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Here is how our escrow search went:

Step one: Finding a serious escrow that does other things than bitcoin. This was actually a very hard step, there needs to be a good index of escrows somewhere. We'd have even been ready to pay to see a detailed lists of escrows, their trust rating, and what kind of business they accept.

Step two: Having the escrow accept us. Most escrows did not want to be associated with IPOs or with people who decide to remain anonymous because they are the ones who look bad if the IPO fails or ends up being a scam. We offered a testnet wallet to prove that we were real, but all but two didn't even want it and stopped their business with us at this step.

Step three: We had only two escrow options left. One of them was not looking serious enough however. We believe that he was probably a scammer, as he was offering to do it for 0% fee and without any cost. In our eyes, this was extremely suspicious, and felt like he was just waiting for an opportunity to run away with some big money.

Step four: The escrow service we were left with is a semi-automated service. For small escrows, they have a website, but they are ready to handle big escrows like IPOs for us in exchange for 1btc in advance and a fee of 1%. We also have to keep track of investors ourselves, and tell them who to give the Sparks to. This might sound like a lot of negative things, but there is a much bigger positive with them: They were  willing to give us a real life identity and prove (through a bank payment of 0.01$) that they are the two persons they say they are.

Communication with them is not easy as they are in an asian timezone and are slow at writing english in real time chat, but when we take our time we can understand ourselves just fine. We did not even ask for the real life identity verification, they offered it themselves, and we appreciated that gesture a lot.




It seems like cryptocurrencies that are not established yet and IPOs have gained an association with scams, and when looking for an escrow you are caught in the middle of this. In their eyes, you are just like the rest, a scammer trying to make quick money. Even after offering to give them a working version of our wallet on testnet, they mostly refused and dismissed us as they do not want to be attached to something that is not big like bitcoin.




                           






Yes, with no mining, the number of coins can not go up.

However, as we mentioned on the original post, there is an annual 10% proof of stake inflation of the total amount of coins. This gives a small advantage to people who decide to have their Sparks in a wallet (even locked/cold storage) where they can hoard them or spend them in shops and e-commerces. The reason for this is that we want to encourage people to use wallets for their Sparks instead of keeping them on exchanges.

The PoS minting is done every day (about 0.028% inflation per day), and is the only way new Sparks can be introduced. It would not even be possible for us to insert more Sparks in the economy without making a hard fork, as only the cloud with the id 0 can contain new Sparks, and that cloud has already been generated and locked.


The stake generation will only start after a bit over one year, on the 1st of May 2015. Until then, the number of coins in circulation will be exactly one billion, not less not more.



                           

                           




We wanted to keep everything private until release / have everything be a full surprise, but it is obvious that this is not how trust is generated. Bad/naive thinking on our part. We are better developers than social engineers or communication specialists, we'll try to improve on that.


Here is a screenshot of the Windows build of the Spark wallet. We went for a minimalistic style due to being graphically impaired, but the wallet can easily be skinned over / redesigned once we're past release and people offer us better looking graphics:




No point in giving a screenshot of our minimalistic wallet (sparkyd), as text in command line is not exactly what I'd call exciting. We'll add this screenshot to the main post.



As for the code snippet, we had a hard time finding a bit of code that fits the following requirements:
1) Does not expose any of our core working methods before release
2) Is not totally worthless, like a whole file of exception codes or config

We went with the class that handles remote calls:





                           





They try to distance themselves from direct involvement in any operations they are in. This was a major contention point between us and them, but we have just asked them to post something on their website if possible regarding the Spark IPO.

A specific email inbox for the Spark IPO is meant to be opened by them, but we're waiting for confirmation that it's operational. I added it to the main post, awaiting confirmation from them now. Timezones and family life make communication between us difficult, we will do our best. We will delete this email address until they confirm it is working.




                           





This was a misunderstanding, we thought that your gif was some form of advertisement, like the others we removed from the thread (namely « crypto tower », « crypto calendar », and some mining pool). You can keep your post and gif if it's just a scam accusation: as we said in the main post, we're ready to live with those. They come with the territory.




                           




From this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525419 : « There will be 1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially, with nothing at all premined or reserved for the developers »

This information has not changed since, we will stick with this number.



                           

                           




Yes, you will get a % of Spark that is proportional to the % of btc you invested compared to the total btc in the IPO.

If you invest 1btc out of a total of 100btc invested, you will indeed get 1% of all Sparks.

All the sparks have already been minted and are in the hands of our escrow. They will be distributed by them as soon as the IPO is over.


An escrow has much more to lose by losing their reputation than they have to win by stealing people's funds. We made sure to pick an escrow group that is involved in many projects and wants to keep on doing it professionally, knowing they will lose all their future business if they sabotage their trust ratings.




As for the proof, Spark has a « genesis cloud » with the id 0, you will be able to trace all transactions emitted from this Spark Cloud. 

We can provide a public list of all transactions ids, since it is not possible to follow Spark transactions without knowing their ID (fully anonymous cryptocurrency). Once you know the ID though, you can verify that each transaction did indeed happen, and check that the genesis wallet has 0 balance remaining.

If there is demand for it, we will provide this list after launch.



Concerning any further inquiries, we will drop by here as often as possible, but prefessional, family, and social life get in the way sometimes.



                           

To have a way to ward away trolls, flooders, and advertisers who would want to take advantage of our thread.

We do not delete any negative criticism, as we view them as a necessary reaction to anything new. Instead, we will reply to them to point out why we believe they are wrong, and let you and them make up your mind on whether you believe we or them are right.

You can find proof of that in the original thread, which is mostly scam accusations that we left unedited.





You have heavily misunderstood Spark.

100% of Spark's codebase is handmade. We have taken all the ideas that we thought were interesting from other coins, and implemented them ourselves into Spark. Nothing was stolen, nothing was copy pasted.

Innovation is meant to be built upon, and this is what we attempt to do here. If someone in the future takes Spark's ideas and builds upon them to do something better, we would be proud of it and applaud them.




Of course !

WTFPL licence, you will be free to do what you please with the codebase without asking us first. Read more: http://www.wtfpl.net/







Think of Spark clouds as blocks, since the concept is similar. Instead of being inserted in a blockchain, they are generated individually, and only kept by the nodes which have used them for transactions, instead of having a copy stored by everyone.

It is also important to know that there is a « Main cloud » which contains a registry of which transaction happened in which Spark cloud. There will be a copy of this main cloud on each Spark node. We took inspiration from the way the Electrum bitcoin wallet works.

When someone needs info about a particular transaction which is in a Spark cloud that he does not have a copy of, the Spark protocol will perform the following actions:
- Query a random node on the network to know in which cloud his transaction ID is stored (the node knows from its Main cloud copy)
- Query other random nodes to verify that the information is true (as it is possible to carry false information on a decentralized network)
- If a node carries false information, it will be flagged as unreliable. More than 2 unreliable ratings in a 1h timespan and the node is considered forked and will automatically resync its data from the other nodes.
- Query all nodes on the network to know which ones carry a copy of the cloud that contains the transaction ID
- Reliability check, flag nodes that carry wrong info, etc
- Download the cloud that contains the transaction required
- Depending on client settings, keep or discard the cloud that was downloaded once the transaction is checked

The whole process is extremely quick, as all those operations are done almost simultaneously.


As you will understand from reading this, the network relies heavily on its nodes to keep the information trustworthy. However, due to the concept of Lightning bolt transactions, and the need for commercial entities to have a functional network, we believe that enough people will run nodes to keep the network safe and decentralized. Any attempt at forking will get flagged at bad nodes, and no client will use the incorrect nodes until they have the correct data.

Upon launch, we will provide 8 nodes in Europe, 4 nodes in the USA, and 5 nodes in Asia. The first version of the Spark client will be set by default to run as node, therefore building up our network. Once we have enough people willing to run nodes, we will distribute the client in the default mode that discards clouds once done. This can be toggled easily in the client settings.

With enough nodes, the only thing the Spark network would be weak to is a false flag attack, where healthy nodes would get flagged as unhealthy. To prevent this, we have set up a system that should work in theory, works in testnet, but needs to be tested on a much wider scale to know whether it works properly. Basically, a flagged node will get peer reviewed by other nodes to make sure the flags are legitimate and not a sabotage act against this particular act or the network. If the node passes peer review, it will lose its flags and be able to continue working normally.

There is of course an incentive for people to run nodes, the ability to be able to recieve Lightning bolt transactions, thus eliminating the need for a third party centralized payment processor to do near instant transactions.


I know this is a lot of information to process, and our team is sadly graphically impaired enough to not be able to make an easy visual representation of the whole process.

A full documentation on clients and nodes comes with the Spark client, it should clear up the confusion.





Just like any other cryptocurrency out there, it relies on its users, and is fully decentralized. With no mining, we rely fully on nodes to keep the network alive and healthy and to make sure there are always copies of every cloud somewhere. The no mining model was adopted after seeing that it works just fine for Nextcoin. We took it a step further by making it a decentralized network that does not require a blockchain, thus giving the average user much more ease.






There is minimal cryptography involved, indeed. Many things however are hashed in Spark, mostly for integrity checks. There are cryptographic hashes on transactions, spark clouds, node flags, etc.

We however agree that the term decentralized currency fits more than cryptocurrency. It's a different direction for the same concept.










We will be using a public third party escrow to do all the collecting and distribution for us. At no point in the process will we touch the bitcoins or the Sparks that are invested/given out.

If it is a scam, it sure is a very elaborate one.





A few months ago, we read this (and other similar things), and decided that we should not use proof of work: http://pando.com/2013/12/16/bitcoin-has-a-dark-side-its-carbon-footprint/

We however agree that 100% IPO is not a good idea either. We tried to look into a fair distribution method, and could not find a single one that gave no one an advantage. Here is what we looked into and why we discarded it:
- Proof of work (mining) would be supporting a concept that we want to disappear. We want Spark to be eco friendly.
- Requiring a proof of identity and giving a fixed amount to each unique person can be cheated on (fake passports, borrowing passports, etc.). Besides, this kills the whole anonymity thing.
- Doing giveaways puts too much power in our hands, and it is very easy to cheat on giveaways to get as much of them as possible.
- Opening faucets makes them cheatable, it is easy to change your ip an infinite amount of times (or just use a botnet) and run the faucet dry.

We had thought of other methods that I do not remember right now, but none of them satisfied us. Besides, the IPO method lets us build a marketing fund through our escrow with the collected bitcoins, which gives us a chance to promote Spark very heavily as soon as it is released. This makes investors winners, as they not only get their money's worth of Spark, but they also get free promotion for the currency that they are now a stakeholder of.





How does one premine what can not be mined?

The cryptocurrency userbase is too heavily focused on mining, and sees everything from a mining point of view. As discussed above, we agree that IPOs are bad, but we also think that mining is even worse, as it has real life consequences.

Besides, mining, just like IPOs or buying on the market, is a way for the rich to get richer. We do not buy the concept that mining puts everyone on the same level, as investing ASICs and GPU farms gives a pretty massive advantage on the mining market.

After looking at Nextcoin, we are confident that the market will adjust itself and that Sparks will be fairly distributed as soon as people start « dumping » their shares.

We'd like to share this very interesting graph that we found about Nextcoin's distribution, since we will be using a similar model : http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/818/9098/original.jpg





You are completely right, after looking at it, the 10 month distribution serves no purpose at all, and makes you trust us / the escrow service much more than you should have to. We have changed this plan, and all Sparks will be given right away to the concerned parties once the IPO is over.

As for an IPO cap, we simply have no idea how much is a good idea. We'd rather leave it open and see what happens.




We are sorry, we would have liked to do that, but the best way to make an IPO as « fair » as possible is to have people be aware of it. The more people know about the coin before the IPO starts, the less people will be scorned by not having heard of Spark before it was too late.







If you do not trust us because we decided to remain anonymous, we will undertsand it.

Anonimity is, for us, the one most important thing about cryptocurrencies. The true freedom to do whatever we want with our wallets and money without having anyone being able to trace us.

All three of the Spark developers work both professionally and personally on security and anonimity related projects, and believe that in the wake of current geopolitical events, anonimity is a very important concern. Whether you are a first world citizen concerned with the NSA issues, or a third world citizen trying to evade your government's grasp on currency, you need anonimity more than you think you do.

We are what we preach, and, as of such, will remain anonymous. I don't see people complaining about Satoshi or Sunny King being anonymous (which is a good thing), and we opted to do the same.

In the event that we stop supporting Spark, the community will be able to take over very easily, as the project will be open sourced in a public repository. There is no « premine » for us to dump, it would be extremely silly to distance ourselves from Spark right away after 4 months of hard work on it. Spark is our baby, and we'll help it grow into an adult.





The developer that came with the idea for Spark has worked on a previously unsuccessful, generic, and boring altcoin. Said altcoin is currently traded on Cryptsy. He is not proud of it.

The other two developers have no past experience in cryptocurrency, but were able to learn the trade quite fast.

We dislike the « coin » naming of every new currency these days, it would have hurt us to call our currency a coin when it is not physical.

A new cryptocurrency will be unveiled soon.

It will not be a fork of anything that already exists.

It is developed by a team that knows what they are doing.

It is full of new ideas.

A new generation.




In order to make the announcement next week, I have to prepare an account on bitcointalk. For that, I need to post this thread to make sure the account works and I can post.

See you soon in the altcoins section