Thoughts about Decred

[rslsrkr]

After reading the press release about Decred(link below)I was surprised to know that the core developers is trying to introduce yet another coin to the bitcoin ecosystem.Why has it become so hard to carry on with the satoshi's bitcoin?What is the catch here or Am I missing something?

http://www.coindesk.com/press-releases/meet-decred-digital-currency-bitcoin-developers/
https://www.decred.org/

[tokeweed]

The catch?  An opportunity to profit from gullible 'investors'.

[_ingsoc]

After reading the press release about Decred(link below)I was surprised to know that the core developers is trying to introduce yet another coin to the bitcoin ecosystem.Why has it become so hard to carry on with the satoshi's bitcoin?What is the catch here or Am I missing something?

http://www.coindesk.com/press-releases/meet-decred-digital-currency-bitcoin-developers/
https://www.decred.org/

Hey there rslsrkr, I'm part of the Decred community and wanted to throw in my two cents. Decred is by a number of the btcsuite developers. It was borne out of experiences contributing to the Bitcoin development ecosystem since early 2013. You can read some backstory about where it all started here. It is not about "yet another coin" - it's about exploration of technology and governance in ways that cannot be explored in the current Bitcoin development system. Here is makes the project different:

• Development capacity: A complete group of Bitcoin developers who funded themselves and didn't ask a cent from the community - the software is already written and in testing
• Inclusivity: An airdrop is open for sign up by anyone interested in a progressive and contributory community, whereby they receive coins unconditionally in an effort to distribute the network far and wide from day 1
• Sustainable funding: A development subsidy is baked into the consensus rules so that any party can enter the development ecosystem in the future and be paid for deliverables to develop Decred
• Open governance: PoW is kept in check by PoS, and issues are voted on in the blockchain so that power stays with the users' to direct development (not outside parties)
• Symbiotic with Bitcoin: Improvements in Decred benefit Bitcoin (à la btcsuite), and vice versa (Bitcoin codebase gets tested and improved)

There are more points to Decred, and I won't spam your thread. You can have a look for yourself here on Bitcointalk if you want. Feel free to message me if you have any questions.

The catch?  An opportunity to profit from gullible 'investors'.

There are no investors. In fact, no developer got any coins for free. They had to purchase them through Bitcoin and/or work. The community, however, gets the equivalent for free - and that is still open and available to anyone, you just have to fill in the airdrop form on https://decred.org. The risk is carried by the developers and they are the only ones who lose money if Decred fails. I don't know of any other project that has done this (post Bitcoin).

[gjhiggins]

issues are voted on in the blockchain so that power stays with the users' to direct development (not outside parties)

To express it like that is to risk misleading people.

The notion of “voting” on issues was discussed on the CLAMS thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=623147.msg13349322#msg13349322


Cheers

Graham

[behindtext]

issues are voted on in the blockchain so that power stays with the users' to direct development (not outside parties)

To express it like that is to risk misleading people.

The notion of “voting” on issues was discussed on the CLAMS thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=623147.msg13349322#msg13349322


Cheers

Graham

To express that we're risking misleading people is itself misleading.  PoS votes in the Decred lottery system can be used to vote for or against a new consensus rule, which allows stakeholders to vote on issues on-chain.  Note that it was not claimed that this allows voting on all issues, but changes reflected in consensus code can be voted on.

[indiemax]

Hey OP,if you have thoughts and questions why don't you get yourself over to the ANN thread, ?    https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1290358.0

You will find a great deal of probing questions from the community being answered

well worth a read to get a balanced view if your interested

[bitcoinear]

Not convinced about this project. Looks to another scam what wants to get the money from the people.

[iCEBREAKER]

Not convinced about this project. Looks to another scam what wants to get the money from the people.

Oh goody, it's another single-purpose throwaway newb account sent forth to attack XDC.  How nice to have flak confirming we are over the target.

Every PoS coin's market share/cap is threatened by the creation of a more innovative, fairly-launched alternative to Peercoin, Dash, etc.

Especially Dash, given all the hype the DashHoles make about their Masternode HYIP based voting (which is entirely controlled by Otoh and Evan-the-Instaminer).  

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I will admit my tech ignorance here.  That article sounded like complete gobbledegook to me.  Not sure why any more variations on the bitcoin theme need to be introduced.

[gjhiggins]

To express that we're risking misleading people is itself misleading.  PoS votes in the Decred lottery system can be used to vote for or against a new consensus rule, which allows stakeholders to vote on issues on-chain.  Note that it was not claimed that this allows voting on all issues, but changes reflected in consensus code can be voted on.

Either you didn't read the CLAMS post or you completely missed the point.

Cheers

Graham

[CoinHoarder]

To express it like that is to risk misleading people.

The notion of “voting” on issues was discussed on the CLAMS thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=623147.msg13349322#msg13349322


Cheers

Graham

To express that we're risking misleading people is itself misleading.  PoS votes in the Decred lottery system can be used to vote for or against a new consensus rule, which allows stakeholders to vote on issues on-chain.  Note that it was not claimed that this allows voting on all issues, but changes reflected in consensus code can be voted on.

Either you didn't read the CLAMS post or you completely missed the point.

Cheers

Graham

Maybe you can explain the point...? The link talks about one vote per person being impossible to do on a decentralized cryptocurrency (which is true with today's technology). However, in Decred's design, voting will be weighted by the amount of stake owned (which certainly works...)

I am looking forward to seeing where this cryptocurrency goes... they are trying innovative things and there are some good developers behind this. I suggest everyone sign up for the air drop. I like this: "The project is bound by the Decred Constitution on the core principles of finite issuance, privacy, security, fungibility, inclusivity, and progressive development of the technology that keeps these principles together."

[gjhiggins]

Maybe you can explain the point...? The link talks about one vote per person being impossible to do on a decentralized cryptocurrency (which is true with today's technology). However, in Decred's design, voting will be weighted by the amount of stake owned (which certainly works...)

The link was to the summary of an extended and detailed discussion of the practicalities of actually trying to get an insight into the community's collective preferences.

The discussion starts back on the 24th Nov: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=623147.msg13056330#msg13056330 and continues off'n'on over the next three dozen pages. It delineates a particularly unsettling period for the community and is focused on assessing the desirability / acceptability of different potential changes to the coin as future defensive measures.

The kernel of the principle is pretty much nailed in dooglus' response to smooth's concerns about centralization:

I also believe this can potentially be undermined by "voting" systems that are inherently centralizing (share of voting power is an increasing function of share of stake).

I was talking to Creative about this a couple of days ago. I was voicing my concerns that giving voting power proportional to stake means that the rich get to have their own way at the expense of the poor.

As Benjamin Franklin apparently never said:

  "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

I worry that the CLAM rich will vote to disenfranchise the CLAM poor - but Creative points out that the voting system is only a provably fair way of gathering information about consensus. Any change would still be subject to the usual soft-fork rules, requiring a super-majority to be in favour of the fork before it activated. And the "CLAM rich" would have to be pretty short sighted to vote in any change which would be seen as unfair - because that would damage the price of the coin, and so end up affecting them negatively. Adding the ability to express your opinion on-chain in a well-defined way doesn't cause any harm, and allows us to get a clearer view of what the community wants than the current best system we have - that of shouting at each other in forum posts.

This perspective was developed further during the discussion.

My perception is that setting voting power proportional to stake allows the interests of large stakeholders to dominate the community and overtly advertises that distortion which is an effective means of driving away the smaller, uninfluential stakeholders, leaving the coin moribund. Makes no odds how many coins you have, you can't compel the super-majority of the community to adopt a fork. It’s hardly “voting” if an unpopular outcome can simply be rejected by a super-majority - which is why CLAMS refers to their particular approach to consultation as a “petition”.

I note the website asserts: “Project bound by the Decred Constitution”. No it isn't, it's an open source peer-to-peer networked cryptocurrency and people are free to behave as they see fit. The inherent egality of peers and the lack of identity defeat any attempts at coercion, no matter how well-intentioned or otherwise. It seems a bit of a profound misunderstanding to attempt to impose a centralised constitution on a user group that is constrained by the limitations of the cryptographic protocols to be an anarcho-collectivist system (one which envisions the means of production being owned collectively and controlled and managed by the producers themselves).


Cheers

Graham

[_ingsoc]

I note the website asserts: “Project bound by the Decred Constitution”. No it isn't, it's an open source peer-to-peer networked cryptocurrency and people are free to behave as they see fit. The inherent egality of peers and the lack of identity defeat any attempts at coercion, no matter how well-intentioned or otherwise. It seems a bit of a profound misunderstanding to attempt to impose a centralised constitution on a user group that is constrained by the limitations of the cryptographic protocols to be an anarcho-collectivist system (one which envisions the means of production being owned collectively and controlled and managed by the producers themselves).

I found this super interesting, so I wanted to single it out while I read the rest of your information. You're being critical, but you're engaging the issues and I respect that as an individual. I agree that you cannot regulate users' behaviour, nor should you want to, however, I think it's possible and necessary to regulate the behaviour of those charged with the stewardship of the project (the people that act as custodians). A project constitution acts as this check on the behaviour of those who work on the project.

Imagine this scenario: You have a system open to anyone where it doesn't matter who was there first. Your value in that community is derived from the contributions you make (i.e., the work you do, or the issues you engage with the view to explore new solutions). Such behaviour is the closest thing to derive "status" in a meritocratic system like that. Status is then regulated by a constitution, so that behaviour by those who rise up in the community stay within a framework so that those who get involved know what to expect from the project, and can get an indication of what behaviour will look like from custodians in the future. If you build into that framework inclusivity, anyone can enter that system and progress in it.

The purpose of a constitution is therefore not to regulate the behaviour of users, but the behaviour of those users who contribute at a level that affords them greater responsibility in that system. Every user can then judge for themselves the behaviour of the latter custodian users within the context of a framework and decide whether the two are congruent.

[gjhiggins]

I think it's possible and necessary to regulate the behaviour of those charged with the stewardship of the project (the people that act as custodians). A project constitution acts as this check on the behaviour of those who work on the project.

I appreciate the appreciation

The peer-to-peer aspect of cryptocurrency has some profound implications for the user group (where user = someone who knows a private key and has occasion to either interact with a web service or run a node directly).

From a practical perspective, the bottom line is that as soon as the source code is publicly released no-one is “in charge” of anything. The witticism “herding cats” doesn’t even come in to it; people are completely free to do as they like: run a node, not run a node; hold coins, don't hold coins; set up a foundation, a faucet, a business, promote the coin, fud the coin, set up webwallets, offer an alternative wallet design, provide off-chain features, pay to spam the blockchain, pay to clean up the blockchain, generously contribute to a faucet, mischevously drain a faucet dry.

The fact that there is no one person in charge is significant to US financial regulators. A couple of years ago the US FinCEN made it fairly clear ...

A final type of convertible virtual currency activity involves a de-centralized convertible virtual currency (1) that has no central repository and no single administrator, and (2) that persons may obtain by their own computing or manufacturing effort.

The thing is, “official” this and “official” that are meaningless in the context of a cryptocurrency because no-one has the authority to stamp anything “official”. Or rather, anyone and everyone has the opportunity to stamp anything they want as “official” or make a claim to be “official panjandrum” but the claim carries no authority, only that which it can engender itself.

Regulation cannot be effective because it's simply not possible to identify any individual and in consequence, it's impossible to impose any penalty for breaking regulations.

Taking on the role of custodian is purely a voluntary commitment, anyone can do it simply by cloning the codebase and, if they can be bothered, submitting a PR to the claimed “official” repository, otherwise they merely advertise the location of the clone and let people decide for themselves.

It's not doom'n'gloom at all, far from it. If you check the set of attributes that pertains to a p2p networked cryptocurrency, you'll find a very close match for the set of attributes that characterises a Teal organisation (search for “Teal organisation”, “Frédéric Laloux”, “Reinventing Organisations”).

The main difference is that a cryptocurrency is constrained by the cryptography protocols to be an anarchy (primary definition: “a state of society without government or law”) whereas Teal organisations are expected to evolve from an existing organisation that currently follows the usual strong hierarchical control model. I actually think altcoins make for better Teal organisations because of this.

Cheers

Graham

[Richard1972x]

I have registered for the airdrop and looking forward to this interesting new project. Sounds good so far. We will see what the team will deliver here.