MC2: A cryptocurrency based on a hybrid PoW/PoS system

[tacotime]

It's older than Feathercoin and almost all of the new features are unique...  Since publishing various ideas a few have been incorporated into other blockchains, e.g. my memcoin proposal was integrated into YACoin and my random hashing scheme was into quarkcoin, but I'm not really going to directly take credit for any of that.

[luffy]

i believe Netcoin would be the most radical coin when it arrives
but i wonder if new features could actually implemented along the way (by voting and updating the client?)

[JessicaMILFson]

Why did the price per coin values change?

Ingsoc felt like the formula I was using before was a little too penalizing to latecomers, so I tweaked it a bit.

Oh, I understand now. Yeah, I thought it was a bit penalizing too as well.

How come the number of total coins awarded changed? That's a major difference for a little tweak, almost 3x less.

[tacotime]

Why did the price per coin values change?

Ingsoc felt like the formula I was using before was a little too penalizing to latecomers, so I tweaked it a bit.

Oh, I understand now. Yeah, I thought it was a bit penalizing too as well.

How come the number of total coins awarded changed?

After tweaking to lottery winner/ticket system, there was no need to use 2^16 as the number of blocks to calculate the lottery winners with. Ticket maturity was then altered to 2^15 blocks (45 days), as 2^n was useful for the formula I'd been using to calculate crowdfunding distributions.

[Luckybit]

It's older than Feathercoin and almost all of the new features are unique...  Since publishing various ideas a few have been incorporated into other blockchains, e.g. my memcoin proposal was integrated into YACoin and my random hashing scheme was into quarkcoin, but I'm not really going to directly take credit for any of that.

People assume that the innovation or ideas will stop coming just because some other group rushes to implement it but quality of implementation is everything. Those alt coins were hacked together probably over a period of weeks.

[_ingsoc]

I wouldn't get too hung up on the distribution. Until we can say we have X, who will develop Netcoin for Y, in jurisdiction Z, I wouldn't treat any of this as final. My only concern with the initial distribution was that it was suited to when we wanted to raise less. People may disagree with me here, but I would rather have everyone benefit roughly the same with a smaller diminishing rate over time, than be in a position where we get half or a third of our target. But kids don't like sharing nowadays. At least this way it's unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno! That has a certain romance to it, no?

[digitalmagus]

Hi guys,
At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot....

I've read about 15 pages worth from this thread, the latest whitepaper, parts of the wiki and website, but I am not understanding the crowd sourcing scheme at all.

I must have read the below "Distribution Scheme for Crowdfunding" page at least 8 times, and I'm left perplexed. I wish you could re-write it in more layman's terms, as the current explanation assumes one understands a lot of concepts, some of which i do, several which I know I don't. Let's face it, if this is supposed to be an effort to fundraise, the simpler it is to understand the more people will be willing to put money into this. I shouldn't have to read for several hours, pages of material from 3 different locations to make only partial sense of it. If you do manage to make above $100,000 fund raising limit, please consider making a video explaining how your coin works for the layman, because if bitcoin is complex enough to understand, your coin, by virtue of improving various factors, is N times more complex than bitcoin. If nobody can understand it (i.e. Ripple), nobody is going to bother using it.

Now for my questions...

Reference URL1: http://www.netcoin.io/wiki/Distribution_Scheme_for_Crowdfunding
Reference URL2: http://www.netcoin.io/latest.pdf

I apologize in advance if some of these questions sound idiotic, I fully admit, I don't understand PoW and POS very well yet.

QUESTIONS:
Q1. What can a Lottery Hash Winner actually win? Coins? How many? 37.5 (as per whitepaper's 25+12.5) per block?
Q2. If this is a lottery, can you please explain odds/probability of actually winning per ticket?
Q3. Why are tickets being sold in different donation brackets have different number of coin values, when in fact coin value will be ultimately determined by market supply/demand?
Q4. Is there going to be a cut off $$ donation ceiling or # of tickets sold? Why/Why not?
Q5. What is the tentative date this crowdfunding effort will start?
Q6. Where exactly  (URL?) will this take place? kickstarter.com ?
Q7. How many days/weeks will it run for?
Q8. "Tickets are private keys corresponding to a stakeholder vote", which according to the whitepaper can only be exercised after 29 days (whitepaper: page 4 section 2.).... is that after 29 days from genesis block, or every 29 days?
Q9. To get coins out of these tickets, the whitepaper suggests that we (ticket holders) have to perform specific actions, like vote on blocks. How exactly does one vote on a block?
Q10. Assume I have $5,000 I want to throw at this. That puts me in the first bracket with 9,216 tickets or private keys. What tools will I have to possible manage / make sense of that many private keys?
Q11. With 9216 private keys, I have upwards of 65,536 blocks I can vote on. That means I have to sit there and manually vote on at least every 7 blocks on average? Or, at 30 blocks per hour (pg.5 of whitepaper), this means I have aprox a 2 minute window to vote on each block, and assuming I can do this in about 15 seconds, with 9216 private keys that means I have to be glued to my computer for at least 138,240 seconds or 38.4 hours. This sounds like WAY too much work for a $5,000 donation. Why do I have to work at all to give away my money? Why can't you just give us X # of coins per Y # of $ donated? I'm probably grossly misunderstanding all of this, but if I am even partially right, this sounds way too convoluted/requiring too much effort on behalf of people that want to give you $.
Q12. If a lottery ticket holder can only collect his coins by voting Yea on a block, why would anyone with piles of lottery tickets ever vote no on any block off the start here? Which then begs the question, why bother with voting at all if all votes are going to be Yea's so people can collect their coins. Clearly, I'm very confused.
Q13. Page 5 of whitepaper states that a block must be signed by 5 different signatories (people?). What happens if not all 5 sign it? What if only 3 out of 5 sign it ever, do those 3 people get their coin rewards or do they have to wait around to be compensated until all 5 sign it?
Q14. I am confused with the very first 2 lines of the web page:
"For the first ~45 days of the coin (32,768 blocks), there will be no lottery hash winners chosen. To safeguard the network, stakeholder tickets for these blocks will be issued via the crowdfunding platform, in proportion to the quantity pledged."

First sentence says there will be no lottery hash winners "chosen". Chosen by whom/what - yes I read they will be 'randomly selected', is this randomness the same mentioned in the whitepaper? Then second sentence says to safeguard the network tickets will be issued from crowdfunding... so how exactly does crowdfunding secure the network when he with the most $ gets the most votes? Also if the first 45 days of blocks will be exclusively allocated to crowdfunding pre-assigned ticket holders, how exactly does this incentivise any mining?


Thanks in advance for your time & efforts.

[tacotime]

I will answer these questions in a bit, I'm really pressed for time atm

[_ingsoc]

Wow, great job, digitalmagus. You've done a lot of research. We should rework these questions and answers into an FAQ section so others can easily find the information. I'll make a start and try to answer some of the administrative questions. tacotime can override mine and answer the technical questions to give the best explanation. Take these as supplemental.

Q5. What is the tentative date this crowdfunding effort will start?
The date depends primarily on (1) how Netcoin will crowdfund from a legal perspective (i.e., will it have to form some type of organisation in some jurisdiction to accept donated funds for the purpose of development, and things along these lines). It would have to be compliant and transparent, and that means Netcoin has to operate in real terms as well (which takes time and can be confusing for a lot of parties involved - particularly because everyone is still figuring out how to treat virtual currency in the "real" world). Secondarily, the date depends on (2) who Netcoin can secure for development and when they can start. There's been progress in both of these areas behind the scenes, which will be shared once there is concrete information and things are as finalised as they can be prior to crowdfunding. To answer the question more bluntly, as soon as (1) and (2) are figured out, the crowdfunding can begin.

Q6. Where exactly  (URL?) will this take place? kickstarter.com ?
The crowdfunding platform Netcoin will use depends on where the project exists physically. Kickstarter for example requires a US presence (or possibly UK/Canada). Others are open to international projects (e.g., Indiegogo). At the end of the day, it doesn't matter which platform, and there will be two weeks notice, so everyone will know where and how. Another thing that has to be figured out is whether platforms like Kickstarter will even allow Netcoin on there. Even though funding Netcoin development through crowdfunding doesn't represent a financial return (or equity) for the funder, the platform provider may view our effort differently given all the confusion around cryptocurrency - and that this model of crowdfunding is untested. Look at this to see what I'm talking about.

Q7. How many days/weeks will it run for?
This depends on whether Netcoin can raise the target. I imagine a one month campaign is necessary. I want to add that depending on the outcome of points (1) and (2) from Q5, there may be the possibility of crowdfunding cryptocurrency as well. I know some people are upset that this has been ruled out, but if there is a way to do this that meets all the requirements, it will happen (again, plenty of notice and instructions on how).

Let's start with these answers and see how we go. Having said that, if anyone has any information or advice (or questions) to the above, don't hesitate to post or send me a PM. Netcoin is definitely a collaborative effort.

EDIT #1:

Q4. Is there going to be a cut off $$ donation ceiling or # of tickets sold? Why/Why not?
tacotime suggested in message #927 that there should be a cap at $10k per individual or group. I think 10% of the target is reasonable. The reasoning for this is to deter monopolies of the network and also try and give everyone who wants to fund the development a chance to do so.

[dmatthewstewart]

Im gonna crap my pants if I cant mine this thing soon

[JeanCool]

Im gonna crap my pants if I cant mine this thing soon

Patience is a virtue of a Pro. And this is not your everyday shitcoin, so thourough preparation will pay off in the long run ...

[AnonyMint]

Sorry but Netcoin can be attacked:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=273197.msg2954801#msg2954801

[Luckybit]

Sorry but Netcoin can be attacked:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=273197.msg2954801#msg2954801

Go into more detail. I did not see any explanation of precisely which attack vector will work. It has already been covered that it is a pseudo-random process but it's not designed in such a way that there is an obviously simple attack.

Please go in depth.

[AnonyMint]

I did not see any explanation of precisely which attack vector will work.

Did I not already?

In the case of Netcoin, its PoS contribution can be attacked because a [PoW winning mining] peer can target its [PoS] peer key by the transactions it includes in the block which determines the hash that selects which [PoS] peers can vote.

[wizzardTim]

Hi guys,
At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot....

I've read about 15 pages worth from this thread, the latest whitepaper, parts of the wiki and website, but I am not understanding the crowd sourcing scheme at all.

I must have read the below "Distribution Scheme for Crowdfunding" page at least 8 times, and I'm left perplexed. I wish you could re-write it in more layman's terms, as the current explanation assumes one understands a lot of concepts, some of which i do, several which I know I don't. Let's face it, if this is supposed to be an effort to fundraise, the simpler it is to understand the more people will be willing to put money into this. I shouldn't have to read for several hours, pages of material from 3 different locations to make only partial sense of it. If you do manage to make above $100,000 fund raising limit, please consider making a video explaining how your coin works for the layman, because if bitcoin is complex enough to understand, your coin, by virtue of improving various factors, is N times more complex than bitcoin. If nobody can understand it (i.e. Ripple), nobody is going to bother using it.

Now for my questions...

Reference URL1: http://www.netcoin.io/wiki/Distribution_Scheme_for_Crowdfunding
Reference URL2: http://www.netcoin.io/latest.pdf

I apologize in advance if some of these questions sound idiotic, I fully admit, I don't understand PoW and POS very well yet.

QUESTIONS:
Q1. What can a Lottery Hash Winner actually win? Coins? How many? 37.5 (as per whitepaper's 25+12.5) per block?
Q2. If this is a lottery, can you please explain odds/probability of actually winning per ticket?
Q3. Why are tickets being sold in different donation brackets have different number of coin values, when in fact coin value will be ultimately determined by market supply/demand?
Q4. Is there going to be a cut off $$ donation ceiling or # of tickets sold? Why/Why not?
Q5. What is the tentative date this crowdfunding effort will start?
Q6. Where exactly  (URL?) will this take place? kickstarter.com ?
Q7. How many days/weeks will it run for?
Q8. "Tickets are private keys corresponding to a stakeholder vote", which according to the whitepaper can only be exercised after 29 days (whitepaper: page 4 section 2.).... is that after 29 days from genesis block, or every 29 days?
Q9. To get coins out of these tickets, the whitepaper suggests that we (ticket holders) have to perform specific actions, like vote on blocks. How exactly does one vote on a block?
Q10. Assume I have $5,000 I want to throw at this. That puts me in the first bracket with 9,216 tickets or private keys. What tools will I have to possible manage / make sense of that many private keys?
Q11. With 9216 private keys, I have upwards of 65,536 blocks I can vote on. That means I have to sit there and manually vote on at least every 7 blocks on average? Or, at 30 blocks per hour (pg.5 of whitepaper), this means I have aprox a 2 minute window to vote on each block, and assuming I can do this in about 15 seconds, with 9216 private keys that means I have to be glued to my computer for at least 138,240 seconds or 38.4 hours. This sounds like WAY too much work for a $5,000 donation. Why do I have to work at all to give away my money? Why can't you just give us X # of coins per Y # of $ donated? I'm probably grossly misunderstanding all of this, but if I am even partially right, this sounds way too convoluted/requiring too much effort on behalf of people that want to give you $.
Q12. If a lottery ticket holder can only collect his coins by voting Yea on a block, why would anyone with piles of lottery tickets ever vote no on any block off the start here? Which then begs the question, why bother with voting at all if all votes are going to be Yea's so people can collect their coins. Clearly, I'm very confused.
Q13. Page 5 of whitepaper states that a block must be signed by 5 different signatories (people?). What happens if not all 5 sign it? What if only 3 out of 5 sign it ever, do those 3 people get their coin rewards or do they have to wait around to be compensated until all 5 sign it?
Q14. I am confused with the very first 2 lines of the web page:
"For the first ~45 days of the coin (32,768 blocks), there will be no lottery hash winners chosen. To safeguard the network, stakeholder tickets for these blocks will be issued via the crowdfunding platform, in proportion to the quantity pledged."

First sentence says there will be no lottery hash winners "chosen". Chosen by whom/what - yes I read they will be 'randomly selected', is this randomness the same mentioned in the whitepaper? Then second sentence says to safeguard the network tickets will be issued from crowdfunding... so how exactly does crowdfunding secure the network when he with the most $ gets the most votes? Also if the first 45 days of blocks will be exclusively allocated to crowdfunding pre-assigned ticket holders, how exactly does this incentivise any mining?


Thanks in advance for your time & efforts.

Some of these were answered by _ingsoc

Wow, great job, digitalmagus. You've done a lot of research. We should rework these questions and answers into an FAQ section so others can easily find the information. I'll make a start and try to answer some of the administrative questions. tacotime can override mine and answer the technical questions to give the best explanation. Take these as supplemental.

Q5. What is the tentative date this crowdfunding effort will start?
The date depends primarily on (1) how Netcoin will crowdfund from a legal perspective (i.e., will it have to form some type of organisation in some jurisdiction to accept donated funds for the purpose of development, and things along these lines). It would have to be compliant and transparent, and that means Netcoin has to operate in real terms as well (which takes time and can be confusing for a lot of parties involved - particularly because everyone is still figuring out how to treat virtual currency in the "real" world). Secondarily, the date depends on (2) who Netcoin can secure for development and when they can start. There's been progress in both of these areas behind the scenes, which will be shared once there is concrete information and things are as finalised as they can be prior to crowdfunding. To answer the question more bluntly, as soon as (1) and (2) are figured out, the crowdfunding can begin.

Q6. Where exactly  (URL?) will this take place? kickstarter.com ?
The crowdfunding platform Netcoin will use depends on where the project exists physically. Kickstarter for example requires a US presence (or possibly UK/Canada). Others are open to international projects (e.g., Indiegogo). At the end of the day, it doesn't matter which platform, and there will be two weeks notice, so everyone will know where and how. Another thing that has to be figured out is whether platforms like Kickstarter will even allow Netcoin on there. Even though funding Netcoin development through crowdfunding doesn't represent a financial return (or equity) for the funder, the platform provider may view our effort differently given all the confusion around cryptocurrency - and that this model of crowdfunding is untested. Look at this to see what I'm talking about.

Q7. How many days/weeks will it run for?
This depends on whether Netcoin can raise the target. I imagine a one month campaign is necessary. I want to add that depending on the outcome of points (1) and (2) from Q5, there may be the possibility of crowdfunding cryptocurrency as well. I know some people are upset that this has been ruled out, but if there is a way to do this that meets all the requirements, it will happen (again, plenty of notice and instructions on how).

Let's start with these answers and see how we go. Having said that, if anyone has any information or advice (or questions) to the above, don't hesitate to post or send me a PM. Netcoin is definitely a collaborative effort.

EDIT #1:

Q4. Is there going to be a cut off $$ donation ceiling or # of tickets sold? Why/Why not?
tacotime suggested in message #927 that there should be a cap at $10k per individual or group. I think 10% of the target is reasonable. The reasoning for this is to deter monopolies of the network and also try and give everyone who wants to fund the development a chance to do so.

Can someone answer the rest of the questions? I see that a lot of people are confused on many topics regarding NTC.

[_ingsoc]

Can someone answer the rest of the questions? I see that a lot of people are confused on many topics regarding NTC.

Hey, sorry about the delay. tacotime recently moved, and as you would know, that stuff takes a while. He should be back in action this week. I'd much rather have him answer these questions directly to clear up any confusion (and I don't think I have the elegance to explain adequately like he does). There's been good progress on getting some great people involved in this project, but everything is kind of pending on one thing or another.

Once tacotime is back there'll be a lot of movement. I think what'll end up happening, is you'll see a whole bunch of stuff happen at the same time. If, in the meantime you want to get ready for that data dump, you can subscribe to the Netcoin subreddit (/r/netcoin) or follow us on Twitter (@netcoin). I figured those two big social platforms are the least corrupt, so we can stick with them.

[Stark-Fujikawa]

Is there a finalized version of the whitepaper yet?

[_ingsoc]

Is there a finalized version of the whitepaper yet?

This is pretty much his #1 Netcoin priority after completing all the work on the wiki. Expect it soon!

[Stark-Fujikawa]

Is there a finalized version of the whitepaper yet?

This is pretty much his #1 Netcoin priority after completing all the work on the wiki. Expect it soon!

Alright, good to know. I'll be checking this topic every so often, but feel free to contact me when it's done so I can start translating.

[tacotime]

Sorry I've been gone. I didn't even have a desk to sit at until today, I'll reply to the questions above tomorrow.