That drk wasn't insta, fast or opportunistically mined. Do you really think if Evan and his friends weren't the ones who benefitted most that the coin would not be relaunched? Don't rename it, relaunch it if you won't to avoid the scam label.
There is no one trying to deny many coins were mined fast in the beginning.
It is not denied; that would be even insane than the current attempt to whitewash it. It is downplayed describing it as 48 hours (in fact most of the coins were mined in 8 hours), the unprovable claim that the coins were redistributed is presented as fact, and relevant information about the highly suspicious circumstances surrounding the instamine/premine orchestrated by the then and current developer are omitted (see above).
Regarding distribution:
[DISCLAIMER: see disclaimer of conflict of interest at the bottom]
Sigh, I'm a bit tired of seeing the same talking points from the DRK FAQ, etc., but just once I will respond because I think in general AlexGR you are pretty sincere.
You are missing the point.
Quote: "If you see fraud and don't shout fraud, you are a fraud"
-- Nassim Taleb (author of The Black Swan and Antifragile; credit to opennux for the quote).First of all, on the matter of redistribution:
DRK/dash supporters frequently claim that the instamine happened but it "doesn't matter" any more because the coins have been redistributed. This is repeated in the DRK FAQ along with several other unsupported statements about who does or does not own certain quantities of coins. However, these statements are at best supposition, as it isn't possible whether it actually happened as claimed.
The problems is, you don't know 90% of what happens in the markets. You can say "coins traded at such a price" but you don't know who was on each side of that trade. If I were trying to legitimize my instamine, the first thing I would do is trade it around, move the coins between wallets, and generally create an appearance of redistribution. To contend that there are not pump groups, whale groups, shady coin developers and others who engage in manipulative and sham trading of altcoins is absurd to the point of ridiculous. This is not the New York Stock Exchange (even there, you probably shouldn't trust everything you see). There is simply no way to know that didn't happen or if it did how much of the activity it represents. This applies at both low prices and high prices.
I will grant that if the coins were traced to a theft at Mintpal and then dumped, that was probably actual redistribution; I don't think the Mintpal scammer was tied to the DRK instamine scam (but you never know with these things; scammers gonna scam). But at best that was a minority of the instamine (and wouldn't early instaminers and other adopters logically have had their in masternodes by then?)
Now I agree it is certainly fair to say that the coins
might have been redistributed or
could have been redistributed. I would not object to that at all.
But to continue to present this as fact (in the FAQ and frequently used as a talking point by dark supporters) is unsupportable and effectively fraudulent.
In addition, the DRK FAQ claims that the 2 million coin instamine happened over 48 hours, and this talking point is also frequently repeated by DRK supporters. However, this grossly understates the severity of the instamine, and perhaps paints a picture of a short mining period over which outsiders could still realistically decide whether or not to participate.
In fact:
1. Within
the very first hour over 500,000 coins were mined
2. Within 8 hours over 1.5 million coins were mind, which is most of the instamine.
On the matter of the instamine itself, to focus on the amount of the instamine and the subsequent disposition of the coins is to ignore a whole host of extremely deceptive and arguably fraudulent practices that surrounded it:
3. That Evan misled people into thinking that the launch would not happen for days (and specifically "definitely" not in "hours"), then it happened in a few hours, late at night in the US and during the early morning hours in Europe. Considering the >500K coins mined in the very first hour alone, the effect of this "ambush" was enormous.
4. That the stated reason for delaying the launch for days was to do more testing and fix bugs. Yet when the coin was lunched it still had a "serious error." Why was the rushed ambush launch done in this manner?
5. That Evan withheld information about the purpose, features, and goals of he coin development until after the instamine was complete.
It was absolutely impossible for you to have any reason to mine this coin unless your strategy was to mine 100% of new coins that were launched, you just happened to stumble into it, you were friends with Evan, or you were Evan. In effect it turns the instamine into a premine, because the coins were mined before the coin was properly announced.
6. That various changes have been made to rewards, etc. multiple times., always in the direction of reducing/restricting/locking up supply, to the benefit of existing holders. The latest version of this is masternode payments, which look very much like a HYIP (a form of financial fraud which attracts new investors by offering high yields to the benefit of earlier investors)
7. Renaming the coin has been proposed by Evan and then later later implemented to reduce attention on instamine, the previous withholding of information, the manipulation, and the misleading and deceptive statements that occurred in connection with the previous name(s).
Now it is possible all of this was an accident. If so, you are asking us to believe in a string of extraordinary coincidences all apparently (by sheer luck) benefiting the same party or parties.
If it is instead not all an "accident" then it is evidence of deliberate fraud on the part of
the person or persons still involve with running the project. That is certainly relevant and troubling information, even if the nature of circumstantial evidence (even strong circumstantial evidence) is that it can't be 100% proven. Things might be different if there were a complete and transparent change of leadership (as for example with BitMonero->Monero, and probably some other coins). But that is not the case. The person (assuming, not necessarily with certainty, that he acted alone) responsible for everything reported above is still there.
None of this proves it was
not an accident, but given the fairly strong circumstantial case, I'm going to not only stay away, but advise other people to stay away.
AlexGR further claims that the instamine was okay "because satoshi did it too" or that "satoshi solomined" (paraphrases), a frequent defense of various premine/instamine/fastmine/ninjamine scams. That is a fairly absurd justification, even if it were a valid equivalence in this particular case, but it is not. Let's review (using the numbers above):
1. The rate of Bitcoin mining followed the published schedule. There were no extra coins mined at the beginning (in fact I think some of the early blocks were quite slow). It took 2-3 months to mine 500K coins, not
one hour2. It took the better part of a year to mine 1.5 million BTC, not 8 hours.
3. The Bitcoin launch was announced well ahead of time, the code was reviewed by several people who help finish it, and it happened on schedule. No misleading statements were made about the time of the launch. "Many people" are reported to have mined during the first several thousand blocks. Certainly many mined over the following months as well.
4. There were indeed bugs in the code, and some mined coins were even lost to fix them, but none of this involved a "serious error" right after launch when an enormous number of coins were mined.
5. satoshi did not withhold information about the features and goals of the project. He engaged in a detailed and extended discussion about how it would work and what it was attempting to accomplish
before it was launched.
6. No changes were made as satoshi made it clear that to have legitimacy as a decentralized system, the parameters needed to be "set in stone"
Furthermore it isn't even true that satoshi was the only one or one of only a few mining in the early days of Bitcoin. "Many other people" were mining in the first several thousand blocks, according to gmaxwell.
One more thing to add. The part of this that is (probably) fraudulent is not that Evan got a lot of coins, its that it was held out (and in many ways continues to be held out) as a public open distribution process, when in reality what happened was in effect more of a premine (see items above esp. #6), and I believe at this point that was very likely the intent. If he had forthrightly presented it as a premined coin, one might think that was a bad idea, but there would be no claim of probable fraud, at least not by me. I've never claimed that an openly premined coin was a fraud (maybe a bad idea, maybe something that should be relaunched sans premime, but not a fraud if done honestly).
DISCLAIMER: I am a Monero core team member and I do not deny a conflict of interest. Nevertheless I endeavor to be factual and I suggest that readers consider the facts, check the facts, reach your own conclusions about what happened and how it matters today, and finally to avoid the temptation to attack the person stating the facts or the coin(s) with which he might be associated]EDIT: add disclaimer, various typos, writing cleanups, reformatting, add references.
References
Ok now it insta crashes when I type "setgenerate true".
Time to go to bed and try again next week?
Yeah, let's do that. I obviously need to do some more testing. Thanks everyone!
Best thing to do I guess. Please, confirm you won't be launching after some minutes/hours even if you fix it, and the sooner would be tomorrow, thanks.
Definitely not. I'll also follow up with this post when I do set a time.
Launch is being moved to 11PM EST!
Everyone please update to the new version on the git repo, there was a serious error that I just fixed:
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
what(): CreateNewBlock() : ConnectBlock failed
Aborted (core dumped)
I compiled the exe for Windows... no blocks yet, just a bazillion rejects.
Any chance you could upload that windows client exe? I'd be willing to throw 5k XCO at you. Just make sure it's the latest source from github
Ok now it insta crashes when I type "setgenerate true".
Time to go to bed and try again next week?
Yeah, let's do that. I obviously need to do some more testing. Thanks everyone!
Best thing to do I guess. Please, confirm you won't be launching after some minutes/hours even if you fix it, and the sooner would be tomorrow, thanks.
Definitely not. I'll also follow up with this post when I do set a time.
Launch is being moved to 11PM EST!
... seriously?
Just woke up to this
How many hours have I lost? Oh, well. Time to git pull and launch it again.
Did Darkcoin have a fair launch?
Yes and it was publicly preannounced.
Was Darkcoin Instamined?
~2mn coins were issued in the first 48 hours due to problems with the difficulty readjustment. That represents approximately 10-15% of the total money supply that will ever be issued.
The majority of these coins were distributed through the market in the following weeks and months at very low price levels* (0.0000x BTC per DRK to 0.000x BTC per DRK) and a lot of them were also absorbed in the April/May 2014 price increase.
- Examples of prices and selling action almost two weeks after launch:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg4861558#msg4861558https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg4889177#msg4889177- Forum member coins101 did a blockchain analysis of Darkcoins distribution as of September 2014:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=778616.0I read somone who wrote that 50% of the coins in circulation are owned by the devs
No. This is a classic case of spreading FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) by supporters of other cryptocurrencies who perceive Darkcoin as a threat to the coin they support.
The coin has been well distributed through exchanges since early February 2014 – almost 15-20 days after the coin's launch. One could buy as many cheap DRKs as they wanted, with prices of 0.0000x per DRK or 0.0001x per DRK. This can be verified by historic charts of c-cex.com and poloniex.com of early Feb 2014. These two exchanges were the first that adopted DRK. Huge buy orders of 20-30-50k DRKs were being filled by early miners who were dumping their coins for pennies, not really appreciating the coin they had in their possession due to the “abundant” way in which they mined it as people do not really appreciate what they are given in ample quantity.
Miners who “instamined” large quantities never foresaw the huge price increase and as such sold over a million coins at prices from 0.0000x up to 0.002 – with the first large batch being sold after DRK hit the exchanges and the next large batches being sold from February 2014 to April 2014 @ 0.0015 BTC price levels. In fact, many coin holders were complaining* of all the “dumping” by those who held cheap coins from the start that kept the price at artificially low levels for 2 months straight.
The dumping ended, due to tremendous market demand, when a “pump” was initiated by “whale” buyers that swallowed millions of USD (in DRKs), raising the price from 0.0012 to 0.017 within a few weeks.
- During this dumping period there were certain individuals who spread FUD about how the coin will never rise in price due to the instaminers dumping continuously. These are typically the same people who are claiming that the 50% instamine distribution affects the coin distribution today. However it is impossible to simultaneously claim that the coins were being dumped and that the 50% instamine holds true today. It's either one or the other. Since the coins were being dumped, the 50% instamine distribution was gradually reduced with each dumping wave. Blockchain analysis indicates a well distributed coin, reflecting the fact that the dumped coins were evenly distributed through the market. Early distribution is not currently an issue as huge buyers have been reshuffling the "rich-list" in their favor, buying millions of dollars in Darkcoins during May 2014. Late distribution through aggressive buying is currently more of a concern than early distribution.
1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288).
He did not. I mined during that time— so did many other people I've talked to. As you're probably aware the original software mined _very_ slowly, and contemporary hardware was slow. Heck even a fairly current machine with state of the art software can just barely do enough hashrate for difficulty 1. (and god, before more handout requests come: Bitcoin was worthless then, the software was annoying windows-gui only— I ran it in wine+vncserver, and I didn't keep my original wallet)
A sister coin would wipe out Darkcoin, especially if we did it. So it's not a good idea.
Other options are:
1.) Renaming the coin. It keeps coming up over and over, maybe we should really consider it. Everyone start coming up with names and I'll make a voting page to gauge if our user base even wants this.
2.) The first 24 hours of the coins existence keep causing us problems, an "airdrop" could be a solution to this. We could airdrop all holders (uniquely verified) with a equal portion of coin. This coin would come from a block in the future that paid 2.4million+ coins to a specific address that I hold. We could use some kind of verification system like mastercoin (
http://mastercoin-faucet.com/github-intro)
The airdrop would be a month or so into the future, so it would give users time to buy coins and become holders creating some demand. Also, we'd have a much larger market cap and the argument about the first 24 hours would become invalid.
As always, we listen to the community. If enough people complain, we'll do something...
1) The name is fine - "the general public" is never going to use darkcoin, it will be used by people who care about ANONYMITY - The general public will just stick with bitcoin, because it is "anonymous enough" for 95% of folks, and has tons of other advantages (wide retail acceptance etc)
2) The first 24 hours became a larger problem when the # of coins decreased from 84million to 22million, In retrospect this was probably a mistake... but we can't take that back now without killing the price and shaking investor confidence. The airdrop idea sounds super shady, even if it isn't.
Major changes like this should not be taken lightly. Investors want specs that are written in stone. Major changes should ONLY happen if it's crucial for the success of the coin. Neither of these issues meet that requirement and therefore I think should be left as-is.
eduffield
Darkcoin airdrop (cancelled)
2014-04-07, 04:49:41
The first 24 hours of the coins existence keep causing us problems, an "airdrop" could be a solution to this. We could airdrop all holders (uniquely verified) with a equal portion of coin. This coin would come from a block in the future that paid 2 million+ coins to a specific address that I hold. We could use some kind of verification system like mastercoin (http://mastercoin-faucet.com/github-intro)
The airdrop would be a month or so into the future, so it would give users time to buy coins and become holders creating some demand. Also, we'd have a much larger market cap and the argument about the first 24 hours would become invalid.
How would you get a part of the airdrop?
- You must own 100DRK ( if you're new to Darkcoin but want to be part of the drop, you would need to purchase 100DRK ).
One of the following:
- Github: To redeem this reward, you need either at least three public repositories and your account must be older than August 1, 2013
- Reddit: To redeem this reward, you need a Reddit account with more than 100 karma.
- Bitcointalk: To redeem this reward you need an activity score above 10 as well as at least 10 posts
Any of these accounts would need to be created before April 1, 2014.
Vote! Sorry, this was a terrible idea.
Someone asked me this via email, I thought I'd post the answer for everyone:
I'm looking for some clarity on the amount of Darkcoins that will be minted. I've read some where that it is something quite large. I'm looking to invest founds into emerging crypto's that have a possibility of longevity. I'm very concerned thought with the total number of coins that will be minted. Please advise. thanks.
--------------------------------
DarkCoin is unique in the since that it has a variable block reward that is based on difficulty. This means that while currently the block reward is 120, when difficulty rises the block reward will fall. Eventually the block reward will be driven down to it's lowest amount which is 15DRK. After that, every 2 years the block reward is halved again. So in 2 years, 7.5DRK, in 4 years, 3.75DRK, etc.
So, we don't know how many there will be, but it definitely won't reach anywhere near 84 million. It mostly depends on how long it takes us to reach the lower block reward cap. At this of rate of growth that should happen this month (it happens at about 100 difficulty).
I've read that variable block rewards are exploitable from "dishonest miners" in coins like dogecoin who switchover when the rewards are low. Could that happen to Darkcoin also? If yes then it is tempting for someone to take Darkcoin code, clone it and say "a better and improved Darkcoin, safe from dishonest mining tacticts" etc.
So, without getting insanely technical, Doge and DarkCoin are setup differently. The block reward function in DarkCoin is set on a very even curve and reward is higher toward the beginning. Later on people will forget that it was ever not fixed and they'll just talk about the halving. So there's not anything to really take advantage of, right? After a difficulty of 100, no matter what the blocks will return 15 DRK.
When I wrote the reply to the email earlier, I was thinking we'd hit 100 difficulty in a few weeks, but we're already at 600Mh/s for the network (up from 200 yesterday). If this keeps up we'll have a difficulty of 21 tomorrow and we only need 5x the growth of the network to reach that lower cap.
So I guess it's a question of incentives, knowing that we're going to cap at some point who wouldn't mine right now? From an economics point of view it's a feedback loop and it should actually make the growth exponential.
Great, now that everything is stable, I'll be posting later about the vision of this project and milestones! Time to move on to actually implementing what I set out to do.
As promised, here is our vision and future plans for XCoin!
http://xcoin.co/XCoinVision.pdfTL;DR: We're building XCoin into a moderately-anonymous network, where the transactions are sent encrypted and only able to be read the party who is receiving the funds. Blocks will be published via CoinJoin as to ensure some amount of anonymity. This is being built in such a way to compete with the other top alt-coins and maybe even Bitcoin.
I compiled the exe for Windows... no blocks yet, just a bazillion rejects.
Any chance you could upload that windows client exe? I'd be willing to throw 5k XCO at you. Just make sure it's the latest source from github
Just came here to try out the new Merit system.
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