We have some good discussion going, this is good!
From my perspective, changing the max # of coins is the variable that would really have a negative impact. However, keep in mind as we've seen with a lot of other coins, Doge in particular, that fundamentals don't necessarily always equate. Doge for instance has a massive coin supply and yet continues to see huge volume and nice prices. Just something to keep in mind.
I understand the point of view of Jean Bax, but we need to consider the cost-benefit and impact of doing nothing. But I get that a hardfork and change to the coin parameters is not a minor change and can be unsettling.
Now, on the other hand, what really will support the price and drive interest and attract more miners is publicity and social media marketing. This effort will really kick in once the new wallet is out and the platform comes up behind it.
The problem is I only have so much bandwidth. My suggestion is if we are going to make a change to the block reward, we do it now BEFORE the interest really picks up again, and make sure we get it right so we don't have to worry about another hardfork down the road when the impact would be worse.
I know everyone is pushing to have the next gen wallet _now_
I am working as fast as I can behind the scenes. I am making good progress, but we need to decide what to do about the core Qt wallet and daemon before putting out the next gen wallet.
The alternative is we don't change it for now, focus on putting the next gen wallet out and marketing, and see how the market reacts. But we would need to do as previously suggested and get people organized into mining for the sake of keeping the network hash rate at a reasonable level.
I am open to either option, and trying to be responsive to what the community wants. So, for now, I propose that I spend the next week focusing on the next gen wallet and getting updated screenies in the hands of the graphic designers, in the meantime the communty can continue the discussion, and then we can take a decision.
Also, to answer another question from a few pages back - the next release of the next gen wallet will be a real Beta as opposed to an alpha drop - this is my goal, but requires more effort to polish before I push it out. Need UI QA, etc. and some real release packaging.
I am very committed to seeing Particle succeed and become an established platform. This is my real interest in Particle is longer term being able to build some entrepreneurial things around it on top of the platform. Since this type of platform didn't exist before, I decided to build it. ;-) If this were a client project, it's the kind of thing I'd put 5 guys on. It is me doing the work of an entire team
It also means I have to space things out and pace myself on purpose to avoid burnout.
I have been approached by a lot of people hitting me up to do coins and various development for them. I have turned them all down to keep focused on Particle.
The past few weeks have been a little hectic - we've had crazy weather, the flu, etc. slowing things down a bit. But now we're heading towards spring and things are back at full steam. I don't know if anyone's seen some of my other posts on here but here is another piece of news: one of the things I've been looking at over the past few weeks is Open Transactions. I think this will be the next major activity after the Beta 1 release of the next gen wallet, to integrate and use the OT platform as the solution to a number of features we want to bring into the wallet. This is part of the reason I was a little quiet for awhile, as I was looking into how much of this I could pull off now vs later. As I look at the development schedule shaping up, I think this will fall in after Beta 2 time frame. I'll get a post up on the blog today with a better breakdown of the current schedule.
