My dad has been curious why I'm always hooked on to the computer reading about something called Bitcoin.
I'm from India. In our country Bitcoin is banned. So to him Bitcoin is a dark technology. He's concerned I might be moving to the dark side.

So I decided I should probably tell him things I've learnt in complete layman terms.
He doesn't understand any computer science. He doesn't know what a hash is.

I wish I had something I could share with him to help him understand.

In the end I decided to make one myself.

After much deliberation, I've gathered courage to share it with you guys too - if there's someone in your circles who'd want to learn Bitcoin from scratch without the jargon.

Here's the link : https://madhavan.nity.app/bitcoin-course-2dc/bitcoin-course---season-1-f6a

It's paid, but costs only $3. Just to cover my costs. I hope you don't mind.

I'd love to hear your feedback on this.

Also, i'll be grateful if you could spread the word too

Lots of love!

Hi,
I have been working on a project in which i needed my users to login with an Ethereum address so that i am able to map the users with their corresponding Ethereum Address. I needed to do this in a way that there are no transaction fees involved and such that they don't have to be tied to a certain device with MetaMask.

So i built Dauth (https://dauth.co) which is similar to OAuth, but i tried to keep the architecture as opely decentralizable as i could.

I'd love to hear feedback on this.

A blog post i wrote on the same topic : https://medium.com/madhavanmalolan/login-with-ethereum-e6dbd408d46c

And, no this isn't an ICO. 

What are the economic incentives for the participants who run a Lightning node?

I am aware that there are over a 1000 nodes at this point, will this hold even after the novelty dies down?

What is in it for the people who maintain such huge (?) nodes, and locking up their own funds?

Bitcoin, Ethereum and the like have their own way to add coins in circulation through mining rewards. This keeps the economics (inflation vs liquidity) in balance.
How do altcoins/ERC-20s introduce coins in circulation?
The ones that i have seen either have a fixed supply or are minted by a central authority.

What are the best practises for introducing more coins? What are the market/economic dynamics one should be aware of before making this decision?
Are you aware of some coins that have an innovative approach on this?

Its been a while since we've been seeing ICOs happening.

Are there some guidelines one can come up with to reach out to the community and get them to participate in the ICO?

The most solid compilation that i have got to date is this :
https://medium.com/@mccannatron/guide-to-launching-an-initial-coin-offering-ico-94587af2c8d5

But this doesn't talk about how to make sure you are able to reach out to the potential investors for your ICO.

I know this is a very vague quesetion, but, any leads on this?

I am aware that you have to look for technical completeness/soundness and also look for a good team.

I am curious how do you evaluate a white paper on those guidelines?
How do you check if the project is sound from a technical standpoint, what are the elements you look for?
How do you validate a good team?

Most of the whitepapers i see are more business plan than technical details.
I am looking for blockchains that base themselves on truely innovative technology, for that is when i think an alt coin actually has any value.

The only 4 good technical whitepapers i have come across are
1. Bitcoin ofcourse http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
2. Ethereum https://ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/paper.pdf
3. Filecoin http://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf
4. Orchid Protocol http://orchidprotocol.com/whitepaper.pdf

Is there any other blockchain that presents a whitepaper of their tech, and not management?

If there is what are the things you look for before investing in such projects? What do you look for in the papers?


Keenly looking for some help!
Many thanks, in advance

It is possible to provide services in exchange for cryptocurrencies.
In a marketplace, there is always a scope of a scam. (Buyer underpaying or seller overcharging)

Some examples are
1. Orchid Protocol (decentralized selling of bandwidth) allows leechers to underpay, but mitigates the larger malice by requiring every user of the network to stake some coins before enabling any transaction. This reduces the number of people who will be able to perform leeching by means of a sybil attack. https://medium.com/@gustav.simonsson/you-describe-a-viable-dos-leeching-attack-1cf01436974b

2. OpenBazaar (decentralized Ebay) maintains a thread of scammers and a set of moderators who do some basic validation. This does allow a cheap adversary to make some quick money by "selling" something and never shipping it. https://www.openbazaar.org/scam-prevention/

What are some other examples of marketplace related dynamics to avoid buyer-seller scams from happening?

Hello,
I am referring to the orchid protocol as defined in the paper here : https://orchidprotocol.com/whitepaper.pdf

The paper does mention a way to make probabilistic micro payments, but what is the amount that is to be paid?
If a relay node is to bill the customer based on number of packets relayed, how does the billing occur?
Does the relay node issue a bill by monitoring the data that it is relaying? If yes, how does it protect the customer from a malicious node that over charges?

In other words, how does the customer pay for exactly what she/he is using?

The protocol is lovely and i'd love to see it implemented soon!

Cheers!