Topic: Please remove, thread moved to self moderated - page 6. (Read 57444 times)

A lot has been discussed about proof-of-work versus proof-of-stake in regards to decentralization of a cryptocurrency. Both of these methods of transaction signing attempt to solve the unsolvable: fairness and decentralization.

On one hand, early miners of any proof-of-work coin are essentially rewarded with a lot more coins because of the low difficulty. In history of some coins, these people have sometimes been referred to as "insta-miners". A pre-mine is when a coin is already mined prior to being released. Any coin with a pre-mine is highly suspicious if not completely defunct from the get-go. With a lack of any shareholder oversight or board of directors with public voting power, any pre-mined coin is a potential scam despite the promises of an anonymous developer (which are clearly worth nothing).

In a proof-of-stake network, those who have more coins staked will receive more coins (it is proportional). Therefore, one is only shifting the idea of "fairness" from one group to another. From the early comers to the larger holders. Either system is rewarding investors for their investments. And both systems are fundamentally the same from an economic perspective: expending resources (time and money) in order to acquire other resources (coins). Whether you do this through mining or purchasing coins, is an irrelevant part of the economics picture.

Just because you cannot mine a pure proof-of-stake does not mean you can not exchange work for coins. You are just exchanging a different type of work - money and time that you buy Bitcoin with that you exchange for other coins.
The real fundamental flaw in proof-of-work consensus is the 51% attack. This is what Jed McCaleb designed Ripple for - solving the issue of network security and how to prevent double-spending.

Ripple and NXT are clear proof that other methods of consensus can accomplish the same goals as a proof-of-work network, because they move the work off the blockchain and into the real-world, where instead of exchanging electricity (money) for coins, you exchange money (money) for coins.

What are we doing here? We are changing the incentives and methods of transaction signing.

From an economics perspective, it doesn't matter if I pay you with 4 quarters, 1 dollar bill, 10 dimes, 150 pesos, as long as you accept them as payment, they are good currency. How those coins were acquired are of little interest to a merchant. He doesn't know if you stole that money, earned it through hard work, won the lotto, or inherited it.

He only cares that he received the financial compensation in exchange for his goods and services.

In the grand-scheme of things, we are seeing from Bitcoin, Ripple, NXT, FIAT currencies, Gold, etc is that currencies are not used because they are decentralized -- they are used because they serve as a medium of exchange.

If it was about decentralization, Bitcoin would have already lost, because the majority of the network is controlled by only a handful of massive mining operations.

What are some problems with investing through proof-of-work? It causes money to flow into wasting excessive amounts of energy. Money that could be spent investing in other areas of the network are instead invested in maintaining a ledger (blockchain) through wasting computing cycles on brute forcing SHA256 or Scrypt hashes.

Ripple, NXT, and other methods of consensus don't force people into putting work into a coin in order for the marketplace to work. Instead of expending resources on maintaining an inefficient network - resources are expended on building on top of a network. Using that electricity and money to build something - not just prove to the world that your network is 5% more decentralized than someone else's network.

Because at the end of the day, decentralization and fairness are completely subjective.
I could argue from every direction all day, but the bigger questions - what is the best approach to building a network and what offers people the easiest way to become a part of the network?

Do we really expect everyone to setup miners and ASICs in their basements? Or buy video cards? Are we not excluding the poor and those with the least amount of tech knowledge from participating?

Continuing with proof-of-work will continue to exclude non-tech people in participating in the network, and it certainly doesn't solve the decentralization problem either.

I applaud the idea of Bitcoin and the work of Satoshi Nakamoto, but there's only one coin that proof-of-work has really worked out for over the long-term and that is Bitcoin. The majority of others are just copy-cats with some extra gimmicks that add very little real-world utility.

So I ask to myself, what is the purpose of the Cannacoin network? How can the blockchain be used in other aspects of our lives other than currency? Why isn't participating in a decentralized network as simple as downloading and running a client (e.g.: p2p file-sharing, NXT staking)?

People are rewarded for running a bit torrent client because they get access to the network and all of it's resources.
There's no incentive at all to run a Cannacoin client. And even those who are mining will find they cannot actually recoup their investment because any selling would crash the price of the coin.

What happened to all of that work? I will tell you.

Nearly all of the proof-of-work that flows into Cannacoin and other altcoins is transferred right into Bitcoin.
Neither proof-of-work nor proof-of-stake solve the problem of fairness and decentralization.

At least proof-of-stake gives more people an opportunity to participate in the network and gives an incentive to running a client.
It also gives those of us with large quantities of Cannacoin the opportunity to gift those coins to Northwest Green Thumb so that even the least technical person has the opportunity to become a node on the network by simply running a client.

I currently hold 169,900 Cannacoins, and hope that one day we can move to a proof-of-stake network and that I can gift most of these coins to NWGT members so that we can further decentralize the network.

I would also like to work with SirPokeSmottington in setting up a Cannacoin Foundation and a Cannacoin Reserve that acts as a central fund for coin development and growing our political, social, and economic movement.

Coins staked from this fund would be completely transparent and given to NWGT members as rewards for community involvement. Through democratic means, all funds staked from these coins would be put to a public vote on NWGT.org.

Cheers, Patrick

Any input is welcome and appreciated.  Cheers

http://www.reddit.com/r/cannacoin/comments/2c6zj4/proofofwork_or_proofofstake/

https://github.com/AlienGit/electrum-cannacoin

Details on how to connect to the meeting will be shared in #cannacoin on Freenode IRC on Wednesday at 12pm Pacific, we will use Mumble: http://www.mumble.com/get-mumble.php

Pre-meeting: 2:45pm

Meeting: 3pm

Post-meeting discussion: 3:30pm

The meeting will be short, 30 minutes, so that we can accommodate those with tight schedules. We will not divulge into technical or theoretical discussions. The purpose of the meeting is to get straight to the point what our current priorities are, what people are working on, and what people can do to help others.
If you have a topic that you would like covered in the meeting, please post a reply here.
I will post a topic schedule for the meeting on here prior to the meeting at 2:45pm.
Please join us for the pre-meeting and be ready to start at 3pm. Any discussions that are time consuming and not urgent can wait until 3:30pm so that we don't get sidetracked to much.

UPDATE

PRE-MEETING:
Make sure everyone has seen this list.

MEETING TOPICS:

1) Cannacoin Miner promotion 30 Mh/s - logistics of distribution, utilization, IronJuggernaut, SubCreative, Greg, John
2) NWGT Apparel, Cannacoin banner, guerilla marketing - Jameson? Patrick?
3) Promotional template for dispensaries Patrick, Jameson, Josh, John
4) Updates from Subcreative and Phil on Cannapay
5) Discuss algorithms - We are now actively discussing switching algorithms and Proof-of-stake is on the table as a method of securing the network.


POST-MEETING TOPICS

1) Creating a new Cannacoin Logo, using existing logo as Mascot (Dave Dabsman?, Harry Hashworth?, Wayne Waxman?, etc)

Everything is going well, thanks.  Look forward to seeing you on IRC.  My next post here will be the topic schedule for the meeting.

Well, I was going to save my first post for a beta [ANN] thread, but you guys are gonna make me blush. Thanks for the shoutouts to you and KSGuy

I've been away with a family emergency for the last few 2 weeks, but should be able to be more active on here, IRC, and of course your mumble meetings again soon. Hope everything's going well!

Cannacoin Meeting - 3:00pm Pacific Time - Wednesday July 30th - Be ready to participate by 2:45pm

http://www.reddit.com/r/cannacoin/comments/2bzv1m/cannacoin_meeting_300pm_pacific_time_wednesday/

Details on how to connect to the meeting will be posted on our Reddit on Wednesday at 12pm Pacific, we will use Mumble: http://www.mumble.com/get-mumble.php

Pre-meeting: 2:45pm

Meeting: 3pm

Post-meeting discussion: 3:30pm

The meeting will be short, 30 minutes, so that we can accommodate those with tight schedules. We will not divulge into technical or theoretical discussions. The purpose of the meeting is to get straight to the point what our current priorities are, what people are working on, and what people can do to help others.

If you have a topic that you would like covered in the meeting, please post a reply on the reddit.
I will post a topic schedule for the meeting there prior to the meeting at 2:45pm.

Please join us for the pre-meeting and be ready to start at 3pm. Any discussions that are time consuming and not urgent can wait until 3:30pm so that we don't get sidetracked to much.

Thanks, Patrick

We are a small but tight-knit group, that's for sure.  Yes it is grass roots and localized.  Everyone's contribution is helpful.  Where we need the most help is maintaining a social presence here and on our Cannacoin reddit.  We are really fortunate to work with SubCreative and his brother, and growing NWGT and Cannacoin is long-term goal.  They benefit each other.  My vision is a political, social, and economic movement that can help to decentralize and reduce the ability of large corporations and banks to take control of Cannabis and dominate.

The work being done on Cannapay and NWGT behind the scenes is amazing.  I hope you can come out to Seattle some day and meet with the group.

Cheers

What I like most is the grass roots, localized effort. Given that I am located about as far away from you as possible on this Continent (I live in New Brunswick, Canada), I am contributing as an investor at this point. But I was thinking, I read alot of your forum chats while doing due diligence, and I realized what a great community you have there for growers to work together locally. When Canada finally gets Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister and we legalize pot across the country, perhaps a local group of growers in my neck of the woods could model themselves off of your efforts and adopt Cannacoin too. If that began to happen in small geographic locations smattered throughout the continent, Cannacoin could connect a number of like-minded efforts anywhere cannibis is grown. I realize that's a leap into the future, but we can make it happen, and I can help.

I intend on being at the convention and look forward to meeting as many new faces as possible. Tell your friends, this will be a great opportunity to get introduced and learn more about Cannacoin and some of the people working behind the scenes!

Hello everyone,

I am in the initial planning stage of a Cannacoin meetup in Seattle to take place over the course of two days on the weekend of September 13th-14th. This will be to bring together growers, vendors, Cannacoin developers, NWGT.org community members, and others to meet each other in person and form a stronger partnership for the success of Cannacoin. The purpose of the this convention will be to share ideas and resources for the growth of our political, economic, and social movement with Cannacoin and NWGT as the backbone.

As we all know, the Cannabis industry is going through revolutionary changes and Cannacoin is going to be a part of it.
Our core developer Josh has been hard at work developing Cannapay and we believe now is the time to come together and utilize this infrastructure to make a push towards decentralizing and empowering growers, vendors, artists, and developers with this open-source project.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7942295

Please let me know if you are interested in joining us. We currently do not have a location selected, but it will likely be somewhere convenient along the I-5 corridor outside of downtown Seattle.

My hope is that we can gather a group of 6-8 people and start hashing out our bigger plans for the future.

Cheers, Patrick

I agree.  I hope you decide to join us in building Cannacoin going forward.

Cheers,
Patrick

This really is great work. I sent you a PM! 

Just as a quick sneak peek into some of the tools being developed.. Right now I'm working a merchant processing solution for Cannacoin called Cannapay. Cannapay will offer full exchange/cashout abilities (to BTC or other cryptos) and eventually direct fiat money transmission via WA state for vendors. All user data will be stored securely so not even we have access (nothing stored plaintext except email) and we will also utilize 2FA for added security via Google Auth along with other cool features :-)

Not only will Cannapay act as a central hub for managing your merchant processing, but it will also integrate a full API so that users can access their invoices, withdraw/deposits, and more all via secure HMAC based authentication.  Im excited to share this with you and look forward to continued development on what I hope to be a key application in the success of Cannacoin. Check back soon for more updates on Cannapay!

One thing you should know about Cannacoin is that it has a very dedicated team and most of us have invested upwards of $1500 or more in resources and that doesn't include the 1000's of hours of time spent developing APIs, community development, meetings, etc.

At least it's not exactly like Weedcoin, the ultimate coin in which people just buy things for themselves. I'm all up for research oriented coins. Buying some.

Thank for the advice I'm not much for mining I'll take all your advice into consideration and thanks for offering to help I really appreciate that.  I'm so kicking myself for grabbing a fat sack of Cannacoins when I first stumbled on this coin. 


Many thanks for the detailed update!

Anybody here interested in buying my account @ zeusminer.com
It has 304,4 USD store credit, i'm willing to part with it for 250 usd


pm me if you are interested.