Sorry, I was incorrect when I said that Idris/Agra produce false negatives, I should have said that given a statement, the result can be undecidable whether it is valid or not.

Yes, the proof process taking too long is what I was getting at. So, you're talking about restricting the input so that the constructed statement considering the prior state and intput should be able to be determined valid or not within a reasonable period of time, correct?  

I'm trying to understand why restricting the possible input so nodes are able to process them all is better than just allowing the nodes to just reject inputs that can't be processed in a reasonable  time period (or in the case of undecidable languages causes the statement to be undecidable). My guess is that each individual node has their own internal state, which means that a scenario could exist where some nodes view an input as valid, others view it as undecidable, (or undecidable given a reasonable amount of processing time), and if that statement was part of a tau block chain it would cause a fork, which wouldn't be easy to reconcile. Is this the reason, or is it something else?

So then you are attempting to build tau with the following properties:

1. Uses a consistent, decidable logic
2. Has input restrictions that prevent a statement that is too complex from being accepted.
3. Has a prover that can take a statement derived by any input that passes the restriction in 2 and any internal state, and test for validity in a reasonable period of time.

Is this correct?

If so, then I'm curious about 3. Is it possible to prove that a prover can do this? If not, won't it be possible for Tau one day to be vulnerable to inputs that pass its restrictions but when combined with the internal state of a node still cause the prover to take too long?

Yes, but if a malicious actor attempts to add a rule to the system which, within the context of the system, can only be determined valid after an inordinate period of time, wouldn't this be a problem for a MSOL based Tau? It would be, for all intents and purposes, be undecidable, correct?

An undecidable system, such as Idris/Agra has false negatives (a valid program is not accepted), but not false positives (an invalid program is accepted), correct?

So, both systems, for all intents and purposes, have a false negative problem. When using Idris/Agra and the user inputs a program that is undecidable, the user is just asked to clarify. Similarly, it would seem, if after a certain period of processing, validity can't be determined by MSOL based Tau, then it would also need to ask the user to clarify, or reject the rule outright.

I don't know if I'm talking to anybody at this point, but the discussion with HMC and Ohad brings up the following questions:

1. Ohad seems to think that all proofs must be automatic for Tau to prevent malicious actors from attacking Tau. Couldn't the rules of the P2P nodes just require a proof of certain properties to be handed along with the rules for them to be acceptable? Be solvable in a certain amount of cycles using a given Resoner?

A general proof system that can solve all proofs automatically and quickly seems like a tall order. I mean without including the whole distributed computing P2P part of it, such a system would seem to be a major advance over what we have currently with Idris, coq and others.

Yes, the alternatives described would also work with a Turing-complete language, as well, but so what if it did? If using MLTT or MSOL isn't substantially better than a Turing-complete language, then a Turing complete language should be used.

2. Just because MSOL can be solved automatically, this doesn't mean it can be done quickly enough to be useful in Tau, isn't it? I mean that if it takes an exponential amount of time to automatically solve a question proposed in MSOL (and it seems from what I'm read that it is N-EXPTIME), then it might as well be true that some expressions aren't solvable in MSOL, right? And if that is the case, you have the very same problems of MLTT.

I think they're both protecting their ego. They are probably flaws in both ideas.

I noticed the work has slowed down according to the commit log (last commit July 5th): https://github.com/naturalog/tauchain/graphs/commit-activity

Have you guys taken your work out of public view? Are you still working on optimizing the compiler?

Thanks.

Ah, great. Thanks

It would be nice if the dev team would consider uploading their progress to the github repository, https://github.com/naturalog/tauchain . It's been nearly four months since the source has been updated.

Also, could someone explain why the coding is being done privately now? For anyone thinking of helping out,  it makes it difficult to evaluate whether he/she the skills to do so.

But wouldn't that leave room for a test network? A test network wouldn't require the best possible performance, and the code (logic? I'm not sure what to call the stuff that makes up the Tau network) should run as is on production once you get there, right? And that way, you could assign the creation of the code running on Tau off to some other people, because it would be mostly orthogonal, isn't it? And also, people could independently try and improve your engine/create their own, since they'd have a baseline to run theirs against.

You've been working on that for a long time. Have you considered working on the actual code to bootstrap Tau first, and come back to this later?

I know that when building something as complex as a new language, and pieces have to work together, but once you have the code that the Tau engine will compile, it will be a lot easier to create an efficient compiler, "A plan never survives first contact with the enemy", "Make it work, make it right, make it fast" and all that...

Also, having something to show, as slow and imperfect as it may be, would do well for getting the message out and help you raise funds. This as well as the effect on the community and helping draw smart people to be involved in the product, which I would expect to be invaluable...

This is a little tool for helping with capital gain calculation for crypto currencies. It uses ledger-cli.org style account books and spits out a csv file like the following:

Short term Trades
Shares	Symbol	Buy Date	Sell Date	Sell Price	Buy Price	Gain	Running Total Gain	Refs
XXX	FOO	2015-10-22	2015-10-22	XXX	XXX	XXX	XXX	S: bittrex.dat:43 foo.dat:44 B: foo_adj.dat:7
XXX	FOO	2015-10-22	2015-10-22	XXX	XXX	XXX	XXX	S: foo_adj.dat:7 B: foo_adj.dat:7
XXX	BTC	2015-09-27	2015-10-25	XXX	XXX	XXX	XXX	S: poloniex_adj.dat:10 B: bittrex.dat:55
…
Long term Trades
Shares	Symbol	Buy Date	Sell Date	Sell Price	Buy Price	Gain	Running Total Gain	Refs
XXX	BTC	2013-09-01	2015-04-29	XXX	XXX	XXX	XXX	S: electrum_wallet1.dat:7-17 B: btc-e.dat:39
XXX	BTC	2013-09-01	2015-08-12	XXX	XXX	XXX	XXX	S: electrum_wallet1.dat:24 kraken.dat:8-38 B: btc-e.dat:39
XXX	BTC	2013-09-01	2015-08-19	XXX	XXX	XXX	XXX	S: electrum_wallet1.dat:33 B: btc-e.dat:39
…
Remaining balances:
Shares	Symbol	Buy Date	Buy Price	Refs
XXX	AUG	2015-08-19	XXX	electrum_wallet1.dat:33
XXX	TAU	2015-08-21	XXX	masterxchange.dat:1
XXX	TAU	2015-08-31	XXX	masterxchange.dat:6
…

The "Refs" column pointa to the file number, line number(s) of the individual ledger posting used, so it's easy to track what this program does. Each line shows the "S", sale, and "B", buy of the coin, and intra-day entries are combined. For example, on line 1, bittrex.dat:43 means the bittrex.dat ledger file, line 43, and an example ledger entry might be:

2015-10-22 12:45:01 * Trade
   Assets:bittrex           XXX BTC
   Assets:bittrex           -XXX FOO


WARNING: I just added a large portion to this for ledger and multi crypto currency support and am the only user as far as I know, so there may be bugs lurking. This is GNU licensed.

You can get it here: https://github.com/redfish64/bitcoin-tax-calculator

I had a dream about the regression theory in reverse.

In the dream, a sheep befriended me and magically teleported us to the end of universe. It was dark and empty.

“Heat death, baaa,” it bleated, “is the end of the universe. Your money is no good here. There is no energy to expend.. nothing can be accomplished no matter how much you want to give. Baaaa….”

The sheep then pulled out a watch it carried in its fur, looked at it for an instance and snapped it shut. The scene subtly changed, just slightly. “A moment before the last. Your money is no good here. In a moment it will be useless… if I take it now, I cannot spend it in the future, therefore it is useless now. Baaaaa.”

The sheep took out its watch, and again we went back a moment, and it repeated, “Baaaa, in moment your money will be useless. I won’t be able to spend your money in the future, therefore its useless now.”

And again and again, we did so, going back one moment in time, each time the sheep repeated the line. I was getting dizzy, so I said “Enough!”

It transported me back to the present, and said “All your kinds of money is useless one moment in the future, therefore it useless now!”

--

Is it possible that one day when there are automated agents in Tau, if I can prove something like "All money is worthless" to one of them, then I would be able to trade it a tiny sliver of computation time for all the wealth that it controls?

Could other bugs of logic similar to this exist in Tau?

I wonder what the Neucoin team thinks mining is buying them.

They are paying 164304 Neucoin per day to the miners, who just dump it on the market.

Each block that's mined has so such a small internal trust value that it can be wiped out on a whim (as shown by this latest fiasco), so its not helping with security at all. In fact, it hurts it because if people using Neucoin don't know the difference between PoW and PoS blocks, they won't realize that having 100 PoW confirmations of their transaction means nothing.

If they are aware of it, they certainly aren't playing it that way. Arcansis still wasn't convinced after I explained it to him on the neucoin forum.

Here is another issue:

Neucoin decided to put cold minting in, but did you ever wonder where they got the original code? (Of course they didn't write it themselves)

Here:

https://github.com/sigmike/peercoin/commit/8df4a0360f3917e042cc0185dc39ed894c9f4148

Which is in an offshoot commit created over a year ago and has never been merged into Peercoin.

There is nothing about it in the whitepaper or anywhere to show they even considered the security implications of doing this.

For instance, if people start cold minting regularly, and begin to share each other's cold minting private keys to help each other mint, and an attacker can find these cold minting keys online and gather over 51% of network's hash power with them, he can then execute a double spend, or anything else.

Some more sloppy work from them.

The reason it splits if it's under the time limit is that:
* block.GetBlockTime() is actually the time the UTXO was staked.
* txNew.nTime is close to the current time

So as long as the current time is less than the time the UTXO was staked plus STAKE_SPLIT_AGE, then it's split.


I think it's just rather confusing code. I thought the same thing you did at first.

This just shows their incompetence.

Here's another issue:

http://forum.neucoin.org/t/interesting-tidbits-learned-from-reading-neucoins-source-code/1640/5?u=timengler

If you want to see this in action, look here:

http://www.neucoin.io/transaction/d5c8a3496eb8340130e6c1fcd3c04f57634b9f69a398db0d226f460fcd9f7aea

and keep clicking on "Previous output". You'll notice the staking amounts have been splitting in half after every stake.

Which means the amount of interest Neucoin is getting is slowing down. Every time this happens, their UTXO's get smaller and take longer to stake. Eventually they'll lose most of their compounding effect, and will have around 45 days of unclaimed interest in their mega account that will disappear as soon as they try to make a transfer from it. I tried to explain this to them in that thread, but it seems they can't quite grasp the concept.

Another sign that their technical team today isn't really up to the task.

IMO it's because Neucoin likes to lock people into an investment, so they can't say anything negative without knowing they are hurting their own chances for success. Anyone who signed up for the growth account has shutup and smile for the next 3 months, and that's how the Neucoin team likes it.

That's also why they won't update the neucoin-qt client. They want everyone using the growth account for the lock in.

It reminds me of the multi level marketing/pyramid scams that go around from time to time. Once you buy into it, if you say anything about how you're losing money, failing to get other people involved, etc., then you are just hurting your chances to get others signed up underneath you. So everyone involved has this weird fake plastic smile, while they all sell their souls on the inside.

Hi, I've begun work on a PoS alt coin with the following features:

1. A pool of coins is collected and grows in value with each block.
2. Anyone can create a poll to spend from from the pool. The other users can then vote with their coins yea or nea.
3. Anyone can create a poll to upgrade the official client to a new version based on an md5sum. If enough votes are yea, then the official client will prompt the user to upgrade to the new client.
4. Anyone create a non-binding poll to gather information from the other coin owners. A question such as, "Would you support changing the PoS interest rate to X?" could be asked.

The point of #4 is to get ideas for 2 and 3.

The idea is that the coin can morph into anything. If people like proof of work better, it can become proof of work. If they want ethereum style turing complete scripting language features, they can ask someone to port it and pay for it with the money from the pool. If they want a commercial on the super bowl and the pool has enough funds, they can do that, etc.

I'm thinking of doing this with a single coin premine just to get started, and maybe 10 coins or so in the pool, and then vote the coin into other peoples' hands. I could go proof of work to start out with for the first few blocks, if people think that's more fair.

I'm still working out the details, but I don't want to duplicate work that's already been done.

Does anyone know of any other alt coin that does this? Thoughts?

Oh alright, lol. Don't ask for specifics, right? I guess we'll all have to trust you as a position of authority about how I "introduce weird calculation" and the there is "math" I "dont seem to comprehend".

What "math" do I not comprehend? What "weird calculation"? Again, did you even bother to look at anything I did? Can you even understand it?

Geez, man... harsh. What does it matter how many changes I made to the README? I was tasked with learning how the code worked, what it did, and accomplish my task all at the same time. And yes, I was also learning how to use git and how to interface with github, too (I also didn't know how github displays README's in general. They're preview functionality kind of sucks). I just did it as a hack so I could mint effectively, and thought it would be nice to share.

And that commit message was before I was even considering releasing it to the public.

I noticed you didn't bring up anything about the changes I did implement. Did you even look at them? Read the README, where I go through the specific details on how to mint effectively? Most of the work actually was reading the code and figuring out exactly how Neucoin/Peercoin worked, which I was by no means an expert on before I started this. Doing all of that in the time I did so I could get ready to mint from day 1 was actually a pretty good accomplishment.

What's your goal here? Why'd you want to see my code if all you're going to do is tear apart the superficial stuff without taking a look at what I did do?