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

[marcelus]

The experience of the last two days with centralised exchanges that are susceptible to attack (Bitstamp is totally down ATM) really has me extra looking forward to the DEx.

[dacoinminster]

Check out this awesome intro to Mastercoin: http://honeybadgerofmoney.com/2013/11/19/mastercoin-the-one-to-rule-them-all-preliminary-review/

frankenmint really did his homework and put together a very concise overview of why Mastercoin is/will be awesome.

[Tachikoma]

For somebody who did his homework the 'Master-coin' thing kinda bothers me 

[dacoinminster]

For somebody who did his homework the 'Master-coin' thing kinda bothers me 

Heh. Didn't notice that the first time through.

It's very cool to see this through the eyes of somebody just learning about it. Reminds me how exciting this whole thing is.

[zathras]

It seems Masterchest.info is lagging and does not display recent MSC transactions.
zathras, are you aware of that?

Ouch, seems there is a nasty bug triggered by a recent transaction. 

FYI Masterchest is now running with my new v2 dev engine rather than the original v1 (so that new transaction types eg exchange can be parsed for the sneakpeek dev site) so I do expect some stability issues in the short term while I bug-spray.

I'm hitting an NaN issue writing a transaction to the database so it means I've either got a type mismatch or a divide by zero somewhere (NaN means 'not a number').

Unfortunately this bug is fatal (ie we can't just ignore it and move on with processing) - I don't have remote access to my source as I'm OOO today which means I'm not going to be able to fix immediately - sorry guys - I'll handle when I get home - ETA 12 hours.

I've put a note up on the site to say it's behind.

Thanks!

[TKeenan]

Check out this awesome intro to Mastercoin: http://honeybadgerofmoney.com/2013/11/19/mastercoin-the-one-to-rule-them-all-preliminary-review/

frankenmint really did his homework and put together a very concise overview of why Mastercoin is/will be awesome.

A reader's prime attention is at the first few paragraphs.  If writers spend the entry paragraphs telling what Master-coin the alt coin is/isn't and what Mastercoin the new bitcoin protocol is/isn't - we are screwed and we'll never get the message across.  We need to proceed as if those altcoin fools don't even exist and we don't even know about them.  Explanations of how we are distinguished burn up attention bandwidth.  Soon, there will be so many google pointers to us and none to them - it won't matter anyway. 

Please don't let writers waste their attention thinking about the altcoin with the same name.  Don't even mention it.  It is a terrible way to start an article.

[rbdrbd]

I have a few questions related to smart properties:

From the spec, it looks like the unique factor used to differentiate one property from another is the Property Name, in which one may put up to 21 characters, correct?

Question 1: What’s to stop people from spamming new smart properties? This could be like the domain name system, without any pricing required to reserve a name. Someone could reserve a smart property like “dog”, or “House Deed”, in perpetuity. Is any MSC required to be consumed to create a property, or is it just the BTC transaction costs to send the transaction? Is there any rate limiting on new property creation, or any way to detect and control abuse?

If we are just limited to 21 bytes for property names in this kind of wild-west scenario, without any kind of payment requirement beyond the minimal BTC fees to keep away spam, I can see all of the intelligible choices for this filling up quickly. People would then be forced to use names like “HouseDeed_348dF” or even some kind of odd hash value. This may not necessarily be a ‘bad’ thing…worse case we could see Mastercoin property names devolving to the level of implicit legibility as Bitcoin addresses (i.e. a long string of numbers and letters).

If MSC is required (or you are considering this), you could have two options here: pay to the Exodus address (further enriching that, although I don’t know how necessary that is), or destroy the funds, similar to Peercoin transactions.

If destroying the MSC, to offset the deflation this causes, a future proof-of-stake type system could be even initiated that would inflate the supply at a low level (e.g. fixed 1%, or a variable rate derived periodically based on the MSC value destroyed over the past X period of time) to offset and attempt constant, or very slowly growing supply. I think that this idea is probably heretical and overly complex, since MSCs were created as a fixed supply (sounds kind of like a central bank, coded into the software, hah!)…just thought I’d throw it out there if in the future we find ourselves needing to allow for some controlling feedback to be applied to several aspects of the system (smart properties, bidding, etc) by allowing Mastercoin to require at least a small amount of MSC for most actions, in a way that didn’t unfairly enrich one specific party, or disrupt the balance of wealth in the system. Whether it would cripple the usefulness of Mastercoin in the process is up in the air though. If the fee was low enough, it shouldn’t.

Question 2: I see where dividends can be paid against smart properties. Can Smart properties be transferred? (I do see “Listing something for Sale” and “Initiating a Purchase”, but I’m a bit confused whether these have anything to do with a smart property, as their identifier is a 11 byte category and a 16 byte subcategory. If not currently, why not? Perhaps that’s an area of the spec that needs to be added.

Question 3: Can creating of smart properties be done with a Class A transaction, or is B or C required for this? (And more to the point, can any Mastercoin transaction be done as Class A, or just sending funds?)

If these were covered somewhere else, forgive me. Thanks for any answers.

[rbdrbd]

MSC DEVS! LOL ====>

Guys, can we start moderating out haightst's posts such as this that do not add anything intelligible to the conversation? If he has an adequate argument, that is one thing, but things like this is worthless noise. I've ignored him but it forces everyone else to, to get the most out of this thread.

(And for the record, I am not an "MSC DEV" trying to censor him.)

[dacoinminster]

Guys, can we start moderating out haightst's posts such as this that do not add anything intelligible to the conversation? If he has an adequate argument, that is one thing, but things like this is worthless noise. I've ignored him but it forces everyone else to, to get the most out of this thread.

(And for the record, I am not an "MSC DEV" trying to censor him.)

I've been deleting them as I see them. I just wish there was a way to ban people from a thread altogether!

[frankenmint]

For somebody who did his homework the 'Master-coin' thing kinda bothers me  

Heh. Didn't notice that the first time through.

It's very cool to see this through the eyes of somebody just learning about it. Reminds me how exciting this whole thing is.

Thank spell check squily lines for that one...I took them out and they now say mastercoin.

It was very important for me to differentiate the alt because when I met DJohnston at the 1st meetup he talked about "mastercoin"  I was an active member of cryptsy and I proceeded to buy 100K of the ALT coin and not by donating a bitcoin to the Exodus Address as I would have wanted to do.

[rbdrbd]

For somebody who did his homework the 'Master-coin' thing kinda bothers me  

I got some Bit-Coin I'd like to sell you. I can e-Mail you the offer from my i-Pad. 

[TKeenan]

For somebody who did his homework the 'Master-coin' thing kinda bothers me  

Heh. Didn't notice that the first time through.

It's very cool to see this through the eyes of somebody just learning about it. Reminds me how exciting this whole thing is.

Thank spell check squily lines for that one...I took them out and they now say mastercoin.

It was very important for me to differentiate the alt because when I met DJohnston at the 1st meetup he talked about "mastercoin"  I was an active member of cryptsy and I proceeded to buy 100K of the ALT coin and not by donating a bitcoin to the Exodus Address as I would have wanted to do.

Understandable.  But it is just a terrible way to introduce Mastercoin - by telling what the other one is.  This name differentiation is a real problem. Now we have haightst f-ing up every thread he can find.  And Cryptsy reporting on the dead project.  PITA.

[dacoinminster]

I have a few questions related to smart properties:

From the spec, it looks like the unique factor used to differentiate one property from another is the Property Name, in which one may put up to 21 characters, correct?

Question 1: What’s to stop people from spamming new smart properties? This could be like the domain name system, without any pricing required to reserve a name. Someone could reserve a smart property like “dog”, or “House Deed”, in perpetuity. Is any MSC required to be consumed to create a property, or is it just the BTC transaction costs to send the transaction?

If we are just limited to 21 bytes for property names in this kind of wild-west scenario, without any kind of payment requirement beyond the minimal BTC fees to keep away spam, I can see all of the intelligible choices for this filling up quickly. People would then be forced to use names like “HouseDeed_348dF” or even some kind of odd hash value. This may not necessarily be a ‘bad’ thing…worse case we could see Mastercoin property names devolving to the level of implicit legibility as Bitcoin addresses (i.e. a long string of numbers and letters).

If MSC is required (or you are considering this), you could have two options here: pay to the Exodus address (further enriching that, although I don’t know how necessary that is), or destroy the funds, similar to Peercoin transactions.

If destroying the MSC, to offset the deflation this causes, a future proof-of-stake type system could be even initiated that would inflate the supply at a low level (e.g. fixed 1%, or a variable rate derived periodically based on the MSC value destroyed over the past X period of time) to offset and attempt constant, or very slowly growing supply. I think that this idea is probably heretical and overly complex, since MSCs were created as a fixed supply (sounds kind of like a central bank, coded into the software, hah!)…just thought I’d throw it out there if in the future we find ourselves needing to allow for some controlling feedback to be applied to several aspects of the system (smart properties, bidding, etc) by allowing Mastercoin to require at least a small amount of MSC for most actions, in a way that didn’t unfairly enrich one specific party, or disrupt the balance of wealth in the system. Whether it would cripple the usefulness of Mastercoin in the process is up in the air though. If the fee was low enough, it shouldn’t.

Question 2: I see where dividends can be paid against smart properties. Can Smart properties be transferred? (I do see “Listing something for Sale” and “Initiating a Purchase”, but I’m a bit confused whether these have anything to do with a smart property, as their identifier is a 11 byte category and a 16 byte subcategory. If not currently, why not? Perhaps that’s an area of the spec that needs to be added.

If these were covered somewhere else, forgive me. Thanks for any answers.

1) Adding some sort of cost to reduce spam is a great idea. Thanks for bringing that up.
2) Yes, each new property gets its own currency id, so anything you can do with a currency can be done with a property (buy, sell, transfer, bet, etc)

Regarding 1), this is a tricky problem, which I have thought about some already. There are several ways to add cost. I prefer a sliding fee scale which targets creating X properties per day. If more than the target are being created, the fee goes up, otherwise the fee goes down.

I think the fee should destroy MSC, not send them to the Exodus Address.

I'd be interested in hearing other opinions about this. I'd be really happy to see a pull request about this once we've got some consensus.

I haven't added anything like this to the spec because everything I came up with seemed a bit too complicated. For instance, the number of properties created per day might need to go up once MasterCoin is getting widespread use, and it's hard to make the right formula for adjusting that automatically.

[rbdrbd]

I did watch the senate hearings yesterday and today, and heard at least two separate (one from the Foundation representative, and one from the Bitpay guy) where Mastercoin-type features were alluded to (the bitpay guy mentioned making a house sale up against the blockchain to both reduce closing costs and record the property). I think it went over the heads of 99% of the folks in the room (especially the politicians), but that was a super promising development.

I'm thinking many of the Bitcoin folks are starting to see how something like Mastercoin helps Bitcoin values and adoption as a whole, and can benefit all Bitcoiners, even if they aren't personally invested in MSC.

Great stuff!

[dacoinminster]

It was very important for me to differentiate the alt because when I met DJohnston at the 1st meetup he talked about "mastercoin"  I was an active member of cryptsy and I proceeded to buy 100K of the ALT coin and not by donating a bitcoin to the Exodus Address as I would have wanted to do.

Wow. That sucks . . . MSC would have been a great investment. MST, not so much.

I'd just like to point out that the first rev of my paper describing Mastercoin (MSC) happened long before the alt-coin Mastercoin (MST) launched.

I also differentiated this project from the alt-coin in the OP, hoping to avoid this confusion. I think it makes sense to do so as long as the possibility remains that someone could make this mistake (buying MST on cryptsy).

[haightst]

Guys, can we start moderating out haightst's posts such as this that do not add anything intelligible to the conversation? If he has an adequate argument, that is one thing, but things like this is worthless noise. I've ignored him but it forces everyone else to, to get the most out of this thread.

(And for the record, I am not an "MSC DEV" trying to censor him.)

I've been deleting them as I see them. I just wish there was a way to ban people from a thread altogether!

I just got off the phone with Taariq he sounds like a good guy to have on your team! I have some homework to do here regarding the concept of smart property>>

http://szabo.best.vwh.net/contractlanguage.html

*Taariq will clarify some things for you as he has been over on the other boards and is familiar with what i'm having to deal with!    ~take it easy!

[TKeenan]

I also differentiated this project from the alt-coin in the OP, hoping to avoid this confusion. I think it makes sense to do so as long as the possibility remains that someone could make this mistake (buying MST on cryptsy).

On the other hand, we can't idiot proof everything in this world.  If a guy can't make a clear distinction between the two - he is clearly not thinking enough that day and he needs to go get a coffee.  There is a certain amount of due diligence to be done when making an investment.  That includes - understanding which instrument you are buying - at least.

[rbdrbd]

I have a few questions related to smart properties:

From the spec, it looks like the unique factor used to differentiate one property from another is the Property Name, in which one may put up to 21 characters, correct?

Question 1: What’s to stop people from spamming new smart properties? This could be like the domain name system, without any pricing required to reserve a name. Someone could reserve a smart property like “dog”, or “House Deed”, in perpetuity. Is any MSC required to be consumed to create a property, or is it just the BTC transaction costs to send the transaction?

If we are just limited to 21 bytes for property names in this kind of wild-west scenario, without any kind of payment requirement beyond the minimal BTC fees to keep away spam, I can see all of the intelligible choices for this filling up quickly. People would then be forced to use names like “HouseDeed_348dF” or even some kind of odd hash value. This may not necessarily be a ‘bad’ thing…worse case we could see Mastercoin property names devolving to the level of implicit legibility as Bitcoin addresses (i.e. a long string of numbers and letters).

If MSC is required (or you are considering this), you could have two options here: pay to the Exodus address (further enriching that, although I don’t know how necessary that is), or destroy the funds, similar to Peercoin transactions.

If destroying the MSC, to offset the deflation this causes, a future proof-of-stake type system could be even initiated that would inflate the supply at a low level (e.g. fixed 1%, or a variable rate derived periodically based on the MSC value destroyed over the past X period of time) to offset and attempt constant, or very slowly growing supply. I think that this idea is probably heretical and overly complex, since MSCs were created as a fixed supply (sounds kind of like a central bank, coded into the software, hah!)…just thought I’d throw it out there if in the future we find ourselves needing to allow for some controlling feedback to be applied to several aspects of the system (smart properties, bidding, etc) by allowing Mastercoin to require at least a small amount of MSC for most actions, in a way that didn’t unfairly enrich one specific party, or disrupt the balance of wealth in the system. Whether it would cripple the usefulness of Mastercoin in the process is up in the air though. If the fee was low enough, it shouldn’t.

Question 2: I see where dividends can be paid against smart properties. Can Smart properties be transferred? (I do see “Listing something for Sale” and “Initiating a Purchase”, but I’m a bit confused whether these have anything to do with a smart property, as their identifier is a 11 byte category and a 16 byte subcategory. If not currently, why not? Perhaps that’s an area of the spec that needs to be added.

If these were covered somewhere else, forgive me. Thanks for any answers.

1) Adding some sort of cost to reduce spam is a great idea. Thanks for bringing that up.
2) Yes, each new property gets its own currency id, so anything you can do with a currency can be done with a property (buy, sell, transfer, bet, etc)

Regarding 1), this is a tricky problem, which I have thought about some already. There are several ways to add cost. I prefer a sliding fee scale which targets creating X properties per day. If more than the target are being created, the fee goes up, otherwise the fee goes down.

I think the fee should destroy MSC, not send them to the Exodus Address.

I'd be interested in hearing other opinions about this. I'd be really happy to see a pull request about this once we've got some consensus.

I haven't added anything like this to the spec because everything I came up with seemed a bit too complicated. For instance, the number of properties created per day might need to go up once MasterCoin is getting widespread use, and it's hard to make the right formula for adjusting that automatically.

Having a fee is about much more than just reducing system abuse. If done right, it can also be about encouraging the growth of MSC, by requiring people to trade and vest into MSC before using the features of the systems. Doing this I believe will have a huge impact on enlisting long term support of Mastercoin, because it makes anyone that wants to use Mastercoin features have to be vested into the system to some extent, even if it's only a bit, in order to consume finite platform resources (e.g. smart property namespace and currency IDs in this case). It's also an area where I wonder how Mastercoin clones (such as Mastercoin2, where no Exodus-style funding and no inherent coin worth) will handle. To deter namespace spamming, requiring something beyond the minimal BTC transaction value to be spent on a valuable service with finite addressing resources makes logical and economic sense, to me at least, and keeps the system un-bloated and useful. And it is also something to consider from a systems perspective...i.e. if Tachikoma or someone needs to implement a smart properties feature to the site, parsing out and caching each smart property for quick look-up takes time and memory space.

So that all being said, I agree with you on some kind of fee (which I think should be reasonable, able to adjust/change possibly, and made with the foremost intention of reducing spam while preserving usability and desirability of the feature-set). Also agree that it should not go to the Exodus address. It should be done in a way that doesn't bias one participant over another. However, the problem if we did that alone, is that Mastercoin would become a deflationary currency, possibly even more than bitcoin is (where supply slowly reduces due to constant max and people losing wallets, etc, but transaction fees do not destroy BTC). Not inherently a deal killer, but it would reduce the supply over time. Not entirely sure about what the exact consequences of this are, as the annualized deflation rate could become significant, depending on the exact fee structure and service use volume.

So if MSC destruction on feature use is desired, I would put forward us considering some kind of proof-of-stake type system, similar to Peercoin's coin-age redeeming system, with a fixed inflation rate, or a variable one that takes MSCs destroyed by service use into account. With Peercoin, coin-age is consumed, so that stake awards can be rewarded in a fair and decentralized way. Given the fact that PPC network is the base network and produces POS blocks itself (instead of laying on top of a POW network like bitcoin), any MSC POS feature may end up having to be implemented totally differently. I am not technically experienced enough on the workings of PPC POS to make an intelligent comment beyond this. Another factor to consider is compatibility of future Mastercoin ports to other blockchains, such as Peercoin and Litecoin.

I'd be very interested in hearing other opinions on this. It may even be a good idea to enlist Sunny King into the conversation at some point for this point of view (and if people DO want to go with this, we could even pay him to implement it for us).

[dacoinminster]

There's a voting feature in the works which will use proof-of-stake. I have outlined how it might work, but I'm actually going to redesign it to be a more generic distributed bounty system (basically what the Mastercoin Foundation does, but using distributed proof-of-stake voting to disburse project funds). I have some ideas on that which I need to flesh out more.

Mastercoin has a fixed supply, and I'll gladly destroy them as an anti-spam feature. You'll notice that distributed e-commerce destroys MSC to avoid gaming the feedback system. I think it makes sense to destroy MSC to avoid spam feedback, and spam property creation, and spam anything else. Deflationary = Good Investment = Bigger Mastercoin Community = Faster progress = Even better investment

[rbdrbd]

There's a voting feature in the works which will use proof-of-stake. I have outlined how it might work, but I'm actually going to redesign it to be a more generic distributed bounty system (basically what the Mastercoin Foundation does, but using distributed proof-of-stake voting to disburse project funds). I have some ideas on that which I need to flesh out more.

Mastercoin has a fixed supply, and I'll gladly destroy them as an anti-spam feature. You'll notice that distributed e-commerce destroys MSC to avoid gaming the feedback system. I think it makes sense to destroy MSC to avoid spam feedback, and spam property creation, and spam anything else. Deflationary = Good Investment = Bigger Mastercoin Community = Faster progress = Even better investment

Well, then if Mastercoin is VERY successful, we'll end up with our very own version of OneCoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=200177.0). 

Can't wait for the Smart Properties conversation to really get off the ground, so I can follow it and contribute feedback. It looks like you guys got a very qualified individual to run with it...really excited. I can see several areas around it where the spec needs to be expanded/improved, and would be happy to be a part of that conversation.