Topic: [SKY] Skycoin Launch Announcement - page 106. (Read 381579 times)

Unfortunately crypto-currency appears to lack an equivalently popular use case.

Terrifying. You are hitting a wall trying to go with traditional banking systems, also I recall Dwolla was involved with the feds seizing MtGox account.

This is the MP3 thing all over again, the music industry embraced the sharing technology so late that piracy was already miles ahead of them when they entered the market. I guess the same will happen to Bitcoin, most Banks will fail to embrace the technology and Bitcoin will get it's side market that sooner or later will make the traditional banking system obsolete. Anyone that has used Bitcoin to transact any amount of money over borders or to pay for any product online knows it. Bitcoin is freedom from banksters and governments.

Again how about we focus on real world problems:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10651033

Is this out?

Nice to see that the project is moving forward

+1
Nonetheless, while i agree the +600 alts will fade away, there are imho a handful of slots for alt-coins that posses a 'Focus Differentiation' strategy, which inherently gives them some unique sales proposition in a niche or defined market.

Examples are:
* Anonymity - there is a clear market for anonymous transactions, with Bitcoin delivering only pseudo-anonymity. A good contender is Darkcoin to lead this category, but Skycoin can deliver on that as well.

* Smart Contracts - there is a clear market for small decentralized apps, with Bitcoin not built to deliver due to scaling, block-rate, etc..., whereas either NXT or Ethereum can lead this category.

* Communication - there is clear need for a free, P2P, non-censored, border-less communication & hosting. Freenet is nice, and Tor works, but it's not "it". Skycoin can lead this category, in competition perhaps with MadeSafe.

As for the majority rest of alts. RIP.

You could be right about the BTC market, but if your observation refers to the altcoin market as well then I disagree this is a crashing market that has not yet bottomed, I would say the altcoin market is a disappearing one. This is an absolutely hopeless market of +600 shitcoins, operated by day traders and pathetic P&D scammers. None of the coins, not even NXT has a slight chance to make it, because there is nobody use altcoins in the real world. Ethereum perhaps will make it as smart contracts could address many real world business requirements and I thought, having this apparent development fire power and novel ideas Skycoin could make it as well permit that they can raise some money.

Who attempts to do an IPO in a crashing market that has not yet bottomed?

Obviously people lacking business experience.

Sorry I have been critical, because I sigh when I see technically capable developers who share some of my concerns about the macroeconomics of the world, not respect that they need someone more experienced to lead them.

But that is the way it works. People only learn from experience. We can't give them experience with words. Especially not very smart guys; they are not going to listen to me.

amen

i literally heard gospel music in the background while reading  

The Skycoin IPO is the typification of struggling and quite likely all future altcoin projects. The altcoin market has been completely destroyed by the endless scams of 2014, and now very worthy projects like Skycoin is having serious difficulties to get started. This is one of the most remarkable, innovative and technically sound project, with clearly one of the best developers around crypto, but there are very little interest in the IPO. Quite unfortunate really, and knowing that how many scammers, douchebags and all kind of fucking human parasites took money from crypto, it is really sad that a worthy project Skycoin fail to raise the money.

As for the price, it seems users have serious issue with the price of Skycoin. Please correct me if I am wrong, but how the price is relevant in a project that is trying to crowdfund its operation? Currently even the Bitcoin price is an arbitrary number, nobody knows why Bitcoin price is $270 today and not $27 or $2,700, so how it is unacceptable for many users that the Skycoin price is just a completely arbitrary number at this stage? What makes users who are worried about the coin price think that a cheaper coin price would yield more profit, I mean why that would be better if the Skycoin dev would offer twice as much coin for half price, how that would make this a more rational investment? Crowdfunding investments are completely speculative and I thought it is based on trust and liking the developer and idea instead of a rational calculation, and then hope the developer will pull off the idea.

I think this ipo is becoming a bit of a disaster also at this time.
I have bitmessaged for a few coins but no reply yet.
Things are going very slow.

Apart from the slow progression, the coins are way overpriced at the moment. I consider that they should be valued at under a cent ($0.01 or less), Just like bitcoin was when it started. And there are five times more skycoin than bitcoin.
I wanted to get many more but the price is quite problem at this very early stage.

It's 280 USD/BTC now.......16% profit lost if IPO price is still 240 USD/BTC

yep!
Given the Bitcoin price is too low right now and with a brilliant future, I do not think it is a good time to invest in this project with Bitcoin ---- unless the skycoin IPO is priced by Bitcoin other than Dollar. 

@Skycoin, bitcoin price is 260 dollar now, you guys should adjust the IPO price to 260 BTC/USD

I wrote my response to your post before you wrote your post:

CoinJoin's denial-of-service vulnerability redux?

Ok, thanks for keeping us up to date.

IPO Update:

I have not sent out receipts or test coins yet.

The messages are being processed by hand. If instructions were too long, just
- install Bitmessage
- send message to BM-2cU8XJp3GPVQG75ZwMjiyzdDEa9eD4B7iM
- include how many Skycoin you want. At 10 cents per Skycoin. You will get receipt back.
- send contact information and a bitcoin address in case we need to return coins
- send us a Skycoin address where you want the coins

You will receive receipt
- There should be some test coins in your address
- send bitcoin for receipt and rest of coins will show up



You should include email or bitcoin talks, qq-chat or other identity information in case we have to contact you. You must send us a Bitcoin address we can send bitcoin back to if we need to.

Preferred Format:

```
contact: bitcointalks:rockhill
bitcoin_addr:113n1hdJFN7R61fMncQr14TmnbcVQ7cBgP
skycoin_addr: ZWhZtjwXMS46cpDxfRwQyxxKPhqwsQu8oN
coins_requested: 9600

good luck!
```

This is an example message that is good. You can include a message below the IPO request.

Good Article on Bitcoin:

This is the Council on Foreign Relations publication. It generally predicts five to twenty years out institutional changes and what is on the horizon before it happens. The topics addressed are issues of concern to the CFR and not necessarily reflect official position or consensus among the elite, but .

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143162/paul-vigna-and-michael-j-casey/bitcoin-for-the-unbanked

There is a clear split. The central banks dont like Bitcoin, the tax authorities are neutral because it is so heavily centralized on Coinbase and Bitpay that it can be taxed automatically. The income is "matchable" if it goes through bitpay/coinbase.

The upper tiers support Bitcoin and vaguely hope it may be able to reign in the FED or generally believe it will promote justice in the world. They see banks seizing houses they dont own and selling them without even pretense. They understand the FED and financial sector group is too powerful to be restrained by law. During the "financial crisis" they grabbed a company with 100 billion dollars in assets and forced into insolvency using a government regulator, on a rumor they caused and then "sold" the company to themselves for 2 billion dollars. This is literally "You dont own that" and they grab your property and give it to themselves. They cannot be restrained by law or government. They are government, it is the same group of people under different badges and titles. Or they grab trillion of dollars from county and give it to themselves, creating a debt that needs to be tax farmed from the public.

There is a sincere intention that technologies like Bitcoin may get the poor or anyone with a cell phone onto the global financial system. Many people will have Bitcoin, cell phones and internet before they get electricity or running water. The real politik is that Bitcoin may evolve into something that can impose some discipline on governments and reign in the FED.

There is a split between the interests. The people at the top want to continue the current system at the international level and the people below it want it abolished or dont understand it. The top level banks have determined that Bitcoin is immature and that is not viable and does not pose a threat to their powers. It doesnt allow the slaves to escape the plantation. They believe Bitcoin should be studied carefully but is not significant in its implications to their current operations.

Bitcoin is really a war of the 1% against the 0.00001%.

Using the github source from 20 hours ago or so, I left the daemon up overnight but it didn't manage to connect to any peers -- all connection attempts timed out, then only a series of 'requesting dht peers' appears in the log.

Research Update:


Homomorphic secret sharing

I think we now have homomorphic secret sharing for for secp256k1. This means that Skycoin can do multisig transactions without having an explicit multisig transaction. Multisig transactions happen outside of the blockchain are not a different transaction type than non-multisig transactions. There is no way to tell them apart on the blockchain.

Background
- there is a basepoint b on the curve
- there is a group operation that takes two points on the curve and generates a new point on the curve
- you apply the base point to itself N times as the operation (exponention of the base point in the curve)
- You choose a random 256 bit integer, N. This is your private key. Your public key is the base point raised to the power of N

You have two people
- one generates a private key N and public key P
- the other generates a private key M and public key Q
- They exchange public keys. Each other raises the other's public key to the power of their private key
- They both arrive at the same public key
- They hash the public key to generate an address

This is implemented in the cipher module as cipher.ECDH(seckey, pubkey)

That is the multisig address. The coins at that address can only be spent if one of the parties obtains both the private keys.

So for A to send coins to B, then A discloses the private key N to B. Now B can spend the coins but A cannot. So B owns the coins. The coins have been transferred, without the "transaction" being on the blockchain or the address even have been changed. B can now move those coins.

The question is whether one of the parties can choose a "weak" private key that allows exploitation (faking a signature or allows the private key of the other party to be easily calculated). It has to be proven, that if a weak key can be found that allows signatures to be faked or the private key recovered, that it allows the solution to the discrete logarithm problem on the curve.

For instance, if someone chooses a small private key, then they can recover the other persons key if it is possible to do square roots over the elliptic curve operation. However, the square root operation appears to be equivalent to solving the discrete logarithm problem (however, not certain).

Continuous Settlement and Clearing

We still need explicit multi-sig with timeout eventually, for exchange infrastructure and settlement. This allows an infinite steam of micropayments of potentially millions of payments, with only a single transaction appearing on the blockchain.
- A puts coins in multisig output with signatures from A and B required to spend
- the output becomes spendable by A alone after a week (to prevent coins from being held hostage)
- A and B settle every minute (millionths of a coin) and create a valid multisig transaction with the updated balance, paid from the coins A put into the output. However, the transaction is not published to the blockchain until very end
- If B disappears, then A will get their coins back after the lockup period. B cannot steal the coins without signature or private key from A.
- A cannot double spend the coins to another address without B
- we may need to place a "max time" property or ensure that earlier transactions do not settle before the largest transaction if the whole transaction stream is published.
- B loses coins if an earlier transaction from the stream is published, so A will be attacker. If there is a max time that each transaction can be published and is valid, theft is limited, but A can get their coins back if they knock B off network so window expires. Then B will be unable to execute the spend transaction. There are a series of problems here that make this not simple.

This allows continuous settlement and clearing between peers, without going through blockchain at all, until the transaction is finally published and executed. This is the cornerstone a decentralized exchange infrastructure.

Skycoin settles in a second anyways, so this is more useful for Bitcoin. It is technical curiosity and I am not sure how useful it will be. It is definitely useful for Bitcoin because of longer block time, but does not seem to add anything to Skycoin and only increases the technical complexity.

Minimalist Protocol

The simplest protocol, uses the 2 of 2 homomorphic ECC multi-sig in the first part, with a timeout that allows an output to be spendable without a signature, but only to a specific address. This is a standard transaction with a timeout, that allows it to be spendable to particular address after certain time, if it has not otherwise been spent.

On balance, I still have not found a use-case where the complexity, security and attack problems from a scripting language are balanced out with something more than 1% of users will ever use.