We could develop from scratch, but the concensus seems to be to put our efforts into new features, and clone the "basics" from another source.  At this point, I don't think we intend to wait on another coin.

If we do clone, it will be an existing coin that has solid code.  There was some recent discussion about using Bitshares, for instance.

kind regards,
nio

You should have seen what I really wanted to say!

LOL.  I just thought of a use for an exchange. Go ahead.  Mock me.  

One exchange (Polo) has recently changed their procedures for accepting coins.  Thus, Ora's "premine" alone will probably disqualify it from trading there, in spite of the altruistic point of Ora's existence.

Lots of ppl like Polo's approach to this because it helps filter the crappy pump and dump coins.

My vote is we could use polo to oversee the second round of distributions from their "giveaways" page, thereby making Mac Red breathe a sigh of relief!

That may also get us in good graces with Polo, so that IF the time comes to apply to get on the Polo exchange we will have our foot in the door.  This may also give Ora some street cred with the exchange crowd.

The downsides are:
1.  It might be too costly to pay them to do this.
2.  that clientele might be more likely to turn around and dump Ora.
3.  They might not want to distribute a coin that exists only in NXT, where they don't control a wallet.
4.  It will bring out the fud'rs, ppl who are interested only in the word "free" and not the ecosystem of Ora.
5.  We probably would get mocked for using NXT to distribute what is essentially a competitor.


I don't think this is a brilliant idea.  Or even a good idea.  But it might solve problems of future distributions, and give Ora some publicity.  I'm just not sure if this is the type of publicity I want for Ora.

kind regards,
nio

All, don't forget we have a dev thread where we talk about what Ora is going to become.

Stop on by and give some ideas and feedback!!!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675484.120

kind regards,
nio

I will very likely implement multisig, or some similar solution.  It falls under our previously-discussed MFA scheme, specifically under the "something you have" category.


Anyone hungry for a can of worms?  Here is one I wrote earlier in 2014.  It is an excerpt from one of my unpublished white papers.  This explains why I am not fond of the whole multisig (escrow) solution for commerce, though it is still valid for theft prevention.

I have reread this dozens of times, hoping for a lightbulb to come on, in an attempt to solve this issue in a decentralized manner.  (Proof of Trust is an elephant name for the as yet-to-be-determined solution to this puzzle):


(the markup in this is because it was written in TeX)


This was written some time ago, and some of my opinions have changed, so consider this nioccoin version 1.0.  But I still am haunted by the problem of having to centralize trust.  That hasn't worked out too well for the payment card industry, and even SSL companies have been robbed blind, causing heartache, or heartbleed, as the case may be 

As long as we are dealing in physical goods, I don't think we can solve this problem "online".

Here's my vision for "the" winning currency:  In-person transactions using digital anonymous payment, where the buyer can inspect the physical goods, and the seller can confirm the payment on the spot.  No escrow needed.  No credit card with your name on it, and being asked for your photo id.  95% of all commerce still takes place locally anyway.  Digital cash needs to behave almost exactly like real cash for the buyer, and be verifiable instantly by the seller, no less than if you pay the seller with a crisp new hundred-pound note and he has to use a special pen to mark it to check for counterfeit.



kind regards,
nio

I just want to make some comments on this piece of news:
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-affected-new-yorks-bitlicense-may-trade-discount/

Here's a little backgrounder.  Anyone paying attention to capital flows is aware that the sovereign debt crisis is getting worse.  The proposed NY law in the article is not a cause but a symptom.  Governments worldwide are cracking down on financial privacy because almost every country, state, county, and municipality is wallowing in debt.  Nobody is talking seriously about reducing governments' spending (which is the problem), and when an official does speak of it they get mauled by public-sector workers who fear their benefits being cut.  And so they should fear.  Reducing government spending means reducing the pay and or number of government staff.  Government officials are notorious for creating bureaucracies/hiring-programs that are vastly bloated and filled with golden promises that are, frankly, impossible to pay for, in the long term if not the short.  It is easy to make a promise of payment when the actual implosion happens on the watch of a future official.

This proposed law is about tracking money for tax purposes as much as eliminating financial privacy.  And in about a year, this crisis will become far worse as government debt becomes the ugliest, most risky investment, and capital flows out of public and into private markets.  Even if the law does not pass, expect more governments in the near future to restrict cryptocoin capital flows using some method like this.  This public to private swap is merely a repeat of a cycle that has gone on for thousands of years, as governments imploded.  It is time once again for governments who spend with profiglacy to be shunned by investors.  That will make governments incapable of borrowing (at reasonable rates), and for revenue they will pass all sorts of laws restricting capital movement and penalizing investors and financial privacy.  That is why the USA has even infected the time-honoured swiss banking privacy system with legal threats and retributions, so as to track and tax wealth.  And not the super-rich, but everyone else gets caught in the net.  Laws like that are often touted as "getting the rich" and those laws always define the "rich" as everyone who isn't eating catfood to survive.  Ironically, it is the super-rich who always manage to squirm out of the net, mainly because these laws are almost always income-based, and the rich often have much more investment income, which isn't "earned income".

What does this mean for anonymity?  As the article suggests, the law intends to attack from the exchange perspective.  That is a government's first answer to everything like this:  attack the exchanges.  That's basically what China's government did.  I have heatedly argued with others that the governments of the world don't have to outlaw cryptocurrency.  All they have to do is outlaw exchanges, or at least regulate them.  If you require mintpal to report the actual identity of every transaction, then mintpal - rather than be forced out of business by noncompliance - will require all users to provide a copy of their identifying docs, thus making anonymity in crypto unimportant.  Whether or not an exchange could survive with that regulation in the crypto space remains to be seen.  Who cares if coins are anonymous if selling them or buying them means laying your identity bare?

Meanwhile, NY is trying to get others onboard this experiment by waving the arbitrage flag in front of them.  I am seldom amazed at what ppl will do to their own freedom, in exchange for a chance to make money.  These regulations are privacy and freedom-killers, plain and simple.

The last line of the article is spot-on:


That part about pushing trading off exchanges is the critical part for Ora.  Why do we even need exchanges at all?  Let me get this straight:  We create decentralized currencies, and then centralize them in order to buy and sell?  Why not have a decentralized exchange for decentralized currency?  I seriously doubt that any government could successfully restrict p2p software that operates in a truly decentralized manner.  It's only when we cross centralized boundaries that we are subjected to proctology exams.  So perhaps we should never cross those boundaries, and build that into the product?

Am I the only one who thinks that exchanges will be regulated out of existence?

kind regards,
nio

You are reading my mind on plugins.  The beauty of this approach is we create a core wallet with an API, and anyone can build a plugin, for fun or profit.  If someone creates a killer plugin and others think it's worth a fistful of money, then it can even be sold; or traded for work on a project; or donated.

This adds a financial incentive for others to add value to Ora.  For mainstream features that are more mission critical or should be included in the base product, we could offer a power bounty for a new feature (it will be forbidden to be sold), and release the kracken.

The downside is this adds complexity to the product, making it much more difficult to design, build, and maintain.  I would have to figure out how to deal with the intricacies of this model, especially in terms of security, but also in terms of bloating the blockchain and enforcing a usability standard on all plugins.

kind regards,
nio

So, the problem or challenge is how to get users to run the wallet all the time and thereby help keep Ora secure?  Here are some ideas:

1.  This could be solved by defaulting the Ora daemon to start when the computer starts, by default.  The way I see it, we are responsible for making Ora secure.  More nodes means more security, so why not enforce "always on" or "on by default"?  That also solves the problems with blockchain downloading: like a torrent, it is more secure with more peers.  Just like your antivirus, you know it's always on for security, so you don't mind that it comes on all the time, every time.  I think users would understand this with Ora, too.
An alternative to this would be making two versions of an Ora wallet, one called "Ora-regular wallet" that doesn't turn on automatically.  The other could just be called "Ora Secure Wallet", and it contains the auto-on feature.  Which one would you download??

2.  If we add the right features, we will create industry in the coin such that some nodes will be on all the time to capture revenue, or use a trust system in which they are rewarded.   For instance, XC does this by "paying" some nodes to be essentially always on.  Those nodes must have a minimum of 500XC in order to act in that capacity.

kind regards,
nio

Thanks bob...

We will have clear deliverables, and I will enforce a pretty strict system to prevent scope and feature creep.  The process is as or more important than the software, because it inspires confidence and instills trust in a coin.  Once we know what we are building, we will put a mORAtorium (I'm on a cheesy roll) on new ideas being implemented (we will of course always accept change and feature requests).  Any new ideas after that will be deferred to the next major release, unless the community decides it is too important to live without,and then I will produce a report about how it will affect the budget and/or schedule.

As for your suggestion that we take the atomic option of building a nucleus, and later adding in the electron cloud, I'm not opposed to it.  It has some advantages doing it this way (reduced time to market).  And some disadvantages, too, such as being prosaic at the start.  I think that's more a marketing decision than a programming one.

kind regards,
nio

Yes!  Ideally we want to take the best features and practices from multiple coins, leave out their faults, add in our own features, and build Ora up.  Then we will have oragenesis, which is "orogenesis" without the "faults" 
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/orogenesis

kind regards,
nio

Thanks for your input fragORA.  Here are some things to ponder:

1.  I am a devotee of ease of use.  When considering ease of use, it all just make sense:  if something is easy to use, it will be used, and widely dispersed.  Look at picasa.  I hate it, personally for reasons that have to do with one nagging feature.  But it brought easy photo enhancement to millions of soccer moms and others who are not a traditional marketing target for the likes of Adobe photoshop (which I prefer for some tasks, and abhor for others).  Look at picasa's UI.  The top left corner has a palette of photo enhancement quick-selects that give the user live previews of the current picture in the main window, and what it looks like with each photo.  It's brilliant in its simplicity, and is handy for quick redeye fixes or twitter and facebook photo mashups.
They found a market niche and filled it.

2.    Ease of use and high security are always at cross purposes.  The division between how much to "hold the users' hands" and giving them ease and freedom is vast.  One thing we could entertain would be to focus more design attention to usability engineering.  I for one am weary of the tiresome cloned interface of most coins.  My vision for Ora's UI is much grander than that, but my vision is for Ora to have much grander features, too, so it goes hand in hand.  I'm not thinking megacoin, either.
But even then there are issues with familiarity.  Until very recently M$ was persuading windows devs to stick with the canonical menu system (file, edit, view, etc) instead of getting fancy.  The reason is familiarity.  If you do something cute, it my be the coolest app in the world but the average joe won't find it intuitive or familiar.
I'm also considering a skinnable UI, so that anyone could write a skin to appeal to lower-end users, such as a skin with large colourful buttons and simple-simon navigation.
Just like writing a novel, we need to ask the question, "who is our audience" or "who do we want to be our audience?"
M$ spent millions studying how ppl used their office suite, and in the end changed from the menu system to what I think was the office productivity equivalent of windows 8:  they made it suck starting in about ms office 2005/7 with the toolbuttons and other nonsense.  Their UE studies showed that the new system was "better".  Lots of office faithful begged to differ.  Windows 8 took away the start button because their studies showed nobody ever used it.  Windows 8 failed in part because though nobody used the start button, they used it as a polar star for navigation.

3.  My vision for a clean ui, and by clean ui I mean uncluttered with unnecessary features, is simple:  switch-selectability.  That means it can be feature rich, but the end user has complete control over what features are enabled, via a control panel.  We could also have feature templates, such as sets of features that are enabled by default.  So for someone who just wants secure chat and email, a "communications" template could be selected, and they could happily chat their heart out.  Someone who wants to trade coins could have a "traders" template that kills off all else but what is necessary to trade.  The user could have granular control over what features are used, and how cluttered their UI is.
The only downside to this type of thing is user support (in a commercial app this is nightmarish).  For instance, a vid showing install and usage would likely not match what the end user's interface looks like.  I believe support could be gotten around simply by making a usage vid for the "out of box" Ora app, with the assumption that if you are advanced enough to turn on the advanced features, you are advanced enough to know how to use the advanced features.  Of course, the wiki could have all sorts of tutorials for turning on and using each feature.

OTOH, don't mistake my intent.  I'm not inspired to throw a bunch of features at the wall to see what sticks.  I want Ora to be succinct in its features, so that it satisfies some clearly-defined needs or wants.  I don't care what we add so much as caring about whether what we add is either necessary or elegant (gives Ora a marketing edge).  Sometimes you have to add features that are common just because all the other apps have them, or more frequently, because users may respond to features that are more blingy than useful.

kind regards,
nio

The Ora initial planning documents have been released!!!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675484.msg8154125#msg8154125


kind regards,
nio

Your wish is granted.

The project planning docs, v1.0 release, are available for download here:  https://github.com/nioccoin/ora_project/releases/tag/v1.0

Github will be the official portal for these documents, so updates will appear there as "versioned" releases.

This is a baseline release, but it does contain some hints about what direction I want to take Ora.  Remember, this is the jumping off place.  This is not "the plan" but merely "a plan".  You might look at this and want to rip it to shreds.  Great!  Let's hear your own ideas.  

What I would like to see happen is for everyone to focus most of their attention on the "risk register".  Those risk items will serve as our "opportunities" to explore and sift for potential new features.  I will also be adding a change management template soon, so we can begin formalizing stakeholder ideas that change or augment the project as we move forward.

Some of the risks in the risk register are cryptic, because they harbour some ideas that I have been mulling in terms of new Ora features, and the ideas are incomplete.  Feel free to ask questions.  I will be providing more in-depth explanations in the near future.

kind regards,
nio

My best estimate for an original codebase is at least 800 man hours.  That estimate is based on a Qora or NXT-like exchange system.  And, that estimate does not include the systems analysis or the code design.

I don't think it is worth it.  I would rather put the major effort into innovation.

Given that even Qora and NXT are routinely fudded, that won't go into any calculations of what direction we will head.  We are going down one road or another regardless of, and perhaps in spite of, fud.

kind regards,
nio

b)  Keep the IP closed for a short while, thereby protecting the IP until Ora is too far ahead for copycats to catch up to it.

Yup, that seems to me the best middle ground.

However, it is at odds with the open nature of Ora.  And it complicates the dissemination of information about what direction Ora is heading.

Hmmm.  What to do?

How should Ora handle "intellectual property"?  Open discussion in the dev thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675484.msg8131251#msg8131251

Join me in the dev forum to discuss bitshares...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675484.msg8132032#msg8132032

kind regards,
nio

I'm not opposed to any direction in which the community wants to take Ora.  But I would like us to examine what is behind these things because beneath every idea or proposed direction, there hides some underlying motivations.

I like ideas.  This is where we begin to crack open problem domains and investigate them.  So, there seems to be some fusion here of stakeholders and contributors who want to clone another coin, particularly bitshares.  Let's pursue this discussion.

Having read every comment in the forum (main thread and dev thread) thus far, here are my observations of the forum proposals:

I.  Orastarfishians (Oras) want to expedite the existence of the Ora cryptocoin.
II.  Oras are wanting to forge alliances with other crypto systems.
III.  Oras are desirous to recruit other and/or more devs to Ora.
IV.  Oras want to clone a coin instead of use a fresh codebase.

There are more, but those seem to be the main things.  Now, here are the Ora questions; some are purely existential.  Pick one or more and answer them.  Or use #15 to add your own and answer it.

1.  Should Ora be a direct clone of another coin at all?
2.  Does it matter if Ora is innovative, or only that it exists?
3.  Should Ora first exist, then innovate later?
4.  Should Ora innovate before it exists? [What I mean is, would the community like to add innovation at Ora's birth, or should it be an exact clone?]
5.  What defines Ora today?
6.  Is what defines Ora today "enough" to sustain it?  For how long?
7.  What should define Ora tomorrow?
8.  Should Ora "come to market" quickly and with less planning?
9.  Should Ora come to market slowly and with more planning? [This is related to question #4]
10. Is Ora's most important feature short-term price, or long-term value?  How best to achieve your preferred answer?
11. What problem is Ora attempting to solve, or what challenge will Ora prevail against?
12. Assuming that Ora clones another coin, what will differentiate Ora from other clones of the same coin?
13.  If Ora comes to market slowly, what is the worst that can happen?  The best?
14.  If Ora comes to market quickly, what is the worst and best that can happen?
15.  Add your own question here, then answer it.

kind regards,
nio

Thanks for your input.

1.  I never wanted to clone Qora for the reason that the native JVM has known issues with real-time data.  I prefer C++ over Java, but could do either.
2.  Yes, Qora's open source timeline is fraught with issues.  Besides the unknown release date, there is a break-in period during which devs tear the code apart looking for security issues and other problems.  That could take days or weeks.  Once the code is OS'd, the blackhats will have their turn to rip it to shreds and sink the ship.  I'm not a fan of closed source in the crypto space, but I understand the motivation to keep the IP close to the devs for a little while anyway.

This brings up an interesting discussion which is: presuming Ora brings some fantastic innovation to the table, what would the community prefer to do with that innovation?
a) Keep the intellectual property closed, thereby protecting the IP.
b)  Keep the IP closed for a short while, thereby protecting the IP until Ora is too far ahead for copycats to catch up to it.
c)  Open it up for all to see (and copy with abandon), thereby risking Ora's innovation right at the start (or strengthening its innovation by subjecting the code to strenuous public review).


As for what to use for a clone, presuming we don't write it from scratch, I'm not sold out on BTS or any other coin base to clone at this point.  But since you brought it up, what do you see that makes BTS better, or the best coin to clone?

Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

I'd like to agree with you, but I don't, because I question the premise that ppl leave because they get sick of waiting.  That is certainly one reason, and not unfounded.  But there are many reasons why ppl leave a coin, including a new opportunity.  We've all done it.  Most ppl reading this have dropped their bags - even at a loss - to pursue a new coin with a new idea or approach.  Not to say that they didn't get tired of waiting.

I would also like to point out that it is human nature to become impatient with progress, or lack thereof.  But most ppl have no experience of what it is like on the inside of the problem domain.  Everything seems simple, but reality intrudes.  Even shoddy development is immensely complex.  But great development is even more difficult and time-consuming, because by its nature great dev is extensible and scalable.  What scalable means in laymans terms is Ora needs to be capable of being a small crypto system with a small user base, all the way to a worldwide crypto system with billions of users, without causing performance and other issues.  As for extensibility, it needs to be capable of being extended without breaking existing functionality.  That takes careful planning, which in turn takes time.


Almost every complaint I've ever read about a coin comes down to profit.  Ppl want to make money off crypto, and to make money they need to buy low and sell high.  That process is complicated by the coin fundamentals, and the coin development speed.  That's not so different than a tech company promising to release the next big gizmo, in the hopes that they will sell a billion of them.  Even then, the share holders make their own decisions about the viability of the gizmo, or its colour or its capabilities, and sell off or buy in based on those ideas.  They enter or exit based on their assumptions, and those assumptions may be grotesquely wrong, leading to ruin.  Or they could be right, leading to fortune.  Or, they could ride along for years in a sideways market.

I don't dispute the importance of momentum.  However, I don't want to fool myself into thinking that we have that sort of control or power.  Ppl use cryptocurrencies for different purposes.  Some are fanboys, some are institutional investors, and some are swing traders.  Some think that a portion of crypto users are governments trying to swing the free currency movement one way or another in order to corrupt or kill it.
This is a revolving door, and ppl come and go as they see fit, or as Adam Smith would say, as it suits their motive for gain.  That gain is usually but not always monetary.  Some ppl who bought BTC at 5 cents and sold at a dollar thought they made a fortune.  They exited and made very good on their investment.  Others held out and were rewarded with a 900 USD sell, a phenomenal gain.  All of this took three or four years, during which BTC was routinely hyped and disparaged for any number of reasons.  Ppl got upset and fled, and others took their place.

My point is, I fully expect ppl to get off the bus, and those same ppl I fully expect to get back on when the bus comes around again, or when the bus has a better paint job and new mechanicals.  That is Ora.  Those who are not satisfied with baby steps may be inclined to get off the bus and wait until the price goes up again.  Look at all the coins out there.  The most volume is when the coin gets really hot or really cold.  When it's hot, the bulls push the bears into selling high.  When it is cold, the bears pound the bulls into dumping into the floor.  Everyone wants to cheer for the winning team.

Ora, like all other coins, will have its fair-weather fans, who latch on when Ora's growth curve is positive, and get out when things look bleak.  Or, when they need money.  Or any number of reasons.


We are committed to doing what we can, but not necessarily toward an end that you are expecting.  If I could summarize the theoretical underpinning of Ora, I would have to say: "an overnight success takes a decade of hard work."  Ora is here for the long haul, to build quality.  Quality attracts success.

The ultimate prize in this business is becoming the de-facto e-currency for a new era of money that is not centrally controlled.  That is what all of the serious contenders are vying for.  Some would argue that BTC is already positioned for that.  I'm not convinced.  Lots of 800-kg gorillas have been dethroned by underdogs.  BTC is vulnerable not because it is a bad system, though I see some real problems with it;  BTC is vulnerable for the simple reason that it is the top dog, and eventually one of the hundreds of little dogs nipping at its heels will cause it to stumble and perhaps even crash and burn.

kind regards,
nio