We have some good discussion going, this is good!

From my perspective, changing the max # of coins is the variable that would really have a negative impact.  However, keep in mind as we've seen with a lot of other coins, Doge in particular, that fundamentals don't necessarily always equate.  Doge for instance has a massive coin supply and yet continues to see huge volume and nice prices.  Just something to keep in mind.

I understand the point of view of Jean Bax, but we need to consider the cost-benefit and impact of doing nothing.  But I get that a hardfork and change to the coin parameters is not a minor change and can be unsettling.

Now, on the other hand, what really will support the price and drive interest and attract more miners is publicity and social media marketing.  This effort will really kick in once the new wallet is out and the platform comes up behind it.

The problem is I only have so much bandwidth.  My suggestion is if we are going to make a change to the block reward, we do it now BEFORE the interest really picks up again, and make sure we get it right so we don't have to worry about another hardfork down the road when the impact would be worse.

I know everyone is pushing to have the next gen wallet _now_   I am working as fast as I can behind the scenes.  I am making good progress, but we need to decide what to do about the core Qt wallet and daemon before putting out the next gen wallet.

The alternative is we don't change it for now, focus on putting the next gen wallet out and marketing, and see how the market reacts.    But we would need to do as previously suggested and get people organized into mining for the sake of keeping the network hash rate at a reasonable level.

I am open to either option, and trying to be responsive to what the community wants.  So, for now, I propose that I spend the next week focusing on the next gen wallet and getting updated screenies in the hands of the graphic designers, in the meantime the communty can continue the discussion, and then we can take a decision.

Also, to answer another question from a few pages back - the next release of the next gen wallet will be a real Beta as opposed to an alpha drop - this is my goal, but requires more effort to polish before I push it out.  Need UI QA, etc. and some real release packaging.

I am very committed to seeing Particle succeed and become an established platform.  This is my real interest in Particle is longer term being able to build some entrepreneurial things around it on top of the platform.  Since this type of platform didn't exist before, I decided to build it. ;-)  If this were a client project, it's the kind of thing I'd put 5 guys on.  It is me doing the work of an entire team   It also means I have to space things out and pace myself on purpose to avoid burnout.

I have been approached by a lot of people hitting me up to do coins and various development for them.  I have turned them all down to keep focused on Particle.

The past few weeks have been a little hectic - we've had crazy weather, the flu, etc. slowing things down a bit.  But now we're heading towards spring and things are back at full steam.  I don't know if anyone's seen some of my other posts on here but here is another piece of news:  one of the things I've been looking at over the past few weeks is Open Transactions.  I think this will be the next major activity after the Beta 1 release of the next gen wallet, to integrate and use the OT platform as the solution to a number of features we want to bring into the wallet.  This is part of the reason I was a little quiet for awhile, as I was looking into how much of this I could pull off now vs later.  As I look at the development schedule shaping up, I think this will fall in after Beta 2 time frame.  I'll get a post up on the blog today with a better breakdown of the current schedule.

The reason you don't see PoS implemented more is because it is a lot of modding to the out-of-box bitcoin code to do it.  You could take something like PeerCoin I guess and base it on that.  But, its a little more complex to implement it.

I would say we can keep PoS on the table as an option, but further down the road once we get the current Qt wallet updated and the new advanced wallet out the door.  Need to space these major features out so we have realistic time for development ;-)

So, the question for the community is how would you like to adjust the block reward algorithm to encourage continued mining.

We could bump it back up to 180 coins, or 360, for a longer period of time?

Let's tackle the block reward first.

It's possible to add POS at any time... but, it does also add a fair amount of complexity to the wallet code.  Maybe something to think about longer term.

I took a stab at tweaking the reddit CSS:  http://www.reddit.com/r/particlecoin/ 
It's not great but a start.

It seems the blogosphere is starting to get interested in Particle now, based on my inbox, getting a lot of requests for info, backgrounders etc. for articles and posts.  Very cool!

I'll be tied up most of the day today, but will have an update later tonight.

Thanks!

Just another quick update:

I am feeling much better and am over the flu.  It sucked for awhile though.

Had to do Valentine day activities last two days ;-)  Had very nice massage today

As noted in previous post, we aren't changing the _mining_ algorithm, but the distribution algorithm.  Basically bump up the reward a bit more so it isn't drop so fast.  Still playing with some numbers in spreadsheet, because side effect of bumping it up, is it pulls in the time when the cap is reached from 10 yrs...  I don't want to have to change it again for awhile.

Would like to get new QT wallet out in next day or two, and a drop of the beta wallet sometime this week but will do some cycles behind the scenes with our graphic artist resources to have a strong showing.

Working on a few other things tonight as well..social media stuff.  Would be great to have a strong buzz going into march.

Will try to get you some stuff tomorrow

Snotty I did see the updated mockup and have been working to try and replicate it   These graphics and ads are awesome.  I feel like we might start getting some good momentum going

Ping bittick, it's his bread and butter...

Well no, of course not, because that would be stupid.

Also my gitian build server is up and running again, I had to spring for a pricier drive as its what they had locally, but at least I can do builds of the qt wallet and daemon on demand again.  Would like to get an updated Qt wallet out this weekend with the new graphics and the algorithm adjust.

We will adjust the algorithm again so that mining is a profitable endeavor that people want to do, while having a reasonable distribution over time.

The latest logo from snotty is really growing on me, I like it!  I'll probably do a dev update blog post with a few new screenshots maybe tomorrow or Thursday.  I'm trying to get the "full encapsulation" of the daemon sorted out, it'll just make it easier for new users to not have to worry about it.  All they know is they run the wallet.  deamons and RPC etc. just happens behind the scene.

The problem is its not really a premium domain, its not a keyword or EMD domain...its just kinda a word fragment...   It has Ion in it, but I can't really think of how one would work this into any kind of branding...

Wow, that looks really nice snotty.

I've gotta get caught up and fix my main build machine.  I had an SSD failure.  One thing older SSD drive does not like is power "brownout".  I think newer SSD has better firmware logic to handle better.

So, we had adjusted the mining to pull it back down and stretch it out.  We can adjust it again to bump it up a little and try to strike the balance this time.  But however we do it, I don't want to do another hardfork again for awhile so we better get it right this time

What I was thinking is we could package it up with the beta release of the new wallet as some kind of relaunch or something.

I got some high quality art of the logo from Snotty to put in the new wallet.

I've removed all existing Qt artwork etc. from the new wallet.  So there is nothing compelling a source release of it for awhile and I'll probably sit on it for 3-6 months to give us some lead time.  Once the surrounding ecosystem starts to come online it will be a lot harder for anyone to try to replicate.  It is a tricky spot to be in though, because there is something to be said for the whole idea of open source and contributing some advancement back to the collective body of knowledge etc.  I think we can strike a balance here too.

Guys bear with me, I have been really sick, I was in hospital, and stuck in bed.  Probably won't be back to speed until Monday or Tuesday.  Serious influenza a.

The mining issue can be dealt with.  Really need to get core development of new wallet platform done and then all the other pieces will fall in place around it and we'll do a push.  I have idea but I am sit on it for right now.  Prices on un-china markets are pretty unreliable because the volume is just too low, its just too volatile.

Doing this from bed not workin gto good so...for now, just be patient thank you :-)  You know this quiet time is good opportunity to finish all that graphics work you guys have been talking about

Would be... but I am not writing game any time soon ;-)  Somebody in community could though.  I wrote one long time ago, when police quest was new, to learn how I made small one.  But I have to focus on core platform and bootstrapping the ecosystem.  Made a lot of progress today, tomorrow I will spend some time (not a lot though) on graphic design to integrate some of things from community, to show incremental progress on that front.

Most important priority I have right now is to get version of alpha/beta out door that is locked down and has full lifecycle support for apps, and publish API spec...so interested people can start building apps and trying it out.  I have got a lot of direct messages and emails from people asking to get started.  So need to get it in their hands.

You can request Cryptsy to add Particle on their support desk forum, someone started a thread here:
https://cryptsy.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/62022/page/24

I'm not sure on color...I'll try this one and then you can tweak.  Size, well we want high res so it can downscale as needed and still look good.  Full HD/1920x1080?  Doubt we will need quite that big but you never know...someone might have ultra4k monitor or something.

RPG or adventure game like that would be pretty cool.  Like old Sierra games, Leisure Suit larry and police quest.

I'm gonna run with this for now and put it in the wallet.

Such small amounts though.  At this point I'm more concerned with volume than price.  Even if the price were to drop for awhile, we need volume to get to exchanges like Cryptsy.  Volume is how they make money.  Volume will pick up more as news picks up.