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

[dacoinminster]

The Exodus Address is now over 2000 BTC! Thanks to the 14.7495 BTC investor who pushed us over that mark! http://blockchain.info/address/1EXoDusjGwvnjZUyKkxZ4UHEf77z6A5S4P

I own 175211.66524471 MasterCoins, so the next big milestone will be if we cross 350423.33048942 MasterCoins purchased, meaning I will no longer hold the majority of them. We are at 281926.70208002 MasterCoins purchased right now (these numbers came from the GreaseMonkey script I wrote to analyze the Exodus Address purchases: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/175196)

[bitcool]

I'd be more interested if ...

Someone offers a Bitcoin^2, providing not only Exodus Address but also Homecoming Addresses, any users can join or leave  Bitcoin^2 ecosystem on a 100% voluntary basis.

The value of Bitcoin will become the rock bottom support for this new coin, this essentially take risk away.

Not sure if it's doable, but definitely more attractive.

[dacoinminster]

I'd be more interested if ...

Someone offers a Bitcoin^2, providing not only Exodus Address but also Homecoming Addresses, any users can join or leave  Bitcoin^2 ecosystem on a 100% voluntary basis.

The value of Bitcoin will become the rock bottom support for this new coin, this essentially take risk away.

Not sure if it's doable, but definitely more attractive.

Interesting idea. I can't think of an automatic way to refund investments if people wanted out, but I'd be fine with manually cashing people out if they decide they want out. They'd just have to prove they own the BTC address that invested with some sort of "refund request" transaction. The Exodus Address could then manually refund the BTC (less the percentage of project funds used on project expenses), and clients could interpret that refund as meaning the BTC address no longer holds MasterCoins.

I suppose if somebody starts getting really vocal demanding a refund, I'll have to think about supporting something like this. Hopefully MasterCoins will explode in value and nobody will want refunds anyway

[dacoinminster]

First Ever Send Transaction!

I figured somebody else would do a real send transaction before me (due to the Android wallet bug), but it looks like I did the first one!

It's a little early, but I was too excited to wait, so I went ahead and did the first transaction for the MasterCoin giveaway thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272577.0

The transaction sends 1 Test MasterCoin to CryptoBeggar, who was the first to post in the giveaway thread.

Here is a screenshot of MasterCoin Advisor telling me what to do to send them:



Here is a screenshot of me setting up the transaction in Bitcoin-QT:



Here is the resulting transaction: http://blockchain.info/tx/ab4adf577b9b88b264347b734dfce9d399ed985f76ca7c913338ca144238d3b8

Oops! That transaction came from my change address, not from the address that owns MasterCoins! I was so excited that I completely skipped "Step 1" in the screenshot above!

First I need to transfer the remaining funds in that wallet to the address which owns the MasterCoins: http://blockchain.info/tx/34476c6606cc927735ca1452fa758fd92c8c6be3bb99ae39c637e650f1cbe9db

Now here is the transaction again, this time coming from the right address: http://blockchain.info/tx/63c7eb7032645344a362bf729fb05217156d6d5d7e610e4e1953485dd1892d1c

Nice!

Let's break down the data that was stored in the data address. If we take the data address (1Cm6AkGxmmU8wWV66uhkupJj6XhMiQpEX5) and convert it from Base-58 to hexadecimal, we get this: 008100000000000000020000000005f5e10000000004d0630c (as shown in the first screenshot above)

The basic breakdown is:
00 = bitcoin version number (this is why bitcoin addresses all start with 1, since 0 converted to base-58 is 1)
8100000000000000020000000005f5e100000000 = MasterCoin Transaction Data
04d0630c = checksum

Now, breaking down the transaction data, we have:
81 = sequence number, which is one less than the same byte of the reference address, which is 0x82
00000000 = transaction type (simple send)
00000002 = currency identifier (2 = test MasterCoins)
0000000005f5e100 = amount transferred (0x5f5e100 = 100000000, meaning 1.00000000 Test MasterCoins)
000000 = unused padding

Edit: That send was for Test MasterCoins. Here is the follow-up transaction sending 1.00000000 REAL MasterCoins to the same person: http://blockchain.info/tx/9e0b6bb921ff60de42125bd75c80ba68ceab3c649882fbd15d6f5190ecda0737


This is super-exciting to me, and I think it is historic on the same level as the first bitcoin transaction between Satoshi and Hal Finney (who are the same person, IMHO, but that is way off topic).

[vokain]

 

[marcus_of_augustus]

I don't feel like reading the whole white paper but this has piqued my interest ... is there a summary of how MasterCoins is supposed to work?

So far by osmosis I got;

- it is piggy-backing transactions onto bitcoin blockchain somehow to achieve something like coloured coins functionality

- you can make other master sub-coins that have in built auto-regulators for issuing based on supply-demand/pricing (where are the market operations taking place?)

- dacoinmeister is getting a ton of btc sent to an address controlled by him (and his wife if he dies) to do the dev work
 - if you don't get in now and send coins to dacoinmeister now you will miss out on the great early adopter mastercoin gold rush

[moltenmich]

^

is that mastercoin in binary?

although, I would like a logo, professional but alludes to the biblical book of exodus some how. IMO, those designs are a bit too sterile for my personal liking. Regardless, they look cool!

Yep! It says Mastercoin. The black and white makes them look really harsh. But I'll think about exodus and see if I can come up with anything. That's an interesting angle.

Wow! That is awesome! For some reason the ones that look like radiation symbols appeal to me. I think maybe it is because I have always viewed this idea as potentially very destructive to existing money systems, like an atomic bomb.

We haven't actually set a bounty amount for this logo yet, so we probably should! Anybody know what what bitcoin projects are paying for logos these days?

Thanks! Here are a couple more added to the b/w sketches. I tried to go for an abstract representation of the parting of the red sea (exodus). Definitely not explicitly that because i tried to design it into an "M", but hopefully you can see it.  




Whichever one is chosen, I'll provide vector/png formats for them and release them as open source. As far as what logos seem to be going for, I'm happy with whatever donations people would like to offer. Logos range in price so I don't really have a specific number, but typically it's between 1-2 btc.   Obviously I'd love to have access to some mastercoins so that would be great too, except I would have to download the client onto my desktop, right?

[TheSwede75]

First Ever Send Transaction!

I figured somebody else would do a real send transaction before me (due to the Android wallet bug), but it looks like I did the first one!

It's a little early, but I was too excited to wait, so I went ahead and did the first transaction for the MasterCoin giveaway thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272577.0

The transaction sends 1 Test MasterCoin to CryptoBeggar, who was the first to post in the giveaway thread.

Here is a screenshot of MasterCoin Advisor telling me what to do to send them:



Here is a screenshot of me setting up the transaction in Bitcoin-QT:



Here is the resulting transaction: http://blockchain.info/tx/ab4adf577b9b88b264347b734dfce9d399ed985f76ca7c913338ca144238d3b8

Oops! That transaction came from my change address, not from the address that owns MasterCoins! I was so excited that I completely skipped "Step 1" in the screenshot above!

First I need to transfer the remaining funds in that wallet to the address which owns the MasterCoins: http://blockchain.info/tx/34476c6606cc927735ca1452fa758fd92c8c6be3bb99ae39c637e650f1cbe9db

Now here is the transaction again, this time coming from the right address: http://blockchain.info/tx/63c7eb7032645344a362bf729fb05217156d6d5d7e610e4e1953485dd1892d1c

Nice!

Let's break down the data that was stored in the data address. If we take the data address (1Cm6AkGxmmU8wWV66uhkupJj6XhMiQpEX5) and convert it from Base-58 to hexadecimal, we get this: 008100000000000000020000000005f5e10000000004d0630c (as shown in the first screenshot above)

The basic breakdown is:
00 = bitcoin version number (this is why bitcoin addresses all start with 1, since 0 converted to base-58 is 1)
8100000000000000020000000005f5e100000000 = MasterCoin Transaction Data
04d0630c = checksum

Now, breaking down the transaction data, we have:
81 = sequence number, which is one less than the same byte of the reference address, which is 0x82
00000000 = transaction type (simple send)
00000002 = currency identifier (2 = test MasterCoins)
0000000005f5e100 = amount transferred (0x5f5e100 = 100000000, meaning 1.00000000 Test MasterCoins)
000000 = unused padding

Edit: That send was for Test MasterCoins. Here is the follow-up transaction sending 1.00000000 REAL MasterCoins to the same person: http://blockchain.info/tx/9e0b6bb921ff60de42125bd75c80ba68ceab3c649882fbd15d6f5190ecda0737


This is super-exciting to me, and I think it is historic on the same level as the first bitcoin transaction between Satoshi and Hal Finney (who are the same person, IMHO, but that is way off topic).

What is your expectation for "release" of the wallet and opening of transaction for those who have sent BTC to the exodus address?

[vokain]

^

is that mastercoin in binary?

although, I would like a logo, professional but alludes to the biblical book of exodus some how. IMO, those designs are a bit too sterile for my personal liking. Regardless, they look cool!

Yep! It says Mastercoin. The black and white makes them look really harsh. But I'll think about exodus and see if I can come up with anything. That's an interesting angle.

Wow! That is awesome! For some reason the ones that look like radiation symbols appeal to me. I think maybe it is because I have always viewed this idea as potentially very destructive to existing money systems, like an atomic bomb.

We haven't actually set a bounty amount for this logo yet, so we probably should! Anybody know what what bitcoin projects are paying for logos these days?

Thanks! Here are a couple more added to the b/w sketches. I tried to go for an abstract representation of the parting of the red sea (exodus). Definitely not explicitly that because i tried to design it into an "M", but hopefully you can see it.  




Whichever one is chosen, I'll provide vector/png formats for them and release them as open source. As far as what logos seem to be going for, I'm happy with whatever donations people would like to offer. Logos range in price so I don't really have a specific number, but typically it's between 1-2 btc.   Obviously I'd love to have access to some mastercoins so that would be great too, except I would have to download the client onto my desktop, right?

i love them! the pyramid ones are great too. can i send you .1btc as appreciation?

[moltenmich]

i love them! the pyramid ones are great too. can i send you .1btc as appreciation?

I always appreciate tips! my address is in my sig. Thank you, sir.

[edit] also, while i'm posting something might as well point out this unicode looks really cool. Ѫ
I know, gettin' waaaaay ahead of everything. Just sayin' [edit]

[bitcool]

Sorry for the ignorance, but can someone tell me what's  the main difference between the capability of Mastercoins and Colored Coins?

I.E. what Mastercoins can do while the Coloredcoins can't, or vice versa.

[CryptoBeggar]

Thank you very much for the transaction.

I was about to ask for a more detailed description, but I realized it's already here 

[killerstorm]

Sorry for the ignorance, but can someone tell me what's  the main difference between the capability of Mastercoins and Colored Coins?

I.E. what Mastercoins can do while the Coloredcoins can't, or vice versa.

Colored coins allow one to create tokens which represent ownership of something, like shares, bonds, currencies, derivatives etc. Basically, whatever you want to have tradeable.

Then there is a way to trade them in a secure fashion, which opens up a possibility of decentralized, peer-to-peer trade.

There will be probably some features which are useful for stocks and bonds: paying dividends, motions, etc.

One can implement futures and prediction markets using colored coins, but there are no features specifically for that, it is up to issuer to guarantee proper settlement.

There are also some advanced features which can be used to implement currencies with demurrage, built-in taxation, etc, but it is largely theoretic now.

And that's pretty much it. MasterCoin features which require non-local interactions (i.e. transaction affects state of objects not linked to it) are not possible within colored coin model. This includes things special savings addresses, bets, and stabilized user currencies.

(Note that you might be able to implement features like that via advanced features of Bitcoin (multi-signature scripts, contracts) unrelated to colored coins. )

So, to summarize, with colored coins we deliberately avoid features which require non-local interactions. This makes things simpler.

Colored coin transactions are Bitcoin transaction, and they behave in exactly the same way. You wait confirmations in the same way as you do with normal Bitcoin payments. They are not sensitive to ordering. Double-spending is prevented by Bitcoin nodes.

This means that in comparison to MasterCoin, colored coins are:

• simpler and more reliable: colored coin kernel function is just ~15 lines of code, we only need to code review it to make sure that it works properly
• has well-understood properties which are based on Bitcoin properties: no need to wait a lot of confirmations to guarantee that transfer happened
• client needs to scan transaction history of one specific color to be able to receive it. This allows secure thin clients similar to SPV Bitcoin clients (although potentially such clients need to download much more data than Bitcoin thin clients). In contrast, to be able to work with MasterCoin you need to scan the whole Bitcoin blockchain, so thin clients will have to trust some server
• colored coins do not liter Bitcoin blockchain with unspendable UTXOs: all UTXOs which are used to represent colored coins are spendable and can (and should!) be eventually reclaimed

However, lack of non-local interactions means that we need more facilities outside of blockchain, i.e. decentralized trading requires separate communication and policies. (On the bright side, we do not liter the blockchain with offers and such, only with complete transactions.)

I also expect that off-chain trading will be used together with colored coins: i.e. trading will happen within a centralized service of some sort (potentially, Open Transactions) and colored coin transaction will be used only to settle the balance periodically.

It can be more-or-less secure as it is possible to use Bitcoin features such as multi-signature scripts and contracts together with colored coins.

Oh, and you cannot invest into colored coins in general: it is open source software, not a currency. You might be able to invest into a company which develops colored coin software, though.

HTH

[killerstorm]

And, by the way, it's worth noting that we were aware of MasterCoin when we were designing colored coins. (Quite possible it was an inspiration, but I'm not sure.)

I've considered both proposals about a year ago, and found that colored coins are much simpler, and thus it is easier to make a robust, mature implementations.

Then we deliberately designed colored coins in such a way that it would be possible to make efficient, thin clients which won't need to scan whole chain.

Situation is still worse than with Bitcoin SPV thin clients (which need very little data to operate), but there is some room for optimization and trade-off...

Otherwise, making it similar to Bitcoin SPV would require support on protocol layer. I.e. an alt-coin with explicit colored coin support.

[bitcool]

And, by the way, it's worth noting that we were aware of MasterCoin when we were designing colored coins. (Quite possible it was an inspiration, but I'm not sure.)

I've considered both proposals about a year ago, and found that colored coins are much simpler, and thus it is easier to make a robust, mature implementations.

Then we deliberately designed colored coins in such a way that it would be possible to make efficient, thin clients which won't need to scan whole chain.

Situation is still worse than with Bitcoin SPV thin clients (which need very little data to operate), but there is some room for optimization and trade-off...

Otherwise, making it similar to Bitcoin SPV would require support on protocol layer. I.e. an alt-coin with explicit colored coin support.

Thank you! much appreciated.

I LOVE simplicity 

[shakezula]

I must say that I am very intrigued by this idea. I have long since come to the conclusion that the alts have been over-run and many won't survive. BTC will though, and its because of the blockchain and its usefulness that its only getting started. I have initiated a .5BTC transaction through the Exodus address and can't wait to see where this goes!

407e0a6ae2986693c8e5d35b2e47f973af35239fc53e8561137ee5f320195682

[krusin]

What the heck, it's only money. I'm in.

37992e445c33dd74a1e4e00dabb6a66f16a5d39977a1f5fd1a6c0154e884eee2

[bitcool]

What the heck, it's all about money, better kinds of money.

I am in, not greedy, just to get my feet wet. 

6769187272ebe0fae45b8c0617fead121072e3447753fa1afa47c47d5f478cd0

[Rampion]

Funds can be sent to the Exodus address till the end of August – right?

[vokain]

^Right, as per the white paper's subheading "The Exodus Address"