Just want to add my suggestions how to possible find a way out of the situations:

I am not against changing the code, not even massively like it would be the case with adding a superblock, but I am against the superblock as the only strategy to move out of this situation. People will see it as it is: an easy and probably desperate move to save Quark. I don´t see how that would help Quark even shortterm. I think we should go for a merge mining approach that integrates some structural changes and turn Quark back to a promising investment.

The basic idea was that people would mine Quark because it had enough value which isn´t currently the case and will probably stay like this for several years. That´s why I think we should look for a merge mining solution. However, I don´t see other usable cPoW coins who could be seriously used for that. Why not creating a composite coin that experiments with some of the new features that are currently out there. We could use it as a sort of test baloon and integrate the features that do well into Quark.

At the same time, I think (I mentioned that many times on the qrk.cc forum) we need to find a perspective for the foundation and rewrite the concept. I made proposals and I am willing to repeat them here as well if there is any interest.

To be honest this whole discussion looks incredibly childish to me. I see insults, I see threats I see wild speculations about sock puppets.

I am sorry for you, McClintock, that you obviously speculated with money that you needed for your family. I don´t think that was in any way wise and everyone will tell you that you should never invest what you can´t afford to lose, but it still happens to a lot of newbies. I don´t think that you can blame anyone for having lost your money, as you lost it on your choice. You bought in high and sold low.

Personally I don´t think that whole Bill Still thing was in any way good for Quark. I am also not a fan of Bill Still´s work because he is often demagogic and I don´t see how he can ever become part of an intellectual debate over crypto. The whole Bill Still & Max Kaiser support was good for speculators and many people "won" money while many more lost. And yes, that attracted pumpers and dumpers. From what I know, Max Guevara, the developer of Quark, didn´t profit of this development because he simply didn´t have a lot of coins and didn´t sell. Others have or may have sold to gain money.

It is said but true: speculators exist (probably the mayority in crypto) and they exist with basically every cryptocurrency. I have only a small stake in Quark and I became part of the community because I understand it as a platform where you can develop things and there were and still are people who want to move things forward, not just for the short pump but long term. But yes, unfortunately there are always people who want to make quick money and they served well to those who always claimed that Quark was premined, pump&dump and so on (ironically these arguments were not applied to coins like Darkcoin, only by people of the Quark community who were pissed that people who complained about Quark started investing in Darkcoin - at least it appeared to me this way).

With regard to Quark I don´t find it fair to blame Quark for the individuals who come supportin it. I find the discussion from both side at least disturbing and would be glad to see how you come back to a normal discourse.

I don´t think that I am the one who´s emotional here. I disagree on the either is or is not a scam

Let´s assume you were right and all initial NXT were sent to the developer to pump the coin: what would happen if those people would sell off at one point (which would obviously their point since this would be what the scam is all about)? The exchange rate would drop dramatically and many people will claim to have "lost" their investment. But once all the initial "scammers" are out, what prevents the coin to be a success in the end? That is what happens to all crypto, which is why I referred to the Bitcoin drop from 30USD to 50cts, because this moment could be considered as a major scam as well (and it was, as far as I read). It also happened to Quark: The coin was hyped in December was far beyond its effective value. Lots of people went into for fast money, not because they wanted to develop Quark and some of those who had massive stakes because of early mining dropped their coins. People called that a scam as well, and they were wrong as you are in this discussion: With crypto there is no "real" value but the network/community which develops the crypto and stuff on top of it.

As long as crypto isn´t adopted by the mainstream it can be used to guide peoples actions with expectations a la "this is going to skyrocket" or "this is certainly the bottom, won´t get lower". I remember you wrote the latter about Quark at 500 satoshi and I thought it was just not right because neither you, nor me nor anyone else can actually know how the network reacts. I believe that Quark can come back and it is the same with other crypto - even if there are massive drops a dedicated community can catch up and move on.

I know I repeat myself, but you need to understand that your bashing of NXT doesn´t do any good and ironically mirrors arguments that have been brought against Quark (and were rejected by you as well). Take this advise from a friend: leave it, learn and move on. We have lots of thing to do, let´s mind our own business.

@Kolin


Scams can exist on different levels. Maybe 99% of all Bitcoin holders are just scammers trying to sell an ideological narrative (money created and governed by the people) and dump once the exchange rate explodes. Who knows? I don´t think that this is going to happen, but if we´re honest we simply don´t know. The bigger the community and the better the infrastructure, the less likely it will be possible to scam people, which is why we should rather do something for our own community instead of bashing others.

Were people scammed by Bitcoin when it dropped from 30$ to 0.5$? You bet that there were enough people who felt scammed and enough who were scammed, because they sold. But today we can clearly say, that rather those who sold for 30$ were scammed.

I don´t like this argumentation because it is frequently used to promise people huge rewards even in desperate situations but it demonstrates the meaning of scam can only be attributed retrospectively in this cases. As long as there is an ongoing development in infrastructure we can at least assume that there is sme valuable substance.

@EvilDave


I was thinking of things like NFD-coin or NXT-e (however with NXT-e I am not sure what happened. I only remember that the developer was deleting critical questions from the thread). It is obvious that IPOs combined with anonymous currencies provide some potential to scam people. I also think that borders between scam and good business is blurred in all cryptocurrencies because there are lot of people putting money into it and just hope that it grows so they can be rich. We simply don´t know because (given the anonymity) we don´t know who´s in. The best the communities can do is show their dedication and work on community and infrastructure.


@Kolin


Fact is that you can´t prove your thesis with hard facts, which means that we are only dealing with your assumptions - this is not enough to start calling people names or stupid (or posting childish images).

Why do some people still call Bitcoin a scam? Because it COULD be a scam. IS it a scam? We don´t know until it is mainstream and diversified so market manipulations can´t happen. It also doesn´t matter if a coin was hyped for profits if the community proves that they are not only trading it for quick gains but invests in the project. Fact is: there are only few coins that ARE scams by itself - which is when the developer only launches the coin to collect money from people and then disappear. In most cases the coin is just a technology and, yes, it can be used to scam people. But it can also be used to become a legit currency. This argument can be applied to every coin. To NXT but also to Quark and most others

Kolin,

as said before on other threads, also on Reddit, I think you aren´t doing Quark or any other cryptocurrency a favor by writing this kind of posts and while I disagree with the counterbashing I think that some (EDIT: most) people who challenge your argumentation have actually better arguments than you.

One of your main points seem to be the assumption that the NXT IPO was a scam where developer bought their own coins to bump the prize and then get fiat rich. To me that is a harsh statement that needs to be backed it up with solid proof and I don´t see any, particularly any that would incriminate the developer directly.

With regard to the  "fake volume" you are repeating an argument that people stated against Quark - and, guess what, in some way everyone´s right on that one: The volume of many coins - especially pure POS coins but also coins with a quick mining period like Quark - cause a bump on marketcap-pages that can cause a hype without any real substance (btw. hard to say what is "quick", quick can be 6 days as with Blackcoin, it can be several months as with Quark but it can also be several years as with Bitcoin depending on the scale from which we are looking at it). Of course the hype disguises the effective (way smaller) potential behind the currency and this CAN be used to scam people... but the fact that it CAN be used doesn´t mean it IS used and this is how we need to treat it in an argumentation. Again, Quark has been addressed with this type of arguments (pump and dump) again and again, which is why I have even less sympathy for repeating them.

I don´t mind to be critical to projects like NXT. Other projects that worked the same have been proven to be frauds, so there is a lot of potential to betray people - let´s be honest: this potential exist with every cryptocurrency. Should we start calling all cryptocurrencies a scam? (remember, there are lot of people doing that already)

And one more: Assuming that everyone who disagrees is a sockpuppet or that people are bought looks very unprofessional and I am not surprised at all that you need to deal with a lot of haters.

Let´s go back to building instead of bashing.

Bit sad to read that, because I know many people who work their asses off. However, I agree: that´s not visible to all. There is a Trello board where Julie started to gather people who were obviously active and wanted to move things forward. Many things, including Shaq but also other and smaller promotional activities and giveaways have been bundled there. For instance, undercard and glongsword are currently working on a wallet that allows to control auto-mining and chatting. You also shouldn´t forget about the guys over at quarkuniverse.cc. I am currently working on two projects (a webpage and a game that uses quark as ingame currency), have been creating (unreleased) video promo material and did stuff like providing people with artwork if they needed it or just didn´t find it (even though everything is on qrk.cc). I also mailed a lot to people who I thought could help us to create innovative non-code-related products and of course had a lot of conversation with other active Quarkers how to push things forward. There is and was a lot of setbacks obviously and there will be for sure, but the point why I am writing this: big things start small, and the small parts are often overseen and underestimated (people prefer big pictures and hype). But then, things can be easy as well if people start DOING things instead of asking why they are not happening. The subreddit page looks shit? Then provide the admins with the right content so they just need to copy paste.

Anyway, it is obvious that the biggest problem is NOT the lack of gadgets (think: Litecoin, think Dogecoin) and it is neither the lack of merchants using Quark (think: early Bitcoin - merchants can in fact be a negative factor if they are not in the boat, because those will just sell off for fiat and drive the price down. Of course, merchant adoption is important but it can - and in my opinon should - happen slowly like it did for BTC). The main problem is the lack of trust and the lack of perspective where the hashrate is one important factor why people are skeptical. I personally believe that this can only be addressed by a sort of contract that is made between leadership and community because the community needs a perspective and the leadership also needs some sort of security that people back their work and the financial capability to do things. A lot of things would be possible if there was more backing.

In the end it´s a snake that bites in its tail. I agree that there need to be some sort of signal that keep people trusting and allow the community to create something on that platform.

P.S. Re: Superblock: I don´t think that this is the right way, because it´s basically money printing and it has been pointed out already that this would be sort of a contridiction in itself. However, I agree that this type of decision should be debated in relation to the individual holdings (not individual votes). In general I think it is rather interesting than harmful to discuss every idea to improve Quark even if it is as radical as implementing Quark as BTC sidechain. Why not?

Kolin, I agree on the point, that one shouldn´t act based on a short term emotion, but I strongly disagree with your opinion that everything is as it should be:

1. Currently we have a low hashrate which makes the coin susceptical for 51% attacks. Changes of difficulty will affect the hashrate but since the price is low it won´t lead to real improvements.
2. In fact, we aren´t a decentralized community: More than 51% of the hashrate is centered in one pool. Technical issues or abuse would affect Quark directly
3. There is no public long-term plan for core development, while there are some innovative concepts out there with development backing

What the community lacks is perspective and we won´t build that by pretending that things are fine. Even if Quarks´ core is solid and advanced I don´t think that this will be enough in the competition we currently
have in crypto. As you know, even good ideas won´t survive just for the sake of it, people need to adopt them and what they need is a smart concept with a convincing vision for the future. I think we need to work on the latter and we need to work on additional features like sidechains, smart contracts, colored coins. They may be gadgets right now, but they will be part of cryptos future.

What we should do in my opinion

1. Discuss POS/POW hybrid solutions that will allow us to keep a constant inflation and don´t give huge advantages for large wallets (maximum reward was mentioned, there are other possible solutions)
2. Find competent and dedicated developers who are willing to work with us for at least 2 years. Quark has much to offer when it comes to promotion and networking, I think we are way beyond the vast mayority of all coins. Combined with good developers this will allow for a major rise in adoption so there is a mutual interest.
3. Find ways to give the community full control and transparency with regard to the process of development. This will boost trust in long term support.

I agree that the major problem is not the code but the trust in the currency. We need to back the trust with some real assets. I say, let´s do it.

Good point, I am also a Quark supporter and to me it´s refreshing to discuss issues rather than pretending that everything fine. It is neither with Quark nor with any other coin. This is still an evolving market and things are in experimental status. Having said this I personally believe that PoW will face some real issue as long as there are multipools. To make PoW work properly the coin needs to be valuable for the miners. But even if the value will rise which I expect to happen for many coins this won´t automatically lead to a stronger network as Multipools will constantly seek the strongest coins and dump them to pump another coin.

However, I don´t believe that multipools will eventually be the end of PoW, I rather believe that they exist at the current moment because there is a lot of competition about who will be number 2 in the crypto market. In my opinion it is very likely that the gap between frontrunners and copycoins will grow and with it the interest in multipools will be lower than now.

I think we should be open to discussions about how the Quark protocol can be changed to make it stronger and more efficient and we shouldn´t exclude major changes like switching over to PoS. However, if it is done it should be a decision of the community as a whole to make it transparent and fair for all stakeholders. This would be the demontration of a real community.

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@RockHound

I heard some merchants saying that they even accept 0 confirmation payments and never experienced a double spend. Especially when it comes to smaller sums I think that approach is fine and it´s cool that the merchants trust their clients. However, the fact that it works out fine is also due to the state of the userbase which is well integrated and has a very low interest in deceiving the system. Once Bitcoin becomes mainstream other users will educate themselves about loopholes and try to exploit them. While Quark has its own current issues I believe the speed to be a real advantage over slower coins like Bitcoins because it doesn´t make you dependent on payment processors to pay in store.

I think the main thing about Quark being in the game will be the exposure to cryptocurrencies and our future collaboration with the gaming scene. We are currently working to get Quark integrated in other games to make Quark long-term valuable. It´s cool to see how things worked out in the last months. Expect more to come

A coin itself can´t be "pump and dump". It is made pump and dump by the people who trade it. When will people start to understand this?

Even Bitcoin is premined.

P.S.: Polemic intended

I voted for Quark. As I know about the developments behind the scenes I am optimistic about the future development. Yesterday I posted an article about the myth of Quark being premined. Looking forward to read your comments.

So just to be sure: You just changed the rules? Because you initially said:

Yeah, hard work pays out. Claps for all who participated. The community grows stronger with grassroot initiatives popping up. Let´s rock!

"Don´t let the french win"

at least that´s what they say in the promo video. No, but honestly: what´s worse: Remaking a classic like Monkey Island or remaking a game that was actually shit. Well, Shaq Fu was classic in some sense - so classic that people united to destroy every copy of the game I think the devs will mock the game on their own in the remake, but no matter how funny it will be, they will offer Quark in-game payments, how cool is that? It will definitely be a huge step forward for crypto in the mainstream.

Indiegogo is not Kickstarter. The money will go to the dev-team anyway. The game will cost much(!) more than the targetted 450K. This is a community initiative and also a promotion for the game. We supported them from beginning and it is good to see what we reached together.

Should have read more than the last paragraph. The one before your quote is for you:


Of course the blog is about Quark...doesn´t change the fact that THE ARTICLE concerns ALL crypto. But why am I discussing. You didn´t read the article....so I´m wasting my time here.