Developers are now actively working on this project. One of them is very busy, but wanted to find another C++ programmer to collaborate with.

Visit forum.truthcoin.info or email me for details.

kolinko: Are you trolling me with such a bad answer? Surely you aren't saying that, for every contract, you personally will look at how people signed to make sure that they signed correctly, then yourself provide a final signature. The challenge is to do this decentralized. Welcome to square 1??

It screws up the network effects. There are a lot of smart people working on Bitcoin, merchants accepting it, frontend developers, etc.

That's a lot to throw away. Then volunteers would have to look at updates to Bitcoin and copy them into BothCoin...big hassle.

I check: forum.truthcoin.info much more regularly than this thread.

I think about this all the time, trying to get it to work, but actually it doesn't make any sense at all!

This idea implies that if the Oracle misbehaves, they'll lose some collateral. But how do you ever know that the Oracle misbehaved? My solution, to use a simultaneous coordination game, and redistribute ownership, is actually a pretty weak solution, but it really is the only solution I've come across (aside from the similar and non-scalable Baysian Truth Serum). Its the only thing that provides any reliable meta-information for assessing honesty.

The only way this could make sense would be to have a separate mechanism, with a greater emphasis on accuracy and less of an emphasis cost (speed, effort, employed-capital). If someone has one, but more importantly, a way of triggering it, I'd like to hear it. The tricky part is that if the cost to triggering an audit is too low, people will trigger audits all the time, to attack the network (ie it might make attacking easier), and if it is too high, it actually encourages attacks or and make threats-to-attack more credible. Its the same problem as before: what costs more for the attacker?

I invite you all to read this section of my FAQ, which discusses incentive-systems: https://github.com/psztorc/Truthcoin/tree/master/docs#why-dont-you

Personally, (for what its worth) I also felt that this idea was more-similar to RealityKeys than you've described, and even though this was never explained to me, assumed that RealityKeys would be some kind of "gear" in a bigger mechanism (like a multisig 3 of 5). As I mentioned on twitter, trusting >1 oracles isn't as magically decentralized as one might hope, as someone can generate a number of fake identities and wait for an opportunity to strike.

One thing I like about RealityKeys (which makes it, currently, my favorite trusted-feed solution) is how their business model cleverly plays with the economics of trust (requesting a key is free [only efficient if this part is automated], but they 'charge' for the truth, aka independent verification, so the truth is what they need to focus on, but it is off-path so would never actually need to be used [unless project grows very large]). I haven't looked into it, but I'm skeptical that people will want to become a Orisi oracle and supply data. How much can they reasonably expect to be paid for this tedium?

I really like the idea of using Bitmessage to trigger oracles and am really excited for all of the new attention that this space is getting. I still think that I have the only truly trustless and decentralized solution, but that's far from saying that I believe my idea is going to be useful, let alone the most popular.

Hi everyone!

Fielding questions via email, twitter, and multiple sites, is getting difficult, so I've created a special forum just for this project: forum.truthcoin.info .

I hope you will help me grow the forum my putting your questions and ideas there, in a more centralized space where we can all learn from each other. Thank you!

This 'RepublicSpace' guy is some kind of bot which repost reddit comments: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ycjdi/whitepaper_decentralized_bitcoin_prediction/


Thanks! I hope you'll join our new forum at forum.truthcoin.info


I don't. I think that people would bet, in the meta-market, that the Decision "Will a consensus of voters vote against the truth?" would itself resolve to 'No'. Moreover, if they thought 'Yes', why would they bet that way (how would they know that the Yes result would itself be accurately resolved)?

I think your example might be mixing some GT topics. For a start, off-path reasoning (usually called off-the-path) must always be considered even if it is never experienced, because there is a clear relationship between the consideration and the experience. Imagine a magical prison, where as soon as anyone commits a crime, the prison magically becomes aware of this and teleports the criminal into a prison cell. In this world, probably no one would ever commit a crime (the 'path' would be No Crime), but this fact results from the fact that the prison has this magic power.

The protocol acts as law enforcement, but it is required in this case to build the payoff matrix. Second order prediction wouldn't offload anything without another Truth-Source.


I hope you ask any new questions on the new forum!

Beautifully explained, as always.

Plagiarism! Prove to us you aren't a bot.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ycjdi/whitepaper_decentralized_bitcoin_prediction/cfjbh4e

Hello again,

Happy to see that this thread has revived. I've made a lot of progress since the project first started, for example I'm nearly certain we can add Scaled claims (which take a scalar rather than boolean value). Instead of voting .5 for incoherence, voters pick an extreme (max or min, chosen as least-frequent choice within that maturation-ballot [this prevents any possible strategic upward or downward bias]) which robs the author of money in the same way. Check the new excel for my thoughts, the R consensus-code is already written (but I have yet to do an example-test).

First and foremost I would like to thank gwern from the bottom of my heart, for defending the project while someone else submitted it to ycombinator last weekend. I was on vacation and had only my phone, and it would have been tragic if an unexpected publicity-event had gone to waste because no knowledgeable people were participating in the conversation.




In https://github.com/psztorc/Truthcoin/raw/master/docs/1_Purpose.pdf I attempt to explain why Truthcoin would succeed where previous PM attempts have failed.

I actually designed Truthcoin as a side-chain (without knowing the name, and just hoping that someone else would figure out how to make one), so of course side-chains would be great. It looks like, instead of that ideal scenario, I may be forced to use my least-ideal scenario (at first), what I call "BothCoin", which is basically a true altcoin that, in addition to being spent like Bitcoin, can be spent on PM-trades. Its my least-desired plan, but you can't test something that doesn't exist.


I also came up exactly with idea 3, its not as good as you might think, because in Nash Equilibrium you still need an incorruptible way of determining outcomes (for the holdouts [even if it were never be used on-path, the game theory requires that the off-path reasoning be persuasive]). One holdout can cause you to have to research the issue, and once you've done that, it costs nothing to re-use that research for all other traders. So a losing trader can easily force the administrator to research his claim, if the administrator is not prepared for the possibility that he will be required to research ALL claims, than this can be gamed strategically.

The only way you can lighten that load is if you can actually pull some weight, you see?

2, as you say, won't really work. gwern has already perfectly explained the 'exit scam', which is yet another reason why I went with reputation-tokens (you want to keep them pristine so that you can sell them, allowing for 'non-scam exit').

1 is, I think, consequentially the same as 2, is it not?


Although I'm very happy to see all of this interest, I'm greatly concerned that many people are duplicating work...for example SchellingCoin, which won't work, contains many ideas I had over two years ago. I'm sad to see other people spending their time when I did all of this work and released it to the internet for free. Another cause for sadness is the attitude of many developers, who say "econ people shouldnt mess around with crypto they dont understand", and yet when the tables are turned these devs feel comfortable messing with econ that they dont understand.

I am also uncomfortable with the Silicon Valley style of "just publish whatever you're thinking, even if it sucks". I have basically the opposite style and feel a lot of pressure to rush things out.

I've made a number of updates to the paper for clarity and accuracy. In particular, the Implementation Details section is much better and actually informs developers on how to implement the protocol (thanks to the individuals who wrote in to offer their comments).

I also "finished" the python version of the code for the consensus vote and trading, although there are almost certainly many bugs. The R code is more stable. All code is intended as proof-of-concept.

You can't directly sell BTC to Fiat, but you can anonymously spend BTC on whatever you wanted to buy, which is in some cases better. Moreover, I expect the BitBuyer to overpay which means that the BitSpender gets to shop online at a huge discount.
I'm not sure that ANY direct Fiat transfer will ever be scalable and fraud-resistant in the way that this idea is.
You may be thinking of BitSpend.com, which failed precisely because they had to move large Fiat (this idea solves that problem completely).
Merchants would love this as it generates sales in the form of 'Gifts', which to them look just like normal sales. Merchants never break AML or otherwise know they are doing anything out of the ordinary.

You are correct that it may trigger AML issues, which is one reason why we did not move forward with it. However, every other idea in this thread also breaks the same US AML laws (unless the BTC-seller is going to do KYC on the buyer) so I just assumed you lived outside the US or otherwise didn't care.

Thanks for your interest. Outcome is not ONLY decided by vote. There is an incentive system with (theoretically) a unique Nash Equilibirum where everyone votes truthfully. The mechanism is designed such that I actually do expect every single voter to vote exactly the same way (but of course, I designed it primarily with deviant actors in mind, as off-path reasoning is crucial to the game-theory of something like this).

You can just use your existing system for one single transfer, yet set the collateral OVER the transfer amount. It will have almost the same incentive effect, although of course it requires users to tie up more capital.

RE: RE: "... if the parties could never contact each other at all":
More fiat transfer problems you can avoid with the 'Gift' idea. Banks may respond strategically to your Fiat-transfer ideas, but I can't see any merchants or politicians ever banning "The Gift Basket". I feel that direct BTC to Fiat transfer is siren music.

If the service is good enough, rich people might contract someone to spend time pushing their large amounts of money through the exchange for BTC. This upper-tier institution could then develop into a decentralized exchange, with multiple "fiat-rich-person-contractors" attempting to swap Fiat for BTC and developing professional relationships to do just that. These organizations and networks would only exist if there was a foundational reason to tie up Fiat in an exchange-attempt. Improve only a few things at a time, and the project will remain possible.

Sure.

First, requirements are low:
Allowing the BitSpender (spending BTC on stuff) to choose his Gift Basket solves many problems (USD quantity transacted, anonymous use of name/identity/address, specification of merchant/product-version, etc.). The software then requires only the ID of the Gift Basket (a few characters). The website chosen (Amazon, NewEgg, Walmart, etc.) does have access to everyone's info in a connected way, but they do not know that they are party to a Bitcoin transaction, so you can safely use their existing centralized infrastructure for the non-Bitcoin parts. This infrastructure includes private wish lists, shipping/tracking numbers, proof of payment invoices.

The Bitcoin requirements are also mostly low: BitSpender pays 1% of order upon creating the 2 tx's (2 of 3 multisig, one for success, other for cancel/refund). This 1% can be easily verified as a database-entry requirement, invalid entries will chase away counter-parties. If either everything goes well or parties mutually agree to cancel, they simply sign the relevant tx without any new requirements. The reputation system I envisioned was simply a total of all USD volume (easily calculable from the shared database, and possibly even reconstructed completely from the blockchain's shared history, if embedded with OP RETURN). Disagreement statistics ("reputation") can be easily calculated (how often arbitration was req'd, for which transaction sizes, what was the outcome, etc).

Something like BitMessage, which you've already discussed as a shared database idea, can probably handle all of these requirements so far. We also considered BittorrentSync despite its closed-sourceness.

Second, we initially planned to be the centralized arbiters, collecting all the 1% fees for ourselves. However, over time we expected other people to become arbiters and compete with us on fees/service/volume.

Thirdly, I separately developed a math trick (in Truthcoin) that allows people to vote on an arbitrary obvious Yes/No external state, with a Nash Equilibirum of them each voting honestly. Its difficult to translate this math trick into the signature world of Bitcoin transactions but I have some ideas that might make it a little easier if the specific application were known.

Notice, for example, that arbitration is very easy because Amazon/whoever will give receipts. Faking them would probably be too much work for a scammer. Honest individuals could establish long-term reputations and leverage this reputation into better prices. Honesty could become its own industry.

I highly suggest you look at this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=307922.0) , which solves all Fiat transfer problems except fraud (anonymity, reversal, suspicious transactions, bank closure, reporting, etc.) by actually extending the scope of the project to allow spending of Bitcoin on anything.

In the past I was an economic consultant to a very similar business idea. Someone on my team was adamant that the idea eventually be made from website into software (and thus decentralized). We planned to allow the exchange rate to float, and charge 1% of each transaction to pay for dispute-resolution (and prevent Sybil on the reputation system).

Please post/contact me with any questions you have as I was disappointed to see this idea die. Hopefully it will see renewed interest.

Also, I have independently developed something (Truthcoin) which could be adapted for decentralized arbitration (ie, deciding who is right in the event of breach-of-contract). This would make the process completely decentralized.



This coinffeine idea is stronger from a game-theoretic point of view, because you'll notice that it is essentially a repeated version of what has been proposed with the collateral OVER the transaction amount. Blackmailing is therefore riskier (but still possible). Counter-intuitively, it might be best if the parties could never contact each other at all.

Nope. He's a True Empiricist and pretty cool guy though. Why do you ask?

(I signed my name "Paul", but of course if I were lying about that I wouldn't change my answer just because you've asked a second time).

As soon as I typed that I thought "that other guy is going to hate this". It was just a little idea, Andy, you can relax!

Moreover the secret-keeper-Oracle was just my guess at how to make the blockchain aware of an external state. I'm not surprised to learn that it didn't work, but I do expect something to work eventually. So far gmaxwell has proposed I investigate SNARK, for example. Others have suggested Etherium or MasterCoin but, precisely as was argued, these newer ideas can't be seriously considered yet. I also considered a true alt-currency which can just be moved around in two different ways (directly through transactions and indirectly through the contract mechanism), which might be at least a practical place to test everything out.

So I have all kinds of guesses, but I expected that, instead of taking them as proposals, someone would say "Don't do that, what you really need sounds more like X".

That's a good idea. I'm intrigued by your link because although the content is very familiar to me I've never heard that term before. But clearly from your scholar search the fault is mine.

Ok, now we're talkin. I did not know this, so very helpful answer. Probably best to try a different approach rather than try to get blood from a stone.

However, you are saying that it IS possible, just only for one week, so I have a pretty bizarre idea: Can the obfuscated software spawn a "child", a newly obfuscated copy that wakes up and generates a new keypair? The "adult" then sends the money it is guarding to its child, and dies.

Blocks would have to include some ID or something of the child, which the parent could even sign. After its ID is stamped into a block "Child" becomes the new "Adult".

I was just assuming the developers leaked keys to their friends, or that people cut out the check-for-license part even if they couldn't fully read it.

If only all pursuits were so noble.

I understand completely. I have many friends, some of whom I might call "empty suits" behind their back. To their face I challenge them to be more self-critical.

Consider this: if someone were to pay for help, they'd be smart to ask for the free help first. And they might then know whom to hire.

It is pretty interesting. Ironically, I drafted an essay on Altcoins to basically the same purpose but from a completely different perspective, a microeconomic or even psychological one. I talked all about how "money is a network" obviating the need for a second Internet-Dollar, why exactly the market prices would always be so connected / non-diversified, how the cost of time to research an altcoin produced a completely sunk cost making it better to just buy every new thing reguardless of its non-utility (if you were rich enough and feared competition), how early miners were rewarded with purchasing power and want to "do that again" hence introduction of Litecoin (even though in steady state mining on more expensive hardware would increase centralization).
Then I just gave up and said anyone who doesn't get this by now can just enjoy their own funeral.

Will do.

Hey thanks for your response.

I know that I don't have a lot of specialized knowledge here, but here me out because I'm not sure you are understanding my question: my suggested solution proposes a separate blockchain which does NOT contain the secret. Perhaps my title is bad ("ambitious") because there is no 'distributed signing'.

The secret is in a separate bare-bones software which is watching the second blockchain, in the manner that Mike Hearn described a hypothetical piece of software watching Google. From this, I assumed that one could compile binaries such that the source code / private key could not be re-derived (an assumption I came here to check with experts). Moreover, in the longer description I mention possible obfuscation techniques such as using the hash of a block as a source of randomness.

I hope you don't feel I'm wasting anyone's time. If you can explain how:
a) an Oracle can sign a transaction upon Mike Hearn winning a gold medal as reported by Google...
...is fundamentally and unalterably different from...
b) an oracle can scan a blockchain and sign transactions embedded within it after certain criteria are met
...then I'll close this specific request.

I'm sorry to disagree with your friend but his essay contained the following "sections":


Clearly that is a draft but that's hardly an excuse imho. I strongly feel that Altcoins are disrespectful to Satoshi and the work that is done here, but if you expect anyone to take a piece of writing like that seriously you are crazy.