Topic: ORA:: Development discussion thread - page 2. (Read 13432 times)

...snip...
Can we have a reputation coin built into ORA somehow?

I hope we will continue here, not really a big fan of looking in different places for the same info.

A new place to discuss Ora is up!
http://www.oraforum.org/

This of course doesn't mean we'll stop any discussion here; it's just an extra place to help gather and build the community.

// Mac

Probably we can accomplish it step by step. First a wallet that is running with nodes. Stabilise that can do some basic transaction. Then ora 2.0 comes with all the fancy plugin ideas.

Edit : also please consider adding multisig for public accounts.

\section{Talk more about proof of trust}

Proof of Trust is not a new innovation, but a ubiquitous one.  The inspiration comes from human observation.  We are social creatures, and with that social imperative comes the issue of trust.  We all come from parents who may or may not have been trustworthy.  We all have had friends, spouses, and family, some of whom have betrayed the trust vested in them.  Officials betray trust all the time.  What is needed is not to cast trust out, but to embrace proof of trust, and then still prepare for its unwinding.  Proof of trust, like an SSL cert or trusted algorithm can sometimes be found wanting.  When you read Satoshi's seminal work - he discusses the problem of trust in regards to financial transactions.  But his solution is inadequate because it is one-sided.  His Bitcoin system is designed for trusted transactions, but in his Introduction he writes "Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers."

Wait, this sounds as if Bitcoin does not use cryptography to eliminate trust!  Exactly.  It is one hand clapping.  It solves only the merchant's trust problem.  The buyer must \textit{hire} a trusted partner to escrow the transaction or otherwise certify the goods are as described.  What is an escrow system but a third party that provides the trust component?  Would anyone trust an escrow whose main office is a travelling carnival?  So even Bitcoin does not eliminate trust.  And that is not what it is trying to do, but it is not accurate to say that Bitcoin fixes the trust issue.  What Bitcoin does is fix the \textit{seller's} risk in the protocol, and the buyer's commodities are of unknown risk, pending a second financial transaction procured by the buyer to the escrow system!!!  Alibaba at long last has an escrow system that works seemingly well, and it places the onus on the seller to deliver the goods prior to the escrow releasing the money.  But it increases the cost of doing business for the buyer and the seller.  The seller will raise his price to accommodate the new basis in cost to his business.  One way or the other, the buyer will end up paying the difference.

Further, it is clear from this that the trust part of the equation is necessarily centralized, if not by one company by a dozen, but still far less than the decentralized peers that secure the blockchain.  Supposing there exists one escrow service that sifts Bitcoins and goods, attempting to satisfy both sides of the transaction.  That entity will necessarily need to sit at the crossroads of the physical and digital boundaries, unless the goods being purchased are themselves digital.  Therefore, that escrow entity must be physically centralized, and how will they be trusted?  Won't they have to post a bond of some sort to certify their business as legitimate, and purchase insurance on the goods they hold?  Won't they need to satisfy not only the financial authorities as well as the commodity authorities?  It seems that an escrow service is not nearly as trivial as was envisioned.  The Alibaba system is a good example, but notice they provided it to satisfy the buyer for a very good reason.  Fraud from the seller side was rampant, causing the reduction of trade.  The frauds were hurting the legitimate buyers and sellers.  The escrow service put the onus of trust on the sell side, because the fraud wasn't bad money per se, but bad or grossly misdescribed or fraudulent goods.  What if the money is fraudulent?  In Bitcoin, it doesn't matter. If the Bitcoin is stolen, it is spendable without recourse.

But if the money is held in abeyance, that completely defeats the elegance of the fast payments upon which Bitcoin is based.  The point is that one of the best parts of Bitcoin is in reality not feasible, and not usable, because it defeats itself in practice.  As has been discussed, where Bitcoin is most interesting (purchasing goods), it is least useful, and where it is most useful (transferring money), it is prosaic, offering little benefit to the user and, as of recently, incurring a capital gains tax that makes the baseline expense of using it at least 15\% more expensive than cash.

Even if it was trivial, being at the crossroads of the physical and digital worlds requires real expenses, for facilities, for employees, and the like.  Therefore, it would seem that the purchaser will pay additional fees, probably in excess of what the transaction would have cost using a credit card or cash at the local brick and mortar warehouses.

In sum, trust cannot be decentralized when it must cross the physical boundary.

You are reading my mind on plugins.  The beauty of this approach is we create a core wallet with an API, and anyone can build a plugin, for fun or profit.  If someone creates a killer plugin and others think it's worth a fistful of money, then it can even be sold; or traded for work on a project; or donated.

This adds a financial incentive for others to add value to Ora.  For mainstream features that are more mission critical or should be included in the base product, we could offer a power bounty for a new feature (it will be forbidden to be sold), and release the kracken.

The downside is this adds complexity to the product, making it much more difficult to design, build, and maintain.  I would have to figure out how to deal with the intricacies of this model, especially in terms of security, but also in terms of bloating the blockchain and enforcing a usability standard on all plugins.

kind regards,
nio

Also nioc, just thinking, is it possible to have a platform and features that act like plugins. Like the iphone / android ui feature. So most of the features can be added like an app. And that also may bring in more devs to work or bring in some new features. Ora wallet becomes like a smart platform. What do you think about this?

This is the idea. Maybe the exchanges can do an "app" and integrate with the wallet directly or any other feature.

So, the problem or challenge is how to get users to run the wallet all the time and thereby help keep Ora secure?  Here are some ideas:

1.  This could be solved by defaulting the Ora daemon to start when the computer starts, by default.  The way I see it, we are responsible for making Ora secure.  More nodes means more security, so why not enforce "always on" or "on by default"?  That also solves the problems with blockchain downloading: like a torrent, it is more secure with more peers.  Just like your antivirus, you know it's always on for security, so you don't mind that it comes on all the time, every time.  I think users would understand this with Ora, too.
An alternative to this would be making two versions of an Ora wallet, one called "Ora-regular wallet" that doesn't turn on automatically.  The other could just be called "Ora Secure Wallet", and it contains the auto-on feature.  Which one would you download??

2.  If we add the right features, we will create industry in the coin such that some nodes will be on all the time to capture revenue, or use a trust system in which they are rewarded.   For instance, XC does this by "paying" some nodes to be essentially always on.  Those nodes must have a minimum of 500XC in order to act in that capacity.

kind regards,
nio

I had a dev idea today that I'd like to share. The goal of PoW mining is to encourage people to run the coin P2P software to firstly secure the network, and then as a mechanism to distribute the coin supply. With PoS the coins have all been created with the genesis block, so the incentive for people to run the software comes from forging revenue.

If there was another reason that motivated people to run the coin software 24/7, then we could ensure the network was being secured, and maybe we could divert the forging transaction fees into a community pool, or donate them to charity ... or do any of a number of other things.

I'm not a dev, but on my PC there are a number of programs that I run 24/7, and if ORA incorporated the functionality of one of those programs then I'd be doing my bit to secure the network without any financial incentive required.

---snip-----

Is this too far fetched? I'm in brain storming mode, and maybe this is a ridiculous idea, but it seems much of the economics of crypto is based around motivating people to run the P2P software as much as possible. Why not attach ORA to some other software that people run anyway, then the economics of ORA can be completely different.

Great job. I think our biggest goal should be to have clear deliverables.  Meet the core goal of being a decentralized secure crypto currency and release. After the wallet is online and the chain is healthy, take the time to build up a new release with a plan to develop all the cool things.
Follow the KISS model and get something working that is strong and extensible.

Just my 2 cents.

Excellent job nio, I think everyone's appreciating the level of structure you're bringing to the project.
We got a terrific start and things will only get more interesting from here.

@Kora
I fully agree we need to focus on what we'd like Ora to do. Like for example mixing functions from various coins to create something better. This way we can pinpoint the next steps more accurately. I also agree we need to trust those who are experts in their fields like nio to do their thing. We should however all voice our opinions.

Nice piece Kora and very impressive paper nio.

To me a few of the most important features of a new coin in the current climate are...

1. Ease of use. A lot of coins are striving for this at the moment, but nobody has really cracked it yet. We should aim for a system that is as easy to use as gmail for instance.

2. Security. Again this has to be bullet proof but easy for the end user to implement. No paper wallets or offline wallets. 2FA is probably a must.

3. Clean UI . Some coins are integrating chat and secure email etc, but I feel that these are not necessary and there are plenty of 3rd party apps that would probably do a better job