DECENTRALIZED crypto currency (including Bitcoin) is a delusion (any solutions?)

[iamnotback]

If the loss of stake is less than the cost of the proof-of-work, then there is a gradual transfer of the ownership of the coin to the mining farms and thus the stake eventually becomes winner-take-all concentrated.

The point is that proof-of-work is no matter how you organize it, a transfer of wealth out of the ecosystem to pay for security. And worse is that unless your coin is the "one chain to rule all the others" then your coin is always vulnerable to rented double-spend attacks, because even if your proof-of-work algorithm has been implemented on an ASIC and has great investment in mining farms which do not wish to destroy their investment by renting out hashrate to attackers, the problem is they effectively control the coin (even in your negative interest rate design) because they can decide to move their hashrate to the coin which they feel has better attributes or is a new pump&dump speculation (moving on from one to the next).

Thus your undesirable negative interest rate on savers is an insecurity. It creates a power vacuum for the miners to move their hashrate to a coin that doesn't have that weakness and to 51% attack and short your coin on the way out the door.

Proof-of-work is a winner-take-all, "the one chain to rule them all" phenomenon. Slice and dice it as you wish, that won't change.

[1715265792]

1715265792

[1715265792]

1715265792

[iamnotback]

I argue in my white paper that TaPoS is as objective as proof-of-work.

Okay, but does it also provide objective consensus in the strict sense of the following definition (personally, I'm sharing Vitalik's opinion that weak subjectivity is sufficient)?

A consensus protocol is objective if a new node can independently arrive to the
same current state as the rest of the network based solely on protocol rules (e.g., a definition of the
genesis block) and messages propagated across the system (e.g., a set of all blocks).

By that definition, proof-of-work is also not objective, because you don't know which hidden chains are the longest chain. You are trusting that the sources who send you chains are omniscient.

Vitalik's entire premise was undecidable and irrelevant.

[generalizethis]

Those models worked (BTC, XMR) and are working, so your estimate based on typical wall street derived structures misses my point entirely. Think of your coin as a module, and if it's successful and resilient, it pools the next group of contenders. [skip]

Saw edit 2, have you looked at CK's design? Barring any strange hybrid ruling on game laws, does it stand a chance, not arguing about landing spot--Faulkner had these wise, and enigmatic as hell (he's oddly buried by a grave marked ET, yes, weird shit) words, "Mr. Khrushchev says that Communism, the police state, will bury the free ones. He is a smart gentleman, he knows that this is nonsense since freedom, man's dim concept of and belief in the human spirit is the cause of all his troubles in his own country. But if he means that Communism will bury capitalism, he is correct. That funeral will occur about ten minutes after the police bury gambling. Because simple man, the human race, will bury both of them. That will be when we have expended the last grain, dram, and iota of our natural resources. But man himself will not be in that grave. The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next."

[r0ach]

I don't see penalizing those who don't transact as a viable model for a store-of-value which is one of the attributes of money.

Cryptocurrency is essentially just a video game where the player is effectively AFK but still playing by a static input (mining at a fixed rate by having a rock on the keyboard).  I don't think you will ever get any type of decentralization out of that model.  To create a real decentralized currency would probably require active participation from miners or senders of transactions (solving a captcha or whatever) instead of pretending you can have decentralization by having all input variables on cruise control.

Instead of stake holders or other participants having to constantly manually interact with the system (such as Vitalik seems to be trying), the only way that really makes sense is having senders of transactions require manual, human based PoW.

Malthusians want to return to simpler time when there was no surplus and thus we were all struggling every day to find food:

That statement is nonsensical referring to people who know that increasing technology requires an exponential resource commitment curve, increasing vertical integration and loss of freedom as "Malthusians".  Kaczynski is correct and increasing complexity always results in loss of freedom.

"Progress" doesn't exist.  The further you go the more it's going to be a tyranny run by technocrats where humans mirror the social structure of ants in complete collectivism and every centimeter of our closed ecosystem is micromanaged with no escape.  

The technocrats at the top never have to actually meet any type of merits for their position (unlike real ants that have to do stuff like lay eggs), so it always turns into just a plain old 3rd world, rent seeking, banana republic tyranny.  It then either collapses under it's own weight or people tear it down since it doesn't serve them and enter a new dark ages in a cyclical nature.

[iamnotback]

Those models worked (BTC, XMR) and are working

Define "working".

I see them as dismal failures both technologically and (mass) marketing wise.

[generalizethis]

Those models worked (BTC, XMR) and are working

Define "working".

I see them as dismal failures both technologically and (mass) marketing wise.

Working as in they are still being developed and expanded on--but if you are after a one-stage rocket to overtake the current model, sure everything is a failure.

[iamnotback]

To create a real decentralized currency would probably require active participation ... senders of transactions ...

... the only way that really makes sense is ...

Let me ask you a rhetorical riddle. Does the proper functioning of some open source software require every user of that software to review every line of code. Linus' law is the only known positive scaling law of software engineering.

Malthusians want to return to simpler time when there was no surplus and thus we were all struggling every day to find food:

That statement is nonsensical referring to people who know that increasing technology requires an exponential resource commitment curve, increasing vertical integration and loss of freedom as "Malthusians".  Kaczynski is correct and increasing complexity always results in loss of freedom.

You are entirely conceptualizing everything incorrectly. And I mean everything. You are so fundamentally off course, it is ridiculous.

Your error begins with not understanding that the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that entropy is always trending to maximum. Technology increases the degrees-of-freedom, thus is congruent with the inexorable Second Law. Consuming resources is merely the restructuring of matter in greater degrees-of-freedom.

I have written extensively about this in my discussions with CoinCube. Remember iron used to be a precious metal.

I don't have time to argue this with you, but I am warning you r0ach that if you stay in this tinfoil hat delusion, you are going to miss the big enchilada investments.

I suggest you move this debate to the Economic Devastation thread where it belongs. It is really off-topic for this thread.

[iamnotback]

Those models worked (BTC, XMR) and are working

Define "working".

I see them as dismal failures both technologically and (mass) marketing wise.

Working as in they are still being developed and expanded on--but if you are after a one-stage rocket to overtake the current model, sure everything is a failure.

They are rotting and decaying. They both reached the pinnacle of their sapling growth spurt and are now locked into their inertial morasses.

Saplings grow to oak trees, but oak trees don't grow to the moon. Most saplings don't even grow to oak trees.

Each project gets one chance to be a sapling. Each project defines its ultimate potential (the DNA) very early on.

[generalizethis]

Those models worked (BTC, XMR) and are working

Define "working".

I see them as dismal failures both technologically and (mass) marketing wise.

Working as in they are still being developed and expanded on--but if you are after a one-stage rocket to overtake the current model, sure everything is a failure.

They are rotting and decaying. They both reached the pinnacle of their sapling growth spurt and are now locked into their inertial morasses.

Saplings grow to oak trees, but oak trees don't grow to the moon. Most saplings don't even grow to oak trees.

Each project gets one chance to be a sapling. Each project defines its ultimate potential (the DNA) very early on.

You are metaphorically challenged. We are talking modules, not trees. BTC is fine for what it is and XMR is fine for what is. If you have something better, build it, but don't expect it to be more than part of the cc whole.

[iamnotback]

You are metaphorically challenged. We are talking modules, not trees. BTC is fine for what it is and XMR is fine for what is. If you have something better, build it, but don't expect it to be more than part of the cc whole.

You are a jealous motherfucker (in the Chinese tall poppy syndrome way of nobody allowed to rise their head above the poppy tops, unless of course it is a project you are invested in) who afaics accomplishes nothing but write some useless shit in these forums. I am confident you've convinced (deluded) yourself that your contribution has been useful.

We will soon see who is "metaphorically challenged". Lol.

Since your dumb ass didn't understand the metaphors I employed, I will spell it out more clearly for you. Little two bit shit ain't having no impact whatsoever in the larger scheme of things. Bitcon and Moaner are playing in a tiny sandbox of tinfoil hat speculators. As for your beloved Crypto Kongdung, it is playing in an even smaller fishbowl of Risto ass lickers.

Modules and trees are your little fantasy world of poetic Communism of how this is going to play out.

It is a winner-take-all game in terms of any impact outside the small sandbox of speculators. That small sandbox is enough to motivate us to work on projects, but let's not delude ourselves as to the absolute non-impact of proof-of-work ecosystems which are going to be entirely owned by the Chinese mining farms. You won't get any significant network effects when the investors can't rely on a level-playing field going forward.

generalizethis, the fundamental problem is that you should not be conversing with me. I am a programmer, engineer, and a marketer. You have absolutely nothing to say to me that is relevant. And I have nothing to say to you about poetry. Please recognize that we have no common interests. I don't give a shit about your silly ass theories. I have made million user s/w products more than once in my career. I don't see any relevance whatsoever to anything I have ever read from you. Sorry.


And I think this thread is overcooked. There is nothing more that needs to be said here. The next step is to release a white paper and an implementation.

Feel free to rebut with some more words which I think are irrelevant and I will let you have the last word in this thread for the time being. I don't have time to waste on this nonsense.


P.S. A tree in computer science has nothing to do with exponential growth and decay. It is a data structure. So "modules and trees" means something different to a computer science person than your intended metaphor. I understood very well your metphor about modules and an ecosystem of R&D. But apparently you didn't understand mine. Your fantasy of how markets and monetary systems (power vacuums) work is incorrect.

[generalizethis]

Dude, your use of an oak that never reaches the moon (stars, whatever) precludes my interpretation of your metaphor as a computer tree, unless you think no coin can get into orbit--in which case, "Why are you here, dude?"

PS: I'm better at language than you are at math. Deal with it. I should be better than this, but you keep poking the bear. I was more than happy to leave it alone, but you kept sending stuff to my PM and got my attention. Was perfectly happy to play a video game and let your dim appraisals go unabashed, but you claim my tepid vouching of steem is proof of my inability to look at systems, so...you got a fight...my guess is you owe me copyright infringement dues for the use of inkblot logic (or are you claiming you created that term? You're certainly using it enough).

[sidhujag]

Less talk more action... we want to see something tangible not forum ego.. finish your paper and leave the negative nancies to themselves

[iamnotback]

Here is the chart from my white paper:

[iamnotback]

but you kept sending stuff to my PM and got my attention. Was perfectly happy to play a video game and let your dim appraisals go unabashed

I have only sent you 4 private messages (below) since I created this iamnotback account.

I hadn't sent you a private message since Nov. 14.

Was perfectly happy to play a video game and let your dim appraisals go unabashed

Such as that inaccurate appraisal you were spouting about Steemit and whose appraisal ended up being correct?

Re: which altcoin dev had most impact so far?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1679187.msg16872568#msg16872568

Re: Proof-of-work BLOCKchains can NEVER be fixed

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5cerbi/researchers_suggest_new_method_to_scale_bitcoin/d9x1rrn/

Re: Maybe, just maybe a breakthrough on my health...

I experience a lot of delirium due to low energy. Something is draining my mitochondria energy. So I am not able to get the really deep concentration that I could before 2012 (although I was also less informed back then). Actually the chronic fatigue started 2006, and become significant in 2010. By 2011, I was in a slow motion tailspin and then the May 2012 collapse into the acute phase.

I am experimenting now with some changes in diet...

Re: Renamed ZenScript to Type-fu

https://github.com/keean/zenscript/issues/3#issuecomment-249461561

Creative people are often insatiable...

[generalizethis]

I'm not playing fact finding missions with you--i have better things to do, but any pm's are too many. I told people to collect on steemit (not invest), and take the free money (show me how that is terrible advice?), but as far as playing devil's advocate to your assumptions about its failure or success, get over it, dude--you still can't claim it's a failure anymore than i can claim it's a success.

[iamnotback]

r0ach I cited you as a Reference where I explain my solution to eliminate the ability of exchanges to control the private keys of our tokens.

https://steemit.com/news/@r0achtheunsavory/bitfinex-is-lying-about-the-hack-and-i-can-tell-you-exactly-what-likely-happened

I am going to put an end to the mess with exchanges. Stay tuned...

[iamnotback]

I told people to collect on steemit (not invest), and take the free money (show me how that is terrible advice?)...

Backsplaining...

My guess it is in more in the 2 year time frame for social media success--and not in the rocket ascent of an instagram outlier.

I believe it is unlikely for Steem to make any changes that would create viral adoption. I thus believe it will peak at much less than 1 million users.

Yes I think you need a rocket viral ascent.


The Chinese appear to be coming to game Steem's curation reward system:

This has never happened before, and Maximum CPC exceeds 800%

Later they will realize they need to collude to take more of the money, as did the Bitcoin Chinese mining cartel.

But Bitcoin has a use case. I fear Steem will unravel. I don't think it can sustain at a low level of usership because the forces holding it up are expectations and later these must turn into fighting over money (Tragedy of the Commons).

All that changes perhaps if Steem has a widespread use case. But I don't see it.

Rocket ascent is the outlier in the graphs you used, so I'm not sure why you assume steemit would be the exception--Instagram's straight out the gate burst was probably due to low user expectations as far as language and interface is concerned (a monkey could probably be taught to use it), whereas steem is more complicated, so lag should correspond to complexity. Unless someone finds a way to dumb it down tremendously, they probably maintain their lead. All the algo and initial distribution arguments seem like theater of distraction at this point. If serious people can maintain their interest and grow their bases organically, then there's a chance that it works (at least as far as blogging goes).

Rocket ascent is the outlier in the graphs you used

Are you referring to Google search popularity that I mentioned in my blogs week ago?

Facebook reached 1 million users in 10 months:

On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.

1 million — End of 2004.
5.5 million — End of 2005.
12 million — End of 2006.
20 million — April 2007.
50 million — October 2007.
100 million — August 2008.
150 million — January 2009.
175 million — February 2009.
200 million — April 2009.
250 million — July 2009.
300 million — September 2009.
350 million — End of 2009.
400 million — February 2010.
500 million — July 2010.
608 million — End of 2010.
750 million — July 2011.
800 million — September 2011.
845 million — End of 2011.
901 million — March 2012.
955 million — June 2012.
1.01 billion — September 2012.
1.06 billion — December 2012.
1.11 billion — March 2013.

If yes, note steemit has already peaked and is declining:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=steemit

I could have said the same thing about facebook using a 3month sample from various time frames--I was referring to the graph you posted a while back that showed the large jumps in usership occurred at around the 2 year mark for most social networks--the only outlier being Instagram.

The platform is named steemit

Bands with crappy names: Beatles, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, The Who, Depeche Mode, The Cure....

You are a marketing neophyte. You continue to make numerous mistakes.

You're making an analogy between apple pie and baseball bats.

Usually the name of a band is not intended to implicitly describe the type of music the band creates, except perhaps in a very abstract and creative way (e.g. Smashing Pumpkins might make me think of punk rock). The band's music creates the emotional attachment and devotion, thus branding the name.

The name of a company, product, or service usually must convey what it does or is for (at least some connected meaning), as this is very important for viral spread and recall during viral mentions.

Steemit sounds like a porn site.

That is really, really bad. Again I refer you to the females who are stating how important it is that the site not be connotated with scams and negative things, in order for them to promote the site virally to their communities such as the one lady with 500 members in her cause oriented group.

When you get to nitpicking the name of a brand (unless it's Shitty McShitFace), then you are really scraping the barrel of valid concerns.

Sorry man but you've been completely off in left field during most of the recent discussion. I can't even understand what you are writing most of time (lately) and thus not replying. I don't mean to be disrespectful and maybe I am a literary dunce in your opinion because your text lately reads to me like gibberish (not referring to the post I am replying to). I was avoiding saying anything, but I guess it's better I inform you.

Hell, McDonalds has a purple pile of poo named Grimace as part of their mascot team (would have loved sit in on that meeting, "Hey, Bob, it's a giant purple shit named Grimace--and we're selling food?"

Grimace is targeted to kids. It is cartoon stuff.

You need to remember to apply context.


Edit: even an abstract name such as Google, is derived or similar to ogle or goggle, which connects some meaning to searching or looking into. Even Apple had a meaning at the start. The logo was an apple with a BYTE in it.

Yeah, well you haven't figured out that reddit+steam=steemit (at least you figured the steam part, but it took me about 3 seconds after hearing the name to figure it out, but let's not let this get personal).

Yeah, well you haven't figured out that reddit+steam=steemit (at least you figured the steam part, but it took me about 3 seconds after hearing the name to figure it out, but let's not let this get personal).

Are you sure I "haven't"?

That was my first connotation also (which is why Steemit didn't originally offend me too much).

But perhaps you've forgotten the data I shared recently on BCT about Reddit's demographics that it is mostly young (white?) males:

Btw, I also wrote "(and males)" and many males thanked me in the comments. The point is I bet you are turning off the females and they have left (and for other reasons as well). Females want to congregate where other females are being chatty. Go to the posts of females and nearly all the comments are from males. Where are they building their community.

And Reddit doesn't have this extra male overhead of exchanges, trading, arbitrage, and the lack of the ability to organize communities (subreddits) centered around female interests with rankings in those communities controlled by those who vote there.

In addition, note Reddit's usership is only ~100 million.

So the point I am making is that the females and the older people might not have Reddit in their mind when they hear Steemit.

Before I came into the cryptocoin arena in 2013, I had vaguely heard of Reddit but never used it. It would not have been in my mind had I heard Steemit at that time. I had visited the site once and decided it looked like shit and never returned until I needed to use it when BCT banned me and also when Shen-noether only wanted to discuss over there.

My point is you're nitpicking up the wrong tree, Polonius.

My point is you're nitpicking up the wrong tree, Polonius.

For readers who don't know it, Polonius in this context means "blowhard". So he is insulting me.

I have explained why the name can potentially not be nitpicking. It depends on how the masses perceive the importance of bad connotations such as porn. I realize porn is very pervasive now, so maybe people won't care. But when you are talking about inspiring people to come visit a site based on word of mouth or a link shared in social media, then connotations may or may not be important.

Thing is that viral can't be contained to only links and visuals. People still talk verbally. I told my Mom "Steemit" and she was was like "WTF?". My Mom is a very literary person, much more than myself. She pays attention to the meaning of words. Then again, she is 70, so maybe imagery of porn might disagree with her more than the younger crowd.

A better name could go a long way towards inspiring an ideological viral spread.

If you don't believe me or are 100% certain of your opinion, I'm sorry I don't have any more time to waste on rebuking you. Carry on with your opinion.

You are starting to understand what I meant upthread when I said I don't think Graphene can scale, and that their decision for interactivity with WebSockets instead of prioritizing cached content chunks also impact scaling.

Let this be a lesson to @generalizethis, that when I say something has issues and is not yet a slamdunk, it is wise to remember that I do know a fair amount about software development and marketing. It doesn't mean I won't make mistakes (and especially the case that I will make mistakes when I get this fucking brainfog headache enjoined by stomach pain, chronic fatigue aka sleepiness but inability to sleep and numbness of my limbs from my illness)

[generalizethis]

  See your way-back machine is working. So what coin are you working on now? I'm working on CK, and it's pretty awesome.

[alkan]

By that definition, proof-of-work is also not objective, because you don't know which hidden chains are the longest chain. You are trusting that the sources who send you chains are omniscient.

That's a fair point if you look at objectivity in a strict sense. However, practically, it does make a difference if you only need one honest and omniscient (or at least up-to-date w.r.t. the longest block chain) node to get the latest state of the network. If you can connect to an unbounded number of nodes, you can asymptotically achieve objectivity since the probability that one of them will send you the longest chain will approximate 1 provided that at least one out of all nodes is honest and up-to-date.

Whereas with subjectivity, different nodes might come to different conclusions if some of the nodes are malicious.

Vitalik's entire premise was undecidable and irrelevant.

Vitaliks definition is too narrow and thus irrelevant.

Even if we are talking about "asymptotic" objectivity, its impact on security (and partition tolerance) of a decentralized network seems questionable to me. You cannot download and use the network client without trusting anyone (expect if you are the creator of the network) because you can never be sure if it's the right client or just a malicious copycat that is perhaps using a different protocol.

[iamnotback]

The major 8 sections of the white paper are completed. 16,621 words. 250+ paragraphs, 104 references. I am awaiting feedback from two people who will be reviewing it. These two guys aren't thoroughly qualified though to do peer review. I don't know who I can trust to do peer quality review before public release. Any way, one guy reviewing it is a programmer with a college education. The other guy has a degree in Applied math.

alkan, I will reply to you later. I am busy for next few hours on athletics with my son.