I mean the proposal I made on page 326:

Following my proposal there would be a (relatively large) pot for core and community development.

I think POS+POW would be better, but that´s not the point. As Yellowblackbird noted this wouldn´t be an IPO, it would be rather Proof of Burn. It would mean that we move from one coin to another. That´s why I said we should go for this as last choice but it is always good to know that there is a last choice that allows maintaining the community work we achieved, even if Quark keeps dropping in price.

That would be a good idea and I discussed it with Julie some time ago but
a) the game still needs to be financed
b) the game is Android based
We discussed implementing a mobile miner and HashEngineer even said, that it could work without totally draining the battery, but the effect would only be relevant if - say - 1 Mio. people play it and I don´t expect this to happen short-mid term, even if we manage to market it good.

To be honest, solution D seems pretty appealing to me because it would allow the community to finally take over. Sometimes it is simply better to start from scratch. To most of us it is no real problem if Quark fails but losing the community we builded up would be a real loss.

I think it is possible. We had a duscussion on that some time ago on Reddit. It is certainly possible to talk to him about this.

@ReRaise

 Beside the "leaving the wallet open" solution which you don't agree on. What is your opinion on "moving" to POS/POW (my proposal on page 326)?

You are asking the wrong questions. We are discussing here, not deciding and as long as their are no decisions your questions can´t be answered.

This debate is open and if you have arguments, go ahead and let us hear them. Until now I didn´t hear any substantial contribution to the discussion.

Don´t know what your agenda is, you seem repeating points (and smilieys) you already made.

I´ll answer some question that reached me via mail by Quarkcheck (he wrote:I don't mind to post this as well to the bitcointalk thread, if you prefer to answer them publicly)


Yes, Quark algo but it can have other features.


I thought about a PoS+PoW system that works on an inflation rate comparable to Quark (~0.5-1% but steady)

You may know this whitepaper, if not: check it out. I really liked it, also because it allows for voting on interest rate by the community. Maybe we could even ask the dev. He has his mail address posted on the thread. Maybe bit too early, but I think we can bookmark him and come back to him in case we are going for something like this.


Well yes, premine (or mint?) because the coins that are distributed need to exist in advance. 10% are discounted and given to the community (administered by a solid Foundation).


2 example scenarios:

1. You pay 10.000 QRK
>> 9.000 COR go to you
>> 1.000 COR go to the Foundation

1. You pay 10.000 QRK
>> 5.000 COR go to you
>> 1.000 COR go to the Foundation
>> 4.000 COR are stored and leased back to you monthly in (e.g.) 36 months (no additional profit, just as an insurrance for the launch and development phase that people stay supportive [even if they don´t do anything] and not dump their coins [easily]) I haven´t seen this implemented - only models where developers promised rewards for leaving coins on the wallet.

@cryptohunter


I agree that too much time has passed undone (especially since some people simply talked problems away) but this doesn´t change that we need to weigh up advantages and disadvantages in the present and should at no cost rush into any solution in my opinion.


On what base do you make this statement?


Even if the foundation would control the Quarks and hold them back from market people will ask themselves if they should rather stick with quark or the other coin and why the hell there is a second coin. From the perspective of an observer this is confusing and as long as there is no obvious good reason why there are two coins it doesn´t sound sustainable to me.


I received a foundational mail address because I was contacting possible external partners, so I would consider myself to be associated to the foundation. I always rejected to become part of the foundation as long as it has no democratic and transparent structure. However, I am working closely with the people and I can tell you that everyone is working hard to find a solution. I think the problem that makes it take so long is a lack of institutionalization. The foundation needs a real structure and things will become more effective and less time consuming. However, this is tough work and all of us have normal life, work & freetime. This is why I am pushing for public discussions. We should do this together and exchange opinions publicly.

@reRaise

I don´t know to whom DI refers when he says "we". I know he had his own plans - if the Foundation would have agreed on something like this I would know and it is no t the case.

EDIT: I edit terminology to be clear about the proceeding: proof-of-burn is a way to make sure that the newly started coin isn´t heavily premined.


Maybe, but from my experience you do worst when you act quick because you start to get nervous. So lets go through the arguments and our view will be clearer afterwards (i hope

So the Quark only IPO (EDIT: rather Proof-of-burn). As I said elsewhere, i can´t see how the companion coin wouldn´t massively undermine Quark, because people would always ask why the heck they should keep Quark if they can have a "better" coin (and still the same community). I only see one way where proof of burn is a good solution, that is when a Part of the community wants to move away from the developer. I can´t see this as a "companion" solution. However, if the development perspective appears to be negative , then it may be a good solution to move Quark investors to a somewhat more promising solution.

Take this scenario:

1. We look for a capable team of developers who are looking out for a capable and dedicated community (usually not the case, but as I lined out, the community is one key factor to success and we can provide that)
2. The developer create a Quark based coin (working title: core) that adopts features that are seriously promising (and not only to hype the coin, I am especially thinking of features that allow voting with your coins!) with ~ the amount of coins as Quark + a yearly inflation of say 1% (currently we have no stable inflation, that is seriously confusing)
3. We create an Quark proof-of-burn protocol where every 1 destroyed Quark = 1 Core.
4. However 10% of the acquired amount are saved in a community pot which is used as "community share" (I talked about this earlier). This money is administered by treasurers of an elected board (better: smart contracts) and will be distributed in a timeframe that we expect is needed to install a solid infrastructure. This is also the money which we can use to pay the developers on a regular basis (NOT at once).
(optionally 5. Another 40% is stored via smart contract and paid out to shareholders for the next 36 months. This could be a mechanism to reduce prisoners dilemma: People know that there are large shareholders and they might be scared (for good reason?) that those are just waiting for the right time to drop all of their holdings. By "leasing" it back to holders you "store" self-interest and by doing that support trust in the community. (I am not talking about shady concepts like e.g. ECC used [the longer you keep the more you get]. you will get back what you paid in, there is no additional inflation)

I really like this as an alternative in case that there is no development perspective AT ALL. So in my opinion we should seek a critical debate with the developer to level out what is possible and what not with him. If it turns out to be a waste of time then I think this could be our Plan D


Everything I wrote here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=683618.new#new
can be applied

@cryptohunter


Re: superblock: You are right, the distribution would effectively be the same, or even: more fair. I also agree on the point that the option to change of the code shouldn´t be exclude and is most likely inevitable. However, I believe that changing the distribution is different to changing the code as it
a) directly manipulates the price
b) could be concepted as "marketcap bumping"
c) creates insecurity in the community with regard to price stability (the money that we redistribute could well be worth only 75% of what we assumed to collect because people sell off)
d) it would be a can opener (if people do it once, what keeps them from doing it twice)

All in all I see your point, but I think we should rather raise the money from donations and I also believe that we CAN raise it from donations if we make the community aware of the neccesity and potential of this step.

We certainly need to find a solution how to handle this huge amount of money trustless. I thought that probably smart-contracts could help here. What do you think? Maybe multisignatures?



Good to hear



To me that would make sense if a group of us would like to "leave Quark" because that would be effectively what would happen. Your argument that this coin wouldn´t be more competition than other coins is partwise valid to me, but it certainly makes a difference if competition comes from "within" the community than if it comes from outside. As I wrote: I am not convinced of the companion coin idea as long as their are no real distinguishing features and the more I think about it, I don´t see how to find distinguishing features at all. If we create a companion coin there will always be the elephant in the room "What for?" and if the only answer to this question is: "to fix hashrate" then this won´t contribute either to value nor to greater community participation.

So all in all I stay critical towards the merge mining idea, while I still believe that the hashrate needs to be fixed. However, if we start this great initiative there may well be the chance that we manage to mobilize more Quarkers to leave the Wallet open an mine with 2 cores to support the network. It is sort of a chicken egg situation and I would currently rather opt for fixing community (and by that: price) stability first and then take care of more initiatives to push hashrate. We have good things going on (for instance a pool where 1% of your income is invested in a lottery that allows for big gains), we certainly need to mobilize people from the community to get things going, but first and foremost we need to gain trust.

@victzhang

Glad to hear that. As I wrote, we should discuss solutions how to handle massive amounts of money without having one person who can theoretically dump it all as this would undermine trust.

Was my first reaction, too.

I would take things as they are: Quark - like all other Altcoins - is an experiment, they are not (yet) serious business even if some pretend it to be different. I would even argue that this can be said for Bitcoin. I rather prefer a hobby developer who needs more time to do things but is dedicated to the project than a professional who only works once he or she gets paid in fiat.

I also say this because the developers aren´t the only ones who make a currency successful and invest time into the project: without good promo, good networking, good miners etc. the currency is anything but just another quick trade. So the same as you are right with arguing that the developers need money for a living you can say that core members need money for a living. We all do it in our sparetime as a donation to the community and everyone who holds theoretically profits.

So, yes, I would rather go the "indie" way than another. Imho the only projects who can afford to pay out "real" saleries are those with large IPOs or comparable approaches (Darkcoin etc.). While this is definitely an approach that can be promising (can also be used to exploit) I think it is still worth a try to start with community driven payments. There is a lot of competition on the market but even promising coins with professional backing may and will disappear in a while because the hype is "burned out" so I personally think it is worth giving it a try with internally raised funds and a slowly but steady progress.

I wouldn´t rule out BTC payments instead of QRK entirely (especially when it comes to a grand overhaul process of the currency) but I would give it definitely a lower priority and prefer to work with people who trust in the value of the community. We already have some of those on board and if we manage to keep the exchange with Max Guevara running we will be able to get those people more involved when it comes to core developent.

Uhm, so you basically compiled the github sources? So how does it differ from the current releases that are hosted on qrk.cc?

Also, maybe we should keep this away from this discussion because it is not directly related.

No, I am strongly against paying a developer in fiat. Why would any community do that? We need developers who are dedicated to Quark. If they believe in the future of the currency they will be fine with a decent salery in QRK. If they prefer Fiat they obviously aren't interested in long term involvement or don't trust in the project. In both cases I wouldn't opt for this dev.

Not betting, just looking on numbers. I never held a lot of Quarks and I don´t mind to buy the same amount again for this project. Most of my contribution was related to time I spent discussing and work that I have done.


Sorry to ask like this, but how come noone know about this wallet project? Just because I won´t install wallets from unknown sources.

EDIT: also forgot to ask: what is the purpose of the Wallet and what are the differences to the original Wallet?

Hey cryptohunter, thanks for answering, I will come back to the points later on, now I need a break from Quark


This is the proposal that I announced, please check in:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=683618.new#new

This post is dedicated to Quark community members but you can certainly apply the proposal to your own community if you are not holding any Quarks, so feel free to read and contribute

* * * * * * *

As we all know any form of crisis has its positive aspects as it may unleash forces that allow to create new things. In the last months Quark experienced problems due to

a) an unclear development perspective and
b) a decrease of the hashrate

I and many others don´t believe that Quark will recover from waiting and doing nothing, but I also believe that the community has the potential to create something on the basis of Quark that raises it´s value. I am convinced that we need a project that involves massive redistribution and work on long but also mid-term perspectives. We are currently discussing different approaches to cope with the “technical” issues in this thread. In this thread I want to present a proposal how the Quark community (any maybe other communities) can interact and take decisions in the future and I want to invite everyone to add thoughts & to develop or improve the idea.

As you may see, the post is somewhat long, so if you like, grab a coffee and read or jump to whatever paragraph you like

Taking stock: Community starts with Communication

As we all know communication is the key to the development of a solid community. As most coins, Quark established several forums at the beginning. One of the reasons why they failed in my opinion, was the inability to gather people in one place. Many people were active on 3 forums + Reddit, but for most people this led to confusion and people stopped contributing as the community got smaller after a grand hype in December. Beside the fact that some people simply leave the community because they had no interest in Quark anymore, there were other reasons why people were and are not contributing:

a) there is a lack of structure
b) there is small revenue (especially when activity is getting lower [talking to yourself kinda seems senseless])

The second argument is crucial as inactive platforms will get inactive faster, which causes more people to leave and so on. Beside the hashrate issue that was already addressed on the other thread, the relevance of the community can´t be underestimated. Traders come and go, but a real community stays and can keep things up when everything looks bad. Actually I feel that is what currently happens, but the core community is not as big as it could be.

The Quark community has a Foundation (with me being associated) that has theoretically the ability to structurize discourse and set incentives, but the structure is neither transparent nor democratic with respect to the rest of the community. This is why I believe that an improvement of community structures is necessary and will eventually contribute to the value of the currency itself.

Quark Development: Paying developers - easy as that

Probably the shortest bullet point: If we want good developers I believe they should get paid. This raises their stakes and own interest in the currency. However, I neither believe that this payment should happen via a massive premine (as has been carried out by many currencies) nor as one single payout, but as a payment on a regular basis (e.g. quarterly) after reporting the work that has been done (see also Expense allowance below).  Also development shouldn´t be kept in the hands of a single person that has no obligations towards the community as it contradicts the idea of decentralization.

Quark Foundation: Structure creates trust

Cryptocurrencies are decentralized (at least most), insofar it may sound incoherent to call for more structure (which usually includes centralization). However, if you think twice, in the early years all cryptocommunities are somehow based on the actions and initiatives of a few individuals only - they are not really decentralized. They mostly depend on people who haven´t been elected and will take their decision independently from a community vote (which also usually doesn´t exist). This is the reason why cryptocommunities like Bitcoin or recently Doge created Foundations who can moderate between the community and the people who work on the code and infrastructure. Maybe at a later moment this will change, but for now a solid, transparent and democratic structure is necessary to get things done.

In the Quark community there are several taskforces that were working independently but keeping a vivid exchange between members. Most of this happened via mail and internal forums because it was more convenient than on a forum, but I believe this needs to be changed to make all of our work transparent to everyone and allow for more participation (in many cases people wouldn´t even know that “things were moving” - this is alarming in my opinion).

I suggested in different discussions to unite the taskforces under the umbrella of the Quark Foundation



This alone won´t be enough. The Foundation needs to be recreated as a solid part of the community. E.g. currently it is not transparent how people become part of the Foundation. Basically people from the Foundation agree on who else can become part of it where those who are members are people who actually work actively on infrastructure and community. I propose the Foundation to rather be a group of people who are long-term supporters who want to participate in decision taking but not necessarily are nerds like me who spend a lot of time in a hopeless venture like this So being part doesn´t necessarily need people to actively participate all of the time: funding or simply gathering is also support and helps a lot. While I don´t think the Foundation can be recreated in one move, I suggest the following first steps, with more to follow, supported/carried out by the Foundation:

Quark Foundation: Financial contribution allows for voting

1. Everyone can become member of the Foundation by paying an equivalent of 20-200 USD (or X) in QRK (10 different levels = up to 10 votes) as deposit
2. Yearly contribution depends on the level and is 20% of the current cost for one level.
3. Members can leave the foundation at any moment and will receive their funds within 4 weeks after leaving (to prevent leaving to sell Quarks for quick profits/panic selling).
4. Leaving and Staying is rewarded:
Leaving before first year ends >> deposit refunded -30%
Leaving before 2nd year ends >> deposit refunded -15%
Leaving before 3rd year ends >> deposit refunded -7.5%
Leaving before 4th year ends >> deposit refunded -3%
After 5th year >> + 10% reward on deposit
After 6th year >> + 15% reward on deposit
After 7th year >> +20% on deposit 20% (no yearly contribution from 7th year on)

Quark Foundation: Everyone can become member of the board

Everyone who is part of the Foundation can become elected member of the board. The election is publicly carried out by all members of Foundation. The foundational board covers the departments and by that integrates the current teams:

1. Core development (former QuarkFoundation)
2. Public Relations (former QuarkPress & QuarkLabs)
3. Project development (former QuarkPlanet)
4. Support & Promotion (former QuarkUniverse)
+ 2 Treasurers with multisig keys

Quark Foundation: Expense allowance & Infrastructure

1. The yearly contribution is used to
a) pay an expense allowance to the representants of the Foundation and
b) support infrastructure (server cost etc.)
2. Expense allowances are paid quarterly after members handed in a report of their work.
3. The money is controlled by two treasurers with multisig keys. They report quarterly on the current finances.

Quark inc.: ROI projects

Whereas the Quark Foundation cares for the core functionality of Quark there can be projects that are only based on Quark and that can therefore be handled independently from the Foundation. Quark inc. (working title) would be a group of people who invest in projects that allow for revenue.

1. In Quark inc. you can buy shares for 1000 QRK a piece. You can buy as many shares as you like.
2. The Quark inc. has two treasurers who are also moderators of the Quark inc. forum.
3. The percentage of shares you hold in relation to the whole amount gives you an equivalent of votes on the Quark inc. forum.
4. On the forum, everyone can propose a project and Quark inc. holders can vote for or against them. If a project reached a quorum of 25% and the mayority of pro votes it reaches development status.
5. In development status the project initiator needs to layout his ideas and present a business plan within 30 days. If he_she fails to do so the project is cancled. If the work is handed in correctly it needs to reach the quorum of 25% and the mayority of pro votes to get funded.

This way people can develop projects together with the community and have the whole process as transparent as possible.

Quark Forum: Rewarding community creators

Beside a functional currency & hashrate support + trader recognition the ability to create a successful community relies heavily on community builders. Currently those people who work their ass of on forums and email lists aren´t rewarded. Bounties are also usually rather paid to those who carry out projects, not to those who initiated debates to get projects going. A renewed forum with a feedback system can reward those who actively participate in discussions and get positive feedback from others. The forum may replace the old forum (forum.qrk.cc) and parts of what Reddit and BTCtalk are used for at the moment.

We are currently testing a forum that allows not only feedback but already supports a credit system that can be translated to cryptocurrencies. (If you are a PHP coder, your help is much wanted)

1. Members of the forum get credits for agreement depending on the rank of the people who agree or disagree with an opinion
2. First 20 (or X) Members are paid on a monthly basis from a faucet that is loaded by donations (I suggest ~5000 QRK monthly)

* * * * * * * *

I wont get more into detail as I know this was already a long read but just to be clear on the costs of all this: I believe that we need to raise an estimated amount of ~ 2 Million Quarks for this kind of reforms. I know, this are not peanuts but a substantial amount of money. However, raising this amount can be a crucial motor to the value of the currency and it´s infrastructure. It also means a better distribution which will diminish the risk of large dumps and insofar creates trust between members.

I know that there are large holders listening: If everyone of us donates 5-10% of our QRK this won´t affect us a lot financially (especially since none of the large wallets can dump without causing the exchange rate to drop substantially), but it will allow getting things done and at the same time to get more people into the community.

I´d personally give all my Quarks into this project and buy an equal amount from the market. How bout you?

As I mentioned, feel free to comment on whatever aspect you like. I am interested in any sort of discussion

I agree, we should be specific. I try my best to find some flaws to get a discussion going



First off, I see currently only one main issue that is the hashrate, because it will become a threat of the network and scare away people. A merge mining coin can help us to increase network stability. It won´t automatically solve the other issues that you address, but it will provide the basis for other things to happen. So I´d say, yes mining is currently only for keeping the chain secure and merge mining would help here. It is not the only solution, though. Will come back to that later.

So from what you say ("To me i'd rather just see POS introduced that another merge mined coin.") it sounds as if you were just for introducing POS instead of merge mining. We had this discussion some weeks ago and I think the baseline was that POS has too many flaws. I still think that there are some promising POW+POS projects out there we should consider as an alternative solution to merge mining.


You address the need for funds to get things going. I only wonder what would happen if we create one hell of a coin that can only be bought with Quark. I would expect people rather investing in this coin and not in Quark so the Quarks would loose even more value and then the whole point would be missed. Maybe I got something wrong, so maybe you can comment on that again.


To me the falling price is an issue but it is not really a thing we should be scared about. I agree, Quark dropped to 19 and even 20 but many of the higher rated coins are new ones that are currently hyped. I also see that this shouldn´t make us happy about the development but we need to remember one thing: Quarks value is more than the price. It is the work we have done, the work we are currently doing and the structures we managed to establish + our active community. That´s why I don´t agree that this is the "only important thing for the coin right now". Most coins didn´t manage to build up a solid taskforce - we did. However, we sucked in getting our developer to be active and up to date. This needs to be changed and if it doesn´t change we need to take measures (I will post about this in an upcoming thread).

So I agree on your point, that new things needs to be implemented and some active devs. However, I don´t see why we shouldn´t be able to do this by raising money in the community. I have no doubts that we will be able to raise larger ammounts to pay for a developer who works on Quark and I think if it was only the development issue then we should prefer this to any other solution.

As I wrote I am for a merge mining concept to get the hashrate up and I wouldn´t have a problem with premining as long as the money would be a) administered by a solid, democratic and transparent Quark Foundation b) not paid (premine) out at once but based on a quarterly (or so) basis and c) has distinguishing features to Quark. I don´t see the problems with a) and b) - we will be able to do that. But when it comes to c) I wonder if the companion coin wouldn´t become either a competitor to Quark (if its good) or very bad promo (if its bad, gets pumped, etc.).

Aside from merge-mining I would like to see again discussions about POS+POW implementation. With regard to the value this alone won´t solve any issues but if we launch a series of new technologies like the one you mentioned (plus the ones I will present in another thread) I can see how interest will come back. This is why currently I tend to prefer to focuss on active devs who can work on a complete Quark overhaul that will make it more interesting and demonstrates our will to continue working on the protocol.

Good points Hilux. The more I think about the companion coin idea the more I become unsure whether it is a good strategy, because as you mention it will be hard to understand why there is a second coin and it certainly needs a purpose. Earlier I recommended to make this an "experiment" coin but even that doesn´t convince me any more because if it is "too" experimental people will wonder why they should mine it at all and if it is really good then people will ask "why Quark"

I think that the current situation brought up a lot of good discussions that are valuable even if we don´t go one or the other way. Is your suggestion to turn Quark into a POW+POS coin or are you reffering to the companion coin? (I guess the latter) Also, would PoW+PoS lower the "issue" of a low hashrate?