Topic: Tau-Chain and Agoras Official Thread: Generalized P2P Network - page 78. (Read 309762 times)

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/qtums-block-size-limit-will-be-governed-by-smart-contracts-heres-how-cm794200

seems Qtum try to solve the same problems?


Qtum’s Block Size Limit Will Be Governed by Smart Contracts: Here’s How

Qtum is an up-and-coming smart contract platform set to launch in September of this year. Sometimes ambitiously referring to itself as "China's Ethereum," the project recently raised $15 million in three days through a successful crowdsale or "Initial Coin Offering" (ICO).
On a technical level, the Qtum blockchain will resemble Bitcoin, but will integrate an Ethereum-like Virtual Machine on top for smart contracting purposes. Additionally, Qtum is in the process of implementing a "Decentralized Governance Protocol" ( DGP ). This DGP will have smart contracts determine the blockchain's parameter selection, like its block size limit.

Jordan Earls, also known as "earlz" online, is the co-founder and lead developer of Qtum.


"We believe this will allow for Qtum to be the first self-modifiable, self-regulating and ultimately self-aware blockchain," he told Bitcoin Magazine .

 The Concept
Any blockchain has a number of parameters. In Bitcoin, this of course includes the 1 megabyte block size limit. But it also includes the block reward (currently 12.5), the block interval time (ten minutes) and more. These and three other parameters apply to Qtum as well.

But there are two basic problems with needing to have these parameters. First, they are very hard to get "right," in so far as that's even possible, since different parameters benefit different use cases. And second, in a decentralized system, these parameters can be very hard to change.

"The core rationale and problem we had when designing this is that we will release Qtum with some initial parameters that we try to make perfect," Earls told Bitcoin Magazine . "But we don't know what the ecosystem will look like one month after release, much less one year. So, we designed DGP. That way, we can tune the blockchain to be as usable and secure as possible without needing to fork, just to change a simple number from 1 to 2."

Qtum plans to realize this way of "tuning the blockchain" by doing what it does best: The DGP will consist of relatively straightforward smart contracts made up of blockchain-readable pieces of executable code.

"We have open-source smart contracts which implement the rules for changing the parameters, which will then be accepted by all nodes. It implements a fairly simple governance system of 'user keys' and 'admin keys.' There is a modifiable parameter in the contract which determines how many keys of each type must vote in order to approve a change to, say, the block size limit."

Importantly, through the use of smart contracts, these keys can actually represent more than just a regular user per key: Each key can represent a defined group.

"Perhaps one key represents a majority of hash power; or a key represents coin votes by coin holders; or a key acts according to a dynamic limit based on how full blocks are. Or even oracles: a key can effectively be controlled by people or servers that act based on input not directly readable by the blockchain itself, like USD market price for transaction fees. It's extremely flexible."

Qtum will almost certainly include smart contracts for the block size limit, the gas schedule to determine the price of different smart contract operations (for which Ethereum hard forked several times) and the minimum gas price. Additionally, it might deploy smart contracts for block interval times, block rewards, maximum gas per block and maximum script size or signature operations per transaction or block.

Changing the Rules
Embedding the parameter selection in smart contracts is clever and having all node software adjust accordingly even more so. However, an arguably even harder problem is not so much what parameter is decided on, but who gets to decide in the first place and how.

In Qtum, the initial parameters will be set by the developers based on their testing and measurements.

"For instance, we've already determined that a block size of 2 megabytes should be reasonable," Earls said.

After that, the initial set of rules to define the parameters can be changed themselves within the rules of the system, too.

A smart contract could, for example, start out relatively simple: It requires a majority of core developers to change the rules of the contract. Then, if a majority of core developers decides that instead of just developers, it should also include a majority of coin holders, the contract can be changed to a two-of-two multisig contract. From that moment on, one key would represent the developers, while the other key would represent the majority of coin holders. Next, if both developers and coin holders agree, hash power can have a seat at the table, too, and so forth.

As such, Qtum smart contracts can change not only the parameters of the system, but also how the parameters themselves can be changed.

That said, as Earls acknowledged, the Decentralized Governance Protocol can't actually solve all governance problems. It's specifically designed to make certain predefined parameters more easily adjustable, and it can indeed even change how these parameters can be adjusted to some extent.

But the Decentralized Governance Protocol does not and cannot apply to network rules that aren't among these predefined parameters. Protocol changes outside of these specific parameters would still require a typical upgrade mechanism, like a hard fork or a soft fork.

"I believe if Bitcoin had DGP technology, then we would still see all this fighting about SegWit vs Bitcoin Unlimited, etcetera," Earls acknowledged. "But, DGP would have been used in the meantime to increase the block size to something conservative but reasonable like 2 megabytes or 4 megabytes, to avoid all the transaction speed problems. Meanwhile, the developers and community could figure out a more permanent solution."

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.



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quite same way bitcoin is secured. omni is encoded over the bitcoin blockchain

How secure is it? I still don't like idea having coins laying around at a 3rd party places. At least not before i get my coins back from mt.gox, cryptsy, mintpal and all the other scammers.
Not saying Omni is a bad thing, just wondering how security is enforced.

i only develop a minimal core for collaborative development, based on discussions and logic. from there, i will be the least lonliest dev on the planet, and we all develop the final tau and agoras together

Hello Ohad, and creating the intelligent programming language TAU and the TauChain string is not a task too large for a single person ?. Then you have to develop Agoras smart market.

I'm looking forward to having TauChain come out and be able to collaborate in the network.

As soon as the portfolio of Bittrex is fixed I will put my agoras tokens in Omni wallet

they have a little wallet problem (txfees related) and they work with the omni team to fix it. i know because im subscribed to their communication (bittrex-omni)

I want to assume that those are constant updates delivered by Ohad and is a good sign of project progress

What's up w/ Bittrex? Wallet has been under maintenance for days. 

right now im the only dev, but with a lot of help around (+5 people). the state is working on explanations (of the important parts, then move to code) and fortunately im not alone here. for more info can see on this thread.


as for lunyr, doesnt seem they have a way to price knowledge. and nonprecise pricing is a security hole, as it can be exploited. that'd be one tiny little point about lunyr

That sounds like Lbrary, some kind of wikipedia on the blockchain. I think that would fit as a "module" to the concept of tau, but nowhere near the whole system.

Hi Ohad hope all is well.

I saw this website, https://lunyr.com/

"Lunyr is an Ethereum-based decentralized world knowledge base which rewards users with app tokens for peer-reviewing and contributing information"

Are they trying to do what you do using ethereum?

Hello Ohad.

How many developers are the TauChain project team? Are you developing your own or are there other participants?

Regarding the project What is the current state of the project?

1. You can also buy the agoras on bittrex.
2. This is the coin/token to be used right now with Tau. I assume its used to finance the project and will be the first/major abstracted value for Tau.
3. I would be interested in that as well I guess it will take some time. It is quite a project.

Cheers
MM

1. I want invest in Tau chain, how can I do this?
2. That is Agoras Tokens?
3. When completed the development?

right now, on btc, everyone gets diluted, same %% for all. that, if we take the coin generation part (block reward).
txfees are not newly generated coins on btc.
so this model can be translated one to one into a fixed-coinbase currency.
however ofc creativity is possible and welcome in optimizing the ways the various "taxes" are determined

The tax approach is a very interesting idea. Do you mean taxing every account no matter if the user makes transactions or not when creating a block? How about transaction fee? Do you think the system should charge transaction fee on top of the tax?

this can also be decided by the public to a very large extent. but following are my personal thoughts.
i claim that new coin generation in a fair economy is meaningless.
because if you generate new coins, then by the fairness requirement, you need to distribute them equally, but then it'd be like adding a zero to all balances, which is meaningless.
one may come up with a way to truely define and measure "economical growth" and have inflation according to it. but i don't think anyone is "there" yet. maybe in an electronic economy like agoras and with artificial intelligence like tau we'll be able to achieve it.
even if such formula will be found, there's still strong rationales in a fixed amount of coins.
as for mining, as any other housekeeping of the network, they better be incentivized. therefore in my opinion the "tax" approach is better here: that everyone give some fraction to miners up to amounts that the public agrees on. the more hashes, the more security and value on the chain. the public will have to buy security and pay what it costs, directly and not by dilution. this is more transparent and removes a need to print new coins.
agoras will also support risk-free interest without printing new coins (thanks to black&scholes theory and hedge markets), but that's a different story.

ATM there are 42M agoras tokens in sale, some of them easily scoopable at bittrex (the ico hasn't ended yet, and the remaining coins will be burned). They represent the total 3500 future coins / actual agoras token.

So if assuming Agoras will use PoW, how the inflation will work? In that case, the Agoras tokens will be like pre-mined coins and in the future the miners will also mine new coins, right? btw, I am not against the inflation and mining at all.