via freequant

You are a visionary. I am reading your posts from years ago. You have predicted everything that happened and outlined the future ten years out. I should be working, but spent last ten hours going through you post history and links.

You right about the mining cartels. Once the top 80% of miners get together, they will start to ignore the blocks of smaller miners and it is profitable for them to try to orphan the blocks for pools outside of the cartel. People will be upset at first, but over time they will get used to it.

This is the time between orphaning injection and the willing block injection averages about 300 seconds.



P2Pool type technologies threaten to redecentralize Bitcoin mining and cut into ability of pools to siphon off hash rate and extract a 4% fee. Unless the Bitcoin protocol is changed to a P2Pool style protocol, mining will be monopolized. There should be public pools (to monitor the pools for orphaning blocks intentionally) and the shares generated by pool should be public.

However, this will never occur for the reasons you stated.

---

capital can't buy knowledge because thought isn't fungible - AnonyMint

Put Coinbase and Bitpay together and you have both the consumer and the merchant, you don't need the block chain any more. Also the mining is already centralized. How much more obvious could it be? - AnonyMint

You are expecting the less likely threat, because the power elite don't shutdown what is popular, they find a way to own it. - AnonyMint

We should not keep flaws that we know about, which clearly open the door and beg for monopolization.  - AnonyMint

I am thinking about what advantage does Coinbase + Bitpay have over Paypal?  The key is that the consumer pays the fees instead of the merchant. - AnonyMint

Bitpay (a BTC facade on fiat payment) is growing faster than Bitcoin adoption - AnonyMint

---


Yes. Bitpay is draining money out of Bitcoin. Merchants are not holding the Bitcoin and its causing capital outflows and driving down Bitcoin price. Every dollar spent through Bitpay, is a dollar in Bitcoin sold, driving down the price.

Bitcoin price is being driven down by
- early investors cashing out
- people buying goods with Bitpay
- miners selling 1 million dollars of newly created coins per day, to pay electricity/hardware costs
- scammers and thieves who have stolen Bitcoin, cashing out (MtGox coins)

Bitcoin price is being drive up by
- speculators buying into the coin

Its very important that Skycoin avoids as many of the capital outflows as it can. It is also very important that Skycoin creates new sources of capital inflows that are not pure speculation and hot money.


Yes. If merchant is using Bitpay or a merchant has to satisfy KYC requirements under regulations, it forces all the payments through Bitpay.  The system becomes as centralized as the system it was designed to replaced. They can still blacklist your social security number and shut off your ability to spend your Bitcoin or withdraw money. Bitcoin does not affect the ability of government to implement Operation Chokepoint in the US. It does not stop government or private companies from linking and tracking every transaction a person makes.

Under Operation Chokepoint, they put your social security number on a list and all your bank cards, credit cards stop working. You are completely cut off from the financial system. Your employer will be required to deposit money into your account electronically, but you wont be able to access it. You will not be able to get access to your cash or even buy food without a 3rd party helping you.

Bitcoin has already recentralized to the point that it no longer no circumvents these capacities.

This is a good article by ChompyZ about what a professional virus/trojan for stealing Bitcoin would look like
- http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/

This is an article about the "computer health certificate" you will need to connect to the new Obamanet (no offense to Obama)
- http://www.networkworld.com/article/2227388/microsoft-subnet/microsoft-proposes-each-pc-needs-a-health-certificate-or-no-net-access-allowed.html
- Microsoft Proposes Each PC Needs A Health Certificate or No Net Access Allowed
- "Whose software gets access to your data to scan your computer for good health?"
- Microsoft plans to advocate for legislation and policies to help advance the model in a way that "advances principles supporting user control and privacy."

There are two aspects of marketing
1. Getting people to use it
2. Public relations, media relations
3. Community relations

For #1. If people are not using it because it is useful and because It meets a need they have, then its useless and no amount of marketing will ensure adaption.

I was one of the first bittorrent users. I was downloading television episodes with bitornado when the client looked like this.



Bitorrent did not succeed because it was the best marketed program. The usability was horrible. It succeeded because it met a need that people had and because it worked. Does Bitcoin or Dogecoin or Ripple or Ethereum meet a need people have? In some sense, Dogecoin is more legitimate than Bitcoin and has been more successful at achieving adaption and building a community and user base.

"Failure" is also relative. The infrastructure for Skycoin is useful to me personally and I would still use it, even as the only user. Skycoin could have 10x the number of users of Bitcoin and still be considered a failure, by most criteria. There is not even a single cryptocoin to date that has more users than Farmville. In that sense, every single coin that exists is a failure.

- What is Bitcoin's user acquisition strategy and what does Bitcoin do to drive new users?
- Why would someone use Bitcoin over using a credit card?
- Why would someone use Bitcoin over fiat, when a stable currency like USD is available?
- Is there a reason to own Bitcoin or has Bitcoin and the alts become a real money forex trading game. Did Satoshi invent a legitimate challenger to fiat currency or did he invent a fantasy football altcoin trading game? The way I see people using Bitcoin, the new users and how they trade back and forth between Dogecoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin and thrive on volatility suggests a gambling, fantasy football like behavior rather the use of Bitcoin/alts as a tool for facilitating real economic exchange or production.

Different measures of success exist
- Is the coin and software useful for the people who use it, does it a satisfy a need they have. Is this something they will use or something they will download and open once and forget about.
- How many users does the coin have, how widely is it used
- What is the price or marketcap for the coin


Yes. In Skycoin the 51% attack does not matter. The network could be 51% attacked twenty times a day and almost no one would care.

Skycoin has different mathematical properties than Bitcoin and is stricter. If you are trading coins back and forth between five people in a closed network, the 51% attack does not affect them. You need a private key of someone in the transaction chain to do any damage in a Skycoin 51% attack. There is no transaction malleability in Skycoin. Almost ever will have exactly the same outputs and same balances and same transaction histories on both the original chain and the fork, except the attacker and people they were trading coins with. If there is a fork in the chain, it just copies the transactions over from the other chains.

The 51% attack is only going to affect people day trading with shady people and gambling sites.  It will not affect commerce transactions very much. If an exchange follows best security practices and keeps the user wallets segregated, there worse attack is pretty mild.

Bitcoin is doing 100 million dollars a day transaction volume. Total transaction volume in Bitcoin is about 200,000 Bitcoins. Bitcoin has transaction malleability, this means that if someone 51% attack and rolls back transactions in the last hour, then about 4 million dollars and 10,000 Bitcoin in transactions balances will be screwed up. A rollback attack going back 24 hours could be 100 million in damages and up to 200,000 Bitcoins. An attacker can roll back any transaction in Bitcoin.

In Skycoin, they cannot affect or modify a transaction chain without knowing a private key for an address used in that chain of transactions. So if five banks are just trading back and forth between each other for settlement and they all have good wallet security, the 51% attack would not even be noticed. Their balances are the same. That is assuming, the 51% attack is even mathematically possible, that someone bothers expending the resources to attempt it and that it succeeds.

If someone manages to 51% attack Skycoin (which may be possible, but is mathematically unlikely) merchants will sing and dance with great rejoicement because losses will be so much less than for a Visa charge back. Many merchants sell laptops and make less than 5% margin on each laptop. Someone claims they didnt get the laptop and the merchant loses $1000, does not get the laptop back AND has to pay Visa an $80 fee. The company has to sell 25 laptops to make back the cost of the loss of a single fraud. If someone steals a credit card and buys a laptop with it, Visa does not take the loss, Visa tries to push the loss on the merchant.

The Skycoin consensus algorithm and the ledger are separate. The consensus system is modular and can be swapped out. If there is a better algorithm five years from now, we can just swap out the consensus for the new one. The ledger and coin balances will be completely unchanged.

Skycoin
- fixes existing problems with Bitcoin
- future proofs Bitcoin
- eliminates the death spiral conditions that Bitcoin has engineered in


It is 100% true. There are severe tradeoffs. There are tradeoffs, faster consensus times for Skycoin type relational consensus means that a smaller number of nodes are required to DDoS the network. However, people can react and remove the nodes from their trust lists.

There will be issues and they will need to be worked out.

Look at Skycoin Coinjoin
- https://github.com/skycoin/skycoin/blob/master/src/coin/transactions.go

A transaction is just
1> A list of output hashes, being spent
2> A list of signatures authorizing the outputs to be spent (signature of hash of inner part of transaction)
3> A list of outputs to be created

Coins cannot be created or destroyed. The number of coins in has to equal number of coins out. Transaction fees are in "coinhours".

There is no difference between normal and coinjoin transactions.
- Two people choose the outputs they want to spend, the outputs they want to create, send to remote server.
- The server creates a transaction and scrambles orders of outputs in/out. Then sends it to each person
- Each person sends the signatures for their outputs to the server
- The coinjoin server injects the transaction into the network

- The coinjoin server cannot steal the coins
- only the coinjoin server knows how many people are involved (1, 2, 4?)
- only the coinjoin server knows which outptus belong to who
- there is no difference between coinjoin and normal transactions (they look exactly the same)

The signature in the ith slot is for the address owning the ith output. The inner hash of the transaction is hashed with hash of output being spent, then this is signed with the private key owning the output.

So it is very simple compared to other coinjoin systems.

This is interesting. Their website is down, so I cannot access the documents. Otherwise would want more information. This could be useful.

Yes. If the wallet was generated on a computer that is not compromised. Many people buy a $200 laptop and generate addresses from computer that has never been connected to the internet.

This used to be secure. You could keep the private keys on one computer, then create a transaction by hand on the computer not connected to the internet and then put it on a USB drive and carry it to computer connected to the internet, where it will be injected into the bitcoin network for execution (addition to a new block).

However, recent malware like Stuxnet and more advanced malware has been able to infect systems over USB and hop from system to system. We are worried about a USB 3.0 DMA exploit. USB is very dangerous for windows users because auto-execute. This makes these attacks possible for 95% of script kiddies. Attacking a linux to linux USB transfer will be more difficult but cannot be ruled out.

The trojans that did this, used to be files on the USB stick. It was a program that was automatically executed when the device was plugged in, that installed a backdoor to the computer and starts scanning for bitcoin wallets or connects to a botnet control center for additional instructions. It might install ad toolbars for ad money, scan for bitcoin wallets, fix security holes on your system so other hackers could not take over the system (king of the hill) or install a key logger and begin grabbing email passwords, credit card numbers and bank account details.

The new trojans are hidden in the firmware of the USB drive itself. They cannot be seen on the file system. You can pass out a USB stick at a Bitcoin conference, someone formats it, thinks its safe but there could be anything in the firmware. If your computer is infected and any USB device is plugged in, that device could potentially be infected itself and spread to any other computer it is plugged into.

Here is an article on USB security and BadUSD: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

Offline Wallets:

Skycoin will have some more features for doing offline wallets or wallets on computers not connected to a network. You for instance, may generate a wallet and seed on a computer not connected to any internet. Your "cold wallet". Then you send the coins to the first address in the code wallet. Then you load the unspent output hash by hand (typing it into the computer).

To send coins out of the code wallet, without connecting the computer to the internet,  the wallet generates a transaction on the computer not connected to the network and produces a QR code you scan with a cell phone to injection that transaction into the network.

There should be a way of doing this safer than USB. Maybe coupling a cell phone app to a laptop over speaker/microphone.

IPO Security

We ended up generating a wallet with a few thousand addresses, using a computer that has never been connected to the internet and then encrypting the addresses (lock the wallet). Then transferring that to the computer running the IPO bot. So even if the bot is hacked (very difficult but cannot be ruled out) the Bitcoin private keys are safe and locked. We have all incoming ports firewalled and the bot is in a memory safe language, so buffer overflow vulnerabilities are not possible (except through one c library dependency).

So the bot can receive coins and check balances, but cannot send coins and even if hacked, cannot loot the Bitcoin (unless they can unlock the wallet). The Skycoin can be looted, but there is a receipt system, so can handle it.

Bitcoin has several security problems. Bitcoind does not allow you to check address balances, unless the public/private keys are loaded into the wallet. You used to be able to just load the pubkey, but that is deprecated. It is designed to force you to do things in ways that increase the risk of theft or loss of coins.

The problem is that people can lose coins because of factors that are not under their control (software bugs, bad usability, bad design, unexpected behavior in the wallet with change addresses, wallets not really be deleted on SSD, buffer overflow attacks). Every factor has to be brought under control. Its exhausting.

Skycoin Exchange Proof of Concept

We think
1> All exchanges should have a common API
2> Exchanges should not be holding balances of coins. The coins should automatically be withdrawn back into the users wallet. The user should be holding the private keys, not the exchange.

In this type of exchange, an exchange is a publickey hash, you add exchanges you trust to a list. The wallet queries the exchanges on the list and looks for the best bid/ask on each coin. Then you do trades and settlement and clearing.

The problem is that Bitcoin takes 10 minutes for settlement, while a person may enter in ten trades per second. If Skycoin achieves 1 second transaction times, then you can do settlement but wont have the Bitcoin in your wallet for 10 minutes. However the Bitcoin will be stored locally and cannot be stolen if the exchange goes down.

It is possible to do instant settlement with Bitcoin without waiting 10 minutes or going through the blockchain at all
- You place your Bitcoin in a multisig transaction, where moving the coins requires your signature and requires the exchange's signature.
- To send the Bitcoin to the exchange, you merely disclose the private key for that Bitcoin address.
- Now the exchange can authorize transactions with the Bitcoin but you cannot
- The exchange cannot steal the coins without your permission
- If you exchange discloses the private-key to you, now you own the coins and you can move the coins but the exchange cannot

So it is possible to do "instant" settlement of Bitcoin off the blockchain. However
- exchanges can hold your coins hostage (sign this transaction giving us 50% of the coins you get nothing)
- if the exchange forgets or loses the private key then you cannot get access to the coins

To get around this, you set a timer and make the signature check short circuit after 30 days. So if the coins are not moved, within thirty days they return to the person who owns the privatekey for the first address. This prevents the coins from being held hostage or prevents coins from being lost if the exchange forgets the privatekey.

To implement that, you would need a bitcoin scripting language op code that can read the time in the blockchain header for the current block and compare it to a target value. Or which can compare block depth of current block to a target value.

Bitcoin/crypto Infrastructure

So the exchange problem has been solved for a while, but no one has implemented the solution. It requires a series of libraries, scaffolding and infrastructure that does not exist and which no one is building.

I see Bitcoin/crypto as a sort of "money operating system" and it a platform with missing core libraries and capacities. Just like the standard library for "open file", "read file", "write data to file", there are a set of standard operations for Bitcoin. Private key generation, signature verification, communication, settlement/clearing and dozens of others. Bitcoin only implements "check balance" and "send" and has a very crude implementation of a fraction of the capacities or libraries needed.

Some of these core operations overlap with the standard library for the operating system. Why you connect to an IP address, you have no idea if the traffic is being intercepted or man-in-the-middle attacked. Any router between you and the destination can intercept and redirect the traffic. The  IP addresses does not actually identify anything in the real world.

When you are on OkCoin or an exchange and you send an HTTP request for "withdraw my coins to this address", what stops someone from sitting in the middle and replacing the address you wanted the coins withdrawn to, with their own address? What prevents them from withdrawing all your coins to themselves? Nothing. HTTPS sometimes (but in practice not, depending on your browser, your ISP and the security of the exchanges HTTPS private keys). Instead of hacking OkCoin, you can hack a frontend server, bribe and employee, get the private key for HTTPS and then hack any router between the user and the exchange and then steal all their coins by intercepting their traffic and withdrawing the coins to your address once they have logged in. How many coins could one person steal with a single BGP hijack and the HTTPS privatekeys for one exchange, without even having to hack the exchange itself or grab the private keys for the Bitcoin.

When you replace IP addresses by a pubkey hash, then unless the person has the private key for that pubkey, they cannot even read the messages you are sending.

You can guarantee that the end-point, if it is able to respond, at-least knows the private key for the publickey. Once you have that, you would deprecate the use of UDP/TCP/IPv4/IPv6 for all Bitcoin applications, because there is no reason you would use those protocols because they only have relative disadvantages in every category for security and do not offer superior performance. Eventually, it moves up the protocol stack and the operating system itself deprecates UDP/TCP/IPv4/IPv6.

So I want Skywire to replace
- UDP
- TCP
- IPv4
- IPv6
- HTTPs
- SSH
- SSL/TLS
- BGB
- MPLS
- TOR
- IPsec
- VPN protocols
- ...

Ironically, Skycoin started as a universal token for traffic settlement in the Skywire protocol. However, Skycoin itself began to require Skywire itself to meet security guarantees for higher level protocols.

This is very boring to most users. Very difficult to sell. People take for granted infrastructure like water and electricity, until it goes out. I think people will eventually end up using it in a way that is invisible to the user. No one thinks or cares whether they are using IPv4 or TCP/IP or HTTPS  when they open a Facebook page.

Another thing to consider is that Facebook makes less than $2 per year on each user and that between cell phone service, cable television and internet each person easily spends $3000 per year.

The real world is like H.G. Wells The Time Machine. Except that the above ground is where Facebook and 98% of users live in comfort and luxury without any concern for where anything they consume comes from, but there is no money here. All the money in the world is in the lairs of the morlocks laboring underground running the tubes and broilers, everything the Facebook users take for granted.

Bitcoin's market cap right now, is 3 billion dollars. Three billion a year is like level of tax evasion by single person or a divorce settlement. A single sovereign wealth fund or dictator trying to stash money where it cannot be seized, is more than the whole Bitcoin market cap. That means everyone here is still early. Bitcoin is already up ten million times from five years ago, but to go to 2 trillion is merely another 600x increase. 1% of global assets in crypto.

However, the state of the technology and computing is not ready for that type of society. The thefts would go from 2 million to 2 billion per month, the mining costs would go from 1 million a day to 600 million a day and drain the money back out of the system. There are technological upper bounds on Bitcoin's market cap. The mining overhead and the overhead from theft, have equal contributions to deflating Bitcoin's marketcap.

I should be excited by the IPO, I should feel like its 1994 again and its the Netscape IPO again. However, I feel numb because I see how much work is left. A week passed and I did not even notice. I feel like there are two days left of work and its so near, but never seem to get closer because of billions of small details

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead. – Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b15

An open source, volunteer model does not work effectively. I am going to hire more developers, set priorities, then transitioning away from coding directly and will just be doing code review.

If we sat in an IRC chat room handling out coins by hand, would be done and take five minutes. However, had to add deterministic Bitcoin address generation to Skycoin and a bot and do cryptographically signed receipts that allow third party verification, through a tox bot. The IPO is over engineered... We already had two working python bots for distribution and should have used those instead of writing a new bot in golang *sigh*

chronic over-engineering.

Good news is that Skycoin almost functions as a full Bitcoin thin-client now and the bot is almost a full Skycoin/Bitcoin exchange. With an sx wrapper, it will do Dogecoin and Litecoin too...

The purpose of the IPO (its not really an IPO, its a private offering), is to get coins out the community and get it trading.

The other purpose of the IPO, is to get it done. I am absolutely sick of working on the coin. Its done.

http://godoc.org/github.com/skycoin/skycoin/src/cipher
http://godoc.org/github.com/skycoin/skycoin/src/coin
http://godoc.org/github.com/skycoin/skycoin/src/visor

When I am working on the coin and writing unit tests and endlessly refactoring, I feel like crypto jesus dragging the crypto cross. Everyone wants to work on the "cool stuff" but few people want to fix build scripts for cywgin or deal with problems. After the IPO we will go on oDesk and find good developers who need to write code in order to feed their family and avoid starvation in winter, who are motivated to handle these hundreds of small things quickly and efficiently.

I want you to go into the Bitcoin source and then look at the Skycoin source
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/src
https://github.com/skycoin/skycoin

Click on a folder. You can feel the clutter. Bitcoin is like a jet aircraft held together by duct tape. Getting Skycoin down from 85,000 lines to 5,000 lines and eliminating all the edge cases and "undefined behavior" was an immense effort over years and psychologically taxing.

After Skycoin and Skywire is done. Bitcoin is obsolete. There is no reason to spend 300 million/year on mining and electricity costs to secure the blockchain. There is no longer a reason to tolerate the crap in Bitcoin, the edge cases, the shitty API, the frustration that it creates doing even the basic task of checking the balance of an address not loaded in your wallet. There is no reason to tolerate the transaction malleability, signature malleability, or use insecure web wallets because the local wallet is shit.

Even if your coin is Proof of Work, it is easier to just fork Skycoin and clone the repo rather than deal with Bitcoin. Skycoin is actually a set of libraries for building cryptocoin applications.

Shorter Summary:


1000 Bitcoin is a tiny IPO. Its not even an IPO, it is a "private offering". 1000 Bitcoins were not even a dollar, when Skycoin project started. 1000 Bitcoin wont even buy you a sports car.

The IPO was sold out a year ago. I just want to get it over with. It is taking up too much time. There are more important things that need to be developed and it is taking up too much resources and creating too much stress. As soon as its done, people can whine about it, but we can get actual work done instead of worrying about minimizing whining.

Skycoin now has deterministic Bitcoin address generation. Bitcoin address generation in six lines of code.





Finishing the Bitcoind wallet import format (WIP) and then bot should be ready.

IPO Today

Ok. Quickly, time to do the IPO while the bitcoin elite are on the secret island.

We want to get this out of the way so we can focus on Skywire. Too much delay.

The tox bot is: c2ec2db92c4d4bed0208bd5bf609ba5e1a277af105c6da40af82b1dcd5e6c456ad79757f1349

Coding bot right now. Deterministic wallet generation is confirmed.
- you do not need the skycoin wallet for the IPO. You can use a wallet seed.

There are three addresses in the IPO
- the address where bitcoin are deposited to receive Skycoin
- the Skycoin destination Address (the deterministic wallet address)
- The Bitcoin refund address (where bitcoin will be sent back to, if there is a problem)

There is a receipt system, to allow third party resolution of disputes. We will take address pairs, hash the json and sign the hash. The rest can be confirmed from public data (whether the coins were received, how much Bitcoin was refunded, how much Bitcoin was sent).

Will update instructions here when bot is ready to go. I would start up tox and verify that you can message the bot.

IPO Details:

This IPO is for developers, people who have been following for a while and experienced people who know what they are doing. This is more of a private offering and not really an IPO. The purpose is to get Skycoin trading and work on bugs.

There is no public Skycoin exchange setup. This is not the public offering for speculators. Trading bot will be setup later.

We will distribute 2 million coins, at 10 cents per coin. Out of 100 million coins. So this offering is very small at 200k.

A joke. The wallet format is being refactored. The attributes are hardcoded and are going into a JSON map, so that they can be modified without breaking old wallets. There is also a change to the private key format. Cipher is being upgraded to generate deterministic bitcoin addresses and private keys for the IPO bot. This means the Skycoin wallet will be able to store, check balances and send Bitcoin with minimum modification. We are adding private key export in a base58 format compatible with Bitcoind.

This is experimental, so dont rely on it for large balances right now.

IPO help

Can someone run the skycoin daemon with the web-interface enabled and check if you can connect to it from an IP that is not local host? If IPs outside of local host can access the webserver, they can grab your private keys and spend coins in your wallet. We want to be 100% sure its rejecting connections outside of local host.

Update. XTC Tested.Deterministic wallet working now. The wallet is firewalled correctly.

I am waiting for Bitcoin to hit $200.

Skycoin Project Overview

This is overview of the Skycoin project code complexity. Skycoin began as an attempt to simplify bitcoin and make a minimalist bitcoin with reduced complexity, improved security and improved usability.

Skycoin was not designed to add hundreds of features, but was designed to strip out all the edge cases and everything unnecessary from Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Complexity

 ~/bitcoin-0.9.2.1-linux/src/bitcoin-0.9.2 $ cloc .
     593 text files.
     584 unique files.                                          
     191 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.60  T=4.03 s (100.1 files/s, 30359.6 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C++                            194           8991           5294          53356
Bourne Shell                    15           2357           2149          18205
C/C++ Header                   159           4108           4316          15847
m4                              17            377            102           3563
HTML                             3             85              0           1136
make                             6            167             29            895
Python                           5             88             79            379
C                                1             43             11            336
Objective C++                    2             37             14            155
CSS                              1             10              1             78
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                           403          16263          11995          93950
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Skycoin Complexity

~/skycoin/src $ cloc .
     645 text files.
     638 unique files.                                          
      77 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.60  T=4.73 s (120.8 files/s, 41069.5 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Javascript                     370          13829          35038          91821
Go                             137           4450           5151          26487
CSS                             15           1712            129           9214
C/C++ Header                    27            448            353           2564
C                                5            151             83            954
HTML                            10             83            130            487
Assembly                         1             62             61            346
m4                               1             30              0            276
make                             1              6              1             59
Bourne Shell                     2              0              5             54
Java                             1              7             19             34
YAML                             1              8              0             11
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                           571          20786          40970         132307
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Skycoin Complexity Drill Down

Removing the one external C library and the javascript for angular we get

cloc --exclude-dir=aether,_deprecated,./gui/static,./cipher/secp256k1-go .
      69 text files.
      69 unique files.                              
     665 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.60  T=0.55 s (123.7 files/s, 34026.3 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go                              68           2029           2459          14210
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            68           2029           2459          14210
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Summary

Bitcoin is 53356 lines of C++, 15847 lines of C/C++ headers. 15,000 lines of bash scripts.

Skycoin is 14,210 lines of Golang. At peak Skycoin was over 80,000 lines, but has become more elegant over time.

Skycoin Drill Down

cloc --exclude-dir=aether,_deprecated,./gui/static,./cipher/secp256k1-go --by-file .
      69 text files.
      69 unique files.                              
     665 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.60  T=0.51 s (132.7 files/s, 36494.5 lines/s)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
File                                                blank        comment           code
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
./daemon/visor_test.go                                127             94           1202
./daemon/daemon_test.go                               131            112           1144
./coin/blockchain_test.go                             102             86            925
./visor/visor_test.go                                 113             70            872
./visor/unconfirmed_test.go                            67             45            735
./daemon/daemon.go                                     53            117            611
./coin/transactions_test.go                            56             41            489
./coin/blockchain.go                                   66            141            478
./visor/spend_test.go                                  41             42            377
./daemon/visor.go                                      60             88            376
./visor/visor.go                                       81            234            371
./coin/outputs_test.go                                 43             23            362
./daemon/messages_test.go                              60             25            338
./cipher/crypto.go                                     51             56            325
./visor/readable_test.go                               40              6            315
./gui/wallet.go                                        71            282            259
./coin/transactions.go                                 45             57            250
./daemon/messages.go                                   36             57            246
./cipher/crypto_test.go                                33             23            241
./coin/unspent_pool_test.go                            19             19            236
./cipher/hash_test.go                                  23             15            221
./cipher/base58/base58.go                              41             24            178
./visor/unconfirmed.go                                 25             36            173
./util/file_test.go                                    23              3            162
./visor/readable.go                                    29             34            153
./visor/blocksigs_test.go                              21              8            152
./coin/outputs.go                                      34             55            138
./visor/rpc_test.go                                    20              9            137
./visor/spend.go                                       23             23            132
./daemon/peers_test.go                                 16              4            121
./cipher/ripemd160/ripemd160block.go                   24             19            118
./coin/coin_test.go                                    55            119            108
./cipher/hash.go                                       20             13            108
./coin/unspent_pool.go                                 15             21            106
./daemon/dht.go                                        13             20            105
./wallet/deterministic.go                              27             27            104
./daemon/gateway.go                                    29            103             96
./wallet/readable.go                                   19             25             95
./visor/serialization_test.go                          20             11             95
./visor/blocksigs.go                                   12             17             93
./cipher/ripemd160/ripmd_160.go                        19             14             87
./visor/serialization.go                               10              4             86
./wallet/wallets.go                                    11              8             84
./util/file.go                                         10              8             84
./daemon/peers.go                                      10             14             82
./daemon/pool.go                                       11             14             81
./cipher/address.go                                    20             29             80
./wallet/entry.go                                      12             11             77
./cipher/address_test.go                                9              5             72
./gui/http.go                                           8             15             72
./util/cert.go                                         15              7             70
./daemon/rpc.go                                        10             10             68
./daemon/pool_test.go                                   8              6             64
./daemon/dht_test.go                                    7              0             57
./visor/rpc.go                                         18             38             56
./gui/blockchain.go                                     6              1             51
./gui/cert.go                                           5              9             49
./wallet/balance.go                                    11              6             46
./gui/json.go                                           7              6             36
./wallet/wallet.go                                     11             37             32
./gui/error.go                                          7              1             29
./gui/template.go                                       4              1             25
./gui/network.go                                        4              1             23
./util/time_test.go                                     4              0             20
./util/cert_test.go                                     3              0             17
./util/time.go                                          4              3             13
./visor/json_rpc.go                                     1              7              1
./wallet/wallet_util.go                                 0              0              1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                                                 2029           2459          14210
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We see that most of Skycoin's code is unit tests. The unit tests are larger than the files.

Removing unit tests

cloc --exclude-dir=aether,_deprecated,./gui/static,./cipher/secp256k1-go --not-match-f='.+_test.go' --by-file .
      45 text files.
      45 unique files.                              
     665 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.60  T=0.41 s (107.4 files/s, 20570.1 lines/s)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
File                                                blank        comment           code
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
./daemon/daemon.go                                     53            117            611
./coin/blockchain.go                                   66            141            478
./daemon/visor.go                                      60             88            376
./visor/visor.go                                       81            234            371
./cipher/crypto.go                                     51             56            325
./gui/wallet.go                                        71            282            259
./coin/transactions.go                                 45             57            250
./daemon/messages.go                                   36             57            246
./cipher/base58/base58.go                              41             24            178
./visor/unconfirmed.go                                 25             36            173
./visor/readable.go                                    29             34            153
./coin/outputs.go                                      34             55            138
./visor/spend.go                                       23             23            132
./cipher/ripemd160/ripemd160block.go                   24             19            118
./cipher/hash.go                                       20             13            108
./coin/unspent_pool.go                                 15             21            106
./daemon/dht.go                                        13             20            105
./wallet/deterministic.go                              27             27            104
./daemon/gateway.go                                    29            103             96
./wallet/readable.go                                   19             25             95
./visor/blocksigs.go                                   12             17             93
./cipher/ripemd160/ripmd_160.go                        19             14             87
./visor/serialization.go                               10              4             86
./wallet/wallets.go                                    11              8             84
./util/file.go                                         10              8             84
./daemon/peers.go                                      10             14             82
./daemon/pool.go                                       11             14             81
./cipher/address.go                                    20             29             80
./wallet/entry.go                                      12             11             77
./gui/http.go                                           8             15             72
./util/cert.go                                         15              7             70
./daemon/rpc.go                                        10             10             68
./visor/rpc.go                                         18             38             56
./gui/blockchain.go                                     6              1             51
./gui/cert.go                                           5              9             49
./wallet/balance.go                                    11              6             46
./gui/json.go                                           7              6             36
./wallet/wallet.go                                     11             37             32
./gui/error.go                                          7              1             29
./gui/template.go                                       4              1             25
./gui/network.go                                        4              1             23
./util/time.go                                          4              3             13
./wallet/wallet_util.go                                 0              0              1
./visor/json_rpc.go                                     1              7              1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                                                  988           1693           5748
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So Skycoin has 6000 lines of golang code. 8000 lines of unit tests.

Sorted by Name

File                                                blank        comment           code
./cipher/address.go                                    20             29             80
./cipher/base58/base58.go                              41             24            178
./cipher/crypto.go                                     51             56            325
./cipher/hash.go                                       20             13            108
./cipher/ripemd160/ripemd160block.go                   24             19            118
./cipher/ripemd160/ripmd_160.go                        19             14             87
./coin/blockchain.go                                   66            141            478
./coin/outputs.go                                      34             55            138
./coin/transactions.go                                 45             57            250
./coin/unspent_pool.go                                 15             21            106
./daemon/daemon.go                                     53            117            611
./daemon/dht.go                                        13             20            105
./daemon/gateway.go                                    29            103             96
./daemon/messages.go                                   36             57            246
./daemon/peers.go                                      10             14             82
./daemon/pool.go                                       11             14             81
./daemon/rpc.go                                        10             10             68
./daemon/visor.go                                      60             88            376
./gui/blockchain.go                                     6              1             51
./gui/cert.go                                           5              9             49
./gui/error.go                                          7              1             29
./gui/http.go                                           8             15             72
./gui/json.go                                           7              6             36
./gui/network.go                                        4              1             23
./gui/template.go                                       4              1             25
./gui/wallet.go                                        71            282            259
./util/cert.go                                         15              7             70
./util/file.go                                         10              8             84
./util/time.go                                          4              3             13
./visor/blocksigs.go                                   12             17             93
./visor/json_rpc.go                                     1              7              1
./visor/readable.go                                    29             34            153
./visor/rpc.go                                         18             38             56
./visor/serialization.go                               10              4             86
./visor/spend.go                                       23             23            132
./visor/unconfirmed.go                                 25             36            173
./visor/visor.go                                       81            234            371
./wallet/balance.go                                    11              6             46
./wallet/deterministic.go                              27             27            104
./wallet/entry.go                                      12             11             77
./wallet/readable.go                                   19             25             95
./wallet/wallet.go                                     11             37             32
./wallet/wallets.go                                    11              8             84
./wallet/wallet_util.go                                 0              0              1
SUM:                                                  988           1693           5748

Skycoin Module Overview

skycoin.coin is the blockchain parser
skycoin.cipher is the cryptography library and address parser
skycoin.visor runs the the blockchain. Downloads blockchain, manages blockchain state, exposes API
skycoin.daemon is the networking module. It does DHT, packets and peer-exchange. It is being replaced by Skywire
skycoin.gui runs the html web-wallet frontend and JSON API.  
skycon.wallet is the JSON wallet library.
skycoin.util is functions for saving files to disc and other tasks

Bitcoin uses OpenSSL for encryption. Skycoin includes the encryption library and has the absolute bare minimum of external dependencies. The dependencies that it does have, are being removed or reduced over time.

Remaining Work

- The wallet needs to be refactored and cleaned up. 800 lines of code were just removed and the wallet format is being improved https://github.com/skycoin/skycoin/commit/98cb1b3dad6cd34791b69bc54026a2bce48f374b
- Daemon needs to be replaced by Skywire. This will allow consensus algorithm implementation and allow the operation of the darknet/meshnet. There is a single DHT library that needs implementation for the meshnet/darknet to be fully operational. Skywire is "the new internet", where IP addresses have been replaced by public key hashes. It is similar to Tor but can have lower latency than IPv4/IPv6 (mostly because of hot potato interdomain routing).
- Cipher needs ChaCha20 support
- Cipher's secp256k1 code needs to be moved from C to Golang, so that we can do cross platform builds easily without any cgo dependency.
- Visor could be cleaned up. Visor is being refactored soon.
- There needs to be a thin-client separation between /src/gui and /src/visor so that cell phones can do transactions easily, without running the full blockchain. We may add a golang RPC layer between visor and the JSON api exposed by GUI.
- We need a library for doing blockchain storage. blockdb
- We need a library for doing transaction history and exploring the blockchain, exposing a JSON api. Skycoin is designed to be minimalist so this was not included as part of the core libraries.
- Merkle-DAG needs to be implemented, so that we can download all blocks in the blockchain in parallel. Merkle-DAG is Skycoin's peer-to-peer content addressable storage standard, "Bitorrent 2.0" protocol based upon IPFS. Merkle-DAG is a stripped down minimized version of IPFS that uses Skycoin's cryptographic primitives and Skywire for networking.

We also need to put together a full time team, working on infrastructure investment. After Skywire and consensus is implemented. This will move us towards deterministic builds for golang and improve the language run-time to meet the needs of the project.

The button for loading deterministic wallets from seed is now in interface. I need to switch the wallet generator to the deterministic wallet and confirm now.



The wallet backend needs to be refactored, but can happen later.

Wallets have an id field, a name field,filename and a seed. This should probably been "filename" as id. The name field should be renamed "notes" or removed. The json storage format needs to be improved later. Just general cleanup in future.

When the wallet format changes, you need to go into ".skycoin/wallet" and move the folder. Then open the wallets with a text editor and extract the seed. Then run client and reimport it.

All is fine in your screenshot.
The msgs is just logging.
For example, if some peer is offline, you can't connect it successfully.

This account is share by some core developers of skycoin.
I wish I know some 14 years old teen who can do all of the existing work, and then I must persude him to join us.

windows executable: http://128.199.188.22:1337/

======
double click the "skycoin.exe" file and then visit http://127.0.0.1:6420

sudo apt-get install libgmp3-dev

Dont compare Skycoin to Ripple. At least half the coins will be distributed to the community over next five years (or over a reasonable schedule). We are doing a tapered distribution like Bitcoin. This is the best strategy for gradual appreciation over time.

Handling Speculators:

There are speculators who will push massive amounts of Bitcoin into Skycoin. They can send the price 50x the IPO price for very little money, then hype coin, bringing in new money. They sell off until they have made more than the cost of the pump. Then they dump everything. Everyone who came in later is angry because they lost money.

We have studied the pump behavior of the NXT clones and we have studied every coin IPO. There is no perfect IPO. Every IPO is unfair to someone. There is no distribution strategy that will make everyone happy. No matter which strategy is chosen, there will be complaints. This strategy was chosen, so that
1> we can control the pump behavior to a reasonable range.
2> the distribution ends up being fairer and more evenly distributed

The more coins are distributed in the IPO vs over time, the more unequal the resulting coin distribution will be five or ten years from now.

Suggestions for improvement:

It is not enough to criticize the IPO format, but you have to come up with a better distribution strategy and an argument for why that strategy is superior. There are trade-offs. The IPO that makes the most money for the people in the IPO may not be the best strategy for the long-term health of the coins or for stable price levels.

IPO Choices that were made

We also made a choice to minimize the importance of the the IPO. The IPO does not matter, because it is such a small amount of coins. By the time 10% of the coins are distributed, only a fifth of them will have been from the IPO. The returns will be modest (we expect no more than 5x) over people coming in at 10% of distribution. A 5x return is nice, but its not a billion percent return like Bitcoin. A 5x return on 200k is only 1 million. So the IPO people will be ok, but they wont be billionaires while the people who come later are mere millionaires.

Even if the Skycoin IPO is completely unfair and a compete disaster, the amount of coins involved is so small, it is of little consequence in the long run. Five times as many coins will enter the market over the next year as during the IPO.

In Bitcoin, there inequality was immense. There were people who bought coins at 1000 Bitcoin per dollar and people who bought at $200 per coins. The average Bitcoin user may have 1 coins or 10 coins and there are users who own 500,000 coins. If the developers do not screw up and are responsible, the level of inequality in Skycoin will be significantly lower than in Bitcoin. A more widely and evenly distributed coin, will have lower volatility.

Psychological Aspects of Altcoin Volatility

There are people who bought Bitcoin when it was at a penny and who slam 10,000 Bitcoins coins back and forth like a coked up day trader. Its monopoly money to them. If they lose 2000 Bitcoin, they do not feel psychological loss because the coins cost them nothing. They need to gain or lose 1000 coins for gambling to be exciting. They need volatility and need to create volatility to satisfy their gambling impulses. This is not

Minimizing Inflation:

People have brought up concerns that going from 2% to 50% distribution of coins will cause inflation. This is true. A good rule, is that the percentage of new coins released as percentage of existing coins (inflation rate) should always be kept less than the long term appreciation rate of the coin.

We intend to do the distribution so that it does not put downward pressure on price. Distribution will decrease if it pushes price down. So going from 2% distributed to 10% will not be a 5x inflation, but will be like Bitcoin going from a cent to a dollar, while the number of Bitcoin itself has increased.

With this strategy, the market cap reflects a circulation of 100 million coins (100%) and not the free float. The inflation rate will always be lower than the rate of long term appreciation.

Developer Self Interest

It is best for the community if the developers are stingy and greedy, but not exploitative.
- coins which are more scarce, will have higher valuations. Developers who shower coins on everyone will make the coin worthless
- developers who plan to make all their money on the coin IPO are not invested in the long term growth. Raising a large IPO means the developers are already rich and they dont have as much as an incentive to increase the coin value. Most coins today are designed to make all the money at the IPO instead of being a long-term prospect.
- a developer selling most of the coins up front means the developer would rather have Bitcoin than his own coin. It shows they lack confidence or commitment in the long term growth of the coin.
- developers who are weak and cave into social pressure, are incapable of making sound or fair decisions. The best choice for the long term, will often make people unhappy. There is a difference between being reasonable and fair and making decisions based upon who can whine the loudest.
- If we only need $200,000 for immediate first year budget, should we raise $200,000 and spend it on the project. OR should we raise $2,000,000 and go and buy sports cars. Why not just sit on the money for five years and buy a castle when Bitcoin hits $10,000. Both other developers AND investors have told us that they dont understand why we dont take as we can get.
- The more coins we give out in the IPO, the fewer major contributors we can compensate. 1% of Bitcoin is 4 million dollars and may be worth 60 million someday. We can give out 1% stakes to key contributors making major contributions and 0.1% stakes to other contributor and so on and the rewards are more compelling if the coin is scarcer. We will be spending 10% of the market cap of the coin each year on development and driving user growth. The best developers want to work on projects they find personally rewarding, they need 40k to 150k/year compensation and they need enough equity to buy a house or retire (with castles and sports cars) if the project succeeds.

Summary

That is the best long term strategy we were able to design
- a small IPO (so small that it is meaningless in the long term)
- a fixed number of coins per day, decreasing over time (tapered distribution)

That is the best possible strategy that we have seen so far.

So if there are 100 million coins and goal is 50% distribution, then a simple rule is "10 million coins per year for five years". In reality, this is a rule of thumb and we are going to do what maximizes the long term value for the stakeholders.

No idea. Golang has difficulty with replication. I changed the flags to the curl command in /compile/install-gvm.sh to fix a problem that one person had. Then other people began getting the problem you are having.

Can you open a ticket on github?

>mingw.

You are on windows? If you are on windows, install go, then do

go run ./cmd/skycoin/skycoin.go -web-interface=true

The gvm script may not work on windows. You should just need go and it should work.

You may need to do
./compile/get-dependencies.sh

>mingw

We need cross compilation from ubuntu. There is a mingw compiler for linux that allows creation of the binaries for windows. It is implemented and works with golang, but there are no instructions for getting it working.