Topic: [RFC] æthereum: a turing-complete coin distributed as per bitcoin's blockchain - page 12. (Read 48633 times)

Simply brilliant.

Where do i get the wallet

I think this idea has been floating around already for some time, but never been really "noticed" or used in practice.  Ethereum is a very interesting concept, although I'm not fully convinced yet that it is practical - but I'm really looking forward to your launch and hope you can do it!  I fully agree with the arguments that the current Bitcoin balances are a good way to distribute new, experimental altcoins in a symbiotic manner to Bitcoin (rather than as competition).

With respect to the "few people hold lots of Bitcoins" argument:  If you launch Ethereum with an IPO, then those same few people with lots of coins can/will still buy lots of Ether.  (Which may even be only a tiny fraction of their coin holdings.)  So no change here.

my first impression is that i like this idea much better than Hill and Beck's Sidechain proposal.

1.  the initial distribution is fair and codified.  
2.  Bitcoin holders have everything to gain and nothing to fear from any altcoin clone distributed in this manner.  they are free to evaluate the altcoin on it's own merits as to whether they hold, sell, or even mine their aether.
3.  it's a much more effective separation from an altcoin; no firewall needed.  i have my doubts about how BTC's can traverse back and forth btwn the main Bitcoin blockchain and a Sidechain w/o interfering with the main chain function long term.  i believe there will be some risk.
4.  they have said they are forming a "company" with "core devs" who undoubtedly will be employed and/or shareholders.  this introduces potential bias and risk to Bitcoin from profit motives.
5.  Peter has introduced an ingenious way to set up a head to head competition btwn aether and ether that can be applied to any altcoin.  this has the potential to severely inhibit scamcoins and premines.  which is a good thing.
6.  altcoin devs still have an incentive to innovate.  if Bitcoin holders dump their free aether, as Peter suggests, the devs have the opportunity to scoop up cheap aether as testimony to the belief in the merits of their altcoin.

i eagerly await more information.

Yes. The correct way to implement this kind of distribution model is to pick a block number (eg. 290000), and say that bitcoins at that specific block are what gives you aethereum. Otherwise, you can claim some AETH with your BTC, deposit and withdraw from an exchange, claim more AETH, and repeat ad infinitum. For the system to be trust-free and secure, it would have to be based on private key signing, which means that you would have to have them in a personal wallet.

If you don't want to set up a new wallet and deal with different addresses another somewhat technical alternative is to use my pybtctool toolkit to generate a brainwallet and put your money all in the one address just before the nucleus happens. Pybitcointools/pybtctool includes Electrum message signing functionality with the "ecdsa_sign" command; here's an example session:

You can independently verify that 04334... is the public key corresponding to sha256(cow). Then you can easily sign a transaction to move funds back out. It's literally as easy as a command line utility possibly can be. But I personally would recommend for this group to do something similar to what we're doing and release an application which people can send their BTC to (it's client side so no security risk involved) such that the application signs at the appropriate time and then sends the BTC back out. Having easy-to-use tools for doing this kind of signing would really do a lot to help Bitcoin-based issuance models gain wider adoption.

Yes.  But the exact bitcoin block # that will be used for the nucleus will be telegraphed to the community with ample notice.  If you want to maximize your amount of free aether, simply ensure your coins are in an address that you control on the date the "snapshot" is taken, and then move them out again.  

My premise is simply that a bitcoin-blockchain-based clone will eat any promising alt coin.  æthereum is a realization of this scheme as applied to Ethereum.  Only with empirical data will we know if my premise is correct.  It seems like this idea is quickly spreading, however...


Here is a more complete discussion of the general theory:  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6148897

You need to have control of the private keys to the addresses, so no an exchange wallet would not likely work (unless there is an exchange out there that provides such capabilities.. of which I'm not familiar).

He said the date and time will be known well in advance, so on this day just move it to a personal wallet you have on your computer or a blockchain.info wallet.

Great idea, this would be the best gen 2 cryptocoin launch thus far!!

I wish you all the best!

What about BTC I hold at an exchange? Would I need to move all my BTC to a personal BTC wallet before nucleus?

The argument that a random distribution TO existing Bitcoin holders is inferior to some scheme mirroring the blockchain distribution is telelogical in nature.

Basically behind all the empty high sounding language, what you are advocating for your coin is some sort of PoS scheme for distribution. All I'm proposing is to add some "white noise" to a PoS distribution.

What you seem to be proposing is a lottery and would result in an extremely inefficient distribution in aggregate.  

By tempting users with unimaginable wealth during rallies and then threatening to take it all way during crashes, the bitcoin free market has become a highly-efficient computer continuously refining the answer to the question “what is the most efficient distribution of coins in a cryptocurrency?”  The point is that any other distribution would be eaten by the blockchain-based distribution because this is currently our best guess at the "most efficient distribution of coins" (whether you like it or not):

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6148897

Why wouldn't you just figure out a distribution mechanism to existing BTC wallets?

You could use some kind of distribution curve. Say setup some sort of Gaussian distributed random number generator whose mean is the total of coins you want to distribute divided by the number of wallets. Don't tell anybody what your doing until after the distribution to prevent gaming the system. Set the variance to what ever you want.

We've been talking about this since yesterday, but I see Levine just talked about a similar idea too:

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/e99-sidechain-innovation/#.U0X-TVdI964

The value is in bitcoin's blockchain.  A blockchain-based clone will eat any promising alt coin.  

The statement that the bitcoin wealth distribution is unfair is an ethical projection based on one's preconceived notions of fairness.  

What we know empirically is that over 5 years, 3 crashes, and $600,000,000 of unrecoverable mining costs, bitcoins have diffused across our user base and the resulting distribution has been logged to the blockchain.  By tempting you with unimaginable wealth during a rally and then threatening to take it all way during a crash, the free market has become a highly-efficient computer continuously refining the solution to the question “what is the most efficient distribution of coins in a cryptocurrency?

Whether you think wealth disparity is good or bad, the truth is that it is inevitable.  The existing bitcoin distribution is the most efficient of all coins in existence.  Thus, by cloning any interesting alt (e.g., NxT) with the exact distribution contained in the blockchain, the freely-distributed clone naturally becomes superior to the expensive pre-mined version.  The clone automatically has the largest user base and a highly diffused distribution.

Why would you purchase NxT if you received bNxT for free?  Why would you think that NxT would succeed more than bNxT when bNxT automatically has a vastly larger user base?


If cryptocurrency succeeds, everyone here will see themselves as early adopters.  The value is in the bitcoin blockchain.  By acquiring a spot on the blockchain, you will piggyback future innovations in cryptocurrency automatically.    

Ethereum is an ambitious project and may fail on technical grounds,
Could this block chain leveraged pre-mine be applied to existing open source altcoins like mastercoin or ProtoShares?

To attract developers, and support the original creators, would it be practical to create the pre-mined coins form 2 blockchains? i.e. supporting Ethereums blockchain and the Bitcoin blockchain eg. :

1)   claim æther by signing a private message on the Bitcoin blockchain.
2)   claim æther by signing a private message on the Ethereums blockchain.


I’d argue Bitcoin is better distributed than any altcoin.

The Bitcoin seed (pre-mine) does not need to represent 50% of all future mining, the original Bitcoin seed could represent just 25 or 10% of the pre-mined coins.

Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Wouldn't it just duplicate one of the main faults of bitcoin? That is, a lot of coins owned by a very small percentage of people?

Interesting idea but bitcoin has wealth concentrated at the top don't you this kind of scheme will only benefit the richest?

A fascinating property of this coin distribution method is that your æther coins are always waiting for you, even if you never claim them.  Every bitcoin user automatically becomes an æthereum user, as they are automatically awarded coins that can be freely claimed.  If you choose to do nothing, you would essentially become a "holder," and holders perform an important function in a cryptocurrency.  

The distribution mechanism of æthereum is such that many bitcoin users will become "holders" by default.  



We will have a detailed tutorial closer to launch, and let me say again that even if you do nothing you still retain ownership of the same amount of æther.  You only need to "claim" it if you wish to sell it or use it.  

Here is a simple example of how bitcoin-signed messages work:  Assume you control the private key to bitcoin address 1LiPtBZu91C4mqFC98EFrHLjwHwXE8cfrE.  Assume your æthereum address is "MyAethereumAddress".  You can sign this æthereum address with the private key to your bitcoin address using the "sign message" feature in the blockchain.info wallet (other wallets can do this to).  The resulting signature is

-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
MyAethereumAddress
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE-----
1LiPtBZu91C4mqFC98EFrHLjwHwXE8cfrE
HKjPUDueVly2uqcFqxcQNox+IHA9pCgUHXMs+6f9BDN+rkGWRy6Sb04VYmDMADDizc9BK09Iv2getRbiQeUfkAE=
-----END BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----

By posting this to the æthereum network, you've provided cryptographic proof that you control the bitcoins at address 1LiPtBZu91C4mqFC98EFrHLjwHwXE8cfrE without revealing your bitcoin private key.  The æthereum network will thus recognize that you can rightfully claim the same percent of æther that this key controls of bitcoin, just like how a bitcoin miner awards himself a coinbase output as a block reward.  

1LiPtBZu91C4mqFC98EFrHLjwHwXE8cfrE has a balance of 0.  But let's assume it had a balance of 1.28 BTC when the nucleus was formed and let's assume the total number of bitcoins in circulation at this time was 12,800,000 BTC.  This means that you control 1.28 / 12,800,000 = 0.00001% of the bitcoin market cap.  You would be awarded (for free) 0.00001% of the pre-mined æther.  

You could sell your æther, hold it, or purchase more.  

I'm a newbie so I'm not a technical expert at using bitcoin wallets. Could you provide a dummies guide on how to sign an æther address under your control with a bitcoin private key?

I know this is very basic stuff to an expert but if you want mass adoption you need to explain a technical step like this in a way that even technophobes can understand.