If there are any San Fransisco Factom Fans, I will be at the Bitcoin meetup tonight.

https://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Bitcoin-Social/events/228473704/

Oh, I think I made a mistake here.

The servers can only observe the market.  They can only reflect internally on the network what is happening on the market.  When Factoids are worth more, they can buy more ECs. By simulating a high price, someone running a testnet can purchase lots of fake Entry Credits on their own computer. 

If someone were to spin up a local testnet, they would have 20,000 fake factoids on their local machine to run their network and test the software.

oh how words get twisted.  In order to help developers, when they spin up a personal testnet, now they can test with 2 terabytes before switching keys, etc.

I made no price predictions.

I figured that if you are running a local network, then you should have a $100/FCT rate.  That'll make your 20,000 FCT go farther.

I have been on the show multiple times and have mixed feelings.

First, you have to understand that the show is first and foremost an FM radio program broadcast live in Austin.  As such, it has to abide by both the FCC rules, as well as the network rules, giving regular time slots for advertisers.  It is not apparent from the podcast version, but there is a clock on the screen which is counting down the seconds until the next ad cycle starts.  It does not wait for someone to finish a thought, or a sentence.  The hosts fill some of the time between the last thought and the start of the ads if they think that the next point the interviewee will make will take more than the available time.  I am also grateful for the breaks, because it allows time to coordinate what you are going to say in the next segment, use the restroom, etc without interrupting the show flow (more than is expected).

I have been on the show when the main talker, Chris, was not present.  It was a fairly awkward experience.  I am now glad to have the conversational lubrication he provides.  Could he be more concise sometimes?  Sure, but that is his personality.  We may dislike parts of the show, but it takes a lot of sustained effort to keep a biweekly show running for several years.  Not many others have had the energy to make it happen.


Adam B Levine came on the show one time.  He has been doing podcasts for years, but he gets to edit them after recording, and he gets to decide when ads happen.  He mentioned that it was a little intimidating coming on the show where there was no editing, and everything was happening live.

I listen to the show too.  I can't stand listening to it at regular speed.  I listen to it at minimum 150% speed, oftentimes faster.  

At one conference I attended, Adam was mentioning before his speech that he had a lot of content, and that he was afraid that he would be talking too fast.  I assured him that he could talk 50% faster and be just fine.  

yes, but only in some circumstances.

Entries need 1 EC per partial KiB.  If an entry is 4310 bytes in payload, it will require a minimum of 5 ECs.  There is a maximum payload size of 10240 bytes, which would require 10 ECs.

The bytes that are counted are the payload.  This includes the content, as well as the data in the extIDs.  Also charged is the 2 byte over head for each extid describing its length.
https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/blob/master/factomDataStructureDetails.md#entry

When creating a new chain, it takes a new entry to be the first one in the chain.  Since creating a new chain adds overhead into the system, it requires more ECs to make a chain.  It takes an extra 10 ECs on top of the quantity for the payload to make a new chain.  Making a chain takes between 11 and 20 ECs.

Does anyone have questions for Tiana they want answered on air?

also, the V1 API takes the hex version of the keys, rather than the base58 version.  the V2 only deals with the base58 encoded type, so this will go away.  as a workaround for now, you can use this website:

http://gobittest.appspot.com/PrivateKey

paste the address in WIF checksum checking
FA2oMzWrkwspnRriJmDvjjiFVfLBzbjUQ28sxgtwvSb3NCytAMnP will give

5FB16DA21F1F8898E705C267365929BD3ACDE6B8F73682DDED30BBC9A90C1A324183
in box 3

strip the 5FB1 from the front giving

6DA21F1F8898E705C267365929BD3ACDE6B8F73682DDED30BBC9A90C1A324183

http://localhost:8088/v1/factoid-balance/6DA21F1F8898E705C267365929BD3ACDE6B8F73682DDED30BBC9A90C1A324183 gives a balance

This is all getting better, but slowly.

There is nothing special about putting a hash vs any other piece of data into factom.  It allows up to 10 KiB per Entry.  I would reccomned a signed hash, as others can also submit hashes potentially fooling your application.  also, you probably want a nonce in the entry (or an ExtID), because duplicate entries won't be allowed in m2 within the same hour.

We have some documentation here, but it is a bit lacking.
https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/blob/master/FactoidAPI.md

You should know that we are very close to putting out a V2 of the API.  It will be json based.  It should be fairly easy to port over though.  that being said, this is how you would do it with the existing tools:

first run factomd and fctwallet


putting entries into factom is a two stage process.  first you need to get a commit (a payment for a piece of data) then you submit the reveal (the data itself)

make sure you have entry credits in fctwallet. 

factom-cli balances

it should show you the name of the address which has factoids

if not, run
factom-cli generateaddress ec myecaddress

factom-cli newtransaction txname
factom-cli addinput txname myfactoidaddress 0.5
factom-cli addoutput txname myecaddress 0.5
factom-cli addfee txname myfactoidaddress
factom-cli sign txname
factom-cli submit txname

After 10 minutes, when your run
factom-cli balances
it will show that you now have Entry Credits.







Everything in factom needs to go into a chain.  lets use this one as an example:  e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
http://explorer.factom.org/chain/e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855



curl -i -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"ChainID":"e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855", "ExtIDs":["657831", "657832"], "Content":"48656C6C6F20466163746F6D21"}' localhost:8089/v1/compose-entry-submit/myecaddress

that returns:

{"EntryCommit":{"CommitEntryMsg":"0001588a2a467dfac23d2299b690813cec4666b11ecb8d2e6b21bbe983c1412b5f5c9405a537d20 13b6a27bcceb6a42d62a3a8d02a6f0d73653215771de243a63ac048a18b59da29c5d4b9c41a7bd5 77f16cba749f89fd2ab4aca2b2434f758f16414509702ecd37768d47ef8ec36bfbe48e6f43e1277 5961f1594a5303ea3819c21e7d5fe3ebf0c"},"EntryReveal":{"Entry":"00e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855000a000365783 1000365783248656c6c6f20466163746f6d21"}}


we break that apart and send those to factomd with two calls.

curl -i -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"CommitEntryMsg":"0001588a2a467dfac23d2299b690813cec4666b11ecb8d2e6b21bbe983c1412b5f5c9405a537d20 13b6a27bcceb6a42d62a3a8d02a6f0d73653215771de243a63ac048a18b59da29c5d4b9c41a7bd5 77f16cba749f89fd2ab4aca2b2434f758f16414509702ecd37768d47ef8ec36bfbe48e6f43e1277 5961f1594a5303ea3819c21e7d5fe3ebf0c"}' localhost:8088/v1/commit-entry

curl -i -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"Entry":"00e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855000a000365783 1000365783248656c6c6f20466163746f6d21"}' localhost:8088/v1/reveal-entry


After 10 minutes it will show up in the chain.  you can check by running
factom-cli get allentries e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855


To read it programmatically instead of through a helper function, you can make http calls to get json data. you would find the latest block then iterate backwards getting successively earlier blocks. at the same time you would pull out all the entries that were placed into those blocks.

curl -X GET http://localhost:8088/v1/chain-head/e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855

which gives:
{"ChainHead":"112b6855ccce87d7891db32ee0a312dcdbb768ec23f043e88b4d5c66b89a31a3"}

then do
curl -X GET http://localhost:8088/v1/entry-block-by-keymr/112b6855ccce87d7891db32ee0a312dcdbb768ec23f043e88b4d5c66b89a31a3


which gives
{"Header":{"BlockSequenceNumber":4,"ChainID":"e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855","PrevKeyMR":"a7833c0dc44f5475f77eed12b5b7853ee81fe6afb1381cbf29f20b1237bb353a","Timestamp":1479786600},"EntryList":[{"EntryHash":"fac23d2299b690813cec4666b11ecb8d2e6b21bbe983c1412b5f5c9405a537d2","Timestamp":1479786960}]}

we can branch downwards and backwards. The call
curl -X GET http://localhost:8088/v1/entry-by-hash/fac23d2299b690813cec4666b11ecb8d2e6b21bbe983c1412b5f5c9405a537d2

asks for the single entry in the latest block in the chain. There can be more than one entry in a block, but this block just has one. the call gives:
{"ChainID":"e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855","Content":"48656c6c6f20466163746f6d21","ExtIDs":["657831","657832"]}

next we can do entry-block-by-keymr to get the second from latest entry block
curl -X GET http://localhost:8088/v1/entry-block-by-keymr/a7833c0dc44f5475f77eed12b5b7853ee81fe6afb1381cbf29f20b1237bb353a


which gives:
{"Header":{"BlockSequenceNumber":3,"ChainID":"e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855","PrevKeyMR":"19a3c3307083a592f76158e97f605e9b3d3638df5892e53b64d0183fd087f844","Timestamp":1478574600},"EntryList":[{"EntryHash":"d66a0c102cb6d8421c015fc905f263b6389c6a0b7e92306eb72a51104b781d53","Timestamp":1478575080}]}


We can keep repeating getting the entries and getting the previous block until 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 is marked as the previous block. this indicates that it is the first block in the chain.




This might have some info: https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/tree/master/DeveloperGuide

as well as this: https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/blob/master/developerSandboxSetup.md


I hope this is enough to help you get started.

Factoids are indeed paid to incentivize running a server.  

https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs/raw/master/FactomLedgerbyConsensus.pdf

https://medium.com/@BrianDeery/i-love-negative-feedback-632f8ee780ff

In order for Entry Credits to come into existence, a specific field in a Factoid transaction needs to specify an Entry Credit key.  Since this balance does not increase another Factoid address, the Factoids are essentially burned.  The Factoid transactions live in the Factoid blocks.  When sending to an EC pubkey, the sender does not need to know the private key.  This is why the Entry Credit store can work.  https://shop.factom.com/

A corresponding balance increase is made in the EC block which increases the specified EC balance.  Those ECs are forever tied to that public EC key. There is no mechanism for reassigning the EC balance in the EC blocks.  The only thing they can do is pay for Entries. 

If you have a non-unique private key, others can make Entries using those ECs.  The key point is that the ECs can't be sent so someone else without sharing the private key.  The doublespend problem is not solved with Entry Credits.  Someone can sell the private key to N different people, and only the first person to add Entries into the blockchain can use them.

I'm glad the first person to test m2 liked what he saw.  We have indeed been working wonders.  Thank you for noticing.

No, sorry this is just a bugfix for M1.  This solves some of the memory issues the community has been testing fixes for.  https://github.com/FactomProject/factomd/issues/23


Also, that announcement you picked up on turns out needed to stay secret for a while longer.  You will hear about it when it is much further along in development.


When we release the public testnet, how many people here will actually download and test it?  No one took me up on my offer to run the simulator.

There are currently some sanity checking guardrails in M1, but nothing close to the volume we have been seeing.  Those won't follow through to M2.

Thanks for posting this.  I hadn't seen it yet.


Indeed.  I share an office with her when she is in town.  Tiana makes things happen and gets stuff done.  I am glad she is on our team.

I still don't understand.  Do you mean entry credits?  those are created by users burning factoids.  when servers need them for varoius sundry tasks, they burn factoids too.  there are only 3 chains that are privaleged in the system which can only be written to by the federated servers, and consequently do not need entry credits.  they are the:

Factoid Chain
Entry Credit Chain
Administrative Chain

The Factoid chain only holds valid factoid transactions.

The Entry Credit chain holds all the Entry Commits and Chain Commits.  These are the payments that users make when they are paying Entry Credits to place data into the various user chains.   It also hold links to Factoid transaction IDs which purchase Entry Credits.  These increase an EC balance, where the commits decrease the balance.

The Admin chain holds the signatures for the previous block headers, as well as keeping track of who the Federated Servers are.  



Once we get m2 up and running we would love to have more nodes on the network.  More nodes will keep it robust and help protect the network from attack.

1. I don't understand question 1.

2. There will be no difference in the cost to place data into factom when the anchors are placed into more that just Bitcoin.

3. you will know about the public testnet when we are ready to have the community start experimenting with it.  You can run your own m2 simulation with dozens of nodes on your local computer testing different topologies, adding nodes and removing them, etc.  If the technically inclined want to play with it, let me know.  http://imgur.com/XuSRcsm

The corner is quickly approaching.