How do we get this to all of the "right" people, who can do something about it and get them interested in taking action?
Well hopefully this Mitosys project will also get more people interested in the idea. I've done what I can by creating a bounty and advertising it on my website. I'm fairly busy with another project at the moment and with Christmas coming up I don't have too much time to spend on this stuff but I would like to see something get built. |
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Ok cool, it's sounds very similar to how I imagined it. One thing I want to mention though: you should link to my project wiki instead of the white paper because the white paper is very outdated compared to the wiki. I think this is a great idea though and I will keep my eye on this project. Send me a PM if you have any questions about the mini-blockchain proposal. |
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Hopefully, this bounty will be collected soon by any bright mind(s) out there due to two new incentives:
1- Bitcoin has reached new all time highs
2- There is an actual concept for an application in which this tool can be used.
You're right, point 1 is obvious but I hadn't really thought about point 2 until I read this thread. The mini-blockchain scheme probably would be a great way to store encrypted messages in a decentralized fashion. Bitmessage also uses a type of dynamic blockchain doesn't it? So the difference between Bitmessage and this idea is that it will also function as a crypto-currency and not just a messaging service, which will enable more advanced messaging functionality like paid services? |
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Yah, if you scroll down you'll see I provided an answer which expands on Rosenfeld's answer. Yeah, I remember now. Well I didn't accept it at the time and it didn't get a lot of votes. Perhaps it's time to kick up that discussion as well. (I won't participate, too fricking busy) Well Rosenfeld's answer was acceptable because it mentions how archive nodes can be used in times of emergency, but he didn't mention the most important point about new nodes refusing the join the network if they detect that a "secret chain attack" like that is happening, that is what really makes it difficult for the attack to succeed. At this stage I'm quite satisfied with the defenses against such a secret chain attack. The only thing which really needs to be discussed in more detail is the exact structure and design of the account tree and how script can be replaced with a simpler type of transaction mechanism which only allows a limited set of hard-coded transaction types. |
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Yah, if you scroll down you'll see I provided an answer which expands on Rosenfeld's answer. |
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Data will be temporarily stored in a dynamic blockchain that prunes itself to keep the size down, and account balances will be stored in a separate distributed archive called the account tree. Would I be correct to assume you are going to use concepts from the mini-blockchain project? Please be aware that I have a 28BTC bounty for anyone who can provide a basic proof-of-concept client which uses a mini-blockchain and account tree (doesn't need all the extra messaging functionality). |
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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. Thanks for explaining to me why I should never bother using Mastercoin. |
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If the attack vector is the non issue suggested by the development team, why not put out a modified client which implements a selfish mining strategy, and invite people to test the integrity of the network. That would put the issue to bed once and for all. The author of the paper was criticised for a lack of empirical evidence, so how bout a bit of empiricism from his detractors?
Ummmm... isn't this attack protected by the fact that people are encouraged to use one of the "official" bitcoin clients and not a modified client which allows the bad nodes to get together and exploit the network in some way? Inviting people to use a purposely malicious client is ridiculous and proves nothing because the security of Bitcoin is based on the assumption that the majority of nodes are going to be running good clients. |
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LOL! The fact they don't even mention Bitcoin is even better imo because they are pointing out why Bitcoin is so much better than the traditional banking system without even realizing it.
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New bitcoin meme:  |
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Wait a minute, what if I imagine that there is no god in any of the universes, if I can imagine such a thing then it must exist in some sense right.
Lol I don't think a hardfork is going to save us in this situation. But in all seriousness it could mean god is both existent and non-existent at the same time. Quantum superposition.
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I would typically go for the simple and elegant design but I'm going to say C.
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I need to read the pdf a couple of times...
Read the project wiki, the white-paper is quite out-dated now. |
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Initially I disliked the idea of Bitcoin's fixed supply but I think with a slight tweak it could be the best solution. We want to have something which will act as a solid currency, encouraging people to spend their wealth but without penalizing them for saving as seems to be the case with Freicoin. We also want to avoid the problem of deflation from lost coins (government seizers, death of hoarders without wills, lost keys and mistaken transfers). Bitfreak suggested somewhere that coins in unused accounts should be removed and remind after some lengthy period of time (something like 100 years) just to avoid long term deflation but I see doing this on a smaller time scale as being beneficial in other ways.
The problem is, can you achieve a currency which encourages people to spend their money with a mechanism other than debasement or something similar to it? I can agree with the basic idea that debasement is potentially desirable if it's used to keep the value of the currency stable, but I cannot agree if it's used to steal value from the currency over time. But the fundamental problem is designing the debasement mechanism in such a way that is keeps the value of the currency stable. First of all what are we measuring the "value" of the coin against, what is its value relative to, and how can we ensure that the thing it is pegged to is also stable. There simply is no way in my mind for how that can be achieved in a satisfactory manner, the only logical solution imo is a floating coin with a value determined by the free market and a stable currency supply which doesn't increase or decrease perpetually (which can be achieved by re-mining lost coins). I'd propose that transactions should have a set fee based on percentage; what exactly I think is debatable but I'd say 1%.
One of the great things about Bitcoin, and one of the things which really encourages me to send international payments using bitcoin, is that I'm basically only paying for the bandwidth of my transaction, I'm not paying some disproportionate fee which has nothing to do with the cost of sending the transaction. Having a percent based fee takes away that incentive and forces people to pay fees which are completely unrelated to the bandwidth cost of sending the transaction. So it's something I don't think is a great idea. |
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Now, when nodes A and B connect to the network on week 3, they have a minichain of week 1 (the "old chain") which has more work, more difficulty, than the rest of the network which has ONLY the blocks of week 2. If nodes A and B see each other they will fork, not accepting the good minichain. The entire "chain" can be thought of as the proof chain + the mini-blockchain. What you seem to be forgetting here is the proof chain. The first thing nodes A and B will do is update their proof chain (every node has a full copy of the proof chain because it's tiny), and it's the proof chain which is used to calculate the cumulative difficulty of the entire chain. |
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Just want to note that KenKaniff 's problem has been resolved.
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Sorry for my delayed response, I haven't been able to spend much time online the last few days. If you click the links at the top of each of the following quotes to read the discussion, it is clear to me that Bitcoin is honeypot for the usual powers-that-be, and it is breaking anonymity and funneling the naive goldbugs into a mix with the criminals and in perfect way to help destroy them during this coming global smash 2016 - 2024 or so.
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Sadly I agree with you. And "Satoshi" (which is probably the same triumvirate, disagree?) has the psychology of these naive goldbugs wrapped around his million BTC finger.
Come on now, if it wasn't for "Satoshi" we wouldn't even be living in a world with decentralized crypto-currency. Quite frankly your above accusations are unfounded, irrational, and not true. If you use Bitcoin properly it's possible to achieve a much higher level of anonymity than any classic banking system could provide. Thus even though there was a super majority that agreed with 5% perpetual debasement, the silence leads me to believe they don't really disagree with goldbugs. Do you believe that you're the only person to ever argue for perpetual debasement? There are several altcoins to my knowledge with perpetual debasement built into them, and as far as I know none of them are very popular. So does that not prove which is more demanded? Agree. In all my years of programming easy-to-use software, I would never want that, if there was a reasonable way around it.
Unfortunately, I don't see another plausible solution. Exactly, there is no reasonable way to do it. If it's not an acceptable solution and you don't have a better solution then it cannot be done. I don't want this thread turning into a discussion about how to solve the anonymity problem, if you want to create a project which is focused on solving the anonymity problem then start a new thread for brainstorming. |
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Every single currency has died, including gold currencies. We had gold currency in the 1800s. We don't now.
That is some what true, but I would argue that gold is still used a currency in some places even to this day and the only reason we got rid of the gold standard in the past was to replace it with a fiat system, not necessarily because a gold standard wasn't working. He therefore used the term "inflation" to mean an excessive increase of the money supply Even if you are correct it's still an impossibly difficult task to algorithmically implement the correct level of debasement over long periods of time. The only logical reason for perpetual debasement is to keep the value of the coins stable, but it is extremely difficult to achieve this because the value of the coin isn't just a function of the total money supply. It would be much better to protect that with a natural rate, then to lose it because we are selfish deflationists who want to steal from producers by sitting on idle savings for 600 years and create dark ages. I would like to know who has 600 years to sit on idle savings for a start. There is nothing selfish about deflation, it is the natural consequence of a currency which experiences increased demand and no one should have the ability to steal that extra value from the currency. What you are basically saying is that people shouldn't be allowed to save their money and hope it goes up in value, which is obviously not the spirit of cryptocurrency. You must compare the relative mass of the earth to the total supply of gold to see that your fear is unfounded. As in several orders-of-magnitude beyond impossible. Just because the limit is large doesn't change the fact there is a limit. Plus if you calculate the cost of recovering gold even from the nearest planet in our solar system, it works out the the cost of the transportation is more than the value of the gold. As of 2033, there isn't much debasement. Even a decade before that it has dropped below 1%. So my original statement was correct. Yes, but by 2033 when it becomes extremely hard to mine even small amounts of bitcoin, the value of each bitcoin will be much higher. The creation of new bitcoins drops off exponentially for a reason, Satoshi wasn't an idiot. He designed it that way for a reason and it seems to be working well thus far. Yet that is only miniscule. The lost coins only gradually take the money supply towards 0 over decades. It can't substitute for a reasonable level of debasement. The whole concept of a "reasonable level of debasement" is completely subjective in the first place, thus impossible to implement algorithmically in a fair and consistent manner. Being able to re-mine lost coins doesn't offer any level of debasement, it simply ensures that the money supply wont get perpetually smaller and cause perpetual inflation in that way. If the value of the coin goes up it will be purely due to an increase in demand and other natural economic forces. |
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To stop the sends from being associated (i.e. "linked"), we need to spend one coin on abortion and a different coin to your Catholic church. Instead of paying for both from the same coin, or even from the change from the prior transaction, as both of these are linked in the public block chain.
So when we receive coins for any reason, we want to receive them in separate small coin values, so we can spend them by joining inputs instead of needing to split change on large value such that we can't delink spends on items we want to be orthogonal.
But that is just so utterly complicated and not user friendly... |
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To be pedantic, technically the term "51%" is incorrect. From Satoshi's whitepaper, it only takes infinitesimally more than 50%, which is why I write 50+%. That is true, yes. If I am not mistaken this secret chain attack is still a 50+% attack, because the attacker must be able to generate new PoW solutions (at same or greater difficulty) faster than the cooperating, honest peers.
It's very similar to a 50+% attack but a little bit different because it can only be pulled off by generating the fake chain in secret. A 50+% attack is not as drastic, it would only allow the attacker to alter recent transactions, and the older a block was, the harder it would be to alter. Pretty much like a 50+% attack with Bitcoin, which has yet to happen btw. But the main point is that historic "super nodes" are not absolutely necessary, even without any such super nodes there is still a very minute chance that a secret chain attack could be pulled off successfully if the attacker is unable to recruit new nodes. P.S. my argumentative style is intended to make sure the effort succeeds in the market place. I am not disrespecting you. I appreciate of course what you have designed.
No need to worry, I am a very thick skinned person and I can appreciate a bit of healthy criticism and debate. Life would be boring if we all agreed with each other. I can also respect your desire for increased anonymity, I'm just saying that it's a very complicated thing to do and perhaps best left to future efforts. I just really want to see some of these concepts implemented and if we wait around trying to develop the perfect system we might not ever get anything done. |
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