Bitcoin Forum

Hello my fellow cryptocurrency enthusiasts,

I believe it has come time to stem the flow of scam coins that are ruining this community. Although we can not stop 13 year old copy and paste "devs" from pumping out blatlant scams, we can perhaps form a committee to help promote fair coins and educate new comers to this industry make better decisions about investing in crypto currencies.

I propose that we start the "FairCoin Foundation". This is not a coin, but a foundation that will help establish guidelines that devs, miners, traders, exchanges and investors can follow. Its all really voluntary and we can't force anyone to follow the guidelines, but perhaps the ones that do will gain a stronger following and help kill off the scam coins that are spring up everywhere.

These are some of the ideas I have been thinking of:

1) develop source code that devs can copy and use to launch their own coins. the source can include several parameters set by the foundation that will insure a fair launch and longevity of the coin. This can include

a) a decent starting diff to prevent instamining
b) a gradual block reward, sort of like what Stablecoin used when it was first launched, to give people enough time to set up pools and miners, and insure a somewhat even distribution of coins.
c) a reasonable diff change algo. this is to prevent mine and dump schemes so that the coin has a chance to survive the early stages of launch.  
d) little or no premine - this is up to the Foundation to decide if devs should get a premine and if so at what percentage. My opinion is that devs should get a premine to promote the coin, however devs will have to provide a public ledger that the FairCoin foundation can verify. If a dev fails to do so, it loses its FairCoin stamp of approval.

Once its established the devs will be launching coins with FairCoin parameters, the foundation will give the coin its seal of approval and aide the coin by promoting it as a FairCoin. So now anyone looking at the coin will know that its not just a pump and dump, instamine scam coin.

2) All new coins seeking a FairCoin Foundation Stamp of Approval must launch with the follow.

a) windows and linux wallets
b) source code
c) at least 3 pools open to registration before launch
b) an official website
c) github
d) allow a decent time before launch so that people aren't caught off guard by a new coin launching at some obscure time.

3) In order time maintain FairCoin status, all coins must have

a) a public ledger for premine bounties. All bounties must be established before launch so everyone knows who is getting what they are doing. This can be hosted on the coins official website or thread, and the FCF will maintain a copy of the ledger on the FCF website.

4) Hardforks should be in the best interest of the coin, and not be done to turn the coin into a scam coin. FCF will use its discretion.

We would require the following and anyone who can provide it will be reward on a donation bases. FairCoin would be non for profit, or perhaps we can launch an Actual FairCoin with a Premine so that we may fund the start of the Foundation.

1) an official website
2) FairCoin source coin for Sha-256, Scrypt, Scrypt-Jane and Blake.
3) a logo
4) Community input

questions, comments and concerns please discuss. If this gets going we can really make an impact on how coins are launched in the future. Imagine exchanges that only host FairCoin approved coins, investors knowing that the coin they are putting money into isn't just a pump and dump scam. Miners not wasting their hashes on coins only designed to make a few people rich. We can have an influence on the future of CryptoCurrencies as we know it!

Last few days I was thinking to propose rather similar idea.

Problem is many outside btt think starting at btt is some sort of endorsement from btt, and mods here do little to stop the obvious scamcoins.

Yeah other coins could still be pumped out just non approved. However the committee would have to contain only longterm respected forum members, or be pointless.

Agreed. I see this as either a move in the right direction, or it will fail and nothing of value will be lost. The problem I am seeing is that people are just pumping out scams left right and center. Governments can see this, classify cryptocurrencies as securities an ban the creation of unregulated currencies all together.

Its a zero sum game I understand, for someone to win, someon has to lose. But when you are scamming people to the point of out right theft, its sickening. We are trying to make the world better not worst.

No disrespect, but the market will take care of all of this, and i hate to say it but alot of these newbes need to lose some money, just so they actually learn some real crypto lessons.

and also, i would believe in this more if you had some Sr Members or some real well know members of the board doing this, just so this doesnt turn into something where you are giving out the stamp of approval for coins that you hold or want.



j



This is not necessary, everyone here has a brain and is an adult, no one here needs saving.

No disrespect, so much wrong with your post its hard to know where to begin. Its not about 'saving' anyone, its about making sure cryptos don't turn into a complete joke.

but yeah agree with your middle paragraph, the stamp of approval, would be by a committee of snr respected members or as I said it'd be pointless and just used by people that own xyz coin.

I will leave the thread open to see if more senior members care to provide input. Also it wouldn't be just me alone give out approval. Each coin seeking approval can provide a poll when they launch their coin and forum members can vote and decide if the coin meets the paramaters. If the forum members and the foundation agree, only then would the foundation provide approval.

This still won't stop people from launching their own coins without approval, but perhaps people would think twice before investing their time and money.

In the end some people will win and others will lose.  

Ok now to lets get straight to the mindless posts (that could follow) about let the free market decide;

Ok I as part of the free market, chose to start a committee to give coins a stamp of approval once deemed not to be a scam, the free market participates can freely chose whether or not to take notice of this committee.

+1

yes even later maybe a poll on what all forum members agree on, to whats acceptable by the community.

This is a big one. Devs shouldn't be allowed to delete posts from those who are trying to challenge a coins legitimacy. Perhaps we can get a Sr Foundation member to create the OP of a [ANN] thread, then let the dev reserve the first few posts after that. That way, The dev can still edit his own posts to prove information for others, but not be able to delete posts of others who may otherwise try to expose a scam.

I guess some guidelines about what not to forget when making a new coin (set up pools, compile windows client, ...) could be quite useful. Even if not fulfilling all the requirement (like having only 2 pools instead of 3, using some other code hosting instead of github, ....), if a coin fulfills most of them, then it can be viewed as fair one ...

You need to make this something like an ISO 9002 rating that corporations use. The Foundation can have this rating system or w/e so that new coins can instantly be identified by miners as "legit" and profitable. Other scam coins will still be mined but having this rating from the foundation could make a new coin much more enticing to mine.

I like the idea.

I am really liking the input so far. I hope that this does take off and forces devs to be more transparent about their intentions. I hope that Sr.Members can get behind this idea and donate some time to give us their input. Jr.Members are obviously welcomed and shouldn't be shy about giving their thoughts.

The FairCoin Foundation should be run on some pretty basic principals and guidelines, so that devs can still have the freedom to create and innovate and still get the approval and support of the foundation. This will also allow miners to back coins with more certainty that its not just a scam, and for exchanges to really back a coin that is going to have longevity. Lastly investors and traders will feel comfortable knowing that once devs, miners and exchanges support coins with FairCoin Foundation Support, they can also throw their support as well.

Once you combine the devs, miners, exchanges, traders and investors into one, you can present the package to the general public and really get mass acceptance.

if any miners actually needs this type of service, they are in so much more trouble then they think,  any person getting into cryptos should know and think about these things.


this is a starting to sound like a parental watchdog group, and we all know how respected those are.


j



p.s. starting this now is kind of funny,   the horse has already left the barn, closing the door aint gonna do anything now.

some people may use this, some not. The goal isn't to force it down peoples throats. We can't stop people from doing what they want. But we can provide some guidance to people new to the game on what to look for. If the general public uses the guidelines then I hope that we are helpful. If every says that this is a bad idea and we should die horrible deaths then so be it, nothing of value will be lost.

Remember when Orbitcoin was listed on Cryptsy? Everyone and their grandma knew that Orbitcoin is a heavily pre-mined scam coin. Everyone protested in trollbox and it didn't even last a day on the exchange. Fast forward some time later. Cryptsy never allowed people to withdrawal their Orbit coins from when it was first listed. A few people bitched and Cryptsy listed Orbitcoin back on its exchanges.

So now you have a coin with a 4 year premine being traded on one of the biggest altcoin exchanges.

People are free to mine/trade whatever the hell they want. But perhaps we are all in this together and it wouldn't hurt to inform someone and say

"Hey BTW, ORB has 4 year premine, perhaps you should think twice before mining/trading something like that".  

i believe your are trying to help people, and i can respect that, but it seem like you are trying to setup a crypto police,   the digital currency world is made of Crypto Anarchists, which rejects controls. a system like that is everything cryptos is against.



may i suggest you just start your own newsletter to inform instead of making a foundation.  just my opinion.


j

I disagree, the idea of bit was to create a decentralized currency, that technical side of things has mostly been achieved, however having it endorsed by people as a "currency" is much more difficult.

We need some kind of organisation that will at least review the coins and put their stamp of approval on it - this is something commonly discussed among our social group here in Australia.

who watches the watchmen



j

I do

and i'm watching you at night, outside your window.

I think this is how the FDA was created - and we all know how well that has come along  ;D

strength in numbers, if the numbers are wrong they wont make it to the exchange and will die out naturally I believe.

So altcoins are just a bunch of snake oil? 

this is a more apt analogy than i first thought. 

Well there already is crypto police on this forum, we'd all agree on the idealist stance if it wasn't for reality. Monies involved, so no policing here and every second download would be a wallet stealer.

My committee idea is not policing anyways, copy/paste 100% premines could still be pumped out to would be dev's heart content.
And again its not about protecting individuals from their own stupid mistakes, its about the survival of legit alts, and not being flooded and diluted with all these scamcoins.

and those anarchists are a minority in the crypto community now the get rich quick types have moved in.

lol so you're saying no scamcoins have made it too exchanges? non with hiddden premines? pump n dump dev's? ....yeah sure  ::)

I am completely in agreement with this idea!

I would like to volunteer Colbertcoin to be the first, or one of the first alts to be developed under the newly created Faircoin Foundation guidelines.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=398018

Lets get in touch this weekend.

Please! Establish a group / thread which can analyze / review new alt coins
Any alt coins released without the unique ID# issued by the review board should be mined with caution.

We really need to distinguish the shitcoins from the ones that devs are actually working and putting their effort into!

DONT MINE COINS THAT ARE MEANT TO BE PUMP & DUMP!
all it does it devalue the economy and cause promising alt coins to stay under the radar!!


PLEASE QUOTE AND BUMP THIS IF YOU AGREE!

tokyoghetto about to send you a pm interesting concept

also like to add I am totally in disagreement with the term 'foundation' (cause it wouldn't be one) or 'watchdog' (its not a policing etc) for this committee.

So should we just refer to it as the FairCoin Committee?

we can also refer to it as FairCoin Association, Union, Trust, Council, Commission, Group, or Board.

It may be sometime before we get the first draft of guidelines established. I hope that you can be patient.

FairCoin Commission also sounds good, but I should warn that the acronym is already in use.

So in order to help establish the first draft of guidelines, we should perhaps breakdown the cycle of an altcoin and what parameters should be followed.

Please feel free to copy and edit the following, as much input is required so we can get the first draft and vote on it.

This is what I would personally like to see, its not set in stone and is subject to change. Remember that everyone in the community has a say in this, we are trying to ensure our survival and fight back against the scumbag scamcoins that are sucking the life out of this place.

The first cycle is the code of the coin. Now we shouldn't care about the algorithm that will be used, but there are some things that should be looked at more closely to make sure that the dev isn't just trying to scam people by running a premine/instamine pump and dump.

In this age of mining, with so much hashing power available, there is NO reason why coins should be launched with such low diffs. So devs can do one of two things. They can either:

A) have a coin with low diff, but with no block rewards, low block rewards or a sliding scale of increasing block rewards until say "X" number of blocks are mined. After "X" is crossed than full block rewards are given. This is how Stablecoin was launched and it was very successful. By the time we hit full block rewards we had stable pools running and all miners were in full force hashing away.

or

B) start the coin with full block rewards and a high diff.

These two things prevents instamining by devs and insiders, plus takes away the advantage that solo miners have over pool miners.

The second cycle is the Pre-Launch. This is when a dev gets ready to launch the coin. If the dev would like FairCoin stamp of approval, the dev will need to ensure the following is in place BEFORE launching the coin:

1) Official [ANN] thread, which should include as much information about the coin as possible.
2) Information on how to solomine the coin. .conf file settings with ports
3) At least 1 pool, with pre-registration so that miners can get workers set up. The more pools the better.
4) Compiled windows and linux wallets. If devs are expected to code and fix coins, they should know how to compile wallets.
5) source code, so that we may scan and verify that it doesn't contain any trojans, keyloggers.

Premine:

If there is a premine, the dev should list the amount, and how the premine will be spent before hand. It seems like devs like to pull a percentage out of thin air, but never say how the premine will be spent. We don't expect to have the entire premine accounted for bounties and giveaways, but a portion of it should be allotted to things like block explorers, logos, giveaways, android wallets, pools, exchanges etc etc. Dev can keep some of the premine as compensation for setting up official websites, pools and for working on the coin. Some devs aren't miners and barely get donations so even good devs walk away from projects when its no longer economically viable for them.

I propose that a % cap limit should be established for premines. Say for example 3%. A portion of that should be put up for bounties and giveaways and the rest is up to the devs discretion. Some devs may need to use the premine to help pay with coding and getting stuff fixed. Some devs may decide to keep the rest of the premine for themselves.

a) a public ledger should be maintained by the dev team
b) failure to do so results in the coin losing its FairCoin status.

So whats in it for the devs/coins being launched using FairCoin guidelines?

Once a coin has FairCoin status, the dev can expect full support from FairCoin. The approval of FairCoin will ensure anyone involved in the devs project trusts the project to be legit and not a scam. In the future we can explore launching an actual FairCoin...umm...coin and use it as a source of funding to help other coins with FairCoin status. This can include compensating devs, promoting the coins to exchanges and the media, perhaps even starting our own exchange were only coins with FairCoin status will be traded.

this is the biggest issue right now there will be hundreds of altcoins made in the next few days > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=396991.0

What about coins launched before FairCoin is established?

Any coins launched before these guidelines are finalized and available to those wishing to follow them will not be looked at. Any coins launched after FairCoin will only get FairCoin status at the request of the dev or the community. Other than that everyone is free to launch coins with whatever parameters they feel like, however we hope that serious devs will use FairCoin as a way to show the community that their coin is the one to be  supported.

+1

I think ultimately the market will be the arbiter of this. Look at how out of the dozen or more coins to launch over the past couple weeks only a handful have made it to exchanges and only a couple of them have retained any value at all. The coins launched in the past few days are generating almost no interest from investors. Even the most enthusiastic investors seem to be learning to not put money into every piece of shit that comes along. This is good since it's the only way to solve this problem. As long as there is demand for something there will be supply no matter what you try to do. If we get to a state where people are only creating random shit coins for fun with zero expectation of profit, then we'll be in a better place.

If you do decide to start something like this, one suggestion I have is that Github repositories should be started as forks off of whatever coin they're copying. It's so much quicker to evaluate code if I can see exactly the changes that went into it --as well as which code base from which it was derived-- in the easiest way possible. It also makes it much easier to track down bugs that have popped up in certain families of alts. This should be mandatory as far as I'm concerned.

One other idea that I've suggested in a few coins' announcement threads half trolling is to make make transaction records for all premined coins public. It's trivial to export the csv of transactions from the wallet to which coins were premined. This could then be posted on the coin website with references to where all the transactions went. Links to giveaway threads or bounties paid (make sure bounty recipients have posted their addresses publicly) would be sufficient documentation for most purposes. Of course there's little to stop a dev from reneging on promises of transparency but it would make it harder to dump if everyone knew what was happening.

My guess is that all those coins will launch with a ridiculously low diff, which means instamine. Since FairCoin discourages instamining, because it puts a large portion of coins into the hands of few people, these coins most likely wouldn't get approval. If we can educate people on the importance as to why instamining is harmful to a coins economics, they will avoid all these coins like a plague.

I love this idea, but with so many shitcoins already on the market and so many shitcoins being created all the time, there have to be other criterium.

I think a huge obstacle is going to be getting an exchange on board. Cryptsy and CoinedUp keep adding new shitcoins. BTC-e hasn't added any new coins in some time. While a huge obstacle to tackle, any foundation is going to have to either a) promote an exchange that uses ONLY FairCoin approved coins; or b) create an exchange that ONLY adds approved coins.

Additionally, peer-review is going to be required. Transparency is essential for this to work. What are you going to do to guarantee this?

I think a crypto should be in the market for some period before it receives an endorsement;
otherwise a dev could premine 3% say its for bounties, giveaways etc, keep a ledger for 1% list on an exchange personally dump 2% and go "so long suckers" (with the committees endorsement to get a higher value).

FairCrypto, FairCurrency, FairCryptocurrency as not all cryptos are coins, but yeah committee or similar.

Yes exchanges add any crap attitude is part of the reason a separate (non benefiting) committee is needed.

You are onto something.

Drop the "coin" part of the name completely so it does not sound like YACC (yet another cryptocoin).

We should discuss the finalize the name over PM to avoid squatters.

Creating an exchange would be the best solution, it would be an elite club that only coins of the highest standards will be permitted to trade upon.

This would obviously be a large undertaking, but not impossible.

What do you mean by this?

well, most coins are just clones of other coins, so they inherit certain traits that make them prime for scams. FairCoin can develop source code for coins that meet the guidelines, so that devs can launch coins with having to change very little code.

FairCoin  can also just set guidelines for devs to follow, and we can ignore having to develop source code for devs. This allows devs to have more freedom over the code they write. Remember that Faircoins intention is to weed out the scam coins that have the following traits:

Heavy Premines
Instamining
Front loaded Block Rewards.

Coins will never be equal. People with more hashing power will always get more coins then smaller miners. Better traders will always win against amateur traders. But I think that we can agree that when a few people control a large percentage of any coins existing money supply, they artificially suppress price, control supply/demand and in the end kill off coins before they gain any traction.

Releasing "fair code template" would require probably one template for each PoW algo (scrypt, sha256, ...) and would require someone to maintain it and merge useful changes from bitcoin, litecoin and other coins ... potentially quite a lot of ongoing work.

I suggest rather just publish some guidelines with explanation why to stick with them, like:

your initial difficulty should be set between X and Y.
This would be harder to tune, but I'd say the really absolute minimum would be so that with original dev's mining hardware the coin would be mined at half speed, or more if the coin is preannounced, even more if massively hyped.
OTOH, if the diff is set too high and none of the initial miners can't find a single block in an hour, then the coin will probably fail horribly too ....

your retarget should be small enough to mitigate any instamine attempts on coin launch (if too many miners join to push block times to few seconds, the coin should adapt quickly), or to avoid coin being unmineable if to many miners leave for another coin (remember Catcoin? :))

your block times should be reasonable. I'd say 30 seconds minimum, unless you greatly improve the protocol to allow smaller times without excessive forking
(6 seconds like 1st iteration of Nutcoin is not a good idea, as it resulted everybody mining millions, but unspendable, as the wealth was only on their own fork of the chain)

This is an awesome idea! Long overdue.

I volunteer to be on the approval board.

Predictably and sadly I can see lots of miners giving push back because they
have the most to lose. They are the ones who create the scam coins, build the hype,
sell them overpriced to the coin threads, and then dump them on the exchanges.

My only advice is keep it simple, don't get bogged down in minutia.

Refine the basic principles to follow to achieve Faircoin status, and create a trusted board of members who can approve or disapprove.

Let's do this!

This community needs to make a decision, keep going down this current path, or start regulating itself.

I have been running online communities since the late 90's and there always comes a time when you need to lay down the law, or you fall into complete chaos.

Lets settle on the name via PM, Ill get a site up and running.

It is important to me that the 'Fair Cryptocurrency Committee' or whatever it is eventually called, it should not strictly limit itself to simplistically judging whether a new issue follows particular rules.  I will explain why using a concrete example.

I've been working on an alt cryptocurrency, but with some major changes to the usual algorithms.  I'm concerned that some deliberate choices made for maximal fairness and for the long-term good of a cryptocurrency, with no intent of personal profit, could disqualify it  from being considered a 'fair coin'.  Note that these are not the only major changes made; merely those made specifically for the sake of fairness.  

Firstly, there will be little or no mining, meaning that maybe 10% of block awards or maybe no block awards at all will be available merely for having compute power.  All, or all the rest, will be distributed via proof-of-stake only.  For at least 90% of the blocks a smartphone with a permanent Internet connection should have as much chance of getting a block as a ten thousand dollar server.  

Secondly, if there is mining, it will not be anything that can be done with ASICs or GPUs.  This is because I believe in fairness.  These things are two or three orders of magnitude faster, for the money, than non-specialized equipment, and I do not want to support a specialized class of miners.  They tend to cause more problems than they are worth, especially when operating en masse, and it is both unfair and counterproductive in my estimation to exclude (by overwhelming) that fraction of the public that uses normal computers from mining.  Finally, miners who own specialized equipment are primarily those who are mining for profit only, and who can be expected to simply dump coins as fast as they mine them in order to buy Bitcoin.  They represent a drag on a coin's value, not an asset.

Thirdly, I object strongly to any pressure to allow mining pools, if mining is allowed at all.  Mining pools in my estimation represent an existential threat to cryptocurrencies; first in terms of centralization, second in terms of logistics by screwing horribly with the difficulty as they jump on and off and overwhelming the probably-small server infrastructure of a fledgling currency, and third in their propensity to attract miners who believe that no other cryptocurrency exists for any reason other than to dump it on the market in order to buy Bitcoin.  

Fourth, as is necessary with proof-of-stake, there will be a ridiculously large premine.  My intent is to distribute about a million units *WIDELY* (to at least a hundred thousand pubkeys) before even announcing.  People who check will mostly discover that they already own the corresponding privkey to at least one of them.  Some will own more than one; that is unfair, but can't be helped.  To the extent that addresses are held by those who do not participate, the coins that those nonparticipants could otherwise claim will (mostly) eventually be claimed on a random basis by those who do participate.  The initial blocks will be created with a script that permits more and more addresses to spend the coinage as time goes on;  each month, about ten percent of them will become spendable by an additional existing key, until the distribution is complete or until they have gone through seven keys each.  Those who participate will occasionally "inherit" a distribution award from those who do not.

During the first year about 30 thousand coins (that is, three percent of the existing million) will be created.  Thereafter each year will see three percent more coins created than the previous year.   So, 3 percent long term inflation after the initial distribution.  But absolutely no relevance to anything like a 'halving time' or 'ultimate total number of coins' criterion that a committee is likely to come up with.  This is specifically to avoid an initial phase of very high rewards, because that would attract pump'n'dumpers rather than people who simply want a currency to use.

Now, I believe that this outlines a plan for a very "fair" cryptocurrency.  In fact fairness is one of my *PRIMARY* intents in creating it.  But I also believe that because it works differently from the expected model, it is very unlikely to meet any set-in-stone criterion of "fairness" based on the usual set of expectations.  

Therefore I ask that whatever else you decide here the committee should remain free to exercise human judgement as to whether a new issue is fair, rather than merely interpreting narrow rules.

Great feedback here so far!

I think the term "fair" should be swapped with "safe".

Fair is a relative term, its the safety of the novices coming in here every day that is the main objective.

Hire me, i'll make you a pro site

This whole idea is useless, 99.9% alts are made to make profit quickly, aka pump-and-dump.
Making a "foundation" doesn't make any sense, if there is something good about an alts everybody can objectively recognized it.
I haven't seen one in months

Ofcourse they have. But they are there because of the peoples demand. Which goes back to my original point which is if the demand exists then it should be able to continue. If a coin has no value and has a lot of followers then oh well, let them figure it out for themselves. You never know one of those people might create a service that will make the coin become very useful.

All im saying is that you never know, and this form of policing kills creativity and the free market.

You should put this effort into removing mastercoin  ;) or if you really care by going through the forums and manually comment on any new coins to alarm the new users.

LOL.... this is why we need a standard.

We are not stopping anyone from mining, selling or owning scam coins, just
helping others make a "safer" investment in alt coins.

exactly. its not policing because we don't enforce any laws. There is no consequence to anyone launching coins without seeking approval. However, we can influence good devs to launch quality products that others can really put their support behind. This should diminish the amount of scamcoins being released and create legit coins that have a chance of becoming Bitcoin 2.0.

You have made a valid point. Each coin should be looked at on a case by case scenario. This is why FairCoin would need a combination of trusted senior members and jr members to review and vote on if the coin merits FairCoin Approval. Its clear that your development approach is sound and not just some fly by night rush scamcoin launch. Good devs can wait a day or two to let FairCoin look at the project before they launch, and use FairCoin to give their project more merit. 

Are scam coin developers and miners really this scared of a little Fair or Safe
coin advisory, a warning label?

We must be on the right track.

:)

Once we get an actual name down and secure the domain, we can discuss site design. Compensation would be through donations. I feel that people who wish to donate their time and energy into this project would like to see altcoins succeed and not just use altcoins as a way to become BTC/FIAT rich.

What is fair is subjective.

I think this idea has the best intentions, but is conceptually flawed. Future currencies would be judged by the established norms of today.

Consider Bitcoin being declared a scam at its outset. It was judged by the dominant understanding of currency that existed at that point in time time. It still is declared a scam by many. I believe this foundation has potential to stand in the way of innovation.

Is anything that radically departs from the current dominant mining model a scam---or is it possible for fair and viable currencies to pursue alternatives?

Mining itself has concerns that must be considered. (botnets? asic? ghash.io? centralization?)

Bitcoin is beginning to gain mainstream traction. It is not that Bitcoin used to be a scam and now isn't; instead, understanding of Bitcoin has grown. Usage and those willing to take risk developed that understanding, and disseminated the knowledge they gained. Understanding the mechanics of a new currency can take a long period of time, in order to for individuals to judge its fairness.

I think NXT is a great example of potential innovation that may be threatened. NXT began as closed source. It radically departs from the traditional crypto currency mining model. If it is flawed for those reasons, then it may still bring tremendous value in concepts that can be adapted to other new systems. NXT is in its infancy, and understanding has barely started. I think the crypto currency community benefits at large by things like NXT, MasterCoin, eMunie, and Ripple being pursued by those that believe in each respective system and accept the risks of their involvement.

How can you avoid an overly restrictive definition of fairness?

Ultimately, anyone can create a service that pumps out clones coins that meet the proposed standards. I see this proposal as further encouraging the homogenization of crypto currency. It encourages a single point of failure in the path of innovation.

I appreciate the motivations, and agree on that level, but do not see this as solving any more problems than it creates.

I believe you are correct. If you notice when these crapcoins first launch, all the new members shout "Good Coin" and "This should be good" before the dev has even launched the source code. All they care about is mining and dumping. In order for these scams to work, they depend on the uninformed public to believe them that the coin is good.

All you hear is "to da moon" and "don't sell cheap" and "this coin will do this trust me". Out right scams. All while they are just waiting for an exchange to pick up the coin so they can dump and move on. If we succeed in educating people about the scams and allowing good projects to really shine, these scams will go the way of the dodo bird.

no exchanges will pick them up, no miners will mine, no one will do google docs exchanges. The scammers and mine/dump folk will only trade amongst themselves and slowly even they will stop.  

Only idiots can throw money at something they have no knowledge about, no standard can help idiots
Look at the passwords people use. Do they know they have to use a strong long password with a mix of chars numbers and symbols? Yes but they don't

How does this proposal in any way discourage the creation of crapcoins? All it does is set standards to legitimize them.

The idea in no way discourages the creation of crap coins, just helps everyone recognize them.

Loving the pushback...we've hit a nerve.

Crap coins can meet these standards, no?

How does this prevent someone copy/pasting search/replacing to create a coin---and then following whatever procedures FairCoin produces to be labelled 'fair'?

Working with Forum administrator to make this thread, or similar ....a Sticky thread.

A regulation committee is a great idea.

More of an advisory committee, a seal of approval... not regulation!

We are not looking to prevent anybody from starting a coin.

The purpose here is to let newbie0872, who just joined yesterday, know that there is a difference between litecoin and lollipopcoin.

Has anyone see the "altcoin" announcements section of this forum?. Thanks to the altcoin generation service and coins like DOGE, you now have:

shoecoin
leprocoin
oilcoin
crapcoin
cagecoin
monacoin
hexacoin
coinye
electric

plus many more, these are the ones I just saw on the first page! We can't force these coins to follow FairCoin guidelines but if the committee reviews these coins and provides the ones that qualify with an approval rating, it would make it easier for new comers to avoid the obvious scam coins.

We all know what a scamcoin constitutes of. Instamining, Premining with no ledger, Front loaded "early adopter" blocks and launching a coin with low diff. You can also include keyloggers/trojan wallet stealers, no source code, lack of compiled clients and mining pools at launch.

So the committee can set guidelines that they can *choose* to follow so that they gain more support from the public. Coin development is becoming saturated and more competitive. Serious coin developers would welcome a service like FairCoin in order to give them an edge over other developers.  

Except nothing proposed accomplishes that. LollipopCoin creator can copy/paste search/replace LiteCoin code, and then meet just make sure he/she meets the following:


Criteria of the above are actually most easily met by quick copy/paste clones and pump/dump schemes, than by new dev efforts with limited resources.

It sounds like this is actually (inadvertently?) going to encourage copy/paste clones and the homogenization of alts:


It does not solve the flood of crap alts.

It also potentially hinders innovative systems that differ in new fundamental ways.

You are correct. We can scrap the source code idea in order to avoid homogenization of altcoins. Devs will be free to develop code with what ever parameters they chose to do.

However, when it comes to launch, devs know that by launching without source code, pools, or compiled clients, they just give themselves and insiders an edge when it comes to coin distribution. Giving such power over few individuals whose only intention is to sell the coins into BTC is dangerous. This creates a lack of confidence in a free market and puts a burden on the entire altcoin community as a whole.

We have not set any parameters or guidelines yet, its all being discussed right now.

Simply cut n pasting Litecoin does not make you legit.

If a new user with 3 posts starts up an altcoin "OMGAMAZINGCOIN - litecoin clone!!"
And then we see a rush of newly created users signing up saying

"Great coin!"

"Nice idea!

"I love it!

"This will do well!"

Yeah, guess what? This is not getting the stamp of approval.

Not that the dev will care, they can keep on with the charades, but they will not be getting the nod of approval from the committee.

A seal of approval for a coin does not stop the creation of scam coins.

Its just to point out that some coins meet a standard that are safer, less risky to invest in

I can't see how a voluntary committee with absolutely no enforcement powers whatsoever could stop the next great innovation in alt currency.

We just want to call out the pump and dump scammers, is that too much to ask for?

not trying to be negative here but that could all be done for less than 1BTC all it will do is filter out the opportunist scamers

mabe the coin has to be backed by a long term forum member ( mabe over 6 months and no bad rep and active on the forums to stop the buying of accounts )

Not to get rich, i'm genuinely interested in creating a site and contributing to this project.

PM me, when your ready to take this to the next level.

My 2 cents:
- properly forked github repo, so the differences from the base coin could be easily audited
- working testnet

Great idea!

But there is a coin named faircoin.

faircoin is just a working title. We are still working on a proper name. any input would be welcomed.

I agree. Another member mentioned this in an earlier post. Especially the fact that it should have a working testnet. Most copy and paste devs don't even know what the testnet is. The list of coins that are trading on exchanges without a testnet is a mile long.

ColbertCoin has asked if they can be the first coin to receive the approval and support of this committee. This is a great opportunity for us to develop  a first draft and see if it works on a real launch. I will review the points that members have brought up and create a master list of guidelines that the dev can follow to ensure a fair launch of the coin. Please feel free to bring up more reasonable criteria you would like to see in a coins creation and launch that would appeal to the community.

I think coins that are relying on a substantially unique code base should be treated somewhat differently than coins which are just copy/paste clones. Otherwise this organization would do more to stiffle innovation than help it. As far as the copy/paste scrypt and sha clones go though there really should be a compelling reason for creating another coin at all, in addition to the other requirements listed. The whole point of currency is to be at least a somewhat universal unit for trade.

That said, I do like the idea of a colbertcoin for publicity purposes IF the developer can get a Colbert endorsement (he started a super PAC so why not this?) AND if the developer has the skills to pull off a decent coin/launch. On the later point, I would hope the dev has enough familiarity with the code to not fork an existing coin with known bugs or other issues (which is a large portion of them).

May not be so easy to properly fork if borrowing several features from several coins, though if there is some base, then it should be obvious from which revision of what it is the fork.
It would be always nice to have something better that git repo with single commit "First released coin version".


How many alt coins have currently a working testnet?

here is a shortlist of coins with/without testnets.

altcoin testnets? Wasteland of failed assertions
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=271176.0

Chances are that any coins released within the last 1 month, including those from the altcoin creation service, will not have testnets. Its a big problem because it means that the dev didn't test the code and may lack the skills to fix the coin if it ever becomes broken. Most scamcoin devs only want the coin to work long enough for it to get listed on a exchange so that they can dump. If that is the true intention of the dev, most likely they will not bother with testnet.

I have been struggling with how I should eventually decide which coins will make it on CCE. The CCE3 project is an ongoing effort to create an explorer that takes up less resources and giving CCE the ability to host more coins.
At first the goal was to be able to handle the vast majority of coins, but the more I think about it, that my not be possible from a human resource standpoint. If CCE has 150+ coins, without developer interaction, there would be no reasonable way for me to keep up with client updates/forks etc. Lets just say developer interaction with just the coins now hosted on CCE has been less then needed.

I have been trying to think of a criteria for adding coins to CCE. I used to get requests to add coins before the Spring rush because CCE gave coins some measure of legitimacy, perhaps it is time to go back to that before CCE3 is finished.
Perhaps a committee like this could play a part in which coins get onto CCE. Maybe a requirement to notify all services directly of mandatory updates, and developer monitoring of services to let services know when something related to their coin(s) has gone awry.

Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise that my work on developing the SCI-FI coins has pushed back the final development of CCE3.

Just a thought.....

I agree. I love the intent... but this does not discourage crap coins---and may stifle innovation, as you have said. It seems that this is (inadvertantly) more about concerns for the long term mining integrity of Bitcoin directive descendants than about supporting innovation.

Mining, as we know it today, may not be the future.

As a counter-proposal I would like to suggest: create an alt-coin matrix.

Use the momentum behind this idea to create a site that details specific objective criteria, such as source code availability/location, main site, lead developers, launch date, whether or not the coin is mined, initial coin count, expected coin count, re-launch history, fork history, supported exchanges, etc...
 
WikiMatrix does something like this for wiki engines: http://www.wikimatrix.org/ (http://www.wikimatrix.org/)

I would love to see that for alts.

While I support free market, I do have to agree that it is getting out of hand.

Maybe instead there should just be higher standards on these forums.  The forums have been around a long time are considered to be the staple-point of the bitcoin community.  I think that in order to have your "new" coin posted here, it should meet certain guidelines and then and only then can it be posted here.

These forums are spinning out of control, and frankly it is looking even worse with all these "reserved" posts.  Now whether they are there to sell to someone at a later point, or whether it is to help peoples post count, I don't know but they need to be cleaned up.

Just my 2 cents.

Excellent proposal. We can also develop a grading system based on certain criteria available before, during and after launch. A score out of 100 based on things like source code availability, compiled clients, supported exchanges, forking history, testnet etc etc.

That way people can have a better place to compare and make wiser decisions on what coins to support. We can also include "FairLaunch" as an option for any new coins. If devs would like, for a small donation we can have committee members review their coins before, during and after launch and if a fair launch is accomplished, they get an approval rating. This way anyone late to the coin knows that coin isn't just a pump and dump scam.

This would also include coins with innovative designs like 100% Premined PoS coins that are meant for fair distribution and purchase, closed source coins, or coins with new and unique algorithms  that have yet to be developed.

Not necessarily. For example with the Darsek relaunch I had a few public test nets and even more private test nets. Just because a public test net is not available, does not mean the developer did not use private test nets. In many ways it makes more sense because with a public test net , every time there is a  change something that effects the block chain you need to reset the test net. With a public test net, that means getting everybody helping with the test net on board every time a major change occurs. This can slow things down. Once a coin is released, a test net is really just a couple of public nodes set with the test net switch on, not really a big feat or any sign of developer competence.
I rarely find myself using a public test net, as setting up a private test net is much more efficient in terms of testing code as a public test net requires others to also be testing your code.
Public test nets do have there place in development, but not to the extent being suggested.

Just my experience :)

I would like to recommend the foundation consider a wiki system, in order to quickly produce an immediately useful resource.

Lock down editing of the home page, and use that to present the matrix information.

Link from the home page to sub-pages for individual coins and global concepts (PoW, PoS, PoB, etc...). Create a required template of information for all individual coins (covering the criteria you with to present on the main page).

Neutral point of view should be the content policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view)

Moderation overhead will be heavy, but directly proportionate the challenge of the Foundation itself. Elected foundation members can serve as content moderators. I would donate to see this get off the ground.

Exactly right.

In efforts to set a good example, we are not simply grabbing the Colbert name and slapping it on a coin. We have reached out to the producers and will bring them in on this.

If they say no, then its off.

If they want to proceed with this experiment, then its full steam ahead.

I will need the assistance of good devs, so if any of you have some experience or have contacts, send them through.

I am strongly sympathetic to the hardcore cryptocurrency anarchists who are involved in the decentralization of the world's currency systems.  This makes me hesitant to support an approval system such as the one outlined.

On the other hand, the proliferation of worthless coins is definitely a problem, and one that should be addressed.  I feel that in order for alt coins to be successful as a long-term challenge to the fiat currencies, they must gain wide mainstream acceptance.  The crapcoins released almost daily seem to me to be counterproductive in this regard, and are making all alternative currencies look more risky and more scam-like to the general population of consumers and investors, simply because most people (outside this community) don't understand the difference between BTC and DGC, and [insert today's CRAP coin name here].  Getting new coins to a state of "safety" and/or "fairness" would help expand the community of coin users and enhance the legitimacy of not necessarily any one group of coins, but to the concept of alternative currencies generally. 

A Fair Crypto Foundation may be a step in this direction if it leads to more stable coins with long-term growth potential, without enforcement powers against new coins and without limiting new currencies to a set template of what an "approved" coin should look like.  Crap coins will still be released, and perhaps some good coins may come about without official approval, but this system may bring in some valuable investment that the community needs to flourish.  And in the end, the free market will still decide which currencies fail and which survive.   

ehhh, I suggested the stamp of approval idea a few days ago in another thread =P
great to see something is done to stop all these copy/scam coins ruining the economy!

The more I think about this idea the more I like it but I still don't think it will do much on its own to slow down the rate of scam creation. Even if all it does is send a message to outsiders looking in that there are people trying to keep things clean and above board I think it can be helpful to alt community legitimacy in the long run. Image matters.

Also I don't think this is all that conflicting with the crypto-anarchist position since it's a purely voluntary thing. I just hope it doesn't turn into the American Heart Association where any food processor can get a heart healthy label on its junk food in exchange for a healthy donation. I also hope it doesn't end up overly rigid or ideological. That would be the quickest path to irrelevance.

Let the market sort it out. Be patient. Decentralized systems are selforganizing ,but messy, regulators, rule-makers, and organizers are old school. That's what I want to get away from. If you need that just stick to the dollar.