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

[ripper234]

Please do not be alarmed, our Trello board wasn't hijacked by aliens.



Trello just gave me 1 month of Trello Gold for free, and I toyed with the board a bit - it's a lot of geeky fun.
If anyone finds the new colors and stuff hard to work with ... please let me know.
Otherwise it just amuses me to no end to be able to add wolfies to cards.

[1713496889]

1713496889

[1713496889]

1713496889

[1713496889]

1713496889

[ripper234]

FYI I added a new item to Trello

https://trello.com/c/3FUX46YS/17-build-us-a-team-page

Someone, please pick this up.

[ripper234]

FYI I added a new item to Trello

https://trello.com/c/3FUX46YS/17-build-us-a-team-page

Someone, please pick this up.

Instead of Someone I should have written the Mastermind.

I hereby propose the official name Mastercoin to mean our little Mastercoin Hivemind.

[vokain]

Instead of Someone I should have written the Mastermind.

I hereby propose the official name Mastermind to mean our little Mastercoin Hivemind.

It's happening, it's catching on 

[ripper234]

I created a Jobs Page.

Well, I added an entry to the FAQ, which I will use to send to good people who I want to recruit.

How do I get involved? Are there any job openings?

There are always job openings, just not in the traditional sense. Mastercoin operates by bounties. We publish our roadmap on Trello, and people pick up whatever tasks they want. Sometimes people get a more chewed task with a specific bounty. Other times, we'll only post a brief one-line ideas to Trello, and expect Feature Owners to pick them up, describe them, propose a budget (including sometimes a bounty for themselves, but not always), and execute.

You can of course propose new features that you think are important.

In order to effectively contribute and find features you should follow our blog and forum thread, we post new features there.
Note - you don't have to be a developer to contribute! There are various types of features suitable for developers, designers, business and marketing people, legal and more.

Also feel free to ask on the forum or contact us at info@mastercoin.org if you want to discuss further.

[Tachikoma]

Just an FYI.

Mastercoin-explorer is stuck on block 268560. There is a problem parsing a weird transaction in one of the following blocks and bitcoin-ruby will have to be patched to fix this. I am hoping to find some time to do this today.

[jquinn]

I had a quick question, which may have been answered before, but I could not find it:

What if the private key to the exodus address gets compromised or lost? Is there a plan for implementing a more distributed design which could indicate which transactions are mastercoin transactions?

EDIT: I suppose that same functionality would remain even if the key were lost/compromised, but there would then be two ghost addresses associated with an MSC transaction, and the reward mastercoins which are supposed to fund development on into the future would also be lost. I understand the utility in having a central location for the purposes of parsing the block chain for MSC data, but it seems too centralized to have just one address. Thoughts?

[Tachikoma]

Although I think this is highly doubtful I also don't think it's a real problem. Yes the funds will be gone but most open source projects run fine without backing. It will still work wether somebody is in control of Exodus or isn't.

[jquinn]

Although I think this is highly doubtful I also don't think it's a real problem. Yes the funds will be gone but most open source projects run fine without backing. It will still work wether somebody is in control of Exodus or isn't.

Good point. It will retain the crucial functionality of acting as a pointer to all the MSC transactions.

[ripper234]

OK, a few interesting brainstorms today made me dream out more work for you guys!
Sorry for all the extra work I'm causing you... 

https://trello.com/c/6iy9kvwl/18-spec-for-gambling-aka-masterdice

We can build a decentralized SatoshiDice quite easily.

Player1 bets against Player 2 on the result of the hash of block height N % 2. The blockchain locks in the funds and decides the winner.

https://trello.com/c/6P2o8QZS/19-spec-for-copy-trades-aka-mastertoro-etoro-clone

Rough idea:

COPY(my_address, my_priv_key, copied_address)

From this moment onward, every operation done by copied_address is copied by my address, in proportion to our funds. Meaning if copied_address holds X MSC and my_address holds Y MSC, and copied_address now places a market offer to sell Z MSC, then my_address will sell Z*Y/X MSC.

This of course needs more details to account for multiple currencies and assets stored on the same address.

https://trello.com/c/MX0ZymMD/20-soec-for-events-feeds

Anyone can publish events into the blockchain.

E.g. A soccer league publishes results of all soccer games..

(This is analogous of course to Price Feeds)

https://trello.com/c/6ZXtVWKz/21-spec-for-prediction-market-event-betting

1. Using Event Feeds, users can bet on the results of events.
2. A prediction market is phase two - once bets that were already closed can now be freely traded.

It also made me fear that we might put some serious strain on the bitcoin blockchain soon.
Think of what SatoshiDice did to BTC... now add prediction markets, copy trades etc.

So I also added

https://trello.com/b/uRutPlms/project

which is perfect for our upcoming Documentation Week!

A lot of people don't know this is possible, but it is. Mastercoin isn't a specific technology, it's a project that can switch backends/infrasturcture if needed.

I think we need to brainstorm about this a bit, and see whether this can help us combat some potential future scalability issues / changes in the Bitcoin protocol. This ticket is for creating a wiki article document this scenario.

We decide on a certain block height in the future. The decision is done via decentralized voting of course.

Then we start a new dedicated alt chain which is entirely premined by holders of Mastercoin. Tokens on the new chain are initially owned by private keys of MSC holders.

[ripper234]

Posted the above to reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/mastercoin/comments/1qbhlx/omg_insane_new_features/

[grishnakh]

Look who's writing about Mastercoin. http://gendal.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/decentralised-digital-asset-registers-mastercoin/
That's Richard Brown, Executive Architect IBM Banking and Financial markets.

[klee]

This is getting bigger and bigger...

[zbx]

Although I think this is highly doubtful I also don't think it's a real problem. Yes the funds will be gone but most open source projects run fine without backing. It will still work wether somebody is in control of Exodus or isn't.

Good point. It will retain the crucial functionality of acting as a pointer to all the MSC transactions.

What about the bitcoins that go to the Exodus Address as part of every Mastercoin transaction? I'd rather not have that money go to an address controlled by any person or group of people (whose identities and motivations one can never be certain of). I mentioned this issue to dacoinminster a while back, and he said that he didn't think that very much money would come in that way; but even if it's only a small amount, it's a loose end, and in particular one that smacks of centralisation.

Note that Vitalik Buterin brought this matter up in his recent article on Mastercoin for Bitcoin magazine.

If one of the multi-sig outputs in a Class B (or C) transaction can be used to identify the transaction as a Mastercoin transaction, then there is no reason to have that output be spendable, right?

[Tachikoma]

It can only be decoded by trying to decode the transaction as a Mastercoin transaction. If you would have to do it for every known multisig it would drastically decrease the ease you can identify Mastercoin transactions with.

[superfluouso]

Look who's writing about Mastercoin. http://gendal.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/decentralised-digital-asset-registers-mastercoin/
That's Richard Brown, Executive Architect IBM Banking and Financial markets.

yep - if you watch  this video it looks like he's describing mastercoin.

[ripper234]

Look who's writing about Mastercoin. http://gendal.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/decentralised-digital-asset-registers-mastercoin/
That's Richard Brown, Executive Architect IBM Banking and Financial markets.

Woa. Nice.

I posted this comment:

Hi Richard, and thanks for this interesting article!

I just want to share a secret with you and your readers.
Mastercoin is not about the technology. It’s a project with a goal and a technology stack, which currently relies on Bitcoin.

However, that can be switched out or modified later if needed.

See http://wiki.mastercoin.org/index.php/FAQ#Does_Mastercoin_have_to_run_on_top_of_Bitcoin.3F

What about the bitcoins that go to the Exodus Address as part of every Mastercoin transaction? I'd rather not have that money go to an address controlled by any person or group of people (whose identities and motivations one can never be certain of). I mentioned this issue to dacoinminster a while back, and he said that he didn't think that very much money would come in that way; but even if it's only a small amount, it's a loose end, and in particular one that smacks of centralisation.

Note that Vitalik Buterin brought this matter up in his recent article on Mastercoin for Bitcoin magazine.

If one of the multi-sig outputs in a Class B (or C) transaction can be used to identify the transaction as a Mastercoin transaction, then there is no reason to have that output be spendable, right?

I agree, and I've been bothered with this myself.
If anyone can think of a modification to the spec that makes sense and removes this, please send in a pull request.

[ripper234]

I'd like to remind everyone that we're gearing up towards launching our Documentation Contest Week.
I've added many items that need documenting over the various channels

Please see updated information on Trello.

As you might remember, the rewards will be handed out retroactively. You can start working on it now and capture all the good parts even before we launch it.

Documentation is an essential part in our outreach and war against FUD.
It will be a tremendously useful tool for us and will enable us to do much more effective PR and lower the hate level.

[Luckybit]

I'd like to remind everyone that we're gearing up towards launching our Documentation Contest Week.
I've added many items that need documenting over the various channels

Please see updated information on Trello.

As you might remember, the rewards will be handed out retroactively. You can start working on it now and capture all the good parts even before we launch it.

Documentation is an essential part in our outreach and war against FUD.
It will be a tremendously useful tool for us and will enable us to do much more effective PR and lower the hate level.

This is something I can help out with, keep me updated on what needs to be documented and on the contest. I will contribute to this when/if I get the chance to.

[ninjaboon]

I'd like to remind everyone that we're gearing up towards launching our Documentation Contest Week.
I've added many items that need documenting over the various channels

Please see updated information on Trello.

As you might remember, the rewards will be handed out retroactively. You can start working on it now and capture all the good parts even before we launch it.

Documentation is an essential part in our outreach and war against FUD.
It will be a tremendously useful tool for us and will enable us to do much more effective PR and lower the hate level.

Will keep watch and pitch in some hours once I get this rid of this flu.