Not sure if you saw that, as it addresses some of the same criticisms you just brought up.

Bigger blockchain means that fewer people run nodes. Especially when the blockchain is an order of magnitude bigger.  I could be mistaken on the payment ID's, but I distinctly remember it being raised as an issue in the Monero thread, with consensus towards removing them. I'll do some digging later. Masternode operators turning on each other? That doesn't sound like a realistic problem, additionally if it were a problem, it would be self correcting by incentivizing more nodes. How would they turn on each other? DOS? March wants its problem back. Node hacking? Remember that you can't steal the coins held in a MN. ( Unless you're a moron and you don't use the clearly safer cold storage setup).

There's nothing "narrow-minded/resolute/whatever" in being a bit conservative in Bitcoin development. It's not some unimportant altcoin whose failure will bother only a few, it's the core of cryptocoin technology. It's designed to last for a long, long time. If some feature in some altcoin stands the test a time for a year or two, then it should be considered wise to implement it in Bitcoin. IMHO this Gavin's Bloom filter improvement is mindless rush to improve the Bitcoin, it should be tested in some altcoin for some time before upgrading Bitcoin's blockchain processing. If no altcoin developer implements it first, Bitcoin developers should invent an altcoin just to test this feature.

You two really think that Gavin et al are ever incorporating any major features that are found in an alt in to their 8 billion dollar baby?

If it's not something that solves a direct threat or major problem with Bitcoin I would put my money on 'never'. Or at least not in the next 5-10 years.

Everyone always says it would be easy to for Bitcoin to do xyz, but in reality even the simplest things are bogged down in politics.

That's not to say that the Bitcoin's devs aren't doing a great job at what they set out to do: Develop a stable codebase. Competing in the market as a product isn't how I think Bitcoin is run right now. That could change of course, but its not likely to for a long time if ever.

I do have a question about this.  (I'm very very simpleton in crypto terms - so please don't eat me)

I understand in theory the blockchain shouldn't be an issue.  Even cryptonote (I was reading about how the blockchain when it grew to BTC size would be 10X as big as BTC).  But as a consumer downloading a 20GB database is a fairly big deal with my internet connection.  (I understand I can use litewallets that sync with other servers)

But isn't the blockchain size fairly relevant to keeping decentralization in the sense that bitcoin was originally invented - to be duplicated across hundreds of thousands of consumer machines?  Even at 20GB - with my internet connection I really don't want to download the entire blockchain ...

Fluffypony your making Fluffy ponys and SR members look immature...just stop it..

If you're referring to payment ID's , you should know they have been identified as a security risk, look through the Monero thread.  Blockchain size does matter, if no one runs nodes, your network becomes centralized and easier to attack.

To your last point, if you can't scale properly, you'll simply lose out to those that can. Once people try to trace Darkcoin transactions and fail, it will become accepted as a standard. Good luck trying to explain your advantages a year or two after a standard has been established. First mover advantage is huge, and you guys aren't getting it Even if you do have advantages, they won't be game changing. I'll grant you that the CN solution is more elegant, but that's utterly meaningless because it all happens under the hood, and the vast majority of people don't care. People use what works, which as you'll find out shortly, is Darkcoin.

-desperation and nonsense snipped-

Satoshi did that before an entire ecosystem grew up around Bitcoin and its many offshoots.

To do the same now would, as stated, be obviously unethical. I don't need to reiterate why.

As for your remark about releasing closed source code, those who consider it a risk and still invest in XC stand to benefit, and those who don't, do not stand to benefit should XC succeed. That's all it comes down to. "Dangerous"? Of course, insofar as dangerous" implies "risky". Unethical? By no means.

But to assert that releasing closed source code is "dangerous" also implies, as far as I can see, that developers should take responsibility for the risks that their investors make. This is just silly. We've been completely open about our policy on open source and any investor would factor this in when they do their due diligence. Come on. What sort of libertarian-paternalist black swan does this position make you?

This coin seems to fit the pattern of a rapid PoW mining period followed by a much slower PoS period.

The coin launched on May 08th, 2014, according to their blockchain. By May 15th, the blockchain reveals that X11 coin had roughly 2,226,000 coins in existence by that day 117). By May 27th, the coin had switched almost entire into PoS 118) with around 5.5 million X11Coins in existence.

Initially, the bitcointalk.org thread created by the x11 community stated that the total number of PoW coins would be around 16 million coins and that PoS minting would take the expected total to 33 million coins 119). However, the coin developers have sinced changed their mind and shorted the PoW phase until 7.5 million coins are mined. Considering it took 19 days to produce roughly 5 million coins, we can't be far off from the end of the PoW phase and the full blown PoS phase, which returns 3.33 percent annually.

The problem with this sort of coin start, from the investor's perspective, is thus:

You are going to mine 7.5 million coins in probably 4-6 weeks. From that moment on, the most the entire network of X11 users can generate is 7,500,000 x .033 = 247,500 X11coins. When an investor comes along and sees a 100% PoW coin that makes 7.5 million coins in the first month, and then proceeds to adjust it's mining operations so that only ~20,000 coins are generated a month, the investor correctly identifies that coin as suspicious of being more of a money making venture for the creators rather than a revolutionary currency. Not to mention the fact that historically, only 50% or less of the coin holders actually mint their coins. It appears too many of them are just interested in day trading or too lazy/uninformed to do something otherwise. So the monthly total drops even more.

Why should an investor look at a PoW/PoS coin (and its coin generation tactics) without a discerning eye?

We also notice that the developer took a 99,000 X11coin premine (~2% total coins today, should be about 1.3% of total PoW coins). Unfortunately, you can read the bitcointalk.org thread yourself 120) and read the numerous problems the coin had launching. A number of miners simply gave up. You can also read how the developer more or less got the first 120 blocks (totaling some 26 thousand X11coin) and was shamed into including that into the premine total.

Last but not least, we can see on the blockchain that one wallet address has received 3.26 million coins 121), more than 50% of the coin's current totals. A quick look at the transactions to this address show it is mostly mining blocks that have produced this astronomical figure. Should it represent the mining of one person, that would be a ludicrous amount of coins. Should it represent a mining pool, it still is a problem because it suggests that one pool already has too much power and could potentially do double spends and other nefarious actions. But then again, the coin was mined so fast…did anyone notice?

All of these are suspect to bad signs for the coin.

Simply, any coins are are Bitcoin forks, will fail. Anything noteworthy on an altcoin, like mini-blockchain, Bitcoin can/may incorporate in the future, leaving said altcoin in the dust.

Nope. First you research, then you code, then you explain it to everyone (via a scholarly paper and other means).

Invert this order and you'll facilitate the creation of innumerable P&D coins that the general public will have a hard time distinguishing from the quality projects. And this hinders the entire altcoin phenomenon.

To not lend support to XC's way of doing things is, in effect, to lend support to an awfully unethical environment composed mostly of scams.

Jasinlee was not part of XC's original dev team.  He volunteered to help with the XC project about 4-6 weeks after XC launched.  His contributions toward the XC project are greatly appreciated, but his involvement with the XC project is limited and thus does not compromise the integrity of XC's platform or development.

Dan Metcalf is the original and lead developer of XC.  XC's original dev team consists of Dan Metcalf and 4 other coders (not counting Jasinlee).  Currently, the only coder besides Dan from the original dev team to have gone public is Christian Howe (the other 3 remain anonymous, but to my knowledge, were there from the beginning as well).  

While I believe the above to be accurate, I am happy to be corrected on anything I just said.

This is a big deal. It's the difference between a coin that stays a proof of concept versus one that can actually scale to mass usage. It doesn't matter how anonymous your coin is, if it can't scale, it'll be anonymous from no one knowing about it.

ok so ring signature bloat is not a big deal...i believe you..so when will you have mobile wallets for XMR, is there an ETA 2020?

It's not just a coin it's a platform. Your going to try and tell me that encrypted messages, voice, and video that is totally decentralized is not useful? Hell it's a multi billion dollar feature. Do you really like the NSA collecting all your data, if anon is such a big deal I would also think that having an XC app on your computer or phone to chat, call or skype  totally anonymous is a big deal.

Regarding mixins, it might be useful to have a low-end random mixin as a default. So if the user selects "Low" or doesn't specify, the mixin would be a random value between 2 and 10 (for example).

If the user selects "Medium" ambiguity, mixin is a random number between 11 and 20.
If the user selects "High" ambiguity, mixin is a random number between 21 and 30.

etc.

Dead? I don't think so.

The new Goldcoin (GLD) client is going to get a lot of people's attention. It's basically Bitcoin 2.0.

https://www.gldtalk.org/index.php?topic=2616.0

Why? Focus on getting your coin to usability, at some point volume will reach a critical mass and exchanges will add it. Focusing on more exchanges while your coin is still just a speculative vehicle just makes it look like your priorities are in the wrong place.