Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 134. (Read 448462 times)

See my note about the deadline a few posts back. The deadline is the turn of the month, UTC. Right now that's just over 24 hours away.

I have reason to believe there will be significant activity on the Exodus Address over the next 24 hours. Also, I WILL BE OFFLINE FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THAT TIME, STARTING IN ONE HOUR

I spend my weekends 100% focused on my family. No exceptions. If a bajillion dollars come in, I WON'T EVEN KNOW until I get online - possibly very briefly Sunday, or possibly not even until Monday.

If that doesn't make me a strange person (especially considering I am a software dev) I don't know what does. But there you have it. I'm a fanatical family man.

I've been getting tons of emails lately with last-minute questions. Starting very soon, those emails will go unanswered (until Monday, when it is too late).

This is of course why I need to hire someone

Thought this might help those of you who were wondering just how much time you have left to invest!

Timer removed. End time: 2013-09-01+00:00:00UTC

Nobody ever believes me when I tell them this, so let me reiterate: this is not a joke. I'm headed offline right now, and will be unreachable (well, except by telephone for those of you who know me that well) for the next 24 hours while last-minute investors are scrambling to get their MasterCoin ducks in a row.

If you are having problems, post here, and please help each other.

See you guys on Monday!

I have reason to believe there will be significant activity on the Exodus Address over the next 24 hours. Also, I WILL BE OFFLINE FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THAT TIME, STARTING IN ONE HOUR

I spend my weekends 100% focused on my family. No exceptions. If a bajillion dollars come in, I WON'T EVEN KNOW until I get online - possibly very briefly Sunday, or possibly not even until Monday.

If that doesn't make me a strange person (especially considering I am a software dev) I don't know what does. But there you have it. I'm a fanatical family man.

I've been getting tons of emails lately with last-minute questions. Starting very soon, those emails will go unanswered (until Monday, when it is too late).

This is of course why I need to hire someone

dacoinminster,

Will you at least agree to look at this suggestion which would seems to allay much of the blockchain bloat fears...

Or prefix the data output with OP_RETURN, which is guaranteed to be prunable. If the output is never meant to be spent, then it is irresponsible not to do this.

Very interested in this.

@dacoinminster: Can I send you my BTC during August 31st (today)? I was going to send them yesterday, but I have to download the whole blockchain in the qt wallet.

Even a hard fork probably couldn't kill MasterCoin. For instance, if bitcoin stopped including transactions to the Exodus Address, we'd simply change reference addresses and keep going. That was an explicit design goal. However we do plan to be a good citizen in our use of the block-chain, and we hope to encode our data in friendlier ways in the future. The worries about blockchain bloat (with some talk of potential improvements) have their own thread over here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-mastercoin-bloating-the-blockchain-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-284178

Thanks!

Ron started a wiki for us!

I'm a little worried that some of our last-minute investors may get bit by time zones. Please be aware that the fundraiser ends at midnight tomorrow as determined by the block chain timestamp (UTC). If you send an investment when it is still August in your local time, it may not be August anymore on the block chain.

Bitcoins sent to the Exodus Address after that date will not purchase MasterCoins! Inevitably somebody will make this mistake, and I'll have to issue a refund. Please don't be that person.

I don't have the time and I imagine you too, but the wiki is live.
Do you want to fill it out with content first?
My approach would be to just post a message like:

"
Hey guys, we have a wiki at http://wiki.mastercoin.org, feel free to start documenting if you'd like. Right now we need to work on the wiki's homepage, and on an FAQ page, but any contribution you'd like to make is welcome
"

I don't believe in "wait till it's really polished and only then publish it", but rather in "release early even if it's butt ugly, and iterate"

Sent to David just a bit ago:

Mastercoin - Protocol Or Blockchain Trojan?

I've read recently that you're defending the Mastercoin project. While this is to be expected considering the
ambitious goals that have been put forward by its creator, I'd like you to please consider the longer-term
implications of what this project means for Bitcoin.

This project is taking an existing resource, the collective hashing power of the entire Bitcoin network, and
exploiting it for its own ends. There is no way to opt-out, unless we hard-fork with another client upgrade.

By treating the blockchain and the transactions within it as a "resource", to collectively read/write data into
the blockchain itself, we have a dangerous precedent -- resource usage that will burden the entire network and
everyone who uses it -- without bearing any gains, except for those using the Mastercoin protocol.

This is alarmingly similar to the behavior of bot-nets, collectively compromised machines (no opt-in, of course)
being exploited to perform other tasks that their users don't condone.

Please reconsider your defense of this project, as added weight behind it may cause a knock-on effect that will
be very difficult to correct in the future without a deliberate hard-fork, and will cause other problems.

Confer with gmaxwell, he's on freenode IRC #bitcoin channel - or via the forums - to confirm what I'm saying.
He's a in-depth subject expert in blockchain mechanics, and I believe he has the same view - that writing data
to the blockchain as Mastercoin proposes is a dangerous and potentially disruptive force.

Thanks for reading,

TT

Sent to David just a bit ago:

Mastercoin - Protocol Or Blockchain Trojan?

I've read recently that you're defending the Mastercoin project. While this is to be expected considering the
ambitious goals that have been put forward by its creator, I'd like you to please consider the longer-term
implications of what this project means for Bitcoin.

This project is taking an existing resource, the collective hashing power of the entire Bitcoin network, and
exploiting it for its own ends. There is no way to opt-out, unless we hard-fork with another client upgrade.

By treating the blockchain and the transactions within it as a "resource", to collectively read/write data into
the blockchain itself, we have a dangerous precedent -- resource usage that will burden the entire network and
everyone who uses it -- without bearing any gains, except for those using the Mastercoin protocol.

This is alarmingly similar to the behavior of bot-nets, collectively compromised machines (no opt-in, of course)
being exploited to perform other tasks that their users don't condone.

Please reconsider your defense of this project, as added weight behind it may cause a knock-on effect that will
be very difficult to correct in the future without a deliberate hard-fork, and will cause other problems.

Confer with gmaxwell, he's on freenode IRC #bitcoin channel - or via the forums - to confirm what I'm saying.
He's a in-depth subject expert in blockchain mechanics, and I believe he has the same view - that writing data
to the blockchain as Mastercoin proposes is a dangerous and potentially disruptive force.

Thanks for reading,

TT

Dean,

Thanks for digging in deeper and stating the question in a different way. I think I understand the context of your questions now.

We are all in this due diligence process together and I'm building my own understanding of all the aspects of this project. I don't have any reason to "step around" your question, I'll attempt to address it based on the best of my understanding and I'll let additional folks with deeper technical understanding like Ron and J.R. answer it from their perspective.
So to your question "What functionality is Mastercoin providing that isn’t already being met by Bitcoin?"

To my understanding Mastercoin is leveraging the existing functionality of the Bitcoin protocol. That is to say it is NOT adding any baseline functions that aren't already present in the Bitcoin protocol. What it IS going to do is create a new layer on top of the Bitcoin protocol focused on the use cases listed, including peer to peer exchange, futures contracts, and issuing additional currencies.

From your comments it seems you aren't drawing a distinction between what the Bitcoin Protocol "can" do and what the existing clients that implement the Bitcoin protocol "actually" do. That is why I asked my question about, if you knew of any actual client implementations that offered the use cases that Mastercoin is developing. If the answer to my question is "No" there aren't any current implementations, than I would respond that the reason to "bother with mastercoin in the first place" is to create actual implementations of those use cases.

For example my understanding is that the Exodus address serves the function of marking Bitcoins (in the history of the Bitcoin ledger) involved in the Mastercoin protocol therefore giving the clients a point of reference for tracking their usage and for identifying the functions they are executing if I'm misunderstanding the protocol here Ron or J.R. feel free to correct me, I've only read the white paper three times. If Dean you are proposing that there isn't a need for an "Exodus" address of sorts in order to make these use cases possible then I'd like to understand that better.

Assuming for the sake of this discussion that there IS a need for a Exodus address type of set up, then allow me to continue in logical progression to your note about Mastercoin being its "own little silo". I believe this sentiment is related to the response I hear from some programmers who dislike "pre-mined" currencies which are often owned primarily by their creators. I'd like to make a few points here. Mastercoin being on the same block chain as Bitcoin of course doesn't need to be mined with additional hashing power.

So the question becomes "What is a fair and logical way to distribute Mastercoins through the exodus address to people that wish to use their functionality"? There are lots of possible answers here, random give away, sell them, give them to developers, on and on. I stated earlier that I believe J.R. has decided on a fairly compelling way of handling this problem. That is to publicly announce on the forums that those interested in developing these use cases can support their development by purchasing Mastercoins until a certain date. Having published the technical spec and spoken publicly (at the Bitcoin Conference) about these developments he is interested to invest in and support the development of. There are also Mastercoins set aside for those developers that contribute to the development of Mastercoin in the coming years, which I believe is important as well.

So Mastercoin is not only the vehicle for the Exodus address, it becomes a vehicle for those that want to invest in and support the development of these use cases. So far that vehicle in my view has proved successful with hundreds of users deciding to support it and having collected 2,618 BTC (more than twice J.R.'s initial investment) which can now be deployed to turn the functionality of what Bitcoin "can" do into the functionality actually offered in user accessible clients.

I fully acknowledge your question is a very important one. It is one of the main questions I asked J.R. during the due diligence, for me I stated it as "is the value of this protocol in the Mastercoins themselves or in the applications it will support. Stated another way, "are these Mastercoins going to be worth anything, or is all the value created by those that offer the services on top of Mastercoin?" In our discussions J.R. convinced me that their is a value in the Mastercoins themselves because users will have to acquire them to preform the functions they desire, for futures, peer to peer exchange of other currencies or issuing of new currencies. So the value equation is similar to Bitcoin in that it is a function of scarcity and utility. I believe that Mastercoins will be scarce and I believe its functions will have great utility. Therefore I'm of the opinion they will have value.

On a related question that I also asked of "if this is open source, what prevents someone else from creating their own forked version of Mastercoin on the Bitcoin blockchain"? The answer, (as it is for Bitcoin also) is: there is nothing preventing someone from creating another version, but the first mover advantage is a big one. Bitcoin has dominated the marketplace in comparison to Litecoin and others due to this first mover advantage, name recognition, momentum, user adoption and so forth. Mastercoin seems to be poised to be the first to implement these functions on the block chain and therefore it will have this first mover advantage in the context of these use cases.

I hope I've explained my current understanding in a clear way. I look forward to your thoughts and any corrections or clarifications from the other technical folks here.
I see this open discussion as a very healthy process and extremely valuable to the due diligence process.

Best Regards,
David A. Johnston
BitAngels.co