Topic: Updated: Community survey for academic paper - page 2. (Read 1848 times)

I would love to really help you out, however I haven't created an altcoin yet.
But let me do my best anyhow.

the cost can be 0
  - you just change some constants in the bitcoin code (or whatever code you're forking)
  - tons of coins were made like this. some even had some success (sadly!)

the cost can be a few man hours worth of coding
  - change the constants and change the PoW algorithm, with one that exists, but not yet in a coin.
  - tons of these exist, and it's a good idea to have alternatives to SHA2 in the cryptoworld

make an original PoW algorithm.
  - you'd better be a cryptographer though, or else it's probably not going to be secure
  - do any of these exist?


On the other hand, the costs can be quite high if you design a new coin from scratch.
   - nxt
   - ripple
   - CryptoNote
   - What else?
   - costs, revenue? ask them!


But keep in mind, that once you publish the source code you no longer control anything, so the revenue must be from collateral sources.
But unless you are designing a new coin, for forking coins it's a simple matter of advertising costs and returns. marketing, or whatever you want to call it.

So, generally speaking, the revenue will not come from you owning the coin, because you can't do that with free software, but rather from generating this new potential source of revenue.
But keep in mind that other people who haven't invested can exploit it too, and it's their right to do so, being free software.

All questions are optional. We're mainly interested in the cost and revenue of creating a new altcoin, and of mining altcoins.

Please help out. Thanks!

We are a group of crypto-currency researchers from the University of California, San Diego, USA. We are writing an academic paper on the socioeconomic behaviors in the altcoin community.

We would like to invite everyone to participate in a short survey.

• For altcoin developers
• For altcoin miners

(Feel free to fill in both surveys if you are a developer and a miner.)

Your experience with altcoin will be useful toward our research and the community. All responses will be kept confidential and used only for research purposes. The result of the survey will be a part of a scientific publication, in which features that identify specific individuals or altcoins will be removed. It is not our intent to speculate or judge anyone. Our goal is to understand the community in an objective, data-driven way.

In the past few years, we have published papers such as this one on de-anonymizing Bitcoin and another one on bitcoin-mining botnets. Both papers were published at prestigious academic conferences such as IMC and NDSS.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact the lead researcher, Danny Y. Huang.

Thank you!

(Edited this post based on feedback from past survey respondents.)