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

[dacoinminster]

I have cloned the github repo of the spec (https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC/spec), and I have prepared the following comprehensive list of changes planned for version 1.2 of the spec:

• Fix incorrect sequence number description (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3122349#msg3122349)
• Clean up various things which were still undecided as of 1.1 or are now out-dated (as I find them)
• Include description of how to determine change addresses (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3190175;topicseen#msg3190175)

  • All protocol transactions should have the same output amount. If one output is different, that is the change address.
  • If all outputs are the same, then look at sequence numbers:
    • If there is a broken sequence (i.e. 3,4,8), then the odd-man-out is the change address (8 in this example)
    • If there is an ambiguous sequence (i.e. 3,4,4), then the transaction is invalid!
    • If there is a perfect sequence (i.e. 3,4,5), then the transaction is invalid!

• Integrate Zathras' Class A/B/C documentation describing multi-sig (https://masterchest.info/files/mscappendix_draft.pdf)
• Clarify distributed exchange rules when BTC is not involved (especially that buy/sell orders can be matched automatically
• Add support for "pay dividend" command (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3233723;topicseen#msg3233723)
• Add support for "spending limits" on a savings address (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3412565;topicseen#msg3412565)
• Add support for "kickstarter" type fundraisers (where money is returned if the goal isn't met) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3451098;topicseen#msg3451098)
• Add support for "Contract For Difference" betting (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324830.0)
• Add support for "Distributed e-commerce" transactions (http://www.reddit.com/r/mastercoin/comments/1nqcq3/mastercoin_could_be_extended_into_a_fully/)

I hope I got everything. If you think something else should be in that list, please let me know!

Excellent!

I would like to hereby appoint you as the Mastercoin Protocol Lead. Do you accept?

I have no issues at all with your changes. I do however suggest a different work process.

This document describes the process of making changes to the Mastercoin spec. This process is it's very early stages, and is expected to change rapidly in the future (e.g. to include Voting). The current Protocol Owner is J.R Willett.

Right now, there are two possible change mechanisms to the spec document:

Developers can fork the repository, work on their own copy, push their proposed changes, and send a pull request accompanied with a post to bitcointalk. The Protocol Owner and the community reviews the changes, and when enough consensus has been generated, The Protocol Owner merges the changes back to the parent repository on mastercoin-MSC.

Minor and/or non-breaking changes can be made directly on top of the mastercoin-MSC parent repository, by people who have push right to this repository. If you want to be included in this group, ask Willett.

For sake of convenience, people who already have push access to the parent repository can work on branches instead of forks. This achieves the same purpose as option 1 above, in a manner that might be more convenient to some developers.

The disadvantage over the way Willett proposed the v1.2 changes is that with his current approach, we cannot examine the full updated spec before he pushes it to master. I would like the master branch on the official repository to always be an up-to-date version of the official spec.

Sounds good to me!

I got a couple hours in last night on this, but I still have a ways to go. This is a fairly big set of changes . . .

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[ripper234]

To clarify, I was requesting the nicks of (active) board members on Bitcointalk, not Trello, to be listed. I imagine you Ripper would know them by heart and could easily list them here?

Not really, but I'll ask for their nicks. Most of them aren't that active on bitcointalk.

[Voodah]

Hello everyone, I was away for a few months, but I originally sent some BTC over to the Exodus address when this all begun.

Fast forward to now; I'm back and just read the last few pages, and it seems like Mastercoin took off.

I still have my offline wallet intact from when I sent the BTC.

How do I get started ?? What should I do ?

(btw, I will be reading the whole post in the next few days, but some heads up would be nice )

[ripper234]

Hello everyone, I was away for a few months, but I originally sent some BTC over to the Exodus address when this all begun.

Fast forward to now; I'm back and just read the last few pages, and it seems like Mastercoin took off.

I still have my offline wallet intact from when I sent the BTC.

How do I get started ?? What should I do ?

(btw, I will be reading the whole post in the next few days, but some heads up would be nice )

Glad to see you join us!

I would head over to the FAQ and blog. There's a shitload going on, it's hard to keep track, hopefully these resources can help you catch up.

P.S I think our site can use a serious boost as well.

1. Using our current platform without any redesign, we can still organize the information there better.
2. Ultimately we want to do a custom design for the site, perhaps using something like 99designs.com

If anyone has any free bandwidth to contribute here, let us know (please email info@mastercoin.org).

[ripper234]

We want to accelerate development of the Voting mechanism for approving changes in the protocol.

I added a Trello Card about it, and currently assigned it to Willett.
If someone is up for it and can formulate the rough ideas in the thread into a coherent spec pull request - that would be terrific.

We would then follow that up with a bounty to implement that.

[Tachikoma]

I've just added initial chart support to Mastercoin-explorer. For now you can see the total amount of Simple Send transactions. Next up will be some Selling Offer data.

[TKeenan]

You guys might be interested in this post I made on another thread about the criticisms that the intial distribution of Mastercoins was unfair:

I what regard do they consider it unfair?  Everyone who participated did their homework early, studied the problem and solution, decided to commit, paid their funds, received MSC. 

Anyone who alleges 'unfair' should explain why they believe this.  They had equal chance of putting up their bitcoin to join the effort - no?  They were late - so now that is unfair?  Even JR paid for his shares.  Many start-ups originate with shit-tons of 'founder shares'.  Not here.  JR paid the same as I did.

What the hell was 'unfair' about the distribution?  It not like tons of MSC was given away to underserving parties. 

From the day after closing - you could buy as many MSC as you like.  It's called an 'open market'.  Fair market value prices are set by those willing to part with their shares.

Nothing is more fair than the MSC distribution. 

[ripper234]

To clarify, I was requesting the nicks of (active) board members on Bitcointalk, not Trello, to be listed. I imagine you Ripper would know them by heart and could easily list them here?

Not really, but I'll ask for their nicks. Most of them aren't that active on bitcointalk.

This is what I have:

David Johnston https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=76620
Ron Gross https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=7087
J.R. Willett https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3313
Antony Vo https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=49247

[rbdrbd]

I've just added initial chart support to Mastercoin-explorer. For now you can see the total amount of Simple Send transactions. Next up will be some Selling Offer data.

Looks great! FYI, the top50 page is currently broken (http://mastercoin-explorer.com/addresses).

[dacoinminster]

David recently posted "Clearing up 10 Misconceptions about the Mastercoin Protocol" on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1q71m1/clearing_up_10_misconceptions_about_the/

As usual, there is a flood of haters swamping the post with negative comments and downvotes.

Anybody who can help raise the level of intelligence there would be appreciated

[maxmint]

David recently posted "Clearing up 10 Misconceptions about the Mastercoin Protocol" on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1q71m1/clearing_up_10_misconceptions_about_the/

As usual, there is a flood of haters swamping the post with negative comments and downvotes.

Anybody who can help raise the level of intelligence there would be appreciated

I have to agree with one of the commentors that the video on mastercoin.org is not very informative. I do appreciate moltenmich's work but the video is no help for someone who does not know what Mastercoin is. Mastercoin really needs a proper explainer video. I hope there will be a budget for this someday.

[solex]

MastercoinExplanation = BitcoinExplanation²

Isn't the priority providing a working prototype capable of institutional application, not educating the public about it?

(mastercoin.org does a heroic job already considering the short time frame).

[dacoinminster]

Here's another feature which may be in the 1.2 version of the spec if people like it: Proof of Stake voting

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309729.msg3524354#msg3524354

Quoted here for convenience:

Ron asked me to spec out what this might look like. If this is acceptable, it could go into the 1.2 version of the spec:

• Mastercoin websites will have a "voting" section for each currency and smart property.
  • Owning a currency or property allows you to vote on issues related to how that currency or property should be run.
• The voting section will list issues which are available to vote on, as well as feature requests, in descending order of popularity, and the current vote tally for each
• Mastercoin messages needed for voting are:
  
  • Create new issue (title and what the options are, such as YES/NO or A/B/C/D)
  • Vote on issue (address X votes NO on currency Y issue Z)
    • Weight of vote is proportional to the amount of currency or property owned by that address (proof of stake)
  • Create a new feature request (title and description)
  • Vote on feature (address X supports feature Z on currency Y) - also weighted by ownership
    • A single address may only support one feature, and may only vote in one direction, however . . .
      
    • A user may split their vote by using multiple addresses
• When some or all property is transferred out of an address which has voted, the votes of the transferred property are invalidated (this allows the owner of the new address to vote again)
• Votes are advisory votes only, and are enforced by social contract, rather than by the protocol itself

As an example, the Mastercoin foundation will be issuing memberships at some point as a smart property. Owners of those memberships can vote on issues related to the governance of the Mastercoin foundation. Similarly, Mastercoins themselves will have a voting section.

[cunicula]

Here's another feature which may be in the 1.2 version of the spec if people like it: Proof of Stake voting

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309729.msg3524354#msg3524354

Quoted here for convenience:

Ron asked me to spec out what this might look like. If this is acceptable, it could go into the 1.2 version of the spec:

• Mastercoin websites will have a "voting" section for each currency and smart property.
  • Owning a currency or property allows you to vote on issues related to how that currency or property should be run.
• The voting section will list issues which are available to vote on, as well as feature requests, in descending order of popularity, and the current vote tally for each
• Mastercoin messages needed for voting are:
  
  • Create new issue (title and what the options are, such as YES/NO or A/B/C/D)
  • Vote on issue (address X votes NO on currency Y issue Z)
    • Weight of vote is proportional to the amount of currency or property owned by that address (proof of stake)
  • Create a new feature request (title and description)
  • Vote on feature (address X supports feature Z on currency Y) - also weighted by ownership
    • A single address may only support one feature, and may only vote in one direction, however . . .
      
    • A user may split their vote by using multiple addresses
• When some or all property is transferred out of an address which has voted, the votes of the transferred property are invalidated (this allows the owner of the new address to vote again)
• Votes are advisory votes only, and are enforced by social contract, rather than by the protocol itself

As an example, the Mastercoin foundation will be issuing memberships at some point as a smart property. Owners of those memberships can vote on issues related to the governance of the Mastercoin foundation. Similarly, Mastercoins themselves will have a voting section.

Proof of stake voting is a wonderful feature.
This can provide a secure fully decentralized source of data streams for asset prices.
The price would be an emergent property of a long series of binary votes adjusting it up and down by a small amount.
There are strong incentives for honest reporting because:
a) The mastercoin owners have a strong incentive to maintain accurate data streams. Such accurate datastreams could allow mastercoinUSD (though the plan needs tweaking) and successful implementation of mastercoinUSD would lead the coin to take on tremendous value.
b) individual capacity to influence outcomes is too limited to profit meaningfully from manipulation

[dacoinminster]

Proof of stake voting is a wonderful feature.
This can provide a secure fully decentralized source of data streams for asset prices.
The price would be an emergent property of a long series of binary votes adjusting it up and down by a small amount.
There are strong incentives for honest reporting because:
a) The mastercoin owners have a strong incentive to maintain accurate data streams. Such accurate datastreams could allow mastercoinUSD (though the plan needs tweaking) and successful implementation of mastercoinUSD would lead the coin to take on tremendous value.
b) individual capacity to influence outcomes is too limited to profit meaningfully from manipulation

Wow, that's a really cool idea. I never thought of that!

I have no idea if it would work (the game theory involved makes my head hurt), but we should definitely try something like this at some point and see what happens.

[ripper234]

We need to produce a better video for the homepage of mastercoin.org.

I opened a Trello ticket.
What do you think should be the bounty for this feature?
Please feel free to comment on top of the Trello item.

I'd open another thread to discuss this, but we already too many thread ... we're discussing whether to open a subforum in bitcointalk or a separate forum.

[dacoinminster]

We need to produce a better video for the homepage of mastercoin.org.

I opened a Trello ticket.
What do you think should be the bounty for this feature?
Please feel free to comment on top of the Trello item.

I'd open another thread to discuss this, but we already too many thread ... we're discussing whether to open a subforum in bitcointalk or a separate forum.

Yeah, I think the time has come. I suggest we get a couple quotes from Mich and maybe one other person. Maybe we could start with a tiny bounty for the best proposed transcript for the voice-over

[inform]

Could you link me all the transactions involved so I can check it out?

i am same question 

[dacoinminster]

Adam from LetsTalkBitcoin has approached us about our sponsoring his show. I really like that idea because Adam's show was instrumental in getting the word out in the last days of our fundraiser (and he owns some MSC, which helps too).

I believe he said it would cost 1.5 BTC to produce a 30-second spot for us, which we can then pay to have on his show. I'd like to suggest that we pay Adam do that, and once we all hear the result, we can decide if it is something the community is enthusiastic about. If so, we can sponsor a few episodes so that the spot is included. I believe his show reaches about 5500 rabid bitcoiners twice a week (so about 11000 impressions per week)

I'd be interested to hear opinions on this. What do you guys think the spot should say? I'd also be interested in hearing what Adam thinks the spot should say.

Note that I am not promising money to anybody yet (all expenses have to be approved by the board). Just making a suggestion to see what you guys think.

Thanks!

[superfluouso]

Love the idea of a spot on LTB - excellent podcast.  A quick summary of the concept, direction for more info, and a call for more developers (not to discount the ones we are fortunate to have already).

Been curious to hear Andreas' thoughts on the project..wishful thinking but if enough progress is made it might warrant mention in his upcoming bitcoin book.