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Author Topic: Proof of ownership/holding - simple and reliable & used by all the "exchanges"  (Read 1084 times)
EskimoBob (OP)
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November 18, 2012, 12:14:33 PM
 #1

You all probably know what happened to many BTC enthusiasts when GLBSE closed down with no warning. As of now, there is now way to prove how many shares of X someone held and issuers have no way to check, if you are telling the truth.

I like to avoid the whole getting glbse'd drama for good, when dealing with any "exchange", crowd funding site or something similar. Smiley 
 
Why I care? Simple. We are in the middle of setting up a small BTC only crowd funding project in one of the CF sites and this is why I am asking for your ideas on how to eliminate the getting glbse'd for good.
Why we need this mechanism? Our plan is this. If everything goes well, we are planning to reward all the early participant/contributor and for that, we need a simple mechanism to prove that they (contributor "C")  did contribute X coins to the project via crowd funding site ("CFS" tm) and we ("P" as a project) need some simple way to confirm that.
Most importantly, this must be possible without involving the crowd funding sites at later date and even if they are pushing daisies for good.

For example, lets say that we are going to list some stuff in OT (or p2p exchange?) or we like to give a discount to all the CF participants in our web shop (btc is obviously accepted).
Now, to do that, CF participants must have a way to prove that the contribution to our project was made, we need to prove or disprove that coin actually arrived form "C" to our account as promised by "CFS". Let me add this. At the time of the contribution, we have no idea who the contributors are - no name, e-mail address etc.

For start, lets use a simple CF set up where:
1) Crowd funding site "CFS" collects coins for your project "P".
2) Contributor "C" sends coins to "CFS", and "CFS" forwards those to project "P" on some previously agreed date.
3) "P" has no idea who sent the coins to "CFS"
4) At later date, "C" needs to prove and "P" must be able to confirm, that those transactions really happened and the stated sum of BTC actually arrived at "P" address?
"P" needs that before it can send out the additional reward(s).   

First, it has to be something simple and obviously must be supported by crowd funding site (or exchange) to begin with.

For the simple CF project I was thinking along those lines:

1) Destination address for "P" must be public.
2) "P" must receive the tx id for the "C" initial transfer to "CFS" address
3) "P" and "C" must have the tx ID for CFA transfer of "C"'s coin to "intermediate" address Z, where all the contributions are held, before the coin is sent out to "P" publicly listed address)
4) ...

Can you describe something simple and reliable that exchanges and CF sites can implement and actually use?

Maybe this can become a "standard" method and be used by all the exchanges, bazaars, CF sites to protect issuers and holders from getting glbse'd.

Thank you.

While reading what I wrote, use the most friendliest and relaxing voice in your head.
BTW, Things in BTC bubble universes are getting ugly....
matmar10
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November 18, 2012, 12:29:20 PM
 #2

I just heard about the "Ripple" project recently (I met the team at the offices of TradeHill when they hosted a meetup here in San Francisco); it might fit as a solution in this space in some way.

http://ripple-project.org/

CIYAM
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November 18, 2012, 12:51:59 PM
 #3

If project P is given the tx id for each specific contributor C then it shouldn't be very hard to get each contributor to "prove" they own at least one of the input addresses in the tx (by signing with the appropriate private key) and this should be enough to safely decide that they qualify for whatever reward.

If you didn't want P to deal with that then of course you could ask the CFS to confirm this for you (although to be sure you'd probably want to check this yourself).

BTW - CIYAM will soon be launching its open source project which provides a whole new twist on project funding - PM me if you are interested to know about some of the details.

With CIYAM anyone can create 100% generated C++ web applications in literally minutes.

GPG Public Key | 1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU
Stephen Gornick
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November 19, 2012, 11:14:28 AM
 #4

Can you describe something simple and reliable that exchanges and CF sites can implement and actually use?

Kind of related is the payment protocol being discussed for Bitcoin:

We need a payment protocol with non-repudiation built in.

See https://gist.github.com/2217885 for a multisig version (the singlesig version is simpler, but the merchant <-> customer communication will be the same).

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EskimoBob (OP)
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November 19, 2012, 12:02:18 PM
 #5

Can you describe something simple and reliable that exchanges and CF sites can implement and actually use?

Kind of related is the payment protocol being discussed for Bitcoin:

We need a payment protocol with non-repudiation built in.

See https://gist.github.com/2217885 for a multisig version (the singlesig version is simpler, but the merchant <-> customer communication will be the same).


Thank you for the tip. Multisign is a nice feature if more than one person must be in charge of the coin. I have waited for this feature close to a year now. Smiley
I am not sure, how can this help a contributor (C) to prove and receiver (P) to confirm, that the coin sent to project account, via third party (CFS), are actually from contributor. I need to read up on that a bit more.

Lets say someone with mental issues (criminal/scammer) wants to scam the shares from "P".
If "P" account address was public, he-she can find out the tx numbers and go from there. 
Sure, I can ask him to prove it by moving coins but this will get tedious really fast.

What if CFS adds a random confirmation code to this picture?

1) Lets say "C" sends coin to CFS, gets a confirmation code generated by CFS and a md5 hash generated from code+tx ID.
2) "P" receives the md5 hash from CFS at the same time but has no confirmation number (this is good).
3) "C" can prove the transaction with that number because code+tx_id = correct md5 hash
4) "P" also had the tx ID from the time when "C"'s coin was moved to "intermediate" address Z.

Will this do the trick?

While reading what I wrote, use the most friendliest and relaxing voice in your head.
BTW, Things in BTC bubble universes are getting ugly....
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