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

[markm]

Maybe he is just trying to make the point that volunteers working on a project could lead to distortion of the project, deviation from the precisely specified details given in the whitepaper?

-MarkM-

[JessicaMILFson]

Maybe he is just trying to make the point that volunteers working on a project could lead to distortion of the project, deviation from the precisely specified details given in the whitepaper?

-MarkM-

Which was exactly proven by ichtin and his requirements

[markm]

But not much problem because if his pull requests are for code that does not match the whitepaper specifications they just don't get pulled.

-MarkM-

[ictin]

Well, I, for one, I am willing to help the development of this coin when I have some free time. I am fairly experienced c/c++ developer (6 years). I don't have a lot experience in cryptography, but i can take a crash course on coursera. But i have some requirements that i would like to integrate in the coin:
1. a block generated at every 10 seconds for fast approval of transactions (this i think is critical for the wide spreading of a coin, because in real life nobody will want to wait more than 10 seconds for the payment to be approved)
2. every block will generate at random between 1.5 and 2 coins at first and then, after some time, between 0.7 and 1.3 (to make it fun )
3. When a critical monetary mass is reached, new coin is generated only based on the transactions done between 2 blocks. Let's say that will be at random between 5% and 15%, plus the fees (this is to have a dynamic inflation). This will give the miners always an incentive to mine and keep the network alive.
4. I was just thinking and this to improve the resistance of an 51% attack, and is the following: Every region has  an IP class, and we make a pool of all the IP classes (I think that the first number of the IP will be enough, for privacy reasons, so if the ip is x.y.z.w, we will store only the x). When a new block is found, the IP class that found the block is excluded from finding blocks for the next 4 to 10 blocks, and then is added back to pool. That way we will have a more even spreading of the coin, and I think that it will also reduce the risk of a 51% attack (I may be wrong, I think i need to study more the cryptography).

these changes you want seem radical and somewhat insane to be honest imo

Insane? I agree that they are radical, but why insane?
And i think that MarkM is right. Everyone that volunteers for this project will have his ideas and they will want this ideas in to he project. I think that nobody will work for free following some fixed specifications. I know that I am paid to do that, and there are some times that i simply hate what i need to do.
And yes, maybe it will be crazy to put this things in the netcoin. This why i think the best thing is to try to modify litecoin or bitcoin and make a new coin with this features. Maybe i will try with bitcoin first, because somebody will bring the big guns to fire at the new coin, and if it will resist the attack then it is a coin with a future, otherwise will die a fast death, and I start again to find a solution.

[JessicaMILFson]

Hmm, one thing that I didn't seem to find the answer to was how many total coins will this new currency have. I searched but didn't find a response.

[Vorksholk]

Looks awesome! Might I ask why you chose a falling block reward instead of an increasing block reward?

Link to the draft version of the whitepaper: Download

Notable things about this chain:
- Uses a new approach to secure hashing algorithms for the hash tree of a given block that should increase FPGA/ASIC resistance
- After 27 coin years it employs a democratic system of voting to manipulate the interest rate of the block chain (users act as the central bank and regulate the rate of inflation)
- Difficulty is based on the linear weighted average of the block times for the past 18 days for PoW blocks
- New block reward adjustment algorithm is given that yields an 8% decrease in block reward per year
- Simple PoS design (tried to strip it of as many complexities as possible)
- PoW and PoS systems are designed to happily coexist, with favour slightly given to the PoW system
- PoS system also intended to prevent 51% attacks

Feel free to peer-review/tear it apart.  I will be the first to say that I'm pretty terrible at math, so please correct any mistakes I've made.  I'd love to hear why you think it's a great/terrible idea, though.  Obviously I anticipate there are a lot of problems with it that I couldn't foresee, so please help me out!

Figure 2 also doesn't want to display with the Y-axis title correct, not sure why that is/too tired to fix this (been working on this/thinking about it for almost 11 hours now).

DONATIONS (will be refunded to the address from which they were sent if this doesn't pan out):
BTC: 12HWFAsv1ojTuw5FzoP9T3SnyjZew5hFDL
LTC: Lb8ESE4NW6kcQVb8uqYS3oRumWSj1gGuza


Lead developer
Tacotime
Potential developer list:
TheBigYak
RauBan
CryptoJunky

[chriswen]

Well, I, for one, I am willing to help the development of this coin when I have some free time. I am fairly experienced c/c++ developer (6 years). I don't have a lot experience in cryptography, but i can take a crash course on coursera. But i have some requirements that i would like to integrate in the coin:
1. a block generated at every 10 seconds for fast approval of transactions (this i think is critical for the wide spreading of a coin, because in real life nobody will want to wait more than 10 seconds for the payment to be approved)
2. every block will generate at random between 1.5 and 2 coins at first and then, after some time, between 0.7 and 1.3 (to make it fun )
3. When a critical monetary mass is reached, new coin is generated only based on the transactions done between 2 blocks. Let's say that will be at random between 5% and 15%, plus the fees (this is to have a dynamic inflation). This will give the miners always an incentive to mine and keep the network alive.
4. I was just thinking and this to improve the resistance of an 51% attack, and is the following: Every region has  an IP class, and we make a pool of all the IP classes (I think that the first number of the IP will be enough, for privacy reasons, so if the ip is x.y.z.w, we will store only the x). When a new block is found, the IP class that found the block is excluded from finding blocks for the next 4 to 10 blocks, and then is added back to pool. That way we will have a more even spreading of the coin, and I think that it will also reduce the risk of a 51% attack (I may be wrong, I think i need to study more the cryptography).

Why don't you just code your own coin ... o.O

[Luckybit]

That's why donating is not really selfless. See it as a tiny investment to give TacoTime the chance to make his plans real.

If you're already a Bitcoin millionaire then you should fund the entire project yourself and receive a medal.

My system of badges and medals would encourage everyone. It would encourage those who act out of self interest and those who act out of Philanthropy as I can think of circumstances where I would donate. The point is I should never be punished for my actions in support of a cryptocurrency. This is why if you do something positive you should receive an immediate reward in the form of a medal of honor or a badge of honor.

What your medal is worth to the community is decided by the community but it is worth something. If you donate and receive no medal for your selfless bravery then it's basically worthless and that is what makes it unreasonable. You should expect to be rewarded for your actions and it should not be just throwing money blindly or donating to something which could take your money and fail. You want should get something out of your act regardless of what happens to this project.

I propose if you and others like you decide to donate then you should get a medal which would be recognized throughout the Bitcoin community. This at least gives you status and recognition which is perhaps the true motivation behind the Philanthropy for most people even if it isn't for you. The point is to reward the behaviors we want to encourage them long term using the incentive mechanisms and the IPO method is proven effective, Kickstarter as a model is proven, donations? People have been donating to feed hungry African children for many decades and the money never seems to get to the children because the vast majority of people act out of self interest and not altruism. We have to design the incentives around the majority of people who will think "why should I just give this guy my hard earned precious Bitcoin?", because the guy who only has 2 Bitcoins isn't going to donate 50% of his holdings unless he can end up with 3 or 4 Bitcoins or more.

But we want to encourage the behavior in the community so that everyone is all in, everyone is invested, everyone has aligned their self interest to cryptocurrencies whether Bitcoin or not, and the way to do that is to simply reward the risk takers, the early adopters, the people who go all in, the people who are willing to selflessly sacrifice themselves. There should be several reward mechanism, money is only one and prestige/status is another. For example if you donate to the cause and receive the medal then perhaps you should get exclusive access to mailing lists, clubs which give you time sensitive information on when the next ASIC is coming so you can pre-order and other stuff like this.

For people who invested they should get a fair and decent profit and the chance to double their investment. They would receive the investor badges depending on how much they invested, and they would be owed that much. I honestly think that is fair.

The Bitcoin model worked for 2009 when no one knew what cryptocurrencies were. By the time this cryptocurrency starts up everyone already knows what they are so everyone wants to be an early adopter and people are willing to pay money to do it. Why not make people pay for that status up to say $100,000 worth or up to a certain amount in Bitcoin and it wont be a pre-mine, it wont be unfair, people who were willing to pay for the privilege early on should be the people who get it. It's just you cannot expect an endless supply of Satoshi's, programmers like that have to be paid and also there isn't going to be enough time to develop all future cryptocurrencies at the rate Bitcoin was developed. We should be streamlining things so that the incentive mechanisms continue to become more efficient because that produces a better launch and a better coin.

[JessicaMILFson]

That's why donating is not really selfless. See it as a tiny investment to give TacoTime the chance to make his plans real.

If you're already a Bitcoin millionaire then you should fund the entire project yourself and receive a medal.

My system of badges and medals would encourage everyone. It would encourage those who act out of self interest and those who act out of Philanthropy as I can think of circumstances where I would donate. The point is I should never be punished for my actions in support of a cryptocurrency. This is why if you do something positive you should receive an immediate reward in the form of a medal of honor or a badge of honor.

What your medal is worth to the community is decided by the community but it is worth something. If you donate and receive no medal for your selfless bravery then it's basically worthless and that is what makes it unreasonable. You should expect to be rewarded for your actions and it should not be just throwing money blindly or donating to something which could take your money and fail. You want should get something out of your act regardless of what happens to this project.

I propose if you and others like you decide to donate then you should get a medal which would be recognized throughout the Bitcoin community. This at least gives you status and recognition which is perhaps the true motivation behind the Philanthropy for most people even if it isn't for you. The point is to reward the behaviors we want to encourage them long term using the incentive mechanisms and the IPO method is proven effective, Kickstarter as a model is proven, donations? People have been donating to feed hungry African children for many decades and the money never seems to get to the children because the vast majority of people act out of self interest and not altruism. We have to design the incentives around the majority of people who will think "why should I just give this guy my hard earned precious Bitcoin?", because the guy who only has 2 Bitcoins isn't going to donate 50% of his holdings unless he can end up with 3 or 4 Bitcoins or more.

But we want to encourage the behavior in the community so that everyone is all in, everyone is invested, everyone has aligned their self interest to cryptocurrencies whether Bitcoin or not, and the way to do that is to simply reward the risk takers, the early adopters, the people who go all in, the people who are willing to selflessly sacrifice themselves. There should be several reward mechanism, money is only one and prestige/status is another. For example if you donate to the cause and receive the medal then perhaps you should get exclusive access to mailing lists, clubs which give you time sensitive information on when the next ASIC is coming so you can pre-order and other stuff like this.

For people who invested they should get a fair and decent profit and the chance to double their investment. They would receive the investor badges depending on how much they invested, and they would be owed that much. I honestly think that is fair.

The Bitcoin model worked for 2009 when no one knew what cryptocurrencies were. By the time this cryptocurrency starts up everyone already knows what they are so everyone wants to be an early adopter and people are willing to pay money to do it. Why not make people pay for that status up to say $100,000 worth or up to a certain amount in Bitcoin and it wont be a pre-mine, it wont be unfair, people who were willing to pay for the privilege early on should be the people who get it. It's just you cannot expect an endless supply of Satoshi's, programmers like that have to be paid and also there isn't going to be enough time to develop all future cryptocurrencies at the rate Bitcoin was developed. We should be streamlining things so that the incentive mechanisms continue to become more efficient because that produces a better launch and a better coin.

Very nicely said. My thoughts are 100% in line with yours

[Luckybit]

Hmm, one thing that I didn't seem to find the answer to was how many total coins will this new currency have. I searched but didn't find a response.

If you want my opinion, it should be less than Bitcoin but not significantly less. Bitcoin is 21 million? I keep coming up with 11 million. My theory is any new coin has to outpace Bitcoin in growth if it's going to ever catch up to Bitcoin. If Bitcoin is always the most valuable it's always going to be the main coin even if some other coin has far better technology. If Netcoin has 100 million coins then even if it is better its not going to be something people will be climbing over each other to get possession of. If people aren't excited like that about it then it will never be able to compete with Litecoin, Bitcoin, PPCoin or any other coin which already exists and which will already be more rare at the time.

11 million coins would mean a shorter early adopter phase but also significantly greater rewards for those early adopters and a significantly faster launch and development time which I think is essential if these alt-coins are to have a chance. If it takes 5+ years for each coin to mature and each coin has more and more coins and less scarcity then in my opinion this is bad for cryptocurrencies as I believe the future coins should be slightly more scarce than the last which means slightly more deflationary with each new alt-coin.

Do you think this is crazy? 11 million for Netcoin, the successor 5.5 million, and less and less?

[JessicaMILFson]

Hmm, one thing that I didn't seem to find the answer to was how many total coins will this new currency have. I searched but didn't find a response.

If you want my opinion, it should be less than Bitcoin but not significantly less. Bitcoin is 21 million? I keep coming up with 11 million. My theory is any new coin has to outpace Bitcoin in growth if it's going to ever catch up to Bitcoin. If Bitcoin is always the most valuable it's always going to be the main coin even if some other coin has far better technology. If Netcoin has 100 million coins then even if it is better its not going to be something people will be climbing over each other to get possession of. If people aren't excited like that about it then it will never be able to compete with Litecoin, Bitcoin, PPCoin or any other coin which already exists and which will already be more rare at the time.

11 million coins would mean a shorter early adopter phase but also significantly greater rewards for those early adopters and a significantly faster launch and development time which I think is essential if these alt-coins are to have a chance. If it takes 5+ years for each coin to mature and each coin has more and more coins and less scarcity then in my opinion this is bad for cryptocurrencies as I believe the future coins should be slightly more scarce than the last which means slightly more deflationary with each new alt-coin.

Do you think this is crazy? 11 million for Netcoin, the successor 5.5 million, and less and less?

Hmm...very interesting thoughts. I'll have to sleep on this and think this through, but it makes a lot of sense and a good way to fight the early adopter first to market advantage that Bitcoin has. Would you think it would advantageous to have the beta running to time it in line with when the ASICS start hitting the mass markets so that we can capture the GPU migration?

[Luckybit]

Hmm, one thing that I didn't seem to find the answer to was how many total coins will this new currency have. I searched but didn't find a response.

If you want my opinion, it should be less than Bitcoin but not significantly less. Bitcoin is 21 million? I keep coming up with 11 million. My theory is any new coin has to outpace Bitcoin in growth if it's going to ever catch up to Bitcoin. If Bitcoin is always the most valuable it's always going to be the main coin even if some other coin has far better technology. If Netcoin has 100 million coins then even if it is better its not going to be something people will be climbing over each other to get possession of. If people aren't excited like that about it then it will never be able to compete with Litecoin, Bitcoin, PPCoin or any other coin which already exists and which will already be more rare at the time.

11 million coins would mean a shorter early adopter phase but also significantly greater rewards for those early adopters and a significantly faster launch and development time which I think is essential if these alt-coins are to have a chance. If it takes 5+ years for each coin to mature and each coin has more and more coins and less scarcity then in my opinion this is bad for cryptocurrencies as I believe the future coins should be slightly more scarce than the last which means slightly more deflationary with each new alt-coin.

Do you think this is crazy? 11 million for Netcoin, the successor 5.5 million, and less and less?

Hmm...very interesting thoughts. I'll have to sleep on this and think this through, but it makes a lot of sense and a good way to fight the early adopter first to market advantage that Bitcoin has. Would you think it would advantageous to have the beta running to time it in line with when the ASICS start hitting the mass markets so that we can capture the GPU migration?

My thoughts are that Bitcoin is like the Myspace or even the Friendster. It's one coin in a evolution sequence or innovation chain of coins which will come after it. It's the first global decentralized currency but it should not be the best or the last. The incentive structure should encourage a culture of always creating a better cryptocurrency. It should encourage the growth of the innovation chain and speed up the pace of innovation.

As far as deflation goes, the same way deflation makes people trade their USD to buy Bitcoin the same mechanism could make people trade their Bitcoin to buy Netcoin and for the successor to Netcoin the same mechanism could make them buy that coin.

So I'm thinking that progressively more deflationary cryptocurrencies over time but it would have to be not too much more deflationary, just something reasonable. Our current economy in USD is the opposite where we have progressively more inflation over time. So I'm thinking of that in the reverse. The result would be quicker launches, an IPO would eventually bring in millions of dollars in a matter of hours and developers would be able to develop their coin much faster. At the same time anyone coming in from Bitcoin or Netcoin would know that buying into the next coin wouldn't lose them any value so they'd see it as a speculative investment.

It's not necessarily a speculative investment to buy Litecoin with Bitcoin when you know Litecoins will never match Bitcoin in value and never surpass it, but what if you had 100 Bitcoins and Netcoin came along and you could buy it for $1 a coin knowing for sure if developed properly it would be worth 50% more than Bitcoin?

As far as ASICs go, if the IPO process and development process is sped up then ASICS probably will be used but I think that these sorts of coins should not be mined just by CPU or GPU as Proof of Work. Proof of Activity has been discussed, Proof of Stake, and of course there can be ways to build it in so that beyond a certain point CPU/GPU/ASIC wont be worth. I'm not someone who has a solution to that, that is Tacotime who can tell you about that.

[CryptoBernanke]

I will be the first to say that I'm pretty terrible at math

How are people going to trust you if you don't know about math. Whoever Satoshi was he was a genius in math and cryptography.

[3Dfilament]

From what I gather through my first reading of your whitepaper is that demand for more currency, at some point in the future, will be generated by demand itself, will be socially organic and global demand. If not enough currency in circulation, then mining demand is stimulated by the metrics of the production of the coin itself. I'll read it several dozens times more ... I'm not kidding, wonderful stuff and ... may the best coin win, for all of our sakes.

[digitalindustry]

Looks very good!
Just one thing: change the name to something usable and new while you can.
Memcoin2 sounds like this is just a second copy of something else, and doesn't sound appealing at all
Don't make the same mistake peepeecoin made :p

Have not read the whole thread yet but i was going to say I like a lot of the ideas here - keep MC2 as the development name and perhaps try to find something that will appeal to the broader spectrum , (as broad as possible) (but pull back before BBQ)

Cheers great work.

[digitalindustry]

It's a working title, I'm open to suggestions.

here is a suggestion

- i think at a point someone has to drop the "Coin" - its cute but stupid, BTCoin has made it an MSM event but,  and it will be hard to do , but i'd love to see a viable Currency lose the "Coin".

The man on the street does not understand "Coin" - they think that's something they throw in their car , they use "currency" to exchange goods and services.

[erk]

Sounds incredibly energy hungry if you won't be able to use FPGA/ASIC. Energy hungry is the last thing the plant needs, I shudder to think what smartphones would be like if we didn't adopt transistors and integrated circuits for energy efficiency.

[digitalindustry]

( if this was already mentioned, apologies in advance )

I think the first coin to establish a system that goes some way to avoiding the need for an exchange will likely be very successful. I don't know how/if this could be coded into client wallets etc, but how about this idea :

I want to send $200 to Mr X, in exchange for a number of noXcoin ( or whatever the name of this imaginary new coin is ), I load my own client wallet with $200 ( let's worry about how I can do that in a while ), this creates a string like a bitcoin address, but prefixed with $, this sting is unique and becomes known on the network, using this string, I send the $200 over to mr X.

Mr X has a number if hours, lets say for now it's 2 hours, ( maybe this time period can be set by the initial sender, the 'guy that goes first' ), to send me my noXcoins, as soon as he does so, the trade is 'locked down' by the network and neither party can reverse the trade. If I do not get my coins inside the 2 hours, the trade gets cancelled, and my $200 get credited back to me by the network.

How do I get these $200 into my wallet? I guess that's the difficult part in this at least, I think something has to be  built into the design that will allow banks to join the network and offer the ability for people to send $,€,£ etc to their wallets, ( for a small fee I guess to give them the incentive ), right, this wouldn't work from day one, and we have to trust market forces to take place and the banks to jump on board with that one in putting their end of the system in place. Maybe there is another better solution to that ?

Saigo - i really think you hit onto a point here - I like the idea of an exchange similar to that but based on the http://nashx.com/About which was inspired by Mutually assured destruction and the Nash equilibrium - a way to get around the larger numbers having to risk larger amounts would be for the efficient network client to - process those transactions in 1 or 2 unit blocks -

- exchanges are a very key part of the acceptability / Fungibility   ie, the more decentralized the better.

the beauty of nash equilibrium and mutually assured destruction is apparent already.

[minefish]

Looks very good!
Just one thing: change the name to something usable and new while you can.
Memcoin2 sounds like this is just a second copy of something else, and doesn't sound appealing at all
Don't make the same mistake peepeecoin made :p

Have not read the whole thread yet but i was going to say I like a lot of the ideas here - keep MC2 as the development name and perhaps try to find something that will appeal to the broader spectrum , (as broad as possible) (but pull back before BBQ)

Cheers great work.

If you read page 13( and the pages before):

Netcoin (I guess I'll adopt that now) won't be that easy.  If it was a matter of another Feathercoin or whatever, then yes, you can change a few constants in the code and be done with it.  But a lot of what I'm planning to change will require more ...

I think that will appeal to a very broad spectrum.

[digitalindustry]

Looks very good!
Just one thing: change the name to something usable and new while you can.
Memcoin2 sounds like this is just a second copy of something else, and doesn't sound appealing at all
Don't make the same mistake peepeecoin made :p

Have not read the whole thread yet but i was going to say I like a lot of the ideas here - keep MC2 as the development name and perhaps try to find something that will appeal to the broader spectrum , (as broad as possible) (but pull back before BBQ)

Cheers great work.

If you read page 13( and the pages before):

Netcoin (I guess I'll adopt that now) won't be that easy.  If it was a matter of another Feathercoin or whatever, then yes, you can change a few constants in the code and be done with it.  But a lot of what I'm planning to change will require more ...

I think that will appeal to a very broad spectrum.

do you?
I don't.