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Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 157. (Read 448489 times)

legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1003
Ron Gross
the economical properties of the protocol have reached "1.0" stage and now can't be changed without a huge fuss.

I strongly suggest you not close this particular topic.... the economics of the system must be changed or it will fail.

When I say "economical properties", I specifically refer to things such as:

1. Each Donated Bitcoin is worth 100 MSC
2. The only donations possible are before Sep 1 2013
3. Early Adopter bonus (10% bonus per week before Sep 1)
4. 10% bonus in MSC awarded to the "Mastercoin Foundation" in an exponentially decaying rate (50% of this bonus in the first year, 25% in the second year, etc).
5. No additional ways to create mastercoins (this is critical)

The properties above cannot now be changed. If anyone changes them, even if it's Willet himself, his changed version will not be MasterCoin (it's essentially a hardfork / Prohibited Change).

Other properties of the protocol could perhaps be changed.
Do you have suggestions for specific changes you'd like to see? (I've read most of your previous posts, I'm asking about specific changes, not an entire redesign, which will also probably not "be MasterCoin").
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 566
fractally
the economical properties of the protocol have reached "1.0" stage and now can't be changed without a huge fuss.

I strongly suggest you not close this particular topic.... the economics of the system must be changed or it will fail.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1003
Ron Gross
It doesn't add to the conversation because it's basically the same points I've written elsewhere, only more way more confrontational. I was probably lumped with spiral_mind and he has not deleted my later posts so I see no point in trying to fault him for that now. I would rather that the discussion went on with what's already in the thread.

+1
bvt
newbie
Activity: 23
Merit: 0
He went on to disregard reddit users because it's a "cesspool of ignorance" and deleted his own thread.

The reddit thread seems live & well. It's hard sometimes to conduct productive discussion over reddit (as well as bitcointalk), I think he has been very responsive in bitcointalk. He's only one person after all, it's not reasonable to expect him to answer every post on every channel.

The reddit thread says "[removed]", does it not? There's a possibility that a moderator removed it, but I assumed he did. I don't know. I think part of the problem is that it suddenly "launched" and asked for funds that he might have got a bit overwhelmed.

I've had 2 of my posts deleted from this thread and I made no claims of scam, but I admit one was a tad harsh. I first read the reddit post and his white paper, then went on to read this thread. The "cesspool of ignorance" remark combined with everything else raised the red flags for me. I think he wanted maximum exposure and I think it's fair to expect him to respond appropriately and address the issues raised.

I actually missed the "removed" bit.

If there is a post you feel was deleted without "a just cause", a post that actually adds to the conversation, feel free to send it to me ([email protected]) for review. I can then post my opinion about it, if you'd like.

(Assuming you still have / can get access to the post text).

From the 1.5+ years I've known him (mostly in the forums, not personally), I've seen Willet as fair and rational, not a scammer or someone to ignore people. He might have overreacted to your posts due to the state he was in, after having to battle real trolls (mistakes happen).

It doesn't add to the conversation because it's basically the same points I've written elsewhere, only more way more confrontational. I was probably lumped with spiral_mind and he has not deleted my later posts so I see no point in trying to fault him for that now. I would rather that the discussion went on with what's already in the thread.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1003
Ron Gross
He went on to disregard reddit users because it's a "cesspool of ignorance" and deleted his own thread.

The reddit thread seems live & well. It's hard sometimes to conduct productive discussion over reddit (as well as bitcointalk), I think he has been very responsive in bitcointalk. He's only one person after all, it's not reasonable to expect him to answer every post on every channel.

The reddit thread says "[removed]", does it not? There's a possibility that a moderator removed it, but I assumed he did. I don't know. I think part of the problem is that it suddenly "launched" and asked for funds that he might have got a bit overwhelmed.

I've had 2 of my posts deleted from this thread and I made no claims of scam, but I admit one was a tad harsh. I first read the reddit post and his white paper, then went on to read this thread. The "cesspool of ignorance" remark combined with everything else raised the red flags for me. I think he wanted maximum exposure and I think it's fair to expect him to respond appropriately and address the issues raised.

I actually missed the "removed" bit.

If there is a post you feel was deleted without "a just cause", a post that actually adds to the conversation, feel free to send it to me ([email protected]) for review. I can then post my opinion about it, if you'd like.

(Assuming you still have / can get access to the post text).

From the 1.5+ years I've known him (mostly in the forums, not personally), I've seen Willet as fair and rational, not a scammer or someone to ignore people. He might have overreacted to your posts due to the state he was in, after having to battle real trolls (mistakes happen).
bvt
newbie
Activity: 23
Merit: 0
He went on to disregard reddit users because it's a "cesspool of ignorance" and deleted his own thread.

The reddit thread seems live & well. It's hard sometimes to conduct productive discussion over reddit (as well as bitcointalk), I think he has been very responsive in bitcointalk. He's only one person after all, it's not reasonable to expect him to answer every post on every channel.

The reddit thread says "[removed]", does it not? There's a possibility that a moderator removed it, but I assumed he did. I don't know. I think part of the problem is that it suddenly "launched" and asked for funds that he might have got a bit overwhelmed.

I've had 2 of my posts deleted from this thread and I made no claims of scam, but I admit one was a tad harsh. I first read the reddit post and his white paper, then went on to read this thread. The "cesspool of ignorance" remark combined with everything else raised the red flags for me. I think he wanted maximum exposure and I think it's fair to expect him to respond appropriately and address the issues raised.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1003
Ron Gross
He went on to disregard reddit users because it's a "cesspool of ignorance" and deleted his own thread.

The reddit thread seems live & well. It's hard sometimes to conduct productive discussion over reddit (as well as bitcointalk), I think he has been very responsive in bitcointalk. He's only one person after all, it's not reasonable to expect him to answer every post on every channel.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1003
Ron Gross
Another possible route to increase is starting to work on some preliminary budget.
It can be conditional on the amount of money raised.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1003
Ron Gross
Willet, did you actually delete the reddit thread? If so, why?

I trust you, but people have raised good points which I also raised myself:

1. This is a tad rushed (you could have waited 2 weeks between posting the 0.7 and 1.0 versions).
2. Trusting you is harder than trusting a board of trustees. I know you aimed very high for someone to hold the money for you, but Perfect is the enemy of Good. It's better to have some reasonable board (I don't care if I'm in it or not, actually I prefer not to be in it to conserve my precious time, but am willing to serve on it if needed).

The points above are not "make it or break it" for me. This is still a very interesting project, and I would like to see where it goes.

Point #1 can't be changed at this point ... the economical properties of the protocol have reached "1.0" stage and now can't be changed without a huge fuss. Point #2 can still be fixed, and I believe it would help everyone's trust in the protocol.
bvt
newbie
Activity: 23
Merit: 0
Yes, I will still control the funds I use to purchase MasterCoins. That's why I can go all in, while the rest of you have to decide if I'm nuts, a scammer, or maybe could really pull this off Smiley

I would like to emphasize that, since you control the exodus address, it is important that you buy only few mastercoins and furthermore that you are completely transparent about how much you buy. Of course, this doesn't apply to buying them on the free market later.

As implied above, I actually intend to buy a large number of them - probably around 24 hours after the announcement. I really believe this will work, and I want to own as many of them as possible.
In other words, you're taking none of the risk and getting all of the reward?

I like you but I really don't like where this is going, you'll need to be extremely transparent (and with reasonable expectations set forth in advance) for this to make any sense.

That's the main of several issues I have against his project.

1) He controls the "exodus" address which means any bitcoins he sends is still in his own control and not at risk of being lost even if MasterCoin fails.
2) There's no explanation of what the expected expenses are. Is it salary for developer(s)?
3) In his white paper, he tries to appeal to greed and how important it is to get in "early". He wants investments/donations (don't know what to actually call it) to be sent quickly and rewards early bitcoins with more "MasterCoins". Why? Seems like cheap sales tactics to me. Let the product sell on its own merits.
4) Even if this turned out to work properly at all, he controls majority of the MasterCoins (so far).
5) He refutes all above mentioned criticism as "anti-capitalism" and "egalitarian". Which is misdirection from the actual criticism. It's the warped risk/reward ratio and circumstances of this being handled and misrepresentation under "project development".


It seems very rushed and he claims to have been working on this for a long time. It really doesn't matter if he initially had this idea in 2009 or 2013. Provided content or any proof of concept seems ... lacking. He went on to disregard reddit users because it's a "cesspool of ignorance" and deleted his own thread. He did not provide any insightful information to the criticism he met there. He danced around every reply. He's essentially giving himself a free pass if this fail because he has written a "disclaimer" and that he promises the return what funds remain at the point of the failure. So he could essentially give this a go for a 6 months period and return half of the funds and keep the rest? He would still keep 100 % of what he put in and 50 % of everyone else's.

I disregard the escrow issues raised, as there are other people more suited than me to address it. I don't expect him to quit his job, but I just don't understand why he's in such hurry to get funds sent to him. Or why he thinks it's necessary to use, what I consider, cheap sales tactics. He posted this in "Project Development", but in reality he's raising funds before any proof of concept.

Personally this raises huge red flags. This whole thing seems out of touch of reality. But maybe that's just me. I think this will inevitably be the downfall of this project before it even starts.
donator
Activity: 2058
Merit: 1054
Yes, I will still control the funds I use to purchase MasterCoins. That's why I can go all in, while the rest of you have to decide if I'm nuts, a scammer, or maybe could really pull this off Smiley

I would like to emphasize that, since you control the exodus address, it is important that you buy only few mastercoins and furthermore that you are completely transparent about how much you buy. Of course, this doesn't apply to buying them on the free market later.

As implied above, I actually intend to buy a large number of them - probably around 24 hours after the announcement. I really believe this will work, and I want to own as many of them as possible.
In other words, you're taking none of the risk and getting all of the reward?

I like you but I really don't like where this is going, you'll need to be extremely transparent (and with reasonable expectations set forth in advance) for this to make any sense.
newbie
Activity: 33
Merit: 0
Alot of Open-Knowledge in this thread!BTC)
legendary
Activity: 1834
Merit: 1019
 Smiley

I keep seeing questions about why I need "so much money" to do this. I don't. I'm proceeding with this project regardless of how much money I raise, albeit very slowly.

The question of why I need "so much money" to quit my job is an entirely different question, and has to do with my personal budget, my wife's desire for stability, children in private school, mortgages, and so on. For a long, long time I hoped somebody "cheaper" would give this a shot, but I got tired of waiting.

Also, I keep seeing the claim that I need $1M to quit my job, which I have never said. I don't actually know the number - it depends on what I can sell to my wife, who has a desire for stability and security to an extent that many of you would consider unreasonable.

good luck  Cheesy

Where are you guys getting these numbers... The ERE guy is like a hippie freak dude and lives out of an RV, right?

Screw him and get on board with Mr. Money Mustache! Thanks goes to calin

Here is how MMM lives retired for the last 6 years on less than $27k a year with him , his wife and 6 year old kid in their $400k house in Colorado: My Deprived Life: Raising a Family on Under $27,000 per Year

That link has photos of his house and toys.

Here is list and comparison of their expenses for 2012 vs 2010 and 2011.

I am now a self-proclaimed Mustachian! I will be debt free October this year and will then be able to stash about $30k for 2014 and $48k for 2015 and on... if I don't get anymore raises or other income (NOT!).

That will see me retired in 12 years from now at the age of 50. Not too bad. Even better if I get married and start living with 2 incomes in the household.
legendary
Activity: 1064
Merit: 1000
Because all information is public the 'smart money' would start to sell as the reserves shrank.  This would put downward price pressure, which would then cause the fund to start consuming the reserves it does have to payout those who want to redeem at face value.  Sure, you have daily withdraw limits and employ other tactics used by banks to prevent runs.  Unfortunately, you have no way to raise capital while the price is below market and everyone knows it.   It then becomes a game of musical chairs where everyone races to the exits.

what I think OP has failed to understand is pegging works because the peg is a black-box. It's basically a confidence trick to maintain an illusion. Once the parameters are known of the peg (i.e how much money and how the escrow behaves), it's no longer possible to maintain the illusion - it's like the magician has shown how the trick is done and it's no longer amazing. But that's not even 50% of the problem, now, smart and rich investors simply have more data to do 'insider trading' effectively, and worse, that insider information has been distributed to everyone. MasterCoin, one coin to ruin itself and destroy a bunch of BTC in the process.
legendary
Activity: 1064
Merit: 1000
What you say would be 100% correct if the escrow fund was run by a human being, but it is not. Its behavior is built into the protocol. The software everyone runs determines what the escrow fund does, and anybody running software with different rules for the escrow fund behavior would create a hard fork in MasterCoin (that is, their version would not be accepted by the rest of the network). It would be just like if somebody tweaked the bitcoin code to have different rules.

That makes it worse, because now an attacker can predict the behaviour and therefor it's no longer speculation. This statement alone has killed any remaining confidence in the scheme.
legendary
Activity: 1358
Merit: 1003
Ron Gross
I love this thread, keep coming back for more.

Willet, I found this pearl via your link to Impossibility Trinity - thanks!

FYI, there are now 1,791.515 BTC ~= $186,317.56 in the fund.
sr. member
Activity: 461
Merit: 251
I don't believe this is true. A government (or any other entity) cannot maintain a peg indefinitely unless they have a indefinite amount of resources with which to do it (and no, money printing doesn't count Wink ).  

Panamá and Hong Kong have their currencies pegged to the USD for decades now, don't they?

AFAIK, all cases of failed pegged currencies were in situations where the money issuers also attempted to use money creation to manipulate interest rates (or any other price). As long as it only creates and destroy currency with the goal of keeping a parity price with a foreign currency, I fail to see what's the great danger.
It's trivial to create a currency with a perfectly stable peg: just maintain 100% reserves in the same asset you're pegging to.  Decrease this reserve ratio, or swap out the reserves for ones whose price has less than a guaranteed perfect correlation with the pegged-to asset going forward, and you increase the risk of being overrun and the peg breaking.

The scheme presented here proposes 0% of the reserves be held in the pegged-to asset, and all of them to be held in a new and unnecessary asset with no established liquidity, whose price has no reason to be anything other than completely uncorrelated with that of the pegged-to asset.  It strikes me as maximally risky.
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 566
fractally
GoldCoins will act like a ratchet that can never go above the price of gold (because the escrow fund will increase supply) but can always fall with the same risk and volatility as MasterCoin.   The only way for the escrow fund to prevent the price from falling is to allocate a larger percentage of the escrow fund toward redeeming the first in line.    

So when the value of MasterCoin falls, the smart thing to do is to sell GoldCoin as fast as possible before its price can fall to match the loss from the backing.  So lets say Gold goes up by 10% relative to MasterCoin on Day 1, the value of GoldCoin will not go up to match for the simple reason that no one would trade 110 MC  for 1 GC backed by 100 MC... they would be trading something for nothing.

Now your claim is the market knows the escrow fund is going to start bidding up GoldCoin to boost the price.  To do this it enters the market and makes a trade no other market participant would make... trading 110 MC for 1 GC and taking a 10% loss.  Every time the escrow agent does this the value of the remaining GC goes down because some of their backing was stolen to give to the first person in line for the exit.   *instant bank run*.

The system is so bad that it fails the instant MasterCoin falls relative to the other asset.   It would be better if the Escrow agent never acted at all, at least then there would be no benefit to being first in line for the exit!




legendary
Activity: 1890
Merit: 1086
Ian Knowles - CIYAM Lead Developer
I realize this may seem rushed to you guys, but my first revision of this idea was published Jan 6th, 2012. I've been percolating on it for over 2 years and getting feedback for over 1.5 years, so it doesn't seem rushed to me at all - it seems positively glacial Smiley

Maybe we have different perspectives about time-frames - I have been working on building the CIYAM system since 2000 (initially it just a weekend hobby project) and have worked on it full-time since mid-2006 with the open source project launched late last year (initially it was a closed source system).

I also expect to still be very busy working on it in another 10 years.

Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1031
Rational Exuberance
The value of GoldCoin is always equal to  the Value of Backing /  Number of GoldCoins.   

Presumably someone wants GoldCoins so they have to 'buy them' and if they are bought from the Network the purchase price goes into the backing / escrow fund and this builds up the supply. 

So all GoldCoins are bought at todays price, then the price of Gold doubles relative to Master Coin and the backing is now only 50%.

You then posit that people will continue to trade these coins at near face value because, eventually, demand for GoldCoins would push the price above market value despite only having 50% backing.    Assuming Gold is in a bull market, the backing behind the GoldCoins would continue to fall toward 0 even if the Escrow fund never had to intervene. 

There is only one way to resupply the fund and increase its backing, and that is for new money to enter and pay above market price for GoldCoins which would allow the fund to 'issue' at the new price.   Unfortunately, this would mean someone paying full price for a GoldCoin and converting that into a 51% backed asset.

If everyone wanted to convert their GoldCoin back into MasterCoin then the result would reveal the fractional reserves for what they are and everyone would get $0.51 on the dollar. 

Because all information is public the 'smart money' would start to sell as the reserves shrank.  This would put downward price pressure, which would then cause the fund to start consuming the reserves it does have to payout those who want to redeem at face value.  Sure, you have daily withdraw limits and employ other tactics used by banks to prevent runs.  Unfortunately, you have no way to raise capital while the price is below market and everyone knows it.   It then becomes a game of musical chairs where everyone races to the exits.

The only way to manage this system is to have a way to bring in more capital when the price moves against the escrow account.  Unfortunately, no rational individual throws good money after bad which means that absent a legal means of collecting a debt, the Escrow fund must start out with a multiple of its initial value.    Thus $200 in Master coins to create $100 worth of GoldCoin.  This would allow the escrow agent to safely control the price as long as it traded in a safe range.    Of course, the original source of these funds would have to come from someone and it wouldn't be people buying GoldCoin because they will only pay $100.   It has to come from people shorting GoldCoin.... and because they are short, their funds are held in escrow until they buy it back and take their profit or loss.     And *tada* you now have BitShares. 

Conclusion, your escrow funds are undercapitalized and will always result in a bank run / bank holiday / daily withdraw limits until there are no funds left.    If you properly capitalize them someone has to take extra risk... 'be short' and provide the capital in case the price of GoldCoin rises against MasterCoin.   The only time you are 'over capitalized' is when MasterCoin appreciates after issuance of GoldCoin so to the extent that MasterCoin could grow in value faster than everything else your system would work, otherwise it is SOL.

As soon as you have two human actors (short and long) you no longer require an oracle, aggression factors, withdraw limits, or arbitrary time delays.

Once you have fixed your collateral / escrow system you are now at a point where the difference between BitShares and Master Coin is only in the transport layer.   You want to use the bitcoin chain and I am creating an alt-chain network.   As a result you will have an order of magnitude higher transaction costs and lower throughput.  This will dramatically impact your market.

You are right that a "run" on a currency with an unhealthy escrow fund could crash the price, although the actual draining of the escrow fund would happen on a much longer timescale.

The scenario you described is exactly the reason that the aggression factor backs off when the escrow fund is unhealthy. The escrow fund is designed to "unwind" as gracefully as possible when people abandon one of these currencies.

This is why the currencies are "meta stable". They can hold their value for many years, but they can't absolutely guarantee the currency will stay solvent forever. It's a tradeoff for not having to trust a central issuer (like Ripple or Colored Coins). There are also scenarios where balancing long positions and short positions to provide this functionality doesn't work either (for instance, margin calls break that model in extreme moves).

I'm going offline right now, but I'll try to catch up on any questions again on Monday. Thanks everyone!
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