Topic: It's simple: Altcoins are Darwin's 'variations' to progress Bitcoin's evolution (Read 2458 times)

Not all altcoins are bad, in fact some are even competing well in the market and they will soon be giving some real coins in run for their money.

the clients that interface with btc are nothing to do with the core protocol. its nothing what so ever to do with the client. i think you miss understand the difference between a client and the core protocol.

and no all bitcoin clients are not beta everything in bitcoin is use at own risk.

Aren't most if not all bitcoin clients Beta and use at own risk ? If bitcoin-qt client fucked up what legal action could someone take if they choose to use beta software and protocols ?
If a dev is to scared to make changes well they aren't a dev.

if you were a developer would you go fiddling with the core source code of software that supports a multibillion dollar industry - not including the value of all the business built around it - if you thought there was even a small chance you could screw it up royally?

Forgot to add:

There is an evolutionary process analogous to how coins such as Bitcoin can borrow code from other coins and incorporate it their own. It's called horizontal gene transfer:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer_in_evolution

Some phylogenetic trees of single-celled organisms show branches as "bridges" extending between two otherwise distantly related branches, i.e. the gene transfer is not always from parent to child:

http://s28.postimg.org/gtg4ol7dp/Horizontal_gene_transfer.jpg

I thought it was the opposite. The price surged when the developers showed that their DarkSend technology was actually working.


Well, there are non-mineable proof-of-stake altcoins. Like Nxt, for example. Peercoin was the first PoS coin, but it was (and still is) secured by proof-of-work mining in the early stages.

99.9% of alt coins are total scams or just for pure speculation and some adding "hype features" to add to speculation. but the .1% of coins that are truely revolutionary such as nxt and nem (forget about the bad media in relation to nxt - just think of the technology for now) do, seriously threaten bitcoin in a big big way. they are not just simple currencies. they support entire eco systems to built ontop/around them. its quite fascinating to learn about and once you understand the concept and technology - free of bias from those with vested interests in other coins - you realise that these platforms are the next logical step in development.

if you ever hear andreas antonopolous or any other big time speakers, you always hear them saying "currency is a side effect, or its just the first application". the thing is, bitcoin cannot, or will seriously struggle, to incorporate everything other than the currency bit, which is what the 2.0's like nxt and nem are doing currently at brake neck speeds.

"And as we have seen many times before with technology, it's not about what's best, it's about what catches on. Think of any given technology and there's what's the best at its job, and there's what the majority of people use. It's rarely the same thing."

i agree, but that only relates to things like betamax/vhs battle. same thing, only ones a bit better than the other. but the one with most hype won out.

however, thats like saying 1.0 and 2.0 coins are like betamax and vhs, when in reality, its closer to betamax and ipod's with internet connectivity. you can even build social networks on top of these platforms in a totally decentralised way. there actually was one half built months ago but it got zero attention and wasnt developed to a user friendly stage, so it was put off, was more like a proof of concept at the time. but it worked, that was the main thing. it showed that the likes of facebook or twitter could be built on top of the blockchain in a p2p manner.

the infrastructure will come in time. it wont be hard for bitcoin business to integrate what ever coin comes up behind bitcoin. business wont care what currency they are dealing with, as long as they make money from it. so the infrastructure is there, it just needs to integrate what ever threatens bitcoin and they are all fine and dandy.

and im not trying to "pump" them ether. its just important that as many people as possible "see the light" when it comes to these platforms as early as possible (helps distribution if many more people get in cheap). once you fully understand these systems, you will get the same feeling you got when you first had the bitcoin "aha" moment and realised what this p2p technology meant and how disruptive it can be. just take the time to study the systems. learn how nxt really works first. just go to the forum ( nxtforum.org) and just ask questions. forget all the fud you hear around because thats all it is. then move on to nem and learn what innovations they have made over nxt. deciding to do this will be the best two decisions you will make since you decided to buy into bitcoin. then come back to me and thank me

Thinking about it more I would like to say that I think the true alternatives to bitcoin will involve competition between PoS/PoI/PoW. The "scam-coins" as they have been known up until now don't provide enough alternative to compete with how bitcoin competed with fiat+banks.

And as we have seen many times before with technology, it's not about what's best, it's about what catches on. Think of any given technology and there's what's the best at its job, and there's what the majority of people use. It's rarely the same thing.

Something better than bitcoin will come along, but it's all about infrastructure.

^ interesting. I have yet to understand PoS or the concept you mention about. Thanks for the info.

just to let you know, nem has come up with an exciting novel approach that is vastly different than mining and also PoS. its called proof of importance. its similar to PoS in the way coins are initially distributed(nem had 3000 stake holders - unlike nxt) but from then on its much different.

nodes are reward based on how important they are to the network. it incentives nodes to make transactions with nodes that are also important to the network(like a merchant that does many transactions in and out to many people further distributing the coin) the more important you are to the network ie. the more you support and secure the network, the higher your importance is and therefore the higher the percentage chance of you forging the next block. nodes are punished for trying to game the system by actually getting a lower importance, it does this(i think) by working out how important a particular transaction is based on how important the node is with which you made the transaction. (as far as i know, thats how it works anyway)

 its a major break through. and not something to pass by with out thought.

i agree that any new coin will have a hard time building a strong network. but a network that directly rewards those who help support the network and make it larger is a network that should, in theory, grow stronger, very fast. starting out with 3000 original stake holders who all get the same amount also helps with network effect early on.

Future hard forks will be much more dramatic/traumatic once BTC is more mainstream.
Bitcoin's "evolution" will probably be slow and boring at the core code level.

Yes what you say is true, and bitcoin may become stuck. But we have hard forked before, when has a living entity changed a part of its DNA? It still remains a lot more flexible than the things we normally refer to when talking about evolution. I agree with what you say, I just think you just underestimate the flexibility of software.

A second point I would like to make (sorry if it's been addressed before) is that unless something other than mining comes along as a solution to centralised ledgers, network strength becomes the major imperative. Bitcoin managed to get out of the danger zone because nobody knew or cared what crypto was while it had time to build strength. Now the boat has sailed, any new coin that uses the concept of mining (an alternative to this wouldn't be an alt-coin, it would be a new paradigm all together) will always have trouble getting of the ground.

Anyway, given your dismissive response to my last post I'm going to assume that I'm in a troll thread and probably stop trying to have a pleasant conversation here.

<3

edit: I know DNA gradually degrades over the course of a lifetime due to copying errors and the like, this is not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about a change on a cellular level that enables you to grow a third arm for example.

Just here some commentaries from the core developers, though bitcoin can be modified and upgraded to any extent in theory, it is not that easy in practice because even for minor changes to protocols may cause a fork, then imagine about major changes!

This is the reason that one day an altcoin or something else does which bitcoin could not do, may even become more valuable than bitcoin..

**sigh**

Read the previous posts irt that subject. It's not true and even the btc devs have admitted that they can't make any changes to bitcoin. Stop spreading fud fhc (false hope & confidence)

Evolution and software.

What's the difference?

The original piece of software can evolve, swallowing the variations of the alts if they prove useful.

Living entities cannot.

Bitcoin will be made stronger by the laboratory that is the alt coins, not superseded.

edit: speeling mistaekz

makes sense. hope it makes me rich too!

But according to game rules of evolution anything that is better than original will survive and propagate, so any coin much better than bitcoin will eventually replace it

Open-mindedness withers away with vested interest and, I guess, age, although Bitcoin hasn't been around that long yet to talk about age. Scepticism for cryptos 2.0 is the same as for Bitcoin in 2010-2011, history repeating. Overall, scepticism is good, but if it's all you have and if you don't follow innovations in cryptos, this scepticism will come and bite you in the arse

I think you'd be surprised how much the altcoin scene has evolved in 2014. With Vericoin you can buy anything you could with bitcoin using their new feature. And now that they've broken ground on that feature I'd expect to see it implemented in other major coins as soon as they can.

You seem to have some old style views regarding altcoins that probably stem from seeing the old style fork-bitcoin and do nothing coins. Three posts above yours I outlined why Bitcoin is incredibly unlikely to be adding any thing game changing without a complete rebirth of the current political structure surrounding it.

The technologies are real and they're evolving now. It's been an extremely exciting year thus far. Never before has there been so much new development and innovation. People are directly looking at the problems of Bitcoin and going and solving them.

I heard about Bitcoin in 2010(through the white paper and the pizza) and I've been following it since I saw that it reached parity with the US dollar. The irony of what I see now is the masses of Bitcoiners who are outright dismissing new cryptocurrency technology sound strikingly similar to the same people who used to dismiss Bitcoin.

I'm not saying you should be buying altcoins or anything. And I'm not saying that one of these currencies is going to supplant Bitcoin. But to ignore the revolution happening under your nose is probably unwise.

exactly. And nxt and nem are probably the most likely.

@light have you done much research into these platforms? Beyond listening to roomers?