46 pages of attempts at finding any real problems: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=397183.msg4453690#msg4453690

ricot is the only one that has come up with theoretical vulnerabilities, presumably already being fixed.

Many objections from trolls, but kind of hard to claim NXT is a scam with source code out and all prior promises being kept. NXT is more than a coin, it is a digital economy system. BCNext is the genius

Only invest for long term (in this world I guess that is for many months even years) what you are able to lose and still sleep soundly at night, short term anything can happen to the price. Long term, NXT will continue to get userbase, features, transaction fees, etc.

Being able to sleep soundly at night regardless of the current price of NXT is what will allow you to hold NXT for the long run.

James

Yikes! 33% attack that works on bitcoin?? And such a simple strategy too...

I don't think anything like that would work in NXT, but after reading some of ricot's attack scenarios, I know I am not fully qualified to make any definitive assessment. Pretty sure Transparent Forging was designed to avoid all these type of attacks.

James

http://qz.com/165273/the-existential-threat-to-bitcoin-its-boosters-said-was-impossible-is-now-at-hand/

It is nice to know NXT does not have to worry about 51% attack like bitcoin. Even 90% attack can be thwarted.

James

Thanks!

correct

We need a layer above current unprotected accts and might as well go with best possible method, which is undoubtedly an ECC layer. https://forums.nxtcrypto.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=524 has a great discussion on the reed solomon method ricot proposed.

Once we have that, we can build more user friendly layers such as allowing people to use their cellphones and scan QRcodes to send/recv payments.

One step at a time. Or since we are decentralized, all steps all the time! As soon as Reed Solomon accts are defined, no reason cellphone QRcodes can't be implemented on top of ECC accts

James

Certainly, it is still very early days for NXT. Still need to fix bugs, etc. I also cannot speak on ricot's behalf.

Any average programmer can code solvable problems by writing a bunch of code. Few are able to write a little code that does a lot. BCNext wrote about 4000 lines of Java code to implement NXT framework. From what I can tell, all of the new features in progress won't take as much as 4000 lines. There was a couple hundred lines of code that looked like it implemented Asset Exchange. a couple hundred lines! Also, from a difficulty standpoint, all the cool end user features pale in difficulty compared to Transparent Forging. Very valuable from end user point of view, but not requiring of genius. Transparent Forging is genius, no doubt.

BCNext doesn't have to do anymore to prove his genius to me. If you want to wait until jean-luc and others polish the codebase to give BCNext his credit, then that is certainly your perogative.

Many think that BCnext might be Satoshi, but that's probably too easy.

James

Exactly!

Also by tracking the transaction fees each NXTIPO company brings in, each company can get a proportional share of the community fund.

The donors can rest easy knowing that the people who helped bring in the most transaction fees (and most likely most new people) would get the most rewards. The people working within a NXTIPO company will all know that their work will be rewarded in direct proportion to how they helped NXT. For a lot of people, this could be a secondary motivation, but it is always nice to know that you have done a good job.

New NXTIPO companies can spontaneously form in a totally decentralized way, knowing that they won't have to beg for bounties, they just need to bring in transaction fees and they will get rewarded. For some people this could be a primary motivation and that is fine too.

Each person can simply ignore the NXTIPO companies they don't understand, and just get involved in the ones they like the most.

James

Does anybody know how most websites that accept bitcoin implement the integration? If we can define the exact way most websites accept bitcoin, then we can create a compatibility glue layer that lets them use the same (even identical) interface to accept NXT.

Ideally, we could say, just copy and paste your bitcoin acceptance HTML, change bitcoin to NXT and now you can accept NXT on your website.

The easier we can make it for website owners to accept NXT, the more will. I just don't know the exact details on this.

James

yes, something like that. We don't want to be marketing a swiss army knife. People will assume that each component is some limited version. We want to market a powerful "Asset Exchange", "Arbitrary Messages", etc. Each should be strong enough to standalone and even have its own non-generic identity.

We don't want it to be like seeing generic versions of many different types of products, but rather premium versions each in its own category. NXT is always there under the hood, powering things. Anybody that digs below the surface will find that NXT is powering a whole lot of things.

For example, a company like Johnson and Johnson has many recognizable brands, but they market each brand to its specific market. The fact that they are all Johnson and Johnson brands is not really a factor. Any investor that does research into JnJ will find out that it has all these brands and more: tylenol, visine, splenda, nicorrete, sudafed, listerene, band-aid, ben-gay, neosporin, etc.

Each of these brands could be an entire company all by itself.

Which is more impressive, a company with a dozen generic products or powerful brands in a dozen categories?

At some point, we probably should come up with a non-generic name for each of the new features. This can all be wrapped into a separate NXTIPO. Decentralized. Develop each brand independently. NXT becomes the sum of all the brands, but not just an additive sum, because NXT will be the ONLY crypto that has all these features and the smart investors will certainly figure this out

James

I agree that confusion is best avoided.

NXT enables an entire digital economy and also creates ways for people to earn an income. It is much more than a coin. 4 of the top 10 (by marketcap) cryptos have no mention of "coin", so it does not seem to be such a critical issue of mass confusion.

I think if each NXT feature was marketed on its own merits, then the confusion will be minimized. No need to explain to somebody that is interested in Arbitrary Messages, all the details of Asset Exchange. Just need one hook to get somebody interested in NXT. Then there is the excellent wiki where they can find out all they need (or want) to know about NXT.

James

rickyjames,

I've got most of the whitepaper content thrown together, but it is still very rough and not really reading like a whitepaper to me.

It needs somebody elses touch and I like how you write. Could you take a stab at editing it so it reads like a whitepaper? I have some more content for NXT yields section 11, but the rest is ready for some new eyes

James

Asian Prepper,

Have you tried to find bugs in the released source code?
Have you ever seen so much functionality packed into such few lines of code?

From your statements it is likely that you are not a programmer. I am a pretty experienced programmer and I can usually find bugs in other people's code pretty quickly. However, only ricot seems to have been able to find any sort of problem with the current source code. I am ignoring style issues, lack of software engineering rigor, etc. This is after all a beta test.

Also, my understanding is that BCNext has spent more money than he has made with NXT. He created something totally new (Transparent Forging), tossed in all other altcoin features, made it run on cellphones and you doubt his genius??

James

Understood. How exactly each node predicts ahead more than a block at 98%, 97%... accuracy was something I couldn't quite see how to do. Maybe hallmarked nodes cooperate with each other and provide this information to all the non-hallmarked nodes?

So, do you approve of whitepaper content (other than missing info)? Do we just have to tweak it and make it all proper English, etc?

James

CfB,

line 4274:
         lastBlock = GENESIS_BLOCK_ID;
         long curBlockId = GENESIS_BLOCK_ID;
         do {
            
            Block curBlock = tmpBlocks.get(curBlockId);
            long nextBlockId = curBlock.nextBlock;
            curBlock.analyze();
            curBlockId = nextBlockId;
            
         } while (curBlockId != 0);

lastBlock is set to GENESIS_BLOCK_ID, but it is not updated inside the loop with "lastBlock = curBlock;" right after curBlock.analyze(); This means the test on line 4581 fails if we are on any block other than the one right after the genesis block.

line 4581:
if (block.previousBlock == lastBlock) {...}

Is this one of the three flaws?

James

I think if there was some NXT glue library that had the same interface as bitcoin, then it would greatly increase adoption of NXT.

As it is, entirely new code with not so simple (to ordinary programmers) logic needs to be implemented. Mistakes cause lost NXT, darkNXT, etc.

If anybody is familiar with how bitcoin is interfaced to other websites (and exchanges) and is able to create a module for NXT that has the same interface, I think that would be worth a bounty.

James

I would think that the 15 second leeway given to nodes on the system clock would create some unpredictability, but if you say it is wrong, I will go with that. I changed the bad sentence to:

****
Due to each node having a different network topology based on the visible peers and changing of active forging accts, it is not 100% accurate, but this is by design.
****

With this info in the Whitepaper, are there any other points that need to be covered?

James

CfB,

How many mistakes did I make with the following?

*****
In order to understand Transparent Forging, we must first understand the forging process itself. The goal of NXT forging is to give a chance to each account proportional to the amount of NXT in the account. A small amount of randomness is required to eliminate the possibility of attacks based on knowing the far future forgers, but the near future should be as close to deterministic as possible to allow significant reduction in network bandwidth usage. These apparently contradictory requirements are satisfied by the following code from the Jan 3rd, 2014 source code release:

    Account account = unlockedAccountEntry.getKey();
    User user = unlockedAccountEntry.getValue();
    Block lastBlock = Block.getLastBlock();
    if ( lastBlocks.get(account) != lastBlock )
    {
        byte[] generationSignature = Crypto.sign(lastBlock.generationSignature, user.secretPhrase);
        byte[] generationSignatureHash = MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-256").digest(generationSignature);
        BigInteger hit = new BigInteger(1, new byte[] {generationSignatureHash[7], generationSignatureHash[6], generationSignatureHash[5], generationSignatureHash[4], generationSignatureHash[3], generationSignatureHash[2], generationSignatureHash[1], generationSignatureHash[0]});
        lastBlocks.put(account, lastBlock);
        hits.put(account, hit);    // jl777: hit now contains a deterministic but pseudo-random number
        JSONObject response = new JSONObject();
        response.put("response", "setBlockGenerationDeadline");
        response.put("deadline", hit.divide(BigInteger.valueOf(Block.getBaseTarget()).multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(account.getEffectiveBalance()))).longValue() - (getEpochTime(System.currentTimeMillis()) - lastBlock.timestamp));
        user.send(response);
    }
    int elapsedTime = getEpochTime(System.currentTimeMillis()) - lastBlock.timestamp;
    if ( elapsedTime > 0 )
    {
        BigInteger target = BigInteger.valueOf(Block.getBaseTarget()).multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(account.getEffectiveBalance())).multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(elapsedTime));   // jl777: chance proportional to effective balance
        if ( hits.get(account).compareTo(target) < 0 ) {    // jl777: as time elapses the target gets larger, eventually triggering the acct closest to target.
            account.generateBlock(user.secretPhrase);
        }
    }

Due to the deterministic way the chances are calculated, it is possible to predict which acct will forge the next block and also when it will be forged. Since the hit value is deterministic, a person with multiple accounts can calculate which one has the best chance of forging the next block and transfer all the NXT to that acct. This is why the effective balance is used instead of the actual balance. A time delay from when an account is funded and also a time delay from when funds are transferred reduces the effective amount to eliminate NXT shuffling attacks.

By storing all of the hit values from all the accounts, if each node also knew which accounts are also actively forging, it will be possible for all nodes to predict which acct will forge the near future blocks. Due to variations in clocks and changing of active forging accts, it is not 100% accurate, but this is by design. There needs to be some error factor to prevent an attacker from calculating who will forge blocks in the far future to avoid the NXT shuffling attacks. As long as the prediction rate is close to 100%, the network traffic is reduced dramatically allowing for near realtime processing of thousands of transactions.

Transparent forging allows for a centralized action in a decentralized network. This is the fundamental breakthrough that NXT incorporates.
******

James

random chance
On average should be one per minute (longer now since TF isn't fully enabled), but statistical average of 1 per minute means sometimes you can get very short intervals

Current yields on NXT is less than 1% per year, around half percent per year. However, there are only two mechanisms to generate transaction fees now. In a few months, I expect the yield to go up significantly. Keep in  mind the yield on all other cryptos (including BTC) is 0%. Peercoin has 1%, but it also has inflation of around 1%, so inflation adjusted is around 0%. I might be wrong on peercoin, but I think the net yield for peercoin is close to 0%

Very early days for NXT. Very early days

James

I intentionally put in whitepaper flaws so the copycats will get a bad whitepaper

PLEASE describe the PoS forging algo and TF, you are the only one other than BCNext that can describe TF. Probably ricot and some other can describe PoS algo now.

James