Mi è arrivata ieri questa mail da Kraken, a quanto pare vogliono quotarsi sul mercato e vendere titoli dell'azienda stessa, il che potrebbe essere molto meglio della mossa che hanno fatto altri exchange (ovvero raccogliere fondi rifilandoti i loro inutili tokens):

We have partnered with Bnk to the Future to create a rare, but limited opportunity for both large and small investors to own shares of Kraken stock. On May 20th, Bnk to the Future will offer preferred shares of Kraken stock to registered users on their platform. Preferred shares of Kraken stock can be purchased until June 20th, with a minimum investment of only $1,000.

Interested clients should register an account (If you do not have one already) with Bnk to the Future at https://bnktothefuture.com. If you already have an account with Bnk to the Future, please visit the offering page at: https://bnktothefuture.com/pitches/kraken/landing. Once registered, the Bnk to the Future platform will guide you through the investment process, including steps for compliance verification and accreditation. Any questions on the registration process can be answered at https://bnktothefuture.com/support.

We will continue to look for ways to democratize access to our equity, allowing more of our valued clients to become valued investors.

Thank you for choosing Kraken, the most trusted and secure digital asset exchange.

The Kraken Team

è valutata 4 miliardi di $ mi sembra un po tanto voi cosa ne pensate? 

All using the same twitter account to abuse bounties:

https://twitter.com/tinyan007

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2370294
http://archive.is/QfJrr

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1371446
http://archive.is/MO1k0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1026959
http://archive.is/C8lap

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2233586
http://archive.is/soZY7

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2261064
http://archive.is/wzD1T

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2203418
http://archive.is/xjzYe

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1829033
http://archive.is/GHw4t

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1825143
http://archive.is/WEbje

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2183928
http://archive.is/ch6tD

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2385422
http://archive.is/V2Jaw

Just posting this for the reference while tagging them

[It seems there are double entries for some users so the results are not accurate indeed]

It seems there are double entries for some users so the results are not accurate indeed


These were found using this tool with the Ironx bounty campaign spreadsheet (signature and twitter)
This campaign require a proof of autenticantion so those ethereum addresses in the spreadsheets are without doubt owned by the people indicated there.

While I cannot be 100% sure these are all abusers, here you can see the whole results:
https://albertoit.github.io/DataCampaign/Ironx/index.html


These are the top results i checked and from what i see, it leaves little doubt (there are direct links to the user bitcointalk profiles connected, provided in the bottom of each page):

Maratouyt12 Users connected: 20 Transactions: 31 Address: 0xf5eaa7513087982eb496c237ec31334924fa2fb2
Irinagoduna1 Users connected: 14 Transactions: 23 Address: 0x847ca2fc14c7b18e1d66f1de34b3911c21125272
Allortvaser Users connected: 7 Transactions: 7 Address: 0x95f68a4bb074a022556fad73ea3eab7c987c4e0b
flyer88 Users connected: 7 Transactions: 86 Address: 0x8ede1dbeecde0ae2859f9735ca0470c8210c0e0c
shiv06 Users connected: 6 Transactions: 15 Address: 0x3761365429599ca7a2ea7cbd5a795ab796fa5183
madfox11 Users connected: 6 Transactions: 83 Address: 0x55515edbe90d7d8f29de195e13d02bb43f9ee8f0
Casabrandy Users connected: 6 Transactions: 67 Address: 0xaaeeda078acf2e037fff742c564dc11eba815b7f
ahyadinnn Users connected: 5 Transactions: 27 Address: 0x84d547a3d8f70857801ea98654df62258d5ea3ae
Pelegrini Users connected: 5 Transactions: 55 Address: 0x822d9cd5b86391cdb5e4743089b8cc9f964195bf
freemind1 Users connected: 5 Transactions: 6 Address: 0x8d25806367854781767728ec23e9d2d9cf13a9e6
oldminer78 Users connected: 3 Transactions: 11 Address: 0x52683d2a38676de03d1029cdae1f2729473b8b7f
Engok Users connected: 3 Transactions: 56 Address: 0xc4437d1c0d9e0a9e935cf31a5e36df9d51be21ef,0x3a2adca35b8b6c60d4d5503971ca16aba5e4c416
Hawaian Users connected: 3 Transactions: 50 Address: 0xf78e198188c10c666cc71a6456e0d7d26cdfb29b
Nat_cha Users connected: 3 Transactions: 12 Address: 0x32241d580b55a3d926ac8149ec42c58e4c76a997
Nakkal Users connected: 3 Transactions: 7 Address: 0xc158394af351906e21dc78d8a840ce8e2af2f827


These in particular are all heroes/legendaries (some already red trusted for other reasons)
https://albertoit.github.io/DataCampaign/Ironx/Details/246683.html

Code:

Pelegrini
madfox11
oldminer78
ahyadinnn
Casabrandy
freemind1
flyer88

Since i took part in this campaign and there would be clearly a conflict of interest if i start tagging, i would leave the final decision to somebody else

The bounty manager is aware of the situation.
[/s]

This is a hacked account trying to lure people to run exe or questionable code from those links, please ban the account and delete those messages, they were already spammed all over the boards:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=222884;sa=showPosts

[2.481.270]

December data is available here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mGEk6V3c_D-IhSYbuJvPrGGVEWLb0V8L

There is both raw data and the SQL Lite DB. There are now 2.481.270 users in it and about 44.206 new users since the last run.

Since from time to time people get interested in having all user data available for different purposes, but they don’t know how to scrape it or they scrape each time their own (and can take a really long time to do it), i thought i would do it and share the data with everybody.
We had already some great thread showing different kind of stories and aspects of users over time, i’m sure somebody will come up with something new we have't seen so far (this contain also a fresh snapshot of the trust details of all users) or can simply be useful to update own user data.

The data was taken between the 3th and 8th of November, there are 2.437.064 users.

This is the table and data available for each user in the database, which you can use to run your query as per example below:

Code:

TABLE UserData(
UserId Integer PRIMARY KEY,
UserName TEXT,
Trust TEXT,
Merit Integer,
Posts Integer,
Activity Integer,
Rank TEXT,
DateRegistered Integer,
LastActive Integer,
ICQ TEXT,
AIM TEXT,
MSN TEXT,
YIM TEXT,
Email TEXT,
Website TEXT,
Bitcoinaddress TEXT,
Gender TEXT,
Age TEXT,
Location TEXT,
LastUpdatedData Integer
);

You can download the data here, both db and raw(db is about 366MB): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1l0xz1OC4mc3FvXzX18scSbSTzsnUkD4f

Here is a brief description of the necessary step to use the database:

Download the Precompiled Binaries for your favourite platform here (we just need the sqlite3):
https://www.sqlite.org/download.html

"A bundle of command-line tools for managing SQLite database files, including the command-line shell program, the sqldiff program, and the sqlite3_analyzer program."

If you want to know more in detail how to use Sqlite3 directly: https://www.sqlite.org/cli.html

Example for usage under Windows platform, from command line:

Put the database, scripts and the sqlite3.exe in the same folder and you have everything you need to start:

Query.bat file:

Code:

sqlite3 btctalk_full.db < CommandsQuery.txt

CommandsQuery.txt:

Code:

.mode csv
.separator "\t"
.output ResultQuery.csv
SELECT * FROM UserData WHERE Activity > 100 AND LastActive <= '2015-01-01';
.output stdout
.quit

Now from command line call Query.bat and after a bit of crunching you will get the data in the ResultQuery.csv tab separated.

Stavo cercando di capire come funziona il mining dei Vanity address per bitcoin, ho provato a cercare un po come funziona, senza addentrarmi troppo nel codice dei vari programmi che ho trovato, visto che non è banale.

Qui ho trovato un post di arulbero, è fuori contesto, ma si parla di sommare le chiavi private e/o pubbliche per arrivare al pattern cercato ("166"): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84569.msg17299181#msg17299181

Questo mi fa venire dei dubbi e vorrei porre la seguente domanda (spero non stupida): esiste qualche proprietà che suggerisca, una volta sommate le due chiavi pubbliche, otterrò un indirizzo che comincia con "166"?
Quali sono in generale le strategie o proprietà da sfruttare per minare questi indirizzi in maniera efficiente?

[Here is a brief description of the necessary step to use the database:]

Since there is interest in having all the data available on users in relation with the merit system to do all sort of analysis and investigations, i'm releasing in here a full version of the database used for Tool to run online SQL queries over Full Merit Data(which will continue to use a limited subset of user information in order to have a light solution and avoid the database to grow too much)

The data will be updated possibly every one or two weeks, since it's 29k users at the moment and bound to grow.

You can download the latest version of the full database (SQLite database), with few scripts that will help you to extract the data here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1l0QQJl2NcAVwbXz49sSK6X5D1xmXxHlw

Here is a brief description of the necessary step to use the database:

Download the Precompiled Binaries for your favourite platform here (we just need the sqlite3):
https://www.sqlite.org/download.html

"A bundle of command-line tools for managing SQLite database files, including the command-line shell program, the sqldiff program, and the sqlite3_analyzer program."

If you want to know more in detail how to use Sqlite3 directly: https://www.sqlite.org/cli.html

Example for usage under Windows platform, from command line:

Put the database, scripts and the sqlite3.exe in the same folder and you have everything you need to start:

Query.bat file:

Code:

sqlite3 btctalk_full.db < CommandsQuery.txt

CommandsQuery.txt:

Code:

.mode csv
.separator "\t"
.output ResultQuery.csv
SELECT * FROM UserData WHERE Activity > 1000;
.output stdout
.quit

Now from command line call Query.bat and after a bit of crunching you will get the data in the ResultQuery.csv tab separated.

If you just need to update your existing data by adding the trust you can simply substitute the query in CommandsQuery.txt with:

Code:

SELECT Username,Trust FROM UserData;

Each user data row specify when the data was read the last time through the column LastUpdatedData

If you need help or some clarification let me know.

[17/9/2018]

Few considerations about what happened between 17/9 and 21/9, users which got and sent their first merit ever and how they are linked together.

After the new restriction applied on jr. members (17/9) in the merit system, there has been a spike on the merits distribution, part of it is because more merit sources were added and more merits were granted to them, part of it, is what i’m trying to explain in here.

I looked at the number of users which actually started sending merits for the first time ever during the period from 17/9/2018 and 21/9/2018, while being registered in the forum before the introduction of the merit system 24/1/2018 and found out there are 390 users which meets this requirement, which account for 1402 merits sent, about 20.24% of the 6928 sent in that period of time.

If we compare a period of 1 week  antecedent 17/9/2018 and we go back till the starting of the merit system we can actually see 390 is a considerable amount, to see that kind of users we must go back till March when the merit system was relatively new. Moreover just one week before the restrictions, we were in a descending trend with about 95 new merit senders. Have a look here:


On a side note: We can also notice this graph seems to “follow” the merit distribution graph by week, this could be a sign that airdropped merit could still play a big role.


To close the circle we need to find how many of these 390 users sent merit to people which never had merit before (note that in this category can also fall a legendary which never got a merit or any other rank for what can matter, but we can see later who actually was the receiver of these merits). The number of people fitting the profile is 353.

The total number of user that received their first merit was 1691 and of these, 606 were merited by these 353 first timers, for a total of 1207 merits

This is surprising imo, since i was actually not counting on finding these many connections and by putting together all the information provided here it's pretty clear that is not a coincidence in most of these cases.
This make me think about the suggestion to raise the minimum amount required to have a signature to 10 merits or more than the single actual merit. If that ever happen it may be certainly interesting to see how many new users will appear and the number of merits poured in the aftermath, as it clearly an indication that many can bypass it quite easily.


I provide in here a list of the Sender - Receiver and since the merit assigned are still fresh you can actually verify everything is as i said. You can also double check with the full merit history using any of the tool the community made available so far.

This is the couple Sender receiver, with rank(there may be legit people as well in here, everyone is innocent until proven otherwise):
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1l4p3_85bf_OLvnadQSRv9hmjubrJHJ5Q0ejcTHSX_Nc

[STATUS: Up]

STATUS: Up

A list of subscribed users accepting notification will be kept updated automatically in this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023605.msg45324744#msg45324744


Short version:
You can try the new notification system,  based on your preference below set up where you want to be notified. After the registration you will receive a message confirming you are signed up and some basic information.



I want to be notified through PM in the forum:
Send a pm to Maggiordomo by placing in the subject subscribe with something in the body just to be able to send it or, if you want to change the frequency which you will receive the PM notifications you can send this command with a number between 0 and 720, this indicates the delay in minutes which will occur from the first notification before it will be delivered. Is 0 for new people subscribing which, means it will be instant:

Code:

notificationinterval:2

I want to be notified through Telegram:
Important:
Before or after you have registered you need to contact @Maggiordomo_Service_bot on telegram (with the same telegram username used for registering) and just write something to him so he can bind your telegram and forum account togheter.

Send a pm to Maggiordomo by placing in the subject subscribe with in the body:

Code:

telegram:yourTelegramUsername (doesn't matter if with @ or without)

When somebody will type @yourUsername or yourUsername you will get a notification.

You can either get notified through PM or Telegram, never both

Read the commands section to know what else you can do.


What trigger a notification (the " are just there tho show the empty spaces around it):

" @user "

" @user* "

where * is any character, this should fix all the missing notifications where "," "." "?" or anything else is used right after the username.

If @user is in the begin or end of the message will just require an empty space onn the opposite side, all these combinations below works (and also the variant with a random character in the end *):

"@user hello how are you?"

"hello you are @user"  

"hello @user
how are you?"

Working example:

@asche! @actmyname? @Loyce( test ) @babo.

This won't work:

@Halab?, @TomCrypto... @Piggy(test)

Now should work the notification also for all those cases where the names are between tags like these, there can even be some space before or after the username:

Code:

[url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=459836] username [/url]

[b] username[/b]
[i]username [/i]
...

Loyce

TryNinja

BitCryptex


Long version:
I have been working and experimenting with a bot i coded which will ultimately could help to extend the functionality of the forum and provide public services, to start, one of the primary aim is to notify users about somebody mentioning them, using the known @username notation.
This part is almost completed and usable, even though is not well tested yet. I had few users in the Italian section using it and i was able to collect some feedback and fix some of the emerging issues.

Now i would need more people to use it and see if everything holds and what needs to be changed/fixed in order for it to work better.

How the notification works:
Once you are properly set up with the bot and somebody include in his message @YourUsername or YourUsername[/li][/list] you will be notified by the user Maggiordomo, receiving one or more links/short quote to the post where you were mentioned.

These notification are going to be customizable and an option to turn them on/off will be introduced.

If you are not registered, anybody interacting with you will have no effect.

How to interact with the bot and what you can do:

Commands:

• To register: send a PM to the user Maggiordomo with the subject: subscribe and anything in the body. You will receive a PM confirming you are signed up and some basic information.
• To unsubscribe from receiving notification: send a PM to the user Maggiordomo with the subject unsubscribe and something random in the body to be allowed to send it

NEW:
Through a PM while placing in the subject subscribe if you subscribing, or  options if you are already subscribed you can now specify other settings in the body of the message, like this:

Code:

alias:your_alias
tagusername:on
quote:off
plainusername:on
automention:off

in order are:
Alias is another name you can use to get notified when somebody mention it, both with @ or without (based on the settings below)
Tagusername, activates/deactivates notification while being mentioned using @ like @username
Quote, activates/deactivates notification while being quoted
Plainusername,  activates/deactivates notification while your username is being mentioned (without using the @)
Automention,  activates/deactivates notification while your username or alias is being mentioned by you

If none of these options are specified the alias is disabled and the notifications are all on by default.

You can have an alias set and you will get a notification based on your preferences, if there is no other user already registered having that username. Otherwise you won't be notified.

NEW
Telegram notification added

Important:
Before or after you have registered you need to contact @Maggiordomo_Service_bot on telegram (with the same telegram username used for registering) and just write something to him so he can bind your telegram and forum account togheter.

For who is already registered just send a pm with options in the subject of the bot and add in the body:

Code:

telegram:yourTelegramUsername (doesn't matter if with @ or without)

If you are not subscribed yet send a pm with subscribe in the subject to the bot and add in the body:

Code:

telegram:yourTelegramUsername (doesn't matter if with @ or without)

Notes:
If you quote a message with @SomeUsername this won’t trigger a notification to that user.
You can send multiple notification with the same message: @user1 @user2 @user3 ...

Keep in mind the bot use a jr member account, which has a cooldown limitation between one post and the other, about ~8 seconds, so don’t expect to receive your notification instantly, but if you have more than one notification pending they will be delivered all at once.

Uses:

• to save a thread or comment you want to get back to
• signal a post which should me merited (not your own possibly)
• bring somebody attention to a thread for whatever reason

Disclaimer:
It could happen that while the bot is off you will miss some of your notifications, you will have to wait some time to receive them or for some malfunction you won't receive them at all.

I will try to leave a notice in top of this thread if the bot goes down.

You can report any problem, issue or feedback in here.

[WHAT WE DO]

Binancelabs will be fostering the development of projects in an early stage, thorough consultancies and cash, 500k$ in exchange of 10% of their Equity/Token.

This seems to be quite an interesting initiative, on the long run could be copied by others, allowing the best projects to emerge and possibly, reduce useless/scammy projects as a side effect. Those entering this program will also have an easy way to enter Binance's exchange, beside the good chances of raising the necessary funds to complete their projects.

Let's see how is going to evolve and in particular which projects will be selected

https://www.binancelabs.co/

WHAT WE DO
Seed Investment: We provide $500K Seed Funding (10% Equity/Token).

Mentorship: We have excellent mentors with both crypto and general startup experiences who will be helping our founders.

Network: We connect startups with our vast network of industry leaders in the crypto space and facilitate current and future BUIDLers to work closely together during the incubation period.

Support Services: We have resources to help with startup formation, regulatory/legal advice, recruiting, technical execution, fundraising, marketing/PR and other. 
 
HOW IT WORKS
1. Application: Apply by Sep. 14, 2018 23:59 PT  through the application link.

2. Interview: Candidates will be invited for a video interview.

3. Program Launch: Teams will physically be at the program site from Oct. 8 to Dec. 14, 2018.

4. BUIDLers Day: Teams will present their products to invited strategic partners and investors.

5. This is just the beginning of our journey.

Una versione stabile del bot è stata rilasciata, ed è attiva 24/7, qui ci sono le istruzione aggiornate in inglese https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023605.0 ma se avete bisogno di una mano chiedete pure qui

Qui trovate una lista degli utenti registrati: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023605.msg45324744#msg45324744

[Updated to Sunday 1st of July]

(Opened initially this on Reputation with the idea most "Merit/alts investigators" would be in there but turn out they may be actually in here as well, if you are an Investigator, i suggest you read this, it may make your work easier)

Hi,

i had made this tool visualization of the Merit Network to find merit sources:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4584759.0

But actually found out it may be good to find abusers as well. This visualization show the merit connections happened between users and in one of these version i marked also the red trust level for each user:

In here you can see who was red trusted(red), who is not(azure) and who is trusted (green) Updated to Sunday 1st of July

Link to the tool below: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/?config=config_Trust.json



Now if you move along the peripheral area of this circle you see in the picture, you will notice a lot of points (users) isolated from the rest, these could be transactions happened between alts or abuse in general(some in fact were already spotted as you can see):

Example 1:

Example 2:






If anybody has the time and will to go through these would be quite convenient as you can see immediately:

• Suspicius exchanges of merits between users
• If the user was already red trusted
• If any people he had some exchange was red trusted
• Clicking on the node you get information about rank - merit sent and received in general

If you have any questions ask.


More over: when you have identified some person of interest, you can use this other tool to output a list of the merit transactions with clickable links to the user profiles and message merited in the forum

Go here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Explorer-SQL/

You can specify in the last line the name of the user you want to search for ( in this example theymos)

Code:

WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

paste this in the box to see the merit sent from the user

Code:

SELECT
date,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || fromid || '>' || fromid || '</a>' as Sender,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || toid || '>' || toid || '</a>' as Receiver,
merit,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=' || msg || '#' || substr(msg,instr(msg,'.')+1) || '>Link Merited post</a>' as MeritedPost
FROM meritdata
Inner Join UserData on UserData.userid = meritdata.fromid
WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

paste this in the box to see the merit received from theymos

Code:

SELECT
date,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || fromid || '>' || fromid || '</a>' as Sender,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || toid || '>' || toid || '</a>' as Receiver,
merit,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=' || msg || '#' || substr(msg,instr(msg,'.')+1) || '>Link Merited post</a>' as MeritedPost
FROM meritdata
Inner Join UserData on UserData.userid = meritdata.toid
WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

One real case research example

i went here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization

and found this user hrbt:


then go to see the same in here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/?config=config_Trust.json



Run this query in here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Explorer-SQL/

Code:

SELECT
date,
'https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || fromid,
'https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || toid,
merit,
'https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=' || msg || '#' || substr(msg,instr(msg,'.')+1)
FROM meritdata
Inner Join UserData on UserData.userid = meritdata.fromid
WHERE UserData.Username like "hrbt"

Result, i display the links of: who sent, who received and a link to the message merited:

2018-02-17T16:20:47   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=340808   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1349874   15   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2495721.msg30181948#msg30181948
2018-02-16T13:50:44   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=340808   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1031556   50   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2728315.msg30370848#msg30370848
2018-02-15T21:15:19   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=340808   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1005975   50   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2728315.msg30354958#msg30354958
2018-02-14T16:33:51   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=340808   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1192328   50   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2211728.msg30188246#msg30188246

Done, the situation in here is pretty clear.

[Updated to Sunday 1st of July]

Hi,

i had made this tool visualization of the Merit Network to find merit sources:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4584759.0

But actually found out it may be good to find abusers as well. This visualization show the merit connections happened between users and in one of these version i marked also the red trust level for each user:

In here you can see who was red trusted(red), who is not(azure) and who is trusted (green) Updated to Sunday 1st of July

Link to the tool below: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/?config=config_Trust.json



Now if you move along the peripheral area of this circle you see in the picture, you will notice a lot of points (users) isolated from the rest, these could be transactions happened between alts or abuse in general(some in fact were already spotted as you can see):

Example 1:

Example 2:






If anybody has the time and will to go through these would be quite convenient as you can see immediately:

• Suspicius exchanges of merits between users
• If the user was already red trusted
• If any people he had some exchange was red trusted
• Clicking on the node you get information about rank - merit sent and received in general

If you have any question ask.


More over: when you have identified some person of interest, you can use this other tool to output a list of the merit transactions with clickable links to the user profiles and message merited in the forum

Go here: https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Explorer-SQL/

You can specify in the last line the name of the user you want to search for ( in this example theymos)

Code:

WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

paste this in the box to see the merit sent from the user

Code:

SELECT
date,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || fromid || '>' || fromid || '</a>' as Sender,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || toid || '>' || toid || '</a>' as Receiver,
merit,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=' || msg || '#' || substr(msg,instr(msg,'.')+1) || '>Link Merited post</a>' as MeritedPost
FROM meritdata
Inner Join UserData on UserData.userid = meritdata.fromid
WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

paste this in the box to see the merit received from theymos

Code:

SELECT
date,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || fromid || '>' || fromid || '</a>' as Sender,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=' || toid || '>' || toid || '</a>' as Receiver,
merit,
'<a href=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=' || msg || '#' || substr(msg,instr(msg,'.')+1) || '>Link Merited post</a>' as MeritedPost
FROM meritdata
Inner Join UserData on UserData.userid = meritdata.toid
WHERE UserData.Username like "theymos"

[What is the purpose?]

This has been quite a long and challenging project given the amount of information to show, i have started to look into it since i saw the network graph threads of DdmrDdmr and sncc. My goal was to have an explorable version of the full network with interactions included, as well as my take on trying to find new merit sources.

Each node represent a user and the edges with arrows merit transactions, received or given.
I made 2 versions, the main difference is in the shape. Then for each of these versions i made two variants,one where the coloring is based on the Rank and the other is based on the Trust.








The node size is based on the Node Merit Size variable (on the User Information Panel) and reaches the maximum with a total of 500 merits given away, i did this to try to avoid the current merit sources shading emerging one. This should help visualize at sight the main givers just by looking at the size of the nodes.

Node Merit Size is calculated in the following way:

Code:

If Merit Given > 500
Node Merit Size = 500
  otherwise
Node Merit Size = Merit Given

The node and edge color simply tells the rank/trust of the node.

I removed from the network all the nodes and edges where:

Code:

Merit Received + Merit Given = 1

So anybody who sent a single merit or received a single one won’t be in it.

There are exactly 15954 Nodes and 54108 Edges in there. If there are more merit transactions from user A to user B they will be grouped together and be represented with 1 line(Edge) that goes from A to B

What is the purpose?

You can use these visualizations to help identify users which could be a merit source, since at first glance you have a very intuitive way of knowing the amount of Merit given (size of the node) and Rank/Trust (color of the node). Plus the personal network tells the merit story of the user.

How i made this?

I prepared all the data i needed and made several iteration with Gephi for the layout of the network graph. The drawing is made using the library Sigma Js which supports WebGL.

How to use it?

• Each node you see can show the user name on mouse over and by clicking on it it will isolate the connections based on merit sent and received, both in the form of a graph and with a panel, which shows supplementary informations about the use selected as well. Moving the mouse over the names on the list will show the label on the graph as well.
  
• You can drag the network by clicking on an empty space, zoom in and out with your mouse wheel or using the buttons in the bottom overlay. The magnifying lens with the square center the graph on screen.
  
• On the left panel you can search for any user by name.

Links to the visualizations:

https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/
https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/?config=config_Trust.json
https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/?config=configsparse.json
https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Network-Visualization/?config=configsparse_Trust.json

[UPDATES]

UPDATES:

• Script system added
• Added Users(name and rank), readable date for the merit data, new SQL examples

This is a tool that allow you to run full SQL queries over the merit data and is based on SQLite. If you are familiar with SQL you know the possibilities are basically endless or limited to your SQL knowledge.

My previous similar tool (here) is perhaps more user friendly, but has some limitation: speed and research flexibility. So this is why i made this.

You can find more information about SQL syntax in here if you are interested to learn, i may also give a hand if somebody want to get out some particular information out, even though my SQL skills are a bit rusty.

Table structure:

Code:

MeritData(
  "Date" TEXT,
  "Merit" Integer,
  "Msg" TEXT,
  "FromID" Integer,
  "ToID" Integer,
  "Board" TEXT,
  "SubBoard" TEXT,
  "TitleThread" TEXT
)

UserData(
   UserId Integer PRIMARY KEY,
   UserName TEXT,
   Rank TEXT,
   Trust TEXT,
   Location TEXT
)

How to use it:

   Just type the query in the box and press Exceute, F5 or Ctrl-Enter to execute it.

Link:

https://albertoit.github.io/Merit-Explorer-SQL/





For those of you who are not familiar with SQL, beside the fact that you will get any result extremely fast, this is what it means:[/b]

We can easily get the Top Receiver for any local section simply using this:

Code:

SELECT MAX(result.total) as "Total Merit", result.toid as "Top merit receiver", result.SubBoard as "Local board" FROM (
SELECT toid, SubBoard, SUM(Merit) AS total
FROM meritdata as m
WHERE m.Board in (SELECT Board FROM meritdata Where Board like "Local%" GROUP BY Board)
GROUP BY toid, Board
ORDER BY Board,total Desc) AS result
GROUP BY SubBoard
ORDER BY result.total Desc

or for any board:

Code:

SELECT MAX(result.total) as "Total Merit", result.toID as "Top merit receiver", result.SubBoard as "Board" FROM (
SELECT toid, SubBoard, SUM(Merit) AS total
FROM meritdata as m
WHERE m.SubBoard in (SELECT SubBoard FROM meritdata GROUP BY SubBoard)
GROUP BY toid, SubBoard
ORDER BY SubBoard,total Desc) AS result
GROUP BY SubBoard
ORDER BY result.total Desc;

Similarly we can find out the Top Giver:

Code:

SELECT MAX(result.total) as "Total Merit", result.fromid as "Top merit giver", result.SubBoard as "Local board" FROM (
SELECT fromid, SubBoard, SUM(Merit) AS total
FROM meritdata as m
WHERE m.Board in (SELECT Board FROM meritdata Where Board like "Local%" GROUP BY Board)
GROUP BY fromid, Board
ORDER BY Board,total Desc) AS result
GROUP BY SubBoard
ORDER BY result.total Desc;

or for any any board:

Code:

SELECT MAX(result.total) as "Total Merit", result.fromID as "Top merit giver", result.SubBoard as "Board" FROM (
SELECT fromid, SubBoard, SUM(Merit) AS total
FROM meritdata as m
WHERE m.SubBoard in (SELECT SubBoard FROM meritdata GROUP BY SubBoard)
GROUP BY fromID, SubBoard
ORDER BY SubBoard,total Desc) AS result
GROUP BY SubBoard
ORDER BY result.total Desc;

Find out the total merit awarded so far:

Code:

SELECT Sum(Merit) FROM MeritData;

Want the full history for a particular user?

Code:

SELECT * FROM MeritData WHERE toID=35 OR fromID=35 ORDER BY fromid,toid;

I noticed this old article (begin of June) today where they explain how they tried to give an answer to the question "who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" At first i thought was the usual speculation article with nothing new, but actually they went a bit further using a stylometry model, comparing the writing of Satoshi against the writing of other people to spot similarities.

Is not a mistery the  way we write has a pattern and we use more certain words than other and beside the conclusion they reached, being right or wrong, i think it's an interesting approach and read. Here is the article: https://zycrypto.com/bootstrapped-gavin-satoshi-nakamotos-identity-revealed/

And here is also another article discussing something similar on the stylometry approach, where they speculate about some US governative agency  already knowing who Satoshi really is :   https://news.bitcoin.com/satoshi-nakamoto-known-to-cia-fbi-created-by-nsa-search-intensifies/

As a side note, not the best comparison, however this looking into the messages left behind, to uncover somebody identity, was already used by the FBI when investigating the Unabomber case.

Coming back to us, if you don't want to read the article and want to know the results, it seems they found some good correlation between Satoshi and Gavin Andresen.

[Update]

I created a tool to query the all history of merit transactions, for any need you may find useful.
There are a series of parameter that can be passed into the url to get the data you want. It could also be used in here as a way to show some transaction simply by posting a link.

The data is updated to the 8th of June. Give it a try, the instructions are below with some ready example.

The result table has embedded links for users, which are pointing back to the full merit history within the tool itself, to the user profile page in bitcointalk  and a ready link to jump to the comment merited as well:

Update: copy to clipboard and forum formatting:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4456438.msg40512247#msg40512247


Latest Layout


Full Merit data history visualization per user


Query data visualization (can be based on merits,time,users)




Some example that can help you to get started on how to use it:

Show a single merit transaction:

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?tx=42723

Filter by users: Username need to be accurate and exactly as you see them in the forum, in case a username is not mapped you can simply use the user id.

Full merit history for Jet Cash:

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?id=Jet%20Cash

Merit sent from Jet Cash to bitmover

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=Jet%20Cash&touser=bitmover

Filter by date:

Merit given by TMAN to TheUltraElite starting from 2018-06-01

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=TMAN&touser=TheUltraElite&dategreater=2018-06-01

Merit given by TMAN to TheUltraElite going backward from 2018-06-01

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=TMAN&touser=TheUltraElite&datelower=2018-06-01

Merit given by TMAN to TheUltraElite between (dates included) 2018-04-01 and 2018-05-01

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=TMAN&touser=TheUltraElite&datelower=2018-05-01&dategreater=2018-04-01

Filter by Merit:

merit given by suchmoon >= 10

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=suchmoon&meritgreater=10

merit given by suchmoon <= 2

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=suchmoon&meritlower=2

merit given by suchmoon between 5 and 7 (>= 5 and <= 7)

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=suchmoon&meritlower=7&meritgreater=5

merit given by suchmoon = 6

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=suchmoon&meritequal=6

A combination of everything:

https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?fromuser=TMAN&touser=yogg&datelower=2018-06-01&dategreater=2018-05-01&meritegreater=5&meritlower=10

Bonus:
https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/Merit%20js%20tool/filterMeritLocal.html?meritgreater=50

[Instructions on how to use the data:]

After i made this graph (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3312945.0) where you could see for each section in the forum where the merit were distributed, i decided to do something similar, to show who actually gives most merits for each board and with which frequency.
This combination is a good indication to identify active users in a particular board, which are reading posts and awarding merits.

I compiled a list of the top 30 users for each board of the forum.

Top 30 Merit per board: https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/MeritTreemap/index.html



Top 30 Transaction Merit per board: https://albertoit.github.io/Visualization/TransactionTreemap/index.html




Instructions on how to use the data:

You can drill down into each board of the forum by clicking on the rectangles and at the same time see who awarded more merits (or awarded merits more often). The size of the rectangles is directly proportional to the number of merits or transactions. To go back to the previous parent board click on the top header.

These tool-graphs could also be useful to a certain extent in identifying/confirming new merit sources, since are highlighting people which are actively awarding merits in a board and possibly (this need to be verified) awarding them to quality posts. This is quite an important aspect, as some person who would actually make a good merit source maybe is simply not interested in assigning merits.

How we could use these information to spot possible merit sources?

We can try for example with the Italian local board, i actually have some knowledge of people posting there and already have an idea of who could be a good candidate:

You can immediately see by the size of the rectangles where most of the merits are awarded, and it seems mostly are flowing under this section:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=28.0

You can also see who awarded the most merits:



  
We notice Micio(218 Mrt) and redsn0w (90 Mrt), which are already merit sources and Babo (85 Mrt), which is not (there are others perhaps worth looking into it).
Now we can look how many times he awarded merits on the transaction graph:



it says Babo (84 Tx), so he has been giving in average ~1 merit per post, looks good

I invite everyone to play around, have a look into boards you know and see if any name comes up, in particular in the Local one, or simply use the tool to satisfy your curiosity.

[Summary:]

Summary:

The ownership of an account can be easily proved through a smart contract (or similar technology), by linking an ETH address to a key, which is tied up with an account in any system. The smart contract allows to request the reset of the password to a new mail provided from the smart contract. When the server where the account are managed sees the request and verify the ETH address and key are linked to a specified account, it will automatically handle the case, sending the recovery details to the new mail belonging to the legitimate owner.

Live demo: https://albertoit.github.io/Demo/AccountOwnership.html



Details:

This is a draft of the smart contract behind it:
   

Code:

pragma solidity ^0.4.23;

contract BitcointalkAccountOwenship {

    address owner;
   
    struct UserAccount {
        uint linkKey;
        string recoveryMail;
    }
   
    event ProofOfOwnership(address account, uint linkingKey);
   
    mapping (uint => address) private _accountsLink;
    mapping (address => UserAccount) public _linkAccount;
   
    function BitcointalkAccountOwenship() public {
        owner = msg.sender;
    }
   
    function linkAccount(uint linkKey){
       
        if(_linkAccount[msg.sender].linkKey != 0) revert(); // address already binded, need to use a brand new
        if(_accountsLink[linkKey] != address(0x0)) revert(); // duplicate linkKey
       
        UserAccount memory user = UserAccount(linkKey, "");
       
        _accountsLink[linkKey] = msg.sender;
        _linkAccount[msg.sender] = user;
       
    }
   
    function verifyOwnership(string newMail){
       
        if(_linkAccount[msg.sender].linkKey == 0) revert(); // we don't know who you are
       
        _linkAccount[msg.sender].recoveryMail=newMail;

        ProofOfOwnership(msg.sender, _linkAccount[msg.sender].linkKey);
    }
   
   
}

Each user can create a brand new ETH address for the only purpose of linking it with his own account’s key and call the function below with it.
   

Code:

linkAccount(2211184082342633147);

After the transaction is confirmed, information necessary to recover his account (ETH and key) must be confirmed and saved as well in the server hosting the account.

If the account get compromised the legitimate owner calls:
   

Code:

verifyOwnership("newmail@mail.com")

The server could have a bot or a scheduled task running once a day, which will read the new ProofOfOwnership events generated; At this point, it will need to verify that everything is in order before to reset the password to the new mail, this can be done by retrieving the key (and the mail) connected to the ETH address which submitted the ProofOfOwnership and verifying it is associated to one of the active accounts (all these checks don't cost anything):

   

Code:

_linkAccount(0xaddress)

Available to answer any doubt and interested to know if anybody has some way to improve it. Maybe a system similar to this one could be taken under consideration in here to secure accounts.

Since i have been in here for a while now and i saw all sort of fine spam techniques, i have some suggestion that maybe can help limit it.

As we know most of the spam comes from low rank accounts, that is a fact, most of them are throwaway account which are used to do anything just because doesn't matter if they get banned, is a loosing battle against these; On this matter, i have seen a worryingly number of new topic created by brand new account for all sort of purposes: fake airdrop, shit airdrop, scams, referral and all sort of bad stuff.

- The first suggestion is to require at least 1 to 5 merits (2 is already enough imo), to be able to open a thread. Or limit it directly based on rank.

- The seconth suggestion is to limit the number of posts anybody can make in a day based on your rank, something on the line of this:

• Brand New: 1 a day
• Jr Member: 2 a day
• Member: 4 a day
• Full Member: 10 a day
• Sr Member: 15 a day
• Hero/Legendary: unlimited

With these two suggestions alone we may be able to solve most of the problems with minimal changes, since these features are already present in the forum, they just need to be applied to other ranks and slightly modified.

Thoughts?