Tacotime, this is something you should have a look at because it has serious potential to change the cryptocurrency playing field.
https://payswarm.com/specs/source/web-api/https://dev.payswarm.com/http://blog.meritora.com/launch/https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/04/introducing-navigator-mozpay-for-web-payments/https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/WebPaymentI propose the idea to make Netcoin an underlying web protocol and develop with Payswarm open standards in mind. I believe sooner or later cryptocurrencies are going to become an underlying protocol of the web.
PaySwarm allows currencies to be specified by either an internationalized currency code, like “USD”, or by an IRI that identifies a currency. This means that anyone capable of minting an IRI, which is just about anybody on the Web, has the ability to create a new alternative currency. The one draw-back for alternative currencies is that there must also be a location, or network, on the Web that acts as the currency mint. The concept of a currency mint will be covered later in this blog post.
http://manu.sporny.org/2011/web-payments-comparison/#currency-mintsPayswarm is also coming in the near future and it includes a specification of "currency mint" based around an IRI which identifies the currency. I propose that developers put the creation of a Netcoin IRI on the development to-do list. If it's relatively simple and could be done before or shortly after the release of Netcoin it could greatly benefit Netcoin users in the long term and promote adoption through integration with Payswarm technology and thus integrate it into the web itself.
If "Bitcoin" becomes the only standard and it's cemented in stone then it stops progress, innovation, and evolution of digital currencies. Bitcoin has many flaws, and there are few reasons why we should expect it to be the only coin ever any more than we would want there to only be one credit card, search engine, payment processor, operating system, etc. That in itself would be centralization of power in a way which does not improve security of cryptocurrencies over the long term.
This sounds excellent and this should be taken seriously. I just tried the demo and already see the big potential for this. It can help with the adoption problem for the layman person, and we can take advantage of the businesses that already accept Payswarm, so that Netcoin can expand its reach.
One thing that I'm uncertain about is whether or not we would need to create an organization to support the Payswarm. From my understanding, it seems that Payswarm is a payment processing platform that we can implement into a central website. Would we need anyone to handle the customer support as well invest in managing the security of the account information? Basically, are we creating our own Paypal with the Payswarm payment processing technology?
The most important thing for a cryptocurrency is that it be used. It's a good idea for Netcoin to embed itself into the web as a long term adoption strategy. Think of Netcoin as becoming the Netcoin protocol, and think of Bitcoin as becoming the Bitcoin protocol, and so forth so that at some point the technology of it speaks and it can exist independently of tribal / partisan politics. At this time Bitcoin is a product and products never become as widely used as core protocols. Productism and politics in my opinion are holding Bitcoin back from mainstream adoption at this point.
I would hesitate to label it our Paypal because Paypal is an "evil" business with a corrupt political agenda. I suggest we unofficially refer to it as project Freepal because it opposes the very essence of what Paypal is doing. Freepal liberates the will of the user by allowing the user to have free speech in the economic form. There is to be no middle man, no centralized master telling us what we can or can't buy, no boss to lend us money we don't really get to own, no third party or man in the middle to charge us fees. It's a direct expression of the economic will of the user to send value person to peerson or peer to peer.
Payswarm is superior to Paypal on every level. It's an open standard, it's built into the web as a specification, it's not proprietary so that the political views and opinions of the some CEO cannot influence anything. Payswarm is attempting to be as politically neutral as possible and I think that is a good direction for Netcoin as well. Offer a very good core technology from a politically neutral point of view, offer the tools of liberty and democracy and let the users determine what direction to take Netcoin.
The reason to have an organization isn't to promote Payswarm particularly but to give people the capability of economically focused electronic democracy. To have a community you need the ability to vote, and to protect a community you need the ability to make decisions. To make it as fair as possible you need the ability to allow stakeholders to vote in a manner which is coercion resistant. It also has to be anonymous, if we know how everyone is voting then we can bully them into voting for our way of doing things or our candidate, I just want the product to adhere to the will of the users and the community of users who give Netcoin meaning.
I don't think it's enough just to build a tool but not give the community any way to regulate itself. When you don't give the community any kind of democratic processes at all then you can end up with fiefdom corporate type systems where they lock the common users out from the decision making process or share holding. We could end up with a digital caste system where individuals from other industries come in years from now and buy everything up and then set up gatekeepers, unfair legal regulations, bosses, middlemen and very undemocratic systems to create a high tier of unaccountable rulers.
Winkelvoss makes people uneasey because of what they could do. They could end up owning the Bitcoin eco-system, and if people disagree with a decision how would that be expressed? So in my opinion sooner or later the voting mechanisms and democratic processes have to be brought in and one thing I like about Netcoin is it's forward thinking enough to reach the conclusion that after 27 years we will have to bring that in for determining the interest rate. I think any cryptocurrency protocol is ultimately backed by the faith of a community and a community is in my opinion better off with democratic processes built in.
For instance lets say it's a year from now and Netcoin is released and I propose the idea that Netcoin should adopt a strategy of embedding itself into the web. If users could somehow vote on it and if they agree or disagree we know, then we have feedback which is very important. If we just for instance rely on Bitcointalk then you could have the votes get fudged because people who have nothing to do with Netcoin could vote in ways to sabotage it or confuse.
I think long term the situation is cryptocurrencies are going to be regulated. It can be self-regulating, or not self-regulated in which case it will be made to conform into the will of others. If it's self-regulating to a certain extent then the elected Netcoin leadership or representatives whomever they turn out to be would go to the SEC, Congress and politicians around the world to explain how things work. The worst case scenario is that there is a leadership void and there are no representatives for the interests of the community to go to the government/politicians and help formulate the legislation and laws around cryptocurrencies. I don't think Netcoin in particular has to be the only cryptocurrency community involved in this but I think the best case scenario is a scenario where you have various cryptocurrencies which have a way to get feedback from the community and then determine the rules based on a combination of that feedback and discussion with lawmakers. I don't think the wild west will last forever.