Thanks for the numbers. I might write a little python code to simulate what might happen with different coin age options. If I do, I'll post the results.

Thanks for your reply. I can't respond to everything and the thread has moved on anyway. It's OK to assume I agree with everything I didn't reply to.


I agree it's desirable if people who realize they have clams from the initial distribution download the client and become part of the network. I encourage people to do so.

I suspect given a choice between doing that and using the kind of quick method Just Dice allows, most people will use the quick method and probably convert to BTC as quickly as possible. If there were an alternative quick method run by someone other than dooglus, then there would be at least two independent people staking in the network and collecting lots of the clams from the initial distribution. (Three or four would be much better.) I think the concentration is partly due to Just Dice being the only quick, easy way to claim those clams.


Actually, I was suggesting people could sign a transaction (even offline) and never give up their private key. I probably didn't make that clear. For example, someone (Alice) could just make a big list of all the bitcoin addresses that still have clams and publish them with codes for transactions spending those clams to Alice's own clam address. Then Alice could say: "If you use some little piece of code that is only doing digital signatures to sign this transaction to my clams address, then I will send 3 mbits to your bitcoin address." Alice only needs the signed transaction to get the clams, not the private key.


I'm guessing you've had to explain this hundreds of times. You're correct, of course, and that's what I did myself just to be on the safe side. I'm trying to suggest an alternative answer: "You don't have to give up your private key, you just have to sign one thing with it." Realistically, most people don't understand and are scared as a consequence. I'm not sure much can be done about that, but I suspect it means most people who have clams from the initial distribution will never claim them.

By the way, there is a problematic corner case with emptying addresses before claiming clams. Some bitcoins (well, tx outs) are really tokens standing for some meta-protocol (e.g., colored coins, master coin, counterparty). Care would need to be taken to move these, or they could lose their intended meaning and lose significant value as a result.


Yes, it should reduce occurrences of "race conditions" -- as should switching 16s to 1s. How many such race conditions occur in an average day at the moment?


Ah, because the reward is fixed at 1 clam? You're right. I hadn't thought about that. With a fixed reward staking all the time provides optimal rewards. Eh, I'm OK with putting age back in.

To some extent, "age" is still in the staking algorithm now since minted coins take 510 blocks to mature (so the age goes from 0 to 1 and stays at 1). I noticed Just Dice mostly gets around this (completely legitimately) by keeping lots of transactions with approximately 4 clams as an output. (I might be doing the same thing, but I'm not telling.) This way there is the same chance of staking as if there were one big txout, but when one of the small ones stakes there are only 5 clams waiting to mature leaving the other small txouts still staking. (I'm not sure if 4 clams is optimal for this strategy. Someone should do the maths.)

Keep in mind that however age is included, stakers will (legitimately) split their clams to optimize their rewards.

I don't know the real numbers, but suppose JD has 25,000 transaction outputs staking with 4 clams on each. No matter how many of these have recently staked, most of them necessarily haven't staked recently and will have some age saved up.

I doubt there is a modification that would cause JD to stake fewer blocks. There could simply be a modification that the same *address* cannot stake twice in a row, but this has the obvious workaround that JD (and everyone else) would use different addresses for each staking output.

If the long-term strategy is to buy some of a lot of alts and wait, then I'd suggest putting them on paper wallets after buying them. In 5 years you can check if you got lucky and one of the paper wallets is not worthless. (That way you don't need to download or sync the client.) Expecting an exchange to still be around and still holding every alt in 5 years is unrealistic.

Plus: 9btc on an exchange? I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

It's good to see people are discussing this issue. The fact that JD controls so much of the staking power is a potential problem. (I don't know any of you, but it is reassuring to read positive comments about dooglus / JD.)

I don't think putting age back in would really help. (If age is put back in, it definitely should be sublinear. There are a variety of sublinear options we could consider, including dooglus' log suggestion.)

The fact that there are still so many unclaimed clams means someone else could bring JD under 50% without people withdrawing clams from JD.

The best solution IMO is for someone else to do the 2 most important things JD has done: (1) make it very easy for people to claim their unclaimed clams and (2) provide a staking pool.

(1) The JD dig feature seems to be more popular than the import wallet feature. There might be an even easier/more popular way to do this. People are afraid of giving up any of their private keys. Technically they only need to use the private key to sign a tx to send the buried clams to a new address. Maybe someone could find a way for people to easily sign such tx's (on the client side) in exchange for something. They should be able to do this without needing to download the clam client and the first 10000 blocks of the block chain.

(2) A staking pool would not require having a website at all. It could all be done on the blockchain in a provably fair way. I thought about trying to set something like this up myself, but none of you know me. I know I'm trustworthy and won't run away with your clams, but realistically you don't. Plus I wouldn't want to spend more than 1 or 2 hours a week on it. There's probably someone in the clams community trusted enough to run such a pool, or a clever "trustless" way to do it.

I think you're probably right that most of it won't be claimed. On the other hand, I suspect there'll be a moment soon when a lot of people do notice. Then they're be a wave of digging. I doubt it'll hit 50% of them though.

This distribution scheme was brilliant. Good work to whoever came up with it.

I just did a quick calculation of the current Clams market cap.

There are approx. 15 million clams.
Each clam is trading on Poloniex for approx 7 mbits, giving a market cap of about 100,000 BTC.
With BTC trading around $350, this gives a market cap of approx: $35 million.

Let me know if I'm wrong about this.

If I'm correct and the other rankings on coinmarketcap.com are accurate, then Clams should be in the number 5 position.

Well done, guys. It's been a coin I've looked at briefly a few times over the months, but have started taking seriously a few days ago.

Well, I've just been bullshitting for fun, so I assume you're happy with me too. Good to know.

A moderator deleted my post yesterday (though thanks to QuestionAuthority for quoting it on another thread so people can read it if they like).

I'll take the deletion as a message that I should treat others on this forum with a basic level of human dignity and respect. It's a shame that Bruno and his apologists are not held to the same standard. However, I'll take the fact that the rest of us are held to a higher standard as a compliment. Sorry the moderator had to spend time on that.

Plus, I've decided to reduce my morning intake of Vodka.

It's been suggested that people attacking Bruno are motivated by a desire to defend Murck. I have no particular opinion about Murck. I have a strong opinion about Bruno, for obvious reasons, and a strong opinion about those who defend him. Bruno's a hopeless case, but most people are smart enough not to take him seriously. He's clearly mentally ill. It is seriously a shame he won't seek help for it and I hope it's not too much of a burden on those around him. For those of you defending him, I hope you'll quietly reflect on it a bit and realize you're not helping Bruno, you're not helping Bitcoin, and you're just not helping.

About the TKeenan being Bruno, I thought about that too. In fact, I seriously considered "coming out" as Bruno myself. It would be easy because Bruno has some obvious "signature" writing patterns one can mimic. Plus it's not like Bruno is capable of making a PGP key to prevent someone from pretending to be him. But, eh, it wouldn't be fun enough to spend that much time on.

When I commented earlier my position was that Bruno should admit he made up the child molestation nonsense and seek psychological help. Reading his responses on this thread, I've been convinced that he doesn't deserve that kind of patience and understanding, so I apologize for suggesting it. Bruno claimed his "family" was in "danger" and even still didn't try to diffuse the situation by admitting he made up his accusations. Bruno deserves all the mud being slung at him. In fact, I'm now ready to endorse a more realistic option:


Let's be realistic here. The main thing Bruno wants is to feel important so he will be remembered. That's why he constantly makes things up and tries to play the hero for "exposing" it. OK, Bruno: When you die a handful of people on a forum will remember you. BUT: If you shoot yourself in the head, far more people will remember you. In fact, perhaps a Phinneaus Gage religion will be founded and for centuries fat priests will grow dumb beards and wear pink tutus. But first you have to shoot yourself in the head.

You will only be remembered as the great man you think you are if you do it while the controversy is hot.

Shoot yourself in the head.

No one has presented any evidence about Murck.

I don't know any of the parties involved. I'm not very active on the forum, but from my lurking I remembered this:

In May 2014, Bruno (as Phinneaus Gage) started a thread "I just paid the $100K USD via BTC to become a Platinum Member of TBF." Later in the day on that thread he admitted that he hadn't done this and he had made the thread to make a point about KnC's possible non-payment to TBF.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=621770.msg6891010#msg6891010

I suspect the simplest explanation is that Bruno was upset by Murck's dismissal of Bruno's concerns in the recent Reddit AMA and he, for some reason, thought accusing Murck of being a pedophile would be a reasonable way to amplify his concerns. (It obviously wasn't.)

If this is what happened, I would hope that Bruno would apologize and then seek some psychological help.  My suggestion isn't intended to be mean. I'm not angry and I really don't want to get involved. But I honestly do think Bruno may need psychological help and, if so, I hope he asks for it (not on the forum, obviously). This isn't something a healthy person would do.

Finally, remember that no one has presented any evidence about Murck. I hope no one is believing this. He hasn't been credibly accused of anything.

Yes. I consistently use Tor. When I registered at bitcointalk, it said I couldn't use my account until I paid X satoshis to remove my "Tor evil."
I thought this phrase was funny, so I remembered it. I don't remember how much X was, but I think it was somewhere around a dollar's worth.

As people who use Tor can tell you, many sites will either make you constantly fill out CAPTCHAs or just block you entirely. I'm happy that
bitcointalk allows Tor users to participate at all.

I first heard of coinapult when they implemented locks.

I think this is the real difference of opinion. Some people place trust US Federal Law. Some of us (especially non-US citizens?) would rather trust organizations that don't ask us for sensitive information.

Ah, I see. I saw it as a link while reading the Terms of Service. You're right that it appears when clicking on "Privacy Policy" in the footer.

I've heard good things from friends about coinapult. I just looked through the site and it looks to me like they don't demand the kind of information that would compromise a user's privacy. They provide tools. Obviously if someone doesn't care about their privacy it's easy to use the tools in a way that leaks information.

That said, I will admit I was a little disturbed that the following link seems to be broken (for me at least):

https://coinapult.com/privacypolicy

I think using Tor carefully and consistently to access bitcointalk means they don't have identifying info (except your email address) to hand over.

Thanks to the bitcointalk admins for allowing Tor access. The peace of mind was worth the few mbits I paid to remove my "Tor evil" when I registered.

If you get targetted by the NSA or similar state level actors, Tor would probably not be enough.

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