quickly than the present rate.  It is important to note, as dooglus mentioned, that this would be a change in pattern from the methodology the digger is currently using to dump - possibly making it unlikely.  This maintains the initial "promises" and sanctity of the chain, distribution and network.  It also, however, requires what could be a long drawn out period during which supply increases via the digger's dumping.  This will almost certainly, inevitably result in a decrease in price/value.

Alternatively, we could choose to quickly act to change the rules of the network. The new rules would dis-allow the transfer of CLAM from the initial distribution blocks.  This would prevent additional "claims" from the time the fork is successfully implemented.  There is a great deal of long and short term risk associated with this decision.  In the short-term, the digger could choose to dig the CLAM immediately.  This, on it's face, is not a bad outcome.  At worst, in the short-term, it results in the digger moving and holding/staking his CLAM, moving and dumping his CLAM.  At "best", in the short-term, the digger does not notice the change and subsequently loses their CLAM.  The long-term implications are more worrisome.  Future investment requires some modicum of "trust".  One of the enduring and utility providing aspects of a p2p value network such as CLAM is the distinct and protected lack of blacklists.  A primary attribute of any value system is what is often called "fungibility".  If a network project such as CLAM is willing to protect one class of user over another via removing CLAM from the network..... that is a very troubling precedent for future users who may be considering storing value in the network.

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Diplomacy

There is another option.
This idea came about long before the digger arrived on the CLAM network and was not actually designed or intended to prevent claiming at all.
It does, however, have some impact on future claims.

It can be implemented with various levels of complication and reach; from the extremely simple to all encompassing.
We will talk about a more simple implementation at the moment (which doesn't include block size at all).
I've chosen to go this route as the more complicated versions will only confuse what is already a rather complicated change.
Further, the additional complication concerns fee markets, bloat, DDoS and a variety of other issues which are not currently being discussed.

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The concept is deceptively simple: When markets operate efficiently they find their own balance/equilibrium.

In Economics, there is the concept of what is called an "externality".
The basic implication is that a market can't operate efficiently when there are costs or benefits which are related to, but not reflected in the market.
For instance: Air pollution causes a cost on society.  Air pollution clean-up should be paid for by those who create it.  When it is not, the cost of creating air pollution is arbitrarily held down and the market demand for air pollution creating devices is arbitrarily higher than it should be if it accurately reflected it's "true" cost.  Everything we do/create has costs and benefits.  When all of those costs and benefits are illustrated in price/value of those actions; the market will, theoretically, provide exactly the appropriate level of supply/demand.

The above is a long-winded explanation; but, it is important that we have a foundation of exactly how important externalities are to an efficient market.

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The problem: The costs and benefits of users utilizing the CLAM network are not properly reflected in the protocol.

When a user makes a transaction on the CLAM network, that transaction must be stored and kept by every node in the CLAM network for what could potentially be forever.
Transaction fees are currently based on the size of the transaction.  This is measured in terms of data storage and enumerated in bytes.  It is a per-byte fee.

If all transactions existed on the CLAM network/chain for an equal amount of time - this concept would make perfect sense.  They do not.
In actuality, assuming equal byte-size, a person holding 1 CLAM for 1 day on the CLAM network pays the same fee for that storage as a person holding 1 CLAM for 1 million days.
Time is not considered at all; despite the fact that time is clearly part of the cost equation.
Yet, currently, the one day user pays the same rate as the one million day user.
This discrepancy in time is an externality; an unpaid for benefit enjoyed by the one million day user at the expense of the network.

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The solution: Ensure that costs and benefits of users utilizing the CLAM network are properly reflected in the protocol.

We introduce the element of time into the required fee to transact on the CLAM network.
It is a per-byte-per-block fee.

In this way, the externality/discrepancy of time is reflected in the cost of using the network.
The network/stakers are, essentially, adding the variable of time into the equation of what to charge users for using the network.
This includes those users who have not claimed distribution CLAM yet - they are being charged for storing their CLAM on the network, just as every other user.

The incentives make more sense(staking/security is incentivized, bloat is dis-incentivized) and cost is more properly, though not perfectly, reflected.
The network/stakers gain an additional source of income, for some time to come, due to the linear rise in cost associated with claiming old/distribution CLAM.

This change is fair and makes free/efficient market sense - regardless of the distribution method that CLAM utilized.
It is not specifically designed to harm claimers, and does not choose or target specific groups of CLAM users.
It does not destroy fungibility.

Assuming a fee market and a competing restriction of space due to a dynamic block size, our DDoS and bloat protections increase.

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This change would also require the addition of other positive features:
* Efficient rebroadcasting of transactions via something similar to RBF(Replace-by-fee) or CPP/CPFP(Child-pays-for-parent).
* Fee pooling/smoothing to prevent the incentive to avoid fees via self-staking.
* Sensible wallet logic to make the change seamless to users.
* Likely, a handful of other changes as well.

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Regardless of the decisions we make as a community - let us make them together, and CLAM will remain strong.

Ask yourself, what the chance there is only 1 big digger?

I also think it's better not to change things, but just to wait out the current digger. It looks like it will be a matter of months, not years, at the current rate. Of course, I sympathize with the big holders, especially dooglus. It's a tough situation, but a temporary one.

Well, in that case good luck watching CLAM go down for the next year or two years. I m sure there ll be a lot of holders after that. Cause if CLAM is all about one or two diggers, then so be it. After all, this is a free market, so easy to get out.

I really think that nothing should be done.  The number of diggable clams was well considered (I assume) before the initial distribution snapshot was taken and the fact that Clam achieved enough value to attract a while digger to find his/her share is part of the ground rules as they were laid out.  I really don't like the idea that people would say beforehand "We've distributed n clams to these addresses" and then try to renege on that when someone comes along to claim them.