Bitcoin Forum

The massive amount of centralization required to support PPC is surprising.

The biggest problem with it that I see is that its basically impossible for PPC to work without having only a few very large pool miners who are well connected. This arrangement reminds me of coins in the past that had trusted nodes who basically controlled the whole network. PPCoin cannot be solo mined because of the centralization caused by the way it targets difficulty.

I just thought I would take some time to respond to one of the posts from the PPCoin thread.


This project has massive problems with the way the difficulty is calculated and its showing up in numerous places. Sunny King is doing his best to cover this discussion up, and getting people to remove all references to the code throwing difficulty target errors, but it is happening for anyone not mining in one of the large PPCoin pools.

The large oscillations, or ringing, are also a product of the way the difficulty is calculated. It's unavoidable for this coin.

The PPCoin is also centralized because of its dependence on checkpoints for proof of stake.

All this required centralization reminds me of a project we all thought was dead. Is PPCoin SolidCoin 4.0?
Have you also noticed that many people involved with past solidcoins had already developed pools and exchanges ready to go for the PPCoin launch?
 Has RealSolid not Really retired from developing altcoins? Is PPCoin the next iteration of a SolidCoin? We can't be sure. Please be careful with PPcoin.

This theory does have some merit. I've seen similarities in the two....

I smell scammy sauce...  :D

please explain why "required"? AFAIK these checkpoints are a bootstrap method to protect the nascent chain until the majority of mining power comes from proof of stake...

Sorry. You lost me right there... can you explain why you think so?

Again. I am lost.

I am not aware of this. Can you provide references for these "target errors"?

Please know that the scenario you quoted applies to bitcoin as well, albeit on a 2-week fixed schedule. In ppcoin the difficulty adjustment was changed according to the design paper:
"In our design both proof-of-work hash target and proof-of-stake hash target are adjusted continuously rather than Bitcoin’s two-week adjustment interval, to avoid sudden jump in network generation rate."

So ppcoin is actually quicker in counteracting, but also drops off faster.

It's not a function of the coin or the difficulty adjustment, it's rather a function of the strength of the network. Large entity miners can play with the minting rate adjustment. It's unavoidable. The only solution to it is to avoid large entity miners.

The likely reason is that these people are just pioneers and will bootstrap the infrastructure for any cryptocurrency which looks promising.

On a crazy scale of 1 to realsolid, I think sunny king is batting maybe a 2 or a 3 right now

Maybe he took his meds ?

@Op and Smoothie

Maybe you guys can explain the votes here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=117744.0 for no,

Anybody who reads this forum knows people who are into other currencies, like LTC are just trying to disrespect any other currency.

Im all for as many alt currencise as possible, but, this thread makes no sense - see Jutarul's post.

This coming from the guy who doesn't know the meaning of "volume" in terms of how many PPC have been created to date when comparing it to LTC or BTC?

You are a shill for Sunny Drag Queen. As I've said before this reminds me of RealShit and his Soiledcoin supporters.

 ::) ::) ::)

Edit: Concerning the link to the POLL you posted, what was your point? Last time I checked the poll there were more people voting NO than YES.

+1 AndyRossy why don't you answer the man's questions as opposed to attacking LTC or myself?

Why would there be a centralization within a supposedly "decentralized" system?

Why are you avoiding his questions AndyRossy?

I support LTC.



I am not, the checkpoint question has been answered earlier on in this thread.

Andy

This is new to me. Is this something real that you have encountered yourself? If so please provide more details I'd like to look into them. As far as I know solo mining works fine for most miners except for cpuminer 2.x.

As to the oscillations it's also in the other chains but is less obvious due to 2 week adjustment interval. But quite a few chains were having problem recovering from it exactly due to this long adjustment interval.

ppcoin has shown that it can recover from high difficulty and withdrawal of miners quite well. Besides the quick adjustment reduced miner advantage in the initial two weeks. I see plenty of people trying to accuse me of 'effective premining' but conveniently ignore the fact that keeping bitcoin's two weeks adjustment interval would give me a lot more time to do this 'effective premining', which pretty much lasted less than two days for ppcoin. No, there was exactly zero premining with ppcoin and it is fair, at least more fair than most other chains.


I have explained this numerous times, since v0.2 checkpoint only serves to protect the network in the initial growth period. It is not part of core protocol and will be gradually weakened as network matures.

It looks like quite some people are ready to 51% attack a new block chain so yes it's a more responsible way to start an alt coin.

We did quite a bit of work to ensure this form of temporary centralization has less chance of becoming a single point of failure. See solidcoin has some recent problems with their trust nodes and block chain stops. But if ppcoin's checkpoint master node runs into problems most likely block chain would not be affected.

PS At the moment I do not wish to answer questions related to my identity/privacy. So I will ignore all such questions for now.

The centralization is required due to poor design and because Sunny King likes centralization.

The difficulty adjustment happens so fast it can't make it out to the solo miners who aren't using long polling.

Sunny King has gotten the people that posted about these problems to remove them from the forum. Sunny King wants to cover up the truth about PPCoin.

Bitcoin doesn't have this problem because it waits two weeks to calculate difficulty. PPCoin only waits 10 minutes to calculate difficulty so you should expect large swings. Bad design.


Actually it is entirely because of the design. See this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_artifacts


Hooray for the pioneers in the RealSolid navy! They never get to go on shore leave because the boat just keeps driving in circles.

Of course you don't want to talk about your identity, because its highly likely you are RealSolid. Thanks.

+1

Pathetic. If you didn't come up with this pack of lies yourself then I suggest you stop trusting whoever fed you this garbage, for your own sake.

+2

my 2 ppc here (again :P )

Im a technology 1st person.
I do not care what the source is for knowledge, it does not change the value.

I think any contribution to humanities living knowledge base is a good thing for humanity even if the technology came at a cost to humanity.
There is even great value in researching a bad concept and implementing it.

If Sunny King = Solid Coin and ppcoin does turn out to be a pump and dump alt currency, the community can take the good ideas from ppcoin and implement them in the next altcoin.
If as it turns out he is not, we are detracting from a good technical discussion and interesting altcoin.

I got to admit, as a person who's just recently become interested in these alternative currencies, it seems every thread I've read on here has made me weary of PPCoin. I think a simple confirm or deny regarding the question of being RealSolid would have been a lot better than this answer. I mean, I respect your desire for anonymity as much as anyone here, but I think it's reasonable to expect an answer to this question.

And yes, I can tell that there are many people here who are critical of you and your project, but I would hope that at some point instead of just being defensive and dismissive, you could address peoples concerns. Especially the technical criticisms that people have been bringing up.

If you really believe that the work you have done has the potential to be embraced by the public and used as a currency, you would think that a couple of people on a message board 'attacking' you or acting 'immature' would not stop you from defending your project.

At this point a random person who reads a few threads here might conclude that it's just another 'scamcoin', but I think if it was a scam the PPCoin people would be doing a much better job at least trying to convince people that it is legit. So at this point I don't even know what to think.

Also, if you are RealSolid, I don't think you should hide that fact. You should be open about it and explain why things are different this time. I'd rather know that and be able to see how things have changed, and hear you explain how you learned from the previous failures.

I gotta wonder what the deal is with being anonymous. Who gives a rat's ass? It only makes it look like you have something to hide. Do you post on BTCtalk via tor like the oh great satoshi too, Sunny?

If satoshi's identity is ever revealed, he is well-deserving of the pie-to-the-face treatment for begetting such a scandalous community.

And I highly doubt Sunny is RealSolid. RealSolid is still working on his scamcoin 4.0, though it has been constantly delayed.

Satoshi was anonymous, whats the big issue ?
If this alt coin gains any momentum and then the lead dev decides to pull a move similar to what we saw in Solid Coin we have the option to fork the network.

Thank being said, you could remain anonymous and still deny being 1 individual :)

I would also like to see an updated white paper or a brief WIP description added to the wiki if the internal workings have changed as much as some claim.

The issue is, as I said, it makes it look like you have something to hide. Perhaps because of the pump and dump aspect of these currencies. Anonymous creators, pyramidal currency distribution, scandal after scandal, etc. The community attracts and fosters scammers by its nature and partly by the precedent set by Satoshi, imo.

If the source code is not open then maybe this 'have something to hide' argument would have some merits. With open source I think repeating this line just shows that you don't fully grasp the concept of privacy, liberty and the political nature of cryptocurrencies. Besides, revealing identity might cause other non-political issues to the developer and hamper their ability to continue the work.

Sure if you want to choose to be all open about your identity like Gavin does then fine go for it. Just don't claim moral superiority over those who wish to remain anonymous.

So I take it you are not thrilled about the idea of satoshi sitting on ~ 1 million bitcoins that he mined in the early days ?

Perhaps if I had been referring to the code.


Ohh please educate me, Mr. King, as I am so obviously stupid.


Yeah like everyone knowing that you're a grody, obese, neckbearded nerd.


I didn't claim moral superiority, I claimed that you are a lemming.

Hmm I don't know what I said wrong prompted such a response from you.

If you deeply understand privacy, liberty and what cryptocurrency is all about then you wouldn't so cheaply accuse Satoshi of starting a scammy society. In a libertarian society people are supposed to be responsible for their own risk-taking not expect government to drive out all the scammers.

Read more on these topics, Jon Matonis is a good writer on these issues.

Is bitcoin a scammy society? Yes. (If you need proof I can provide hundreds of links.) Did satoshi create bitcoin? Yes. Is my observation that satoshi started a scammy society inaccurate? Clearly not. Did I mention anything about governments? Strawman. Is it well within my libertarian rights to scathingly point out the vast theft inherent to the growth of the current crop of cryptocurrencies and the sarcastically serendipitous anonymity of their creators? Certainly. You can play at being coy, stupid, or imply my stupidity, but I will not stand down from my beliefs because you think you have some kind of moral or intellectual superiority and make-believe that it is warranted by calling yourself libertarian.

He seems to like doing that, whether intentional or not. In any case, he's a donkey for it. ;D

No need to get self-indignant like that ;) You are welcome to start a competing currency and show Satoshi and the world how it was meant to be done properly.

Self-indignant? That's quite a strange expression. And can you ever actually make an argument that isn't about sucking satoshi's cock? Enjoy the cliff dive, little one.

One shouldn't talk so much about one's self so much..."self" is also in the word "selfish"

You know that if you add another $100k-$200k into PPC it may become the new world's reserve currency eh? lol

ADD AWAY!  :D

Seems like proper_proper = little Danny Maddox under a new name.

Seriously, a 2 day old account criticizing like this, referring back to solid coin, probably legit, cant be a sock account or dual account surely.

Irony in the op post.... but who is op.

Please know that a perfect system for freedom of speech actually obligates anonymity. E.g. elections in democratic societies are anonymous.

Now with the development of a public good, like a software infrastructure, the creator only has the obligation to release enough information for things to get peer reviewed. And by being open source, ppcoin also has full filled that requirement.

alt-coins have no point if they don't really innovate something.

How many societies throughout history had to reinvent or innovate their own precious metal in order to have a stable medium of exchange?

answer? NONE!

Innovation has nothing to do with acceptance by the masses concerning a medium of exchange.

All societies did was take silver or gold (which they didn't innovate/invent) and stamp their logo/face/dear/god/king on it and call it money and use it as such.

Get a fucking clue when talking about something of a medium of exchange "HAVING" to be innovative to be accepted.

LOL!  :D :D :D

That's an opinion. You failed to provide a rational answer which can be falsified.

What technical aspect are you talking about?

If you see posts disappeared, start quoting them. This at least leaves traces behind. Use those as references.

Why do you think "large swings" are a bad design. They are a response to the changing hashing power. I find it rather great the the difficulty adjusts quickly - keeps the block rate more constant.

Are you proposing to use an envelope function for the running average? In which way would this improve things? Please be technical, which oscillations to you consider harmful?

If it weren't for pioneers we'd never have boats on the sea.

we want to go new ways, so why copy old societies behaviour?

let's strenghten the main coin and make it accepted instead of splitting up into small pointless side-coins.

i will only try an alt-coin if it really has a point.

i don't talk about other people, i talk about my own point.

i will sure not support an alt-coin which is just built like a ponzi.

early miners mine a lot, through hype, a bigger field comes in later to mine as well, while the early guys cash out and leave the currency abandoned.

So then...

1. Copies are ALWAYS bad right?

2. Bitcoin is being strengthen already through ASIC development. Having an alternative isn't a bad thing unless you fear that your bitcoin investment will plummet if another system comes out and takes attention away from BTC.

3. I talk about people who spout bullshit. Like "innovation is a must in creating a medium of exchange over the internet". BULLSHIT!

4. Ponzi? Oh you mean like how bitcoin was started where for about 2 years a small amount of miners with their laptop CPUs mined a FUCKTON of btc that is now worth like hundres of thousands if not millions of dollars? Way to be a hyprocrit.

5. No one cares if you support an alt-chain. Just stop spread bullshit about supposed mindsets behind how a system can ONLY be successful is by innovation.

6. oh and by the way early PPC adopters mined over 3.5 million PPC in 5 days. 60 days later there is only 10.9 million. Now let's talk more about early adopters eh?

Right you are just like every other hypocrit that has come on this board spouting bullshit.

@smoothie:

not worth to discuss with you.

get some manners.

every second word from you is an insult.

you get really aroused by what i say. that's a sign you defend something you deeply inside know is wrong.

bye bye.

oh? lol

 :D

Well....Sunny King is no Satoshi Nakamoto. ;)

But I suspect not a RealSolid either.

1. Sunny King appears to be more than one person. Go over Sunny's posts and you'll see no less than 2, and IIRC, at least 3 different writing styles. (satoshi is widely suspected to have been a group of people, but had one clear voice in public, the writing is the same throughout satoshi's posts)

2. I've have some discussions with RealSolid, and sunny Kin is nowhere near as butthurt about bitcoin. I've not seen Sunny suggest that any of his detractors are members of the "bitcoin church" or any other stupid solid crap like that.

(would you people quit quoting smoothie? many of us ignore him for a damn good reason, mainly, he has nothing relevant to add, and is a trolling asshat)

Stop quoting me guys.... as guruvan said.

 :D

Uhh the people may cast a vote anonymously, but they are still registered, and the politicians certainly aren't anonymous.


Whatever, this is just a rationalization. I'm not saying it's a requirement to be known, but the fact that every single "leader" of these crypto knock offs have chosen to be anonymous (except coblee, I think), and it's no coincidence that every single knock off is a pyramid just like the original. Quite debatable that it is a public good, after all, when there is so much potential wealth transfer to be had.

Are you suggesting that the developers of a cryptocurrency should be compared to politicians?

The minting rate is biased towards early adopter profits. However, AFAIK that's a necessity, since it provides an incentive to invest into mining infrastructure at an accelerated rate. The public good aspect is not related to the wealth transfer in bootstrapping the currency, but to it's sustained features.

Which also reminds me of one of the fundamental problems of cryptocurrencies which still has to be resolved. The reward system does not have incentives for cryptocurrency maintenance and improvement. The only incentive developers have is to implicitly benefit from the super-early adopter advantage and hold on to those shares until the cryptocurrency has matured and they can simply act benevolently. However, that doesn't protect the currency from being abandoned by the core developers (pump&dump).
I think they tried to fix this with devcoin.

wtf bro, you brought it up


It isn't just biased towards early adopter profits, it's biased against a well-functioning currency. Deflation is stupid, especially at the insane levels required for the bitcoin-ilk to achieve any remote amount of currency market share. It is too early to tell and I'm not about to spend time reading the PPC code or envisioning future scenarios for it, but it seems like it will be even more early-adopter heavy than bitcoin.


Tying the cost to produce something more than just supply and demand would be a start. :cough decrits: :P

He just asked if your the SolidCoin guy, nothing else! He didnt ask for ur Realname, Age, Creditcard or whatever!
The denial to talk about the relation of you and RealSolid just prooves that you are it (simple logic!). Someone would only deny this if he knows his Name/Others would be known trough RealSolid. Therefore u just proved that u are RealSolid.

After all i dont care about who you are, all i want to tell you is: there is no reason to hide this! hiding it just makes PPCoin more shady. Be a man and stand for ur mistakes!

#altcoinproblems

lol

Exactly, using simple logic we can show that Sunny King is probably Real Solid. Case closed. The prosecution rests. You only live once.