Hi guys,
Updates should be coming later this week. There's a lot to rewrite in the draft paper, and I need to run it by some people first.
Notably, iddo mentioned an alternative PoS system and, reading it now, I came up independently with a similar solution over the past month. If it works it may allow four minute confirmation and solve the 51% vulnerability, which I'm sure would be desirable for a lot of people. But it needs to be figured out further and a lot of people will need to go over it to ensure it's secure.
I want to rewrite the hashing algorithm so that the hash itself uses all the different algorithms. I've also been going through research papers to try to find the algorithms that use AES code fragments (modern CPU friendly), runs slowly on FPGA implementations (almost all SHA3 candidates like this were eliminated for this reason), and then to implement the hash algorithm and ensure that the following parameters are met:
1) That approximately half of the cycles in the scrypt loop are spent computing hashes of various types, while the other half are spent in memory access steps.
2) That using scrypt with parameters of N that are not 2^n is okay -- hashes compute fine if you remove the error checking in the implementations in C that I have, but I can't be sure that this does not lead to any problems until I step through the code.
3) Goal throughput of 5 KH/s or more average on a CPU to make sure verifying that verifying the blockchain is not impossible for the end user client. N range will be adjusted accordingly.
As far as GitHub is concerned, there won't be a fork started until the theory behind the chain is solid.
Eventually a kickstarter may be formed and I'll aim for $50,000 or so to pay potential developers. There's no way I can do this on my own, I'm paid right now for unrelated contracted research so I won't have a ton of free time over the next 12 months to dedicate to this.
I'll go through this thread later this week and try to respond to everyone's comments and suggestions. Thanks for the interest!
My advice on the funding, definitely aim higher. See if you can be funded in Bitcoin as well as Kickstarter because if the price of Bitcoin goes up you'll have plenty of cash to fund development. It also ties development into the success of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general which is a good thing imo.
Something like this
http://www.raisebitcoins.com/ https://bitcoinstarter.com/in combination with Kickstarter. I think one way to get funding off the ground and I mentioned it before is to find a way to offer somehow a return on the investment people make so that they feel it's in their self interest to invest in the development of your coin.
The same way mining is incentivized as a way to protect the network, development should also be incentivized. This is something which could be built into the project itself.
Here are some ideas I can propose and others here tell me what you all think about it.
Proposition 1: Suppose we all pledge X amount of Bitcoin to the project as a way to reserve shares in the project. A certain percentage of transaction fees early on can go to paying for the development of the project itself and toward paying the share holders. If done right then this project could get hundreds or perhaps even thousands in Bitcoin from initial investors on top of Kickstarter. The price of the shares should be cheap early on for early supporters but slowly rise in price later on for people who decide to come in with big money late. The point of this proposition is to somehow find a way to tie in an economic incentive for people to pledge X amount of Bitcoin or cash to the project, if it can accomplish this it will generate more than $50,000 easily.
Proposition 2: Suppose we don't use a transaction fee model but instead use a sort of privileged mining model where those who want to mine early must pay to reserve a spot on the mailing list? The problem with this would be accusations of premining so it's not the best solution.
Proposition 3: Allow investors to be among the first to BUY these coins prior to them reaching the exchanges. This would likely generate some interest but I don't know how this would be set up.
Anyway there are many more potential propositions but from what I see in the Bitcoin community the best way to fund stuff like this isn't to ask for donations but to provide incentives to make people invest. I see it a lot with mining companies offering ASICs to people who buy some lesser product or to people who preorder etc. Why can't these mechanisms be used to support this project as well?