Topic: [XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency - page 1359. (Read 4671575 times)

Absolutely true. In the early years there was no value, and while some people thought it might become very valuable, skepticism was rampant. It was almost similar to DOGE in being viewed as something of an inside joke and trying to force it to have some sort of value (aka the 10K BTC pizzas).  


It would have to be one of two things:

1. Potential of future utility, since the early network would be too small to have actual utility. Who do you transact with, and for what (pizzas? tacos?)? That is ultimately speculative, but perhaps there is a subtle psychological difference I don't dismiss.

2. Actual (present) utility achieved with high adoption, initially, in a small subculture. A historical example here was eBay, which started as a site for trading Beanie Babies and other collectables. Since it was focused, it was possible for a small site to achieve some degree of network effect in that subculture where the buyers and sellers could transact in the same network. Otherwise buyers would avoid for lack of sellers and sellers would avoid for lack of buyers. Obviously, from there the site was able to grow into a larger marketplace incrementally.

Ideas for how to target one or the other or both or something else are certainly welcome.

It seems that a lot of folks here got into bitcoin/crypto (at least at first) not for the investment opportunities but for the idea of decentralized money that could change the world. I agree that the cool factor is probably not a strong enough motivator, but that doesn't mean early adoption can't be achieved by superior utility, as opposed to investment potential in the coins themselves.

"Guy on the street" adoption is going to take a long time under the most absolute rosy of scenarios (I know some may disagree but that is my opinion). The challenge is to get from here to there, or even to get to the point where there just needs one or two more pieces to fall into place (because then the incentive to build those pieces is much larger).

All of those things you describe and more will come in time, just as they have (somewhat) for Bitcoin and to a lesser extent a few other coins, but only if we can keep people interested and involved until we get there. In fact, the some of the people we need to get interested and involved are the ones who will build them.

People will run from any coin anyway, if the coin cant be used in "daily life". Hashrate drops doesnt matter that much. From my point of view, emission curve, hashrate, transaction fees, etc are not the pressing problem. The real problem is the acceptance of Monero by "the guy on the street". Without mobil wallet, more exchanges (xmr <-> fiat) and so on, there is no future for any coin. XMR (and, e.g., BBR too) must aim for the user experience now -- which includes not to cause another level of uncertainty by changing the already running system.

It is very hard to imagine a lot of (EDIT: early) adoption that is not inherently speculative or greed-based in some manner, because of the bootstrapping problem. Without much of a network there is no reason to be interested. "It seems cool" is somewhat of a motivator (in fact that's why I'm here), but I'm not sure how much we can expect to get from that. The later adopters can be pulled in by the network (thus we don't need to be concerned about giving them a direct incentive), but the early ones can't.

Paypal, for example, gave 10 USD away to everyone who signed up for an account in the early years, obviously a financial incentive, but a small one along the lines I suggesed (going to 15-50% of the potential users), as opposed to giving 10 million USD or 100 million USD to the first person to sign up, and 0 USD to the rest. They also waived processing fees for a long time, again a small financial incentive that got spread out among a lot of early adopters.

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?