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

[spiral_mind]

He's right though Bitcoin is valuable because it has useful and desirable properties. "Mastercoin" lacks those and has as its only real feature an escrow system that will steadily lose money and collapse over time (since maintaining an artificial peg is impossible to profit from). Therefore it will never have value.

[dacoinminster]

Yes, I control the Exodus Address. Any funds sent there are to be used for making this a reality.

Doesn't this mean you are the only investor who bears zero risk for investing, and so have a heads-I-win-tails-I-get-my-money-back situation?   If this is genuinely as good an opportunity as you represent it to be, and the number of coins created (and therefore the relative value of each) is determined by the total amount of investment.... You see where I'm going with this?  You have the most to gain, and you hold no risk whatsoever.

I think it would be more appropriate to have these funds create and finance a non-profit foundation dedicated to stewarding the development of Mastercoin, with the funds being controlled by a fragmented key.

The concept here is really solid, and I think it's fine to fundraise in this fashion but I am uncomfortable having the entire finance under the control of a single individual even if he is the founder and especially if he is the largest investor and primary beneficiary of funds.  That is not investment, it is savings being rewarded as the highest of risk activities.

In an email to me, Adam also said:

. . .

 I would encourage you to put together a board of reputable community members to allay this concern because currently what you're offering is to implement something at your own time with you set to recieve an enormous reward commensurate with a large investment when really you have no skin in the game at all.   

I'd love to get paid a fair hourly wage for what I do, but i'm more concerned with making it happen because if I don't do it nobody else will, than I am maximizing my potential revenue.  It seems like you're trying to have two cakes, and also eat some pie.   

I would LOVE to have a non-profit handle these funds. Earlier in this thread I mentioned how I approached the bitcoin foundation, as well as several major bitcoin companies about holding these funds.

So far they have all told me they are too busy. If I find a suitable organization or group of people to hold these funds, I will be delighted.

[ripper234]

So far they have all told me they are too busy. If I find a suitable organization or group of people to hold these funds, I will be delighted.

How about building the organization?
Is this (= finding the group of people) a priority goal?

[dacoinminster]

How about building the organization?
Is this (= finding the group of people) a priority goal?

If I were building something from scratch, I'd probably try to come up with a way to give other investors (everyone except for me) veto power over the Exodus Address funds. That is, if somebody thought I was using funds inappropriately, there could be a vote, and I would respect their wishes by trying to find an alternate way to accomplish the goal.

Votes would probably be based on investment size, although that would obviously be dominated by the mystery person who purchased 420BTC worth of MasterCoins.

Obviously, this veto power would still require people to trust me, but they are doing that anyway.

Another way would be to nominate a couple people to hold this veto power. I think Ripper and Vokain would do a fine job, given their obvious interest and investment in this project, although spiral_mind will claim they are just sock-puppet accounts which I control.

FYI, here is a list of reimbursements I intend to file immediately come September 1st:

• $80 for netbook purchase (clean OS install, used for armory offline-only transaction signing for the Exodus Address)
• Reimbursement for Ripper's purchase of MasterCoin.org (how much?)
• Reimbursement for laptop purchase for development (I'll be purchasing it this weekend in Oregon, where there is no sales tax - since I'lll be using Armory and copying armory code, I spoke to Alan Reiner and he said I should get something with a lot of RAM)

[dacoinminster]

This morning I whipped up a greasemonkey script to show how many MasterCoins have been purchased by each transaction sent to the Exodus Address.

If you have Firefox or Chrome, you can install it from here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/175196 (Chrome requires that you download the script and install it manually. In Firefox, you can just click "Install")

The script is only active while viewing http://blockchain.info/address/1EXoDusjGwvnjZUyKkxZ4UHEf77z6A5S4P

And with that, the first project milestone (see post #2 in this thread) is complete!!

Here is a screenshot of what the page looks like with the script running:

[ripper234]

If I were building something from scratch, I'd probably try to come up with a way to give other investors (everyone except for me) veto power over the Exodus Address funds. That is, if somebody thought I was using funds inappropriately, there could be a vote, and I would respect their wishes by trying to find an alternate way to accomplish the goal.

Votes would probably be based on investment size, although that would obviously be dominated by the mystery person who purchased 420BTC worth of MasterCoins.

Obviously, this veto power would still require people to trust me, but they are doing that anyway.

Another way would be to nominate a couple people to hold this veto power. I think Ripper and Vokain would do a fine job, given their obvious interest and investment in this project, although spiral_mind will claim they are just sock-puppet accounts which I control.

I think that can work out quite well. After getting approval from Vokain and reaching a decision, you might want to add this to the OP. A further step would be to send the funds to an m-of-n wallet controlled by the three of us. This can happen at a later date, and doesn't necessarily have to happen anytime soon. (Us having veto is almost, almost like any-two-out-of-the-three-of-us-can-vote)

FYI, here is a list of reimbursements I intend to file immediately come September 1st:

• $80 for netbook purchase (clean OS install, used for armory offline-only transaction signing for the Exodus Address)
• Reimbursement for Ripper's purchase of MasterCoin.org (how much?)
• Reimbursement for laptop purchase for development (I'll be purchasing it this weekend in Oregon, where there is no sales tax - since I'lll be using Armory and copying armory code, I spoke to Alan Reiner and he said I should get something with a lot of RAM)

Good list. My cost was a measly $11.48.

[ripper234]

This morning I whipped up a greasemonkey script to show how many MasterCoins have been purchased by each transaction sent to the Exodus Address.

Sweet! I love how it only requires actually permission to the Exodus!

How about setting up a "mastercoin-foundation" github organization, that will hold all the different repos? (mastercoin, greesemonkey, website, etc.)

[dacoinminster]

Sweet! I love how it only requires actually permission to the Exodus!

How about setting up a "mastercoin-foundation" github organization, that will hold all the different repos? (mastercoin, greesemonkey, website, etc.)

I went ahead and forked Armory in anticipation of tearing it all apart:
https://github.com/dacoinminster/MasterCoin-Adviser

The greasemonkey script probably won't change much. I have no idea what I want to do for a website. Probably just contract it out at some point, since I don't really enjoy working on static pages.

[dacoinminster]

No.   the main reason to buy bitcoins is because it will appreciate in value because other people will buy bitcoins to use them because they have extremely desirable properties as a currency.

Look, let's say we have 2 coins XxxCoin and YyyCoin.  X starts with 100 backing MasterCoins, Y starts with 1000 backing MasterCoins. Why would XxxCoin track the price of Silver and YyyCoin track the price of gold?

It'll only happen if the person (that you must trust) behind the escrow, issues and redeems xxx or yyy coins such that its supply vs demand creates a price that tracks gold and silver respectively.  First off, this requires you trust the escrow admin.  So its not a trustless coin.  Secondly, the escrow is gonna get drained or be so "full" it becomes more valuable than the commodity ... even just random walk math shows that eventually this will happen.  Deliberate speculator manipulation, profiting on the information asymmetry where they know how the other party (the escrow) will behave will make it happen sooner.

Sorry - just noticed that I haven't replied to this.

There is no escrow admin - it's all handled by the protocol. Speculators can reduce the escrow fund's trading profits, but cannot eliminate them entirely.

I think maybe I'll stop debating whether the escrow fund can work, and just point out that even if people are doubtful about the escrow-backed currencies, MasterCoins can be absurdly valuable without that feature. Distributed betting is going to be big. Thanks to your suggestion, the spec will also support user-issued coins without escrow backing (working like colored coins).

[mindtomatter]

If the OP is interested then I would be happy to create a project on CIYAM Open for this (subject to *zero* fees).

CIYAM Open is a project management system that unlike traditional "bounties" (where multiple contributors compete for a reward that only one will get) locks in a single contributor to finishing the task by an agreed date and time (with a merged git commit being generally used as "proof of delivery").

The system is currently being used to help manage the Moneychanger project (https://ciyam.org/open/?cmd=view&data=20130606055250338000&ident=M100V137&chksum=a2a9d6d5) and note that all BTC is held by the project's owner (i.e. no actual BTC is held on CIYAM Open and each project manager provides their own BTC addresses).

An introductory slideshow about the workflow can be found at http://ciyam.org.

Can you tell me about how this works?  I'm interested in using this for a FOSS project I'm getting off the ground
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoins-watershed-moment-an-open-source-cryptocurrency-ecosystem/

Feel free to email me adam@letstalkbitcoin.com

[dacoinminster]

If the OP is interested then I would be happy to create a project on CIYAM Open for this (subject to *zero* fees).

CIYAM Open is a project management system that unlike traditional "bounties" (where multiple contributors compete for a reward that only one will get) locks in a single contributor to finishing the task by an agreed date and time (with a merged git commit being generally used as "proof of delivery").

The system is currently being used to help manage the Moneychanger project (https://ciyam.org/open/?cmd=view&data=20130606055250338000&ident=M100V137&chksum=a2a9d6d5) and note that all BTC is held by the project's owner (i.e. no actual BTC is held on CIYAM Open and each project manager provides their own BTC addresses).

An introductory slideshow about the workflow can be found at http://ciyam.org.

Can you tell me about how this works?  I'm interested in using this for a FOSS project I'm getting off the ground
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoins-watershed-moment-an-open-source-cryptocurrency-ecosystem/

Yes, I finally took a look at the slideshow - it looks like a really cool way to organize bounties! (But how does your website make money?)

Do you have a thread for this somewhere else? (So we don't clutter up this one)

[vokain]

How about building the organization?
Is this (= finding the group of people) a priority goal?

Obviously, this veto power would still require people to trust me, but they are doing that anyway.

This veto power (perhaps limitable) would require you to trust the board as well. I would like that, makes things a bit more symmetrical

[vokain]

If I were building something from scratch, I'd probably try to come up with a way to give other investors (everyone except for me) veto power over the Exodus Address funds. That is, if somebody thought I was using funds inappropriately, there could be a vote, and I would respect their wishes by trying to find an alternate way to accomplish the goal.

Votes would probably be based on investment size, although that would obviously be dominated by the mystery person who purchased 420BTC worth of MasterCoins.

Obviously, this veto power would still require people to trust me, but they are doing that anyway.

Another way would be to nominate a couple people to hold this veto power. I think Ripper and Vokain would do a fine job, given their obvious interest and investment in this project, although spiral_mind will claim they are just sock-puppet accounts which I control.

I think that can work out quite well. After getting approval from Vokain and reaching a decision, you might want to add this to the OP. A further step would be to send the funds to an m-of-n wallet controlled by the three of us. This can happen at a later date, and doesn't necessarily have to happen anytime soon. (Us having veto is almost, almost like any-two-out-of-the-three-of-us-can-vote)

I like that. I want nothing more than to see this project through, and as a hopeful budding entrepreneur, I do see ways we can make this project truly the Second Bitcoin Whitepaper. The main emphasis should be on communication, communication, communication, and from there I believe everything will work itself out in the best possible way. I'll look at getting a secure laptop on which to store said keys right now. In the mean time we can discuss the specifics of how this agreement would work.

[dacoinminster]

I like that. I want nothing more than to see this project through, and as a hopeful budding entrepreneur, I do see ways we can make this project truly the Second Bitcoin Whitepaper. The main emphasis should be on communication, communication, communication, and from there I believe everything will work itself out in the best possible way. I'll look at getting a secure laptop on which to store said keys right now. In the mean time we can discuss the specifics of how this agreement would work.

Cool.

I don't think any bitcoin client implements multi-sig yet, although armory is getting close. Perhaps the veto power should be informal at first, and once a way to do multi-sig becomes available, we can codify it using m-of-n multisig.

Does that sound good to you guys?

[spiral_mind]

No.   the main reason to buy bitcoins is because it will appreciate in value because other people will buy bitcoins to use them because they have extremely desirable properties as a currency.

Look, let's say we have 2 coins XxxCoin and YyyCoin.  X starts with 100 backing MasterCoins, Y starts with 1000 backing MasterCoins. Why would XxxCoin track the price of Silver and YyyCoin track the price of gold?

It'll only happen if the person (that you must trust) behind the escrow, issues and redeems xxx or yyy coins such that its supply vs demand creates a price that tracks gold and silver respectively.  First off, this requires you trust the escrow admin.  So its not a trustless coin.  Secondly, the escrow is gonna get drained or be so "full" it becomes more valuable than the commodity ... even just random walk math shows that eventually this will happen.  Deliberate speculator manipulation, profiting on the information asymmetry where they know how the other party (the escrow) will behave will make it happen sooner.

Sorry - just noticed that I haven't replied to this.

There is no escrow admin - it's all handled by the protocol. Speculators can reduce the escrow fund's trading profits, but cannot eliminate them entirely.

I think maybe I'll stop debating whether the escrow fund can work, and just point out that even if people are doubtful about the escrow-backed currencies, MasterCoins can be absurdly valuable without that feature. Distributed betting is going to be big. Thanks to your suggestion, the spec will also support user-issued coins without escrow backing (working like colored coins).

You assume that your escrow is going to profit by maintaining a peg. Basic supply and demand make the maintenance of an arbitrary peg always a money losing proposition. People are only ever going to buy from the fund when they can make money. They're also only going to sell to the fund when they can make money. Eventually any "escrow" you set up will run out of cash as the public treats it like a big money giveaway. How do you counter this?

[bytemaster]

No.   the main reason to buy bitcoins is because it will appreciate in value because other people will buy bitcoins to use them because they have extremely desirable properties as a currency.

Look, let's say we have 2 coins XxxCoin and YyyCoin.  X starts with 100 backing MasterCoins, Y starts with 1000 backing MasterCoins. Why would XxxCoin track the price of Silver and YyyCoin track the price of gold?

It'll only happen if the person (that you must trust) behind the escrow, issues and redeems xxx or yyy coins such that its supply vs demand creates a price that tracks gold and silver respectively.  First off, this requires you trust the escrow admin.  So its not a trustless coin.  Secondly, the escrow is gonna get drained or be so "full" it becomes more valuable than the commodity ... even just random walk math shows that eventually this will happen.  Deliberate speculator manipulation, profiting on the information asymmetry where they know how the other party (the escrow) will behave will make it happen sooner.

Sorry - just noticed that I haven't replied to this.

There is no escrow admin - it's all handled by the protocol. Speculators can reduce the escrow fund's trading profits, but cannot eliminate them entirely.

I think maybe I'll stop debating whether the escrow fund can work, and just point out that even if people are doubtful about the escrow-backed currencies, MasterCoins can be absurdly valuable without that feature. Distributed betting is going to be big. Thanks to your suggestion, the spec will also support user-issued coins without escrow backing (working like colored coins).

You assume that your escrow is going to profit by maintaining a peg. Basic supply and demand make the maintenance of an arbitrary peg always a money losing proposition. People are only ever going to buy from the fund when they can make money. They're also only going to sell to the fund when they can make money. Eventually any "escrow" you set up will run out of cash as the public treats it like a big money giveaway. How do you counter this?

He counters it by removing the feature from the spec and stoping all discussion on it.   Instead he is going to build MasterCoin for the betting system and issuer-based coins backed by trusted parties.  

He has yet to address the HUGE inefficiencies of storing data in bogus bitcoin address fields.

[spiral_mind]

No.   the main reason to buy bitcoins is because it will appreciate in value because other people will buy bitcoins to use them because they have extremely desirable properties as a currency.

Look, let's say we have 2 coins XxxCoin and YyyCoin.  X starts with 100 backing MasterCoins, Y starts with 1000 backing MasterCoins. Why would XxxCoin track the price of Silver and YyyCoin track the price of gold?

It'll only happen if the person (that you must trust) behind the escrow, issues and redeems xxx or yyy coins such that its supply vs demand creates a price that tracks gold and silver respectively.  First off, this requires you trust the escrow admin.  So its not a trustless coin.  Secondly, the escrow is gonna get drained or be so "full" it becomes more valuable than the commodity ... even just random walk math shows that eventually this will happen.  Deliberate speculator manipulation, profiting on the information asymmetry where they know how the other party (the escrow) will behave will make it happen sooner.

Sorry - just noticed that I haven't replied to this.

There is no escrow admin - it's all handled by the protocol. Speculators can reduce the escrow fund's trading profits, but cannot eliminate them entirely.

I think maybe I'll stop debating whether the escrow fund can work, and just point out that even if people are doubtful about the escrow-backed currencies, MasterCoins can be absurdly valuable without that feature. Distributed betting is going to be big. Thanks to your suggestion, the spec will also support user-issued coins without escrow backing (working like colored coins).

You assume that your escrow is going to profit by maintaining a peg. Basic supply and demand make the maintenance of an arbitrary peg always a money losing proposition. People are only ever going to buy from the fund when they can make money. They're also only going to sell to the fund when they can make money. Eventually any "escrow" you set up will run out of cash as the public treats it like a big money giveaway. How do you counter this?

He counters it by removing the feature from the spec and stoping all discussion on it.   Instead he is going to build MasterCoin for the betting system and issuer-based coins backed by trusted parties.  

He has yet to address the HUGE inefficiencies of storing data in bogus bitcoin address fields.

Hey Bytemaster. It's cool you're posting in this thread because I remember your BitShares idea was very similar to this. At least you weren't so greedy that you asked for money directly. You definitely have a point about how he fails again and again to reply in a meaningful way to criticism (or he deletes the post).

[bytemaster]

Here are the differences between the current BitShares system and MasterCoin:

1) BitGold is initially backed by 2x its value in BitShares by someone intentionally taking a short position that will LOSE MONEY if BitGold goes up.
2) The price of BitGold is only ever determined by voluntary market actors, no oracles or data feeds.
3) The highest unaccepted bid is used to perform automatic margin calls for any short position with less than 1.5x backing.
4) BitShare positions actually pay dividends & there is an opportunity cost for being short and a positive ROI benefit for being long.

My original BitShares idea suffered from the same core problem as MasterCoin does today... I was attempting to operate with 0 margin in the event the price moved against the creator of BitGold or GoldCoin.    I also attempted to rely entirely on market expectation that BitGold would track gold on its own based entirely on expectation and new issuers creating BitGold at the new price.   In effect, I started out with all of the mistakes that MasterCoin is repeating.   The difference is that I paid people to find these things and challenge me to fix them.   TheZerg made 10 BTC (when it was worth $1300) and forced me to innovate and come up with the current version of BitShares.

Last I heard from TheZerg he said the new BitShares system is much harder to find fault with.    That said, I am still willing to pay a 1 BTC bounty to anyone who can find a fault with the BitShares protocol that will result in me making a change and 10 BTC to anyone who can convince me to abandon BitShares all together.   Note: Charles & I are the sole judge of whether or not to award the 10 BTC bounty, but we have a history of being fair/honest in our judgements.  If you can convince us of fundamental problems you will save us money and we would gladly pay 10 BTC... if you cannot convince us then we will be rolling out BitShares as the proof of your failure to convince us.  

MasterCoin seems unwilling to risk 10 BTC on the potential that the flaws in his system might be discovered.  If he is so confident his approach will work then it is a 0 risk proposition to offer a 10 BTC bounty.   At the very least his investors will know that he has put up enough money to insure his ideas are properly vetted.

[dacoinminster]

Here are the differences between the current BitShares system and MasterCoin:

1) BitGold is initially backed by 2x its value in BitShares by someone intentionally taking a short position that will LOSE MONEY if BitGold goes up.
2) The price of BitGold is only ever determined by voluntary market actors, no oracles or data feeds.
3) The highest unaccepted bid is used to perform automatic margin calls for any short position with less than 1.5x backing.
4) BitShare positions actually pay dividends & there is an opportunity cost for being short and a positive ROI benefit for being long.

My original BitShares idea suffered from the same core problem as MasterCoin does today... I was attempting to operate with 0 margin in the event the price moved against the creator of BitGold or GoldCoin.    I also attempted to rely entirely on market expectation that BitGold would track gold on its own based entirely on expectation and new issuers creating BitGold at the new price.   In effect, I started out with all of the mistakes that MasterCoin is repeating.   The difference is that I paid people to find these things and challenge me to fix them.   TheZerg made 10 BTC (when it was worth $1300) and forced me to innovate and come up with the current version of BitShares.

Last I heard from TheZerg he said the new BitShares system is much harder to find fault with.    That said, I am still willing to pay a 1 BTC bounty to anyone who can find a fault with the BitShares protocol that will result in me making a change and 10 BTC to anyone who can convince me to abandon BitShares all together.   Note: Charles & I are the sole judge of whether or not to award the 10 BTC bounty, but we have a history of being fair/honest in our judgements.  If you can convince us of fundamental problems you will save us money and we would gladly pay 10 BTC... if you cannot convince us then we will be rolling out BitShares as the proof of your failure to convince us.  

MasterCoin seems unwilling to risk 10 BTC on the potential that the flaws in his system might be discovered.  If he is so confident his approach will work then it is a 0 risk proposition to offer a 10 BTC bounty.   At the very least his investors will know that he has put up enough money to insure his ideas are properly vetted.

I don't mind posting such a bounty if my oversight board (currently Ripper and vokain) thinks it would be a good use of funds from the Exodus Address. However, the posts so far don't even come close to convincing me that the idea can't work at all. The closest they have come is pointing out the trade-offs involved with this kind of system. There are clearly scenarios where excrow funds break down, but to claim the idea couldn't work for any amount of time is over-reaching.

Also, welcome back to the thread

[vokain]

Sure, I'd support a bounty. Perhaps they'll come up with things the developer(s) have yet to, like thezerg has done, so definitely worth the cost in my book!

I'm sorry to disappear for 3 days and then dredge this up, but I can see that you and I have a difference of opinion on the time frame here, and on the idea of the value of the "black swan" events in a commodity speculator's portfolio.  But even if you continue with these attempts at a trustless representational currency, let me very respectfully ask you to also include the ability for people to create their own (trust-required) exchangeable entities, with a reference to a signed legal document describing the entity in its genesis block.  These new "currencies" could be a mortgage, stock in a company, a commodity with real backing, etc.  That is, add "native" support for colored coins within your system.  Whether or not your trustless representational currencies work, these trust-backed currencies will be very valuable, will utilize most of the same software infrastructure as your trustless and would make MasterCoin still useful if your trust-backed currency system does not work.  PM me if you need some impl help maybe I can find some time...

That's a very interesting idea. I suppose we might as well support currencies that work like colored coins. It doesn't really add any complexity to the design, and it seems likely that people would use it.

That would also give people one way to "invest" in the success of coins which work like colored coins - by buying MasterCoins. Previously there was no way to do this.

The built in decentralized exchange between MasterCoins and the other backed currencies would support something like this with almost no modifications.

Now, why didn't I think of that??