Topic: [XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency - page 1359. (Read 4671936 times)

So the easy (and common) assumption is that the early adopters are investors, which I would say is currently the case in this community. I'm arguing that early adopters don't have to be investors, only enthusiasts who see the utility in the project. Thus we shouldn't feel obligated to cater to investors when designing a currency, because they may not be the "early adopters" we wish to attract.

My answer would be "early adopters" and that term can be somewhat broad, but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle it is about 15%. Or possibly some of the "early mainstream" (they are greedy too), which takes the share to something in the 15%-50%.

Thus it is okay if the price has already increased by the time grandma (a late adopter) gets involved, but not really okay if all the adoption gains go to a tiny fraction of very early adopters. The gains should be slower and spread out to a somewhat larger group who can help bring adoption to the rest.

Good points to nloc who raised the questions to which I respond indirectly via a reply to JM.

I definitely have my reservations, but so far it seems we've mostly been thinking inside of a very small box. You make valid points that should be looked at from another perspective:


Which people are we talking about about? Bitcointalk investors? Grandma? Assuming the answer is both, let's consider the latter as a long-term goal. Will grandma ever really understand or care about mining? Will she ever understand or care about block rewards and distribution? What will matter to grandma is how easy the money is to get, and how easy it is to spend. Of course there's the argument that you have to conquer this pond before entering the next, but I'll leave that alone for now.

If we really want to take the non-selfish approach, we have to consider the options that can't make us rich.


I agree it will always be a problem if we're trying to create a widely adopted currency that will also make us rich. For example, a perpetually increasing block reward would never punish new adopters regardless of their timing. It would only punish investors like us But we will continue to paint ourselves into the same corner expecting a different result.

I honestly believe we have to let go of our ideas of how cryptocurrencies should work if we ever want to win the money race.

And no, I'm not advocating any radical changes to XMR emission, so this reply is a little off topic.

Preface: I operate at about 1/10 the speed of smooth with <1/10 of his knowledge and what follows was written before his post.  It is another side I have seen discussed and I wasn't even thinking of the mining aspect.  Since smooth believes the value must increase in order to keep miners then what follows should be taken with that in mind.  Also realize that I am not in anyway qualified to speak on the subject especially considering the talent in Monero.  OK so why is this idiot doing so?  Selfishly to help me understand it.  Also I don't presume I'm the only idiot here so maybe they can learn something from the perspective of one of their own.



I'll give my observations although I believe you know more than your question suggests.

It seems the non selfish argument is along the lines of a) people don't want to buy a coin that is mostly mined.  If that is the case almost every coin will have this problem at some point.  What does slowing emissions so it takes another year or two really accomplish?  I guess a better distribution but that comes from adoption because it is useful.

therefore b) they believe the time it will take for adoption to occur will happen at a time when most coins are already mined.  This is due in part to the time needed to develop Monero to the point where it can be used by the infrastructure that also needs to be built.  

I have no idea if the central premise is correct.  For the people that will find Monero useful, will they really care if it is mostly mined?  I understand Risto's concerns about this but I wonder if this is because he is looking at it from an investment perspective more so than the perspective of a Monero economy.

Why would the hash rate change be temporary and the price change not be temporary?

But in general I doubt a theory that calls for a price change based on an event known in advance.

We don't necessarily need reward changes every single block though, if we have a reason why it would better not to do so. We could keep effectively the same shape curve with less frequent adjustments.

It can also be argued that BTC's abrupt block reward "halving" has the effect of driving the price up (and hash rate down, temporarily) to acheive profitability equilibrium. Perhaps CN's gradual "per-block" reward calculation isn't such a good thing after all.

Miners certainly will run for the hills if the price of the coin does not go up a lot over the next 2 years or so. Already the reward is down from around 17 in the first weeks to around 14 today. That translates directly into about 18% less hash rate, assuming constant XMR and BTC prices relative to mining costs. How many more 20% reductions in hash rate can we accept?

So my answer would be that we have a very narrow window of time for the coin to appreciate a lot before very low rewards become a big mining problem. Historically crypto goes through long periods of down markets and relatively little growth, followed up periods of renewed interest after some unknown period of time. So introducing what amounts to a deadline into the mix may be a bad idea.

Another argument would be that if the coin does appreciate a lot (alleviating the mining issue), it hurts adoption because people are drawn to coins with more upside. That is somewhat more speculative as it relies on various assumptions about human behavior and markets. That is not to say incorrect, but less obviously correct than saying insufficient mining rewards translated directly to an insecure network. But if this view is correct, then too fast a curve is almost a no win scenario. If the price goes up too fast, you lose new users, and if it goes up too slow you lose miners.

It seems the question is whether the trend from the current block reward to the minimum (subsidy) reward is too fast? What criteria would deem the trend too fast? Are miners running for the hills as we speak? I'm only trying to clarify what exactly the problem is.

Is the issue simply that XMR's emission schedule isn't similar enough to bitcoin's?

I wasn't suggesting an automatic adjustment. That is certainly interesting and something I've thought about, but it is very tricky to do while making sure it can't be manipulated in some manner.

In the short term I just meant releasing a patch to change the block time (and then doing it again in the future based if that makes sense given network activity), but in all cases adjusting the emission accordingly to maintain a constant rate (unless there is a community consensus to change emissions -- but that is entirely independent)

Variable Blocktime adjusting to demand/transfers with leveraging emission ... intriguing! And I am totally aware that us technical noobs mindstorming on things like that will cause the goosebumps on hardcore developper's skins out there  sorry!

We view block time as being entirely a technical consideration and very changeable, as long as the emission curve is adjusted to compensate (so 2x block time would have 2x reward per block and vice versa. and the rate of emission over time would be unchanged).

The block time will likely be slowed a bit at some point relatively soon unless usage picks up a lot since it is wasteful to have so many empty blocks, and the likely sped up, perhaps a lot, in the future when usage increases (and also technology improvements such as Gavin's protocol might reduce orphans).

But in every case this is independent of emission curve.

Increased block time could tackle the bloat issue? Perhaps worth a thought.
Just BTX's time warp seem to be postphoned now.

I'm okay with changing to POS. Goes well along with changing mining emission rates.

That's just what I thought you would say.

Sure, I will escrow to an XMR wallet, iftofor a wallet which I will control the private keys, thereby rendering the escrow account to an inaudible spoken word walletcryption factor of 5, when i(z) ~ Sigma 9coin emissions in hydrocarbons0.

Deal-scammerZ?

Escrow?

I will give you 100 XMR if the Devs can implement all that, and I will Ddose the BloatCoinExpress, unless you give me 15 Fiats in the next 72k Ithaca hours.

Not bad, how about this:

The emission curve gets retouched by a certified plastic surgeon, the mining revenue migrates to latitudes below 30 degrees (just for winter), we put the ring signatures up for adoption, and we block all transactions?

Anyone?

MEGA BOT 

poloniex
2014-10-05 20:55:19   Buy   0.0027892   3   0.0083676
2014-10-05 20:55:17   Sell   0.00276024   2.994   0.00826416
2014-10-05 20:53:19   Buy   0.00278931   3   0.00836793
2014-10-05 20:53:17   Sell   0.00276112   2.994   0.00826679
2014-10-05 20:51:19   Buy   0.00278887   3   0.00836661
2014-10-05 20:51:16   Sell   0.0027609   2.994   0.00826613
2014-10-05 20:49:18   Buy   0.00278909   3   0.00836727
2014-10-05 20:49:17   Sell   0.00276068   2.994   0.00826548
2014-10-05 20:47:18   Buy   0.00278931   3   0.00836793
2014-10-05 20:47:16   Sell   0.00276046   2.994   0.00826482
2014-10-05 20:45:18   Buy   0.00278909   3   0.00836727
2014-10-05 20:45:17   Sell   0.00276024   2.994   0.00826416
2014-10-05 20:43:18   Buy   0.00278931   3   0.00836793
2014-10-05 20:43:16   Sell   0.00276101   2.994   0.00826646
2014-10-05 20:41:18   Buy   0.00278931   3   0.00836793
2014-10-05 20:41:16   Sell   0.0027609   2.994   0.00826613
2014-10-05 20:39:19   Buy   0.00278909   3   0.00836727

What if the emission curve remains untouched, and mining revenue migrates to a larger percentage of it being generated via fees, which come about with greater adoption in an actual functioning Monero Ecosystem, aka more transactions per block?

Thank you for responding to The Drooling Masses®

Luckily we have many very knowledgeable and capable people in the community.  I'm looking forward to their input in the appropriate venue.