::State of Sexcoin Address:With trade reopening on Livecoin together with the fact that we have achieved our goal of obtaining TeraHashes of work on the Sexcoin's blockchain, I think its time to bring everyone up to speed on the state of the coin.
As many of you are aware, in August of last year our blockchain came under a concerted attack of a magnitude which overwhelmed honest mining. This resulted in successful double-spending and block replacement of legitimately mined blocks. The main reason behind the attack was not so much to screw Sexcoin, but to cause trade accounts on exchanges to become out-of-balance. In this way the perpetrators were able to sell Sexcoin and withdraw Bitcoin. Then, send the same Sexcoin again, sell them again and again withdraw Bitcoin. This left any exchange unable to detect the out-of-balance condition or the block-replacement underfunded on the Sexcoin side. Something that may be difficult to understand is that the blockchain was vulnerable because of a lack of mining support - not because of a flaw in the Sexcoin code. The blockchain worked as advertised, as did the Sexcoin client.
During one of the attacks we were notified by an Exchange that there was something amiss with the blockchain. At that time we notified all other exchanges trading SexCoin and advised them to freeze trading until we could find out what was happening. Most exchanges responded rapidly. We later confirmed that there were at least 3 very large block reorganizations of over 500+ blocks. At that point, we knew that the attacks were successful. These attacks also revealed that the blockchain would continue to be vulnerable until it had sufficient mining support. We had very little evidence where the attack actually came from - and still don't.
The Sexcoin community had been in discussion about how to deal with the mining issue since the attacks last year. Because we had already been in discussions the SexCoin Core Team were already heavily leaning toward implementing merge-mining. But, we had not made a final decision. Many other solutions still had merit - there were some very strong supporters of switching to POS and also some strong support for an algo switch or multi-algo. Doing a coin-swap to token based was very appealing because of the user-base many of those chains had.
We notified the community, and began working on implementing merge-mining and segwit. Why?
- We wanted to continue to be a POW coin.
- As such, we felt MM (merge-mining) to be the best way to join a larger community, that community being scrypt mining.
- Sexcoin did not want to have to rely on another coin's blockchain entirely. If that blockchain went belly-up it would take us with it. MM gives us the flexibility to be mined with ANY scrypt coin. So, if one coin fails, Sexcoin can be MM'd with whichever one is garnishing support. And, who knows? Sexcoin could also be the one helping secure the others!
- Sexcoin wants to be able to participate in atomic coin-swaps.
- Sexcoin wants to be capable of taking advantage of other merchant services that are evolving.
In many ways this is a sad time for us. As a POW coin, we very much wanted to make participation in mining available to small miners. The avenues available to acheive that goal carried with them too many pitfalls. MM does have its downsides, but we believe the problems that accompany MM are more managable.
Some very good things have come out of these recent events which have forced sexcoin to take position on a few issues that are relevent to the larger crypto-community:
Firstly: We are taking the position that scrypt mining is a good thing. But, that dividing the global scrypt power is not. We would encourage other scrypt coins to implement merge-mining. By dividing the global scrypt power, we weaken the entire system. It is better to cooperate to secure all the scrypt chains. We envision a system where all scrypt power is used to secure all scrypt coins.
Secondly: We are going to make every effort to get on decentralized exchange platforms. We are not saying centralized exchanges are bad - there are some very excellent ones that we are on and they have all done a great deal for Sexcoin. They also have proven to be instrumental in helping us deal with block-chain issues because they have a dedicated team to monitor, detect and react to blockchain issues. For this fact, they are essential. Our push to get on decentralized exchanges is an acknowledgment of this simple fact: The history of exchanges is that they are fantastic, until they are not! PhoenixEx, CoinEx, Cryptsy, Yobit all performed admirably until they experienced devastating attacks, or succumbed to greed, or just turned into plain assholes. When whatever event happened, all Sexcoin users lost coins. I think it would be excessively naive to say it would never happen again. I have personally lost coins in each of these meltdowns as have other members of the SexCoin Core Team.
Thirdly: Segwit is a good thing. But not for the reasons people are currently supporting it. Segwit opens up the possibility of different ways of exchanging coins in a way that coordinates with the blockchain. I do not think the potential has been successfully tapped yet. (But the possibilities are exciting!)
Forthly: Sexcoin still holds the vision of an eco-system that does not rely on exchanges. We want sexcoin to be able to be USED as currency with exchanges being merely an extra service should a holder decide to convert. This was our original vision and that has not changed! We want to see couples purchasing sex toys and go on swingers' vacations. We want to see Cam-girls purchasing outfits with sexcoin and event organizers accepting sexcoin. ( Think Mardi Gras or Nudes-a-poppin ... "Ladies Can I tip you?" - "Sure, here's my Andriod QR Code for Sexcoin!"). We want to see resorts purchasing sex furniture while the craftsmen use SexCoin as their preferred medium of exchange. We want to see providers accepting sexcoin. Not to convert to fiat, but because of the amount of value that it represents.
We are very encouraged to see merge-mining gathering support. With a sustained 4 Terahashes on the network we can have confidence in the blockchain. The dev team is working hard to secure some balancing hashpower.
We are also about a week away from releasing sexcore-sexcoin, which will allow some very interesting merchant services. After that the Adroid client will be updated.
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