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

[dacoinminster]

I just noticed this question on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1o5cfb/investments_similar_to_bitcoin/

What other odd, lucrative, volatile, and outside the box investments are out there that are similar to bitcoin? Not necessarily just crypto currency either. Just curious.

Of course I went to suggest MasterCoin in the comments, except I found that TWO other comments beat me to the punch.

That suggests to me that we don't need to do ANY marketing. People know about us. We just need to execute on our plan!

[ripper234]

The talent we have attracted has far exceeded my expectations, and the progress they are making is way more than I had hoped for. I'm not looking for new talent at all (although more are welcome to join if they are interested in participating).

I figured it would take us maybe three or four months to get as far as we have gotten in one month. I couldn't be happier. Our guys are absolutely rocking this project, and I think everyone invested in MasterCoin should be glad we have them.

+1000 MSC

[ripper234]

Although one thing that I am missing is a weekly update thread by Willet.

There's so much going on, and so I think that summarizing last week's progress in a short post that only Willet can update to would be terrific for communications.

[vokain]

The talent we have attracted has far exceeded my expectations, and the progress they are making is way more than I had hoped for. I'm not looking for new talent at all (although more are welcome to join if they are interested in participating).

I figured it would take us maybe three or four months to get as far as we have gotten in one month. I couldn't be happier. Our guys are absolutely rocking this project, and I think everyone invested in MasterCoin should be glad we have them.

So there is now no intention to seek a full time developer to lead this project?

The right developer will find us if it's needed. As for now, I don't see anyone better qualified than J.R. yet to lead. Development has been very organic and liquid thus far.

[ripper234]

Look at this interesting find - someone is trying to implement the Saving Address feature of Mastercoin directly on the Bitcoin blockchain (perhaps with another side chain).

FYI, I created a wiki entry that describes the Saving Address feature, categorized under the new Features category. Feel free to create entries to describe other Mastercoin features if you want (including feature requests).

[Luckybit]

The talent we have attracted has far exceeded my expectations, and the progress they are making is way more than I had hoped for. I'm not looking for new talent at all (although more are welcome to join if they are interested in participating).

I figured it would take us maybe three or four months to get as far as we have gotten in one month. I couldn't be happier. Our guys are absolutely rocking this project, and I think everyone invested in MasterCoin should be glad we have them.

Why not go to ODesk and announce it there? Plenty of unemployed talented programmers who would be interested.

[Luckybit]

Why not go to ODesk and announce it there? Plenty of unemployed talented programmers who would be interested.

Yeah, no.
Especially for something novel like that.

Why don't you try? How do you know before you try?
On the other hand if you think Mastercoin has enough talent then yeah why bother.

[HammerFist]

Perhaps J.R willet should be speaking to universities and announcing the competition  within computer science graduates

Ding, ding, ding - Winner!  This is correct.  This is awesome.  JR, please send bitwhizz one bitcoin.  Anyone else with brilliant ideas about how to grab some excellent talent outside bitcointalk - please stand up.

Because I have seen the result of jobs done through oDesk and similar websites. And even then, it was for very generic stuff.

You personally had some bad experience with oDesk so you think all oDesk is without talent?  What a dick.  I am here to say the opposite.  I hired a guy from Hungry via oDesk and he killed the task as if it were nothing.  It was in fact a pretty complex regular expressions task with more than three levels of 'if' 'then' conditionals to get to the correct result.  Not easy.  oDesk isn't entirely garbage.  But since mr. pankake doesn't have skills to find good hires - he reckons everyone on oDesk is garbage.  I like the original suggestion.

That suggests to me that we don't need to do ANY marketing. People know about us. We just need to execute on our plan!

JR - don't listen to anyone (apparently you already understand this).  Just go with your ideas as they are producing exceptional results.  Even Peter - who is well qualified - simply can't see the big picture.  Keep up the great work.

[dacoinminster]

Deleted some flames. Sorry guys - please take it offline.

[dacoinminster]

Although one thing that I am missing is a weekly update thread by Willet.

There's so much going on, and so I think that summarizing last week's progress in a short post that only Willet can update to would be terrific for communications.

I agree a weekly update would be nice. I just haven't been able to make time for it yet. This would be an interesting way for someone to contribute though (starting a thread, and summarizing events in the MasterCoin world once a week).

My dad follows www.reddit.com/r/mastercoin to keep up with things. That's another option for people overwhelmed by the volume of posts on this thread.

[klee]

Deleted some flames. Sorry guys - please take it offline.

What is wrong with this project? It keeps making people infuriated lol
Apologies for my bad behavior previously dacoin, you have the talent to wake up deep emotions with Master of coins! 

[puck2]

Deleted some flames. Sorry guys - please take it offline.

What is wrong with this project? It keeps making people infuriated lol
Apologies for my bad behavior previously dacoin, you have the talent to wake up deep emotions with Master of coins! 

I can't figure out why we need Mastercoins that we have to buy when we have colored coins for free built over the Bitcoin protocol. Couldn't Mastercoins just be one of the colored coins at some point?

[killerstorm]

I can't figure out why we need Mastercoins that we have to buy when we have colored coins for free built over the Bitcoin protocol. Couldn't Mastercoins just be one of the colored coins at some point?

No, Mastercoin has features which cannot be implemented with colored coins.

Basically, colored coins takes conservative approach, while Mastercoin is more feature rich (and for this reason will end up with finicky implementation, IMHO).

[HammerFist]

While I am absolutely against marketing per se, some have raised the notion of an introductory video.  I've got to admit, this video for colored coins is excellent.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmFjmvwPGKU  It might be worthwhile if our website had a similar intro.  I am sure you guys who make fancy logos all day can figure out how to download Sony Vegas Pro and get to work.  Anyone?  I'll personally kick down a bit coin for anyone who initiates that which turns out to be a very cool video like the one in the link.  Maybe 10 or 20 others will do the same for a little side bounty action.

[ripper234]

Perhaps J.R willet should be speaking to universities and announcing the competition  within computer science graduates

Ding, ding, ding - Winner!  This is correct.  This is awesome.  JR, please send bitwhizz one bitcoin.  Anyone else with brilliant ideas about how to grab some excellent talent outside bitcointalk - please stand up.

This is actually a really smart idea.

There are a few dedicated Bitcoin groups in various universities (don't remember off the top of my head). Some of them might be want to participate in this kind of project. It's worth spending an hour contacting these groups and seeing if they'll bite.

Although one thing that I am missing is a weekly update thread by Willet.

There's so much going on, and so I think that summarizing last week's progress in a short post that only Willet can update to would be terrific for communications.

I agree a weekly update would be nice. I just haven't been able to make time for it yet. This would be an interesting way for someone to contribute though (starting a thread, and summarizing events in the MasterCoin world once a week).

My dad follows www.reddit.com/r/mastercoin to keep up with things. That's another option for people overwhelmed by the volume of posts on this thread.

Good point, I don't have time for it either.
I think we should recruit an communications officer.
If anyone is interested, please see this thread.

[prophetx]

Yup! Future contests will be feature-driven. Basically, once we reach a milestone, the project will pay anybody who helped us get there, in proportion to the size of their contribution. As before there will be a big focus on collaboration, and probably an explicit code review requirement in the acceptance criteria.

We've got to get the distributed exchange working before smart property will make sense though.

I think we have to start working on the smart property feature right now. Share issuers are running out of alternatives and are in need of a new and robust system.

Here's what I'd suggest:
- Start a new posting to collect ideas and get more people involved in smart property.
- Contact share issuers and ask them if they would be interested in this (one or two of the bigger ones could bring huge momentum). Then start working with them and build a system that fills their needs.

I know we should not jump the gun on this, but I really think that time is of essence here.

I am working on a voice of customer survey here for this exact issue, if you care to contribute I have already populated about 10 questions relevant to trading.  i have a paper due this week but I can try to get this out to people by next weekend so developers have some market needs and wants data to go on.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MIIQCdFV_TutvsL3UqIUHVOrjdrEWlK9vI_XgTZcQmM/edit

[ripper234]

I am working on a voice of customer survey here for this exact issue, if you care to contribute I have already populated about 10 questions relevant to trading.  i have a paper due this week but I can try to get this out to people by next weekend so developers have some market needs and wants data to go on.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MIIQCdFV_TutvsL3UqIUHVOrjdrEWlK9vI_XgTZcQmM/edit

You gave us the edit link, anyone can now edit your survey and not just submit results...

[ripper234]

Everyone, please check out this thread about a new core meta-feature I want to include in Mastercoin - voting on changes.

The Mastercoin protocol will continue to evolve, and currently there is no clear way to evolve the protocol in a decentralized manner. I think it's essential that nobody, including client developers and members of the Mastercoin Foundation, have any kind of control over the protocol. Its users should vote on any desired protocol change using a Proof Of Stake like system.

[prophetx]

Ah, with namespace I was actually talking about the amount of user based currencies that could exist until the unique identifiers run out. If the creation is free you can just spam creations until you fill up the 4-bytes that are reserved for identifiers.

Ah. Using up all 4 billion identifiers would require 4 billion transactions and would cost hundreds of millions of dollars at today's prices, even with no extra fee attached. That's the sort of attack that only a government could contemplate. If we also destroy 0.0002 MasterCoins every time a currency is created, we'll run out of MasterCoins before we run out of currency IDs

I guess that would be a good minimum fee, since it guarantees we'll never run out!

what happens to the value of properties when there are no coins? I think you all need to think this through a bit more. you're setting an artificial non-market based price by doing this, and it could result in unintended consequences.

[prophetx]

I am working on a voice of customer survey here for this exact issue, if you care to contribute I have already populated about 10 questions relevant to trading.  i have a paper due this week but I can try to get this out to people by next weekend so developers have some market needs and wants data to go on.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MIIQCdFV_TutvsL3UqIUHVOrjdrEWlK9vI_XgTZcQmM/edit

You gave us the edit link, anyone can now edit your survey and not just submit results...

yes that's the point.  

i want to get as much feedback as possible, then before i spend any of my time asking people to fill out the survey, i will narrow it down to take out redundancy, etc.

if someone else wants to take the survey and us it is fine by me - the hard part is not making the survey but getting all the data and analyzing it.