Hello, Seems there is a new possible platform emerging for cryptocurrency, using the Browser for the client. This library claims it can do ECC pub/private key encryption in the browser: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tjw/jsbn/ Using HTML5, you can store the keys in the browser database: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/features/storage There are also some file system access functions as well: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/filesystem/ . Thus you could have a wallet.dat file in your regular file system. The problem of key storage has a lot of complex security considerations and is probably the most difficult aspect of doing this correctly. It could potentially be used as a Bitcoin SPV client, although my interest is something slightly different. I have not really confirmed this fully. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Possible? Impossible? Impractical? Just plain dumb? Brilliant? ... just thought I would gather some general input on this idea. thanks, -bm |
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Is there a online repository for this? You think java is the best fit for the protocol/daemon itself? No not yet, I will announce though when it's released. It will be open source with one of the well accepted FLOSS licenses(haven't decided which one yet). I like Java because that's what they use in Finance, it's the most useful language, and they have well validated Crypto libraries. Also it runs on virtually any platform, it's fast, and lots of people know how to use it. You will be able to build a trader bot quite easily in Python though. Do you think Java would be an issue? -bm |
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Anything less is unacceptable. Remember that the value of your Bitcoins depends on you being able to spend them.
good points. I think a lot of what is happening right now is that the empowered insiders are exploiting the general public's perceptions about Bitcoin(p2p, decentralized, etc.). |
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ABSTRACT
In this paper we describe a system for the exchange of assets(currencies) that is decentralized, meaning that 1) it has no central point of failure 2) critical decisions are determined by democratic consensus.
Doesnt this have the same problem as ripple? How do you assign confidence. I believe pragmatically ripple is assigning confidence based on external business relationships with gateways. The system does appear to have some usability similarities to Ripple, but most importantly there is no XRP like commodity currency(although users can build in tx fees if they want). Also it has many structural similarities to Bitcoin and doesn't require major rethinking to get underneath the UI level, so presumably it has more appeal to the Bitcoin crowd. It's also fairly simple to implement. Ripple was another one of those kind of projects that started off one way, and ended another due to the influence of VC. The Confidence is a more generalized definition than PoW. It can be used in a number of different ways. Initially, the Confidence settings will be STATIC and BOUNDED(a predetermined set of notary nodes). What this gives you is a multi-owner exchange that cannot be disabled without disabling every node. Also the trades must abide by the consensus rules, you cannot get this by sticking orders in the BTC block chain. Far superior to Mt. Gox or similar services. I don't attempt to solve the 'unbounded consensus' problem. There are other ways to derive confidence values, for instance membership in a social network. I have not really explored these aspects much. a good background paper by Ben Laurie: http://www.links.org/files/decentralised-currencies.pdfThere is a pretty good thread explaining some of these points here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=220155.new;topicseen#new , if you have the time to get into it. Plus some manual trust links by individuals.
In either case this is either vulnerable to systematic sybil attacks, or legal attacks to the gateways, where because consensus has no mining security, they can be ordered to undo history.
there is no unbounded consensus. There are no party crashers, no generalized participation thus it is not subject to sybil attacks. the fact that the Issuers MUST HONOR THE LEDGER TO REIMBURSE, gives us an additional factor to rely on here. Bitcoin was designed to be a currency without backing and without ownership. We have shifted the goal to 'asset index' or 'bearer shares' (I think thats the term you used). This allows us to safely remove PoW because ultimately we must use a ledger which is honored by the issuer. This is discussed here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=220155.new;topicseen#newIt's a subtle difference in requirements that results in a major change in architecture. -bm |
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bitcoin [...] can be scaled but only at the cost of reducing its decentralization [...then...] most people will be pool mining without validating what they're mining, and then defacto control remains unavoidably central. [...] then become defacto policy points and they'd just as well sign contracts and stop mining.
and keep in mind that the so called 'big names' in Bitcoin actually favor this route because it's a scenario that can be capitalized on. Thus we repeatedly hear solutions of this sort from those looking to commercialize various aspects of Bitcoin. Even IBM has been hanging around lately. Bitcoin is quickly morphing into a traditional payment network. Other than the committed tx defense, if they try to centralize it, and introduce dispute resolution, taint tracing as an analog of credit scoring, they will damage fungibility, increase transaction costs via the credit scoring management tax they extract, and the payment repudiation they may seek to introduce. Eg take a look at this http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/13/sanitizing-bitcoin-coin-validation/Hi Adam, There was a thread about this on this forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=332918.0 Clearly the 'Bitcoin Business' wants to move this thing in this direction. At best, we'll be left with something like SWIFT or ABA. If transaction costs rise to or above the general costs of using eg. Paypal, you will see a drastic reassessment of Bitcoin's business case, and BTC exchange rate. It's really about the way this business sector is constructed. It's not really about vending software per se, because the systems vendors are in bed with the banks and they dont simply deliver technology, they deliver privilege and part of that tactic is making sure that most people do not have access to the basic tools of finance. Most people never realize how much money banks make off transaction fees. If you want to build a financial exchange there are really only one or two companies you can go to. I used to be a infrastructure consultant for AIG on Wall St. btw. Confidence Chains aims to change all this. You can run full fledged exchanges on them, and intend to deliver this functionality as open source. Its based on significant misunderstands about bitcoins value proposition - destroy its fungibility and the costs float up to meet credit cards and paypal.
Im not sure its based on misunderstands. Probably a better term is 'based on a undermining of Bitcoin's value proposition'. This subversion of Bitcoin's values has been going on for some time now. If they want to certify users, they should do that as optional KYC, AML certificates that regulated merchants in respective jurisdictions can request, which are attached to wallets/identities, not to fully fungible coins. The certificates should be non-transistive they attest to the identity of the funds. They should be optionally sent - if the recipient does not request it, it is privacy destructive and a security risk to send identifying information to unregulated businesses and individuals. [...Confidence Chains...] my system solves all these problems by eliminating PoW and instead granting the ownership of the chain to new kind of layout. Any kind of assets can be traded and other financial features can be employed with no problems of scalability or cost of computing equipment. You lose the so-called 'zero trust', gain performance, and keep the distributed nature of the block chain. You don't have to do transactions 'off chain', everything gets fully committed very quickly.
I put some comments about confidence chains idea on the thread about it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=317114.msg3581752#msg3581752I think it has the same problems as other consensus systems like ripple, and the existing banking infrastructure in terms of sybil attack (identity theft), reputation management (equivfax etc) and fraud (when people prove unworthy of their default reputation, succeed in committing identity theft, or commit fraud). These are issues bitcoin mining is intended to defend against. Most attempts to save the cost of mining reinvent ripple and come to the realization that mining is performing a critical security function. Mixed PoW/PoS of PPCoin maybe an exception. Adam Thanks for the comments. I'll respond to the Confidence Chains points in the other thread just to keep things readable. This isn't a Confidence Chains thread and I try to be respectful on this forum. You make some salient points. go here to follow this discussion: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=317114.new;topicseen#newthanks Adam, -bm |
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a migration plan off Bitcoin to another dedicated chain.
FYI I think we can sponsor or co-sponsor some research into the scalability of Bitcoin itself. What are the current research problems that can increase Bitcoin Scalability? How can we support this effort?
Well this is another solution. Make bitcoin so scalable that it doesnt matter. However that is really hard. Zero-trust offchain is one avenue, but its not clear how or if it can work; there maybe some 'crypto/computation physics' limits. Unknown so far, but lots of people are interested to see if it could be done. The existence of satoshi-dice didnt help as a catalyst - the scalability problem is known recognized and very hard, it didnt progress because we're at a technology limit unless and until someone can overcome it. The problem as I see it is bitcoin has a scaling limit, like transactions per second, which it can support in full p2p bearer form. It can be scaled but only at the cost of reducing its decentralization. eg if block sizes go to 1GB, that counts me out of running a full node. Its an issue because if you can only be a full node, with an OC3 line, most people will be pool mining without validating what they're mining, and then defacto control remains unavoidably central. These will grow into large companies, be acquired etc. And then become defacto policy points and they'd just as well sign contracts and stop mining. OK so committed transactions can till prevent policy by making transactions opaque to miners, but it is not quite ideal itelf. and keep in mind that the so called 'big names' in Bitcoin actually favor this route because it's a scenario that can be capitalized on. Thus we repeatedly hear solutions of this sort from those looking to commercialize various aspects of Bitcoin. Even IBM has been hanging around lately. Bitcoin is quickly morphing into a traditional payment network.
The other direction is that the minimum transaction value (implied by minimum fee) goes up, and the minimum bandwidth to be a full node stays p2p compatible. But that implies bitcoin turns into a clearing network. If its for large transactions its less interesting to users and will either disappear from lack of interest (remain as a whale speculator network?) or be co-opted and shaped by companies with a use for end-of-day clearing transactions - large exchanges, big payment processors. All user traffic anyway would end up off-chain. As the off-chain technology does not exist (and we dont know how to do it not for lack of trying), that means the off-chain technology will offer weak semantics: it will have need for central trust in offchain transaction servers, it will have risks of value seizure/account freezes, risks of the transaction server going out of business. Probably 1 of 3 properties could be fixed, or maybe 2 of 3 (pick any two features conundrum style) if the business even care to try. Many are "pragmatic" which is an ugly word.
my system solves all these problems by eliminating PoW and instead granting the ownership of the chain to new kind of layout. Any kind of assets can be traded and other financial features can be employed with no problems of scalability or cost of computing equipment. You lose the so-called 'zero trust', gain performance, and keep the distributed nature of the block chain. You don't have to do transactions 'off chain', everything gets fully committed very quickly. all these problems were entirely visible to me months ago, which led to the development of Confidence Chains. -bm |
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Maybe it's time to be able to have an interface to add custom filters without changing the source code. Thank you for the heads-up - my network support clients (500-1000 connections) will no longer relay TX with inputs or outputs to the 1ExoDus address.
being that Mastercoin is a profit scheme, you could actually charge Ron tolls to relay his transactions. still think the block chain is 'free', chaverim? |
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Frankly, that coloured coins have this problem is obvious, so arguing over who "predicted" it first is a complete waste of time.
if it was so 'obvious' why was I the only one on record to point this out? Because everyone else knew it was obvious, and didn't need to be pointed out? then why is Ron acting like this is a startling revelation? |
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I predicted this problem with Color Coins long before Mastercoin ever began. Check the BitcoinX list.
Ron, stop acting like this is some kind of new revelation. This thread isn't about who predicted it first, it's about scalability. these problems were well understood and clearly stated by myself many months ago. Im not sure how exactly we pronounced Mastercoin this wonderful new technology while it poses systemic risks to Bitcoin. In other words, we must now be concerned about the problems Mastercoin is causing, while a small insider group profits from this business. As in, we fix the problems that are caused by someone's profit motives. An analogy: some factory finds a way to make Hummus for 2 cents less than the competitor however it kills entire forests. The factory does it anyway, then pronounces that there is a huge ecological disaster that we all must come together to fix. First, I think you are vastly overestimating how much use mastercoin is going to get. Second, Luke's first point is the important one here. Mastercoin isn't much worse than bitcoin, so if every bitcoin user switched to it, load would only increase by a small multiple, which is bad, but not cataclysmic. Third, mastercoin transactions are easy to spot. Miners can easily reject them, or insist on larger fees. or decide which ones they like and which ones they don't, creating an entirely new vista of mining incentives. All these things were discussed by myself on the BitcoinX list, but they were not addressed because the people driving the conversation weren't interested in how this technology damages the network, they were only interested in how to get it done for their own glorification. the problem is when you create new 'colors'. Generally its Num Transactions ^ Num Colors = unusable network. In general I think the notion of making accommodations for a for-proft project is a serious violation of Bitcoin principles. Honestly at this point it wouldn't suprise me. Frankly, that coloured coins have this problem is obvious, so arguing over who "predicted" it first is a complete waste of time.
if it was so 'obvious' why was I the only one on record to point this out? |
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I predicted this problem with Color Coins long before Mastercoin ever began. Check the BitcoinX list.
Ron, stop acting like this is some kind of new revelation. This thread isn't about who predicted it first, it's about scalability. these problems were well understood and clearly stated by myself many months ago. Im not sure how exactly we pronounced Mastercoin this wonderful new technology while it poses systemic risks to Bitcoin. In other words, we must now be concerned about the problems Mastercoin is causing, while a small insider group profits from this business. As in, we fix the problems that are caused by someone's profit motives. An analogy: some factory finds a way to make Hummus for 2 cents less than the competitor however it kills entire forests. The factory does it anyway, then pronounces that there is a huge ecological disaster that we all must come together to fix. |
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I predicted this problem with Color Coins long before Mastercoin ever began. Check the BitcoinX list.
Ron, stop acting like this is some kind of new revelation.
In other words you're creating some new feature on top of Bitcoin, generating a major performance problem, and then suddenly you act as though we have some natural disaster that we all must come together to solve.
It sounds more like you're breaking Bitcoin.
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Propaganda.
why do I need to buy Mastercoins? |
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Developing truly accessible open technologies pays you back more than any other engineering approach. oh yeah? Just go to Antibes and look a Linus Torvalds yacht parked next to Paul Allen's yacht and see if you can sustain that position. You are an idiot AND you don't know what you are talking about. You'll see the exchange in action very soon. You'll be shitting bricks about it then. if you want to be Paul Allen, be my guest, just stop pretending to be Linus Torvalds to sell your sh!tcoins. |
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if what is released?
the distributed exchange Im the only one who has defined what that term means. http://goo.gl/vy1uUrIf they wish to copy this, and so far anything I've heard from them is indeed a shallow, poorly articulated imitation of what I have written in the link above, that's fine. VCs are typically in the business of making money though, so if they make it to sell some kind of coin or some such, and mine is open source and free to use, which one do you think will be more popular? |
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better buy up those Mastercoins before they run out then!
there are really two possibilities:
1) the Mastercoin people pulled one over on the VC by telling them that they have a technology that they don't(this much has been confirmed).
2) the Mastercoin people and the VC are pulling one over on us by pretending to have a technology in order to market these Mastercoins.
It's really not very difficult to profit from a scheme like this. Start with 1 million in capital and start the first round of selling Mastercoins. Lets say they are priced at $10 each. Distribute a few to people with blogs and they just start churning out senseless crap with as many important sounding hot topic buzzwords as possible. Suddenly the things are retailing for $15. You just made a half-million dollars. Slowly sell them off, a few months later- 'Mastercoin? never heard of it'. Have you read the 'whitepaper'? this is the next big thing in Bitcoin? lol.
Just a few weeks back they had supposedly put out a bounty for $50,000 to build a 'Distributed Exchange'. To my knowledge the bounty was supposedly paid, but not to anyone who actually invented a distributed exchange, instead it appeared to have been paid to some pseudonymous programmers who made some kind of wallet app for Mastercoin. Meanwhile Alex Mizrahi is talking to IBM rep on the BitcoinX list(just days afterwards) about the Distributed Exchange that Mastercoin has, that has never been defined, and a bounty was put out for it only a few weeks ago(the thing was conceived, accepted, and developed all in a few weeks? covertly?), and a rep from Bitangels publicly claimed that it doesn't exist! The IBM rep is then writing on his blog about how awesome Mastercoin is.
None of these things exist. None have been theoretically proven. It's just people pumping up a digital asset, running around and avoiding any hard questions. If this is your thing I bid you best of luck, amigo. I think I might be one of the few people who is actually watching this thing who is not in on it.
Personally, I believe in open source. Developing truly accessible open technologies pays you back more than any other engineering approach.
You're setting yourself up for a big fall here mate. If it is released, do you promise to take back your slanderous attack? if what is released? |
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Developing truly accessible open technologies pays you back more than any other engineering approach. oh yeah? Just go to Antibes and look a Linus Torvalds yacht parked next to Paul Allen's yacht and see if you can sustain that position. You are an idiot AND you don't know what you are talking about. You'll see the exchange in action very soon. You'll be shitting bricks about it then. As far as I can tell these bounties were never paid. The code repositories are full of padding code, autogenerated code, etc. Im not opposed to making money with software. If you want people to pay you for your software, then you license it. If you want to trick people into buying into your pump and dump scheme, you start strutting around claiming you have all these things you dont, that you need to invest or 'miss the train', etc. This stuff is just pathetic. At this point Im not really sure how much awareness the VC has of what's going on here. |
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Developing truly accessible open technologies pays you back more than any other engineering approach. oh yeah? Just go to Antibes and look a Linus Torvalds yacht parked next to Paul Allen's yacht and see if you can sustain that position. You are an idiot AND you don't know what you are talking about. You'll see the exchange in action very soon. You'll be shitting bricks about it then. so then you admit youre promoting this business? |
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better buy up those Mastercoins before they run out then!
there are really two possibilities:
1) the Mastercoin people pulled one over on the VC by telling them that they have a technology that they don't(this much has been confirmed).
2) the Mastercoin people and the VC are pulling one over on us by pretending to have a technology in order to market these Mastercoins.
It's really not very difficult to profit from a scheme like this. Start with 1 million in capital and start the first round of selling Mastercoins. Lets say they are priced at $10 each. Distribute a few to people with blogs and they just start churning out senseless crap with as many important sounding hot topic buzzwords as possible. Suddenly the things are retailing for $15. You just made a half-million dollars. Slowly sell them off, a few months later- 'Mastercoin? never heard of it'. Have you read the 'whitepaper'? this is the next big thing in Bitcoin? lol.
Just a few weeks back they had supposedly put out a bounty for $50,000 to build a 'Distributed Exchange'. To my knowledge the bounty was supposedly paid, but not to anyone who actually invented a distributed exchange, instead it appeared to have been paid to some pseudonymous programmers who made some kind of wallet app for Mastercoin. Meanwhile Alex Mizrahi is talking to IBM rep on the BitcoinX list(just days afterwards) about the Distributed Exchange that Mastercoin has, that has never been defined, and a bounty was put out for it only a few weeks ago(the thing was conceived, accepted, and developed all in a few weeks? covertly?), and a rep from Bitangels publicly claimed that it doesn't exist! The IBM rep is then writing on his blog about how awesome Mastercoin is.
None of these things exist. None have been theoretically proven. It's just people pumping up a digital asset, running around and avoiding any hard questions. If this is your thing I bid you best of luck, amigo. I think I might be one of the few people who is actually watching this thing who is not in on it.
Personally, I believe in open source. Developing truly accessible open technologies pays you back more than any other engineering approach.
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I was the first person to suggest this idea, which created quite a buzz. As it stands I am also the only one with a verifiable solution to this problem.
The Color Coins crew, especially Alex routinely imitates my statements while simultaneously deriding and denouncing my works.
Obnoxious to the say the least.
Would it be fair to say you have a small chip on your shoulder??  nice try, but no. criticising someone's poor behavior isn't jealousy or resentment, it's called indignation. this stuff happened widely during the dot com era, and every time a company would issue stock options suddenly a gaggle of tech heads with edgy fashion sense would be waddling around talking about technologies that didn't exist. I guess you think this is some kind of contest to see who can fool investors into giving them money? and that Im butthurt because I lost the contest? because that's what you're suggesting. Most people don't know this, but a large disproportional number of these dot com scams came from Israel. |
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the fabled Decentralized Exchange which I have written a detailed explanation of how to build Oh, I see. Now I get it. You are the original and you are upset that JR funded a project to 'get 'er done' while you kept playing pong on your Atari for the last 6 months. Too late to cry now. You wrote about it; JR did it. I was the first person to suggest this idea, which created quite a buzz. As it stands I am also the only one with a verifiable solution to this problem. The Color Coins crew, especially Alex routinely imitates my statements while simultaneously deriding and denouncing my works. Obnoxious to the say the least. Here's a tip, and honestly I'm not sure exactly what your involvement is with this group. When you involve serious VC- let's just say they don't like to be made a fool of. The Bitangles guy who posted here a few days ago seems to not quite understand what the Mastercoin project actually has, which makes me think that someone is playing someone else. I just want to make 100% clear that Im not involved with this. |
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