No one is "pointing fingers". But things need to be cleared up.

Regarding the "burning" of the coins: Ask your lawyer about this, what would be the best, if you were in the same situation as the one who "received" the coins now. It is not an easy one.

Talking about "crying over it": you should get over the fact, that the coins most probably won't get burned at all, considering the legal situation in all developed countries, and in such one Vassilis is living. This is, why it is better to finally accept the fact, that Mooncoin has a very large supply and try to do the REAL work, in order to gain attraction by serious investors: investigating on how fails could happen in detail, in order to learn from it and prevent something similar in the future. Remember: programming often times is trial and error, because you'll never know, whether there are unconsidered bugs and when they occur. But real bad coding is: not learning from previous errors.

Hi James,

as I already said in the above posting to Mooncoin_Foundation: why not simply try to explain in short, how the locking mechanism was intended to work and how it now failed in your opinion, if it wasn't a 51%-attack? It does not help anybody, to say who knows about crypto and who not and on what level. As said above about Jeff Bezos already, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did not need to be the best programmers in the world, to build up some of the best known brands of all time.

Transparency is not only "for me", but discussing this is for Mooncoin, as it shows, that people are interested to professionally deal with problems, if they arise. Remember, many people in forums only read and don't post. So maybe you would not even recognize that these people are very interested in transparently working on the issue and getting a sufficient explanation for what happened.

Thanks and best regards
coinflow

I tried to help people with less technical understanding all the time, as you know. But I get less involved more and more, as I see people not really want to solve problems, but only are focused on how the price can be driven up.

I have already explained, how the attacker managed to move the coins and there was more than enough time now to submit another explanation. But obviously Vassilis isn't available anymore and barrysty1e wastes his time with doing explanations on how someone knows something about crypto or not. If James knows that much about crypto (remember: "knowledge" about crypto is not the ability to code, just as Jeff Bezos would not necessarily know to code himself to know how selling goods in the web really works ...), then at let him explain how the movement happened, so that anybody interested in Mooncoin can make educated decisions on how to proceed. If he isn't interested in this, why would he post anyway? I don't need entertainment. I have also already explained, that serious investors need confidence to invest.

As I have already explained, it was a 51%-attack: the attacker possessed the private keys of the "blocked" Mooncoins to be moved and managed to move them, when he was in control of more than 50% of the hashrate in the moment he moved them. That is, why the network accepted the confirmations, despite of other wallets normally would block the transaction based on their code. These wallets carried on when the attacker left, after he had managed to move the coins. It was effectively a temporary hardfork done by the attacker to move the coins. As long as barrysty1e or someone else does not post a better explanation, which we can discuss, this is what happened. Maybe barry should first invest his time to explain why the Mooncoins in moonrush.org are gone without people having the chance to access them anymore (which was asked here sometimes and barry being silent), before he tries to explain, who knows about crypto and who not.

As said: as long as no details about "Smart Likes" are available, you can consider it as not a valid thing to think further about, as no one can really evaluate, how it is planned to be implemented and hence cannot make an educated decision.

Regarding the movement of coins:
Why only refer to the open source-code being available for experts to look at? That does not answer the questions. The dev of the code should be here and wholeheartedly ready to explain how the "locking" of the coins was planned and how this could fail, simple as that. It is a main part of his job and is common standard in crypto-world and IT in general. The detailed analysis of a malfunction is a must, to show competence, as well as dedication and is the prerequisite to regain trust in a product and the developer/team/company. And last but not least: the investors deserve that.

You obviously make no effort, to really help investigate on how the movement of the said to be "locked" coins to the one of the former devs wallet could happen. Instead it seems, that this issue should be swept under the rug, as good as possible. As long as this is not worked on and investigated as good as possible and people see, that devs help on this and try to explain with their best efforts, Mooncoin is no option for serious crypto-investors.

I didn't talk about you. I talked about the code in general (edit: and that coins were moved to the former devs address - "former" because it was said, that Vassilis is not active anymore for Mooncoin). Who designed it (edit: the code) is relatively unimportant for finding out, how the movement of coins could happen. But while you're at it and really feel to add to the discussion, please explain the mechanism how you tried to lock the coins and how they (edit: still) could be moved. You can use the "insert code"-feature of this forum and then comment on how you designed the relevant parts of the code and why. You could also discuss the relevant code parts in the version of Vassilis, if any of your relevant code-sections for the "locking" were added/changed. That would help us all (edit: including Vassilis and yourself). Thank you.

3) Discard Smart Likes and concentrate on what is important (get a new dev and a flawless wallet with proper support for the community by the dev who can answer questions like: how was it possible to move the said-to-be-"locked"-coins to the wallet of the former dev?).

Smart Likes-"technology" has never been decided over by the community, because no one knows what it should be and knows the details. The "risk" of being copied by someone other has proven to be as low as possible, because if it were really interesting, Mooncoin would range much higher in the charts and another dev would have already taken over the idea and developed a coin with this himself.

As long as we haven't seen anything how it should be implemented, it is like talking about ghosts anyway - others here have recognized this, too. Keep in mind that storing who and when someone has "liked" something, is a serious threat for anonymity (would you like to have these info stored by an entity, that has no proven record)? And it would have to be stored somewhere, if it should work like talked about since years. Aside from the problem with storage space (if this information is stored into the blockchain) or centralization and non-transparency (if the data is stored on a server run by a central instance). Think about things that happened with data-misappropriation just some days ago by an even bigger company. Storage of personal-data in combination with a cryptocurrency goes against everything what is the origin of crypto. Maybe the reason why Mooncoin lost acceptance more and more over time is just the advertisement of Smart Likes? As long as no one knows how this is planned to work in detail, I consider it to not be voted for by anyone, because no one can judge how it works and no one can do a proper technology-assessment that would be necessary to make a proper decision.

And the idea was abandoned.

Please tell the community, why you need defamation of other (longtime) community members? As far as I remember, this was not necessary for several years in both of the Mooncoin threads.

So having said this, I assume you have a good reason for telling, that the believed-to-be Cryptsy-coins belong to "the community"?
As far as I know, they still belong to Cryptsy (represented by the receiver), as part of their "insolvency estate" (edit: to be distributed among their claimants).

A strong spiky rise in hashrate every now and then is not unusual for Mooncoin, 290GH/s is not so much, btw. That does not automatically mean a 51%-attack is going on. Most probably a miner tries out Mooncoin, to see what the returns are.

At the moment there is no real target for a "classical" 51%-attack against Mooncoin, that's right (see here: https://learncryptography.com/cryptocurrency/51-attack ). The interesting target was the locked coins, which was an easy one, because the attacker had the private key, could send the coins during the attack and sell them, when the price was in its highest phase of market-cycle. The question is, why he also sent ~62 bln to Vassilis' public address?

The dev can restore the chain? What about all the coins that have been sent in the meantime? You know what a rollback would mean.

If a wallet blocks coins, the attacker only needs to be in control for the time he performs the attack, in order to overcome the limitation, which is what happened with Mooncoin. If he would want to try to move Satoshis coins, which are not blocked by code, he would need to rewrite the complete blockchain back to where the movements to Satoshis address happened. But even then he would not be in control of the coins as such, but could only rewrite the history of the blockchain that way, that the coins would remain in the original sender's address. As Satoshi most probably mined the most coins directly (like with mining into a wallet or likewise via P2Pool) those coins then would never be there at all. Because when they are mined directly to the own wallet, they are not transferred from one user/address to another, but they are created for the first time ever.

Again: For this kind of 51%-attack with Mooncoin, you won't need to rewrite the whole blockchain from the beginning, but only be in control of the majority of hashing-power, until the coins are successfully sent. Remember, unlike with Satoshis coins, the attacker was in control of the private key for the transferred coins' address, so it was relatively cheap for him to buy hashing-power to send the coins. Despite of these coins being "locked" (only in other user's wallet's code, which had no effect for his transaction), he could confirm it himself alone with his hashing-power, regardless of what the other nodes/miners were saying at that time. He simply dictated the "consensus" all alone and could write it into the blockchain. After this the others took over the majority again and were happily mining away this chain as if nothing happened.

It censors coins again, just like it was done by trying to "lock" them.

I'm only formulating my opinion and try to explain, how there is a better way to go forward.

What did bitcoin do exactly to censor coins?
First of all, there is a difference between censoring coins and censoring opinions. Then, what is the "betterment" of the community? The coin itself can not be held guilty for being used for fraudulent actions. Hence the punishment should only be directed to the one using it for these - AFTER a formal trial in the jurisdiction of that individual. If today the assumed coins of Vernon are blocked, then tomorrow your coins may be blocked, because you have another opinion than the majority of "the community", or because of "an error in the code".

They don't have to buy them again. Others can buy them instead.
They only need to accept, that censoring coins is a dangerous precendence-case, that will make it possible again to block coins for any reason, especially if not ALL other coin-holders have been asked by an official election that is fool- and fraud-proof. Just imagine, these were your coins instead, you are the rightful owner, but cannot prove that those coins are wrongly blocked, by the decision of possibly shady devs or a "strange" community. The problem is the possible arbitrariness.

That is not the question.
The question is, what jurisdiction is relevant for Vassilis and what are the rules there, to not become a criminal when acting.
So, as said, for him living in a European country, it is highly likely that he must return obviously stolen goods to the relevant authority to not make himself part of the crime. Whether they can decide better what to do with the coins is not the question.

Why is this arrogant? Don't you think it is more like raping and being arrogant, if "the community" forces Vassilis to burn the coins, even if he becomes a criminal by doing this? Vassilis himself has not yet reported, what his lawyers recommend.
If the coins would not have been "locked" in the first place, this problem would not have arisen.

I have said that before in other words. It makes Mooncoin arbitrary. And this is what scares potential serious investors more away in the future, then what will be gained now by changing the code. If they can't rely on set standards, that is always bad.
What happens, if the price does not rise significantly, after the coins are burned? Should the amount then gradually be reduced to 1 MOON by taking more and more coins out of the system by first "locking" them and then "burning" them? That is the opposite of seriousness and reliability of a currency and won't build up trust at all.

I hinted to this, because in the past there have been some deadlines for some "decisions" set to two weeks or so (e.g. the logo). This is against all fairness for those members, because they would not even have a chance realize, that something like this is going on. For a serious discussion something this should be propagated everywhere possible and with a wide time frame, to make it possible for non-frequent readers/investors also possible to notice.

I even have linked the page, so everyone can read, in what context the excerpt is used originally. And it says exactly the same: A government should not censor (that means: block) coins. Be it the US-president (elected officially) or a coins dev (not even elected officially).

Please, everyone. I'm by no means against maximizing wealth for every (honest) owner of Mooncoin.
But there are certain basics, that really should be mandatory, to not make Mooncoin and the underlying code only a disposable quantity to be altered if "the price is not right up to taste".

Development needs a developer. So the first would be, that Vassilis clears the situation.

When this is done, Mooncoin should follow this roadmap:

1. Improving the security-model of Mooncoin
2. Teaching the community how markets work, so that they can invest with confidence and not need to come back every day, to ask for development and marketing and/or cry about low prices and many coins in circulation. New features will not help anyone, if investors cannot be confident, that there is a capable, reliable developer, concentrating on the main aspects of serious development first and foremost
3. Get the coin to bigger exchanges
4. Teach the community to share info about Mooncoin and to use the coin, so more and more people can discover MOON as a perfect means to store and distribute wealth, without the complexity of coins like Ethereum, IOTA or other coins assumed to be the "bleeding edge". This can and must be done by explaining, that the relatively high circulating amount of MOON is not a bug, but a feature. It will make for a stable price in the future. Remember: many new people don't like to invest into a coin, that costs thousands of Dollars for one unit. Mooncoin is the ideal investment for newbies, because MOON are still cheap. It only needs to be reasonably communicated and it must be backed by a serious, honest and responsive developer, who is there, if problems arise - supported by the active community of course

If we want to achieve all this and want to make Mooncoin a serious contender to coins like DOGE or even LTC in terms of reputation and market capitalization, then we have enough work to do.

Mooncoin should be a classic, serious, secure alternative to other, more experimental and thus high-risk coins.

Look at it like this:
The Moon means stability and reliability. So why not try to make Mooncoin kind of the "reserve" in the long run? Just as the Moon is the dependable companion for the Earth, which makes human existence possible; because without it, the Earth would not have enough stability to make any life possible.

Hi agswinner,

you know I appreciate your work and what you have done for Mooncoin (donations etc.).

But let me explain in detail, how the 51%-attack worked:
barrysty1e wrote a new wallet-code, that was intended to prevent the one being in control of the private keys of the (believed to be) former Cryptsy-addresses (Vernon) could send them away. This works, if at least 51% of the mining-network uses this code. The coins are "locked".

Mooncoin is Open Source, so everyone can take its code and alter it the way, he/she likes. This ranges from the graphical surface up to its core-elements, like the hashing-algo and the such. Thus it is absolutely NO problem for an experienced coder, to take out the passages of the wallet code, that prevents the coins from the believed former Cryptsy-address to be sent. Now he only would need to make the rest of the network play by its (edit: his) rules, i.e. accept a transaction he sent from that address. Because all of the rest of the miners, namely the honest ones, follow the rules set by barry's wallet and would not use his altered code, he must "convince" them by his sheer majority of mining-power. Now as Mooncoin has a relatively low hashrate, compared to other PoW-coins, it is relatively cheap, to rent enough hashing-power, to "convince" the (honest) network, to accept the transactions sent by the attacker's code.

If the attacker has the majority of hashing-power, he does not need to rewrite the whole blockchain, but only "over-vote" the other honest miners to let the network accept his transaction, as he can now decide, which transactions are made final and which not, namely: written into the blockchain and be confirmed. In other words: as he wants his malicious txes to become part of the blockchain, he only needs to mine as long as needed with the majority of hashing power, until his txes have been fully confirmed, so cannot be reversed by other miners without investing the same or more of hashing-power to rewrite the blockchain regarding these transactions. Normally other miners/nodes accept the longest chain as the valid one and if they have those formerly invalid txes included/confirmed, won't revert them, but simply take over at the chain-position, where the attacker left and then just mine along from there, because for them this then is the most plausible chain, hence accepting the previously blocked-by-code transactions without knowing them to be wrong.

Everybody with a bit of knowledge could know right from the start, that this is a serious attacking-scenario, hence knew that it (edit: "locking") would almost surely not work in the long run, because - as I said earlier, it would only be a matter of time until it became profitable for the attacker to perform this attack. Most probably that is, why the attack was happening in the end of the markup-phase of the recent market-cycle, so that he could at least sell the ~17 bln coins, that where not sent to Vassilis' address, with a good profit at the highest prices possible for a longer time. See here for explanation of market: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/04/050504.asp (I assume, you know of market cycles already, but as others are reading also, it helps to understand, how markets work, and why it happened now).

So to come back to what I said earlier: A 51%-attack is a VERY real attack-vector for any PoW-coin, even for BTC, but very unlikely, because it is THE coin with the highest hashrate, by far, so it is very unlikely an attacker would gain more profit by buying the hashrate for a 51%-attack, then by simply following the rules for mining. With comparatively low hash-rates, which - to be clear -  Mooncoin has, I was constantly voting for mitigating this attack-scenario by working on mixed algos, PoS-component etc. And we still need this to do. The danger is exactly as high as before. This is, why many of the other smaller scrypt-coins moved to better security-models long ago.

Now to close my notes: if you argue, that there was no 51%-attack, then it would be best to let barry chime in and let him explain, how it was possible to unlock the coins, despite his efforts to "freeze/block them". As long as there is no better technical explanation, the 51%-attack is the best. Just remember, that it could be understood as part of a fraudulent action, to first tell the community, that these coins are locked, when - in effect - they are not.

Maybe another technical more savvy, independent user here could look at all this (especially the code) and explain it further.
I'm open for serious discussion.

They can't be burned, unless you would like to leave a bad sign (fraud-accusations) over Mooncoin forever. This will prevent investors from buying Mooncoin. The best way is still to hand the coins over to the authorities - to burn those accusations, instead of burning coins.


Edit:
Moreover, burning coins would make them unavailable for those who are the original owners. They would have a claim against Vassilis, which would make him reliable for recourse. So let's wait, what V's lawyers have to say.

In case you did not realize, this is the new thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1733963.0

Keep in mind, that you have disclosed your private key to an online-service. So the most secure option would be to send the coins to a new address immediately after you have imported your key into your wallet and then don't use the former address anymore.

Maybe barrysty1e was confident, that his solution would work and he made Mooncoin_Foundation and everyone else believe the same? But as the dev he should have known, that this is no 100% secure solution.

Either both overlooked, that Mooncoin is a Proof of Work-coin and thus has the weakness of a possible 51%-attack, which is what happened here? Or they ignored it and the "locking" of the coins was just marketing to drive the price?

A possible 51%-attack (and the relatively low hashrate needed to perform it, compared to the rates of LTC, DOGE etc. and in regard to the available massive amounts of hashing-power worldwide) was the reason, why I advised several times to implement other methods of securing the coin (PoS, hybrid, Proof of Human Work, mixed algos etc.). But nothing of this happened. It was more important to get a new logo several times, SmartLikes, MoonWord, lower block-rewards (to scare the miners even more away ...) and "locking" coins ...

My posting was about burning the accusations, not the coins. It was meant in a metaphorical way. Burning coins technically needs sending them to an address outside of the valid Mooncoin-address-spectrum and it has to be 100% sure, that the coins aren't spendable ever again.

But as said, this is a bad idea, since this won't clear the cloud of possible fraud-accusations, which can better be counteracted by simply doing, what is done with possibly stolen goods normally: hand them over to the authorities, to let them decide what to do with it. This is the only way to end that chapter of the coins. Everything else will not destroy ("burn") speculations/suspicions and will leave a dark cloud over Mooncoin.

CryptoDatabase is right, in that there was an attack, that "unlocked" the coins (most probably by a 51%-attack with code without the limits), so that the owner (edit: the one in control) of the coins, believed to originally derive from Cryptsy, could send them to an address of V. (edit: ~63 bln MOON, and at the same time they sent another ~17 bln to somewhere else).
He also emphasized the OR, which says, that he is not necessarily of the opinion, that he backs the fraud-accusations. Maybe he should clarify this.

giantkin also is right, in that he believes that the coins are from Cryptsy, as stated by "the community". But he is wrong in only concentrating on the "fraud"-accusation. What comes after the OR in the sentence of the original posting is important here, because that attack was successful and the locked-by-wallet-code coins were transferrred to Vassilis' address.

Hopefully it is clear now.

And that is, why I again recommend handing the coins over to the authorities: to "burn" possible fraud-accusations as soon as possible in the best way available, instead of "burning coins", which would leave these kind of accusations unresolved forever.

Hi glantkin,

obviously you both are talking at cross-purposes.

The problem is, that barrysty1e implemented a measure in the code, that did not work --> coins were unlocked and sent to another address. That is another thing than the fact, that the coins that were moved, stem from Cryptsy originally.

Btw., regarding "fact": is there any proof, that the address from where the coins were sent, really is a Cryptsy-one? So that it could stand up in court?