Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 92. (Read 448462 times)

I had an interesting conversation this week with Vitalik from the Bitcoin Magazine, and he suggested this cool feature:

Spending Limit

This feature would limit the rate at which a particular address can send mastercoins.

Here is how I would specify the feature: We would add two new operations SETUP_LIMITED_ACCOUNT and SET_LIMIT.

SETUP_LIMITED_ACCOUNT(priv_key_x, pub_key_y)

This operation would designate address Y as the "limiting address" of address X.
This means the owner of address Y can control the spending limits of address X.

SET_LIMIT(priv_key_y, pub_key_x, currency_ID, limit, time_period)

After a SET_LIMIT operation is transmitted (by the owner of address Y), only if there was a prior matching SETUP_LIMITED_ACCOUNT with Y's public key, then from now on outgoing transactions from address X in the specified currency are limited - for any window of blocks with length time_period, if any send operation would cause the sum of all send operations from address X within this window to cross limit, this send operation would be invalid.

The reason to use two different addresses is that we want to prevent an attacker that gained the private key of X to cheat the system by changing the send limit. You would use a more secure address Y to specify a send limit on address X (just like the Saving Account feature uses a Guardian Address (Y)).


The above is just my initial specification, we can beautify and formalize this a bit more.
I think it's a useful easy to implement feature and would love to see it in an upcoming version of the whitepaper.

"...they don’t want to cripple the network with a critical bug.." nice read!  thanks

Heh. I must admit I laughed too, despite it being aimed at me.

Good comedy, HammerFist, though perhaps not the sort of thing that facilitates constructive discussion.

HammerFist's flame made me laugh, but I still deleted it. If I ever need someone to write a flame for me, I'm coming to you, man.

Let's try to keep it civil, folks.

TomHirsch, could you please stop beeing so rude.

TomHirsch, under new account (guess why) HammerFirst, is a lamer who almost screwed the project from the start (check TomHirst past posts). Ignore it if you can.

Thanks Tachikoma. That'll be hugely appreciated. I'll keep you posted.

I do admit blame. Apologies if I did not give enough weight to this in the way I expressed things.

(Incidentally, I couldn't ask about Coinbase because I was still a brand new member and wasn't allowed to post yet. To add irony to the situation, Blockchain wallets were down, and Armory was downloading the blockchain and wouldn't have finished before midnight on Aug 31st. Coinbase was my third of what I thought were the three viable options.)

A good read (as always from Coindesk):
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-core-dev-update-5-transaction-fees-embedded-data/

regardless of where its sent should not matter, does the MSC stay within that bitcoin or not? i'm confused what do I tell the stock market people?

You could have just asked if Coinbase would work, somebody would have been more then willing to look into that. Also I haven't heard any other reports of this issue. I am a bit annoyed that you are shifting the blame and won't take responsibility for your own errors.

This is the last I will say about this since it's really not my place to 'defend' the way Mastercoin did it's fundraiser.

If Coinbase will let you sign a transaction hit me up with a pm and I can probably create a raw transaction that they can sign for you that move the MSC to an other address you own.

I'll be more explicit. What I meant to imply is that while I admit blame, I also think there's a degree of responsibility on the part of those behind Mastercoin's funding initiative to make sure its initial supporters are clear on how not to shoot themselves in the foot. And I do not think there was enough clarity on this point.

Mastercoin was launched by people taking on a severe level of risk to commit funds to the project. It ought to be clear how to properly make that commitment.

I don't want to express this in isolation from the fact that I love the work that Dacoinminster, you, and others are doing. It's fascinating and, I think, important. But this only makes me want to be part of it more. Now because of what's happened, I can't. And I think something ought to be done for people in my position.

However this happened, I agree that it is very sad. I hope it wasn't a lot of money.

I'm sorry if I'm misinterpreting your words but; 'Being misled', you almost make it sound like you are blaming somebody else then yourself.

Thanks, Dacoinminster and Tachikoma, for your responses.

Tachikoma, I've not known about the possibility of signing a raw transaction at Coinbase. I'll definitely try that one on Olaf, and report back.

Dacoinminster, I'm no expert and so I'll be the first to admit to being mistaken about what one shouldn't do with Mastercoin. However I did read the majority of this thread before 31 August to try to understand what I was doing, but, as it turns out, I ended up with the wrong idea.

I was clear that an Mt.Gox wallet wouldn't offer "full control" over my addresses and therefore wouldn't work. However a Blockchain wallet would work, even though it's a web wallet. Unfortunately I found no clear description of what "full control" constitutes, and so I made the mistake of assuming that because Coinbase supports address creation and retains a list of addresses used, that this was a sufficient level of control. This conclusion was based on the fact that Mt.Gox addresses associated with my account are not retained for me to access, whereas Coinbase addresses are.

So yes, I was mistaken. But I think that there was a significant lack of clarity about what would and wouldn't work. A simple list of wallets that wouldn't work would've sufficed. I spent several hours trawling this thread for clarity, but ended up being misled.

For now here. In a few weeks you can use the Mastercoin protocol itself to do it.

Where can I sell my two mastercoins?

I'd just like to add that the problem here is NOT the sendmany requirement, but the requirement that you be able to send FROM a particular address, which coinbase doesn't give you. Even if coinbase added sendmany support, you would still be stuck.

People who invested from Android wallets (which don't support sendmany) have reason to be annoyed, but they can still get their MSC by exporting their private keys.

I've tried to make this requirement (to not use web wallets which don't give you access to private keys) clear any chance I get. I'm truly sorry that you invested without reading a bit more about MasterCoin's specific requirements.

Web-wallets are a bad idea; always. Coinbase is not a real wallet, it's just a service to store/spend funds. Blockchain.info at least gives you access to your private keys which means you can take your funds anywhere. There is no way to get the Mastercoin funds out of there without either a option to send multiple outputs in a transaction, getting the private key of your address or getting the public key and an option to sign a raw transaction at Coinbase.  

Red flags all over this one, zero communication is never a good sign imho!  

Ok, from Coinbase's perspective, they'd have to implement these transaction classes for users, because they don't give users private keys.

I'll relay this to Olaf from Coinbase, who's been sympathetic, though unfortunately unable to get me out of this mess.

I think we should start a thread to address this issue. It would warn people about it, and help others who, like me, are victims of the decision to only support sendmany transactions - which was not made known until after the window period to initially buy Mastercoins came to an end.

To have supported this project and subsequently found that the Mastercoins I bought are locked ad infinitum is a horrible thing. Something should be done about it.

You will have to get access to your private key in order for any of the other methods to work for you.