What about terracoin? I dont remember if it was brought up.
What will UNO be used for ?
UNO has been an excellent store of value
Uno has been the best store-of-value crypto. I can't think of another with a proven record as long as Uno.
While there are tons of little coins out there that could be merged mined against Uno, many of them are negligibly important and wouldn't bring much hash to the game if we lumped all together. That was my original thinking though; build up a merge mining eco-system of alt coins to improve miner profitability as much a possible. The problem is that other coins don't want to do it.
Why is this important for the community to think about? Well, one of the great things that attracts people to Uno is that it has largely passed through its inflationary period. That means you can hold Uno and not have to worry that miners are dumping tons of coins on the market and eroding the price (a problem that bitcoin has today). But that advantage has flip side: if miners make less money, then the hashrate falls as they move on to mine profitable coins. Uno is usually not profitable to mine, and very infrequently is it the most profitable coin to mine. The current reward is .03125 Uno per block (a block is produced every 3 minutes on average). That means that only 15 Un are produced each day, so investors only need to absorb about $60 worth of Uno each day, which is nothing. In May 2015 that 15 Uno will drop to 7.5 Uno. And it halves again in December 2015, when we'll be looking at less than 4 Uno mined each day as Uno continues to reduce rewards on schedule.
Here's a good post that lays out the schedule.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9954618
The thing that concerns many of us is what will happen to Uno's mining hash and network security as this block reward halving continues.
Proposals from the community have included:
1. Make mining more profitable by encouraging other coins to merge mine against Uno. Efforts to recruit other coins haven't worked yet.
2. Community subsidizes miners by buying their mined coins at a premium. Seems to hold promise.
3. Altruistic hash: buy cloud hash on genesis-mining.com and point it at Uno, or operate your own mining equipment. Hash is getting cheaper.
4. Merge mine against Bitcoin. We already have a commitment from one large Bitcoin pool to add Uno to merged mining if we implement it.
5. Ignore it and hope it works out.
I've been thinking about this for a year. I started working on option #1, trying to get other coins to mm against Uno without success. I even offered a 100 Uno bounty to the first coin that wold do it.
I support option #2. It's a very innovative approach.
I also support #3. I am an altruistic hasher myself, contributing about .8 to 1 TB to Uno at all times.
I've tried option #5 at various times in my life, and I have to say... once in awhile, ignoring problems does work out, but in my personal experience it sucks badly when it doesn't.
My thought process has brought me to option 4. I see that not as any sort of capitulation to Bitcoin, but simply as a practical solution. The hash is there. It doesn't "belong" to Bitcoin -- it belongs to the miners. It is there for the taking. Miners will happily mine Uno with Btc with I0C with Nmc or any other coin. Miners want to run their equipment profitability. Some of them do that by skipping from coin to coin as profitability shifts.
Uno's hash varies between about 12 and 30 THS, which is very good for an altcoin, but it's not even a drop in the bucket of Bitcoin's hash.
I think if we do option #4 (merge mine against Btc), we're solving a long term problem for Uno, and setting it up for some cool things. With hash measured in Phs instead of Ths, it will become even more suitable as a store of wealth. My feeling is that it's better to do this before there is a problem, rather than just wait and see what happens. Auth/Pos with bitcoin would allow Uno to claim the largest hashing network in the world as its own.
Not everybody agrees with me, that's fine. I just wanted to lay it out again, where we've been and what our options are.
As for the Devs, I still haven't heard from Blazr2. He must be on a spiritual journey someplace cool. Bryce likes the idea, and has brought it up in the past. The community has mixed feelings.
that's sort of where we're at.
Thanks for all of that info....I don't quite understand what "merge mine" means still but I think Digibyte may be open..
Hi Blazin604,
In merge mining, miners are able to solve blocks for several blockchains (coins) at the same time. Sort of like buying a lottery ticket that works in multiple lotteries instead of just one. It means that miners who are trying to solve bitcoin blocks might, in the process, generate a hash difficult enough to secure the Uno blockchain (or the namecoin blockchain, or I0C, or IXC, or any of the others). It also creates a more profitable experience for miners. Basically some code is added to Uno's client that allows the network to accept the work done by miners on the Bitcoin blockchain as proof of work for Uno blocks.
A couple of things we don't need to worry about if Uno implement's authPow with Bitcoin (merge mining with Bitcoin that is):
Uno's 3 minute timing does not change. It's still 3 minute blocks.
Uno's blockchain does not "merge" with Bitcoin. It still retains it's own separate blockchain.
Uno can still be mined directly, but the difficulty will skyrocket.
I don't want to change anything that we love about Uno; I would just make the argument that more hash is better than less hash, and there's no reason for us to need to worry about network hash if AuthPow is implemented. The problem of low hash goes away, and nothing changes with Uno except that you have to upgrade your wallet.
