Bitcoin Forum

After watching several new alt coins launch and die over the past year I thought I would offer some suggestions & insights to future developers.

1) Be Innovative
There are 10,00 Litecoin & Bitcoin clones out there, or at least is seems like it. If you are not bringing something new to the table then why even bother? This doesn't always have to be a technical innovation as I would argue Doge brought to us a lesson in crypto mass psychology. People don't like looking in their BTC wallet and seeing they have  0.000189 BTC. They want to see they have 189,000 Doge, Litecoin, Bitcoin or whatever it may be. Our brains are not used to calculating monetary transactions to 6 decimal places. This is why I think coins with billions of coins could surpass Bitcoin one day. The other lesson to be learned by Doge is to have some emotional appeal. This will help bring large amounts of new people in just as Doge has. (FYI I really don't like Doge, but I see the positives in it.)

2) Pre-Mine No More Than 1%
I think every new coin I have seen besides Digitalcoin has been accused of being a scam pre-mine coin. While I understand the need for development and giveaways etc. a dev doesn't need to pre-mine 25% of all coins. I would also have a ledger recording where and how the 1% was spent. This should be publicly available on the coins website. By being open and transparent much more trust can be placed in a coin. Given the way the block chain works this would not be a hard thing to do.

3) Announce The Coin Launch 2 Days Ahead of Time
This will give ample time for people to hear of the new coin so they can start mining at zero hour. While Earthcoin was only pre-announced by a few hours I feel this helped with the coins current success. By allowing as many people as possible to become invested in the coin from the beginning you are allowing for a few things. First, you will have a larger distribution of coins from the beginning.

Second, with more hash and more people you are less likely to experience a 51% attack that often kills a new coin within hours of launch. Finally, you will build a solid foundation of a community as people often like to say "I was there from the beginning" and become much more psychology invested in that particular coin.

4) Good Name & Logo
While you would think this should be obvious, most often it seems devs neglect this in their rush to pump & dump. I would say as of right now if you don't have a good name & logo even in the pre-announce thread your coin is dead on arrival. There are to many options out there right now to waste you time on a crap coin.

I have one simple name & logo test. Could I one day see my grandmother going into the store and purchasing something with her [insert coin name here]. I do not ever see my grandmother buying stuff with her BBQcoin, Hamstercoin, Hobo Nickels etc. I could one day see her using Digitalcoin, Stablecoin, Earthcoin etc.

5) Bitcoin Won't Be The Top Coin Forever
Technologically speaking over the last twenty years being the first of its kinds doesn't mean a new tech will last forever on top. In fact more often than not a new tech is often surpassed within a few years. Think of Netscape as a browser... where is it today? What about Lycos as a search engine? Google came along and did things better. What about Myspace being overcome by Facebook? Or even Napster? 

There are some serious issues arising with Bitcoin. The main being the centralization of hash power with the emergence of ASIC mining companies. This goes against why Bitcoin was founded. When the common person cannot mine and secure a coin I feel a coin will enter into a slow decline & death.

6) There Is Room For More Than 1 Coin
We have Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari & Opera. We have Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express. We have Chase, Bank of America, HSBC, Wells Fargo etc. Why does there have to be one coin that's on top? It makes no sense to embraces this winner take all mentality in the alt community. By having several choices based on different technologies we are making cryptos more secure. If one dies or is compromised there are ten more to take its place.

To help people understand the importance of Bitcoin I often tell them the last time we saw a major monetary innovation like this is when the Bank of England first started printing paper bank notes in 1694. Crypto is here to stay. Power to the people!

Any thoughts, opinions, criticisms are welcome  ;D

I think the simple rule of thumb is to try to show at least /some/ bit of professionalism. Many alt coins are flat out cancer to alt currency in my eyes. People will see all the stupid ones and think that's all alt coins are, a huge joke ran by little children. I scroll down the topics and see a Dubstep coin..which is utterly absurd in every single way. A try-hard cat version of Dogecoin launching that takes the worst of lolcats and vomits it all over the place. Even the ones that try to be taken seriously, I just can't...like how Earthcoin literally looks like someone lifted the "e" from Internet Explorer.

Of the many alt coins out, only a small handful feel legit. BBQcoin..Anoncoin..Sexcoin..the whole lot needs to go away and make room for people who take this seriously.

I believe the free market will take its course and the absurd alt coins will die from lack of interest. I'm not going to nag on people for mining what they do even if I'm against it, that's for the market to decide. I'm simply stating my opinion. Of the newer alt coins out there, Mastercoin feels the most professional. People need to remember that presentation is everything.

+1

In fact I think (sorry to be so old style and primitive) that the first thing the new coin issuer must think about is: why people do need my coin? How can they use it? In what segment of the market? Generally speaking there are tons, I want to repeat -- tonnnnns -- of places where new coins can make people life easier as time goes by. And all of them are different - from the coins for gambling to the special coins for buying tickets... well it is unnecessary to itemize. But the point is - why people needs me, that's the question. And as for the point that this begun with some wild speculation and humster^s coins that^s a human nature. BitcoinTate mention the BoE but before that were Bardi and co and different Orders holding drug traffic. Long before that was Aristotle with his 5 rules... no matter - do your best and hope to see some interesting projects in future.

Just felt like saying thank you. You sum up how I feel about the whole scene in better words than I could. I don't mind coins not called Bitcoin or Litecoin. I even mined Catcoin because it could have potential being the scrypt version of Bitcoin. If pushed right, people could take it more seriously. There are a few alt coins out that have my respect..and a whole lot that are clutter. More quality and less throwing random and seeing what sticks.

I think this is well thought out and is the sort of thing that really needs to be strongly considered by anyone looking to launch a coin.

It's still amateur hour for most of these coins and it seems like there would be a very large amount of money to be made for an actual company to come in with developers, designers, PR and advertising and just blow all these other ones out of the water. As has been said, it doesn't have to be technical innovation, but it certainly needs to get people's attention.

The issue with a lot of the alts is that it's just one guy and "his developer" aka one guy that is around some of the time to make some quick and dodgy changes to the coin. How much work would it really be for a company to create a coin, launch it with windows, mac and linux clients and have a block explorer ready to go?

The current coins all seem like a case of 'lets put whatever we've got live now and deal with the rest later'.

One thing I've been thinking about recently is how you could have the fairest possible launch. As already mentioned in this thread: a pre-announcement and either zero premine or a small premine with a public ledger are certainly good starting points. On top of that though, most coin launches greatly benefit those who adopt in the first day, why not have a launch period where the block rewards start low and then ramp up to the full [regular] reward size over the course of a week or two.

This way those getting on board right at the start still get a decent head start, but they're not earning considerably more than they will be once the coin has settled into regular mining.

What do you guys think?

Having a 1 or 2 week long initial miner adoption incentive is a great Idea. I agree 1 or 2 days is too small of window. This would bring more early adopters in. Having a professionally done coin does take more than one person. I myself have been thinking of getting together with some people and launching a coin. Just haven't thought of a good name yet.

We have Bitcoin, Litecoin, PeerCoin, NameCoin, PrimeCoin. No room for shitcoins.

Thank you for that. It is good to see a honest discussion taking place about this issue. One of the issues that needs to be addressed soon is the growing size of the alt coin thread. We need sub topics now. We need a place to discuss development of alternate cryptos.

This should always be on top!

Bump

finally someone that thinks the same as me :)

Honestly although this is good advice it doesn't matter anymore. People are jumping on every coin regardless of how horrible they are.

NXT ;)

Based on some of the releases I have seen..

Make sure a windows client is listed.
Include a link to the source code.
Include a virus total report of the wallet, everyone seems to panic.

I am working with some talented people on a new coin that will be incorporating these principles and a few more. Stay tuned for details in the coming week. :)

Very good points..."devs" should take heed

I hope some of the new devs take some of your advice, bitcoin may have the most support now but your right, in time something may rise to take its place, it might just be a meme who is to say? Always room for competition, take Bing Search for example=way late to the game but seems to be gaining some traction.

Sub boards for alternatives might be a lost cause, i would suggest a sticky with links to other forums, most serious coins develop their own community.

Bitshares (Protoshares) announced launch months in advance, seemed to be a very successful approach, i would suggest giving as much notice as possible, I might also suggest that in advance of launch it be posted to as many possible crypto forums that someone could reach,QRK Forums, SBC, FTC, LTC, etc.

Lets be realistic with premine, if it is supported by the developers they essentially deserve some type of compensation, nobody is paying them to help them setup in windows etc.

Support 24/7, from my short period of time here I have developed the idea that support needs to be 24/7 to really boost adoption, not just a supporting community but the team of developers needs to be hands on to encourage others that the coin will succeed.

I would like to mine a new coin with a good future before its ripped away from my grasp by the experienced well setup miners, so good luck to your team.

That certainly doesn't mean they'll be successful in the long term though. Most of them will fizzle after a short run.

We want to help guide someone to making a coin that will actually succeed.

I also suspect that bitcoin may not end up as the top coin in the long run. Bitcoin just isn't well suited to buying a cup of coffee. There may be a coin that will come along that will somehow allow very fast transactions, maybe even faster than paying through Interac. I know that there are some coins that have shortened the time-window for confirmation somewhat, but is it really reasonable to just shorten the time window to 1 second while leaving everything else the same? I think that there is room for improvement in this area, and I would like to see a coin come up that I could use every day for all my purchases.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just hoping to see Bitcoin fail because it's now too expensive for me to invest much in it. :)

Unfortunately I think there isn't, until bitcoin is well established and accepted by most of the people/businesses/governments
New paradigms require time and bitcoin is way ahead

For anybody willing to release a new PoW coin:
Please spend days/weeks to mine the genesis block and release at a difficulty high enough to keep away pump-and-dump scenarios

I honestly think that if you are serious about your coin and want to streamline your coin, you need to have a lightweight wallet ready to go with your launch.  When I first got in to bitcoin, I skipped the client and went straight to Multibit because I didn't want to wait an eternity for my client to sync up.  Also something tells me that your grandmother will not have the patience to wait for her wallet to sync up either.

+1

As lightweight wallet is relatively new, compared to standard wallet, it will take time to develop. Given the short development period of most coin, that will be a challenge.

Meh. I don't think it's of utmost importance to have it ready at launch, because the blockchain will be tiny and sync almost instantly. But I do agree with you in general - there definitely needs to be lightweight clients for all the altcoins eventually. I'm not exactly sure if MultiBit is easily portable for use with other altcoins, but it's definitely a great lightweight client to use as a base.

Great post. There really is a need for more imaginative coin logos and names.

Very good point!
+1

Very much this.  I'm surprised Litecoin/Peercoin/Namecoin/etc still haven't really got this sorted yet.  If a new alt does come along that isn't pre-mined, has a sensible block reward scheme and mining difficulty AND has a lightweight client/wallet, it could take off hugely.  Developers please take note.

This thread needs a bump  :D

Microcoin has had an excellent launch, very fair.

The only thing it's missing at the moment is a good logo, but I'd say the rest of the steps have been pretty well adhered to.

NO
1% is too much.
1% of BTC is currently... about 100 million USD!
Consider this: lots of coins get dumped in the first month. 1% of all coins ever is usually about 50% of all coins mined in the first month.
So: premine 1% and after 1 month you have 50% of the market cap!