Bitcoin Forum

I'm running the Bitmark project (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.0), which should serve to benefit the crypto currency sector.

After taking feedback from the community I've worked out a fair long term development fund (https://github.com/coinsolidation/bitmark/wiki/Development-Fund).

The project is currently in need of urgent (minor, one off) funding in order to keep momentum and pay for some resourses. I've already put out details and an alternative proposal to IPO funding (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.msg7485632#msg7485632).

Do any of you have alternative approaches that may be viable?

Is anybody willing to take a small punt on a legitimate project?

Thank you for any advice.

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Clarifications

I must be honest in what I will have at my disposal:

• a) A development fund of the currency from the 0.250% block tax
• b) An amount of personal coins which I will be legitimately mining myself
• c) I'm a working man with an income which varies from month to month, some months it has more disposable income than others

I've calculated the cost of all resources needed to be about 0.6 BTC.

In return I could offer a portion of A for an agreed time.
Also, If required a percentage of B for an agreed time.
In the worst case, should the project have zero value I could recompense from my personal income.

A+B have an unknown value, which we must assume to be zero, but that we hope to be higher.

Perhaps part of the problem is that this is not a pump and dump with "10000% gains tomorrow!", it's a long term development project who's value will be earned rather than presupposed.

If it helps any, part of the project entails making a clone-able reference implementation available to the public (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=673558.0) so that we can have clones which at least use a stable new codebase, hopefully that alone has some value.

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I could suggest a get out clause where if the bitmark supplied hasn't reached a valuation exceeding the investment by an agreed date and the donator feels uncomfortable holding them longer, I personally guarantee to pay back USD amount investment + xx% as a minimum return on that date, in return for the bitmarks back.

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Give credits to donators somewhere in the client (in the about screen showing current version etcetra) and on the website.

Special thanks to CoinHoarder for his valuable contributions to the discussion

People like having incentive to donate money, so I'd just make sure there is some upside in it for them, and I'm sure you will find donators.

That's the only thing good about IPOs.. the incentive if the project does well is apparent and people are more likely to "donate".

I like your idea of funneling the development transaction fee tax to people whom fund the project early on.

Thank you for your reply.

I must be honest in what I will have at my disposal:

• a) A development fund of the currency from the 0.250% block tax
• b) An amount of personal coins which I will be legitimately mining myself
• c) I'm a working man with an income which varies from month to month, some months it has more disposable income than others

I've calculated the cost of all resources needed to be about 0.6 BTC.

In return I could offer a portion of A for an agreed time.
Also, If required a percentage of B for an agreed time.
In the worst case, should the project have zero value I could recompense from my personal income.

A+B have an unknown value, which we must assume to be zero, but that we hope to be higher.

Perhaps part of the problem is that this is not a pump and dump with "10000% gains tomorrow!", it's a long term development project who's value will be earned rather than presupposed.

If it helps any, part of the project entails making a clone-able reference implementation available to the public (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=673558.0) so that we can have clones which at least use a stable new codebase, hopefully that alone has some value.

Just don't tell people you'll pay them a certain amount of BTC back, it could get you in hot water if BTC value goes up a lot.

I learned this lesson the hard way.

You could build an ALT coin generator as a source of funding.. (just an idea, not sure if it's a good one.) I think most of the generators are not generating coins with current codebases.

Or, give credits like at the end of movies to donators somewhere in the client (in the about screen showing current version etcetra) or on the webpage. People like being famous... :)

You could build an exchange in which a percentage of the trading fees go towards the development of your coin and the rest goes to maintenance of the service, or any service for that matter could be made and a percentage of the profits sent to the development fund.

Creative ways to fund development is something that Litecoin/Bitcoin is lacking IMO. Their development funds pretty much all come from donations, I think both could spend more time thinking of creative ways to fund development.

Thanks again for the feedback, it's very valuable.

Your comment on a promise of BTC is very wise. Perhaps then I should suggest a get out clause where if the bitmark supplied hasn't reached a valuation exceeding the investment by an agreed date and the donator feels uncomfortable holding them longer, I personally guarantee to pay back USD amount + xx% as a minimum return on that date, in return for the bitmarks back.

I would be keen to avoid creating another altcoin generator, but am very happy to produce a Bitmark-RI cloning guide for those with enough technical ability to do it, and of course keep the RI updated. It's a good suggestion but the goal of the RI is to encourage safe and stable project forks, rather than a plethora of useless clones created by people with limited technical ability who can't additionally support the coin they create.

additions in response to your edit:
Credits! great idea. Yes let's add this.
Exchange, perhaps later. I do not want to over commit and would prefer to keep development efforts on things which benefit end users and adoption. Existing exchanges are already quite good and improving.
Creative ways to fund development.. always exploring this, I think long term is covered, it's just the initial setup phase that needs addressed.

Again thanks for the brainstorm!

sure just send to my address below

~CfA~

Understood. I'm not saying that making coins from generators is a good thing, but people do it anyways and it would be a source of funding.

Just think outside of the box ;)

Keep it up, and thanks! I've edited my response in response to your edit.

Also I have updated the OP with what has been discussed so far. It's sounding more reasonable already.

This kind of goes against your idea to help new developers out by providing an updated code base, but you could keep it closed source until you actually release bitmark. Certainly the time you spent on the code base already would be worth something to someone creating a new ALT coin as it would save them some time. I guess this would be much easier than creating a service to fund development as you already have it done.

You could also try using indiegogo, kickstarter, or a bitcoin crowd funding website. Just think of ways to provide incentive to people to donate apart from giving them a stake in the currency.. Such as credits, shirts, etc. you aren't looking to raise a huge amount so you might be able to do it this way. I admit shirts are probably a bad idea, so the incentives would need to be thought over.

You could start a raffle where the prizes are worth less than the amount of coins raised, but big enough to where it would be nice to win by donating a small amount.

Giving people incentive is key.

Great ideas CoinHoarder.

Would you be willing to commit some time in the future to the bitmark project, particularly at the adoption stage? I can see the way you think being very beneficial during brainstorming sessions and when discussing targeting specific markets / encouraging adoption - as the target is non crypto currency affiliated ventures.

To clarify regarding the RI, all Bitmark code is already open source and free to use, I just need to polish a few bits, fork, and provide some documentation so that it's easily clone-able by others.

I think what I'd like to convey is that I would like the process of others cloning the RI to be a documented manual process, rather than an automated process.

Thanks.

I'll certainly try to help where I can, but I don't want to get officially involved with any projects at the moment. I learned my lesson with Litecoin not to invest too much of my time and support into one crypto currency, as it makes it much harder to leave if I don't like the direction things are headed. Also I think I'll receive less flak from the community of whatever coin I may abandon in the future by not getting so attached. Some people unfortunately don't understand that opinions can change. Furthermore, I feel genuinely horrible for perhaps convincing people to invest in Litecoin, as they have lost money over the past 6 months. The same goes for perhaps convincing people to buy ASIC mining hardware- I feel bad for that too and I no longer support ASIC mining of any kind.

I'll keep an eye on your project and help out however I can though.

Good luck!

The NXT Asset Exchange is being used by a lot of people/businesses to raise funding....take a look at:

https://nxtforum.org/asset-exchange-general/

seems like a perfect match for your needs....

Don't beat yourself up about it. It's easy to become engrossed, affiliated and evangelise. The simple fact is that Litecoin was just Bitcoin with a different algorithm. Bitmark is essentially a new Litecoin which aims to move forward from where Litecoin left - I consider the technology to be proven (Bitcoin and Litecoin), and it just needs utilized. ASICs for scrypt are out there, and have an important role to play in supporting a viable every day currency. Much of the focus of people in this community was driven by a "missed the train" mentality, loosing the root cause which is to make an everyday currency which non alt coiners actually benefit by using.

You're right, opinions change over time, and evangelists end up being tied to the thing they evangelise about, for better or worse. That doesn't make it a bad thing to have done.

You have valuable ideas and thoughts which you continue to share, it would be great if you could continue to do so, and occasionally in relation to the Bitmark project, without the evangelism or encouraging investment. By all means encourage adoption though when the time comes, that is the aim!

Many thanks again.

Cheers, thanks for the kind words. I'd like to point out one thing which is controversial and opinions differ, but I feel very strongly about it. I wish I would of seen your project earlier so I could of voiced my concerns.

I feel like crypto currencies that are mined by ASICs are not a good thing, and I would suggest looking into alternatives.

1. ASICs make the network more centralized due to ASIC companies being able to make them for pennies compared to the retail prices average consumers can get. Due to economies of scale, they can build large farms much cheaper than the average miner can. This also applies to anyone with enough money to build their own ASICs or buy ASICs in bulk, so it favors large institutions and old money, more so than the average joe blow.

2. I feel like PoW is broken in that so much electricity and processing power is wasted on securing the block chain. PoS coins help and/or solve the electricity problem (depending on whether its fully PoS or not), and coins like Primecoin solve the wasted processing power problem. I'm not saying these solutions are ideal... finding prime numbers isn't going to change the world, and there are many variants of PoS out there and PoS security is still under question. However, with all the talk of how "unsecure" PoS coins are from the naysayers, I find it odd that there have been no problems with it thus far.. not even with PPcoin in which people seem to think is the most insecure PoS implementation. So, I take these arguments with a grain of salt.

2a. Fair distribution is the only main issue others and myself have with purely PoS coins. However, I feel like there are work arounds that can be implemented.
2a1. Having the coin start out as a PoW coin for the initial distribution of the coins, then switching to purely PoS at a set point in time. See Vericoin as an example.
2a2. I have been thinking about other solutions for this problem, as I'm sure they exist. I would like some feedback on something I thought about.. I'm not sure if it would work. Here is a brief overview of my idea:


Since you don't want to do an IPO, you could use Vericoin's approach for the above idea if the logistics were worked out.

3. ASIC mining unnecessarily makes the mining community susceptible to preorder scams, late delivery, manufacturers mining on customers hardware, etc.

By the way- even Vericoin's model is susceptible to unfair distribution because of ASICs, so I would suggest changing the algorithm as well if you were to take this approach.

There are more memory hard Scrypt algorithms that are more ASIC resistant, and other algorithms like x11, keccak (sp), dagger (ethereum's pow), etc.

This would further improve distribution of the coins by not allowing ASICs to participate... ie. anyone with a computer could mine a fair portion of the IPO coins.

I prefer something that's mineable on GPUs as it would help keep bot nets out, CPU coins could be unfairly distributed to bot nets as compared to GPU coins in which people have built mining rigs over the years and the average infected bot net computer (average consumer computer) doesn't have a nice GPU.

Very interesting. Personal opinions follow:

on distribution
I'd like to suggest that much of the unfair distribution is down to the "missed the train" and "pump / dump" mentality. The ecosystem has become geared towards making a fast profit, rather than slowly maturing a project.

Consider a coin with zero value at launch, as Bitcoin was, and where value is earned over time. Do we feel this distribution is unfair? (personally, no).

Fuss, countdowns, IPOs, premines, excessive marketing, rush to get on exchanges, all of these things cause unfair distribution, the human element, not the technological element.

Nothing is infallible, but there are steps we can take to limit unfairness I hope.

on ASICs
I have shared your opinions on ASICs, as you stated earlier opinions change, as mine have.

ASICs will always be created when there is an economical advantage by producing one. No PoW algorithms are immune to ASICs or computational and technological advantages, and percentage gains from the benefits of faster cheaper hashing will always drive the market.
ASICs are economically and environmentally more efficient at securing a PoW block chain.
Over time ASIC farms are more likely to gravitate to where it is cheapest (in all senses), to where it is cold, or where electricity is free. Consider an ASIC farm being powered by wind and hydro, and where the heat generated was used by humans instead of burning fossil fuels.
Securing a distributed transaction ledger has cost, but that cost far outweighs the cost of having a human powered, extremely latent, abused and manipulated ledger.
PoW can have multiple applications outside of currency, and ASICs can be used there.
GPUs are also possible. Several people with GPU miners can equate to one ASIC miner, so a balance can be struck.
One can easily rent a rig if they want to mine, you don't have to own hardware.

PoS is a different case, for now I feel that PoW is the fairest and safest way to ensure distribution from inception, coupled with the points above about distribution.

All of this is just personal opinion on why I chose PoW Scrypt over the alternatives for Bitmark. It feels balanced and proven, under the right circumstances.

general
You make a strong counter argument when you mention ASIC farms and old money. I would counter this by saying that whilst there are multiple players in a field it should not get monopolized, there are multiple ASIC manufacturers and lots of people with old money. I do not feel either should be excluded from the process of migrating to crypto. It is still a concern though. Perhaps it's more of a concern for hyped coins which are to be short lived, and less for a slow project with longevity?

IPO, I honestly want to avoid this at all costs. Nobody get's in early unless they believe in the merit of the coin, no inflated value, and development funds tied directly to the value of the coin over a long period of time, in order to incentive good old hard work.

The human element is always fallible, centralization of funds or distribution, even if through a single distributor, just makes a mess. I don't want that on my head. Anybody who get's a Bitmark will have mined it or bought it from a miner, any bitmark project incurred costs will come from development and increasing the usability / utility to end users.

I feel as though I may have been dismissive in the way I've written this, I hope it does not convey that way.

I'll get back to you later, I've got some things to do.  :-\

No rush, you aren't required to reply again :) Thank you so much for your input so far.

Yeah it seems like we may agree to disagree on that point (PoW/ASICs.) I could go into further detail, but it's probably nothing that you don't already know.

I'm interested to hear what you'd propose yourself. If you had to pick a proof and algo what would they be?

edit: reasoning, compromise to achieve the end goal is the aim, I believe we both want to achieve the same end goal, thus interested to hear viable alternatives.

I am biased obviously, but I like purely PoS coins that are fairly distributed as I had mentioned earlier.

I went a little further in depth and started a thread about it if you would like to read more: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675333.msg7647833#msg7647833

Mostly the only grudge people have versus Nxt is that it was "unfairly" distributed. I think solving that issue would make it more popular.

The bitmark project (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.0) is progressing well, with the first reference implementation technically complete.

The quoted issue is urgently needs addressed. Can anybody offer any further insight, or help?

Create a service such as this for your new crypto currency, and set the fee to where it goes straight to the development fund: http://www.vericoin.info/veribit.html

I have read many of your post.  It seems that you have seriously put great thought into creating an actual currency.  The meaning of currency that I use here is as follows: A unit of account. A medium of exchange. For which the intended use of said currency is to facilitate the exchange of good(s) and/or service(s) on a day to day basis by people in a community, on a peer to peer, local and/or global level. 

There are many other examples in post that you have submitted that will support my statement that you get what a currency's functions are.  Yet this analysis is beyond the scope of this thread, and so I will be commenting on other of your post shortly.   

I will be contributing funds on your project.  I have one request.  Would you produce an itemized cost statement for the following:

Request for Funding
The total cost of resources for the first 3 months is 0.636 BTC, this covers:

    3 months of dedicated server for the project.
    Domain name
    2 base templates, a public facing informational template, and an "administration" style template similar to blackcoinpool.com/dashboard
    A small budget for leasedrigs to use on the testnet and to check block time generation as hashspeed changes rapidly, multipool diff drop mitigation


Thanks much , and I look forward in assisting in making this idea/project become a success over time.

Jay

Thank you Jay :)

• Dedicated Server (i7/32gb + NAS storage): $80.15 x 3 totalling $240.45
• Themes x2 (user website, stats like blockchain.info): $45
• Domain Name: ~$11

Total expenditure is ~$300, or roughly 0.5 BTC accounting for fluctuation when converting to fiat and any minor fees incurred.

The remaining 0.1 to 0.15 BTC will be used to fund leased rigs for the test chain whilst developing Bitmark. Any rig budget remaining when Bitmark is launched would be used to mine on the main network, and create a dividend to be split between the developer fund and anybody who invested.

Today I have made the pre-release of bitmark/pfennig available (details here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.msg7715363#msg7715363)) for testing, perhaps you would like to take a look.

Please do let me know if you have any further questions, or any particular terms to the agreement.

dedicated server usage: publicly it will be used to host the website, a long term stable node, and the first dns seeder. Privately it will be used to cross compile initial releases, to test against pool software, and to build supporting tooling for Bitmark similar to blockchain.info, hence the higher specification of machine and not a generic VPS.

It will be a good day when the first Jerky is paid for with Bitmark!

update: 0.2 BTC donation received, only need 0.4 more

A total of 0.4 BTC has now been donated. We now only need 0.2 BTC to reach our goal :)

If you raise an IPO, you can collect a lot of BTC

Please see this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.msg7757958#msg7757958) for details on why we will be avoiding an IPO, as tempting as it is.

A new proposal, we'll call it a reverse IPO for now https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.msg7764943#msg7764943

Like evildave said, you can always use Nxt Ae to raise funds regardless its ipo or not. As long you have something solid and good thing in the making, the nxt community will lend their hands.