Bitcoin Forum

I have started some guidelines for coins thinking of doing a coin swap.



Transparent Crypto Coin Swap Guidelines:

#1 All wallets are forward compatible. Original wallets must work with new blockchains.

#2 Automatic payouts. Find all the addresses + balances. Send back all the coins in the first block of the new blockchain.

#3 Maintain copies of the older blockchains through multiple channels of distribution. Advanced work can be done to create a custom block explorer that combines both blockchains allowing users to search through both seamlessly as 1 chain.


*These guidelines should be followed when possible. There are times where a swap requires a different kind of wallet rendering the coin unable to comply with these guidelines.☬

**Failure to comply with these guidelines will allow for valid scam accusation associated with the coin swap process.

☬If a wallet needs to be upgraded to add features/security, the old wallet should still work with limited features/security.



Please add on to this list or raise issues with the current guidelines. The goal of these guidelines is to allow coins to perform a coin swap without valid scam accusations by being fully transparent about the process.









How to perform a cryptocoin/altcoin coin swap?

Best practice rules when doing a coin swap.

How to send coins from an old blockchain to a newer blockchain.

These are good guidelines so far.

I will not buy any coin that has engaged in one of these manual coin swaps.

I would not advise anyone to buy into a manual coin swapped coin.
Whether you win or lose on value, it's not good to be involved in such a thing.


Many people consider a manual coin swap to be robbery.

This can sometimes prove problematic
As a general rule its perfectly valid, however factoring in various techniques developers may wish to employ on their platforms/networks this may not be possible so maintain multiple nodes/blockchains, Also this can be a cause of cross-broadcast messages if not done correctly.

What about a realtime technique, where the swap process occurs transparently to the end-user.. the funds from the old wallet are sent to a burn address and every X number of minutes a poll can request to swap out funds from a specific burn address and change to the new coin and forwarded over to the end-user who instigated the transaction..

Suggestions on how to partially achieve this can be found below:-
https://github.com/casascius/Bitcoin-Address-Utility

https://casascius.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/bitcoin-address-utility/

for the version prefixes as a reference
http://earlz.net/view/2014/10/22/0340/provably-spendable-altcoin-burn-addresses


This is also covered in what I briefly described above. Its just the second part of that sentence..
Send back all the coins in the first block of the new blockchain

For this to happen you need to have determined several variables OR made several assumptions.

What if the coin supply has changed in the new coin which is to be swapped.. OR even decreased supply??
What if you have conflicts on the blockchain..
What if you cannot scrape all the addresses form the BE/BC??
What if end-users don't wish to swap their coins.. stupid i know but what if?? Therefore will it be mandatory swap or voluntary swap process..
What if the algo has changed in the new coin which is being swapped
What if the coin to be swapped has enabled PoW OR simply disable PoS

I'm trying to say sometimes things are not cut and dry kind of thing.. but again in principle its sound!





* Maintain copies of the older blockchains through multiple channels of distribution.
This costs money.. what if the costs of keeping several nodes running and a BE service is prohibitively expensive on a shoe string budget?
Maybe Multiple channels of distributions could be a simple .CSV file containing past TXID OR a recursive bootstrap.dat file containing TX's upto the cutoff block

*Advanced work can be done to create a custom block explorer that combines both blockchains allowing users to search through both seamlessly as 1 chain.
Yes agreed this is a valid approach. but the question arises. Time/funding/technical ability's.?

The added time it takes to arrange something like this
The costs involved in maintaining a solution like this
Developers inabilities to actually produce a working BE which can harmonize both old/new TX in one seamless data stream, Not every developer is compliant?




To have such a hard stance and cynical view on the methods employed by a development team is to harsh.. I can understand many, many people have been burned in the crypto game. But what about that 1/100 genuine developer/coin project which is attacked (maybe by you) even when trying to do something for the best of intentions/reasons to help its community..

personally I don't not think its fair to tar the same brush as the other malicious developers who use cryptos as a scam with those who try to do good things for crytpos and actually believe in what cryptos stands for. Just because they did not adhere to these guidelines above!

Just a suggestions:-
A retro-active follow up maybe a good course of action..
After the swap has ended then follow up with your questions to see if they comply.
BUT first make sure they know what it is they have to comply with before calling SCAM!!!.
Give them time to fix any problems and then allow them to justify legitimate discrepancy and leave it upto the community to decide.
Maybe compile a table showing swap data maybe create a service around it.
kind of like what CryptoAsian has done for Proof of developer (http://proofofdev.com) except use swap data and award a points system.



Hi compmaster,

Im curious whether you would consider buying a coin which has had a small element of manual coin-swapping activity (10% +/-) applied to the coin AFTER an automated swap which reached about (90% +/-) of the total coin supply.?

Take AERO which swapped over to AM (AeroME) In this particular issue most of the coins were taken offline and burned by the Exchange.. as I said approximitly 90+% of the coin supply.
However there is a small portion of users whom were unable to meet the swap date for various reasons and as such were offered a Manual coinswap which happened after the automated swap process. Even these manual swapped coins were also burned. Reason for the manual step was to ensure the swap reached and penitrated with the maximum covrage.

So by using a combination of both Automated/manual swaps (primarily focused on automated swap) does your comment (above) still stand based on the details specified above?

Like I said I'm just curious and interested to find out if indeed there is a case to made to get some kind of "standard" formed and agreed to community wide. A standard consensus on coin-swaps "good-practices" for all alts?

We also realized that It may not be possible to collect the complete total coin supply due to breakages.
As a example of what i mean by breakage coins lost from missing privkeys or coins sent to incorrect accounts, or just human error, etc, etc

This is why we considered a second *MANUAL* swap offering to allow those who had genuine reasons why then missed the official automated swap phase..


Thanks,

Majika

Lead AeroME Developer

this willl never work the coins are better to trade inmarket theres legislations and prices fixed soo this is not the maket im expecting sorry i will just stay aware that for not makret coins can be good.

Certainly aspirational and optimistic and I'm glad you've got the good sense to label it "guidelines" and not rules.

There are often really good reasons for not maintaining backward compatibility -- in the case where a chain moves from a POW to POS variant for instance, the old wallet likely wouldn't work -- and could potentially inject erroneous / unsupported transactions.

IMHO, the best way to facilitate a transparent exchange is by leveraging a neutral third party such as Bittrex to facilitate the swap over some well socialized defined period of time.

These are good guidelines. I will try it. Thanks.

If the old wallet still works, then there's no need to swap the coins. 

If you do swap, but you don't burn the old coins, then you have people selling both coins on different exchanges.  It's happened more than once.

is there any example of a backwards compatable swap yet???

He is talking about forward compatibility, which is even harder to implement than backward one :)

But your question itself is very good though: is there an example of a forward compatible swap yet, and any swap done according to these guidelines, or this is just an idle attempt to shoot the moon?

I've been in two swap in my crypto life, BT -> BTX and yesterday with DRZ

What your proposing i partially did.

By using a block explorer i scraped the old GreencoinV1 blockchain.
Premined the total supply
Created GreencoinV2
Used the premine and sent all the balances to users of GreencoinV1

Left with 0.000  coins (actually ended up with - in this case and re-couped 11 users via the coins from another dev)

Users were able to import V1 privkeys into V2 and they were able to see their balance in the new wallet. Automatic and simple

Ahmed

Congratulations on possibly the very first transparent and automatic coin swap.

@mrbodz aka Ahmed

He was left negative cause he didnt account for fees of sending.. Clams went one step further and snapshotted a few utxo databases so any of those with priv keysin those chains can claim coins... Syscoin will do a snapshot of the utxo db and place those coins in the new chain via a tool, similar to what you described.

We've decided to reboot GiveCoin 2.0 as a completely new chain, including changing the address type to support vanity "Give***" style addresses.

The primary motivator however was that we determined that some POS coinbases and wallets have "backdoor keys" in them that allow the developers to essentially do unlimited staking!

More details about our design and value proposition can be found in the whitepaper:

http://bit.ly/2GiveCoin

That is interesting... Didn't know that. Could you please tell which particular coins/wallets are those.?

The pos code is horrible ypu should steer far away from it..

I agree -- which is why we have materially modified the way the system supports both POW and POS blocks, in part by doing a "coalesce" operation that happens in normal sends and in minimum unspent output size (beta is at 100 coins) -- otherwise the wallet bundles up smaller outputs and sends to itself, creating an opportunity for another POW block reward.

I also agree that the code is not very efficient -- which we'll be upgrading in the coming months to make it more efficient -- currently it wastes a lot of time scanning unspent outputs every few seconds looking for an eligible unit for staking -- which is just silly because it should be able to keep a sorted list and set a timer ;-)

-dvd

I hope you don't force every address to use vanity otherwise the entire network loses massive entropy.. sounds like you are going to use POS still... gluck with that... POS is slowly becoming dying codebase.

Only the primary addresses of every human wallet leverages Give* addresses -- all paper wallets use Gift* and all exchanges begin with just G*

as for entropy and addresses -- it's all "theory" -- anyone with half a wit can tie addresses back to the same user through "change" tx's -- and all thin client wallets have to talk to some indexing server which can instantly determine which addresses are tied to the same user.

Pseudo-Anonymity is NOT a design requirement for 2GIVE -- there is enough entropy in the coin selection and block formation to satisfy security needs.  The actual value of the coinbase is not in the storage but in accounting of the fiat exchange -- which means anyone can acquire the coins at any value extrinsic of the nominal, third party spot value pegged to another crypto currency.

It's a color-coin-like implementation -- some TX's are worth more than others.

In the end, just like Bitcoin, this is yet another experiment to help us learn and grow

-dvd

entropy is not about anon but about security.  The pegging sounds alot like thr alias pegs I did for syscoin.. I also used coloured coins.. you have source code avail?

All the code will be uploaded here once we produce the final final chain:

https://github.com/LittleDuke/2GiveCoin

The white paper has most of the details:  http://bit.ly/2GiveCoin

Would love to get some more big brains on reviewing it

-dvd

I dont think you read many posts here about what this thread is intended for have you?

Your whitepaper

"We have yet to determine how we will handle any coin conversions after this period since a greedy miner could continue to mine GIVE v1 and seek to convert it to 2GIVE.   We currently do not have the capacity to exclude coins generated after a given block number.  Anyone with ideas or experience here please contact the author."

What you do is a simple snapshot, take a look at syscoin2 github and the snapshot unit test, its based off of utxo.json... thats all you need and then you dont have to worry about timingof conversion... get rid of the 1 month window bullshit that will ruin confidence in your ability to technically manage a blockchain project.

You have taken the time to promote your 500M premine of give 2 but you havent actually partaken in the guidelines.. please post some code on how you will do it to avoid scam accusation of your new project.People want to see what you will do before you do it not after.

I have actually read the suggestions and comments here -- which is why we decided to have Bittrex handle the exchange.

Fundamentally I don't really care if people here bitch about it being a scam -- the coinbase is for the non-crypto non-profit world -- where we can leverage a new "underwriter model" where any donor/supporter can acquire the tokens from the non-profit at whatever value they see fit.  It's just like a "silent-auction" model that many non-profits enjoy now for fundraising.  In fact any exchange is an unregulated SECONDARY market as far as I'm concerned.

If any other exchange wants to setup Give 1.0 -- that's their prerogative.   We have confirmed with Bittrex the the majority of the current mined coins are on deposit with them and that is the basis for our 1:1 exchange.  The rest of the "early mining" will be distributed to non-profits until fully liquidated.

-dvd

So bittrex will handle exchanging? what if people don't have coins on bittrex? Why not just hire someone or simply start a new coin and forget the swap guidelines because I don't think you are following them anyway?

By hiring Bittrex we effectively "hired someone" to handle this.  If you don't have your coins on Bittrex, you are not eligible for the swap -- that's what having a "registered agent" solves -- plus legally under advice of our attorney's we are not permitted to do the exchange nor "day trade".

These are "guidelines" -- not "rules" -- there is a huge difference between the two and our example should serve as a viable model for anyone else that want's to pursue a coin swap.

-dvd

That is the wrong way because some ppl may not be around and have coins in cold storage. I've already outlined how to do it properly. Anyways Gluck but you will be labelled a scam as per this guideline.

 POS is slowly becoming dying codebase.?

can you explain what you mean there?

have you taken a look at the code? its pretty ugly. To keep up to date with bitcoin core requires more and more work, thus slowly dying... for those that coded it sure it looks fine and works for them, but I havent seen any unit tests around it or anything coin you point them out to me? As bitcoin code matures, POS wil lbe harder to port, unless its a total different platform, then consensus is wide open, but for general purposes the bitcoin code base is the most well tested and code coverage is above 90%.

I have my original $GIVE coins in paper wallets. I don't think it is right for you to just steal my coins from me because they aren't on bittrex.

He is not following the rules that's for sure..

OFFS -- I think Fartbags has resolved this on the 2GIVE thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=741714.msg14677478#msg14677478

The reality is, THERE ARE NO RULES

We obtained the best viable model according to the advice of our lawyers and accountants.

In the real world, when one company acquires another companies shares there is a registered transfer agent and all shareholders of record are permitted to exchange them.   If you lose your share certificate you lose the right to make a claim.

Now with regard to THIS particular post -- it is a ridiculous assertion to say the the coins are being "stolen" -- the V1 coins will still exist and any coin holder will continue to enjoy any rights and claims to them.  If someone doesn't elect to do the swap that's on them.  Strength in Numbers Foundation (SNF) will no longer be supporting the coinbase nor providing any hashpower to fuel the chain post swap.  There is nothing preventing anyone from continuing to mine the coins, transact in them and seek to have another exchange list them.

We have been socializing the swap now for well over six months and Bittrex ceased exchange on 12/31/2015 -- therefore the nominal value of the tokens are essentially zero.

This notion of backwards chain binary compatibility makes about as much sense as say having Microsoft require that the underlying Windows 10 OS still be based on Windows 3.1 :p

All we're doing is demonstrating another viable model for doing a coin swap -- and unless you're a stakeholder in our chain, your opinions will be duly noted ;-)

And just like everything else in the consensus model world of crypto -- we're letting the majority decide

-dvd

You can never assume that people will be on some exchange and carry a risk of forfeiting those coins because its a centralized entity and above all there are trustless ways to do so for the devs that do not require swap deadlines... like I said if the team is not competent hire someone who is, its clearly doing the opposite of what the rules in the OP are laid out. Has nothing to do with advice from people who do not know how to code.

We are NOT assuming -- we are specifically socializing out that Bittrex is our exchange agent.

No one is forfeiting any coins -- you can keep using V1 if you want, it's just no longer supported BY US -- just like Windows XP for example.

You are MORE THAN WELCOME to take over the maintenance of a broken blockchain -- PLEASE by my guest.

The chain swap is required since V1 was built on a chain that did not support staking.

I'm going to stop responding to the "rules" comment because there are no rules -- you have to let that go.

We are under absolutely NO obligation to do any swap or conversion -- it's opt-in.  There are no contracts or warranties made by any chain -- to think otherwise is foolish.

Please check your entitled attitude at the door -- no one owes you or anyone else here anything.

We voluntarily took over the development of Givecoin v1 and have put a lot of time and money into building V2.

I hope you'll join the 2GIVE economy ;-)

-dvd

The fact that you are technically incompetent and chose to use a trustful process to a decentralized and trust less project will forever hang over your new projects head just FYI as long as there are people who got left put of the loop... Gluck I hope this ends that..
Now if you want to see how to do it in a better way check out syscoin2 snapshot unit tests for how to do a proper snapshot supporting older chain

Yawn.  Sorry I'm all out of Purina Troll Chow at the moment.

If you can't deal with ideas respectfully without resorting to pathetic personal jabs I've got nothing for you.

Really I'm helping to try to save your time..I could care less about the project. I Dont think you havr been around here much by not understanding the inherint rules that communities here work by. I was trying to help you and even gave you resources on how to solve your problem properly..but it's ok anyway gluck

Your statement about loss of "massive" entropy is FUD -- based on theory -- when it becomes fact we'll worry about it.

The real risk to date is BAD pseudorandom number generators -- I'd freak out more about that then I would about a few bits off of an ECC key....

---

Our transparent swap of Givecoin 1.0 (GIVE) to 2GIVE has been completed and the market seems to approve...

According to coinmarketcap.com, GIVE had an estimated market cap of $3,807 when it stopped trading

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/givecoin/

As of right now, 2GIVE has a market cap of approximately of $125,000

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/2give/

And is now traded on three exchanges:   BITTREX, BTCPool, and YOBit.

So despite what some of the "haters" here have said about our approach the market agrees and it should absolutely be considered a viable method for swapping other coins in the future.

-dvd

not at all viable and its not fud, try to goto #bitcoin IRC and tell them that.. they will laugh at you. Gluck anyways!