Obyte: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments

[CryptoRobert]

One factor which was missing in this equation is "skin in the game"

I second your opinion. Although I abhor the waste of resources by proof-of-work, I have to give it exactly this advantage.

Thumbs up from me for your post in the ivory tower, a good read and exactly my way of thinking.

I too abhor the waste of resources by proof-of-work, but reality is not what is fitting our wishes, but what is fitting the laws of causality. As ethically perverse as it may be, proof-of-work happens to have this probably in the origins unintended feature of introducing a powerful deterministic skin-in-the-game variable into the mechanism. Once this principle becomes clear and acknowledged, it's up to the best minds in the crypto society to find out alternative ways to force efficient skin-in-the-game variables into less waistful networks as for example Obyte.

I can't comment on Ivory Tower board, but if you have $1 million or 100 BTC (doesn't matter if you inherited it or got it for cheap long time ago), isn't that a "skin in the game" too?

(...)

Metcalfe's law worked for Obyte case too, people had to take part of the "Bytes to BTC holders distribution", airdrop is a misleading name for it. The network value went up, people had to link their addresses by making BTC transfer or by signing the message, but since they didn't convert into users, the Obyte value game down again. That doesn't mean that Obyte whales doesn't have "skin in the game", but I don't know any whales either who is talking sh!t about Obyte, it looks to me that the 2 biggest whales on Draw Airdrop will do anything to increase their GBYTE bags.

Most of your argoments are correct and they are not contraddicting mine, just fine tuning them. I don't pretend to state absolute truths, just want to draw attention to the complexity of the creation of value in crypto, where Metcalfe's law is only one of the agents in play, and it doesn't apply if the nodes are not real nodes.
But in one one thing you are not correct. If you have $1 million or 100 BTC which you've somehow got for free or super-cheap, you don't actually have any skin in the game. You have a lot of money which you didn't have to pay for, which means you didn't have to put your skin at risk to get it. What you have is a free lunch, which of course you wouldn't like to lose, but you could sell it any moment at any price and you would always be in positive territory, since it didn't cost you anything. Money that you had to work for you have paid it with your life - that is skin in the game. During the last bullrun a few years ago I got theoretically rich in FIAT terms because the alts I had got for nothing suddenly mooned - but I didn't sell and after the crash I am again just poor as before. But in real terms I didn't lose anything crucial, like thirty years of life or more which usually you would need to put aside such amounts of money - that would have been skin in the game - I've just lost an amazing free lunch, a Black Swan which has suddenly popped up in my living room and then has suddenly flown out of the open window.
People who instead lost millions of $ of money they had actually to work for - have eventually suicided, there have been cases. THEY had skin in the game, too much of it.
Whales without skin in the game who believe in the Obyte project can be good nodes all the same. But should they some day for any reason lose faith in the project they could easily quit the game at any stage with no real loss, just because of their lack of skin in the game.
Skin in the game is an amplifier of other causes, is what makes other factors of causes more real.

[jbreher]

As ethically perverse as it may be, proof-of-work happens to have this probably in the origins unintended feature of introducing a powerful deterministic skin-in-the-game variable into the mechanism.

Whaddayamean 'unintended'?!? The skin in the game aspect is the fulcrum upon which the entire Bitcoin ecosystem balances.

[CryptoRobert]

As ethically perverse as it may be, proof-of-work happens to have this probably in the origins unintended feature of introducing a powerful deterministic skin-in-the-game variable into the mechanism.

Whaddayamean 'unintended'?!? The skin in the game aspect is the fulcrum upon which the entire Bitcoin ecosystem balances.

Well, I didn't express myself clearly on this point, as it also refers to my long post in the Ivory Tower. Most of today's skin in the game with Bitcoin is consisting in the huuuge expenses miners have to continuously fund to keep mining. I doubt that Nakamoto would have foreseen the rise of ASICS and the Bitcoin network swallowing more energy than entire countries like Ireland. That's so much more skin in the game than anyone had predicted in the early days.

[tarmo888]

Most of your argoments are correct and they are not contraddicting mine, just fine tuning them. I don't pretend to state absolute truths, just want to draw attention to the complexity of the creation of value in crypto, where Metcalfe's law is only one of the agents in play, and it doesn't apply if the nodes are not real nodes.

My point was that non-participants are not users/nodes at all, you classify them as "fake nodes" and you consider "real nodes" only those who have put real money into it? Same with telephone, just having it, but not using it doesn't make it you a node of the network.

But in one one thing you are not correct. If you have $1 million or 100 BTC which you've somehow got for free or super-cheap, you don't actually have any skin in the game. You have a lot of money which you didn't have to pay for, which means you didn't have to put your skin at risk to get it. What you have is a free lunch, which of course you wouldn't like to lose, but you could sell it any moment at any price and you would always be in positive territory, since it didn't cost you anything. Money that you had to work for you have paid it with your life - that is skin in the game.

As I understand "skin in the game", it doesn't matter what is the source of the income. If you play a lottery or you inherit fortune, you have earned it. You had to do something for these events to happen, even if it was as small thing as not to be an a$shole towards the people who raised you. After all, their trusted they fortune to you, not to some cats shelter.

Same thing with "GBYTE to BTC holders distribution", haven't you earned the GBYTE if you hodling Bitcoin and supporting that technology, without which Obyte would probably be here today. After all it wasn't just airdropped to all BTC holders, but just those who bother to link the addresses.

Same thing with Draw Airdrop, it just improved "GBYTE to BTC holders distribution", which back then already featured "GBYTE to GBYTE holders distribution". "Prince of Whales" rewards you for not having dumped your GBYTE and still having the "skin in the game". Even if the GBYTE is not that much worth in dollar value, winners of that draw increase their percentage of GBYTE holding compared to total supply. "King of Goldfish" is not just linking your address either, you have earn it for using Obyte features like "Real name attestation". Current strategy to win "King of Goldfish" is not just by loading up your address as much GBYTE as possible, the points and randomness from BTC block favors those who refer as many "Real name attested" people as possible and load up each of those persons address with optimal 10GB. In order they could get others to do the "Real name attestation", they probably use smart-voucher to refer them too. So, the amount of Obyte features they use, grows exponentially if you want to win with "King of Goldfish". So, what do we call those who use Obyte features? Users. Will they keep using Obyte after just linking to Draw Airdrop, signs say that they don't, they just hodl or refer more people who hodl. So, when calculating Obyte value by Metcalfe's law, they shouldn't be considered as users after they are done with the linking.

During the last bullrun a few years ago I got theoretically rich in FIAT terms because the alts I had got for nothing suddenly mooned - but I didn't sell and after the crash I am again just poor as before. But in real terms I didn't lose anything crucial, like thirty years of life or more which usually you would need to put aside such amounts of money - that would have been skin in the game - I've just lost an amazing free lunch, a Black Swan which has suddenly popped up in my living room and then has suddenly flown out of the open window.

And as I understand from the Ivory Tower board, you consider someone who keeps updating their mining equipment (most probably with the BTC mining rewards) also "skin in the game"? So, if you would have changed you BTC into ASIC miners, would that have made you have "skin in the game". Or you only have skin in the game when you invest money that you earned outside of cryptoverse?

The "skin in the game" doesn't matter about the source of the wealth, but from the risk of losing it. Just that the value of you bags have gone down, doesn't mean that you have lost it. So, in that sense, had you bought ASIC miners ATH, you would have lost it, but your "skin in the game" would have been in the mining, not in the alts anymore.

Whales without skin in the game who believe in the Obyte project can be good nodes all the same. But should they some day for any reason lose faith in the project they could easily quit the game at any stage with no real loss, just because of their lack of skin in the game.

They have skin in the game with the amount they have because their interest is that the asset doesn't loose value. They also can't sell their bags on exchange either because these amount would crash the market and they bags will lose value before they could even sell small fraction of it. The whole sell side of Bittrex Obyte orderbook is only 5k GBYTE while the top 3 whales have 60k, 40k and 20k GBYTE. If the sell it, they sell it OTC, by hiring someone to find the buyer first.

[pineapple express]

As ethically perverse as it may be, proof-of-work happens to have this probably in the origins unintended feature of introducing a powerful deterministic skin-in-the-game variable into the mechanism.

Whaddayamean 'unintended'?!? The skin in the game aspect is the fulcrum upon which the entire Bitcoin ecosystem balances.

Well, I didn't express myself clearly on this point, as it also refers to my long post in the Ivory Tower. Most of today's skin in the game with Bitcoin is consisting in the huuuge expenses miners have to continuously fund to keep mining. I doubt that Nakamoto would have foreseen the rise of ASICS and the Bitcoin network swallowing more energy than entire countries like Ireland. That's so much more skin in the game than anyone had predicted in the early days.

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.  That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server.  The design supports letting users just be users.  The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.  Those few nodes will be big server farms.  The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate. "satoshi" https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware. A server farm would only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with that one node. "satoshi" https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014815.html

[CryptoRobert]

As ethically perverse as it may be, proof-of-work happens to have this probably in the origins unintended feature of introducing a powerful deterministic skin-in-the-game variable into the mechanism.

Whaddayamean 'unintended'?!? The skin in the game aspect is the fulcrum upon which the entire Bitcoin ecosystem balances.

Well, I didn't express myself clearly on this point, as it also refers to my long post in the Ivory Tower. Most of today's skin in the game with Bitcoin is consisting in the huuuge expenses miners have to continuously fund to keep mining. I doubt that Nakamoto would have foreseen the rise of ASICS and the Bitcoin network swallowing more energy than entire countries like Ireland. That's so much more skin in the game than anyone had predicted in the early days.

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.  That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server.  The design supports letting users just be users.  The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.  Those few nodes will be big server farms.  The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate. "satoshi" https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware. A server farm would only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with that one node. "satoshi" https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014815.html

OK, this is really agood quote - didn't know that.

Most of your argoments are correct and they are not contraddicting mine, just fine tuning them. I don't pretend to state absolute truths, just want to draw attention to the complexity of the creation of value in crypto, where Metcalfe's law is only one of the agents in play, and it doesn't apply if the nodes are not real nodes.

My point was that non-participants are not users/nodes at all, you classify them as "fake nodes" and you consider "real nodes" only those who have put real money into it? Same with telephone, just having it, but not using it doesn't make it you a node of the network.

The way you are making your points suggests me you are likely a programmer No offence intended, but to my taste a too schematic way to see things which eventually would make you in some cases miss the big picture. There is no real difference here between the expressions "no nodes" and "fake nodes", we are meaning exactly the same things just with different words.

As I understand "skin in the game", it doesn't matter what is the source of the income. If you play a lottery or you inherit fortune, you have earned it.

Here we totally disagree. If you inherit a fortune from your parents, it's your parents skin in the game the one you end up holding. If you waste your inherited fortune you waste their life of savings, not yours. It did cost you nothing to get that fortune. This is why most people who are winning a lottery end up losing everything. It does cost them nothing to get the fortune - to buy a lottery ticket is not really a cost, nor a merit - and the "skin-in-the-game" value of that fortune is zero. When the skin-in-the-game value of something you are holding is zero your pain in losing it is infinitely lower than the pain of losing something where's a lot of YOUR skin-in-the-game. If you make a mistake which leads you to lose all the savings of all your life you are much more inclined to commit suicide than if you make a mistake which leads you to lose the saving of someone's elses life, which happened to be in your possession just by the way of luck because you have won it or inherited it.
In my Ivory Tower post I'm mentioning also modern politicians ruling without skin in the game. Of course if they make mistakes they have something to lose - their power, but they don't really have to pay the whole price of their mistakes, like it would happen in a distant past. The same applies to top bankers. It's not THEIR skin-in-the-game at stake. All those aspects have been widely and well described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "Skin in The Game". Understanding the meaning of skin-in-the-game is not limited to the concept of "having something to lose", but it deals with the true subjective value of what you have to lose in a game.

[tarmo888]

Here we totally disagree. If you inherit a fortune from your parents, it's your parents skin in the game the one you end up holding. If you waste your inherited fortune you waste their life of savings, not yours. It did cost you nothing to get that fortune. This is why most people who are winning a lottery end up losing everything. It does cost them nothing to get the fortune - to buy a lottery ticket is not really a cost, nor a merit - and the "skin-in-the-game" value of that fortune is zero. When the skin-in-the-game value of something you are holding is zero your pain in losing it is infinitely lower than the pain of losing something where's a lot of YOUR skin-in-the-game. If you make a mistake which leads you to lose all the savings of all your life you are much more inclined to commit suicide than if you make a mistake which leads you to lose the saving of someone's elses life, which happened to be in your possession just by the way of luck because you have won it or inherited it.
In my Ivory Tower post I'm mentioning also modern politicians ruling without skin in the game. Of course if they make mistakes they have something to lose - their power, but they don't really have to pay the whole price of their mistakes, like it would happen in a distant past. The same applies to top bankers. It's not THEIR skin-in-the-game at stake. All those aspects have been widely and well described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "Skin in The Game". Understanding the meaning of skin-in-the-game is not limited to the concept of "having something to lose", but it deals with the true subjective value of what you have to lose in a game.

So, when does the easily acquired wealth convert into a "skin in the game"? Do you have skin in the game if you buy a ASIC miners with that money or is it still "skin in the game" of the parents?
Does it convert into "skin in the game" after you have hodled it for 8 years? I mean, that's how we have Bitcoin millionaires today, some have been rewarded for not selling.
Do you have skin in a game when you have done physical or mental work in order to get those coins? What if you got paid in alts that were created from air and then converted to Bitcoin?
Or do you only have skin in the game if you invest into cryptocurrencies or its hardware with the work you got paid in fiat currencies?

[CryptoRobert]

Here we totally disagree. If you inherit a fortune from your parents, it's your parents skin in the game the one you end up holding. If you waste your inherited fortune you waste their life of savings, not yours. It did cost you nothing to get that fortune. This is why most people who are winning a lottery end up losing everything. It does cost them nothing to get the fortune - to buy a lottery ticket is not really a cost, nor a merit - and the "skin-in-the-game" value of that fortune is zero. When the skin-in-the-game value of something you are holding is zero your pain in losing it is infinitely lower than the pain of losing something where's a lot of YOUR skin-in-the-game. If you make a mistake which leads you to lose all the savings of all your life you are much more inclined to commit suicide than if you make a mistake which leads you to lose the saving of someone's elses life, which happened to be in your possession just by the way of luck because you have won it or inherited it.
In my Ivory Tower post I'm mentioning also modern politicians ruling without skin in the game. Of course if they make mistakes they have something to lose - their power, but they don't really have to pay the whole price of their mistakes, like it would happen in a distant past. The same applies to top bankers. It's not THEIR skin-in-the-game at stake. All those aspects have been widely and well described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "Skin in The Game". Understanding the meaning of skin-in-the-game is not limited to the concept of "having something to lose", but it deals with the true subjective value of what you have to lose in a game.

So, when does the easily acquired wealth convert into a "skin in the game"? Do you have skin in the game if you buy a ASIC miners with that money or is it still "skin in the game" of the parents?
Does it convert into "skin in the game" after you have hodled it for 8 years? I mean, that's how we have Bitcoin millionaires today, some have been rewarded for not selling.
Do you have skin in a game when you have done physical or mental work in order to get those coins? What if you got paid in alts that were created from air and then converted to Bitcoin?
Or do you only have skin in the game if you invest into cryptocurrencies or its hardware with the work you got paid in fiat currencies?

Because it is a subjective quantity you cannot define it with an equation, and there are obviously gradations in how much skin-in-the-game one can have in any situation. Impossible to reduce this to a formula like the Metcalfe's law. How do you measure the pain of risking or losing your assets? How do you measure someone attachment to what they have? Totally subjective. The fact that a principle exists and it has an influence in a system doesn't imply that we have the instruments to measure its strenght and its effects. Nevertheless, we shouldn't ignore it's existence, and we whould try to understand as much as possible of its mechanisms and make our plans accordingly.
Actually i didn't read Taleb's book yet, these are just my own thoughts, perhaps after I will have read Taleb I will have better answers. 

[pineapple express]

You are both right about the skin in the game. Yes any value is the skin in the game. And not always equal value is of equal importance. Obviously, the value earned by one’s own hard work is more important than the value obtained without much effort (lottery, inheritance, high return passive investment)

[aigeezer]

The "skin in the game" issue is an instance of what the ancient Greeks called a "sorites" or heap paradox. They show up in all sorts of places. Corny example - you can't make a person rich by giving the person a penny, but if you do it again and again, eventually the person becomes rich. When, exactly, do they become rich? There is no clear answer, hence paradox. Skin in the game is still a useful concept, if not a precise measure of something. Side note - the penny story makes a nice proof by example that this old chestnut is false: "doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results is the definition of insanity." Life is sooooo complicated.   

Anyway. Obyte is one of my faves as a candidate to replace fiat, but the magic hasn't happened yet. Ya never know when the moment might come though.

[garyn]

Is there anyone here from the Byte ball Team or company to answer a quick question?

[bibonix]

Is this thing minable? I have a farm running in China. Which algorithm do you guys use? PM me if you need this to be mined. I am open for suggestions.

[jwinterm]

Is this thing minable? I have a farm running in China. Which algorithm do you guys use? PM me if you need this to be mined. I am open for suggestions.

No. Coins are distributed at the whim of one guy named Tony.

[barborrico]

No. Coins are distributed at the whim of one guy named long term thinking.

Now it is better said.

[tarmo888]

Is this thing minable? I have a farm running in China. Which algorithm do you guys use? PM me if you need this to be mined. I am open for suggestions.

No. Coins are distributed at the whim of one guy named Tony.

Nice FUD, but in order that to be true, he would need to have control of which transactions end up in Bitcoin block on Friday noon UTC.

[jwinterm]

Is this thing minable? I have a farm running in China. Which algorithm do you guys use? PM me if you need this to be mined. I am open for suggestions.

No. Coins are distributed at the whim of one guy named Tony.

Nice FUD, but in order that to be true, he would need to have control of which transactions end up in Bitcoin block on Friday noon UTC.

This week it's based on bitcoin txs, next week it's whoever posts a pic of something round on insta, following week it's whatever he feels like. This thing went to shit when the distributor decided that he would do away with the initial distribution social contact, and it's gotten shittier and shittier the further Lord Almighty distributor has veered away from it. You can call it FUD but the only metrics that matter, price and engagement, have objectively fallen off a fucking cliff. Happy Friday 

[tarmo888]

Is this thing minable? I have a farm running in China. Which algorithm do you guys use? PM me if you need this to be mined. I am open for suggestions.

No. Coins are distributed at the whim of one guy named Tony.

Nice FUD, but in order that to be true, he would need to have control of which transactions end up in Bitcoin block on Friday noon UTC.

This week it's based on bitcoin txs, next week it's whoever posts a pic of something round on insta, following week it's whatever he feels like. This thing went to shit when the distributor decided that he would do away with the initial distribution social contact, and it's gotten shittier and shittier the further Lord Almighty distributor has veered away from it. You can call it FUD but the only metrics that matter, price and engagement, have objectively fallen off a fucking cliff. Happy Friday  

Aren't you advocating that this situation needs to be changed at the same time when you are saying it is changing too much? Which one is it then? Should a distribution be left unchanged if it doesn't archive it's goal and should the distribution be written in stone even if it turns out to be hurting the project? Where are all those initial distribution social contract people, was that really a good distribution? If it was, then where are they? They just sit on their balls and that's it, no use of them for the project at all.

Do you understand that Obyte would stick to one distribution if it would find the one that works and wherever it works, the #ophoto campaign reached people, which WCGrid distribution probably didn't reach. More varied people than just hard-core hodlers is better for the project in a long run.

[tarmo888]

We are still open for suggestions of better distribution methods. On paper, everybody would create a better cryptocurrency and better distribution, but in reality, people just like to whine. Be different, get creative.
https://medium.com/obyte/distribution-methods-revisited-we-need-you-b0a38800b722

If you could develop the distribution with Autonomous Agents then it will be even better because the distribution could be done even more transparent because all the data would be on public DAG,. As a developer, you would be helping to make Obyte more tested by the time of AA mainnet launch and while coming up with new distribution method, you could win prizes.
https://medium.com/obyte/obyte-autonomous-agents-developer-contest-6a67ae3dacd2

Even if your new distribution method sucks, but you are good at finding show-stopping bugs that crash the whole testnet network, you could still win a prize for helping to discover bugs like that.
https://medium.com/obyte/third-round-of-obyte-autonomous-agents-developer-contest-4a7df3d70b29

If your idea is to burn the whole distribution fund on Bitcoin holders then no need to apply, Obyte tried that already and it didn't work. Good distribution is not the one that burns the distribution fund faster, but the one that actually brings more people to Obyte who will stick around and actually use it.

[jwinterm]

Is this thing minable? I have a farm running in China. Which algorithm do you guys use? PM me if you need this to be mined. I am open for suggestions.

No. Coins are distributed at the whim of one guy named Tony.

Nice FUD, but in order that to be true, he would need to have control of which transactions end up in Bitcoin block on Friday noon UTC.

This week it's based on bitcoin txs, next week it's whoever posts a pic of something round on insta, following week it's whatever he feels like. This thing went to shit when the distributor decided that he would do away with the initial distribution social contact, and it's gotten shittier and shittier the further Lord Almighty distributor has veered away from it. You can call it FUD but the only metrics that matter, price and engagement, have objectively fallen off a fucking cliff. Happy Friday  

Aren't you advocating that this situation needs to be changed at the same time when you are saying it is changing too much? Which one is it then? Should a distribution be left unchanged if it doesn't archive it's goal and should the distribution be written in stone even if it turns out to be hurting the project? Where are all those initial distribution social contract people, was that really a good distribution? If it was, then where are they? They just sit on their balls and that's it, no use of them for the project at all.

Do you understand that Obyte would stick to one distribution if it would find the one that works and wherever it works, the #ophoto campaign reached people, which WCGrid distribution probably didn't reach. More varied people than just hard-core hodlers is better for the project in a long run.

No, I'm saying he fucked it up and you can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

[StandingTall]

We are still open for suggestions of better distribution methods.

I think translators of the wallet app should be rewarded for their work. They spend time working and allow users to operate wallet in native languages which brings value to the network. Alas they get nothing in return. Instead funds are spent on random people with lottery.

The wallet app is translated 100% in only 10 languages. Some incentive wouldn't hurt.