Topic: [PPC] Peercoin - Indicium Logo & PeerAssets Diagram Released - page 13. (Read 50012 times)

Bitcoin, Namecoin, and Peercoin are first attempts at solutions to important, long-standing problems. Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Long before bitcoin existed, people believed that the problem of decentralized cryptocurrency was important.

Namecoin, as far as I know, is the first decentralized DNS system. Again, long before namecoin existed, people hoped for a decentralized DNS system.

Peercoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency based on proof-of-stake. Peercoin's inspiration is the 'tragedy of the commons' associated with PoW mining. The 'tragedy of the commons' problem in mining has a history dating back to this thread in Nov 2010. People began searching for a solution before peercoin existed and before the term of proof-of-stake had been coined.

When I found out about bitcoin (March 2011), it sounded awesome to me. Proof of stake was not a term yet. In April 2011, I became aware of the the tragedy of the commons problem. I saw it as a nail in bitcoin's coffin and I still see it this way.

Discovering proof-of-stake got me excited again. The beauty of PoS is that it does not require miner rewards to function. With proof-of-stake, the tragedy of the commons doomsday scenario becomes a non-issue. Sure they may be no txn fees, but so what? If you are using PoS this is a great feature. If you are using PoW low fees are a showstopping bug. Once I learned about proof of stake, I saw possibilities: 1) Bitcoin adopts proof-of-stake (or some other rule-breaking alternative) and remains dominant in the long-term. 2) An altcoin adopts proof-of-stake and remains dominant in the long-term. Personally, I see exit to a new cryptocurrency as much more likely. The political challenges of rule-breaking changes in bitcoin are just too daunting. If you need to rewrite the rules, starting from scratch can be a valuable asset.

Today, few people understand that the proof-of-stake idea came out of the debate about the tragedy of the commons problem. If you haven't done so already, I recommend reading one of the most influential threads in the history of bitcoin talk: the tragedy of the commmons thread by Vandroiy. Vandroiy's thread attracted a lot of interest, but did not really make any progress towards a solution for two months. Things changed when Quantum Mechanic posted the thread "proof of stake instead of proof of work" (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/proof-of-stake-instead-of-proof-of-work-27787). Quantum's thread is the first instance of the term 'proof of stake' in the bitcoin community. It may be the genesis of the concept as well. Quantum suggests that proof of stake could allow for lower txn fees. Quantum's concept of proof of stake starts to gain traction once it appears in Vandroiy's thread. Quickly, Vandroiy, Meni, myself, and others realize that proof-of-stake is the likely solution to the tragedy of the commons problem. From this point on, I make it a personal mission to promote proof-of-stake cryptocurrency.

To date, proof-of-stake remains the only proposed solution to the tragedy of the commons problem. With peercoin's arrival in Aug 2012, we have seen this solution realized. Bitcoin devs have spent three years searching or an alternative answer, but have yet to even propose anything.

The tragedy of the commons problem matters. Gavin has often said that a working market for txn fees is perhaps bitcoin's most pressing development issue. This is just a different (and less dramatic) way of referring to the tragedy of the commons problem. Game theory I learned in school told me that bitcoin has 0% chance of remaining valuable in the long-term unless the problem is fixed. If bitcoin can't be valuable in say... march 2050, then why would it be valuable in february 2050? Working backward to the present, the implication is that bitcoin's value depends on faith that this will get sorted out.

Freicoin and Primecoin also solve novel problems, so they deserve credit too. However, very few people see the motivating problems behind Freicoin and Primecoin as important. The tragedy of the commons problem, on the other hand, is one of bitcoin's most important lingering issues. For the past 2 1/2 years, I've viewed this problem as the number one threat to bitcoin's survival.

tl;dr Peercoin offers the first solution to one of bitcoin's most important problems. Can you tell a similar story about the intellectual contribution of litecoin, Quarkcoin, [Insert Scamcoin name here], etc.? Even if Peercoin gets replaced by something else and loses all value, it will still have made history. Nothing can change that. Very few coins can say the same.

I think it is a good idea to lean on good concepts and to learn from them.
Why not using NXT's thread format?

Oh, have you ever thought about where NXT got the idea of PoS from?
...one hint: Peercoin invented PoS

Not true. PoS was invented much earlier https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/proof-of-stake-instead-of-proof-of-work-27787 . Sunny King though was the first to implement it.

SM: What led to the creation of the proof-of-stake algorithm? What inspired you? Do you remember where you were or what you were doing when you came up with it?
 

SK: That was in 2011, we had a small study group on bitcoin

Back then there were already a few 'altcoins' floating around, and more being created, but of course not as much as nowadays. We were thinking about something different, not a clone of bitcoin, but different algorithms, for example, addressing the energy problem of bitcoin.

That's how we started looking into alternative consensus mechanism, that using coins itself to secure cryptocurrency. We came up with the ideas ourselves, but later we learned that some people were discussing related ideas on bitcointalk forums in 2011 as well. Overall I think proof-of-stake is a good term describing the general ideas. The difference is, in 2011 we were pretty much the only people committed to use pure proof-of-stake as consensus mechanism. Everyone else were just trying to see if proof-of-stake can provide some patchwork to bitcoin's proof-of-work.

You really want to put things like the block time and the number of coins generated in the PoW phase (was there one?)  in the ANN OP.  The tech specs basically.

Nice copy of Nxt thread layout. Let's see what more is new in Peercoin universe.

Nice copy of Nxt thread layout. Let's see what more is new in Peercoin universe.

Nice copy of Nxt thread layout. Let's see what more is new in Peercoin universe.