Topic: Spin-offs: bootstrap an altcoin with a btc-blockchain-based initial distribution - page 16. (Read 53616 times)

haha... very true!
I think it would be best to bootstrap not using holders of BTC, but using only mined BTC - ie the private keys of the coinbase transaction regardless of whether those coins were later spent or not. Reward actual miners of BTC instead of current holders!
The downside is that if the miners already spent the coins then it's likely that lots of those private keys are lost.
Also, it works with p2pool, but in a traditional pool the owner could use your mined coins to claim these bootstrapped coins... OTOH you already trusted the pool OP with your hashrate once, so it would be acceptable to assume you'd to trust them again...

I guess this reasoning would apply to the proposed case... if you trusted the exchange with your BTC it would seem acceptable to assume you'd trust them your bootstrapped coins...

Exchange owners can do whatever the hell they want with your coins, including run off with them, as has been clearly demonstrated many times.

You don't truly own your coins unless you, and you alone, control the private keys.

So..an exchange owner can use our bitcoin to claim these bootstrapped coins?

One thing people will have to watch for, as they spend their spin-off coins, is privacy implications. If you have a bitcoin address A, replicated to various spin-offs, then each time you notice you have a non-zero balance in some spin-off and decide to spend it, new spendings from address A go out into the public domain. (It might not be called "A" in the spin-off's preferred widely-promulgated syntax - which might use a different prefix, error-correcting suffix, etc. than bitcoin's - but the underlying pubkeyhash must, of necessity, be the same.) The effect is the same as if someone working entirely within one coin accumulated multiple txouts to one address and then spent them to different recipients on different occasions. Blockchain-watchers can learn a lot from this, which is why it's not recommended. Well, with spin-offs, they can learn the same sort of things.

Naturally, coinjoin and the like will spring up in the various spin-off communities, and people who know what they're doing can mitigate the privacy dangers. There is, though, the worry that any particular spin-off might have a rather small community, and not really support good coinjoin mixing.

Having said all that, I must say I'm really impressed with the whole spin-off concept. So much so, that after dithering for a while, I've decided to abandon my "Splash: Ripple without the pre-mine" project, and leave it to someone else to fork Ripple in spin-off style, i.e. starting with the Bitcoin UTXO-set - or, to be precise, the subset that translates into the rather impoverished Ripple address syntax (no multi-sig, no scripts, just single pubkeyhashes).

So, grand announcement time: I hereby relinquish the name "Splash", the slogan "Ripple without the pre-mine", and the currency abbreviation "XSP" to whoever is first to do this. (Or they could do it in Counterparty's style, with XSP minted by BTC being burned. Basically I relinquish to whoever is first to do a Ripple fork without an allocation by software special-case fiat to the developers, or to any other special cases.)

So there you are! You can tell I'm really taken with the spin-off idea, can't you? But please, everybody, bear those privacy aspects in mind!

Yes, that's the point.  The low-risk strategy for current bitcoin holders is to do nothing.  If people dump their "free aether," then this is evidence that they don't value it.  If people trade bitcoin for more aether, then this is evidence that they do value it.  This expedites the price discovery process because you bootstrap the alt-coin with an already diverse potential user base and with a wealth distribution you already know to be efficient for bitcoin.  

This is why it is good. Those who risk capital in the Bitcoin are the early adopters and all be a part of this. Market forces reward the best stewards and the naive suffer the stupidity of there actions.

Best case just hold and wait and see.

You yourself said it. The market will redistribute aether to those who see value in it. so it will have to go through the same growing pains of any other coin, only with a magnified effect, because by the time people figure out that the aether they can claim has value without understanding it's potential, they will start dumping. so every boom will be followed by a super dump by people who hold something they don't value. This will go on for quite a few price jumps as every time, more and people people realize that they can claim aether. You can't assume that just because you give someone something, she/he will value it

You do the signing yourself. You don't have to give your private key to anyone.

I'm probably mis-interpreting this..

No.

So you have to supply your BTC privkeys in order to get the new coins? Doesn't anyone else see a security problem with this?

So many options now we just hope that wisdom and technical skill manifest in the same people. 

+1

This has been proposed before as a way to do any kind of bitcoin 2.0. Split and let the market decide which chain to support.

You could make a Bitcoin spin-off, and grow the sidechains off the spin-off instead of growing them off the original Bitcoin.

Are there any developers thinking of spinning - off there existing code to include Bitcoin distribution?
if not what are your concerns?

I just sent you a PM.  Let me know what you think.  

with that said, how are you planning on leading the charge on this?  i certainly am no coder.

Many people erroneously think the value of bitcoin comes primarily from its "features."  In my opinion, a large part of its value comes from the fact that it has been endlessly beaten-up since 2009 and remained resilient--bitcoin has in fact grown by leaps and bounds in spite the world's efforts to thwart it.

Side-chains are technically brilliant.  If there was a way to implement them without any changes to bitcoin they would have my support.  My concern is that the desire to facilitate experimentation of features with questionable utility may not outweigh the very real technical risk of implementing them and the potential loss of confidence that may result.  I will be able to make up my mind more definitively after I have studied the to-be-released side-chain white-paper.  

That being said, I think things will unfold exactly as they need to.  Spin-offs can become a reality very soon, where side-chains will take longer.  But the new awareness that both are possible helps take a hammer to pump-and-dump alt-coin schemes.  By the time side-chains ever have a chance to become reality, the perception that they are needed may have already waned.  

agreed.

and let us not forget that Adam's company is for-profit.  it's unacceptable to let a for-profit company come into Bitcoin and make hard coded changes to the protocol.  i don't care how well intentioned he may be, profits need to be made.  he's self admitted he missed the Bitcoin wave up.  is this his way of compensating?  i give due respect to his hashcash POW concept but that shouldn't blind us.

also, gmax is on record as being a long term Bitcoin skeptic.  in my debates with him i've found his views on politics, social interactions, and economics highly suspect.  Andreas and I had a terrible time with him back when he lead the charge to unilaterally ban Matonis and Ver from the Bitcoin.org Press Center.  that was a huge battle in the community.  we eventually won but he's been on my suspect list ever since.

as a result i find it interesting he is spearheading this idea as he feels it can "fix Bitcoin".

I worry more about the changes needed to bitcoin to support side chains than whatever it is that side chains do. They don't seem trivial enough for everyone to have high confidence in the firewall. I'm not sure they will ever get adopted for that reason, or that if they do it won't have negative affects on bitcoin deriving from the loss of confidence in the security.

But assuming the changes do get adopted and assuming the firewall is actually secure, then I still agree with you there could be less obvious knock-on effects. Then again, those could be positive. That's a big part of the intent of the proposal after all.