Topic: Hypothetical New Cryptocurrency version 0.1 - page 2. (Read 4001 times)

Right, it is vaporware, no denying that. As I said before I started this thread, there's practically zero chance of this idea coming to market.

now to address your attack scenario:

I'm sorry that I can't provide in-depth descriptions of some of the critical measures that I wish to protect. I've already mentioned that there exists certain systemic assumptions that protect the network from automated attack. The only thing I can elaborate further on about these assumptions is that they don't RELY on breaking pseudo-anonymity to maintain the network, but that self-identification on the network DOES play a role. The only parallel that might be familiar to you is something like the intended functionality of namecoin. Use your imagination from there because I'm sorry, but this is already giving some good hints to any clever devs who know where I'm going with this.

Again, it's certainly feasible that ?coin could be gamed, but the point at which it's feasible for an attack to compromise the network is a point at which any sane end-user or merchant would have already liquefied his holdings into a competing currency. The beginning of the ?coin economy is protected from this because it will be built on trusted agents. This is what I mean by merchants being first-class citizens. This also ties into the namecoin-esque functionality of the design. Could some malicious merchant try to become established enough within the chain to at some point in the future leverage their position for ill? Sure, but unless that particular entity was basically 70% of the network transactions itself, all they would accomplish by trying to attack the chain by flooding it with bogus transactions is quickly removing themselves from the block weighting.

That's important to note: the quicker an attacker tries to exploit the system, the faster the system is able to remove their influence from the block weights,

Without opening it up to scrutiny, this is still just vapors masquerading as a fix for a problem that might not be that important in the long run.
It sounds like yet again - someone is concerned about the unfairnesss of initial distribution more than the other important characteristics of the system.

Perhaps you could fast-forward to a time where bitcoin distribution has played out (approx 21M coins issues) and the function of mining is to secure the system.
What advantage does ?coin give and what problem is ?coin solving at this point?

Also - have you taken into consideration the 'perverse incentives' your system of measuring economic activity may encourage?
You talk of:

.. but in fact it is possible nowdays (and moreso every day) to steam up entire networks of virtual nodes running sophisticated software stacks - and we don't need to talk of 'majorities' for this to be a problem.

If fake economic activity gives even a marginal profit - it will become widespread enough to accelerate scalability issues on your chain.

I thought you were someone else. I get it now.

It is unfortunate that you do not appreciate the visionary revolutionaries that drive Bitcoin. I don't need to listen to these insults.

I have very little faith in your ability to understand and solve the challenges Bitcoin is facing. I still don't understand why you refuse to publish your design, and I can only assume that it is because it does not live up to the expectations.

It's reasonable, but you are going to have trouble making it work with a peer to peer currency that isn't implemented yet.

Don't mind oldminer. I think lead poisoning got to him from mining back in the olden times. The silly old fool is just trying to derail the only on-topic thread in alternate cryptocurrencies.

I am? Huh, I thought it was reasonable to expect to profit from one's own endeavors...

lol he is scared he will lose some money on his new "forK".

I hope your paying attention to this Smoothie. He's talking to you boy  

I've already written it down. I filled about 30 pages of a college ruled notebook with the spec. It right behind me in the filing cabinet...

And I would profit because I would be first to market with associated services. My goal isn't to create a currency I can profit off of directly, like the shit-headed Bitcoiners, but a cryptocurrency so throughly desirable that the business services (which are 100% separate from the currency itself) I also have planned would likely be quite profitable for me.

However, it's important that I be the originator of the initial currency, to make sure that it's not altered before it's released and hopefully adopted.

I fear something along the lines of releasing the spec, and some asshole creating an alternative chain based on my design that omits the miner controls to allow for the disgusting profiteering and speculation of Bitcoin, which completely debases the point, and gives ?coin a bad name before it even gets off the ground.

It's not supposed to catch on with the Ixcoin community, it's supposed to catch on with the Bitcoin community.


Anyway, I'm not sure I understand the problem... Do you plan to profit from being the creator of this currency? I don't see how that's possible with a decentralized currency. You should write down your system, this way you can take credit for its invention before someone beats you to it.

I've actually been thinking of doing a prototype in Ruby...

We'll see I guess. Probably won't become much.

I'm still happy to answer any more questions as best I can.

So what's left? You either forget about it, publish it for free, code it yourself, or pay someone else to code it. You are not going to find someone to code it for you for free unless you can convince them it's a really good idea first, and that would require telling them all the details.

How about coding a prototype in something easy like python? It's still a serious undertaking but you should be able to do it with enough time.

Patenting would be too much trouble.  I'm a busy man, I run a small business and have a family.  Just researching prior art would be a huge undertaking, and the application even more-so. Even then, there's no guarantee the patent would be granted, and I'm very unclear on how basing my invention on parts of the Bitcoin code would work out in the end.

Even if I were to patent it, then what?  We'd still be in the same position of needing someone to do the glut of the code necessary to publish a program...

But, if there's any programmers who would like to code such a project with me, then maybe this thread might serve a purpose.

This sounds interesting but we need the details. Maybe you should patent this? I can't think of any other way to tell us about this and still have any ownership over it.

I don't see how you could carry out some of the things you claim you can carry out but without the details I've just got guesswork to go on.

Yes, something akin to "proof-of-stake" is incorporated in my system, but it's executed differently than in yours and is only one facet of an overall strategy.

EDIT: Sufficed to say, you're on the right track too, and it's obvious how utterly lacking Bitcoin is in many regards.

SECOND EDIT: It should also be extremely paramount in any future crypto-currencies that "mining" be negated as a market stressor, regulator, or contributor. My design solves this elegantly, while still allowing for "mining" to be relevant, but not significant to any degree.

It's this total de-emphasis on mining that I think totally negates the possibility of my design catching on with this community, which is nothing more than a bunch of get-rich-quick maggots looking for a free ride.

Not enough details to assess the feasibility or desirability of your system.

Perhaps some of the ideas here are relevant, where we have discussed how to reduce the amount of hashing that needs to be done for a given level of security. I suspect that your system may take into account "circulation", as I suggest here - real economic activity is determined by the total number of different coins that move around (whereas a client sending coins back and forth will draw on a limited set of coins).

No, the system has no way of differentiating "miners" on the network, and it doesn't need to. "Mining" in the Bitcoin sense is of a very little importance in the ?coin system. The block rewards are generated much differently.  "Mining" will still get you ?coins, but not in the same way. That is to say, there IS an incentive to running a ?coin node besides just being able to send and receive coins, but the nature of the system ensures that it's not a method by which you will receive a greater portion of the pie by putting more nodes on the network in any significant quantity. As I said before, there is potential for abuse, but as long as there's a functioning ?coin economy, the chance of a successful attack is exceedingly negligible.

Which leads to your second question:

Yes, the system can differentiate real economic activity from artificial activity. This is a tall claim to make, assuredly. However it's not as difficult as you might expect. Again, the system makes certain assumptions that make the task much easier than accounting for every form of use that might suggest real or artificial activity. While these assumptions resolve true, certain weights are applied to certain transactions, which balance out the meaningful activity from the "noise." Hypothetically, this could be simulated, but it would have to be a extremely complex and sophisticated undertaking, as well as having an extremely large portion of the network under your control for an extended period of time (proportional to the size of the blockchain).  If such an attack were to be successful, it would mean that the ?coin economy had ALREADY failed long before the attacker(s) succeeded. In this way, if the ?coin economy were to fail then the network essentially reverts to what Bitcoin is now, with all of the same network security implications, with the added difficulty of maintaining some excruciatingly elaborate economic simulation across a majority of nodes to trick the system into believing there is still a functioning economy behind it. And at that point, who would care anyway?

There is interest but without a clear plan and with no chance of an implementation this isn't going to work. New ideas are great though.

Are you saying you have some way to tell the difference between me running two miners and me running one and you running one?
Are you saying you can tell the difference between economic activity and me running a bunch of clients that just transfer money between themselves?

I don't see how you could do either of the above.

Really?

There's THAT little interest in this particular idea?

Makes sense actually, the -coins are only popular as get-rich-quick pump and dump scams anyway, for which my ?coin would completely prevent...

Note that when I say "identifying individual agents" I don't mean breaking pseudo-anonymity. I mean it's baked into the function of the system that identifying real economic activity from automated activity is trivial. This is because the system makes certain assumptions that if resolve to being false, completely negate the intended use of ?coins to begin with.

As long as intended ?coin use resolves true, then the basis of the economic indicators will always secure the network from automated attack.

And as long as the network is secure, it can still be used for both white and black market transactions freely.  If the ?coin network security IS compromised, the state of the network reverts to essentially what the Bitcoin network is presently.

In this way, ?coins can be seen almost as an additional security layer on top of Bitcoin, geared towards merchant adoption. However there are additional advantages and features that set it even further apart from Bitcoin proper, enough that I don't even see ?coin as a Bitcoin clone.

Ah, very good questions.  These were my first concerns, truly.  Unfortunately the economic activity indicators are the core of the "secret sauce" that I "developed." I feel it's clever because it maintains the decentralized nature of Bitcoin.  Part of it involves the identification scheme I mentioned, however it's not a necessity, as there is magic that I've developed that perfectly prevents gaming the system. It's really quite clever, I have to adulate about it because I'm actually quite proud of that part...

What I want to drive home though is that more processing power doesn't equate to a greater portion of the network. This was central to my design. My design is more concerned with identifying individual agents participating in the network that total hashing power. The way I account for this is unique, and doesn't have anything to do with the obvious identifiers. There is potential for abuse, but it's on par with Bitcoin's network security.

In one specific way it's superior, and that's the hypothetical 51% attack. While the 51% of Bitcoin attack is infeasible, it's still possible. With ?coin, it's most assuredly not. Let me think on this awhile and maybe I can distill it into non-technical terms that won't give it away.