I have no idea as to why, no affiliation. Perhaps message ethought, as far as I know it is his pool, or see if there is a support thread or twitter with updates?

I hope miningpool.co has no impact on the release of Bitmark later, that would be sad.

The genesis block has been found, with a timestamp of 18:00:41, and the message "13/July/2014, with memory of the past, we look to the future."

Everything is ready for launch, with some hours spare.

Update

The client is ready for release tomorrow. The genesis block is not, I have 48 cores looking for it, it will be found.

I read a post a moment ago, which sums up why we are making Bitmark, so that people need not make posts like this.

This is our first goal, to ensure that people who want to adopt Bitmark, can adopt it easily.

Thank you for creating this, a few people are in all ready.

Funding
I had forgotten to include the server setup fee in the original amount needed, as such we were 0.0825 BTC short.
I covered this from my own very limited funds. If anybody would like to replace this, I would be very grateful, as my own finances are very tightly balanced in order to do this project.
More details on donating can be found on the first page.

For real time discussion, yes let's create #bitmark in freenode.


We have already proved it possible to have useful discussions on bitcointalk. One thread may not be enough.
We can prefix discussion threads with [BITMARK] and post them under alternative currencies.
This should work for the time being. It is good to keep discussion in a place which is active, if we need our own distinct discussion forum later we can create it then.

Thank you, these are all reasonable suggestions which we can utilize quickly.

Github and Trello for organization.
Bitcointalk and reddit for open discussion.
IRC for real time discussion.
Website, twitter and the usual things for those who wish to keep updated but not necessarily engaged.

Thank you, I will look in to this. Pandher also just suggested this too.


It is very important that discussion is open to everyone. We can use IRC for real time discussions when needed as you suggested, with a logger.


Yes we need open discussion where the community is aware of what is being discussed and can engage as they wish.

This is a zero budget project where our only resource is time and thought, basecamp require payment, so perhaps something similar but free.

I am glad you suggested something which is good for collaboration and organizing projects, rather than a forum, that will keep us all focussed and productive.

Top Of Page Links
1. Last project update and release time.
2. Clarifications

I checked this at length earlier in the project, here is how it works out (1.6-2.7% which averages to about 2% over all) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=657601.msg7409023#msg7409023



Exactly, we have worked out a model that requires no taxation, premine, ipo, instamine or anything of the kind for Bitmark, discussed it at length and adopted it. There are other ways.

We could not implement taxation as it would break compatibility with existing software which we cannot do on our own project, so had to abandon it.

However CoinSheild does not have this problem as it is innovation focused with no backwards compatibility to be concerned with, so taxation will work here.

I personally feel sub 1% (0.25% even) would be better, but 2% is not so bad, and if it does not become hugely successful there is nothing at stake, value will be earned here through hard work which is the most important thing.

This is a good idea, and the approach I am taking with Bitmark.

Bitmark QT, daemon, and cli for 32bit and 64bit versions of Linux, Windows, and Mac will be posted here tomorrow at the release time.

Nobody has early access, including the one confirmed pool (miningpool.co), I am unsure what time ethought plans to release Bitmark on this pool, I expect shortly after release.

We have already had a test run with a cross compiled pre-release and tested successfully on all platforms.

A Bitmark Foundation address for BTM donations will also be specified at release time.
For now the BTC donation address is 18rai2ichzUfXG6PVmUQLNPqBjtctnVRAD, all donations will be used according to the IPM proposal.

Thank you for your kind comments emdje, they are appreciated.

Tomorrow is historically a sad day marking the anniversary of the death of a loved one, I look forward to both being occupied and having something good to associate with this date instead.

I sincerely hope that the valuable discussion continues after the first release, for that is when we really get to work at making Bitmark what it intends to be.

This thread may get cluttered after tomorrow, we should discuss how and where to host future discussions of the quality so far.

Bitmark Release is 2014-07-13 at 18:00 UTC
The community has decided, Bitmark will be released at 18:00 UTC on 2014-07-13. Tomorrow.

Branding Allow is producing some very fine work for Bitmark, not only what you see above but also a home page for the website. I will re-brand the client using his proposed work today.

Jays Jerky and Goodies deepcoreotc has kindly offered to donate 20% of his online sales profits to the bitmark foundation. This is very admirable.
I would like to remind him and all of you, that any donations will follow the IPM model. The donation will be used to hire mining rigs to support the network, and he will receive 95% of the bitmarks mined, 5% will go to the foundation. I hope his kind offer and belief in the project will therefore pay him dividends in the future.


It is better to launch with a difficulty too high than too low. If it is too high the first blocks will be mined slower, which will be novel for the launch a new currency. If it is too low, the difficulty can increase up to 4 times.
The value was chosen to be a reasonable starting difficulty, and to ensure the first change is fairly accurate.
Since the block reward maturity is 721 confirmations, there will be no bitmarks available to transfer until after the first difficulty change, so speed of those blocks does not matter.

Thank you for the many kind words, and the many pages of useful discussion.

We have had a counter proposal for the logo from Allow



Icon: https://i.imgur.com/PkADUkO.png
Black: https://i.imgur.com/JqgTn4R.png
White: https://i.imgur.com/dZKspOT.png
1024x1024: https://i.imgur.com/GRu6e4c.png
metal coin: https://i.imgur.com/sc9o7UD.png

Bitmark Release Time
You decide, tick the date and time you want bitmark to be released and enter your forum username: http://doodle.com/bvva2sa38nduicwz - no login or sign up required.

In 12 hours the top choice will be the release time.

Seed Nodes
If anybody plans to have a bitmark node running on a server, and knows the fixed ip in advance, can you let me know so I can add it to the seed list before release. We have three so far.

It would be nice to also have a TOR node which accepted IP transactions, and an IPv6 node.

Bitmark Release Time
You decide, tick the date and time you want and enter your forum username: http://doodle.com/bvva2sa38nduicwz - no login or sign up required.

In 12 hours the top choice will be the release time.

------------------------


Thank you, anyone else?

Tolerance, people will do what they like, including trade via spread sheet in a forum, and add it to exchanges. We are not actively seeking any of these things, yet they will come.

If we can keep focussed on our plans, instead of worrying about hash rates and prices, we stand a chance of doing what we plan to do.

Yes, new alt coins can merge mine bitmark to strengthen the network further

I hope the network will earn it's hash power, as with every other element of the project.

Request
If anybody plans to have a bitmark node running on a server, and knows the fixed ip in advance, can you let me know so I can add it to the seed list before release.

Thank you.

Thank you.


That is my thinking also, we can try to limit the risks of particular actions, but we cannot stop or prevent them. Somebody may add and remove 1GH, dump 10k bitmarks, permanently add 1GH, buy 10k bitmarks..

The more we focus on natural growth in every aspect the project, the harder each of these actions will be.

If there are any additional steps we can take, let us discuss them as a community and see if they work.

I feel most solutions are to these potential problems are social.

For now, nobody can mine or dump. Soon people can mine but have no where to dump, later there may be some value, and some dumping may happen. We can frame any future dumping as distribution, and early adopters taking some reward. Only if we are successful in earning value.

I hope those that add a small amount to the project over a long period of time will be rewarded most. Miners included.

For those following this thread, we have discovered an additional benefit to the IPM proposal.


I also feel the same about the Bitmark foundation, both for myself and others who join the project.

We have discovered an additional benefit to this proposal.

I have just realized that the IPM proposal addresses this issue.

As the investors would also be indirectly mining and providing a percentage of the network power. Any such drop off in hashing would be partially mitigated by the percentage of power provided by the investors. As it is variable, calculated daily to be 35%(tbc) of the needed power, not a limited resource like that of the core miners.

This would strengthen the overall value of the coin and it's security, whilst removing the difficulty volatility issue for long term miners.

Since the IPM is always open, people could invest as a vote of confidence and rescue the situation for miners and users, whilst earning btm, and while supporting continued development.

Miners, investors, and developers all working together with their respected assets.

 

In another thread, somebody has commented:

This leads me to the question: if the core miners "believe in the coin and hold it", why would 5 days for a retarget be a big issue?
I hope we never see such a thing and want to avoid it too, but the question is valid.


Finding blocks is a random event, due to this randomness a sampling over a longer time period will be more accurate than one over a shorter time period. KGW and DS both show this to be true. Blocks are supposed to be found evenly on average, not one every x minutes. Your examples show the rationale on why I chose not to use either of these for Bitmark. Thank you.

This is similar to a 51% attack, where a bad actor can acquire more hashing power than the network collectively. Only a strong distributed network of hash power can achieve this. In the future I am less concerned as Bitmark is configured to encourage hash power distribution.

In the immediate future, the short term, all we can try to do is disincentive this from happening. The block reward maturity being longer than the difficulty change combined with no inflated value.

If there are any other social or technical things we can do to mitigate the risk of this over the first few months, they would be good to know.

We could always increase the block reward maturity further, to be 2 days, or even 7. That would ensure only those who "believe in the coin and hold it" would mine, but may be detrimental on the crashes. Hoarding will occur, there will be big sells in the future, we do not want to drive away miners when this happens, as that would cause a death spiral.

Balance is hard to achieve.