DagCoin: a cryptocurrency without blocks

[monsterer]

After some adaptation period when a transaction is included into most of tips you need to wait constant time without paying attention to difficulty. A similar thing exists in blockchain-based PoW coins - it's passed time that matters, not number of blocks (if waiting time >> block time, which is necessary to reduce effect of variation).

I don't think transactions in DagCoin go into more than one tip, do they? Not unless we're talking about double spends anyway.

In any case, surely the only actual evidence of passed time *is* the number of blocks, or rather accumulated work? That's why 0 confirmation transactions are not safe in bitcoin - there is no evidence of work done.

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[Come-from-Beyond]

I don't think transactions in DagCoin go into more than one tip, do they? Not unless we're talking about double spends anyway.

If every transaction goes into only one tip then you get a tree, not a DAG.

In any case, surely the only actual evidence of passed time *is* the number of blocks, or rather accumulated work? That's why 0 confirmation transactions are not safe in bitcoin - there is no evidence of work done.

If that my condition is true (waiting time >> block time) then there is no difference between number of blocks, passed time and accumulated work.

[monsterer]

If that my condition is true (waiting time >> block time) then there is no difference between number of blocks, passed time and accumulated work.

I disagree with this assessment - by that logic simply waiting for 10 minutes in bitcoin for a 0 confirmation transaction would be as good as waiting for a block, but this is obviously false.

[Come-from-Beyond]

I disagree with this assessment - by that logic simply waiting for 10 minutes in bitcoin for a 0 confirmation transaction would be as good as waiting for a block, but this is obviously false.

Because

Code:

waiting time >> block time

condition is not true.

PS: ">>" sign means "much greater than".

[Come-from-Beyond]

that hasn't been explicitly stated, but I believe it would work as a phase 2 of a cryptocurrency. I.e., once the emission is complete, this kicks in, similar to how some PoS systems work.

Not many options there, you either don't allow to create new coins or have to live with very low security caused by miners attempting to invalidate each other's work and creating a superwide DAG.

[stdset]

A question to Sergio.

I'm reading the whitepaper, trying to understand the concept. Fig.1 confuses me.
There is a transaction "5" in fig. 1a, in 1b another transaction 5 arrives. Is it a typo?
Why transactions 6, 7 and 8 need to increase confirmation score of 3? Wouldn't it be better if they follow policy of their parent transaction 5 (the newer one)?
Why confirmation score of 3 suddenly drops to 1 when 9 and 10 arrive? 6, 7 and 8 no longer confirm 3, since their descendant 9 has chosen to confirm another doublespend? At the same time 6,7 and 8 still confirm 2?

[Come-from-Beyond]

Here is the announcement thread of a token based on DAG tech.

[americanpegasus]

Here is the announcement thread of a token based on DAG tech.

Presale fail.  
  
How can someone be smart enough to understand mathematics and computer science well enough to launch one of these but not understand that no pre-sale coin can ever become a world standard for value (or will succeed against nearly impossible odds if it does)?  
  
In any n-person pirate game, where pirate #1 literally makes up his own magic token and decides to keep a portion for himself, passing the remaining portion to the next.... how can pirate #1 (and any subsequent pirates) ensure that as many people value the token and use it as possible?  Remember that the token carries no initial value, and any value will come through adoption and usage of the token.  
  
I am confident that one losing strategy for such a game is to draw a line in the sand of "haves" vs. "have-nots" where after a certain point in time you are clearly buying into a line that was drawn before you got there.  A pre-sale functions as one such line.  It's not ultimately the distribution that matters, but the fairness of the distribution and the perception that any player could have gotten "in" at any time for a non-fixed cost that rose organically from zero. 
  
As I have always said, if you have a powerful enough technology then simply developing and understanding that tech will eventually make you very wealthy.  There is no need for a pre-sale.  

[monsterer]

Here is the announcement thread of a token based on DAG tech.

Presale fail.  
  
How can someone be smart enough to understand mathematics and computer science well enough to launch one of these but not understand that no pre-sale coin can ever become a world standard for value (or will succeed against nearly impossible odds if it does)?  

Look at coinmarketcap, there a bunch of presale funded coins in the top 10 - it makes no difference to performance at all.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Presale fail.  
  
How can someone be smart enough to understand mathematics and computer science well enough to launch one of these but not understand that no pre-sale coin can ever become a world standard for value (or will succeed against nearly impossible odds if it does)?  
  
In any n-person pirate game, where pirate #1 literally makes up his own magic token and decides to keep a portion for himself, passing the remaining portion to the next.... how can pirate #1 (and any subsequent pirates) ensure that as many people value the token and use it as possible?  Remember that the token carries no initial value, and any value will come through adoption and usage of the token.  
  
I am confident that one losing strategy for such a game is to draw a line in the sand of "haves" vs. "have-nots" where after a certain point in time you are clearly buying into a line that was drawn before you got there.  A pre-sale functions as one such line.  It's not ultimately the distribution that matters, but the fairness of the distribution and the perception that any player could have gotten "in" at any time for a non-fixed cost that rose organically from zero.  
  
As I have always said, if you have a powerful enough technology then simply developing and understanding that tech will eventually make you very wealthy.  There is no need for a pre-sale.  

You seem to be a smart guy. Here is a challenge for you - design such a system based on DAG that allows to issue coins a-la Bitcoin (we start with 0 supply) without weakening the security of the system. I think 1 week is enough for you. Do you accept the challenge? These links may be helpful:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency

[smooth]

Here is the announcement thread of a token based on DAG tech.

Presale fail. 
 
How can someone be smart enough to understand mathematics and computer science well enough to launch one of these but not understand that no pre-sale coin can ever become a world standard for value (or will succeed against nearly impossible odds if it does)? 

Look at coinmarketcap, there a bunch of presale funded coins in the top 10 - it makes no difference to performance at all.

None of them have become the world standard of value and using market cap as a metric is suspect due to the "sell one coin to a friend" problem especially in anonymous ICOs where no one can really tell whether they have ever been distributed by an effective market process.

Whether such a coin can in fact become a world standard of value in the future is unclear, so I'm not quite as negative as AP. All those coins in the top 10 are nowhere close to Bitcoin's value though (which in turn is nowhere close to any existing world standard of value). So it seems fairly doubtful at this juncture. In fact on this basis alone your statement that it "makes no difference at all" isn't supportable. How about we try a simple regression between presale and no-presale. Any guesses on the coefficient?

But as CfB says if there technically isn't a way to distribute over time then it needs to be done another way. That much is certainly true.

[monsterer]

In fact on this basis alone your statement that it "makes no difference at all" isn't supportable. How about we try a simple regression between presale and no-presale. Any guesses on the coefficient?

Sure. You should probably leave bitcoin and litecoin out of it, since they have the first mover(s) advantage.

[smooth]

In fact on this basis alone your statement that it "makes no difference at all" isn't supportable. How about we try a simple regression between presale and no-presale. Any guesses on the coefficient?

Sure. You should probably leave bitcoin and litecoin out of it, since they have the first mover(s) advantage.

That's not a simple regression. That's creating a model based on your own opinion of what matters.

Litecoin doesn't have any real first mover advantage either, except by being first to be the second to become big enough for you to consider it worthy of excluding. Say what?

So basically "makes no difference at all" is just something you made up.

[myagui]

I always felt that the CLAMS distribution model was rather interesting (even tough I didn't get any  )
Maybe some similar scheme could be devised, perhaps even incorporating a % via presale also.

[monsterer]

That's not a simple regression. That's creating a model based on your own opinion of what matters.

Litecoin doesn't have any real first mover advantage either, except by being first to be the second to become big enough for you to consider it worthy of excluding. Say what?

So basically "makes no difference at all" is just something you made up.

I stand by that. Arguing that bitcoin and it's clone have the biggest market caps *because* of their distribution model is crazy; for a long time there were no alternatives, that is why they have found such a following.

[smooth]

That's not a simple regression. That's creating a model based on your own opinion of what matters.

Litecoin doesn't have any real first mover advantage either, except by being first to be the second to become big enough for you to consider it worthy of excluding. Say what?

So basically "makes no difference at all" is just something you made up.

I stand by that. Arguing that bitcoin and it's clone have the biggest market caps *because* of their distribution model is crazy; for a long time there were no alternatives, that is why they have found such a following.

I didn't argue anything. I pointed out that your statement isn't supportable by any clear evidence. That doesn't even make it incorrect, but unsupported.

[americanpegasus]

I stand by that. Arguing that bitcoin and it's clone have the biggest market caps *because* of their distribution model is crazy; for a long time there were no alternatives, that is why they have found such a following.

 
 
So you believe that if bitcoin had a presale it wouldn't have a.) faced much more hostile attitudes and regulation and b.) failed to gain the critical momentum necessary for mass adoption? 
 
I believe that time will eventually show that pre-sales simply don't work to do anything but temporarily enrich the launchers.  It is a damn fool waste to take what may be valid technology and piss it away on a concept that might endanger the entire implementation at the benefit of padding the creator's pockets a little.  Premines and shadow mines are the same thing. 
 
If Ethereum is crumbling due to it's presale and the attitude of its creators that "we can't do it all, you guys help build it" what do you think will eventually happen to Iota? 
 
Perhaps a solution is not easy to launch a DAG implementation without a presale or premine (and honestly I'm not even 100% sure what this means still despite my best efforts to understand - somehow a lack of blocks and distributed network is supposed to create an infinitely scalable network at the cost that people don't know where money came from until they spent it... or something like that), but that doesn't mean you should take shortcuts. 
 
Worst case scenario?  Don't sell the initial tokens at all.  Allow anyone who is interested to sign up and receive free tokens to seed the initial amount.  Make a topic on the Altcoin ANN section and make an announcement on the cryptographic mailing lists so no one can claim you didn't try to let as many people as possible know.  Let those who received the free tokens then assign their own monetary value to them and let the network's value grow organically afterwards. 
 

[Come-from-Beyond]

Worst case scenario?  Don't sell the initial tokens at all.  Allow anyone who is interested to sign up and receive free tokens to seed the initial amount.  Make a topic on the Altcoin ANN section and make an announcement on the cryptographic mailing lists so no one can claim you didn't try to let as many people as possible know.  Let those who received the free tokens then assign their own monetary value to them and let the network's value grow organically afterwards. 

Already have seen how it ended for Stellar, NEM and few others.

[monsterer]

I believe that time will eventually show that pre-sales simply don't work to do anything but temporarily enrich the launchers. 

Crowdfunding works. Look at kickstarter. Cryptocurrencies are fantastically complicated projects, that take years to develop - how do you propose the developers live while working full time on one of these projects?

[smooth]

I believe that time will eventually show that pre-sales simply don't work to do anything but temporarily enrich the launchers.

Crowdfunding works. Look at kickstarter. Cryptocurrencies are fantastically complicated projects, that take years to develop - how do you propose the developers live while working full time on one of these projects?

That's not a good argument. If there are comparable competing cryptocurrencies and one of them is subsided by some altruistic or ideological rich sponsor or by indirect monetization and the other expects users to pay, then users will likely choose the former. File your fairness complaint with the market.