Here we can see Verge is big in The Netherlands. 

Java is pretty god.  Utherwise it wouldn't be so popular

of course it is , this is a modus how to get them shut up their mouth
I would like to read some constructive reasons why they think that way.... I will wait forever 

So, KRB are basically trying the same thing XHV does, am I getting that right?

You know, I could just move on and don't even care about XHVs doomed efforts, but I think this is extremely symptomatic for the current state of crypto and altcoins. It is not that I think they are malicious or scammers or something like that. I think they started of genuinely believing that they'd find a solution for the problems at hand eventually. And now they are so deep in it that they can't really turn around and basically say "yeah, it's probably not gonna work the way we thought it would", because they'd have a bunch of angry, tikitorches and pitforks swinging "investors" looking for them then.

But the fact of the matter is that not only doesn't the whole thing add up, I have yet to see or hear anything more than *crickets* regarding the issues. Like, if you apply a simple example, you'll find that XHV is way too dependent on certain conditions to actually do what it's supposed to.

Let me state here that I think XHVD can work quite well for some time, given the right market conditions. Which sctually makes the whole thing even worse, because these types of systems tend not to give warning signals or anything, they just at some point flat out will stop working and people will be holding the bag. This is not a XHV specific problem, but can be seen all over the industry. How else can a sane brain rationalize the steps needed to go from BTCs approach to EOS's 21 validators? It's people getting into the market who don't realized and/or understand what Bitcoin was created for, which is, by western standarts, an absolute edge case. We are not surrounded by fiat money crashing left, right and center and for most of us, the banking system and Paypal work quite well. Bitcoin(and other blockchain projects) is primarily not supposed to be a better Paypal (fuck you, Roger), it is a system that is more resilient against catastrophic failure. And catastrophic failure is not a daily occurence, which is why people forget that it's a possibility. I could point towards parallels between this line of thought and the thought process of anti-vaxxers, but I digress.

Let's look at a simple example:

Let's say, XHV spikes to a marketcap of 100,000,000$. At this pricepoint, 2,000,000$ worth of XHV is offshored and 2,000,000 worth of XHVD are created.

Now, the marketcap falls for whatever reason. Let's say, it drops to 10,000,000$. There is still sitting 2,000,000$ worth of XHVD offshore, but instead of being 2% of the XHV supply, they now represent 20%. If they would be onshored and XHV would be created, you'd have to deal with an instant inflation of 20%, add to that the fact that there is no way that the orderbooks on exchanges are as thick as they were at a marketcap of 100,000,000. So, there are 2,000,000$ worth of XHV going into the market, completely crashing the price.

A counter argument could be that miners could not allow these 2,000,000$ to be onshored. This would effectively mean that they are not unconditionally backed with XHV, so one XHVD will not be worth one dollar, even if XHVD can be traded as its own asset.

This creates another question: What exactly is the price of one XHV? Are you going with the spot price, or are you taking orderbook size into account? I guess this wouldn't work, because this would effectively mean that the more XHVD is onshored, the more XHV per XHVD needs to be created to allow the holder to cash out.

Some may say that this is not how rational human beings act, that no one i their right mind would onshore their XHVD, then immediately sell their XHV in a thin market, losing money. Well, but what if they have to, maybe thy got sick and need the money right now, or something like that? Not only that, this is absolutely against the core premise of money itself: that the owner can do whatever the fuck they want with it. If you tie the value of money to a set of conditions that need to be met, this will be priced in.

And this is something that is extremely dangerous when it comes to crypto in general: you can't count on the predictability of human behavior, especially in a scenario in which you have to count constantly on humans behaving rationally or predictably. Because it only needs one moment, one unexpected turn to screw this thing up big time. And at that point, you'll have a bunch of panicking holders running to the exit, either onshoring their XHVD to XHV, inflating the supply even more, or selling their XHVD at completely low, "desperate to get out" discounts.

All this is amplified by the fact that XHVD is XHVs main selling point. If no one uses this mechanism, it just another Monero clone with not much else to show for it. And if a lot of people use it, it just creates a ticking time bomb. You might not even need a big swing in marketcap to make this a problem; a significant amount of XHV being offshored and then being onshored again might do the trick all by its own.

Look, I'm trying hard not to come off as a hater or fudster or anything nad I probably spent way too much thought on this project. But in all honesty, too much of crypt reminds me of the underpants gnomes from South Park(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zc4bGkU05o) and this is, sadly, a prime example.

I've tried for the first time to store UBQ on my Ledger wallet, but after having clicked on Connect to Ledger Wallet on pyrus.ubiqsmart.com, nothing happens. Windows doesn't pop up.
I've read instructions here:
https://support.ledgerwallet.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005459725-Ubiq-UBQ-
but they don't work for me
I'm having 1.4.2 Firmware on Ledger and the Ubiq app installed through Ledger Live is 1.1.7. Inside Ubiq app the settings don't have any "browser support" option, BTW.
What now?

(…)

Sincere apologies if I was to impolite.

As for the monetary reward and costs, there is hardly any of that in Byeball, the role of a witness is very different and it is much more about trustworthyness, reputation. In fact the point is, they are only witnesses because they are reputable and to continue to be recognized as such, they should not have any other interest in the ecosystem other then that. Very different from the interests of miners in a PoW-scenario.

if history teaches us anything, we just need to use new tech to publish porn in order to make a project succeed.

Could be. Also, I'd like to hear if he/she or someone else disagrees with the more interesting part of that statement, namely that basing a consensus mechanism purely on monetary reward will automatically lead to total centralization.

Just like totally free (unregulated) capitalism in a market will automatically lead to a monopoly.

(…)

Only a different consensus mechanism then one purely based on monetary gain can solve this, otherwise the process towards total centralization is automatic.  

I understood it as Bitcoin becomes more and more centralized as bigger miners get more powerful. You don't know when it is happening because these few people are decentralizing their mining operations, so it would not be too obvious that they have the most power. Sounds nuts, but hashrate of Bitcoin network is steadily going up. Who are they, we don't know, but I doubt they are Venezuelans or Iranians who don't have enough money even for food, let alone buying ASICs. https://news.8btc.com/bitcoin-hashrate-increases-in-a-bear-market-investors-are-still-optimistic-in-the-long-term
Byteball on the other hand, becomes more decentralized as more witness candidates and better witness candidates will join and since they are public, they can't be the same rich person.

Think of this way, you kind of know who are the rich guys today, but you can't do anything about it, they rule the world and the banks and the real-estate and the companies. You can't even vote them off from lobbying to the government because they will lobby to whoever is currently in parliament. Just check what's happening in EU with upload filters, that's Facebook and Google lobbying result.
With Bitcoin, you don't know who the rich guys are and you don't know how many rich guys are there, there could be 10, but there could also be only 1. And you can't do anything about it, you could fork and make their hardware useless, but you probably don't get the miners because the rich guys are becoming the majority of the miners.
Byteball moves in the opposite direction, eventually there will be so many witness candidates that if they breach your trust, you replace them and if enough people feel the same, better witness gets elected.

If one day, all Byteball current witnesses are replaced then your only hope that Bitcoin is more decentralized is because you think that the big miners are not the same people, but you can't be sure. Also, if some of those people become so powerful that they could pull off 51% attack, your hope is that they will not do it because it will destroy the value of their holdings, but you don't know how much they hold BTC by that time, they could have been planning for exit or fork for very long time.

Hmm, dPOS actually totally makes sense. I am not saying don't invest into BTC, it will still for sure have nice returns, but it will not be nr1 forever.

Hmm, dPOS actually totally makes sense.

You are right about incentives.  But there is something else.  PoW mining is an economic activity.  You have capex, you have opex, almost all your profits are burned in your huge costs, and you have to care about efficiency in order to stay in the game.  And in any economic activity, you have economy of scale.  As your mining farm gets bigger, it becomes more efficient and stands better against the competition.  You get volume discounts for miners, you will be the first in line for the new generation of miners, you can get cheaper electricity when you buy wholesale, it becomes worthwhile to relocate to a more favorable location, and you can hire the best talent in the industry.  It doesn't matter if the PoW algorithm is ASICable or not, the economy of scale is universal.  It might be not very important in the growing market when everyone, even a smaller and weaker miner, gets a portion of the growing pie, but nothing lasts forever and as the market matures and gets more competitive, the weaker players are darwinized, and the hash power gets concentrated in the hands of a few bigger miners.  Miners, not mining pools.  This looks like an end-game of any PoW based blockchain, because it has a heavy "hook" into the economy, and the economy favors scale.  You can call it emergent centralization.  Incidentally, Byteball moves in the opposite direction.

...Incidentally, Byteball moves in the opposite direction.

Looks like you are still trying to make fun of the phrase "decentralized witness".  Maybe not the best way to say it, "independent witness" would sound better but I bet you understood it anyway.

(…)

… Byteball will be more decentralized than Bitcoin because …

(…)

Byteball consensus is not directly comparable with other blockchain consensuses because Byteball is not just another Bitcoin fork.

We could also have 100 or 1000 witnesses but the platform will become less secure if you have more witnesses. A single witness has no power at all and can easily be replaced by users. Users have the real power in the Byteball network, not witnesses. Only when 6 or more witnesses collude they can harm the network, but they still can't change anything in the past. In fact they have very limited options for abuse.

12 public witnesses, explained in whitepaper

We will not allow redemptions in perpetuity. It wouldn't make any sense, as it's a different project altogether. It merely took ODN holders as eligible recipients as a way of making up for the failure of the ODN developers, and that's where all ties end.

Also, there was no swap. It was merely a limited window where you would prove ownership of ODN, and based on that you would be eligible to receive ODIN.

Now, despite the ODN developers completely failing and dropping the Obsidian project, we do still intend to carry on with Obsidian. We are currently looking at ways to get new developers interested, and are already actioning on making other developmental ideas a reality.

We are making the first step towards decentralization of witnesses.

First Decentralized Witness Candidate — Rogier Eijkelhof



Full story: https://medium.com/byteball/first-decentralized-witness-candidate-rogier-eijkelhof-9e5619166334
Interview: https://youtu.be/TI7cb57Yu9A
Witness pledge: https://www.docdroid.net/pqmfskj/rogier-eijkelhof-byteball-witness-pledge.pdf

Your action is required to support the candidate, see the story above.

(...)

Sherwood's initiative against the Elite cartel - 7 days later

Sherwood pool incentivises breaking up the Elite group by giving a bonus for unvoting their members. Now, 7 days later, I wanna share my little earnings comparison. Within one week I´ve received (rounded) 21 LSK from Sherwood (4 Delegates). During the same period I would have gotten ca. 4.7 LSK from Elite (54 Delegates).

This shows once more how much we're being exploited by this group whose main intention is "keeping most of the block rewards for personal gains". The Sherwood initiative is a good opportunity for a change, finally with prospects of success - Elite is clearly moving down. Just consider the latest Delegate Charts for Lisk. And/or learn more at https://medium.com/@4fryn/its-happening-lisk-elite-is-rapidly-falling-7266322a770b

By the way: Lisk reward "halving" (reward reduction from 4 to 3 LSK per new block) is almost here, around two weeks to go: http://www.liskdelegate.io/ After this happening, Sherwood will rise the share rate of their 50% delegates to 60% - which other delegate will do this?

Disclaimer: I´m not a Sherwood delegate or connected to them in any way. I just wanna support their initiative, cause imho it´s the best what can happen to change this current, disreputable Lisk DPos "cartel" situation.

So, KRB are basically trying the same thing XHV does, am I getting that right?

You know, I could just move on and don't even care about XHVs doomed efforts, but I think this is extremely symptomatic for the current state of crypto and altcoins. It is not that I think they are malicious or scammers or something like that. I think they started of genuinely believing that they'd find a solution for the problems at hand eventually. And now they are so deep in it that they can't really turn around and basically say "yeah, it's probably not gonna work the way we thought it would", because they'd have a bunch of angry, tikitorches and pitforks swinging "investors" looking for them then.

But the fact of the matter is that not only doesn't the whole thing add up, I have yet to see or hear anything more than *crickets* regarding the issues. Like, if you apply a simple example, you'll find that XHV is way too dependent on certain conditions to actually do what it's supposed to.

Let me state here that I think XHVD can work quite well for some time, given the right market conditions. Which sctually makes the whole thing even worse, because these types of systems tend not to give warning signals or anything, they just at some point flat out will stop working and people will be holding the bag. This is not a XHV specific problem, but can be seen all over the industry. How else can a sane brain rationalize the steps needed to go from BTCs approach to EOS's 21 validators? It's people getting into the market who don't realized and/or understand what Bitcoin was created for, which is, by western standarts, an absolute edge case. We are not surrounded by fiat money crashing left, right and center and for most of us, the banking system and Paypal work quite well. Bitcoin(and other blockchain projects) is primarily not supposed to be a better Paypal (fuck you, Roger), it is a system that is more resilient against catastrophic failure. And catastrophic failure is not a daily occurence, which is why people forget that it's a possibility. I could point towards parallels between this line of thought and the thought process of anti-vaxxers, but I digress.

Let's look at a simple example:

Let's say, XHV spikes to a marketcap of 100,000,000$. At this pricepoint, 2,000,000$ worth of XHV is offshored and 2,000,000 worth of XHVD are created.

Now, the marketcap falls for whatever reason. Let's say, it drops to 10,000,000$. There is still sitting 2,000,000$ worth of XHVD offshore, but instead of being 2% of the XHV supply, they now represent 20%. If they would be onshored and XHV would be created, you'd have to deal with an instant inflation of 20%, add to that the fact that there is no way that the orderbooks on exchanges are as thick as they were at a marketcap of 100,000,000. So, there are 2,000,000$ worth of XHV going into the market, completely crashing the price.

A counter argument could be that miners could not allow these 2,000,000$ to be onshored. This would effectively mean that they are not unconditionally backed with XHV, so one XHVD will not be worth one dollar, even if XHVD can be traded as its own asset.

This creates another question: What exactly is the price of one XHV? Are you going with the spot price, or are you taking orderbook size into account? I guess this wouldn't work, because this would effectively mean that the more XHVD is onshored, the more XHV per XHVD needs to be created to allow the holder to cash out.

Some may say that this is not how rational human beings act, that no one i their right mind would onshore their XHVD, then immediately sell their XHV in a thin market, losing money. Well, but what if they have to, maybe thy got sick and need the money right now, or something like that? Not only that, this is absolutely against the core premise of money itself: that the owner can do whatever the fuck they want with it. If you tie the value of money to a set of conditions that need to be met, this will be priced in.

And this is something that is extremely dangerous when it comes to crypto in general: you can't count on the predictability of human behavior, especially in a scenario in which you have to count constantly on humans behaving rationally or predictably. Because it only needs one moment, one unexpected turn to screw this thing up big time. And at that point, you'll have a bunch of panicking holders running to the exit, either onshoring their XHVD to XHV, inflating the supply even more, or selling their XHVD at completely low, "desperate to get out" discounts.

All this is amplified by the fact that XHVD is XHVs main selling point. If no one uses this mechanism, it just another Monero clone with not much else to show for it. And if a lot of people use it, it just creates a ticking time bomb. You might not even need a big swing in marketcap to make this a problem; a significant amount of XHV being offshored and then being onshored again might do the trick all by its own.

Look, I'm trying hard not to come off as a hater or fudster or anything nad I probably spent way too much thought on this project. But in all honesty, too much of crypt reminds me of the underpants gnomes from South Park(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zc4bGkU05o) and this is, sadly, a prime example.

(…)

Hi, thank you for your feedback. I have shared it with the team. Also keep in mind that there are economic incentives in the network. As for some of the new team members they include a Chief Financial Officer and a Business Analyst. More details will be provided in a Medium post. https://medium.com/mysterium-network

We are exploring various possibilities for our community to make use of the MYST token until Mysterium VPN app goes to market. We are also exploring options for nodes to onboard on various platforms to start receiving MYST tokens. More news on this in the coming weeks, stay tuned.

I see mate, looks that the only reasonable choice it's to stay away!

With my brand new DaYun Zig Z1 I'm currently testing NiceHash and some multi-pools such as Zerg, that still include XVG.

Thanks for your worthy point of view!
/E