How to be careful and avoid scams in the wild west of the alt coin scene -part 1

[YarkoL]

Essential stuff and worthy of being elevated to a sticky, which
will not happen, so I guess it needs to be bumped regularly
by the community.

[HCLivess]

Bump. Well-written.

[Daedelus]

Proof of work is best. Proof of stake??  Sorry I cannot support it because of security issues.  At one time I was a true believer in proof of stake and even personally launched an alt coin that was proof of stake.  I can tell you it took a while for me to realize that without centralized checkpointing and control (like ppc has) proof of stake has some security issues in particular since many alt coins use an older codebase of bitcoin to start from.  I don't want to go technical in this post but I personally know several ways that can really produce 'unusual' or 'undesired' results with a proof of stake coin.  Some of these you need to be able to change code around and compile your own attack client or node and some of these flaws are exploitable by someone with some coins in a regular wallet just by changing the clock on a windows computer.   Even with the centralized checkpointing system that ppc was using proof of stake fails to solve /resolve what is called the byzantine generals problem. 

I presume you have only looked at Peercoin's POS (coinage) implementation?

Nxt would pay you bounties if you could show your ideas are applicable to their algo (doesn't use coinage or rely on centralized checkpointing). Clock computer would be interesting to know more about. I believe Nxt client's will accept tx's from up to 15 sec in the future IIRC to allow for latency in the network, I presume. PM me or start a new thread or go to nxtforum.org if you are interested in the bounties.

Regarding the 'centralized' concept of checkpointing I realize some proof of work coins use this to a lesser or greater extent to secure the block chain from attack.  I don't think anything centralized is good. If an individual like me or you can compile the code, run a node and it will work with everything that is my personal test.

How about using decentralized checkpointing?

[sdmathis]

Proof of work is best. Proof of stake??  Sorry I cannot support it because of security issues.  At one time I was a true believer in proof of stake and even personally launched an alt coin that was proof of stake.  I can tell you it took a while for me to realize that without centralized checkpointing and control (like ppc has) proof of stake has some security issues in particular since many alt coins use an older codebase of bitcoin to start from.  I don't want to go technical in this post but I personally know several ways that can really produce 'unusual' or 'undesired' results with a proof of stake coin.  Some of these you need to be able to change code around and compile your own attack client or node and some of these flaws are exploitable by someone with some coins in a regular wallet just by changing the clock on a windows computer.   Even with the centralized checkpointing system that ppc was using proof of stake fails to solve /resolve what is called the byzantine generals problem. 

I presume you have only looked at Peercoin's POS (coinage) implementation?

Nxt would pay you bounties if you could show your ideas are applicable to their algo (doesn't use coinage or rely on centralized checkpointing). Clock computer would be interesting to know more about. I believe Nxt client's will accept tx's from up to 15 sec in the future IIRC to allow for latency in the network, I presume. PM me or start a new thread or go to nxtforum.org if you are interested in the bounties.

Regarding the 'centralized' concept of checkpointing I realize some proof of work coins use this to a lesser or greater extent to secure the block chain from attack.  I don't think anything centralized is good. If an individual like me or you can compile the code, run a node and it will work with everything that is my personal test.

How about using decentralized checkpointing?

I took it to mean all POS coins based off of Peercoin (which is most, but not all) POS coins. Some, such as Blackcoin, VeriCoin, etc... have changed their code to increase security. And then there is NXT which was coded from scratch. It's good that you brought that up because there are people who might think that all POS coins are insecure.

[Spoetnik]

It's really simple..

Does new XYZ coin beat Bitcoin ?
no ?
Then it's crap posted to make some guy or guy(s) money.

Get it ?

Come on there is THOUSANDS of Altcoins and they KNOW BETTER
they know damn well that there new innovative coin does not have a chance of hell at going anywhere long before it's posted publicly.

There needs be no complicated analysis here what so ever.
Only reason to do that is to try and build up your own cred for your own projects..
aka: I'm a legit dev and my coins are legit and the other guys are scammers.
nice try guys and *girls LOL

AND hey do you KNOW peoples private mental motivations ? NO ?
then how do you know they have bad intentions or not ? ..you don't.

I see no reason why 99% of the last few thousands coins were posted.
If an Altcoin can not reach the level Bitcoin has so far and surpass it then it's pointless.
And I am tired of asking so called *legit devs why they didn't just use Testnet LOL

Most alts can rightly claim to be an improvement on Bitcoin, so that doesn't really mean anything.

Of course most devs are in it for a quick buck. That's the whole reason why people need to be careful, and that's why the OP took the time to write his post.

you mean *HER post ..read more carefully
And you didn't get it.
A lot of the time new features can be applied to abandoned / dead coins or even existing projects.. after all there is MANY asking for more dev help.
So why do we see a new coin posted with an IPO/ICO etc instead of someone adding a new feature to an existing coin ?
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

And don't forget if you devs wanted to ? you could write and submit codeforo Bitcoin itself..
It's not like you HAVE to make your own coins and play this whole I'm more credible than some other guys here game..

[cinnamon_carter]

Just because an alt coin exists and forked from bitcoin does not automatically discredit it as junk.

If there was ONLY bitcoin I would never have even joined the forum.

I certainly admire the work of the bitcoin team.

I read their updates and comments on github almost every day and have for some time.

Even reading commits from a few years ago I have learned many things.

Anyone who feels all alt coins are scams or shit coins (Which is certainly the opinion held by many)
is entitled to their beliefs but I wonder why they would even bother visiting the alt coin section of this forum.  (which ironic as it may sound I was told generates the most traffic and revenue for this forum)

If for you btc is all there is then you may be most happy among those who want to develop and work on bitcoin.  I thought about submitting pulls for btc myself a while ago however I think the core team generally handles things on their own and I see little opportunity or incentive for myself doing that. It appears from me watching them at work for a while if you are not all ready a regular you won't be accepted. (To me peer recognition of ones skills or contributions are  more important than monetary compensation..... )

I could be wrong. Maybe someday if I see something I could contribute that would be of value I will submit it and see what happens.

One thing over time I have started to wish was different about bitcoin is how the reward structure was set up. Long gone are the glory days of 50 btc a block.  In about a year the days of 25 wlll be gone. And you all probably know the rest.... With such a large amount of coins done early the advantage to those who got in early is much greater that the potential opportunity to someone who wants to get in now.  Yes I have read the original white paper and probably every post by 'satoshi' in the forum here and many many other things......

I wonder if history were replayed where the block reward stayed steady or had a more gradual gentle decline what would have happened ??  Maybe bitcoin is successful in part because of this aspect.
Still coins that offer a fixed or more gradual reduction are personally more to my liking.


I add these personal preferences of mine as afterthoughts only.


Thanks to those who have suggested the admins of the forum pin this thread.

I don't think that would eve happen like bitcoin itself the forum is carefully operated by a tight group. I am certainly not among that clique nor do I seek it.   I would not object if they removed my name /personal opinions and just posted the facts or added them to one of the existing pinned threads.  Even if they only posted 'some' of the facts it would be ok with me.  I am not seeking any personal credit or recognition.


To answer those on nxt and the proof of stake questions, I have looked it over but not real close. I do not own any and never experimented or tested it..  I have read the work and research of others however and (at least to me) I think the papers I posted earlier from the Ethereum developer are very well written and his logic applies not only to any coin based on older (or newer) ppc code bases but also to nxt.  I am not knocking nxt on 'tech' specs although I think any ipo where initial coins are created out of nothing but code and sold to others and build a system that just generates more coins is something that has a reward structure contrary to what I feel is fair.  You can disagree if you like. I am not saying it is a scam only that some things surrounding nxt I heard about (mostly in this forum and on twitter) like coins vanishing for example have been brought up often enough that I believe it has happened.  It is more likely a glitch if it actually happened not something done intentional.


I can imagine a future where releasing an alt coin would be treated by figures of authority like trying to issue your own paper money and have it used for the exchange of goods/services where you live.
I bet eventually people who like to stay in the shadows won't be able to run coins at all.
Eventually like other industries regulation will creep in.

Everyone who sells insurance, traditional financial products ect.. in the United States has to have a license (or several licenses) to do so. The people who get licensed for all these things have to get background checks, probably give fingerprints and other things too and pass examinations and pay money to 'maintain their licenses' so they can 'stay in business'......   

The second funniest thing of all is regulation of this nature gives birth to an entire layer of a secondary industry that makes a living charging those who need the licenses fees to conduct these examinations and other things (a lot of time this is the government itself who is in control by charging people to be 'licensed'.   The funniest thing of all is the government and some people will have everyone believe this is all done to protect us......... after all no licensed insurance person, licensed banker, licensed stockbroker, licensed bank, licensed mortgage officer ect has ever ripped anyone off. Only those working without a license rip people off ... right....

If anything I think it is actually more accurate to say --- if you want to work in certain industries you pay the organized crime bosses (in this case that is usually the government) a little tribute for the benefit of being allowed to bilk the public.  And everyone just goes along.... And you actually get a piece of paper that says you are legally entitled to do this. I am sure there are honest people in all these businesses also but all the licensing does is add a layer of cost and for these types of business to operate which is of course passed on to all their customers. 

I sure hope I am wrong and no law is ever passed that limits the running of an open source project.

[Daedelus]

To answer those on nxt and the proof of stake questions, I have looked it over but not real close. I do not own any and never experimented or tested it..  I have read the work and research of others however and (at least to me) I think the papers I posted earlier from the Ethereum developer are very well written and his logic applies not only to any coin based on older (or newer) ppc code bases but also to nxt.  I am not knocking nxt on 'tech' specs although I think any ipo where initial coins are created out of nothing but code and sold to others and build a system that just generates more coins is something that has a reward structure contrary to what I feel is fair.  You can disagree if you like. I am not saying it is a scam only that some things surrounding nxt I heard about (mostly in this forum and on twitter) like coins vanishing for example have been brought up often enough that I believe it has happened.  It is more likely a glitch if it actually happened not something done intentional.

So you don't own any, never experimented with it or tested it... but are happy to repeat absurd things you have heard on twitter that you acknowledge might not even have happened? Please post a link where anyone's Nxt has disappeared.

You also seem to imply there is inflation ("generates more coins") which isn't the case. There is no inflation in Nxt. Vitalik's description of weak subjectivity describes Nxt Concensus mechanism (see the comments section, ChuckOne co-ordinates Nxt core dev team). Vitalik has also briefly discussed Nxt's algo on nxtforum almost a year ago where he was satisfied with the approach, based on his knowledge at the time.

That's the idea behind Slasher. It's good against short-range attacks, but not long-range ones (see my article).

Good news. Against long-range attacks we r protected by the extra consensus rule that forces to stick to a branch with the highest rate of transactions belonging to the same economic cluster.

So basically you use transactions-as-proof-of-stake. That sounds reasonable; it's as good as I can think of at this point, although it has the moderately-serious-but-not-fatal flaws that I described in my On Stake article. I eagerly await a full whitepaper description and open source code of your complete protocol so both myself and more formal academics can properly whack at the specifics.

I would like your comments on this: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vbuterin/scalability_paper/master/scalability.pdf

In it Vitalik defines a term known as cyrptoeconimically secure and gives a proof where he says Nxt satisfies the criteria. A Nxter then went on to show what he believed was the proof that Nxt was secure (I can find the link if required but it was taken form the paper)


Taking all this into account, I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that Vitalik thinks Nxt can be lumped in with other POS no more than a flaw in a scrypt algo can be applicable to a SHA256 coin. They may be in the same family (being POS, POW) but two different animals.

[cinnamon_carter]

i guess sooner or later some people were bound to show up when proof of stake is mentioned and of course the coin they want to discuss is nxt, not anything else.  Look if you like nxt good for you. If you want the documentation I based my comments on use google and look up what people say about it. Also keep in mind the 'source' code was not initially available https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=394916.0

If you disagree with my opinion or the opinion of the Ethereum dev. about proof of stake and the concepts he cited be my guest.

One fact about this altcoin forum around here in general I have noticed

Certain coins seem to have some type of 'protected' watchers that are watching all unmoderated threads.   I won't name coin names.  There are several.

Most coins if you post a negative comment on their thread it will be ignored or others may join in. Rare will someone defend the coin in fact the most you may see if someone , maybe on the development team tell you if you don't like the coin don't mine it and gtfo. 

Now ---- certain coins --a select few -- things seem to happen differently.

If a negative comment without much merit is posted like 'this coin sucks' , it won't take long for others to say they like it and just post other items..... this 'forum bumping' technique is a very old tactic and even employed by the United States and likely other governments to sway public opinion on certain things normally related to politics.  This is not a conspiracy theory there are published foia documents that confirm it.

If a negative comment is posted to a coins thread that actually has some foundation and or documentation to it as to what flaw exists or why they will not support it.... a different approach is used.   Multiple accounts slam that user, often following other posts they made elsewhere here in this forum and negate them even to the point of stating things like 'you post negative comments about several coins' .... ect....   Some people have even been confronted online or in person and threatened.
I know of a few confirmed incidents like this.


If a coin thread has a multitude of people responding or even paying attention to every negative or questionable item posted about that coin proceed with caution.  Honest , fair, legit and real open source projects have nothing to hide and no place to hide it. Their code is released to the world and can be tested by anyone. 

Personally I think if you are using any cryptocurrency at all and it is not 100% open source from day one you should seriously reconsider your position but in the end it is up to you.

Coins you think are run by party x could actually be under control of someone else, like a government agency, organized crime ring or many many other things/people ..... use your imagination. 

In closing I will say I stand behind all prior posts I made here.

If you have FACTS that refute anything I stated post them to the thread.

I don't care if anyone likes my opinions or agrees with them or feels differently.

Also, you may want to think twice about attempts to bother me personally as it has happened in the past when I have criticized things. I don't care how many fake sock puppet accounts come of of the sky. I am not afraid of you, whatever government agency you work or are in informant for or what other organizations you are associated with. I can say this with confidence since I am not a criminal.

If someone tries to push me around I will look through your coin /code/ everything else and I am very skilled at finding out vulnerabilities and information.  If provoked I will publish my work. That aside, when left alone I tend to allow a 'confrontation' with another to be a one time thing and not go looking to screw with other people. 


 


 

[kennyP]

i guess sooner or later some people were bound to show up when proof of stake is mentioned and of course the coin they want to discuss is nxt, not anything else.  Look if you like nxt good for you. If you want the documentation I based my comments on use google and look up what people say about it. Also keep in mind the 'source' code was not initially available https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=394916.0

If you disagree with my opinion or the opinion of the Ethereum dev. about proof of stake and the concepts he cited be my guest.

One fact about this altcoin forum around here in general I have noticed

Certain coins seem to have some type of 'protected' watchers that are watching all unmoderated threads.   I won't name coin names.  There are several.

Most coins if you post a negative comment on their thread it will be ignored or others may join in. Rare will someone defend the coin in fact the most you may see if someone , maybe on the development team tell you if you don't like the coin don't mine it and gtfo. 

Now ---- certain coins --a select few -- things seem to happen differently.

If a negative comment without much merit is posted like 'this coin sucks' , it won't take long for others to say they like it and just post other items..... this 'forum bumping' technique is a very old tactic and even employed by the United States and likely other governments to sway public opinion on certain things normally related to politics.  This is not a conspiracy theory there are published foia documents that confirm it.

If a negative comment is posted to a coins thread that actually has some foundation and or documentation to it as to what flaw exists or why they will not support it.... a different approach is used.   Multiple accounts slam that user, often following other posts they made elsewhere here in this forum and negate them even to the point of stating things like 'you post negative comments about several coins' .... ect....   Some people have even been confronted online or in person and threatened.
I know of a few confirmed incidents like this.


If a coin thread has a multitude of people responding or even paying attention to every negative or questionable item posted about that coin proceed with caution.  Honest , fair, legit and real open source projects have nothing to hide and no place to hide it. Their code is released to the world and can be tested by anyone. 

Personally I think if you are using any cryptocurrency at all and it is not 100% open source from day one you should seriously reconsider your position but in the end it is up to you.

Coins you think are run by party x could actually be under control of someone else, like a government agency, organized crime ring or many many other things/people ..... use your imagination. 

In closing I will say I stand behind all prior posts I made here.

If you have FACTS that refute anything I stated post them to the thread.

I don't care if anyone likes my opinions or agrees with them or feels differently.

Also, you may want to think twice about attempts to bother me personally as it has happened in the past when I have criticized things. I don't care how many fake sock puppet accounts come of of the sky. I am not afraid of you, whatever government agency you work or are in informant for or what other organizations you are associated with. I can say this with confidence since I am not a criminal.

If someone tries to push me around I will look through your coin /code/ everything else and I am very skilled at finding out vulnerabilities and information.  If provoked I will publish my work. That aside, when left alone I tend to allow a 'confrontation' with another to be a one time thing and not go looking to screw with other people. 

Good OP cinnamon_carter, well done!

I do disagree with most of your opinions on NXT though, but I do agree with you that some coins have over zealous supporters who jump out and stomp on any criticism of their favorite coin. Some NXT community members do this quite a bit, but IMO the NXT zealots are reacting to what appears to many as a deliberate bias AGAINST NXT by many crypto users.

I like NXT but can see its faults too, and I am quite amazed at how crypto news sites like coinndesk completely ignore NXT, and some bitcoin heavy hitters still accuse NXT of being a scam, which is clearly ridiculous to any open minded person. Despite many obvious faults (the distribution, which was fair but only attracted a small number of stakeholders) most fair minded people can see the obvious merit in the tech, and as a long time lurker on the NXT forum, you can't help but be impressed by the NXT communities enthusiasm and ability to get things done.

IMO there has been, and still is, an almost deliberate campaign against NXT by the majority of early bitcoiners, and that's actually had the effect of bonding the NXT people more tightly together, and that's making the NXT community far stronger than ALL other coin communites IMO. I'm not a tech guy so have to 'trust' others assessments on the merits of NXT tech, but the NXT communities effectiveness is on display to everyone, and part of that effectiveness is a willingness for some NXTers to defend/promote NXT in various forum threads. Sometimes it might be annoying, but it is effective, especially when sites like coindesk go out of their way to ignore NXT, which IMO looks almost like a possible conspiracy against NXT.

[Daedelus]

i guess sooner or later some people were bound to show up when proof of stake is mentioned and of course the coin they want to discuss is nxt, not anything else.  Look if you like nxt good for you. If you want the documentation I based my comments on use google and look up what people say about it. Also keep in mind the 'source' code was not initially available https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=394916.0

If you disagree with my opinion or the opinion of the Ethereum dev. about proof of stake and the concepts he cited be my guest.

One fact about this altcoin forum around here in general I have noticed

Certain coins seem to have some type of 'protected' watchers that are watching all unmoderated threads.   I won't name coin names.  There are several.

Most coins if you post a negative comment on their thread it will be ignored or others may join in. Rare will someone defend the coin in fact the most you may see if someone , maybe on the development team tell you if you don't like the coin don't mine it and gtfo. 

Now ---- certain coins --a select few -- things seem to happen differently.

If a negative comment without much merit is posted like 'this coin sucks' , it won't take long for others to say they like it and just post other items..... this 'forum bumping' technique is a very old tactic and even employed by the United States and likely other governments to sway public opinion on certain things normally related to politics.  This is not a conspiracy theory there are published foia documents that confirm it.

If a negative comment is posted to a coins thread that actually has some foundation and or documentation to it as to what flaw exists or why they will not support it.... a different approach is used.   Multiple accounts slam that user, often following other posts they made elsewhere here in this forum and negate them even to the point of stating things like 'you post negative comments about several coins' .... ect....   Some people have even been confronted online or in person and threatened.
I know of a few confirmed incidents like this.


If a coin thread has a multitude of people responding or even paying attention to every negative or questionable item posted about that coin proceed with caution.  Honest , fair, legit and real open source projects have nothing to hide and no place to hide it. Their code is released to the world and can be tested by anyone. 

Personally I think if you are using any cryptocurrency at all and it is not 100% open source from day one you should seriously reconsider your position but in the end it is up to you.

Coins you think are run by party x could actually be under control of someone else, like a government agency, organized crime ring or many many other things/people ..... use your imagination. 

In closing I will say I stand behind all prior posts I made here.

If you have FACTS that refute anything I stated post them to the thread.

I don't care if anyone likes my opinions or agrees with them or feels differently.

Also, you may want to think twice about attempts to bother me personally as it has happened in the past when I have criticized things. I don't care how many fake sock puppet accounts come of of the sky. I am not afraid of you, whatever government agency you work or are in informant for or what other organizations you are associated with. I can say this with confidence since I am not a criminal.

Wow. If you didn't want a discussion just say so, no need to go so far off into distance. Coming back to reality, if someone is saying the sky in green when all evidence supports that it is blue, then you are going to get people questioning you about it. No conspiracy theories required.

I want to discuss Nxt as all serious research attempts so far have shown it to be secure, in the face of all Nothing@Stake fudders. See the work of Concensus research > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.0

Here's the summary:

To summarize the discussion, known claimed attacks on proof-of-stake distributed consensus algorithm(and concrete implementations) at the moment:

1. Short-range attack  - attacker can offer better chain started few blocks behind current canonical chain. The attack is possible at the moment, the only likely outcome though is just gathered fees increase for an attacker. In our simulations this kind of attack is possible mostly when a long delay occurs due to low target. By the way, the attack has positive aspect for network, as it shorten delays average between blocks. So attacker gets extra fees for a good job done 

2. Long-range attack - attacker can start fork hundreds or thousands blocks behind current chain. From our investigations the attack isn't possible. 

3. Nothing-at-stake attack - not possible at the moment! Will be possible when a lot of forgers will use multiple-branch forging  to increase profits. Then attacker can contribute to all the chains(some of them e.g. containing a transaction) then start to contribute to one chain only behind the best(containing no transaction) making it winner.  Previous statements on N@S attack made with assumption it costs nothing to contribute to an each fork possible and that makes N@S attack a disaster. In fact, it's not possible at all to contribute to each fork possible, as number of forks growing exponentially with time. So the only strategy for a multibranch forger is to contribute to N best forks. In such scenario attack is possible only within short-range e.g. with 25 confirmations needed 10% attacker can't make an attack. And attack is pretty random in nature, it's impossible to predict whether 2 forks will be within N best forks(from exponentially growing set) for k confirmations. So from our point of view the importance of the attack is pretty overblown.

4. History attack - attacker can buy whale's private key for $5 and build alternative story. Solved with some checkpoints now, located behind max rollback possible, so the solution is not so scary in terms of centralization etc.


If you know any other kind of attack, please add. Please note IPO properties of a concrete coins etc isn't related to proof-of-stake distributed consensus problems.

And Consensus Research is going to work on better proof-of-stake prototyping & implementation !

You can repeat these findings with the models published with the results, if you see fit. I am still interested in the details of your attacks on POS (as I asked about above), as I have seen a few try similar ideas in the past and they don't work in Nxt. Maybe yours will? And if so, it would good to know about them.

If someone tries to push me around I will look through your coin /code/ everything else and I am very skilled at finding out vulnerabilities and information.  If provoked I will publish my work. That aside, when left alone I tend to allow a 'confrontation' with another to be a one time thing and not go looking to screw with other people. 

Again wow. Are these the only conditions under which you review ideas?

[Nxtblg]

Also, you may want to think twice about attempts to bother me personally as it has happened in the past when I have criticized things. I don't care how many fake sock puppet accounts come of of the sky. I am not afraid of you, whatever government agency you work or are in informant for or what other organizations you are associated with. I can say this with confidence since I am not a criminal.

If someone tries to push me around I will look through your coin /code/ everything else and I am very skilled at finding out vulnerabilities and information.  If provoked I will publish my work. That aside, when left alone I tend to allow a 'confrontation' with another to be a one time thing and not go looking to screw with other people. 

"You go, girl!" Unfortunately, the heads are so hot around here that I can see the need to make a pre-emptive threat. Not my policy: by habit, I silently seethe when angered but remain polite. (By throttling, I hope to reach a happy day when I can let the usual heated words just roll off my back as I shrug them off.)

But as far as Daedelus is concerned, there's no need to worry about him. He's not aggressive, he's defensive. If he bothers you personally, I'd be shocked.