MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address”

[dacoinminster]

@dacoinminster: In order to succeed as an open source project leader, you will need to keep this in mind: http://youtu.be/ZSFDm3UYkeE

Thanks!

It also helps to have self-moderated threads

Unfortunately, Reddit remains (mostly) a spiraling cesspool of ignorance.

[notme]

This is a scam. He keeps deleting my posts hoping someone else will send money to his scam.

"@dacoinminster: In order to succeed as an open source project leader, you will need to keep this in mind: http://youtu.be/ZSFDm3UYkeE"

ITS NOT OPEN SOURCE. There is no source code. There are no "mastercoins". He will take your money and run because there's NOTHING keeping him honest.

I'm sorry you have lost faith in the basic decency of most people.  You are right there is risk in sending him money, but people have the right to spend their money how they want.  Your concerns have been voiced (he left my quote of you), and you are derailing productive discussion.

[RationalSpeculator]

I have debated whether or not to respond to this thread, but it seems like you are getting a lot of positive reviews so I am writing to provide some alternative opinions and explain how / why this system will not work.  I do this as a favor to you because I previously paid people on this forum over $1200 to show me where I went wrong with some of my early idea on how to create GoldCoins.  Reading and responding to your paper represents a significant investment of my time into your ideas and I am providing my feedback for free.

The #1 problem with your system is that it is not decentralized and therefore using the blockchain only increases costs while providing little benefit.   The number of times you mention relying on 'trusted' parties is entirely against the ethos of trust-free currency.   The mere possibility of a 'bank run' shows the shaky foundation.  Once you depend upon 'trust' and 'issuers' then you might as well use a system like egold... and we all know how that turned out.  For that matter, you could use Ripple!

I would like to address some major economic fallacies:

1) Depending upon a public oracle for pricing information is not economically valid means of facilitating trades in your GoldShares vs GoldCoins market because it fails to consider that GoldShares and GoldCoins are entirely different things in the economy and valued by individuals uniquely and independently from Gold even if the price is highly correlated.    

2) Assuming that controlling the supply instantly controls the price.   The FED has doubled the US money supply but prices still haven't factored this in.    Next, this GoldShare supply is regulated by an external feed from an entirely different market.   Note how different prices are between BitStamp and Gox and they are trading in very similar assets GoxBtc/GoxUSD  vs BitStampBtc/BitStampUSD.   Why can't BitStamp arbitrarily operate their exchange based on a Mt. Gox feed?   The reason is something fundamental:  all exchanges of value at all times must be based upon voluntary consent.   Historical price data (even just milliseconds old) is never a valid substitute for voluntary exchanges by people making an assessment of the value of the assets being traded.   Allowing a 3rd party to 'price fix' something via inflation/deflation is exactly what FIAT money is.

3) You have apparently failed to address all of the competing ideas in your white paper or participate in community discussions on how to create peer to peer exchanges and crypto-assets like GoldCoins.    If you had you could have saved yourself a lot of time.

Now that I have said all of this, I would encourage you to read the BitShares white paper and then come back here and explain where I have missed something because I believe that more minds dedicated to the problem will result in better solutions.  In summary, I have also created BitGold that can be traded against BitBTC and does everything your system attempts to do with the following differences:

1) No trusted oracles or external data feeds  
2) No trusted parties at all (entirely trust free)
3) Pays dividends
4) Enables trust-free put/call options against any BitAsset
5) Addresses scalability issues with Bitcoin.

I think perhaps you are replying based on the previous version of my paper?

Nope, the most recent paper.

OK - because the concept of "GoldShares" are from the last version - I dumped that idea for something simpler in the specification.

I have followed your work on BitShares with great interest, but as you can see, I'm taking things in a different direction

Thanks for your thoughtful input.

I'd like to see you address bytemaster his, on first impression, strong valid criticisms. Your response to just say 'I do different, thanks for your input' scares me away.

[Seth Otterstad]

JR, your identity is public right?  People doing scams tend to not make their identity public, otherwise the SEC will come after them.

This escrow fund concept looks flawed to me.  I'm trying to think of a specific example that would cause it to fail.

[dacoinminster]

I have debated whether or not to respond to this thread, but it seems like you are getting a lot of positive reviews so I am writing to provide some alternative opinions and explain how / why this system will not work.  I do this as a favor to you because I previously paid people on this forum over $1200 to show me where I went wrong with some of my early idea on how to create GoldCoins.  Reading and responding to your paper represents a significant investment of my time into your ideas and I am providing my feedback for free.

The #1 problem with your system is that it is not decentralized and therefore using the blockchain only increases costs while providing little benefit.   The number of times you mention relying on 'trusted' parties is entirely against the ethos of trust-free currency.   The mere possibility of a 'bank run' shows the shaky foundation.  Once you depend upon 'trust' and 'issuers' then you might as well use a system like egold... and we all know how that turned out.  For that matter, you could use Ripple!

I would like to address some major economic fallacies:

1) Depending upon a public oracle for pricing information is not economically valid means of facilitating trades in your GoldShares vs GoldCoins market because it fails to consider that GoldShares and GoldCoins are entirely different things in the economy and valued by individuals uniquely and independently from Gold even if the price is highly correlated.    

2) Assuming that controlling the supply instantly controls the price.   The FED has doubled the US money supply but prices still haven't factored this in.    Next, this GoldShare supply is regulated by an external feed from an entirely different market.   Note how different prices are between BitStamp and Gox and they are trading in very similar assets GoxBtc/GoxUSD  vs BitStampBtc/BitStampUSD.   Why can't BitStamp arbitrarily operate their exchange based on a Mt. Gox feed?   The reason is something fundamental:  all exchanges of value at all times must be based upon voluntary consent.   Historical price data (even just milliseconds old) is never a valid substitute for voluntary exchanges by people making an assessment of the value of the assets being traded.   Allowing a 3rd party to 'price fix' something via inflation/deflation is exactly what FIAT money is.

3) You have apparently failed to address all of the competing ideas in your white paper or participate in community discussions on how to create peer to peer exchanges and crypto-assets like GoldCoins.    If you had you could have saved yourself a lot of time.

Now that I have said all of this, I would encourage you to read the BitShares white paper and then come back here and explain where I have missed something because I believe that more minds dedicated to the problem will result in better solutions.  In summary, I have also created BitGold that can be traded against BitBTC and does everything your system attempts to do with the following differences:

1) No trusted oracles or external data feeds  
2) No trusted parties at all (entirely trust free)
3) Pays dividends
4) Enables trust-free put/call options against any BitAsset
5) Addresses scalability issues with Bitcoin.

I think perhaps you are replying based on the previous version of my paper?

Nope, the most recent paper.

OK - because the concept of "GoldShares" are from the last version - I dumped that idea for something simpler in the specification.

I have followed your work on BitShares with great interest, but as you can see, I'm taking things in a different direction

Thanks for your thoughtful input.

I'd like to see you address bytemaster his, on first impression, strong valid criticisms. Your response to just say 'I do different, thanks for your input' scares me away.

Cool. Let's see what I can do:

His #1 concern is centralization, but my plan is no more centralized than bitcoin, other than that I have a fundraiser at the start. I think this comes from a misunderstanding of a concept from my earlier paper.

As for the economic concerns:
1) Seems to be based on the earlier version of my paper
2) Seems to assume that one cannot control prices by controlling supply. I believe that is false. While the fed has indeed printed a lot of money, they could drive the value of the dollar to zero if they wanted to print billions of dollars and give them to every person on the planet.
3) Is about other methods of accomplishing this, such as his, which I have looked at enough to know that I didn't want to go that direction (However, I have the highest respect for bytemaster, and I know that he is working on some cool stuff)

Does that help?

[dacoinminster]

JR, your identity is public right?  People doing scams tend to not make their identity public, otherwise the SEC will come after them.

This escrow fund concept looks flawed to me.  I'm trying to think of a specific example that would cause it to fail.

Yup! J.R. Willett is my very public identity.

There definitely are ways that the escrow fund could fail. For instance, if I base a currency on a datasource that simply appreciates at 10% a day, the price stabilization method will eventually collapse.

[dacoinminster]

This is a scam. He keeps deleting my posts hoping someone else will send money to his scam.

"@dacoinminster: In order to succeed as an open source project leader, you will need to keep this in mind: http://youtu.be/ZSFDm3UYkeE"

ITS NOT OPEN SOURCE. There is no source code. There are no "mastercoins". He will take your money and run because there's NOTHING keeping him honest.

Unfortunately, Reddit remains (mostly) a swirling cesspool of ignorance.

I think what you really meant to say is you're butthurt because I exposed your bullshit on Reddit and you can't self moderate the thread.

I'm sorry you have lost faith in the basic decency of most people.  You are right there is risk in sending him money, but people have the right to spend their money how they want.  Your concerns have been voiced (he left my quote of you), and you are derailing productive discussion.

We shouldn't have to have faith in the creator if the protocol is sound. We didn't have to have faith in Satoshi Nakamoto or buy Bitcoins from him. The rules of the system create the system. He's set this system up to let him cheat as much as he wants with nothing keeping him honest so that's what is going to happen. This is a fatal flaw with the "project" not a "concern".

He's going to keep deleting this post and I'm going to keep posting it. If he had a valid answer to any of these criticisms he'd reply instead of deleting.

I will indeed continue deleting any posts such as the one above. I'm going offline for the night, but I would ask others on this thread to please avoid feeding the trolls (by responding to them) - I will delete the abusive posts whenever I get online again and see them.

Thanks you guys for your support. I hope I will be able to have some "proof of concept" code soon.

[ripper234]

1.

I did a co-founder search awhile back:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1fqgn0/will_you_be_my_cofounder_professional_salary/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=226215.0

I got some replies but nobody really had what I needed then.

The protocol may change as it gets implemented. Right now is just the fund-raiser. I agree it would be cool to have multiple people helping me hold the coins. I approached several people about helping me hold the coins m-of-n style, but they were all too busy.

Completely missed that.
Too bad you didn't bump the old MasterCoin thread, I might have jumped on your offer
In any case, I'm currently not looking to co-found it, but might serve on the board of trustees if you'd like.
I will not require any salary from the board, and you, as the main developer/founder, will be entitled to some agreed upon salary.
I think Meni Rosenfeld might also be interested to serve on such a board.

Of course, if you decide you do not need a board and want to be the treasurer yourself, that's fine too. Also, for the initial fundraising, an m-of-n address is not strictly required - you can always transfer the funds to such an address later. The fundraiser might be more productive (because of the greater trust) if it started with a trusted board and an m-of-n address. Now that I think about it, you can even release an update to the protocol that changes / adds a new Exodus Address while the fundraiser is still going (it would make the protocol less 'clean', but there are benefits).

Anyway, I'm just trying to benefit MasterCoin here, no hidden agenda of myself, feel free to decide what you feel is best.

2.
FYI, I just posted about this thread in the alt forum.

3.
I wouldn't mind spending some time editing the whitepaper for added clarity (like I have too much free time ), assuming it is in a format where you can indeed easily see and verify my edits. I voiced most of the points I'd like to edit above.

4.
How about MSC as the abbreviation? (FYI MST is taken by the usurper)
You could brand the coin it as an M.Sc. student

5.
Good news - I have just registered mastercoin.org on behalf of the project!
I can't believe you haven't registered that domain already in the last year...
For now I made it a redirect to this thread.

I kind of like what Sunny King has done with ppcoin.org and primecoin.org - you might consider doing something similar with mastercoin.org

6.
FYI, I posted about MasterCoin in the Hebrew Bitcoin forums (Facebook, Google Group), and made a short article on our wiki. There is some positive interest.

[ripper234]

Hmm, quicky thought - you could ask piuk of blockchain.info to add a special token to the search system.

If someone searched for "Exodus" or "ExodusAddress" on blockchain.info, that would bring him to http://blockchain.info/address/1EXoDusjGwvnjZUyKkxZ4UHEf77z6A5S4P

He can also include a link from http://blockchain.info/address/1EXoDusjGwvnjZUyKkxZ4UHEf77z6A5S4P to this thread / mastercoin.org

[ripper234]

Also, in case you missed my question about blockchain.info - it would be nice to get a formal reassurance that blockchain.info addresses are ok for investing in the fundraiser. I see no reason why they won't be, but in light of your comment in the paper, a reply from you on this matter would be great.

[Voodah]

I kind of like what Sunny King has done with ppcoin.org and primecoin.org - you might consider doing something similar with mastercoin.org

.
..
...
....
.....seriously?

I consider those among the worst designs I've ever seen...

To each his own !

[ripper234]

Hmm, quicky thought - you could ask piuk of blockchain.info to add a special token to the search system.

If someone searched for "Exodus" or "ExodusAddress" on blockchain.info, that would bring him to http://blockchain.info/address/1EXoDusjGwvnjZUyKkxZ4UHEf77z6A5S4P

He can also include a link from http://blockchain.info/address/1EXoDusjGwvnjZUyKkxZ4UHEf77z6A5S4P to this thread / mastercoin.org

I'm completely blind sometimes - after after staring at the address some time after posting this, I noticed the prefix.
So FYI everyone, searching for "1exodus" on blockchain.info will in fact lead you to the above address

[hmmmstrange]

J.R.

Thanks for taking the initiative of getting this off the ground.

[ripper234]

J.R.

Thanks for taking the initiative of getting this off the ground.

+1

With all my constructive criticism and suggestions I forgot to simply say "thank you"

[hmmmstrange]

Ripper, since you're so positive about the project would you care to answer why you think its ok for the creator to recieve money into his personal bitcoin vanity address before source code is released and without any mechanism to keep him honest? How is this distinct from a nigerian prince scheme? I'd really like someone to explain.

Why didn't we have to buy all the Bitcoins in existence from Satoshi Nakamoto before he released the client? Such a project would have been doomed to failure before it began because it has no substance.

spiral_mind,

faith

[adamstgBit]

Ripper, since you're so positive about the project would you care to answer why you think its ok for the creator to recieve money into his personal bitcoin vanity address before source code is released and without any mechanism to keep him honest? How is this distinct from a nigerian prince scheme? I'd really like someone to explain.

Why didn't we have to buy all the Bitcoins in existence from Satoshi Nakamoto before he released the client? Such a project would have been doomed to failure before it began because it has no substance.

spiral_mind,

faith

You're asking people to have faith in an internet pseudonym whose reputation is based upon hundreds of single line posts devoid of anything meaningful as well as (likely someone else's) LinkedIn account. Bitcoin worked because people didn't have to have faith in Satoshi Nakamoto. They have confidence in the security of the mathematics and code behind Bitcoin. And until you release some code any faith or cash put in your project is misplaced.

By the way I asked Ripper to respond. Oops, your sock puppet slipped onto the wrong hand.

Explain how this isn't a nigerian prince scam by telling us what will keep you honest. And don't type the word faith again. Type a sentence as if you can use your brain.

you really don't get it?
he can take off with the coins
it won't matter
he will have left us with his idea and we can implement it ourselves. we'll get our MasterCoins one way or another.

the coins are going to his address because he deserves them

you made your point quite clear over and over, thank you.

now, good day!

[forsetifox]

Sounds like Parasitecoin.

 

[adamstgBit]

you really don't get it?
he can take off with the coins
it won't matter
he will have left us with his idea and we can implement it ourselves. we'll get our MasterCoins one way or another.

the coins are going to his address because he deserves them

you made your point quite clear over and over, thank you.

now, good day!

He can take off with the coins and it won't matter? What about releasing the source code? What about all the people whose money he would have stolen?

The idea alone is worth everyone sending him Bitcoins in advance in exchange for nothing? Actually it does matter if you steal people's coins.

He (or should I say you?) deserves them simply for writing a paper proposing that he should get all the coins before he releases the source?

This is a very, very questionable post.

yes if he can fool us into sending coins somewhere, he F'ing deserves them.
I trust he takes pride in his idea and wants to see it through.
so i might be willing to send a coin, but for now i am watching this project's development ( just saw it today ) and will jump in when i feel comfortable.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

2) Seems to assume that one cannot control prices by controlling supply. I believe that is false. While the fed has indeed printed a lot of money, they could drive the value of the dollar to zero if they wanted to print billions of dollars and give them to every person on the planet.

Increasing supply to decrease price is the easy part. Decreasing supply to increase price is the impossible part.

[ripper234]

Willet chose a valid way to bootstrap his idea.
It is not identical to the way Satoshi bootstrapped his idea, but as we all know Satoshi made quite a profit nonetheless.
Ripple/OpenCoin also choose a different way to bootstrap their idea, and as far as I know it's working well (they got investments from Google and Peter Thiel for one).

I believe Colored Coins was left in relative stagnation in the last year precisely because it lacked a good bootstrapping model that would pay for the cost of development (although it is seeing some increased usage today).

I summarized my thoughts on the matter on a blog post I just wrote about MasterCoin.