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

[vokain]

Congrats with the reason article. It seems like they interviewed the best of the best.

What article? Link?

 http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/20/the-top-3-things-i-learned-at-the-bitcoi

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[Tachikoma]

Edit 2: Fixed deployed! Could you verify everything is as expected now? Also congrats on being the first non-dev to make an actual purchase

Wow, that was fixed fast! And yes, everythings looks good now and behaves as expected.

I think we need to move this kind of discussion to a testing specific thread as I'm sure there will be much more and posting here might be to distracting.

You don't have to post on the coding contest thread if you don't want to, but I know the devs appreciate seeing stuff like this separated out from the general discussion.

Yes, you're right – I'll keep the main thread clean from bug reports.

Hey Maxmint just a quick follow up since I don't think you read the development thread (often). Zathras pointed out that the actual Bitcoin payment also needs an output to Exodus. This means yesterday's trade is not actually valid. Just so you know why you might be down 1 test coin later today

[Luckybit]

What are the rules for testing? I'd like to take part in that contest.

Well, you help out however you can, making sure to post what you are doing publicly. Then at the end of the contest, you summarize everything you did, and we split up the money among contestants based on the opinions of myself and the other contestants and devs about how valuable each person's work was to the project. More valuable = more money. It is subjective though, and payout is highly dependent on how many other people are helping out and how much they are doing.

I've never seen anybody else do bounties this way, but it seemed to work pretty well for the last one we did.

I think we might need a to-do list. Then I'll select something I can do from the list.
If it's sending test transactions maybe I can do that when there are clearer rules and instructions on how to make decentralized transactions.

[Tachikoma]

What are the rules for testing? I'd like to take part in that contest.

Well, you help out however you can, making sure to post what you are doing publicly. Then at the end of the contest, you summarize everything you did, and we split up the money among contestants based on the opinions of myself and the other contestants and devs about how valuable each person's work was to the project. More valuable = more money. It is subjective though, and payout is highly dependent on how many other people are helping out and how much they are doing.

I've never seen anybody else do bounties this way, but it seemed to work pretty well for the last one we did.

I think we might need a to-do list. Then I'll select something I can do from the list.
If it's sending test transactions maybe I can do that when there are clearer rules and instructions on how to make decentralized transactions.

I hope to provide a test plan for people who are on Linux/OS x and who want to test my Wallet software. It will run on Windows but it's a bit harder to make it work. I will provide instructions when my next build is ready.

[prophetx]

Here is the latest blog update.  Also I have a link to a tutorial to test MSC-BTC transactions but I think I am having some issues, if someone want to check it out, perhaps I misread something.


Programming, Testing and More Testing of Mastercoin

News for week 44.2013.

There is a lot of excitement building up around Mastercoin and some important milestones have been set since last week’s blog.  But we have a lot of hard work cut out for us.  The developers are working hard on the next code contest and always looking for more folks to join the effort. Take some of your  spare time to check out the tutorial (see bottom) for conducting exchange transactions.

We now finally have a price graph of the MSC/BTC trades that have occurred, the Board has decided to engage a PR firm, we have a new addition to the Mastercoin repo’s on Github, there is a bounty open for building an MSC faucet, and a new proposal for enabling the limiting of spending of MSC on addressed that have been identified to have this feature enabled.  And if you are interested in the current economic distribution of Mastercoins here are the Top 50 MSC wallets....


http://blog.mastercoin.org/2013/11/02/programming-testing-and-more-testing/


Tutorial: Test MSC – BTC Distributed Exchange Transactions

http://blog.mastercoin.org/2013/11/02/tutorial-test-msc-btc-distributed-exchange-transactions/

[Tachikoma]

Here is the latest blog update.  Also I have a link to a tutorial to test MSC-BTC transactions but I think I am having some issues, if someone want to check it out, perhaps I misread something.


Programming, Testing and More Testing of Mastercoin

News for week 44.2013.

There is a lot of excitement building up around Mastercoin and some important milestones have been set since last week’s blog.  But we have a lot of hard work cut out for us.  The developers are working hard on the next code contest and always looking for more folks to join the effort. Take some of your  spare time to check out the tutorial (see bottom) for conducting exchange transactions.

We now finally have a price graph of the MSC/BTC trades that have occurred, the Board has decided to engage a PR firm, we have a new addition to the Mastercoin repo’s on Github, there is a bounty open for building an MSC faucet, and a new proposal for enabling the limiting of spending of MSC on addressed that have been identified to have this feature enabled.  And if you are interested in the current economic distribution of Mastercoins here are the Top 50 MSC wallets....


http://blog.mastercoin.org/2013/11/02/programming-testing-and-more-testing/


Tutorial: Test MSC – BTC Distributed Exchange Transactions

http://blog.mastercoin.org/2013/11/02/tutorial-test-msc-btc-distributed-exchange-transactions/

Already answered in the development topic.

[maxmint]

Hey Maxmint just a quick follow up since I don't think you read the development thread (often). Zathras pointed out that the actual Bitcoin payment also needs an output to Exodus. This means yesterday's trade is not actually valid. Just so you know why you might be down 1 test coin later today

Thanks for the note, I'll make another transaction later. Also, I'm closely following the dev thread now

[bitsample]

At the moment what's the best way to decode MasterCoin transactions?  Is there any open source code we can read through?  Can we read the source for the MasterChest library?  Has anyone had any luck decoding or encoding messages with the pymastercoin?


Thanks!

[bitsample]

errr nevermind.  I think I see it all here in the mastercoin-tools python project.

thanks

[bitsample]

Ok, how about this one...

Has anyone had any luck getting sx to work?  It hangs for me.  (eg. sx balance ...hangs)

[mah87]

mastercoin future is dead

[superfluouso]

Hey Maxmint just a quick follow up since I don't think you read the development thread (often). Zathras pointed out that the actual Bitcoin payment also needs an output to Exodus. This means yesterday's trade is not actually valid. Just so you know why you might be down 1 test coin later today

Thanks for the note, I'll make another transaction later. Also, I'm closely following the dev thread now

FYI maxmint - I went ahead and sent you the 0.1 test msc separately since you did pay me and its good practice for me to put the tools to use..

[maxmint]

Hey Maxmint just a quick follow up since I don't think you read the development thread (often). Zathras pointed out that the actual Bitcoin payment also needs an output to Exodus. This means yesterday's trade is not actually valid. Just so you know why you might be down 1 test coin later today

Thanks for the note, I'll make another transaction later. Also, I'm closely following the dev thread now

FYI maxmint - I went ahead and sent you the 0.1 test msc separately since you did pay me and its good practice for me to put the tools to use..

Thanks superfluouso, very much appreciate that!

I made another purchase offer and this time everything worked fine (I did send to the Exodus address as well this time).
Just a suggestion for the order book at Mastercoin-explorer. What about renaming the column labeled "Mastercoin available" to "Units available"? I was a little confused because it says "Mastercoins available" when I'm in fact buying Test Mastercoins.

[Tachikoma]

Hey Maxmint just a quick follow up since I don't think you read the development thread (often). Zathras pointed out that the actual Bitcoin payment also needs an output to Exodus. This means yesterday's trade is not actually valid. Just so you know why you might be down 1 test coin later today

Thanks for the note, I'll make another transaction later. Also, I'm closely following the dev thread now

FYI maxmint - I went ahead and sent you the 0.1 test msc separately since you did pay me and its good practice for me to put the tools to use..

Thanks superfluouso, very much appreciate that!

I made another purchase offer and this time everything worked fine (I did send to the Exodus address as well this time).
Just a suggestion for the order book at Mastercoin-explorer. What about renaming the column labeled "Mastercoin available" to "Units available"? I was a little confused because it says "Mastercoins available" when I'm in fact buying Test Mastercoins.

Good suggestion. Should be online now.

[nanobit]

what do you think about ripple ? Do you think it's a competitor for mastercoin ?

I think that Ripple is a powerful idea that has been badly mismanaged, and yes, it competes with MSC. Their focus on Peter owes Paul owes Sam owes Jake debt chains causes their true killer features to get lost in the noise. Nobody cares about collapsing debt chains, but distributed exchange is incredibly important. Perhaps they have fixed this marketing snafu (I haven't checked lately).

I also disagree with their XRP distribution model, and I am doubtful about the case for long-term appreciation of that currency. (Trivia: the MasterCoin giveaway thread was funded with MSC purchased with BTC I got for selling XRP I received from an early Ripple giveaway)

Finally, I think their system is way too complex, not sufficiently decentralized, not sufficiently open source (this may have changed since last I looked), and not flexible enough for other cool things people want to do with distributed currencies.

Other than that, I love Ripple.

You should check it again. Totally open-source since a month . I agree they are not good at communicating but their main aim is not bitcoin community but exchange platform like zipzap and future gateways. With more gateways and nodes the ripple network will be  distributed enough to be fair and honest.

New features are coming with "contracts". I don't think it's too complex, it can easily be integrated and someone could use a ripple wallet without even know about it. About flexibility I couldn't really tell I'm not competent enough to say.

XRP distribution model is particular but you don't need xrp to use ripple network (mm ok actually you need less than 1$ to fund a wallet...). About long-term appreciation I think it may appreciate if the network find more gateways and plateforms that use ripple. Otherwise it may also disappear (just like bitcoin or mastercoin actually since there's not real economy backing them).

I've been reading a lot about MSC, and my concern is that communication-wise we're repeating the same mistakes Ripple is blamed for in the quote above. Perhaps the concept is clear to everyone deeply involved, but I'm willing to bet there's heaps of people like me on the forum and Reddit who, even with their best efforts, just can't find a simple explanation about what MSC is, why do we need it and what are the practical, real-life use cases. How do we expect people to get excited about weekly newsletters if these basic things are not explained anywhere? Either MSC can't be explained in a simple way, in which case I'll become even more concerned about its feasibility, or people who truly get it are not trying hard enough to explain what's it about.

As an example, I tried to find a ELI5 for Mastercoin. There's two requests for that I found (here and here). To me neither explains much; they only demonstrate how bad the situation with common-sense introduction material is. If the mindset is that ELI5 request can be answered with a link to the whitepaper (read: technical system specifications) then we really, really need someone on board who understands communication.

It was good to read that a PR company will start working with MSC. Perhaps that will solve this issue in a month or two. In the mean time I would like to hear do you people agree what I say about the lack of ELI5-like material, or haven't I just been able to find it?

[Luckybit]

what do you think about ripple ? Do you think it's a competitor for mastercoin ?

I think that Ripple is a powerful idea that has been badly mismanaged, and yes, it competes with MSC. Their focus on Peter owes Paul owes Sam owes Jake debt chains causes their true killer features to get lost in the noise. Nobody cares about collapsing debt chains, but distributed exchange is incredibly important. Perhaps they have fixed this marketing snafu (I haven't checked lately).

I also disagree with their XRP distribution model, and I am doubtful about the case for long-term appreciation of that currency. (Trivia: the MasterCoin giveaway thread was funded with MSC purchased with BTC I got for selling XRP I received from an early Ripple giveaway)

Finally, I think their system is way too complex, not sufficiently decentralized, not sufficiently open source (this may have changed since last I looked), and not flexible enough for other cool things people want to do with distributed currencies.

Other than that, I love Ripple.

You should check it again. Totally open-source since a month . I agree they are not good at communicating but their main aim is not bitcoin community but exchange platform like zipzap and future gateways. With more gateways and nodes the ripple network will be  distributed enough to be fair and honest.

New features are coming with "contracts". I don't think it's too complex, it can easily be integrated and someone could use a ripple wallet without even know about it. About flexibility I couldn't really tell I'm not competent enough to say.

XRP distribution model is particular but you don't need xrp to use ripple network (mm ok actually you need less than 1$ to fund a wallet...). About long-term appreciation I think it may appreciate if the network find more gateways and plateforms that use ripple. Otherwise it may also disappear (just like bitcoin or mastercoin actually since there's not real economy backing them).

I've been reading a lot about MSC, and my concern is that communication-wise we're repeating the same mistakes Ripple is blamed for in the quote above. Perhaps the concept is clear to everyone deeply involved, but I'm willing to bet there's heaps of people like me on the forum and Reddit who, even with their best efforts, just can't find a simple explanation about what MSC is, why do we need it and what are the practical, real-life use cases. How do we expect people to get excited about weekly newsletters if these basic things are not explained anywhere? Either MSC can't be explained in a simple way, in which case I'll become even more concerned about its feasibility, or people who truly get it are not trying hard enough to explain what's it about.

As an example, I tried to find a ELI5 for Mastercoin. There's two requests for that I found (here and here). To me neither explains much; they only demonstrate how bad the situation with common-sense introduction material is. If the mindset is that ELI5 request can be answered with a link to the whitepaper (read: technical system specifications) then we really, really need someone on board who understands communication.

It was good to read that a PR company will start working with MSC. Perhaps that will solve this issue in a month or two. In the mean time I would like to hear do you people agree what I say about the lack of ELI5-like material, or haven't I just been able to find it?

I have some posts with some thoughts on what a finished Mastercoin protocol could do. Honestly I think we need a series of videos just as there is with Bitcoin. Text can only explain so much.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3429661#msg3429661
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=318610.msg3436731#msg3436731
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3435101#msg3435101

If you don't want to read all those different overly wordy use cases. The main categories of users will be traditional users and issuers.

Traditional use cases:
If you're a traditional user then you'll want to do stuff you already can do but in a decentralized way. Maybe you want to do decentralized betting. Maybe you want to trade Bitcoins for Litecoins on a decentralized exchange built into the Bitcoin blockchain. Maybe you want to buy crypto-equity/stocks or bonds without having to worry about whether or not Burnside will shut the site down.


Issuers:
If you're an issuer then perhaps you're a business owner and you're issuing virtual stocks. If you're an issuer you might offer bonds or somethings similar. Or you might offer your own currency, voucher, credits, backed by your goods and services or backed by another currency.

So for example if you issue a currency you can back it by another issuers currency called goldcoins to back your currency by gold. This allows for redeemable cryptocurrencies and that is a game changer. Currently when people ask what Bitcoin is backed by we have to say it's not backed by anything. New currencies will actually be redeemable and backed by the goods and services of the issuer. This will provide long term stability.

I hope my explanation was of some help but I know it probably does not help. A visual illustration is needed and this will mean videos showing how it all can work.

[Tachikoma]

I've spend the last few days working on updating my Mastercoin-wallet (running on OS X and Unix-like, windows is possible as well) to supported distributed exchange messages and gave it it's own topic. For those who want to help test things this would be a great opportunity.

[Luckybit]

I've spend the last few days working on updating my Mastercoin-wallet (running on OS X and Unix-like, windows is possible as well) to supported distributed exchange messages and gave it it's own topic. For those who want to help test things this would be a great opportunity.

I intend to test it out later today.


By the way you and JR should have a look at this paper: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324106.msg3464105;boardseen#new

It seems highly relevant to Mastercoin. The particular concept which is most interesting in the paper is the concept "confidence chains". There are some good ideas in the paper and maybe some can benefit Mastercoin.

I think it would be a wise if there were some bounty set aside to fund theoretical papers of high quality just for R&D purposes. There are a lot of researchers on Bitcointalk who might be able to contribute to that if not right now at some point in the future.

[prophetx]

what do you think about ripple ? Do you think it's a competitor for mastercoin ?

I think that Ripple is a powerful idea that has been badly mismanaged, and yes, it competes with MSC. Their focus on Peter owes Paul owes Sam owes Jake debt chains causes their true killer features to get lost in the noise. Nobody cares about collapsing debt chains, but distributed exchange is incredibly important. Perhaps they have fixed this marketing snafu (I haven't checked lately).

I also disagree with their XRP distribution model, and I am doubtful about the case for long-term appreciation of that currency. (Trivia: the MasterCoin giveaway thread was funded with MSC purchased with BTC I got for selling XRP I received from an early Ripple giveaway)

Finally, I think their system is way too complex, not sufficiently decentralized, not sufficiently open source (this may have changed since last I looked), and not flexible enough for other cool things people want to do with distributed currencies.

Other than that, I love Ripple.

You should check it again. Totally open-source since a month . I agree they are not good at communicating but their main aim is not bitcoin community but exchange platform like zipzap and future gateways. With more gateways and nodes the ripple network will be  distributed enough to be fair and honest.

New features are coming with "contracts". I don't think it's too complex, it can easily be integrated and someone could use a ripple wallet without even know about it. About flexibility I couldn't really tell I'm not competent enough to say.

XRP distribution model is particular but you don't need xrp to use ripple network (mm ok actually you need less than 1$ to fund a wallet...). About long-term appreciation I think it may appreciate if the network find more gateways and plateforms that use ripple. Otherwise it may also disappear (just like bitcoin or mastercoin actually since there's not real economy backing them).

I've been reading a lot about MSC, and my concern is that communication-wise we're repeating the same mistakes Ripple is blamed for in the quote above. Perhaps the concept is clear to everyone deeply involved, but I'm willing to bet there's heaps of people like me on the forum and Reddit who, even with their best efforts, just can't find a simple explanation about what MSC is, why do we need it and what are the practical, real-life use cases. How do we expect people to get excited about weekly newsletters if these basic things are not explained anywhere? Either MSC can't be explained in a simple way, in which case I'll become even more concerned about its feasibility, or people who truly get it are not trying hard enough to explain what's it about.

As an example, I tried to find a ELI5 for Mastercoin. There's two requests for that I found (here and here). To me neither explains much; they only demonstrate how bad the situation with common-sense introduction material is. If the mindset is that ELI5 request can be answered with a link to the whitepaper (read: technical system specifications) then we really, really need someone on board who understands communication.

It was good to read that a PR company will start working with MSC. Perhaps that will solve this issue in a month or two. In the mean time I would like to hear do you people agree what I say about the lack of ELI5-like material, or haven't I just been able to find it?

Thanks for the feedback. A lot of this material takes time to develop and disseminate, unfortunately a lot of it hidden away in these forums as well.

I think the simplest explanation I have seen, is here: http://www.mastercoin.org/#features

1. distributed exchange using the bitcoin network
2. issuing  smart properties (stocks, etc)  and currencies on top of bitcoin network

[nanobit]

I think that Ripple is a powerful idea that has been badly mismanaged, and yes, it competes with MSC. Their focus on Peter owes Paul owes Sam owes Jake debt chains causes their true killer features to get lost in the noise. Nobody cares about collapsing debt chains, but distributed exchange is incredibly important. Perhaps they have fixed this marketing snafu (I haven't checked lately).

I also disagree with their XRP distribution model, and I am doubtful about the case for long-term appreciation of that currency. (Trivia: the MasterCoin giveaway thread was funded with MSC purchased with BTC I got for selling XRP I received from an early Ripple giveaway)

Finally, I think their system is way too complex, not sufficiently decentralized, not sufficiently open source (this may have changed since last I looked), and not flexible enough for other cool things people want to do with distributed currencies.

Other than that, I love Ripple.

You should check it again. Totally open-source since a month . I agree they are not good at communicating but their main aim is not bitcoin community but exchange platform like zipzap and future gateways. With more gateways and nodes the ripple network will be  distributed enough to be fair and honest.

New features are coming with "contracts". I don't think it's too complex, it can easily be integrated and someone could use a ripple wallet without even know about it. About flexibility I couldn't really tell I'm not competent enough to say.

XRP distribution model is particular but you don't need xrp to use ripple network (mm ok actually you need less than 1$ to fund a wallet...). About long-term appreciation I think it may appreciate if the network find more gateways and plateforms that use ripple. Otherwise it may also disappear (just like bitcoin or mastercoin actually since there's not real economy backing them).

I've been reading a lot about MSC, and my concern is that communication-wise we're repeating the same mistakes Ripple is blamed for in the quote above. Perhaps the concept is clear to everyone deeply involved, but I'm willing to bet there's heaps of people like me on the forum and Reddit who, even with their best efforts, just can't find a simple explanation about what MSC is, why do we need it and what are the practical, real-life use cases. How do we expect people to get excited about weekly newsletters if these basic things are not explained anywhere? Either MSC can't be explained in a simple way, in which case I'll become even more concerned about its feasibility, or people who truly get it are not trying hard enough to explain what's it about.

As an example, I tried to find a ELI5 for Mastercoin. There's two requests for that I found (here and here). To me neither explains much; they only demonstrate how bad the situation with common-sense introduction material is. If the mindset is that ELI5 request can be answered with a link to the whitepaper (read: technical system specifications) then we really, really need someone on board who understands communication.

It was good to read that a PR company will start working with MSC. Perhaps that will solve this issue in a month or two. In the mean time I would like to hear do you people agree what I say about the lack of ELI5-like material, or haven't I just been able to find it?

I have some posts with some thoughts on what a finished Mastercoin protocol could do. Honestly I think we need a series of videos just as there is with Bitcoin. Text can only explain so much.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3429661#msg3429661
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=318610.msg3436731#msg3436731
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3435101#msg3435101

If you don't want to read all those different overly wordy use cases. The main categories of users will be traditional users and issuers.

Traditional use cases:
If you're a traditional user then you'll want to do stuff you already can do but in a decentralized way. Maybe you want to do decentralized betting. Maybe you want to trade Bitcoins for Litecoins on a decentralized exchange built into the Bitcoin blockchain. Maybe you want to buy crypto-equity/stocks or bonds without having to worry about whether or not Burnside will shut the site down.

Issuers:
If you're an issuer then perhaps you're a business owner and you're issuing virtual stocks. If you're an issuer you might offer bonds or somethings similar. Or you might offer your own currency, voucher, credits, backed by your goods and services or backed by another currency.

So for example if you issue a currency you can back it by another issuers currency called goldcoins to back your currency by gold. This allows for redeemable cryptocurrencies and that is a game changer. Currently when people ask what Bitcoin is backed by we have to say it's not backed by anything. New currencies will actually be redeemable and backed by the goods and services of the issuer. This will provide long term stability.

I hope my explanation was of some help but I know it probably does not help. A visual illustration is needed and this will mean videos showing how it all can work.

Thanks for the links and the short summary, Luckybit. There's material that I'm sure helps people understand MSC's capabilities better, though some of the examples are a tad abstract.
I like the idea about video. That'll take time though, even if that idea goes forward. Perhaps as a first step the summary you wrote could be elaborated and copied to a suitable place where it's easy to find?

Currently when someone would like to learn about Mastercoin his options are limited to reading this 85+ pages of MSC discussions, and try to pick out all the right comments among the questions, answers, suggestions, criticism, decisions, and changes to previous decisions made 6 pages ago.
That's ironic as dacoinminster said Ripple is "way too complex". I wonder what people's first impression about Mastercoin is?