Topic: rpietila Altcoin Observer - page 6. (Read 387519 times)

well all discussion here is somewhat advertisement for coins but I would seriously like to get opinions on the following situation:

was clams ever discussed here?

clams were distributed to all non-dust bitcoin, dogecoin and litecoin adresses somewhen a year ago - so every non-dust adress of the three coins got 4.6 clams (around 3,1 million coins initital distribution). they use a pows, which is in im my opion a proof of stake which randomly (?) gives 1 clam every minute to every supporter of the decentralised network.

well all of this is quite boring but clams have a purpose. they are the in-house-currency of one of the most trusted dice sites: just-dice. I think dooglus is a well known person within the cryptosphere - he managed days back a very large amount of btc on just-dice and never ran. now his casino has an inhouse investment of around 540k clams (around 650k$)

what is interesting is that clams have an interest rate of around 0,2% per day on just-dice (according to dooglus) - this is all fine but you had this massive exchange risk given that clams are one of the hundreds of altcoins flying around. what basically changed today is that clams are now on margin trade on poloniex. theoretically you could insure the exchange rate of your casino investment, but you have to find someone who is giving a loan on clams.

since you have the interest rate of 0,2% per day on just-dice for clams, you have to find a good reason to give loans at a much lower rate on poloniex. the counterparty is risk is at least as low on just-dice as it is on poloniex etc. pp.

compare a 0.2% per day with the other interest rates: it think btc has around 0.07%, xmr around 0.004%, dash around 0.02% - this should have some implications.

given this special situation I assume we will see an interesting price discovery regarding clams

opinions regarding the situation?

More on the CK plans can be found in the latest post.

There is no need for much funding. Monero is very little funded, and more actively developed than Bytecoin. Also CK did not really receive any funding. Same with Bitcoin.

The marginal benefit of money when doing something truly great is almost zero. CK character "Town" is paradoxically awash with money ($10,000s), but we did not find any use for it, we would like to have marketing but did not find a way to spend money on that +EV. After the release, unless it is required for development, we'll just return it to the characters.

Bytecoin is still being developed actively. I wonder where do they get the funding, from the premine?

Well, Bytecoin announcing a GUI release this week might have worked miracles. Maybe we can move them into announcing some OpenBazar clone, to speed it up over there at Dwarfpool 

Honestly, looks like all the groundwork has been laid for the Grand Finale - The GUI. And it all fell into place so quickly, relatively speaking.
Once we have a true "Killer App" GUI out (with the merchant tools too I believe), I think then we will know where Monero is going. Though recent movements hint... up. 

Let's talk Bitcoin has interviewed fluffypony (Monero core developer)
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/ltb-e202-understanding-monero.

Furthermore Monero was now added been to shapeshift.io:

https://twitter.com/ShapeShift_io/status/585570515139563521

And the pull request for the database version in the official master was made:

https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/pull/256


Best Monero day ever? :-)

I am not attacking anything. Just saying that like nuclear weapons, you need to first have them before you can use them. Perhaps nobody has the nuclear weapons to attack NXT, or the ones who have, don't gain by using them.

Just because something has a marketcap, does not mean that there is much to be gained by destroying it.

Indeed, it is a weak argument. My thought: What to tell people on here that do not want to read kushti's or vitalik's paper and still say that every PoS is vulnerable to n@s?
So let's fight Joe average's reasoning with the same.

but still, if n@s was possible and a hacker could easily gain a lot of money doing it, it makes you wonder why no one succeeded. It's been almost 2 years since Nxt is out.


yes. But people on here don't care.

One argument that I'm not particularly fond of, but is often used by supporters of PoS is the "if an attack is possible, why hasn't anyone done it yet?". I think that's a pretty weak deflection and it reminds be of recent Darkcoin supporters defending their anonymity implementation with the same logic, i.e. "why hasn't anyone deanonymized a Darksend transaction yet?".

Kushti's recent research seems to indicate that long range N@S attacks aren't an issue on NXT at least. I really would like to see more people from #bitcoin-wizards and others who are capable of academic level criticism take the time to give some proper responses and critiques. Since it seems like it should be a pretty big deal that the perceived major flaw of PoS isn't really much of an issue in reality. The lack of responses might indicate something positive, but I'd still rather see some more people take some shots at it even if it turns out to be flawed in some aspects. It's the only way the technology can progress.

So you attack point 3. and say that currently, an attacker would not gain anything?

edit: Note that market cap for Nxt has been 100M in the past

In my understanding, n@s is a capability you don't lose. So it's better to wait until there is something to gain.

Do you agree that, for Nxt (don't know others):

1. N@S attack is possible (let's say to generate all blocks with only 1% of stake)
2. criticism of n@s attack is "agenda of convincing people of something untrue"
3. There is financial or ideological incentive to do N@S
4. Successful n@s attack has never been observed in reality

This looks paradox, no?
Possible explanations for 4.:

- Nobody ever tried (improbable, because 3.)
- Some guys tried, but weren't successful

If the latter, then either n@s is too tricky and no hacker in the world has been able to do it up to now, or it's impossible.

It's funny that you say this, because in my experience I get the impression that the "motivated" research is done by all the detractors with a financial interest in Bitcoin and/or PoW.

All else being equal, a robust PoS system would be vastly superior to PoW. And looking at it objectively as a Bitcoin user you would think that people would be actively pursuing even the slightest possibility of establishing PoS in Bitcoin. The 'stakes' are massive, the amount of waste both literally in terms of energy and economic waste is huge. But in general Bitcoiners are derisive and dismissive of even entertaining the idea that PoS should be considered or researched.

Even if it doesn't work out the potential benefits are huge. PoS is the most important invention in cryptocurrency since Bitcoin itself. There's no single idea with a higher expected economic value to cryptocurrency than PoS.

Also, hot off the press and related, Vitalik's latest paper includes a few pages about Nxt's algo and he seems to believe that Nxt is 'cryptoeconomically secure'

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/nxt-vitalik-b-confirms-the-nxt-algo-is-secure-1015354

More "motivated" "research" perhaps? Probably not worth reading..

Are you suggesting there are A) solution proposals for the "Byzantine's Generals' problem" in CS in general or B) there are (solution) proposals for a better, secured (not flawed) PoS available in the scientific world?

If you meant A), there is a an obvious misunderstanding, because obvious I (as many people do) know about them.

Be careful of putting yourself or others in one camp.

Does Reddcoins Proof of Stake Proof  / Proof of Velocity fit transactions-as-proof-of-stake?
FWIW, Factom is plannig to use the same or similar PO* model.

So you haven't read it? All of it is about Nothing at Stake, where did you get the impression they are unaware of it?

Anyone can reproduce their findings with the models they published, if they were motivated to. I didn't think anyone took N@S seriously anymore, at least no one has put forward anything approaching a rebuttal to what they have done.

Nobody who looks into this problem seriously can possibly be unaware of Nothing-At-Stake.  If they pretended not to know about it, then they were not actually looking into the problem.  Instead, you may conclude, as I did, that they are doing "research" about as valid as that of climate change deniers and creation-science shills.

In other words, that was "motivated" research, with the agenda of convincing people of something untrue.  Ask yourself whose motives it aligns with, and you will find the man behind the curtain.