Bitcoiners / Masterminds,

I'm pushing the reset button on the Mastercoin Foundation priorities.

Come engage the MSC community as we set our feature road map going forward in a fully open way.

http://mastercointalk.org/index.php?topic=796.0

http://blog.mastercoin.org/2014/08/05/intro-to-david-johnston-resetting-the-foundations-priorities/

http://www.reddit.com/r/mastercoin/comments/2cow6s/resetting_the_msc_foundations_priorities_give/

Thanks.

David A. Johnston
Chairman of the MSC Foundation

Bitcoiners,

I'd like to invite everyone here to comment and contribute to this new Whitepaper about "Decentralized Applications" I've written with the help of my co-authors, Steven Mason, Farzad Hashemi, Ron Gross, and Sam Yilmaz.

The whitepaper is up on Github and is open sourced so you are all welcome to offer pull requests for its improvement : )

https://github.com/DavidJohnstonCEO/DecentralizedApplications

I recently did an interview with Adam at Lets Talk Bitcoin about these Decentralized Applications along with Ron Gross.

Here is the link to interview minus the first section of the episode which covered Milli Bits.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2R_eSvAkuXSX2t4QjRBamJpQWs/edit?usp=sharing

This paper defines “Decentralized Applications” as follows:

Qualification 1. To qualify as “Decentralized” an application must be completely open source, it must operate autonomously with no one entity controlling the majority of its tokens, and its data / records of operation must be cryptographically stored in a decentralized blockchain.

Qualification 2. Decentralized Apps must also generate tokens according to a standard algorithm / criteria over time and / or distribute tokens at the beginning of their operation (in accordance with their protocol) to reward predefined value adding behaviors by users. These same tokens must be utilized by users to access the features of the Decentralized App.

Qualification 3. The Decentralized App can adapt its protocol in response to proposed developer improvements and market feedback, though all changes which are accepted into the protocol must be based on the majority consensus of its users through Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, or a similar mechanism(s).

I've launched an entire Website at: http://distributedapps.co/ in order to cover this broad topic and I'll be announcing a legal / regulatory group called C.O.D.A. "Council for the Organization of Decentralized Applications" along with other open source groups focused on this issue.

I'm looking forward to everyone's input on this subject and if you are interested in developing Decentralized Applications in 2014 please PM me or email me directly and I'd love to hear about what you are developing and offer to help in any way I can.

I'll be investing my full time efforts into the largest scale / most disruptive Decentralized Applications of 2014.

Talk with you all soon.

David A. Johnston
http://www.bitangels.co/
http://distributedapps.co/

David@BitAngels.co

______ P.S. Note The Moderators______
I'm posting here in the "Project Development" section of Bitcointalk, instead of Alt Coin section because the primary discussion is about Decentralized Applications built on top of the Bitcoin Protocol and NOT a discussion of alternative blockchains. These are applications with a wide diversity of use cases, not currency focused or competitors with Bitcoin, and thus not "alts" in that sense of the word either. Thanks.

BACKGROUND for Poll:

Original Post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=342431.0

Edit: To clarify this proposal is predicated upon the Proof of Stake system and Distributed bounty systems being implemented in order to direct the distribution of these Dev MSC in a decentralized manor.

From original post.

"I propose we formalize the distribution of "Dev MSC", to mirror the amount of Dev MSC generated each month. Further more that these Dev MSC be distributed in proportion to the amount of BTC won by participants in Mastercoin bounties that month. With the intension being, that this distribution process will be fully controlled by the Mastercoin community via the existing Bounty system and up coming Proof of Stake voting.  

It seems a simple and elegant distribution curve, and is awarded in proportion to the the BTC anyone earns or wins as part of working on the Mastercoin implementations, competitions and bounties. That way everyone can be confident in how this gets distributed and earning some of the Exodus funds comes with an automatic bonus of earning a proportional amount of Dev MSC.

Lets talk some simple math here.

Simple Dev MSC Distribution Equation:  A / B = C * D = E
(A) Amount of awards an individual earns in BTC during a 30 day period, divided by,
(B) the total amount of BTC awarded during that 30 day period, equals
(C) his or her individual award percentage, times
(D) the total Dev MSC generated during that 30 day period, equals
(E) the amount of Dev MSC awarded to the individual in addition to his BTC awards during the 30 day period.

Example #1 (using round numbers):
A (100 BTC) / B (1,000 BTC) = C (10%) * D (1,000 MSC) = E (100 MSC)

There are 56,316 Dev MSC that will ever be generated.
28,158 Dev MSC will be generated this year or 2,346 MSC each month.
So if a developer won 10% of the bounties this month he or she would earn 234.6 Dev MSC (worth 35.19 BTC / $24,633 USD at current MSC / BTC / USD prices)."

BACK GROUND FOR THOSE THAT HAVEN'T READ THE MASTERCOIN SPEC 1.2

There are two main types of Mastercoins. MSC and Dev MSC (there are also Test MSC, but I won't get into those here). All original Mastercoins (MSC) were generated between August 1st and August 31st by all those that sent funds to the "Exodus Address", these total 563,162. In addition the Mastercoin protocol generated 10% additional Dev MSC (originally termed Reward MSC) which total 56,316 Dev MSC. Combined you get all the Mastercoins that will ever exist 619,478.

Here is the reference from the Mastercoin Spec:  https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC/spec
"For every 10 Mastercoins sold, an additional “dev Mastercoin” was also created,"

The generation of these Dev MSC is controlled by an algorithm described in the spec.
"Which are being awarded to the Exodus Address slowly over the years following the fundraiser. These delayed Mastercoins will ensure that we (the Mastercoin Foundation) have funding to complete the features desired by users. The reward is be structured so that we receive 50% of the reward by one year after the initial sale, 75% by a year later, 87.5% by a year later, and so on". Here is a Google Doc that has been public since the beginning of the project simply calculates how many Dev MSC are available for Distribution each year. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmR_eSvAkuXSdDI3Y1JnVjFvUDBXOWZiZl8zZ2Rkamc&usp=sharing

You can see the current total of the accumulating Dev MSC here: https://docs.google.com/a/bitangels.co/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtCyUJvk_IyNdGpVcnpBN2tOczFmbVRnck5TWjZuRFE#gid=1

8,080 MSC generated so far with 6,580 not yet Distributed via a bounty.

There isn't a description in the protocol on how the Dev MSC are to be distributed or at what rate.

Thanks for participating in the poll.

Proposal for Standardizing the Distribution Rate of Dev MSC via the MSC Protocol

I propose we formalize the distribution of "Dev MSC", to mirror the amount of Dev MSC generated each month. Further more that these Dev MSC be distributed in proportion to the amount of BTC won by participants in Mastercoin bounties that month. With the intension being, that this distribution process will be fully controlled by the Mastercoin community via the existing Bounty system and up coming Proof of Stake voting. 

It seems a simple and elegant distribution curve, and is awarded in proportion to the the BTC anyone earns or wins as part of working on the Mastercoin implementations, competitions and bounties. That way everyone can be confident in how this gets distributed and earning some of the Exodus funds comes with an automatic bonus of earning a proportional amount of Dev MSC.

Lets talk some simple math here.

Simple Dev MSC Distribution Equation:  A / B = C * D = E
(A) Amount of awards an individual earns in BTC during a 30 day period, divided by,
(B) the total amount of BTC awarded during that 30 day period, equals
(C) his or her individual award percentage, times
(D) the total Dev MSC generated during that 30 day period, equals
(E) the amount of Dev MSC awarded to the individual in addition to his BTC awards during the 30 day period.

Example #1 (using round numbers):
A (100 BTC) / B (1,000 BTC) = C (10%) * D (1,000 MSC) = E (100 MSC)

There are 56,316 Dev MSC that will ever be generated.
28,158 Dev MSC will be generated this year or 2,346 MSC each month.
So if a developer won 10% of the bounties this month he or she would earn 234.6 Dev MSC (worth 35.19 BTC / $24,633 USD at current MSC / BTC / USD prices).

The benefits of using this method should be obvious.

1. Market Confidence: Having a standard and predictable amount of Dev MSC coming onto the market each month removes any need to "guess" about the current amount of Mastercoins in circulation and removes any worries about a large number of Dev MSC being released into the market at unexpected times (the Fed watching / Ripple problem).

2. Simplicity: This mechanism removes the need for devising a complex system for how much Dev MSC should be vested and to whom, and any potential conflicts of interest that would come with developing such a complex system. We already have a bounty system rewarding those contributing value, they should also be vesting Dev MSC in proportion to the value they are contributing to the community via the existing bounty system.

3. Community Driven: The Exodus address BTC funds will be controlled by the community Bounty system and the Proof of Stake voting, so it seems logical that the Dev MSC should also be controlled by the community Bounty system and Proof of Stake voting and be vested to those adding value in proportion to their contributions.

4. Developer Confidence: A number of developers are spending more and more time contributing to the Mastercoin implementations and with a standard for the amount of Dev MSC to be distributed, they can have a strong level of confidence that investing their time, talents, and energy in Mastercoin will provide a predictable income stream for their work. Additionally as the value of MSC increases over time, (in conjunction with the increased demand for /utility of Mastercoin) the Dev MSC monthly rewards will increase in BTC / USD terms and thus attract more and more developers each month to participate in bounties and competitions. Already that monthly 2,346 Dev MSC is worth almost $250,000 USD at current MSC / BTC / USD prices. That's $3,000,000 worth of Dev MSC to vest with Developers this year (at current prices). 

I've discussed this proposal with the Mastercoin Foundation Board and I'm posting here to get feedback from the community on the best way to implement this as part of the Mastercoin Protocol Spec.
 
BACK GROUND FOR THOSE THAT HAVEN'T READ THE MASTERCOIN SPEC 1.2
There are two main types of Mastercoins. MSC and Dev MSC (there are also Test MSC, but I won't get into those here). All original Mastercoins (MSC) were generated between August 1st and August 31st by all those that sent funds to the "Exodus Address", these total 563,162. In addition the Mastercoin protocol generated 10% additional Dev MSC (originally termed Reward MSC) which total 56,316 Dev MSC. Combined you get all the Mastercoins that will ever exist 619,478.

Here is the reference from the Mastercoin Spec:  https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC/spec
"For every 10 Mastercoins sold, an additional “dev Mastercoin” was also created,"

The generation of these Dev MSC is controlled by an algorithm described in the spec.
"Which are being awarded to the Exodus Address slowly over the years following the fundraiser. These delayed Mastercoins will ensure that we (the Mastercoin Foundation) have funding to complete the features desired by users. The reward is be structured so that we receive 50% of the reward by one year after the initial sale, 75% by a year later, 87.5% by a year later, and so on". Here is a Google Doc that has been public since the beginning of the project simply calculates how many Dev MSC are available for Distribution each year. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmR_eSvAkuXSdDI3Y1JnVjFvUDBXOWZiZl8zZ2Rkamc&usp=sharing

You can see the current total of the accumulating Dev MSC here: https://docs.google.com/a/bitangels.co/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtCyUJvk_IyNdGpVcnpBN2tOczFmbVRnck5TWjZuRFE#gid=1

8,080 MSC generated so far with 6,580 not yet Distributed via a bounty.

There isn't a description in the protocol on how the Dev MSC are to be distributed or at what rate.

I look forward to everyone's input.

David A. Johnston
Executive Director of BitAngels.co / Board Member of the Mastercoin Foundation

The Mastercoin Open Source Project has been moving so quickly I wanted to offer more information to clear up some of the most common misconceptions.

* item 1. Misconception - Mastercoin is an "Alt Coin" and was "Pre-Mined"

Truth - The Mastercoin Protocol does not have an "alternative block chain", rather it adds advanced features on top of the existing Bitcoin Protocol and Bitcoin blockchain. As for "pre-mining", in fact the Mastercoins that exist were "minted" by ANYONE in the Bitcoin community who decided to participate in the "minting period" between August 1st and August 31st 2013 by sending Bitcoins to the "Exodus Address".
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg2841328#msg2841328

* item 2. Misconception - The Mastercoin transactions will "bloat or pollute" the Bitcoin blockchain.

This misconception is based on the old way in which the protocol first proposed recording the Mastercoin Transactions into the blockchain (with a fake transaction used for meta data purposes). However, since then the protocol has been updated to support two other ways of adding this meta data, which are preferred. The first is through a Multi Signature process and the second is through the new Provably Prune Able Outputs described in Gavin's update to 0.9 of the Bitcoin reference client. You can read more on this topic by searching Bitcointalk for Class A, Class B, and Class C Mastercoin transaction types.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3168372#msg3168372
https://masterchest.info/files/mscappendix_draft.pdf

* item 3. Misconception - J.R. Willet (creator of the MSC Protocol) owns the majority of the Mastercoins.

Truth - Thanks to the many BitAngels and community members who participated in the Exodus Address period (500 people plus), J.R. was diluted to 28% of all Mastercoins (while still the largest participant in the Exodus Address by sending 1,200 BTC) he does not control a majority or even have enough MSC to block a super majority 2/3rds vote of 66.6%.

https://masterchest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=15WrQhYhHts7jTMoGJ9rDCD12JuCTKy7MM
https://blockchain.info/tx/68c0677e3fc26286d2c83772f6e1f7b4b9e3072008995a884a8c1e943f4dbf99

* item 4. Misconception - J.R. Willet set up the Exodus to send the funds to a Bitcoin Address he owns, therefore he wasn't taking any risk and was just sending funds to himself.

Truth - Thanks to the BitAngels and community members who insisted that there be an incorporated "Mastercoin Foundation" to administer the funds, the Bitcoins which have been raised, are being divided up and sent from J.R.'s address to a variety of addresses administered by the members of the Mastercoin Foundation (7 member Board). J.R. acts as Treasurer by holding only the funds actively needed for distribution to winners of coding competitions and bounties. In fact all expenses are open record via this Google Doc.

http://mastercoinfoundation.org/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtCyUJvk_IyNdGpVcnpBN2tOczFmbVRnck5TWjZuRFE&usp=sharing

* item 5. Misconception - The Mastercoin Foundation will control the distribution of BTC raised and Reward MSC.

Truth - All of the following decisions are moving to a "Proof of Stake" system that is being developed as one of the bounties. A. Which feature a bounty should be offered for next. B. Who Reward Mastercoins should be issued to based on their contribution to the code base. C. If new proposed changes to the Protocol Specification should be merged. This proof of stake system will allow for everyone who owns Mastercoin to develop consensus and "vote" based on their MSC ownership. The Mastercoin Foundation is eager to decentralize decision making, driven by this "Proof of Stake" consensus system.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309729.0

* item 6. Misconception - The Mastercoin Foundation controls the protocol and makes all decisions about its features.

Truth -  The Mastercoin Protocol, clients, and all source code has been open sourced on Github since day one. Anyone is welcome to examine or contribute to the source code, propose protocol changes, develop new features, or improve existing features, provided they get consensus from the Mastercoin Community via the "Proof of Stake" system.

https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC

* item 7. Misconception - The 30 Day Exodus Period was too short a time for the initial Distribution of MSC.

Truth - First, this period has to be taken in context with the more than 1 year long period in which J.R. Willet proposed the Mastercoin Protocol to the community via his white paper, took input from the community, updated the proposal and eventually with much publicity on Bitcoin Talk, Reddit, and via Bitcoin Media opened the Exodus Address for contributions from ANYONE in the Bitcoin community.

Second, as for the specific length of the period, Kick Starter has done a great deal of research on this very topic, of how long in the future, deadlines for participation in community driven initiatives should be. Here is there text from the Kick Starter website recommending why 30 days is the optimal amount of time.

"Setting your project deadline - http://www.kickstarter.com/help/school#setting_your_goal
Funding can last anywhere from one to 60 days, however a longer duration is not necessarily better. Statistically, projects lasting 30 days or less have our highest success rates. A Kickstarter project takes a lot of work to run, and shorter projects set a tone of confidence and help motivate your backers to join the party. Longer durations incite less urgency, encourage procrastination, and tend to fizzle out."

* item 8. Misconception - Some of the Advanced Features of Mastercoin are not technically / economically feasible (specifically the Escrow Based Currencies).

Truth - This misconception is based on an earlier version of the protocol that detailed how Escrow Based Currencies would work, since then better methods have been suggested to make this feature possible including "Contracts for Difference". https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324830.0

The vast majority of the Mastercoin Protocol features are uncontroversial on a technical basis, including:
A. Transferring MasterCoins
B. Marking an Address as “Savings”
C. Selling MasterCoins for Bitcoins
D. Selling MasterCoins for Other MasterCoin-Derived Currencies
E. Purchasing a Currency Offered For Sale
F. Registering a Data Stream
G. Offering a Future Event Trigger
H. New Smart Property Creation
I. New Currency Creation

* item 9. Misconception - All the Mastercoins have been created, so the early adopter opportunity is over.

Truth - There are lots of ways to get Mastercoins and the early adopter cycle has just begun, here are just a few of the ways to get involved, add value to the eco-system and be an early adopter of Mastercoins:

A. Contribute to the Development of the Mastercoin open source codebase and earn "Development / Reward Mastercoins". https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292628.400
B. For small amounts of "Test Mastercoins", there is a "Give Away" thread on Bitcoin Talk https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272577.msg3403599#msg3403599
C. For small amounts of real Mastercoins, there is a Mastercoin Faucet. http://faucet.bitwatch.co/
D. Google Doc Order Book with open buy and sell orders. https://docs.google.com/a/engine.co/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApGPLGUd5ZCzdHFxbnhHQjBDSDVKamY5UHlWdkNMNWc&usp=sharing#gid=0
E. Through the private BuyMastercoins.com and other exchanges.
F. Trade BTC for them on the Distributed Exchange http://mastercoin-explorer.com/order_books

* item 10. Misconception - Mastercoin is a fixed protocol and whatever flaws it has will be longterm problems.

Truth - As you can see from the 9 items above the Mastercoin Project has been evolving quickly based on technical feedback, community input, and the developer consensus process. If you have issues with the protocol then please offer productive input on the forums and to the developers involved. Together we can continually improve the Mastercoin Open Source Project and do something great for the Bitcoin community.

https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC

Conclusion:
I'm not proposing that Mastercoin is perfect. I am proposing it is fundamentally built on the same ethics as Bitcoin. It is a fully transparent, decentralized, autonomous, and open source based application being developed on the Bitcoin blockchain.

This project has gathered a great deal of momentum and I sincerely hope more and more members of the Bitcoin community will get involved in developing these advanced features and contribute their time, energy and efforts to improving the Mastercoin Protocol, clients, and eco-system.

For more information visit, http://www.mastercoin.org/

So here are the facts:

I'm running a Macbook Pro Mid 2010
Operating System version 10.8.4 (latest version all updates installed).
Memory  8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Processor  2.66 GHz Intel Core i7
Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB

I've been running Bitcoin-Qt without issues since version 0.7.1
I made the upgrade to 0.8.1 when it was released.
I made the upgrade to 0.8.2 when it was released.
I made the upgrade to 0.8.3 just recently when it was released.

When I try and open Bitcoin-Qt 0.8.3 or any of the older versions I've got on my computer, the program spends a few moments "verifying blocks" then "loading wallet", and then I get the following error message.

"Bitcoin-Qt quit unexpectedly" followed by the Crash Report. A few lines from the crash report below.
___________

Date/Time:       2013-06-29 14:49:47.698 -0500
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.8.4 (12E55)
Report Version:  10

Interval Since Last Report:          71248 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           1
Per-App Interval Since Last Report:  248 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   1

Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:  EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
Assertion failed: (pfork != NULL), function SetBestChain, file src/main.cpp, line 1761.
______
And so forth.

I've got my computer backed up, so if I can navigate how to properly transfer the wallet files to another Bitcoin client than that is an option, however I'd like to get my Bitcoin-Qt up and running again.

Any suggestions, tips, or tricks would be very much appreciated.

-DJohnston

TLDR, Bit Angel Website and sub Reddit launched. Join us. http://www.reddit.com/r/bitangels Pic of first meeting: http://t.co/d06it4ghKR New Website Address: http://www.bitangels.co/

The Bit Angels website and sub Reddit is the culmination of a pretty amazing experience at the 2013 Bitcoin Conference. By the end of Saturday night there were a critical mass of veteran entrepreneurs and angel investors at the conference and a real desire by everyone to gather together to discuss the most compelling companies in the space and to explore ways to accelerate those companies.

Sunday morning I hacked together the first Bit Angels website, made a post on Reddit about a 12:00 noon meeting (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1emwq4/bit_angels_to_meet_today_at_1200_for_lunch_at_the/) and a quick announcement at the conference about doing a first meeting of the Bit Angels. I invited 6 people and more than 20 showed up to the first meeting. Now more than 35 people have joined the group as of this posting. I've volunteered to be the Executive Director and things are moving fast. If you are an experienced entrepreneur and have a few BTC to invest come join us.

Here are a few guidelines the Bit Angels discussed at the first meeting: Discussion of companies which we can accelerate by investing our social, financial, and intellectual capital in. Community Guidelines: Consider companies that strengthen the Bitcoin / digital currency eco-system. Focus on early stage companies. Focus on companies that can out perform the appreciation of Bitcoin or will directly lead to its appreciation. Gentlemen's agreement to go pro-rata on deals that go through the Bit Angel application, screening, presentation, and due diligence process. Invest equal parts sweat equity and financial capital. Meaning invest your time, skills, and experience in the Bit Angel startup entrepreneurs not just your BTC.

-DJohnston