Topic: Theymos's list of altcoins with some technical merit - page 6. (Read 33299 times)

I am glad to hear your voice on different coins, you views help me on investing as I don't have so much time to know every coin .

why is everyone so dismissive of Zcoin?

although described as a "clone" of Zcash, they appear to be heading in a different direction.

Thanks, this was an incredibly interesting read.

Would love to get your take on more of the currencies you didn't mention. 

I take from this post to hold bitcoin and mostly ignore alts, i agree .  What about namecoin you could do a review of that also? my understanding was that namecoin did infact offer something unique. Also what about blackbytes - which are linked to byteball and apparently anonymous - they are currently not traded on any exchange.

I think you leap frogged over the key point of initial distribution.
Which is tantamount to the launch of a currency.
It's like evaluating money based on the graphics on it or anti-forgery features.

Other than that some good insights.
I found the "Bitcoin Clone" comment offensive though.
You gave the same exact comment for Litecoin as you did Doge coin.
That is obscene !
theymos you know well that LTC was launched for a reason and Doge was for another.. $$$
Doge came out during the SCRYPT cloning craze of late 2013 era and was among countless others like Kitteh Coin.
All of them literally a clone with a new icon.
SCRYPT did not exist before LTC did it ?
Lumping them in together is fraudulent. 

And Ethereum ?
Where do i even begin to start ?
It was crooked from day one and rigged and manipulated before it even launched.
Care to explain why Coindesk kept running full page "news" stories about it before it even launched almost daily ?
Suspect it might have had something to do with the 100 BTC blocks bought up on launch day in mid 2014 ?
Lets rewind.. Coindesk ran a story when Doge died off (as i predicted)
They announced that they had been using ASICS to mine Doge quietly.
They said they made about a quarter million dollars and asked the public what to spend it on etc.
Hmmm ETH you say ?

Funny how you all seem to completely ignore the puppet masters playing a rigged game here.
Even when Butters quietly keeps announcing he is dumping yet more of his ETH "holdings"
And where may i asked did he get them from ?
It's been a long time since i looked at the web page list of titles and who is a paid employee.
Reminds me of Ripple and the trillions in premined coins all those guys got with just these few coins.

Here is a reminder.
Bitcoin and Litecoin were not premined.
Get it ?

Who cares right ? 

Nice list of altcoins. I am looking forward to your views on Neo and XEM.

What do you think of ZRX?

https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/0x/

is your upcoming list ordered? Does that mean you're doing bitbay next?

@hyperme.sh , there was no need for the two statements to have a logical link. They are related by the fact that they are intended to give perspective on factors relating to the valuation and success of a currency.

   I have been skeptical of PoS all along. My background is in economics and politics, however, and not computer science, which is why PoI seemed interesting to me.

     It seems though that you have invested a lot of time into refuting PoS as a viable alternative to PoW, and I don't disagree that the same shortcomings could apply to PoI. However, to keep importance high requires consistently transacting with accounts that one does not control ones self. Ultimately, this would seem to result in a net loss if one is not providing real utility to the network.

   As for the thousands of sock puppet accounts, I don't have proof, but nor is their proof that this morally dubious marketing strategy was so extensive. 1

     Also, you say there is no technical advancement, but made no comment on the multisignature transactions or the mosaic framework.

    What blockchain based forum are you referring to?

There’s no technological advancement in terms of the PoI aspect at least. NEM’s PoI is obscured PoS.


I acknowledge you were humble in your post. You’re aware that you are still learning and have a lot to learn. If you study this stuff full time for 4 years as I did, you still will not know everything.

The subtle factors on understanding deeply all the issues is well beyond the capabilities and effort expended by most everyone.

n00bs need someone to explain these issues in great detail and with care to explain them in a way laymen can understand. That is an enormous undertaking. I try to do it, but get only shit tested for doing so.

Theymos has a computer science background, but I'm presuming with high confidence that he simply does not delve into these technological issues on a full time basis. Also apparently he is only in his mid-20s, so he lacks the body of experience and knowledge that someone who has been doing computer science for 38 years has.


You have no proof. It is only your belief based on what you want to believe, because you really want to believe it is good. Based on what economic and technological fundamentals which refute the facts that have been presented?

They refused to use Facebook verification and other methods suggested to them. Why would they refuse if they wanted their coin to have some degree of trust in the distribution. Because they know fools will simply believe because the witless want to fall in the woodchipper.


Son you need to go to school and learn logic. The first sentence has nothing logically to do with the second. And the second sentence is not a cogent rebuttal to the mathematics and economics I have presented.


And pay the transaction fees to yourself, because you’re the oligarchy.

Thus PoI is just obfuscated PoS.

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Technically incorrect. The oligarchy controls the longest-chain (else PoS doesn’t function) and thus they can pay themselves all the transactions fees which they spend from their Sybil accounts. Thus their importance is high and free to them because there is nothing-at-stake.

Note section 7.6.1 Sybil Attack of the NEM white paper is not dealing with the case that the oligarchy spends the transaction fees to itself and is also in control of the longest chain. Their analysis is concerned with splitting accounts to fool the page rank algorithm, which is not necessary for what I am explaining.

Also the section 7.7 Nothing-at-Stake Problem is referring to longer range attacks, which is not the issue I am explaining below.


Steemit.com

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You’re apparently not fully knowledgeable about the technology so please stop spreading incorrect information.

The witnesses of Byteball don’t have to be trusted. They can’t corrupt anything. Properly learn how stability points work. Every majority of witness actions form a quorum and identify a new stability point which advances the total ordering to include recent transactions. Nobody should trust any new spend until it is confirmed by a stability point. There is no way to undo a stability point. The only harm the witnesses can do is if 50% (or I argue it must be 67% for correct security, thus if 33%) stop responding, then the chain is stuck and stability points do not move forward. Byteball added Byzantine agreement on top of a DAG, which is clever but Byzantine agreement although 100% final suffers from liveness failure risk (per the unavoidable tradeoffs in the fundamental FLP theorem). But Byteball has other serious flaws, which are enumerated in my shocking document.

It is entirely illogical to argue that the onus is on us to prove that IOTA will work if they will remove the Coordinator and let it run decentralized.

The onus is on IOTA to stop running a centralized cryptocurrency, because centralized is absolutely meaningless for us.

And I guarantee you it will blow up if they remove the Coordinator, unless they can earn enough money from the scam to dominate the transactions with a centralized Sybil attack in order to force a longest-chain using only their oligarchy controlled transactions. Again this will just be another oligarchy in control.

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@Traxo is sleeping. Mods leave @Traxo out of this, he is a real person who is not me. He is Europe and I am in Asia. He is just trying to help the readers understand, but really I’m telling him to just let BCT remain ignorant. So I will sacrifice this BCT account. I can come back any time I want, but it doesn’t mean I want to come back to this shit hole forum where snobbish idiots think they (or Blockstream idiots) know it all. Academics such as this one don’t usually produce correct results!



I have read it, cited it and Vitalik’s blogs numerous times. And you are still not understanding.



You’re referring to longer range nothing-at-stake attacks. Whereas, I’m referring you to the fact that in the short-term there is no objectivity either. It has nothing to do with the fact that offline clients coming online have no objectivity. Rather the point that is being made to you is that even clients which are online have no objectivity, because all of the near-term (even a chain of a single block divergent) forks are potentially valid. And there is nothing burned thus there is no penalty cost to force a winning chain to emerge naturally via random action. The only mathematical way a longest chain converges is if one coordinated group of stake which has more stake than any other group (i.e. an oligarchy), coordinates on which chain it will forge on. Coordination requires trust. Coordination is what PoW purports to solve in a trustless manner. Coordination that has control is the definition an oligarchy. Lack of coordination in PoS is divergent. Thus PoS accomplishes nothing that isn’t attainable with centralization of control, other than obfuscating this fact from witless n00bs.

Andrew Poelstra failed to note that penalizing for signing multiple histories doesn’t resolve the power vacuum that no unique near-term history is distinguished from all the others in the absence of coordination and thus definitionally an oligarchy:


My “shocking document” refers to “altruistic prime” more than once and cites Vitalik. But you seem to not understand that Vitalik’s argument is that altruistic prime is an undersupplied good, meaning that defection is the Schelling point. Re-read Vitalik’s blog more carefully. Or read the shocking document as it is also explains this. Here again you assert yet another claim (about superficiality) without any proof. My document is substantial and detailed. You can say anything you want, but words must have meaning in order for anyone who is not a fool (which unfortunately is most people) to take you seriously. The fools always end up in the same crab bucket together drowning each other.

Moreover, you are entirely missing the point. Unlike in PoW, the stakers (aka forgers) for all their “altruistic prime” good intentions can’t mathematically autonomously choose which of the forged chain possibilities is the coordinated one without coordination.

Really son, you haven’t thought this out well, yet you adamantly inject condescending remarks about the superficiality of your teacher. I was trying to be respectful of you, but are you being sufficiently humble and wary of your mistakes?


Transactions as Proof-of-Stake (TaPoS) isn’t a solution to this near-term forking divergence issue. “Economic Clustering” if coordinated is a coordinate oligarchy. If uncoordinated, then it doesn’t address the near-term issue. It is true that TaPoS is effective against the longer range reorganization attacks, but that is not the issue I’m teaching about.


The economics and mathematical facts have been explained to you that PoS does not function without an oligarchy. If you want to remain in denial, that is your problem.


You’re mistaken yet again because Steem is delegated PoS.

Sneaky insta- or quickly mined PoW as my document stated. And delegated PoS as the ongoing consensus algorithm as my document stated. My document also explains why DPoS is always an oligarchy.

You’re all mistakes with hubris. Typical BCT slobbering. Don’t worry, @mprep will come to your rescue, so that all you fools can continue to slobber on each other and feel good about your circle-jerk.


You have proven nothing. You have not made any cogent rebuttal to the fact that the economic power vacuum insures that the insiders will take most of the stake. You have made no cogent rebuttal to the mathematical fact that PoS must be coordinated by an oligarchy else it diverges away from consensus. So if a PoS is functioning, we know it is an oligarchy.



You’re apparently incapable of analyzing how BitUSD and SBD suffer the same analogous flaws as NuBits at the generative essence level of analysis. This requires a level of IQ for abstraction which you may not have. There are hints here.

If you want to get spanked, come debate BitUSD and SBD with me where I am where everything is saved on a blockchain and nothing can be censored. You know damn well I am banned/censored from this forum. You’ll never get accurate information when I am not here.

Or simply ignore me, until you can’t ignore me anymore because I win. Because I’m correct, and Blockstream and all of you are incorrect. Because I analyse this stuff deeply. Much more deeply than any of you or they do.

Of course this post and the entire thread is archived. Censor the facts as you wish on your BCT circle-jerk.

Readers be advised that I will not likely be allowed to continue to reply. So nonsense will follow this post. Besides I have work to do and do not have time for this.

Traxo, I know the Nothing at Stake problem and that PoS is not "objective" in the sense that there isn't, in every moment, a "longest chain" that all participants can identify. What you quoted from your chat is basically what Andrew Poelstra wrote in his well known essay: "On Stake and Consensus" (page 9 and 10, if you want to re-read it).

I wasn't clear enough but that was what I meant with this phrase:

Even Poelstra does not object that:


The last remark "This is not a distributed consensus" is the key: PoS is not "objective" in the sense of a mathematical consensus model, but in part "subjective". I invite you to read Vitalik Buterin's article about Weak Subjectivity.

The "shocking document" you cite is much more superficial than Poelstra's and Buterin's documents (and the linked Bitfury document, which is also mostly correct) and completely ignores "altruism-prime", which in my opinion is the most important mechanism why PoS works: because for honest stakers it's more important to keep the value of the coin (in simple terms, "forks are bearish") than to win a bit more transaction fees or block rewards by minting on multiple chains. That is also why block rewards are low or inexistent in PoS currencies, because in a highly inflationary PoS currency stake grinding and forking on multiple chains would be incentivized.

An explanation of altruism-prime:


"Altruism-prime" has been tried to refute with a short seller attack (attacker lends a large part of currency supply, double spends it, short sells it, creates a chain reorganization and profits from re-buying at a much lower price) but this short selling attack is not only very expensive and unpractical, but also possible with PoW and may be even cheaper, if the attacker buys hashing power for a part of his lended coins (for a long lasting 51% attack you need about 5% of the market cap of a currency).


That is what I meant with "51% (nodes with 51% of "active" stake) must be honest". Honest nodes are different than an "oligarchy".


"Coordination" is only necessary to avoid new nodes (or some that have been offline for a long time) being lured into an attack chain. That is done normally by frequent hard-coded checkpoints in every new minor version that don't differ from Bitcoin's checkpoints included in the Bitcoin versions. In some currencies like in NXT, a concept named "TaPoS" or "Economic Clustering" is used, that allows a new user to rapidly check if his node is on the same chain than his friends or his service providers (exchanges etc.).

That all does not prove that an "oligarchy" is needed. The only thing is that there must be a trustable website to download the code, but that is also true with PoW currencies.

For Qtum and EOS (wasn't that the successor of Bitshares?), I can't comment them, because I never followed these coins. Bitshares was a bit shady, that's true, but I liked some of their innovations (but not DPOS, that is truly an "oligarchy".)

CoinoUSD is an IOU like Tether, while NuBits is/was (it still exists but is totally irrelevant) a totally flawed model. I was talking about BitUSD.

I've followed the ICO in 2013 and even invested a few satoshis there. Those that participated all were given their "stake". I can't prove that "BCNext" didn't participate, but my point is that from these 73 founders, a lot were respected forum members. Maybe 10 or 20 could have been collaborators of BCNext and CfB and/or sockpuppets, but that is not the point I wanted to make.

(PS: I don't want to hijack anymore, theymos, if you want you can move the discussion about PoS into a separate thread - "Can PoS work?" or something like that.)

I asked for a response to your statement in chat and I received a rebuttal as follows:


CoinoUSD and NuBits both failed.


Here is one of them I found with Google. There were other such threads.


Nothing can be proven because identities are Sybil attackable.

It’s not speculation because the economics of power vacuums dictates that in all such launches where it is not provable otherwise, then 80+% of the money supply went to insiders and the rest to monetarily incentivize accomplices (i.e. all of us) who shill it to the greater fools (the newbies coming into crypto).


But in the announcement thread it said the ICO would be ongoing for 3 months, so he thus apparently moved some funds and was enabled to buy from himself recycling funds already used.

Even if he didn’t move and recycle BTC, he only needs a wealthy accomplice to buy most of the Nxt from themselves, making it appear there is a wide distribution when in fact there is not.

Why are we so gullible? Because we are profiting on the greater fools. Thus complicit as the SEC has warned. This is not a sermon. It is about future blowback by the authorities. It is all being tracked and recorded by the national security agencies which are sharing it all with the G20. They are biding their time and will ponce when they are ready to collapse it all. Right when we need cryptocurrency because the world economy is collapsing, most of us and these scamcoins will be destroyed by our own choices.


I read in the first pages, they pretended someone was sending 800 BTC. Do I need to quote it?


What is your proof it is a myth?

Okay on not hijacking this thread, but (and intended in a friendly tone) you are making a claim without any proof. I’m relying on economic truths to support my position.

This was one of the more interesting posts I've read on here in awhile.  I'll hope you'll expedite your review and give your views of the others.

Good luck if you try and go with an alternate index.

Thanks for the forums.

Thanks for the article and many insightful comments here.

Personally would appreciate your thoughts on EOS and NEO. Will the former really provide the scale it claims and the latter a challenger to ethereum? Can't wait to see the score

So by the look of admin post Monero is the best option to invest regardless bitcoin ?

Unless it takes days to receive confirmations and you have to pay an absurd amount of money as fees... I just hope we don't continue going down that road, which will eventually lead to a crash/much lower adoption rates...

What you described is what we, as users, aim and hope for the most... unfortunately there are a bunch of people with more influence and money disturbing the roots of the coin atm...

Exactly, that's the problem. With Byteball there is a similar problem - it seems not to work without trusted "witnesses". However, there is no proof that it doesn't work, so I give it a minimal chance.

I know about Nothing at stake, and the attack scenarios are very difficult to implement. I've read the whole series the Ethereum team has written about that topic ("The History of Casper"). From what I know it is even more problematic if PoS coins have an uneven distribution, while a PoS currency with relatively equal distribution would normally work as expected. And at NXT most of the original holders only hold a fraction of their original holdings. Distribution may be still uneven but should have improved.

What is true is that the holders of 51% of the stake must behave in a honest way (not trying to cheat minting on several chains at once), but that is not different from mining.

PoS has some disadvantages, because no external resources are "burnt" and so its consensus depends on the blockchain history, but it can be organized in a way the disadvantages aren't relevant for a working cryptocurrency system.


I didn't like the NEM distribution and I am not a NEM holder. The advantage their system has to "regular PoS" is that it incentives the creation of services like exchanges (these are rewarded a lot more than in PoS because they "use" the currency) , what can be an advantage for a small cryptocurrency. But for a large crypto (thousands of TX per hour) their method isn't very suitable because it incentives blockchain bloat.


Well, until now, it has worked. Can you link me to the Pastebin? (The other text you're referring to would also be interesting. Isn't it Andrew Poelstra's well-known criticism of PoS?)

OK, in this case I didn't know the details, so if you want you can point me to a text explaining that.



That is simply speculation. It may be true for some ICOs but not for all of them. ICOs on blockchain platforms are not trustless, that's true - that's also why someone should check carefully who is selling.

This and this suggest the first transaction was on October 29 but to another address controlled by BCNext and from that it was not moved until November 17.
At the beginning, they had suggested to not invest more than a few satoshis.

CfB is the coder of the first versions, yes, but that was also announced in the announcement thread. I also believe he could be BCNext (and maybe also Jean-Luc, the anonymous lead developer of the current Nxt team).

But I don't want to hijack this thread for a lengthy discussion if NXT was a scam or not - if you believe that, you can continue to do that. But the "Nxt is controlled by 73 insiders" is a myth that has been divulged very often here and is simply not true, that's why I commented it.

And what do you think of Elastic (XEL)?

byteball is really cool and they have their tech rolling strong. byteball has the lowest supply of any coin. you can link your btc to get gbyte airdrops. byteball is the #1 general alt. If btc is gold, byteball is rhodium imo. tenx is the best for cryptocard market, ioc looks great for a micrrocap with their own tech

Just my few cents mate, the entire open source cryptocurrencies worth zero if you ask me, only a few people are deciding on which coin they should

Put their money and invest heavily, cryptocurrencies are literally like the money printing plates, imagine if US was sharing dollar bills plates with the

Public. regarding IOTA, you call it as a coin currency while it was supposed to be used for something else entirely different. Bitcoin is the one decentralized currency which the community agreed upon adopting and supporting it, if community decides to move to another coin there is nothing

That could stop them,, this is the downside of crypto, anyone at any time could make a clone of any coin and if everyone start investing on the clone
Then the original coin could collapse.