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

[Tachikoma]

Isn't the fact that the OP holds roughly 30% of the Mastercoins in circulation a big concern? His course of action (holding or selling) will drive market price.

One more question: will the bounties for the developers be denominated in BTC or Mastercoins? I think it would be cool to give Mastercoins to spread them in more hands while helping broader adoption.

It will be hard to figure out the value of a Mastercoin before sufficient software has been written to enable users to easily trade them. Especially if the bounties are meant to encourage people to build/implement just that.

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[Meni Rosenfeld]

Isn't the fact that the OP holds roughly 30% of the Mastercoins in circulation a big concern? His course of action (holding or selling) will drive market price.

True. It's like a MASSIVE premine. No altcoin would survive if 30% of ALL coins were premined.

It's not really a premine since JR didn't get the mastercoins for free, he got them because he invested 30% of the funds used to develop the project.

The fact that he is in full control of the Exodus address does complicate things.

And if anything, the fact that the issuing was done over a period of 1 month can be called a premine.

[superfluouso]

Yeah, I don't see this as premine either.  JR put in his investment very early in the month to maximize his take of bonus mastercoins.  However, this left the rest of the month for anyone to contribute and buy coins.  Technically, had enough purchased coins, his percentage could have also ended up as 1%.  Either way, nothing I've come across about JR and his viewpoints screams "nefarious". If this coin develops and performs as intended, not just mastercoin but also bitcoin stands to gain considerably.  Don't let this be a distraction from the other issues, like whether or not the escrows will function properly.

[Ola]

 

(I think) I've fixed the reported problems when calculating coins bought with multiple inputs and updated the url to the easier to remember http://mastercoin-explorer.com/.

The next feature I will add is a (webbased) Mastercoin Advisor clone so everybody has easy access to it.

you are awesome Tachikoma such altruistic spirit!! I would back any useful project you are trying to develop

[Rampion]

Yeah, I don't see this as premine either.  JR put in his investment very early in the month to maximize his take of bonus mastercoins.  However, this left the rest of the month for anyone to contribute and buy coins.  Technically, had enough purchased coins, his percentage could have also ended up as 1%.  Either way, nothing I've come across about JR and his viewpoints screams "nefarious". If this coin develops and performs as intended, not just mastercoin but also bitcoin stands to gain considerably.  Don't let this be a distraction from the other issues, like whether or not the escrows will function properly.

Nefarious or not, it remains a fact that JR holdings are so big that he "owns" the market. What he does with his 30% share of the market will deeply affect price.

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

He work on it for almost 2 years.
You don't hurt your baby

[Tachikoma]

I think as soon as the foundation exists a multi-sig address will be created so nobody has the power to spend the coins without consent of the other members. 

[maxmint]

I just bought a decent amount of Mastercoins from someone and noticed that it's really hard to check how many MSC an address actually contains. I know about http://mastercoin-explorer.com/, but this will only work for addresses that got coins directly from the Exodus address. If someone sends Mastercoins to a new address, then it won't work.

We really need a simple way to check how many Mastercoins there are on a specific address or buying / selling won't really take off.

Tachikoma, you think you can implement this?

[Tachikoma]

Tachikoma, you think you can implement this?

It's on the todo-list. The main problem is that this is actually very hard to figure out because there are different cases to account for.

If you want to check the balance of your account and you did not buy from the Exodus address I first need to backtrace the transactions to your address. I need to make sure that address _did_ buy from the Exodus address and that at the time he did the transaction to your address he actually held enough Mastercoins for the transaction. This is not an easy feat when you consider the tons of data that are in the bitcoin blockchain and the fact that ever Mastercoin transaction is pretty much virtual and might not or might have happened based on how a client implements these cases.

I think the foundation needs to set up some test vectors to make sure every implementation of the protocol works exactly the same or else you might have 100 Mastercoins using one client and zero using an other. 

[dacoinminster]

Tachikoma, you think you can implement this?

It's on the todo-list. The main problem is that this is actually very hard to figure out because there are different cases to account for.

If you want to check the balance of your account and you did not buy from the Exodus address I first need to backtrace the transactions to your address. I need to make sure that address _did_ buy from the Exodus address and that at the time he did the transaction to your address he actually held enough Mastercoins for the transaction. This is not an easy feat when you consider the tons of data that are in the bitcoin blockchain and the fact that ever Mastercoin transaction is pretty much virtual and might not or might have happened based on how a client implements these cases.

I think the foundation needs to set up some test vectors to make sure every implementation of the protocol works exactly the same or else you might have 100 Mastercoins using one client and zero using an other. 

Parsing the block chain for MasterCoin transactions and tracing their ownership though various protocol events is easily the hardest piece of work. Hopefully it helps that all MasterCoin addresses "mention" the exodus address with a tiny output - that should make them significantly easier to find

Also, I'm holding my MasterCoins as a long-term investment. I might have to diversify someday, but you need not worry about me dumping MasterCoins onto the market any time soon.  I've gotten several PMs asking me to sell them some of my personal stash (because people trust me to get the details of the send right), but I've been sending those folks to the buyer/seller thread.

If I take an action which impacts the market, it will probably be an upward impact. The MasterCoin Foundation needs some MasterCoins (to use for bounties when people would rather have MasterCoins than bitcoins), so we may use some project funds to purchase MasterCoins on the open market at some point

[dacoinminster]

When is the coding contest starts?
My domain masterblockchain.info is now ready, I need motivation to start coding.

Need to iron out the specifics. Hopefully within a few days.

[killerstorm]

If you want to check the balance of your account and you did not buy from the Exodus address I first need to backtrace the transactions to your address. I need to make sure that address _did_ buy from the Exodus address and that at the time he did the transaction to your address he actually held enough Mastercoins for the transaction. This is not an easy feat when you consider the tons of data that are in the bitcoin blockchain and the fact that ever Mastercoin transaction is pretty much virtual and might not or might have happened based on how a client implements these cases.

I believe the only viable approach is to parse blokchain sequentially up from the first block which includes a mastercoin-relevant data, and to maintain state in a database of sorts, which notes how much each address holds now, etc.

Going from another end, i.e. backward scan, is pretty much impossible. While forward scan is almost trivial.

"Almost" because existing tools, like ABE and blockparse, are optimized for scanning whole blockchain rather than a part of it. But it's possible to deal with it by "throwing hardware at the problem". (Or another approach is to modify tools, or use ones which are better.)

[grishnakh]

Is there a mastercoin irc channel?
Curious about how this project will evolve btw.

[Rampion]

Tachikoma, you think you can implement this?

It's on the todo-list. The main problem is that this is actually very hard to figure out because there are different cases to account for.

If you want to check the balance of your account and you did not buy from the Exodus address I first need to backtrace the transactions to your address. I need to make sure that address _did_ buy from the Exodus address and that at the time he did the transaction to your address he actually held enough Mastercoins for the transaction. This is not an easy feat when you consider the tons of data that are in the bitcoin blockchain and the fact that ever Mastercoin transaction is pretty much virtual and might not or might have happened based on how a client implements these cases.

I think the foundation needs to set up some test vectors to make sure every implementation of the protocol works exactly the same or else you might have 100 Mastercoins using one client and zero using an other.  

Parsing the block chain for MasterCoin transactions and tracing their ownership though various protocol events is easily the hardest piece of work. Hopefully it helps that all MasterCoin addresses "mention" the exodus address with a tiny output - that should make them significantly easier to find

Also, I'm holding my MasterCoins as a long-term investment. I might have to diversify someday, but you need not worry about me dumping MasterCoins onto the market any time soon.  I've gotten several PMs asking me to sell them some of my personal stash (because people trust me to get the details of the send right), but I've been sending those folks to the buyer/seller thread.

If I take an action which impacts the market, it will probably be an upward impact. The MasterCoin Foundation needs some MasterCoins (to use for bounties when people would rather have MasterCoins than bitcoins), so we may use some project funds to purchase MasterCoins on the open market at some point

I do not doubt of your good will and honesty, that's why I invested in your project. I understand what you say regarding an "upward impact" - the fact Satoshi is holding tight to each and every coin of his +1M stash is for sure one of the reasons Bitcoin has historically only gone up. In fact, I can tell you that discovering "the founder" didn't move a single coin from his stash, even during rallies and bubbles, was some of the things that fascinated me when I first learnt about Bitcoin.

On the contrary, I always believed that the day in which those "first mined" coins start to move, there will be a lot of panic and dumping going on, unless the transfers and movements are minimal. If large amounts of Satoshi's coins suddenly move, it will probably not be a good sign at all. I always thought that if he had sold his coins during the 2011 bubble, probably the "this is a ponzi" crowd (Nagle et all) would have had much more credit among the community and the world in general.

What I mean with the above is that by holding such an insane share of Mastercoins, you have a very big responsibility. I guess Satoshi understood that and decided to just hold. The project might be open source, other devs might make it huge, but still the fact remains that one single person (you) holds 30% of the total coins in circulation (which BTW in proportion is much more than Satoshi's holdings in relation to the total BTC supply). That's "total power" and "total control" for one single person, and an honest concern for every new investor.

I trust you, but to be honest when I've been asked about Mastercoins, among the few drawbacks I included "one single person holds 30% of them". I will keep saying that to whoever asks me an opinion about the project - not because I do not trust you, just because it is a hard cold fact.

[TomHirsch]

True. It's like a MASSIVE premine. No altcoin would survive if 30% of ALL coins were premined.

Are you smoking drugs again?  J.R. paid for his shares same as you and I.  He threw $120,000 at the project and you call him a bum.  They ought to take you coins away from you and give them to the first person who hacks your computer and changes your desktop color to pink.  Numbnuts.

[Rampion]

True. It's like a MASSIVE premine. No altcoin would survive if 30% of ALL coins were premined.

Are you smoking drugs again?  J.R. paid for his shares same as you and I.  He threw $120,000 at the project and you call him a bum.  They ought to take you coins away from you and give them to the first person who hacks your computer and changes your desktop color to pink.  Numbnuts.

As far as I know the exodus address is controlled exclusively by J.R., so he sent $120,000 in BTC to an address he controls. Funds are supposed to be used for bounties and project development, but again the hard cold fact is that those funds are "in his pocket", at least at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I repeat again that I invested in Mastercoin and I trust J.R., but someone needs to play devil's advocate.

[dacoinminster]

Hey J.R.

What about using a service/tool like https://www.coinfunder.com/bounty for the coding contest?

btw, we should open a new forum thread for developers and leave this one for general Mastercoin discussion.
Manuel

That's a pretty slick site. I'm guessing we won't use it though since we would presumably need them to hold the money. (Not that I think they are untrustworthy, but accidents happen and people get hacked all the time)

[maxmint]

Tachikoma, you think you can implement this?

It's on the todo-list. The main problem is that this is actually very hard to figure out because there are different cases to account for.

If you want to check the balance of your account and you did not buy from the Exodus address I first need to backtrace the transactions to your address. I need to make sure that address _did_ buy from the Exodus address and that at the time he did the transaction to your address he actually held enough Mastercoins for the transaction. This is not an easy feat when you consider the tons of data that are in the bitcoin blockchain and the fact that ever Mastercoin transaction is pretty much virtual and might not or might have happened based on how a client implements these cases.

I think the foundation needs to set up some test vectors to make sure every implementation of the protocol works exactly the same or else you might have 100 Mastercoins using one client and zero using an other. 

I see, seems like there is no easy way yet to check the balance of an address.

I just sent a properly formatted Mastercoin transaction from an address that has no Mastercoin balance. Still, the site shows that Mastercoins were transferred:
http://mastercoin-explorer.com/transactions/3d76acd8fc18d2f6e23af9a222da1c1e527cbf3faa1943c5f2571be7c3066e0b

I don't wanna criticize your site (it's great!), just wanted to let others know that something like this is no real proof of Mastercoin transfer.
I guess in these early stages we have to manually check the blockchain to make sure a Mastercoin transfer was successful.

[Tachikoma]

I see, seems like there is no easy way yet to check the balance of an address.

I just sent a properly formatted Mastercoin transaction from an address that has no Mastercoin balance. Still, the site shows that Mastercoins were transferred:
http://mastercoin-explorer.com/transactions/3d76acd8fc18d2f6e23af9a222da1c1e527cbf3faa1943c5f2571be7c3066e0b

I don't wanna criticize your site (it's great!), just wanted to let others know that something like this is no real proof of Mastercoin transfer.
I guess in these early stages we have to manually check the blockchain to make sure a Mastercoin transfer was successful.

Yeah all it does is decode the transaction itself; it does not validate in any way if the coins are actually on that address at the time of the transaction. I will add a specific disclaimer to the transaction result page to make sure people understand that.

[grazcoin]

Before we start any coding, we should verify that we all understand the spec in the same way.

The first point to check is the amount of mastercoins bought before 1.9.2013.

My calculation is available on:
http://pastebin.com/HiPVUxzT
where you can see on each line:

• the block on which the tx was confirmed
• txid
• amount of satoshis
• amount of mastercoins (+ the calculated 10% bonus per week)
• the amount of seconds the tx was sent before 1.9.2013

Things to note:

• Timestamp taken for the tx is the timestamp of the corresponding block.
  
  • There isn't anything like tx timestamp in the tx structure inside the blockchain (see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transactions)
  • The "Received Time" which can be seen in blockchain.info is some internal data that blockchain.info keep (which could be easily modified - non trusted).
  • That blockchain.info "Received Time" value is specific to the node of blockchain.info
  • This means that the following tx are *NOT* mastercoin purchases (although they have "Received Time" before 1.9.2013):
    
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/a37c9271ce64b9ec4ac147990a24c296747251d09d8da0e27c6a214fbad08421
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/eb78c2f3c3b69ef239e9eb9a962109c50f7248d876e985991f632c317f241db5
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/23bfafb474e21356fa7f7fe302b5301accde1fb714f0bc34d1f015d16a20c3f2
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/da621a2bd48c2bccb536741a5eb94426e191519e1875ccf42b18354130272ae7
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/025692e2b535a667e9ce27e783ec19f0b6031038415c7dc7bd218cd6b7c6b296
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/16c96d2871a941e54a10892b7e0a0dc40e636e780438c7d6dd045b5f029a8a33
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/8fba8cfebc75b3ce4d6453e32ce802238e357983e36078223efe8a3ec99afaac
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/fedcb2c01555b284c96326f3ec28007e550e9b3bf68437a4f1e011c9a7c25a19
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/b111ac1df8fef7c1c0c8699898e850b539cd5062950991788670d6fc3f2baadd
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/4cd397682dab60f00adb4e88d8a51b3d687352ed52fa9b0d7d13b82b6eebc1f7
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/ee7eaada2fd5346662750ae452b5b36bf358978087a6bdb2f544055cb02db34a
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/827a7818976cc3114f6b157a054cb3be663aaf59dc8afea75a3d9b629d122611
    • https://blockchain.info/tx/935dfdcb31237ab4435877f2c6d28dd3906974753b0072c6921fa30c8239e4f3

• Since mastercoins tx includes a payment to the 1EXoDus address, all the mastercoin tx before 1.9.2013 are also mastercoin purchases. It is possible to decide to ignore those purchases, but the way I see it - it would be already a modification of the spec. Example of such tx:
  
  • https://blockchain.info/tx/63c7eb7032645344a362bf729fb05217156d6d5d7e610e4e1953485dd1892d1c