Could this be done? Ok, maybe that's not enough information there  Here's my line of thought: - I have a wallet, it has some funds. I create an address and send a few coins to it. - I'm on another client altogether now. I want to collect these coins, but the address isn't mine. What do I need, which keys does it take to create a transaction from the sender address to a private address of mine? In other words, what do I need to own the result of a transaction and where does bitcoin client store that (in code, I know its in the wallet ) |
|
|
|
If I were puddinpop, I would release versions of my proprietary client that seem legitimate at first and really are, but gradually implement code to kind of taste what users are doing with my client and also of course monitor how much income I am receiving. If I notice that I am receiving more and more income, at a point where there are hundreds, thousands even millions of users who have established trust into my product because it is so helpful to others to generate bitcoins, on my next update I would then proceed in secretly changing the 5% sent to me to 100% as well as add code to send to me ALL bitcoins left in each user's wallet and then suffer having a bad reputation at the expense of others as is furiously posted to the forums and users gradually discover my evil intent, but I will have already exchanged the BTC for another currency. As far as I know, there is no illegality for doing this, because I haven't established any terms of service for my product. Instead I simply released it on a forum without any related informations or anything.
Don't give puddinpop any ideas! But yes you make an excellent point: Gradually build up trust and then violate that trust for profit. That's a common scheme used by scam-artists/politicians/criminals... I don't like what puddinpop is doing...I hope someone releases an opensource version. Does anyone know of any donation pools for generating and releasing an GPL opensource OpenCL/CUDA client? If not we should start one. There are at least three other implementations around: -artforz' but I'm guessing he's keeping his edge -sgtstein hinted he was working on one too, and would release -mine at http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1009.msg12334#msg12334 which I have a major update for being tested, currently giving me 6200khs on my laptop GPU alone. I'd be willing to work harder on making this usable by other people without having to tweak too much code for some coins, sure. But frankly I see a handful of people complaining here about how puddinpop is closed, how it might be a scam, and that we need an alternative but, frankly, I've received zero feedback on the usefulness of my approach. Oh, and keep in mind I'm releasing everything I do, but I'm only doing it on OSX 10.6 because that's the only cuda enabled gpu I have. Also, for all the ATI users out there, I'll try opencl soon, just don't know exactly when. But I don't want to hijack puddinpop's thread, sorry for the shameless plug, if nothing else he did me a huge service by releasing his client close source, making me get my first cup of cuda, something I was meaning to do for a long time... I'll send him 5 coins for each block I generate with my client, if I ever do |
|
|
|
|
But you know what?
"There is no spoon..."
Hah!
|
|
|
|
Here's a little story to think about.
There is an apple tree growing in some public place where everyone is free to take apples whenever they wish. Everyone is happy and content eating the free apples directly from the tree. Now some start to think about all the possibilities that the apples can provide. You can make apple juice, apple cider, apple pie, etc. Most only think about the possibilities and don't take action. Either because they can't cook, or they don't have the time or resources. Now someone comes along and decides to make apple juice. He sets up a stand and sells the juice to the people. Some people are fine with this, and happily pay. They understand the value added to the apple by processing it into juice. It took time, effort, and resources to do so. Others are upset that the apples they had been getting for free have been processed and that they now have to pay for the refined product. They would rather take the apple juice by force rather than paying for it or making their own.
I've just been catching up a bit and reading through this thread. Isn't the above story a bit flawed with your program in mind though? The way your program works is almost like saying you are going to use someone else's house, and stove, and gas, and pots/pans to make the apple juice, then charge them for it in the end too, isn't it? Almost right. You do your own cooking, not him, but by using his special spoon, you'll get your meal quicker You will, however, loose 10% of your meal in the end. |
|
|
|
Run 2 on different time scales? What do you mean?
Sorry, I mean run two that will take different lengths of time, a pick4 and a pick6 or a pick3 and a pick5 Aha, ok. Well, haven't thought about that possibility... in fact have coded the thing in a way slightly incompatible, but can fix. It's a great idea, certainly worth trying. I just hope I'm not diluting the (3) betters too much Again, I don't follow. Sorry if I'm just being dense. Are you asking if we are going to have 500 block intervals from now on? I'm experimenting, it feels like 1000 is just too long.
Previously I read something about doing a special that would empty the cumulative pot, it's too soon I think, I was only verifying that. Yes, the idea as I remember (I didn't read back the thread) was as soon as the side pot reached 500, but can also do on the first prize reaching 500, or whatever. I also intend to change the draw to get rid of the bounty and instead get a cut for the house, probably the same 5% I take from the pick. I need to get a little stash so I can seed a bit jackpot not too far away from now You guys cool with that? |
|
|
|
Read previous posts to understand what I mean, nelisky.
Heh, got confused there, sorry. But if by 'cracking this' you mean reverse engineer it, from experience it's easier to just code it from scratch! If, on the other hand, you mean remove the ransom part, then yeah, I guess it can be done with little effort. |
|
|
|
We are just about crossing the 300BTC pot on Pick6! Woohoo...
So, statistically speaking, what is the correct bet char size to have an average of one pick per day, at 1000 bets per pick?
The pick 4 would be too fast and the 5 too slow. Maybe pick 4.5? ;-) Getting 1000 daily is still pretty optimistic though, so the 4 is actually going to give you a few days at any likely volume, the first one just happened to go quickly. Yeah, I know that, but just assuming... All numbers aside, I have this gut feeling things winners will be found more likely than not in a shorter timespan that that which is statistically calculated, so I'd rather err on the upper side. But what I really want is to have an average time span per pick on the order of 1 day, as multiple picks per day will probably not allow many people to bet, with timezone differences and all. Actually, maybe 2 days would be perfect. I don't have the head to run the numbers (weekends and beer, not good for number crunching ) but what I need is something that gets a comfortable pot and gives time for people to see the pot and get attracted, but doesn't take that much time that people loose interest. This whole thing with being anonymous, and thus not being able to send notifications is kind of a bugger in this respect... You cannot have huge pots in relation to the size of bets without having tons of bettors or a wealthy backer. I think it is best to be content to run 2 on different time scales and let it grow over time as bitcoin grows.
Run 2 on different time scales? What do you mean? Is this 500 draw a guarantee?
Again, I don't follow. Sorry if I'm just being dense. Are you asking if we are going to have 500 block intervals from now on? I'm experimenting, it feels like 1000 is just too long. |
|
|
|
Your ransomware has bugs and is ripping people off.
I was testing mine on the live network but I think I'll test with a test local network just to make sure it works and release it so you stop ripping people off.
Yes, please do release yours! I loved the experience of thinking massive parallel for coding mine (and I also need to release my 2x speedup update). I'm really interested is understanding your approach to the problem! |
|
|
|
|
We are just about crossing the 300BTC pot on Pick6! Woohoo...
So, statistically speaking, what is the correct bet char size to have an average of one pick per day, at 1000 bets per pick?
|
|
|
|
Okay, I'm getting you current problem: it's volume.
Typically what lotteries do to drive volume is advertise the winners:
As in, "Hey everyone, SO and SO just won 100 BTC with a 2 BTC bet. In fact, everyone who bet one since there are so few bettors! Come try your luck!"
You could also advertise it more generally and allow people to buy BTC from you on the TAABL site at say a 50 or 100% markup over Mt. Gox, if they aren't inclined to go open an account and download the client. Then you could advertise the lottery more generally.
Yeah, you're right. And I really like the idea of allowing people to buy BTC directly from the lottery, but that could get messy. It's not an exchange site, and all logic is bound to the bitcoin client, so I don't really want to get into that right now I could build an EUR based exchange client, hook it up to mtgox with automated transaction sharing, and people could just send the coins to the taabl address. Or they could do that right now from mtgox site! In the end, volume is the key, but I can't advertise winners and call the lottery anonymous, now can I? I'll bet more later, promise. Although for now, I'm down about 11 BTC. Sigh. : ).
I stopped counting my losses, but I can tell you the grand total of losses I suffered in the state lottery to date are embarrassing. I guess that when the pots get to 5K you say "I only lost 100 so far but I can still get rich"... |
|
|
|
The whole TAABL ecosystem right now is composed of 25 accounts, of which 3 (this including myself) are actively betting Not much to see here, really. I know this will change someday, I'll keep things running until it does. In the mean time we keep bouncing coins amongst each other and hope others won't grow tired of the process. I think the lottery framework is pretty good now, it only needs, ya know, people betting. The BitPicks... well, there's the automatic better feature that would really increase usability, so I guess I'll do that and move back to Pick4 or even Pick3. In fact, removing the seed and adding the auto better (where I'm a seeder in the form of bets) is a great plan that was hinted by TTBit. I'll try and cook something up this weekend. |
|
|
|
And are 4 of these 5 given to satoshi and all the others working on the open source?
Satoshi and the others wrote the code that made it possible to write the client, but they did not write this code that uses the GPU to generate the blocks. I would be more than happy to add an extra 5, 10, 20, or whatever payment for satoshi and any others who worked on the bitcoin client if you like. Anyway, are you really donating to them now after every block you generate? Are you going to donate to them after every block you generate on your CUDA client? After all, they made it possible for you to write it. And on top of that, you are forcing the (fairly distributed) payment of your work, but fail to move that income down the line, to the base of your own work. You are perfectly capable to make that payment yourself when you generate a block. This is starting to be another nitpick thread, but I'll try my best to keep it civil I'm not arguing everyone should pay everytime they generate a thread. That is the purpose of the infrastructure and people get paid for the work they are doing suporting that infrastructure. In fact, if noone generated blocks, we wouldn't be here in the first place. So, yes, I'm doing my best to help satoshi and everyone else by generating more blocks and making the network harder to defeat. I don't have to pay others for the work I do, that is just nonsense! What you are doing is slightly different. You create a better hashing mechanism/algorithm and you can capitalize on it by generating more blocks. Go for it, it's what we are all doing anyway. But then you decide the effort you put in this isn't going to pay off anytime soon by just generating, moreso because regardless of how fast you hash, there's always a component of luck. So what do you do? You sell your work. Actually, you rent your work. So now you are not suporting the network, you are capitalizing on top of it. You have every right to do so, mind you, I'm not arguing with that. If you had a way to hash 100MH's on a P3, I know you could sell that on biddingpond for a lot of coins. It's not the idea that bugs me, it's the process. By providing a closed source system you depend on other's trust, which is fine if they trust you. I don't trust you any more than you trust me, insofar as we don't know each other. I run very little closed source software, and yes, I run OSX and linux and no, I haven't read the whole source for the kernel, but still a group of other people have, and I trust numbers. Again, I'm not pointing a finger or stating you are wrong in your intentions. I'm just saying I don't see what the big deal for this to be so secretive and closed, and I have put my money where my mouth is and went ahead and developed something myself. It's crude, gives me ~7MHs at this moment on my macbook, which is a 4x speedup over the CPU version, I'm happy I did this in two partial days without any previous cuda experience. Yeah, I'm a coder by trade, but still this gave me a warm feeling... I will continue development until someone else picks it up, at the pace I can afford. It may end up amounting to nothing, but hey, at the end of the day, I feel very good about myself, as I know you do to, so two thumbs up, my friend. |
|
|
|
Okay, the pick4 went off faster than average. I understand not wanting to love money, obviously.
But if you aren't going to seed it why do you want it to take so long?
A pick 6 with 1000 tickets will be won after 10k blocks only 45% of time. That means (roughly) that with 100 tickets it will take 100k blocks on average.
I'm following TTBit's clues and formulas. I don't want it to take long, but I do want the pot to grow so as to attract more betters, and when these get closed so fast you can't really raise much interest. If the site ever gets very busy, or I get to put the auto bet feature, then maybe it's ok to have 4 picks close in the same day. Would a Pick5 be more to your liking? |
|
|
|
There is no ransom involved. Use of the client is at the will of the user, and the cost is explained and known about up front. Would you feel better if there was a single large up front cost for each user? The way it is now, the cost is proportional to the number of blocks you generate, which I think is much more fair. Otherwise it will be severely disproportionate for those who use it very little or have a slow GPU and those who use it a lot on a fast GPU.
Now I have seen a few say they would be willing to donate for an open source client. I would be willing to release the source provided a large enough donation is made.
Right, I may simply be dense, sorry. The way I see it, you did an amazing job which I, unfortunately, can't make use of. If I could, maybe I'd gladly give the 5 coins to you, who knows? But the fact remains that while I feel that this has a niche to it, and while I'd love to have a farm of multi tesla computers to generate coins to my heart's contempt, I don't like the idea of closed source, binary distributed software for security reasons. And on top of that, you are forcing the (fairly distributed) payment of your work, but fail to move that income down the line, to the base of your own work. But that's more philosophical than anything else, and you did nothing wrong, you disclosed your intentions from the start, etc. I just feel that the community would be more forthcoming with sharing their earnings if given the chance, that's all. Having said that, I don't expect a bitcent for the work I did, but then again I'm not doing it for profit. |
|
|
|
great idea, take an open source project, make a closed source mod that sends you cash, profit.
no thanks i'll wait for an open version, who knows what happens to my wallet using this thing..
I have nothing against closed source by itself, and I surely understand the profit taken after hard work has been done, me being a coder working on the comercial arm of an open source project. But that's where my positive reasoning ends. Charging for work is important, but not so much taking a ransom. And are these 5 BTCs per generated block only from blocks generated using the GPU? And are 4 of these 5 given to satoshi and all the others working on the open source? Anyway, still crude and already outdated but look here -> http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1009.msg12264#msg12264I didn't understand what all the fuss was about in this cuda development so I decided to take a stab at it. I only have very limited time, but I am now testing a version doing 6Mh/s as opposed to teh 1.4MHs I get from the CPU. And it has only been mildly optimized, so there's still much room for improvement. My hardware is limited too, so I only tested in my OSX cli client, but the idea is there for other to work on. I can be convinced to work harder on it, but this was just proving a point for me. |
|
|
|
|
Ok, thanks to TTBit for showing me the math stating "there's no way I can not loose" with the BitPick as I had it. Pick3 and Pick4 are just too easy to win, and not enough people bet on it fast enough, so we are moving to Pick6!
Also, the pot seeding + 50% for the house on bets is also something that will only work when I have a lot of coins to seed this. As that's not the case, I'm dropping the seed completely for now and moving the house cut to 5%. C'mon people, get it while it's hot!
|
|
|
|
it seems I paid the fee too. Why would that be? A block that had too many tx, the value coming from multiple small value purses (but the client should see one purse that satisfies the whole transaction, right?) or what else?
You received a fee of 0.01. You didn't pay one. Well, then it sounds fair to me, all of the sudden Did I get davidonpda's penny? |
|
|
|
|
I'm really puzzled with all this. I also generated a block and transferred it out on the spot. Looking at the transaction:
"address" : "1LCSXSx8sjcZKHFXbyasBsuEdJtBVRaco7",
"label" : "",
"txid" : "1249190d1a13b03b51c27ded2e8441d446a8ae6ef90f90db31a8267da0845685",
"txtime" : 1283997623,
"category" : "debit",
"amount" : 50.01000000,
"confirmations" : 228
},
it seems I paid the fee too. Why would that be? A block that had too many tx, the value coming from multiple small value purses (but the client should see one purse that satisfies the whole transaction, right?) or what else?
|
|
|
|
No...... pick3 is gone!
I liked how it went off frequently. Maybe put just 1BTC in for seed and 100% of all entries? This would actually make every bet the tiniest bit +EV, and I could justify buying pretty much any amount I desire.
Oh, I guess there is a problem with that, I could buy all tickets and snap up that 1 coin constantly. You could cap it though at 3000 tickets or something, it would be won within 3 rounds of hitting the cap for sure so no one would be locked out for long.
Ha, there were only 3 people actively betting on pick 3, hardly justifying the cost it had to me If eventually we get enough people on board, there's a lot that can be done, but for now, while pots are small... And capping, that I cannot do for 2 reasons: - Against my principles - Completely impossible, you can open as many accounts as you want Please go ahead and try the pick4, I'm sure that if the bets get high enough it will be really frequent too. And maybe I'll find a way to do a super seed! But if enough people request it, I'll drag Pick3 back, with either seeds completely gone and bets at 100%, or smaller seeds and smaller cuts. But really, I think a Pick4 with a 1000BTC starting pot would rock |
|
|
|
I'm a TAABL Luck Box! I keep putting in a few coins and hitting.
Maybe you could give me your address and I can just send you all my coins, saving us both some trouble  I don't understand the payouts. I thought:
Person A places 20 bets, pot is 20.
Person B places 50 bets, pot is 70.
But this doesn't seem to be the case, as the pot was 50 with zero bettors? I think I see your problem ;P
Yeah, I never got around to putting that in the rules page. There's an initial seed, which is free for all (is 50 currently), so if you bet 1, you can get 50. Further bets will increment the pot 5 btc for every 10 bets. So 50% of the bets go to the pot. There is a confirmation period for bets, and that is why you see 20 bets and a pot of 50. After 6 blocks (roughly one hour) the bets are confirmed and the pot raises by 10, moving to 60. This confirmation period has nothing to do with bitcoin confirmation blocks. It's to make sure the total bets for a block are known an hour in advance so I can't just put in a known winning bet after the block comes out and cheat on everyone
What is the house/charity edge?
I get 50% of all bets minus the seed. So the theory is I can get a truckload of coins, and reality is I'm bleeding coins. The earnings I make on this, if I ever do so, will have an impact on the seeding of the next pick, so if I make 1000 coins, you'll see a much larger seed on the next pick, probably on the 500 coins area, so I can keep a buffer.
Is there a way I can deposit 50btc, and auto-fund 10btc at a time when the pick 4 is hit? Otherwise, I have to keep checking when the lottery ends and resets to zero.
Not right now, no. The auto betting feature is something I have on my to do list, but don't have time for... if there's generalized interest on this, please speak up. Thank you for playing, and the (continuation of) best of luck to you. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
