Dear community, Vod and amishmanish, thank you for taking the time to engage. Also amishmanish thank you for your excellent representation in your previous post. Here I will respond to your license and organization questions, then discuss Asterisk vs digital slavery under the oligarch vs self-interest, and finally that your help makes all the difference.


This post is scoped to philanthropists in this pre-release phase. If Asterisk is Bitcoin, then the year now is 2007. This letter and thread discusses mostly vision and values, and a wide range of topics are discussed currently only in private correspondence and personal meetings.

For other readers, please hold during this funding round and another 16 months. Hugely useful decentralized protocols, tools and apps speak louder than words. Our team's thousands and thousands of man hours of effort should currently be very much primarily focused on the release goal.


Open source license
For open source license, this will become an actionable question many months into the future however the original or extended AGPL with linking exception (a la LibBitcoin) or Apache (similar to Bitcoin Core's choice of the MIT license) should be fine.

The objective is that the Asterisk parts that you want to embed in your programs, should be perfectly embeddable in a way that is compatible with your purposes, whether you're making free or commercial software. (In comparison, Linux' GNU GPL v3 would be anathema in this role as tools licensed under it cannot be used in non-free programs and apps.)

Remember that beyond open source license choice are equally or even more impactful factors, which relate to ethics. For example, Oracle after acquiring MySQL, pulled the unit tests from open view. This meant that on paper, MySQL was open source because the code was GPLv2, but you couldn't do anything with it due to Oracle's greed.


Organization
Organizational matters are discussed on page 4+ in "g) Organizational Structure" and "f) Financial prospects". The appendix is still recent and up to date and as you see we _will_ incorporate a foundation.


Asterisk vs your digital slavery as hostage to the oligarch vs self-interest
Under both your questions seems to lie a question about how Asterisk relates to self-interest.

Asterisk's object is to offer an alternative path to the current daily hostage situation you yourself experience online, where your activity is claimed and owned by a middleman.

The middleman is some app service run by a corporation which in turn is owned by shareholders. The shareholders are giving you access to their service that they own, as a favour that they don't charge you for, and they do this exclusively to push the most severe agenda of _their_ interest over _your_ interest. Just like feudalism, where they're the oligarch and you're the peasant or slave.


Of course many of us normal people are vigorously uneasy by this and many simply stay away from a lot of these services because it feels ethically unsettling and also there are real unknowns about their conduct that can mean risk with respect to money and otherwise.

One issue is moral corruption as in the risk that a rapacious oligarch who should not be trusted with anything would be in charge of the service. Here Zuckerberg offers a quintessential example, as he calls Facebook users "dumb fucks", laughs about that he is over the law and decrees that you "have no right to privacy".

Another issue is immoral and or undignifying conduct such as a realization that all your and your family's personal information including vacation photos, medical records, lawyer correspondence, your contact lists and social graph, comprehensive behavioral information as well as your business information most likely has ended up with foreign corporations and governments for value extraction, resale, storage and processing forever.


With respect to self-interest, Asterisk sticks out from the typical maximized-self-interest-by-value-extraction-through-shareholding-in-a-corporation model.

Firstly Asterisk is a decentralized protocol, which in any situation it is not possible for anyone to value-extract much on. For comparison, how much money can the ISO/ANSI organization charge you tops for a copy of the C++ programming language standard.

Second the object of Asterisk is to continue to be a cure for a long time, and it would not be harmonious with this ethical objective to in some form engage shareholders who then could and likely enough would pressure for compromising the ethics later through the control and ownership that belongs to their title as shareholder. There is some space for nonobliged funding model discussion however better keep it simple.


In essence Asterisk is about important aspects of keeping and advancing Earth as a place where you actually want to live.

Thank you again for bringing up these questions. I look forward to discussing this further with you, please raise any thoughts or questions you have.


Responsibility, karma
This is written in a way to wake people up but not so much for entertainment.

This thread has bestowed you with real responsibility over your and others' future. The normal principle is that you get what you wish for, independent of whether the vision you buy into is Zuckerberg-Orwell style slavery where you will need authorization to speak, eat, work or date and where your human rights vanish, or a vision of a dignified, respectful civil order.

The usual principle is, with all good causes weighed together: do what you can for a good cause. Sometimes you can talk, sometimes you can help, sometimes you can excercise choice, and sometimes you can fund.

This may sound grave and it is, however also like all things Asterisk should be fun and easy.


Please note again that Asterisk is pre-release. Wikipedia or Red Cross grade crowdfunding campaigning is another day. Aside from competence which we have, additional funding is instrumental in moving forward, which we need as we're not breatharians.

Time is running fast and Asterisk would better be available to the public now or better yet, yesterday.

If you can donate 0.1, 1, 10 or 100 Bitcoins then please by all means do so:


If you are a philanthropist who loves freedom, we're looking forward to make a decisive difference together with you.

If you know a philanthropist, send him or her this thread and the letter.

Looking forward to get in touch.



A host of disclaimers apply to this text: this text is not advice of any sort including financial and no responsibility is taken for this text. Only to be quoted in part or whole with the written permission of the author.

NotATether, this is an excellent point by you and it deserves to be discussed another day. Asterisk

Hi Vod,

Thank you for your kind message.

Please specify which part of the Asterisk work your license question regards. If you have followup questions within this question please let me know.

Regarding the "the days of (word of your choice here) within crypto are over": I agree that the majority of post-2009 projects have been broken, and that organizations like EOS have committed large crimes by running away with billions of USD, mostly the broken projects have been ICO:s, tokens. Again please note that Asterisk is not an issuer, an issuer of 'gas' or some token.

It's great to do something that is actually positive for humanity and unlocks doors. For me personally I have a kind of higher gratitude about it.

If you have any questions or thoughts please share.

Best regards,
Asterisk

(This thread was mistakenly moved to the incorrect section "Altcoin Discussion" [1] (subsection Announcements) by the moderator. Asterisk is not an altcoin. Now moved back to the correct section "Bitcoin Discussion" [2].

[1] Described as "Discussion of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. Note that discussion of how these currencies *relate to* Bitcoin may fit in other categories."
[2] Described as "General discussion about the Bitcoin ecosystem that doesn't fit better elsewhere. News, the Bitcoin community, innovations, the general environment, etc.".)

Do you notice that these courses use the word "blockchain" and not "Bitcoin".

The university courses I checked out, are misguided at best. They don't distinguish Bitcoin from replicated linked list.

That's like a biologist not seeing being able to distinguish a rhino from a pebble.

Hi chaoscoinz,

I respectfully want to point out to you that the reason Proof of Stake, BFT, Proof of Weight, DPOS appear attractive relative to Proof of Work to you, is because you have not really studied any of them.

A signature-based security model can be fine in a limited group. In contrast, a digital currency's blockchain is public and open. Proof of Work means a connection with reality, a reality proof. Meanwhile cryptographic signatures are free and outside of a specific context don't prove anything.

Regarding PoS please see https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-Fallacy and https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/on-stake-and-consensus.pdf . PoS has a "proof of nothing" issue which makes it impossible to sync PoS chains from their genesis block. In other words, there is no security at all.

Also EOS is a billion dollar scam, and Tron according to its founder is a shitcoin.

Just wanted to help you get these clear. Glad to see you in this space, always keep learning,

Asterisk

davis196, the issue with cryptocurrency privacy currently is that it is a domain that is changing constantly.

Please be aware that *all* the privatization technologies available in cryptocurrencies today (including Monero, Grin) are broken, maybe with the exception of Zcash which relies on too exotic mathemathics and so ultimately you can never be confident that inflation not has happened unbeknownst to you.

Really private would mean that a third person is unable to reconstruct the transaction graph. The way they are broken is either at the networking level or in the cryptography used e.g. dandelion is broken.

Maybe the most promising research is the Lelantus algorithm.

In other words, Bitcoin with its Lightning is biggest because it's still the strongest, best, most rigorous and well understood technology, so much that there has been no reason to migrate.

Hi amishmanish,

Thanks for picking up the conversation.

Your comment does not express appreciation. With more insight you would realize that your response is way below standard, however this forum is a coarse social surface with very limited trust, necessarily shared values and such, so as such I don't blame you for coming from a very low expectation in approaching posts.

I find there to be unending amounts of junk in the wider Bitcoin and blockchain communities so indeed these are very polluted waters, e.g. EOS and the list goes on and on and on.

Non-https is fine for a codenamed project's publication of one document. Please feel free to post the img tags, that's fine.

Asterisk

Either you are incorrect, or unclear, or both.


That's great, good for you.


Feel free to describe it.


It's a challenge to take you for serious when you write like this. It's unclear what you are trying to say, if anything.


Why did you make a thread with the title "Re: Is 51% attack a double-spending threat to bitcoin?" - a question to which the answer is no - to discuss a Bitcoin fork?

You suggest a "it (doublespends?) will be revealed anyways (now how, unlike how else?) and destroy the attacker completely beforehand (how?)" related to "Bitcoin inflation rules" in the "social contract, rather than some lines of code".

Are you trying to communicate a Bitcoin fork or protocol feature suggestion?

Anyhow this was my last post here.

(* Moderator please also note the bottom of this message)


11 April 2020, Easter

Dear Community,

Please find here attached the public call for philanthropic funding for the world's most groundbreaking and decisive work for decentralization and privacy:

Letter (2 A4 pages): http://www.asterisk.fyi/2020-04-11_-_Public_Call_For_Philanthropic_Funding.pdf

Appendix (3 A4 pages): http://www.asterisk.fyi/2020-04-11_-_Public_Call_For_Philanthropic_Funding_-_Appendix.pdf


During this time of pandemic global lockdown crisis, when the need for both truth and trust could never be more obvious, I am humbled to bring you this humanitarian project for your consideration. We are confident it will have a lasting global impact and we hope you will find it worthy.

We're a small team committed to advancing humanity's rights and needs for privacy. I view the need for this non-profit major project as urgent and important for all of humanity. I am asking your help to please forward this work to capable philanthropists committed to making a meaningful and lasting difference in our world.

After devoting over 9,000 hours of work towards this humanitarian goal, we have reached the stage that philanthropic support will bring us over the tipping point we need to bring stability and scale. We are hopeful this quest for support will find its way to capable people who want to make a difference. Our main focus is for the work to have a lasting global impact, stretching decades into the future. We hope you will share our vision. Your support will make a historical difference that will serve future generations.

(Pseudonym)
contact@asterisk.fyi

For donation address please contact us, also http://www.asterisk.fyi/transfer.html

PS: Send us an email or PM if you would like to receive future updates.


FAQ

1. Why should I care?
Because you and your children and grandchildren are owned by Facebook, Google Mail, Instagram, TikTok, etc., forever. This is a work to offset and dismantle your digital slavery.

2. Is this an ICO?
No. In contrast with several blockchain genre organizations such as Ethereum and EOS, Asterisk does not issue a private, proprietary token or coin. I want to emphasize, again, that Asterisk is a non-profit team with a humanitarian mission. We have installed no trojan horses and there is no present or future proprietary 'gas' or 'token' that users will ever be required to own to enrich the creators. Please refer to the letter and appendix for further discussion.

3. Why are you making this call at this time and why are there not more details?
Asterisk is a work that is existential to not only us but our children and grandchildren. We like details of the work to remain inhouse for now since the work is pre-release. Asterisk is a public standard and the release process is expected to start about 16 months after this round of philanthropic contributions.

4. Who is this message for?
Someone who likes to make a positive difference through philanthropy by monetary contributions. Participation of other kinds will be greatly appreciated and if you like to help we ask you to please message us, and include your skills/CV/works. We will collect all of these and follow up in due course. Right now we have more than ten thousand man hours of formalization and software work inhouse ahead. Public outreach and community building is coming. We who are running this project are making the best of time available at this stage and various social relations will land more the next years.

5. What is the expected outcome?
Currently, that some seasoned philanthropists get in touch and contribute.

6. How can it be that the vision sounds so grandiose?
Because we are more genuine and have more expertise than blockchain projects have. We proceed with ethics to serve humanity, and this is why we do not make a greed-driven ICO but instead ask respectfully for philanthropist contributions to do this right and so really contribute altruistically and lastingly.

7. How does this work relate to Bitcoin?
It uses Bitcoin payments. There is a lot of detail to cover later.



* Moderator: Please note that this is a Bitcoin genre project that uses Bitcoin for payments. This is not an altcoin. Alas "Bitcoin Discussion: General discussion about the Bitcoin ecosystem that doesn't fit better elsewhere. News, the Bitcoin community, innovations, the general environment, etc." is the correct classification of this thread.

This thread is a philanthropy call more than a project announcement, that may be reason for it to be in "Bitcoin Discussion" rather than in "Bitcoin Projects".

aliashraf,

Your original question and discussion in your thread is a total mess. You are using very unclear terms, and you are bending Bitcoin terms in a way that shows that you do not understand Bitcoin's security model.

You don't understand what a "full node" is (as you confuse it with SPV), and you don't understand its role in the network.

It's a headache to read what you write as you appear to be ranting and make half-points all along the way.


Confusion..
Here is only one example of your confusions:
Here is more confusion:
Even more confusion:
Even more confusion:

I started out reading your thread coming from a place of being willing to help and to clarify how Bitcoin works, but after reading your responses, I'm not convinced you are interested at all.


Bitcoin safe to double spend, based on fully validating nodes
Just to start somewhere, Bitcoin does solve the double spend problem. This is achieved by that participants run fully verifying nodes, and each such node enforce Bitcoin's consensus on every transaction of every block, and this will mean that in one node's view and perception, no double-spend ever occurs.

Miners are then free to mess up with blocks as much as they like, but they do so at their expense, so as long as the value of your transactions are insignificantly small compared to the Bitcoin miners' electricity expenses, you're safe - it's highly unlikely that someone will want to play appear-disappear reorg games with your 100USD transaction when it costs 10,000USD to mine a block.


UTXO commitments discussion
Regarding UTXO commitments, again you discuss these without understanding Bitcoin.

I'll share with you here that UTXO commitments are somehow similar to Ethereum 1's blocks' merkleized state snapshots.

What happened in the Ethereum community then was that, they fell for the temptation of validating blocks at all - when the Ethereum network is too busy, it will trig a feature that they call "fast forward", where a fully validating node will skipover one or more blocks, and thus simply blindly trusts the other nodes and the miners that they didn't forge anything. This is extremely risky and a viable attack vector for attacking their blockchain.

Further discussion of Bitcoin's security model, the definition of decentralization, and of that, here: https://hackernoon.com/the-ethereum-blockchain-size-has-exceeded-1tb-and-yes-its-an-issue-2b650b5f4f62


UTXO commitments infallible as you suggest is not correct
Your assertion that "UTXO commitments would always be valid because the miners are always attentive, correct and would never want to trick anyone" does not hold.


Again, this reads confused, you need to be more specific and clear.


A 51% attack would not let through a double-spend
Last to respond to your question in the thread's title, "Is 51% attack a double-spending threat to Bitcoin?", I guess you have the answer already: It is not.


Asterisk

Longsword94, Bitcoin's security model is that you run a full node.

The economic benefit of running a full node is that you know that you are synced with Bitcoin.

Currently, all models for using Bitcoin without running your full node, mean that you trust - you guess - that the Bitcoin ledger someone gives you, is correct.

In a Bitcoin wallet model that does not involve a fully verifying Bitcoin node, some reduced security mode is used. For instance header-only sync and SPV proofs. An SPV proof can prove to you that a payment has happened. But, an SPV proof cannot prove that Bitcoins you believe you own, have not been consumed. It would be expensive to trick your computer which does header sync, however it can be done. So again, running a fully verifying Bitcoin node is the only way to know that you are on the real, valid mainnet chain.

So that is, it's a cost that you pay to know that you are in reality, similarly to how you pay for a newspaper to know what's going on in the world.


Regarding operational expenses and suitable hardware for a fully verifying Bitcoin node:

As pointed out by others a Bitcoin node is a very cheap piece of hardware, except for that using an SSD is greatly helpful. For the computer part, some cheap 64bit Raspberry Pi computer is enough really.

The computationally intense tasks a fully verifying Bitcoin node performs, are 1. to check a lot of SECP256K1 cryptographic signatures and 2. to compute a lot of SHA256 hashes. At the end of the day these operations are still not many, so again a pretty primitive computer will do.

A very high end could maybe sync the whole Bitcoin blockchain in 15 minutes using LibBitcoin. In your case if the initial sync takes days, it's still fine as your timeframe is to run it for years.

This kind of low-power, simple computer fully verifying Bitcoin node should operate in the 0-30 watts total power consumption interval. That should mean 10-20 kilowatt hours per month power consumption. I wonder if anyone has benchmarked this? Or noone did because it was so cheap noone really cared. The energy consumed eventually becomes heat.

Rarely bandwidth consumption could be an issue and you can configure that away.

An apple falling on Newton's head is probably a good allegory, to illustrate how unexpected the invention was.

Also in these 11 years there has not really been any digital currency invention that beat Bitcoin. No new fundamentals have been discovered or established that would be so big as to replace Bitcoin.

For instance, there has been research in algorithms for private transactions. This research has been helpful but the added value of the privacy that any of those projects added over Bitcoin, has not been felt as decisive by users enough to change, also given that that research itself is undergoing constant changes, which algorithm is the most private has changed about once per year or so, recent years. This is unlike Bitcoin which has been stable these 11 years, even while with some drama that culminated 2017.

There may have been a lot of systematic research behind Bitcoin's invention. However, Bitcoin as an invention is unique, it could not be anticipated, so you cannot say that Satoshi must have invented Bitcoin because of a particular personal reason such as that he was happy or sad or upset. Satoshi may have been that, however that was not what caused the invention, just like the invention of the refrigerator did not happen because of someone's mood.

buzkiran, what you are asking are general Bitcoin protocol and deployment questions.

Either here or on StackOverflow (though stackoverflow may have less overview than here?), what about you post your questions.

Please make an effort to express your questions exactly. Also questions here would be general Bitcoin protocol questions, if you're deep in some particular library, I guess that library should have an emailing list or chat channel to discuss.

What are you trying to achieve? Who is the user?

I agree 100% that Bitcoin is the most important element for world peace, yes.

The world was historically trapped in a trust problem, about who is the most trusted party, more trusted than others.

Bitcoin has dissolved that whole trust problem. It couldn't possibly be a bigger success for peace - we now trust the Bitcoin protocol which is neutral mathematics, instead of persons who are corruptible.

AtomicLemon_, PoS does not help wealth questions. Also PoW is as strong as usual.