Post-2007 SecondLife (sans admins), here we come!

[markm]

That is what Open Simulator is.

It is more than that. And sadly, it is also less. OpenSim sims do not have a common currency. Accordingly, no real functioning economy.

The centralized control that LL has over SL allows for common asset servers that let you carry your identity across sim boundaries. This allows for portable assets. This in turn allows for a system of commerce.

Last I looked OSGrid had no expectation of an av carrying their inventory and being able to rez it in any arbitrary region. At least and hope that it is discernible in its true form by others. Is my impression outdated?

I have taken gear from OSGrid out onto the hypergrid, picked up items out on the hypergrid and brought them "home" in my inventory to OSGrid.

It is apparently true though that Open Simulator deliberately does not force a particular implementation of currency.

I have heard there are various currency modules or plugins but I have not investigated them yet, partly because someone else is already looking into using Open Transactions somehow for that. There is at least one open currency though that supposedly works, is exchangeable and so on, supposedly it is simply up to people who run regions whether to choose to enable it. (Maybe having to go get that module and include it somehow; it does not come with the "standard" mainstream Open Simulator releases.)

-MarkM-

[edmundedgar]

A couple of responses to things people are wondering up-thread:

1) You can now transfer move around between different grids and use the same inventory, if the grid you're on and the grid your inventory is on both allow it. IIUC what's happening under the hood is that the first time you try to rez some inventory that comes from another grid, the grid you're on fetches a copy of the whole thing, including all the textures and sounds.

2) OpenSim doesn't include money handling by default, but it has a lot of hooks to allow people to make modules for it that do. The approaches are:
 a) Internal currency that only works on your grid and may or may not be exchangeable for real money (there's a FOSS module called DTL/NSL, and the other day Dreamland Metaverse announced what sounds like a proprietary one for their own grids.)
 b) Vendor-managed digital currency - Virwox, who also run Bitcoin exchange services, do a currency called OMC which is designed for OpenSim grids. This looks like quite a nice piece of work, but relies on a single, small tech company to be competent and honest, stay in business and not suddenly pivot to a more promising product. So far so good in this case, but it's probably not sensible to build an open commerce infrastructure on a small private company.
 c) Real-world currency, where the grid just brokers addresses and confirms payments (Mod-PayPal for PayPal, or my Mod-FreeMoney for both PayPal and Bitcoin).

[DOH!]

That is what Open Simulator is.

It is more than that. And sadly, it is also less. OpenSim sims do not have a common currency. Accordingly, no real functioning economy.

The centralized control that LL has over SL allows for common asset servers that let you carry your identity across sim boundaries. This allows for portable assets. This in turn allows for a system of commerce.

Last I looked OSGrid had no expectation of an av carrying their inventory and being able to rez it in any arbitrary region. At least and hope that it is discernible in its true form by others. Is my impression outdated?

The client is open source, you can pay someone to add whatever you want to it.  I talked to a dev about adding support last year and he said he could do it.

Blatantly thread-shitting to warn anyone who deals with Andrew Bitcoiner that he is a scammy fuck!  This guy owes me over 133btc in withdrawls from bitjack21.com, and he deleted my account which still had over 260btc in it!!!!

[Factory]

Thanks for the post Rassah. It was an enjoyable read. Like many others here, I had only heard miscellaneous stories about SL, and you provided a very interest glimpse into it's life.

[muyuu]

Don't get too excited. Gavin has already promised a September surprise that is supposed to "create stability" in the bitcoin economy. We may yet be under the control of some authority to prevent this exploration. It's really sad to see him keep this secret from everyone and just spring it on us the way he plans on doing.

without a complete redesign of the currency i don't see how it could be centrally controlled.

and if that happens, we fork to xxcoin

Likely something to do with this: https://gist.github.com/2217885

[Gyrsur]

Do we need a grid for Bitcoin?

Edit: Imagine we can meet Gavin and give him back some BTC we received out of his faucet. And maybe Satoshi too! 

[rini17]

In Bitcoinland, we have just passed through stage 7 (though at a smaller scale, even if the losses, $750k from Ginko, were much smaller compared to BTCS&T's $5mil).

This is warrantless optimism. I don't see end of this "stage" anywhere in the sight, especially with steady inflow of newbies. People in general are poor with money management even within heavily regulated area of fiat currencies/credit cards. And even if you succeed with some community self-regulation(had that ever succeeded in history?), don't forget there are billions of other people that don't speak english/don't know about bitcointalk/don't trust us/etc.

[Vitalik Buterin]

I personally believe that human nature falls into two social categories - those that take advantage of people and those that are taken advantaged of.

And where in your model go those who simply want to live and let live?

[Rassah]

In Bitcoinland, we have just passed through stage 7 (though at a smaller scale, even if the losses, $750k from Ginko, were much smaller compared to BTCS&T's $5mil).

This is warrantless optimism. I don't see end of this "stage" anywhere in the sight, especially with steady inflow of newbies. People in general are poor with money management even within heavily regulated area of fiat currencies/credit cards. And even if you succeed with some community self-regulation (had that ever succeeded in history?), don't forget there are billions of other people that don't speak english/don't know about bitcointalk/don't trust us/etc.

The part in bold is kind of my point: I'm not sure we really ever had a chance to try to succeed, since every time 7 happened, 8 (laws and regulation) followed. My optimism only extends to being able to see what will happen. Perhaps you are right, and thanks to Bitcoin we will be stuck in stage 7 for ever. Maybe we'll come together to form some sort of ratings body that, while doesn't have any legal force, can use its ratings power to destroy anyone who doesn't conform to accepted practices. Or perhaps the outcome will be something else, and something totally unexpected. I don't know. I believe people in general are good, so perhaps I am a little optimistic.

[firefop]

I hate to say this but this "unveiling of number 8" isn't always a good thing. So far in history there is a reason why the heavy hand of authority comes into play, and unsurprisingly after markets have been deregulated for a time period, and turned into a steaming pile of shit. I personally believe that human nature falls into two social categories - those that take advantage of people and those that are taken advantaged of. There will be other pirateat40's with get rich quick ponzi schemes, there will be other Matt's that make reckless bets and don't pay up, and there will be many other denizens that will be far worse than these two combined; at this point in time, it's a simple race to the bottom really.

So, what happens in a completely unregulated market? Is it all a house of cards and one blow away from oblivion because there is no trust? Do all the weak hands, and/or naive investors all leave? Will people finally wise up after being scammed (maybe numerous times) and understand that this isn't a game? You are right, we are going into an unknown, but no one really knows if this will be the end or beginning.

House of cards, in the sense that there's so much behind the scenes graft and market manipulation that the regulating entity doesn't want revealed that they'd rather start the demise of the entire system then let it be revealed. Bitcoin doesn't have this issue - there's nobody pulling the strings here.