I have 1 miner at home and 1 remote server running all the time now.

What peers to you see when you do a getpeerinfo?

And what current block nr does your wallet show right now?

Thanks, connectivity will get better the more people participate.
You probably lost connection because nobody was mining anymore.
If we don't have atleast one guy mining, then there is no network, and it will appear as "no peers".

I will setup another server.

Mac, Linux, github coming up later today. Too much work, sorry!

BTW, in the future, if we add miner voting to our coin, we should let their votes first mature (probably also 120 confirmations, like coinbase) before we count them (especially since this further influences how coins are spread).

I deliberately skipped this part in the current experiment, since it would just make everything more tedious to observe.

If you compare SPR with Dash,
we deliberately want to get rid of a fix required collateral (like 1000 DASH) that is needed to run a node and instead replace it with a competitive collateral.
(a single person/group can't be allowed to make such an important decision in the name of everybody else -> ergo SPR introduces decentralization through a free market price discovery).
We do this by not fixing the price of the collateral but the amount of available seats at any time, which creates competition through artificial scarcity.

A similar way of thinking is applied when we don't take a fix reward away from the miners to pay for services, (again, who among us can be allowed to make such an arbitrary decision in the name of everybody else? It's as centralized as a king making arbitrary demands.) but we rather let miners themselves influence the reward percentage.

And since everybody can mine, everybody has the opportunity to influence it according to his view.

It's as if Dash is all about "equality of outcome" (everybody is forced to accept arbitrary terms or leave)
while SPR is more about "equality of opportunity" (everybody gets to influence arbitrary parameters. You are not happy with it? Influence it!).

I'm specifically talking about arbitrary parameters here. Ofcourse lowlevel protocol stuff like max coin supply or blocktime etc should never be exposed to any voting process. (or shall we say: voting in this context means creating your own fork!)

So I guess, when I mention decentralization, I mean letting participants influence arbitrary parameters so that they feel empowered.
It also allows us to tie seemingly unrelated things (like increasing servicenode reward and incentivizing solo mining) together, if we come up with clever solutions to create "free markets" like that.

Yeah, let the brain storming start. Just keep decentralization in mind.

Good question, we have so many expected payments/rewards/profits entangled with "running a servicenode" we have to bring a little light into this mess:

First, everybody who runs a servicenode in the early days will see enough profit when their contribution helps push the price 10x or 100x.
I mean, if that isn't enough motivation for people to participate, then they are just greedy. But of course this is just valid through the early stage of price discovery.

Secondly, the endgoal is that in the future more sophisticated services will require that the user pays a fee for using such a service, which ofcourse is then shared among the servicenodes only. (miners will just get any tx fees involved, not servicenode fees)

Thirdly, we can think about certain open services which don't require a user to pay a fee, like the upcoming decentralized blockexplorer.
Anybody who runs a spreadcoin wallet can query servicenodes about blockdata of any coin that is available, and they don't need to pay a fee for every search. That would be ridiculous.
So those services are like non-commissioned services, meaning they don't represent a "specific order" submitted by a user for processing by the servicenodes.

Such services are "free of charge" services.

So, with this in mind, we have to ask again: what is the meaning of a "recurring reward"?
Is it just "icing on the cake"?

Yeah, I guess, and that's why I think this is the way to go: to create a free market for this "icing on the cake", which simultaneously motivates more people to do more solo mining, which is the heartbeat of our network.

So, the recurring reward we are talking about all the time is here to voluntarily "tip" servicenodes for all the "open services" they will provide.
This has nothing to do with any eventually more sophisticated services (which have to be rewarded accordingly), like for example getting a percentage of a trade done on the decentralized exchange or similar commissioned services.

The decimal places are here to show you that your vote matters, lol 

No, if you vote 100%, then you are merely influencing the average % with it. And only for a 1/1440th part of the whole thing.
If you don't like the average you can upvote or downvote it with the maximum you are allowed,
OR you can keep voting the target value you would like to see, for example 10%, and eventually, if enough people do the same, it will actually go to 10%.


Hm, I don't know, is this a windows 8 / 10 thing?
I didn't add any sounds, but maybe your system is configured in a way that will play a sound when there is a popup?


Coming...

Thanks, I fixed it. Please redownload.

No, there is lots to do before the Big Breakthrough testnet will be ready.

Meanwhile, I thought it might be a good idea to create a few of those smaller experimental testnet versions.

There are many things to take a look at, and creating an experiment like the "muscleminer" took me about 2 days.

For spreadcoin 1440 means on average 1 day, since we are a 1 min coin.

Hey, you can test it for yourself now!

That's such an upside down way of thinking.
Yes, servicenodes are important, but they will stand on the shoulders of the miners.

Hey everybody,

I created an experimental build of spreadcoin codenamed muscleminer (EX1).

We are testing my proposal regarding how the future servicenode reward percentage will change over time, if miners are allowed to directly influence it through block voting.

The percentage is calculated by taking the average of the votes of the last 1440 blocks.

ATTENTION: Any coins you mine with this build are worthless!

This is just for testing purposes and to prove a concept.


Currently a windows version is available here:

www.spreadcoin.info/downloads/EX1-muscleminer.zip


I added some functionality to the wallet, and adjusted the protocol/blockchain:



That's similar to the CPU Miner you already know.
You can now set your SN percentage vote here, and should you find a block it will write your vote into the blockchain.



It will then calculate the average percentage of the servicenode reward based on the last 1440 votes. (And if there are not enough votes, the rest is considered zero votes).
The average percentage is updated with every new block that is found.
You can check all the recent votes, and observe how the average percentage changes over time.

Maybe you can try and influence it? Please feel free to play around with it.
Mining is easy, so you should find blocks on a per minute basis.

Blockchain has been adjusted so that there is now a new byte before the tx-segment:



Don't freak out about the green theme design, lol.  
I created a color patch that allows me to quickly create themes for experimental builds and testnet versions.
This will be helpful in the future.

Also, I want this to be idiot-proof, and this helps!

BTW, you can run this experimental version side by side with your normal spreadcoin wallet if you like.



They run on completely separate ports, datadirs, blockchains, etc..

I will add versions for linux and mac and github source later today.

I have tons of stuff to discuss, but have to look after a few things first.

Stay tuned for more, and let's see where this goes.  

Practically nothing will change.
It's just an additional byte in the blockheader that miners have to set (and full nodes will expect), and it will have a default value preset for miners who don't care.

But the value will have to be there, because blocks without this byte will be considered invalid (since their header has a different length). So this will be a new protocol version and will require a fork.

Should be very easy to adjust mining software since SpreadX11 (both the X11-part and the Spread anti-pool-mechanism-part) stay exactly the same, just a new byte has to be introduced, and somekind of GUI or CMD input read in so that miners can type in or set their vote. (Or simply let them write in their vote in the conf file, and it will be used from then on.)

Right now I'm creating an experimental build for testnet that will allow us to CPU-mine and set our vote and observe how the percentage changes over time (1440 votes per day).

Should be fun. I hope to have it finished in a few hours.

What you describe here is the kamikaze-method which I wouldn't recommend.
You as a node operator can do much more than just the existential "to be or not to be":


3) You can start mining yourself, and you will not just strengthen the system (and slightly weaken the rogue miners power) and earn SPR by doing this, but also influence the percentage (which means more profit not just for your but everybodies servicenode!).
We will stay a solo-mining coin for as long as possible (forever). So we are going to need a steady increasing number of solo-miners!
This is probably one of the more important reasons for introducing such a voting system (which incentivizes people to solo-mine)!
It might also create additional demand for more optimized mining software (which you don't need to share with the bad guys)

(Also: you as a "servicenode miner" are never alone. Talk to other node operators, they will be plenty and they will have the same interests as you. Figure it out! Create a union or whatever!
We see similar things happen with other coins.)


4) You can influence the miners directly. It's not like they are living on another planet! Talk to them, negotiate with them... maybe give them a servicenode as present?
Maybe share profits? Or operate a shared ownership servicenode? Whatever you come up with... keep conspiring and colluding until you reach your goal.
And if all else fails, return to 3).

What do I know...
I propose this system EXACTLY because I know that the collective wisdom will come up with solutions I would never come up with by myself.

And I am absolutely disgusted by a system where a king dev (or a few top "early" investors who own millions of SPR) get to decide the percentage according to their whims, which ofcourse will be:
...more, More, MORE! ... but never less, hm?   Why not? With our voting system sometimes it will make sense to reduce the percentage again. It will be allowed to fluctuate.)

------

Sorry it's getting very late where I am, I'll answer in more detail later today, thanks again!

Awesome comments, thanks for doing this. It's exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping we will have.

Let me first add a few more scenarios just to broaden the horizon a little bit:

------

Scenario C:
A big GPU farm gets to mine 1000 of the 1440 blocks. The remaining 440 blocks are mined by hundreds of servicenode operators each operating just 1 GPU, and small/midsize miners who are on our side!
The big GPU farm is greedy, doesn't understand economics, doesn't listen to hundreds of very vocal servicenode operators (and other community members) who do a lot of persuading (in more inventive ways than we can know right now).
So the big GPU farm votes "zero" all the time. (driving the price down, harming itself out of existence until it has to switch to another coin while us little guys take back control again, ... but I digress!   )

So everybody gets to observe the misconduct of the big GPU farm very closely, and so the small GPU miners (most of them servicenode operators) decide that it's an emergency so they all apply the maximum counteraction they are allowed to: vote "100".

The project might be in a state where the whole community (devs, miners, node operators, etc..) has agreed to publicly recommend a percentage of 20% (based on state of development, functionality and usecases, etc...) .
So interestingly a party can always give a vote that is much higher than the current recommendation, EXACTLY so they can counteract an "unfair" percentage if necessary!

1000 "0" votes averaged with 440 "100" votes is still a very healthy 30.5 %. So the voting collective would have managed to even surpass the proposed goal during this emergency (suicidal GPU farm).

For the same reason we can imagine the opposite scenario where servicenode operators somehow manage to largely dominate mining (which wouldn't be a bad thing if you think about it... it would be like they pay themselves lol) ... but analogous to the previous case miners who think the percentage is too high, can always take drastic countermeasures.

------

Scenario D:
The network has matured and we see an interesting organic behaviour were people have learned how voting works and how the community can act as a whole to decide the percentage.
The next evolution of this would be to use this voting system in case it turns out something is malfunctioning in the current version of the very very complex servicenode network.

Why should miners be forced to continue to pay into a temporarily broken system?
So the community can now react very swiftly, spread the message and reduce the percentage accordingly in just a few hours.
The devs work out what caused the bug, and create an update.
While they are doing this the miners don't feel like jackasses but instead like empowered members of an everimproving system!
After the servicenode network has been fixed, miners return to the last known "good" percentage.
It's always very easy to return to a percentage, everybody just needs to type in the same vote for a period of 24 hours.
(ofcourse I'm assuming here a system of matured miners that understand what is beneficial for the price of SPR)

------

Scenario E:
The network has reached godmode level (the final level) and people don't even need a recommendation anymore to figure out the best percentage.
It has become an inexplicable entangled feedback loop (kinda like a giant orgy) between minining servicenodes and serving miners.
The perfect free market!

Every block will have a vote in it. A value between 0-100.

Obviously whoever finds the block gets to write in that value.
Much like he gets to write in his coinbase tx.

So every block has a vote. Those blocks that don't have a vote (because they are from the previous version) are considered a zero vote.
(this will only have to be considered during the 24 hour interim period after we do the fork. After that it is mandatory protocol for a miner to fill in the vote value.)

How do we now calculate the percentage that goes to the servicenodes?

By looking at the last 1440 blocks, by reading all those 1440 votes and calculating the average of all those votes.

With every new block we repeat this.
Again we look at the last 1440 blocks, which are now 1 block higher, so the average will be slightly different.

And we just repeat this over and over. There is no "voting period" as you say, it just happens continuously, much like new blocks do appear on a constant more or less predictable basis.
(average once a minute).

In effect we are looking at all the votes of the last 24 hours.

And as the globe spins, we are spinning with it!  

BTW: With an average over 1440 values we will see a very steady smooth curve.
The maximum the percentage can be moved from one block to the other is 0.07% (that's in the absolute outlier case of having 1439 "0" votes, and 1 "100" vote.)

change your avatar to this here



and keep it online for 30 days.

And then I will answer your questions.

No joke.

I think you guys have been drinking the DASH kool-aid for too long. (I hear there is a DASH soda machine now?)

Miners are more important than servicenodes.
Without miners we can't have servicenodes (we wouldn't even have a coin without them)

But we sure as hell can have miners without servicenodes.

That's just the reality, nobody has to feel duped.
I was talking about "empowering" all the time, right?

Just because miners will get to influence/vote how much they want to give, doesn't mean that servicenodes will get nothing.
I think that's a completely wrong assumption to make.

Anyway, I had to mention my plan, because after long thinking it appeared to me as the perfect match for the competitive collateral scheme.

Embrace voluntaryism guys, no need to be afraid of the voluntary actions of the guys who "make our coin run"!

I know that I will both mine on 1-2 GPUs and run a bunch of servicenodes, and since I am better with servers than with GPUs, I will give a "100" vote all the time.  

You can vote whatever way you want!
That doesn't sound awesome to you?

Stay tuned.