Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 166. (Read 448489 times)

I would also be interested to know who in the Bitcoin has reviewed the paper, and what was their general sentiment about it.

You do move quickly, I was about to post my comments on the other thread, when it was locked.

Congrats on the launch! (I guess you can call this a launch, even though no software was written, because the protocol is fixed). I would appreciate a hasty reply to the following points:

General notes

Very well done, I feel the 0.7 version has greatly matured compared to the 0.5 version of the paper from last year. It seems you at on the right track, and headed for a hasty release (only one month from now, or less).

I personally feel I understand the vision of MasterCoin better now, after reading this version of the paper. Readers who haven't not read previous versions of the paper might benefit from a longer introduction that explains the concrete benefits that MasterCoin and derived currencies can offer. I would rename the Summary section as Abstract, add an Introduction section, and also number the different sections. The introduction should list the concrete use-cases describes in the paper. Also, I think you should dedicate a small section to surveying the competitors in this space (namely Colored Coins and Ripple), and explain why they are lacking in comparison with MasterCoin.

I would also add a section that attempts to model the economic behavior and effects of MasterCoin. How many mastercoins will there be now? Ever? How is the expected rate of Bitcoin-Mastercoin expected to behave under a few  scenarios? Didn't you have such text in the first version of the paper?



Specific comments

0. What is the MasterCoin three letter abbreviation? You should clarify that your original MasterCoin, and the new "usurper" MasterCoin are not related in any way, and that you have prior claim to the MasterCoin name.

1. Aren't you begging the question?




2. Fair release schedule

You should pre-declare a date on which you will reveal the precise exodus address. Since the protocol gives bonuses to early adopters on a per week (and part of) before August 31th 2013, which isn't too far away, the address should be revealed way before that, and ample time (at least 1-2 days, preferably 7 days) should be be given where no extra bonus is given. In other words, people should have at least a few days from the moment the exodus address is revealed, in which all funds sent to the exodus address are capped in the amount of Bitcoins they send. There can be a bonus for early adopters, but everyone should have a fair chance to invest.

3. Who has the private keys for the exodus address? If it is you, this should be stated explicitly. It can also be a m-of-n address where there are n "MasterCoin project directors". Or rather, is this a sinkhole address like the original MasterCoin design, which has no feasible private key? (instead of this, you can send to an unspendable script which is guaranteed to be a sinkhole, not just computationally infeasible)

4. Hiding MasterCoin Protocol Data in the Block Chain
I would rename it to Encoding MasterCoin Protocol Data in the Block Chain.
I think this section deserves some more elaboration on motivation and technique.

5. Fake bitcoin addresses require more explaining. How does one generate a fake address? Where did the magical "20 bytes" come from?

6. Using block times gap to encode transaction is vulnerable. A coalition of miners might collude in order to postpone some of a group of transactions that were broadcast to the network at the same time. This might also happen naturally as network traffic grows - we do not know enough at this point to predict how fast transactions will get mined, and how that would depend on fees.

7. I think that the Saving/Guardian model, while perhaps not adding anything qualitative to Bitcoin (it can be "implemented" by correctly securing and backing up your private keys and passwords), does add some nice ease of use to the protocol.

8. "Selling MasterCoins for Other MasterCoin-Derived Currencies" seems to lack a time limit parameter, by mistake I assume.

9. "Registering a Data Stream" can use some motivational example. When would someone want to "publish the price of Gold" in the blockchain? What does this mean? (which Gold price? His price?)

10. "Only the first payment sent from that address in a given day (as determined by block-chain timestamps) will be considered ticker data" - why is the timespan of "a day" special here? What does it mean to "be considered as ticker data"?

After reading ahead, I understand the motivation of the division to days is the aggression factor of trust funds. It should be noted at this point of the paper ("Tickers and the reason for their granularity will be explained later on").

11. Bet fees ("The other 0.5% goes to the creator of the data stream") - These should be configurable by the stream owner. I should be able to create streams with arbitrary fees.

12. Aggression factors - when during the day do the trust funds take action? One idea is at the end of each day, or (giving the data sources ample time to publish data whenever they want during the day).

I suggest giving an option for alternate aggression tactic - instead of increasing the buyout each day, simply buy X% of the relevant currency each day, without increasing X. It is not immediately clear which aggression tactic is "better", so it would be prudent to support both and let creators of coins decide which tactic they prefer. More variations on the aggression tactic is possible (you can allocate a protocol field to the tactic, and not necessarily decide on all the precise tactics now, but allow room for improvement in a future MIP (MasterCoin Improvement Proposal).

Project Milestones, in rough order of implementation:

• Create simple greasemonkey script to run on blockchain.info and tell people how many MasterCoins they purchased (including the 10%/week earlybird bonus)
  
  • COMPLETED 8/6/2013: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/175196
• Start the "MasterCoin Adviser" software project with code to implement "Simple Send"
  
  • COMPLETED 8/12/2013: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2919863
    
    • Complete breakdown of the first ever MasterCoin Send Transaction: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2940318
• Do a small MasterCoin giveaway thread using the above "simple-send" software
  
  • LAUNCHED 8/12/2013: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/paused-giveaway-for-mastercoins-the-new-protocol-layer-built-on-bitcoin-272577
• Create software to scan the block chain and track MasterCoin transfers
  • Completed 9/9/2013 Many MasterCoin functions, including parsing send transactions, are now available online: http://mastercoin-explorer.com (Note site disclaimers! There may still be bugs!)
• Find and implement a friendlier way to store our data in the block chain before moving on to advanced features
  
  • Described 9/16/2013: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3164831 (currently being finalized and tested)
• Create and track distributed currency sales between MasterCoin and bitcoins
  
  • This feature is the focus of our current 300 BTC coding contest: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/300-btc-coding-contest-distributed-exchange-mastercoin-developer-thread-292628
• Create and track "Property creation" logic (IPOs, deeds, dividends, etc) and integrate with distributed exchange
• Create and track "Savings Wallet" logic
• Create and track "Data Stream creation and display" logic
• Create and track "Distributed Betting" logic
• Create and track "User-Defined Currency" logic
• Create and track "Distributed E-Commerce" logic (carefully, due to potential illegal uses, such as a "distributed silk road")

Again, please remember that these features will probably come a lot slower than you want them! Here's why:


Edit: Thanks to an enthusiastic community of developers, this project is going much quicker than I thought it would. Thanks everyone!