Finally a thread about a new coin worth reading about. Colour me interested.
Few questions;
1: How far away do you think this is from testing?
Dunno really. It depends on how long it takes me to figure out QT and adapt the Bitcoin source I started with. I've worked out the CLI and Daemon to use "multivalent amounts" (valence 0 = base cryddits, valence 1 = tumbler coins) and an "amount" as a concept is replaced throughout that code with a map of valences to coin amounts.
Incidentally, there can easily be a lot more than two valences - if another use is found for "colored coins" that requires another valence of coin amount, that's simple to implement.
But this has become a problem with QT because they don't provide anything like an input or output widget for something that bizarre - the QT code wants to handle int64 input and output through number-entry and number-display widgets, and so far I haven't figured out how to make the colored-amount widgets that I want to replace them.
2: Do you see any potential problems or difficulties in implementing some of the features you mentioned?
Not technical problems as such. The clients have yet to learn about "tumbling," which is why I hedged that that feature may not be available initially. But there is no particular further problem with implementing it. I will have to crawl through the protocol for exchanging bids and offers, and the block making code for using bids and offers to construct transactions without further input from the bidders. It was moderately complicated to work out the proxy signature scheme needed to make it work, but I found it in Schneier's book "Applied Cryptography."
3: Coloured denominations; they will have a fixed value, correct? They simply serve as an alternative to dealing in decimalisation?
Yes. I'm tired of hearing the crap about people being discouraged because they can only own part of a Bitcoin. I wanted to give them an easy alternate way to think about it.
4: How does one obtain a stake in CC?
What I'm planning to do (in fact have already the code to do) is extract public addresses from the Bitcoin blockchain, excluding coinbase keys and blatant speculation purchases (the buy-and-sell exchange floors are easy to spot). What I haven't done yet is write code to do the patch-and-join to figure out which sets of addresses are likely to be owned by the same entity. In each such set of addresses, I'll pick one at random to use in the initial distribution. So, hopefully, every owner of Bitcoin who has actually used it to make a transaction will have one tranch of coins (assuming they haven't lost the public key). In practice, some will have more than one, but that can't be helped. If that amounts to some too-small number of addresses, I'll do the same with the Litecoin blockchain.
So, at the original distribution, it'll be "The Altcoin you already own." And people will find when they download a client and paste in their bitcoin public addresses, that one tranche of cryddits will already be assigned to at least one of their addresses. But this will completely ignore how much or how little Bitcoin they have at that address -- everybody's getting an even stake as far as I can discern who "everybody" is.
If you want more than the even stake, the strategy is simple: download the client as early as you can and put up a node. The proof-of-stake awards (3 percent interest on a million coins) will be divided per share among those who are actually running nodes, and shares initially are (nearly) equal. So if you get in while not very many people have started running nodes, that's to your advantage.
Also, you can use that large initial dump that I expect as a buying opportunity. You'll probably be able to buy a whole bunch of cryddits for not very much money (or Bitcoin) at all.
Otherwise, make sure that you have used Bitcoin to actually make a purchase! I'm going to completely ignore keys corresponding to amounts that have merely been purchased from mtgox, btce, bitstamp, etc. So if you've never yet used your bitcoin to actually make a purchase, you're likely to not get an initial tranche.
Finally, another winning strategy is DEFEAT MY BEST EFFORTS! If you can arrange the Bitcoin blockchain so that your addresses are not linkable by patch-and-join, you'll get more than one tranche of cryddits. Watch closely as I fail to care too much. Best efforts are best efforts, I'm not going to sweat that they aren't perfect.