They were initially involved but then rejected AT in favour of some other smart contract idea.

I'd say wait and see about Qora - Bitshares has its own SC system and Bitcoin is not interested in one for now.

Qora will be doing AT very soon and a few other alt coins have approached us with interest to implement AT.

Many people do wear "mouth and nose" masks in Beijing (and not just because they are ill).

I lived in Beijing for seven years (up until the end of 2013) and the main reason that I don't live there now is because of the pollution.

About the only time it was really nice there was during the Olympics month of August and the first two weeks of September 2008 due to the fact that they shut down hundreds (or maybe thousands) of factories (and I guess some coal fired power plants) in the surrounding areas for a few months in order to improve the air quality (they also introduced rules about the last digit of the number plate and which days you can drive within the city in 2008 which are still enforced now I believe).

It isn't just the smog btw - all the construction (less now but was crazy in 2007) in such a dry and often windy place results in more dust than I've ever experienced in my life (you have to clean your floors at least once per week and virtually no-one uses carpet because of the dust). Even without all the construction the desertification of much of north west China and the annual weather patterns means that Beijing is subject to "dust storms" every spring (making it about the least pleasant time of year you'd want to be there).

If you are keen to visit Beijing then I'd recommend mid to late September (you generally get quite a few very nice sunny days then which are also not unbearably hot and humid).

It is - as is Codius and all three projects have their respective strengths and weaknesses.


Sorry - documentation is here: http://ciyam.org/at but understand it is really aimed at devs (so is very technical) - I have added the link to the OP.

That project was not about "smart contracts" but about P2P storage and it is not designed to be incorporated into existing blockchains (so apples and pears).

They have gone down the path of using Google's "native client" which is a sandbox for running x86 code.

Also although it is not as restrictive as Ethereum (who have forked a browser) I think you are limited to using the Chrome browser (or OS) for Codius.

Link should be fine now.

Yes - maybe we are being attacked by those that don't want to see us succeed (it should be working again in a few minutes).


AT is blockchain "agnostic" (so it doesn't care how the host blockchain does that).

For AT you can see the design here: http://ciyam.org/at

The first document is the main technical description of how AT works.

Interestingly it seems that CIYAM is being DDoS attacked right now.

I'd be keen to know why you still think it is misleading (we have no intention to mislead anyone).


It allows people to create general "smart contracts" so the exact same use that Ethereum has. Also we have developed an "atomic cross-chain transfer" AT that will allow for peer to peer trading of digital currencies *without a trusted 3rd party*. I think that has at least some real worth to people.

As to creating a new "high-level language" we are not doing that (but Ethereum is).

Not sure why that is misleading - we have never said that it is running on Bitcoin.

(so you are saying that alts don't have mainnet's at all?)

I don't think Ethereum is going to be launching on Bitcoin either (or do have evidence that they are going to do that?).

We have a very simple policy - we don't *hire* people (be they from a GS background or any other).

Instead we promote the idea that those that are interested in the project can contribute (with actual coding or other useful things).

Some people may already be aware that AT has been launched on a mainnet (via the Burst altcoin - http://www.theuknews.com/index.php/nav/newsr/5228) providing Turing complete "smart contracts" including the world's first decentralised Lottery (which is already running).

Whilst CIYAM Developers have *zero* VC funding nor any IPO funds we have however managed to create our "smart contracts" implementation and see it through to launching on a mainnet in a relatively short space of time (no easy feat)

It has been noted that the fact that currently ATs have to be written in an "assembly" language makes them not easy to develop but at the same time it should be noted that we are looking into using LLVM in order to allow ATs to be written in C or C++.

The Ethereum project have not only decided to not use any well known high level language (they have created their own) but they are also now forking a web browser (something that we have no plan to do as we think most people are simply not going to want to change their browser).

Also AT has been designed from the start to work on multiple blockchains (i.e. relatively easy to integrate with any alt and will get easier as we progress) and we plan to be able to demonstrate an "atomic cross-chain transfer" within the next month.

It is a "David vs. Goliath" issue that we face but we feel that providing a system that supports major existing high level programming languages and all main browsers and allowing all blockchains to join in is perhaps something that might be more appealing to the devs in this field compared to the Ethereum approach.

AT documentation can be found here: http://ciyam.org/at (and yes it is rather technical)

Your comments are welcome.

AT supports "generalised smart contracts" (so there is no specific set or limit to what can be created).

In the case of Burst some user friendly HTTP forms are being created to help non-devs construct ATs from a specific set of "templates" (and this approach makes sense to let non-programmers create ATs).

The only thing that "limits" a dev is their understanding and ability to actually write an AT either from scratch or from an existing use case (currently they are written in an "assembly language").

We have plans to use LLVM in order to generate AT compatible machine code which would actually let people write ATs in C++ (something I don't believe even Ethereum can offer as they are instead focused on the idea that everyone should learn a new language and also use a new browser which is not the way we think things should be done).

Unfortunately like most media articles it is full of mistakes - most importantly AT allows for the creation of arbitrary code so there is no limit of 5 kinds of "smart contracts" (it is just that only that many ATs have actually been written so far).

For normal end users who want to create their own ATs the idea is to provide a very simple web UI to do so but any user who has the skills to code an AT is not limited to that as they can just construct an AT using the raw machine code.

Although vbcs will have more definitive answers for the questions about the lottery the basic things to note are this:

- the current winner is the holder of the current best ticket (the final winner will be the best ticket when the lottery is due to payout)
- the tickets themselves are random values (that appear only after a certain number of blocks) and the current best ticket is the highest ticket number that has been issued since the last payout
- if you are the holder of the current best ticket then that value will appear highlighted (so you can see you are the current winner)
- total amount to win is basically the balance of the AT at the time of payout (minus a small amount for the fees to process and send the payout)
- the current lottery takes no % or income at all (just miners get some fees for running it)

Have let vbcs know about your difficulty to see if he can make the instructions clearer but if you click Buy Now then you just need to click Okay after that (no need to type in any numbers at all).

I use Skype mostly so you can PM me to get my Skype id.