This probably belongs to the same type of issues as the other open issue that minters may stop processing transactions. I generally consider under these type of situations most rational nodes would not try to modify client to gain very little profit. Tragedy of the commons most likely does not apply as the gain is minimal.

Ideally it would be nice to not have this type of issues, but in practice it might not be easy to completely rid of them given the design goals and other more serious attacks to defend. Also if it's true that users are easily bribed to adopt corrupted clients, then there are likely a lot more tragedy of the commons type of attacks to all cryptocurrencies including bitcoin.

But anyways we can keep this topic open in case it becomes realistic.

The current algorithm is for the unlucky miner to try to extend fork A, but if B gets extended by others first then the unlucky miner would accept fork B and reorganize.

Once again I don't see much incentive here to try to disable duplicate stake detection and open yourself to serious DoS attacks. You just get your 1% later, it's not lost.

You could try to do that, but other nodes may only take the first block you send due to duplicate stake detection (see design paper for the description of duplicate stake detection). That means you would end up on one fork anyway.

Also the proof-of-stake mint is based on coin age consumed by minter. You don't lose much if your block is on the wrong fork, as then the coin age wasn't consumed. So there isn't much incentive to try to prevent mint loss by getting on multiple forks.

I have no intention of broadcasting this estimate of ppcoin project effort cost. I don't know why smoothie is so obsessed with it and quoting it everywhere, well it might actually be free promotion for us 

The original estimate was intended to counter the accusation that my goal was to make a quick buck and then disappear. I was merely pointing out the fact that it couldn't possibly be the case considering how much effort went into this project. Of course one doesn't need to trust me on that, I have repeatedly stated that users should be fully aware of the risk involved in investing in ppcoin market as it is an experimental project.

I would like to clarify that I do not claim that because I spent so much time on the project then ppcoin should be valued at such levels. How much ppcoin should be valued is entirely up to each user and market in general. It's quite possible that the design is not good enough to compete in the market so it wouldn't worth much at all.

I would like to say that my motivation has been to innovate and help advance cryptocurrency technology, given my belief that bitcoin technology is beneficial to humanity and gives liberty more chance to survive amongst growing tyranny throughout the world today. So yeah I spent a lot of time on the project. I could have used the time to further some of my other potentially more profitable but soulless projects, but I find ppcoin project the most cherished in my heart, so even if ppcoin entirely fails I would have no regret whatsoever. I have enough means to support myself so I don't really see how making more money would make my life happier and more fulfilled.

I fully intend to continue work on ppcoin project and I don't see myself disappearing any time soon, barring any unforeseen circumstances at least. I also encourage capable developers gain more knowledge of the design and become a source of backup of the project.

I also appreciate people voting in this thread valuing our work on ppcoin. Even if you voted for a value less than $1000 I take it that you still think our work has some value and may potentially contribute to the advancement of knowledge in cryptocurrency technology. So I thank you for the kind support 

Really appreciate all your support I should really start doing a better job of ignoring all these pointless attacks. I was probably a bit too naive to hope that I can instill some reason to the mind of the trolls but so far it's been quite futile.

So yeah I need to concentrate more on the real work at my hands.

Fuzzy is quite right that one shouldn't put in ppcoin what one cannot afford to lose. The project is experimental so please manage your risk accordingly.

Again thank you all for the kind support and I will try my best 

Aug 19 was the release date. Difficulty starts at 256 so lots of mining power joined to mine some blocks at low difficulty.

ppcoin's mint rate is determined by difficulty. So as difficulty rise mint rate is somewhat lowered.

No need to get self-indignant like that You are welcome to start a competing currency and show Satoshi and the world how it was meant to be done properly.

You are right I don't have a math analysis of how much coins are needed to attempt control of block chain. First it's more difficult than Satoshi's design, secondly I think there maybe other practical attacking vectors that I have missed so putting a math formula there as the final say on security is a bit misleading as well. So no I don't think I am ready to do this type of analysis. I think I have mentioned this before.

I did not claim that you need 50% coins to control ppcoin block chain. Much less of that would be enough.

It may not match your expectations but I did what I can to contribute, rather than sitting there and accusing other people being lazy and greedy while they are the ones doing the real work. How convenient.

If you are so helpful then why don't you polish your analysis and continue discussion on the security properties? Instead you would just launch your personal crusade to attack me and ppcoin project. If you worried so much about investors then why I haven't seen one pm from you describing the vulnerability of ppcoin and discuss with me ways of fixing it? I have received quite a number of pms but none are from the detractors as their main goal is to discredit ppcoin in public.

However given all that I have endured from you, you are still welcome to pm me if you truly wish to discuss about security analysis of ppcoin. Otherwise we would just have to part our ways.

Weekly Update #8

• SatoshiRoulette introduced PPC games this week, becoming the first (non-exchange) website that accepts ppcoin payments.
• Andy Rossy has provided a raw transaction rpc patch for those who needs the patch to run a service.
• This serves as a reminder that ppcoin is experimental software that I do not make any guarantee regarding its security. Users must evaluate risks on their own regarding the security of ppcoin and I can only say I will try to do my best to make it more secure.
• Some miners like to jump between currencies to maximize their profit, this is normal. Often we see ppcoin proof-of-work difficulty oscillate a bit as miners switch and this is expected. My observation is that mining difficulty tends to follow exchange rate. This phenomenon is universal to other bitcoin forks as well, as we saw some chains had problems recovering from miner withdrawals due to long adjustment intervals. For ppcoin it appears to recover from miner withdrawal reasonably well due to the continuous adjustment design. This type of oscillation has less negative impact on ppcoin network for two reasons. First proof-of-stake block generation is independent of the proof-of-work difficulty. And secondly the proof-of-work mint rate design somewhat dampens the oscillation effect.

Have fun and next week!

Hmm I don't know what I said wrong prompted such a response from you.

If you deeply understand privacy, liberty and what cryptocurrency is all about then you wouldn't so cheaply accuse Satoshi of starting a scammy society. In a libertarian society people are supposed to be responsible for their own risk-taking not expect government to drive out all the scammers.

Read more on these topics, Jon Matonis is a good writer on these issues.

It's relatively random and you don't have much control on how often you get one other than that the more idle coins you have you would generate them more often. Also their age needs to be greater than 30 days.

Sigh, killerstorm, I already replied to your formula the same day I don't think they are correct. Whatever you believe, you can feel all superior and think your 'security analysis' is all foolproof, and warrant personal attacks and smear campaigns of ppcoin.

Sorry I don't think a real researcher on these issues act like you do. They are probably more level headed and responsible. So I guess we'd have to part our ways then.

Right now my priority is operational and security issues. Design paper may be updated in the future but there is no guarantee at this moment. Unfortunately that's how things are done outside ivory tower. I feel with the design paper + source code out there if you truly want to do some analysis of the algorithm you already have all you need, not out of the norm even for pure research oriented work you'd have to make some effort to understand things.

You can also help to make the learning curve a bit less steep, by creating some wiki articles/discussion topics for example.

No you don't lose the stake it's only withheld for a few days after generating a block for the network. Here stake means more like shares than the gambling stake.

For more explanations on this topic please see our FAQ: https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/wiki/FAQ

If the source code is not open then maybe this 'have something to hide' argument would have some merits. With open source I think repeating this line just shows that you don't fully grasp the concept of privacy, liberty and the political nature of cryptocurrencies. Besides, revealing identity might cause other non-political issues to the developer and hamper their ability to continue the work.

Sure if you want to choose to be all open about your identity like Gavin does then fine go for it. Just don't claim moral superiority over those who wish to remain anonymous.

Yes my time worths more than some forum trolls who claims he can program too.

Programming real algorithms cost more than some hello world kiddy scripts. Well if you truly want to show that I overestimated then produce a cheaper proof-of-stake coin that's not a copy of ppcoin.

Of course you cannot do it other than trolling forums. Not many programmers can do such mission critical algorithms and not all programmers are paid the same low salary that you expect. My estimate also includes Scott's time and his time worths every bit as much as mine so I think my estimate is quite fair.

Stop being so childish and go ask coblee how much his time is worth.

But feel free to keep trolling rather than learning some skills and do some real work.

Simply state, money is something that facilitate the monetary functions: unit of account, medium of exchange and store of value.

There has been a debate in Austrian school as to whether bitcoin can be money. The debate centered around Mises' regression theorem, which states that a monetary commodity can be traced back to its original non-monetary use in the market.

Of course the problem is bitcoin does not have a non-monetary use. So some took this as the proof that bitcoin must not be a legitimate form of money.

I find this argument rather disingenuous. I believe if Mises or Rothbard is still around, they would readily recognize the error in the regression theorem when they saw what happened to bitcoin in the market.

Bitcoin has proven that market will value monetary properties alone, regardless of non-monetary use. This does not detract from the brilliance of Mises, as he didn't have the privilege of watching the market valuing monetary properties without any non-monetary value. Yes it's a huge difference if you can see it happening right in front of your eyes.

So yeah cryptocurrency is here to stay and is the most revolutionary form of money to date.

I am perfectly willing to engage in discussions however to my disappointment only cunicula among the self-proclaimed proof-of-stake experts seems to be capable of civil discussions. I don't see much merit in your so-called security analysis. I understand your criticism, but coblee also thinks the type of attacks you are concerned with are not practical when you presented the same argument to his litecoin proposal. Sure I will consider improvements in the future as problems arise, but that's hardly a valid excuse to paint ppcoin design as worthless.

The problem I see with your camp is that you guys have too much ego and think only your proof-of-stake design is good. The so-called critics (except for cunicula) did not give even a tiny credit to ppcoin team and me. I only hear regurgitation of how your design is more legitimate and superior blah blah plus a lot of dirty words thrown on ppcoin.

I am sorry I cannot acknowledge this type of 'criticism' as constructive. No you didn't contribute to ppcoin, with or without your 'harsh criticism' I was going to introduce the v0.2 improvement to ppcoin, which I entirely came up with by myself.

I hope you can realize the error in your ways and start engaging in meaningful discussions without unreasonable attack on ppcoin and me. I think you are smart and maybe can contribute some good ideas if your mind is in the right place. As I said before I wish everyone of us can look deeper and realize that maybe we work towards the same larger goal so we can throw away our petty differences and be respectful to each other. I do not hate all these litecoin trolls either who throw insults on me freely, but I pity them and hope one day they would realize what they did was wrong as well.

Pathetic. If you didn't come up with this pack of lies yourself then I suggest you stop trusting whoever fed you this garbage, for your own sake.