Feathercoin Advanced Checkpointing released today

[bushstar]

Quick note. You can enable and disable the checkpointing with enforcecheckpoint true and enforcecheckpoint false

./feathercoind enforcecheckpoint false


, this discussions over the attacks came up on the forum many times and this solution was discussed there. The general consensus was that ACP was the lesser of two evils, the other being simply leaving ourselves unprotected against attackers. This is not an easy call to make as Satoshi's original vision was one of complete decentralisation. However we should not regard his paper as some religious text with which to limit our abilities.

Also we have been talking about this solution for months now. You had your chance for a say but as you can imagine we never had these debates on BitcoinTalk as there are more people throwing stones than trying to be constructive. A vote was never taken, just general consensus. If you are really interested in how Feathercoin is being developed then please spend time on the Feathercoin forum. The feedback system is not some form of democratic system

Balthazar, thanks for sticking around even though not being a great fan of Feathercoin. We could always use someone with your ability over in the Feathercoin forum. We are a friendly lot and you would not to spend so much time shouting at people. I think that NVC is in a good position to disable checkpointing as you have PoS which will give you more and more protection over time. I do believe that crypto coin is going to be a revolution and not a quiet one either. Bitcoin should be looking to get some kind of protection not less. People are ignoring the issue of attacks on Bitcoin because they cannot imagine such a thing and let's hope it never happens, however people should not be complacent on the issue of attacks.

atomicchoas, Feathercoin still loves you

[Balthazar]

Was FTC premined? No.

Do you still believe in Santa? Like any 0-startup-diff coin, it was instamined by early-adopters.

so they would accept NVC into their exchange

Sherlock, I don't need to bribe btc-e owner for anything.

By the way, I suggested him to add FTC & CNC. So, we made for FTC more than your "cocksuckers" (c) team ever would be able to do. It's humiliating for you, isn't it?

but half of the premined coins

Is there any proof for that? It is easy to guess that you have none. I have published proofs of mined volume (~65500 coins), and also we have a proof of 110k coins destruction. On the other hand, your buddies has nothing except "AAA SCAM 200K PREMINED"... That's pretty mature behavior Especially funny it looks at the background of fact that 200,000 coins at that time simply didn't existed in the network. Yep, pre-mined 200+k coins from 160k, LOL. Oh well, trolls are using the own arithmetics. Thanks for the portion of pleasure, now I'll let you get back to your normal occupation.

Quick note. You can enable and disable the checkpointing with enforcecheckpoint true and enforcecheckpoint false

That isn't enough, command line option is still required.  ::)Because only a few users will run commands in the RPC console.

[bushstar]

Quick note. You can enable and disable the checkpointing with enforcecheckpoint true and enforcecheckpoint false

That isn't enough, command line option is required.

To do that people need to go into the debug console in the Qt GUI. Are you saying that an option needs to be made available in the GUI as that is very doable?

In fact we would welcome you to make a commit for such a thing if you are willing

[sumantso]

atomicchoas, Feathercoin still loves you

Are you claiming to be Feathercoin now? I won't stand for this kind of centralisation 

[Balthazar]

To do that people need to go into the debug console in the Qt GUI. Are you saying that an option needs to be made available in the GUI as that is very doable?

Nope, I mean command line key. In NVC you are able to start client with the -nosynccheckpoints option, and this will disable checkpoints enforcement... User can add this option into shortcut or conf file and forget about checkpoints.

I'll make a patch soon, maybe.

[Balthazar]

atomicchoas, Feathercoin still loves you

Are you claiming to be Feathercoin now? I won't stand for this kind of centralisation  

He is the Avatar of Feathercoin.

http://andromeda.wikia.com/wiki/Celestial_Avatar

 

[atomicchaos]

The general consensus was that ACP was the lesser of two evils, the other being simply leaving ourselves unprotected against attackers.

By whom? The developers and main holders? Of course this would be attractive to them. In the same reason the US implemented the Patriot Act under the guise of protecting the country.

atomicchoas, Feathercoin still loves you

And I love Feathercoin, although that gave me a slightly creepy cult vibe... Anything that keeps LTC difficulty down is great to me, plus the propping up of the market has been nice for mining.

That said, what is the formal plan to notify people when the central console is utilized? What can you provide besides "trust me", that the central console is not used or accessed for any other purpose?

You had your chance for a say but as you can imagine we never had these debates on BitcoinTalk as there are more people throwing stones than trying to be constructive.

You don't learn from those that agree with everything you do, you learn from those that don't.

[Balthazar]

Maybe it's better to use coinbase property values for voting, just like Bitcoin did with P2SH...

[bushstar]

You had your chance for a say but as you can imagine we never had these debates on BitcoinTalk as there are more people throwing stones than trying to be constructive.

You don't learn from those that agree with everything you do, you learn from those that don't.

I know what you mean but I used to find the altcoin forum very useful but it is now very confined as there are so many 'alts' here and there is often a lot of hostility that is counter productive. I like to think that everyone on the Feathercoin forum wants to see it survive and succeed

I do not think that anyone was over joyed with this solution but eventually found that this was the most viable short term protection against the 51% attacks. What every crypto coin needs is protection from 51% attacks through decentralisation and that is where we hope to be. I believe alternative crypto currencies is where the real progress in cryptos will now be made. It has been said in this post that Bitcoin could never do ACP, that is correct, they have to maintain the status quo now and lack agility.  It is up to the 'alts' to do the work that no else wants to, we would hope that the end result is a solution for everyone to use.

[triciam]

Congratulations to Feathercoin for now adding extreme legal hazard to its already amazing record of technical failure.  By becoming a centralized virtual currency, Feathercoin has now become de facto controlled by a single entity and is thus at risk of government crackdown like what happened to Liberty Reserve.  The owner of the checkpoint key also puts themselves enormous personal risk.

The track record of technical incompetence of Feathercoin development is clear and quite humorous.

* Despite claiming that Feathercoin is about innovation, Feathercoin hasn't fixed ANY OF THE BUGS since copying the old Litecoin 0.6.3 source.  They have had months of opportunity to copy critical bug and security fixes from Litecoin 0.6 or to upgrade to 0.8.

* To add to this further, when Bushstar copied Litecoin, he failed to change the alert private key (which was seriously bad), but the way Bushstar responded made it even worse.  Instead of replacing the alert key with his own, he disabled alerts entirely making it impossible to alert all users that they need to upgrade in the event of a future emergency.

* Also the way that Feathercoin modified its difficulty formula without understanding what he is doing and without modifying the pool software created that breathtakingly awesome time-travelling exploit.
 
Feathercoin has managed to fix no bugs, added more bugs, make themselves a regulatory hazard that is highly likely illegal as a centralized virtual currency, and has failed to upgrade to 0.8 despite months of source code access to litecoin.  Amazing.

The excuse against centralization being bad where individual users can remove or disable checkpoint enforcement is a meaningless lie.  If the major pools enforce checkpoints, then it doesn't matter if the users are enforcing broadcast checkpoints.

[digitalindustry]

The fact is that people against checkpoints can cry all you like , the community has decided , checkpoints are accepted politically because they secure the individual investors investment .

And the arguments against are vauge retarded like statments about hostile takeovers , and images of crack teams storming server complexes or possible drone attack .

Points for creativity , but the retarded statments against centralized checkpoints are vacant as the community clearly has decided , Nova is trading number 2 and PPC could be called a successful endeavor , so ...

Look at the scoreboard.

FTC has clawed back credibilty in my books , for protecting investors or taking action to do so at least .

[kokjo]

The fact is that people against checkpoints can cry all you like , the community has decided , checkpoints are accepted politically because they secure the individual investors investment .

And the arguments against are vauge retarded like statments about hostile takeovers , and images of crack teams storming server complexes or possible drone attack .

Points for creativity , but the retarded statments against centralized checkpoints are vacant as the community clearly has decided , Nova is trading number 2 and PPC could be called a successful endeavor , so ...

Look at the scoreboard.

FTC has clawed back credibilty in my books , for protecting investors or taking action to do so at least .

if checkpoints secure ftc, it does not deserve to call it self a cryptocurrency, as its no longer decentralized.

also think of it this way: if checkpoints was secure there would be no need for a block chain. and the invention of satoshi would be a very very small one(and i think we agree thats its not.). if checkpointing was a good solution bitcoin and any other cryptocurency would have been possible for over 60 years.

[digitalindustry]

The fact is that people against checkpoints can cry all you like , the community has decided , checkpoints are accepted politically because they secure the individual investors investment .

And the arguments against are vauge retarded like statments about hostile takeovers , and images of crack teams storming server complexes or possible drone attack .

Points for creativity , but the retarded statments against centralized checkpoints are vacant as the community clearly has decided , Nova is trading number 2 and PPC could be called a successful endeavor , so ...

Look at the scoreboard.

FTC has clawed back credibilty in my books , for protecting investors or taking action to do so at least .

if checkpoints secure ftc, it does not deserve to call it self a cryptocurrency, as its no longer decentralized.

also think of it this way: if checkpoints was secure there would be no need for a block chain. and the invention of satoshi would be a very very small one(and i think we agree thats its not.). if checkpointing was a good solution bitcoin and any other cryptocurency would have been possible for over 60 years.

that's essentially a distortion of the truth and you know it, i really don't care , you can talk to Anonymint about it if you like , I'll go tell him you want to chat about it ?

you are trying (and failing) to exaggerate the importance of checkpoints in the overall system and structure and its dumb.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Congratulations to Feathercoin for now adding extreme legal hazard to its already amazing record of technical failure.  By becoming a centralized virtual currency, Feathercoin has now become de facto controlled by a single entity and is thus at risk of government crackdown like what happened to Liberty Reserve.  The owner of the checkpoint key also puts themselves enormous personal risk.

The track record of technical incompetence of Feathercoin development is clear and quite humorous.

* Despite claiming that Feathercoin is about innovation, Feathercoin hasn't fixed ANY OF THE BUGS since copying the old Litecoin 0.6.3 source.  They have had months of opportunity to copy critical bug and security fixes from Litecoin 0.6 or to upgrade to 0.8.

* To add to this further, when Bushstar copied Litecoin, he failed to change the alert private key (which was seriously bad), but the way Bushstar responded made it even worse.  Instead of replacing the alert key with his own, he disabled alerts entirely making it impossible to alert all users that they need to upgrade in the event of a future emergency.

* Also the way that Feathercoin modified its difficulty formula without understanding what he is doing and without modifying the pool software created that breathtakingly awesome time-travelling exploit.
 
Feathercoin has managed to fix no bugs, added more bugs, make themselves a regulatory hazard that is highly likely illegal as a centralized virtual currency, and has failed to upgrade to 0.8 despite months of source code access to litecoin.  Amazing.

The excuse against centralization being bad where individual users can remove or disable checkpoint enforcement is a meaningless lie.  If the major pools enforce checkpoints, then it doesn't matter if the users are enforcing broadcast checkpoints.

of course this scam coin is dead and there are good reasons for it. so R.I.P 

[atomicchaos]

It's not dead, nor will be for a while, but if this doesn't scare people away, they deserve what they get.

[smoothie]

There are talks of changing the difficulty algorithm once again because it is "unfair" that certain miners get to "abuse" the rules set forth.

To change the rules again shows that the first change was not well thought out and should not have happened at all. Sorry if this is off-topic but it is essentially in the same category as this thread as it is another change being spoken about currently.

I don't think there should be any other difficulty adjustment changes. Disclosure: I am not a miner and have not been for 2 years now.

[digitalindustry]

Advanced Checkpoints  {Tick yes}

Diff adjustment changes  { No , generally bad}

The Reward insta-mine  {No , possible deal breaker for me} {See Goldcoin's "success"} {you can see they are trying very hard to memory hole this issue} 

[smoothie]

There is no way to "have fun", even if checkpointing server will be stolen from the DC. If you would try to change checkpoints in the past, such attempts will be rejected by network.

If checkpointing server can be stolen and it would not make any difference, then what is the point (pun not intended) of having a checkpointing server at all?

It contradicts itself - if this checkpointing server is so important for security, then how can the theft of this server not compromise security in any way?

And here in lies the problem of having a centralized master node.

Now it boils down to mainly physical security. Our current banking system already has that problem. Only difference is they have the status quo and resources to protect their systems and Peter doesn't.

QUESTION: What would happen if the master node were to crash? Would the network come to a halt? Who or what would decide the depth of checkpointing and validate the checkpoints?

[digitalindustry]

There is no way to "have fun", even if checkpointing server will be stolen from the DC. If you would try to change checkpoints in the past, such attempts will be rejected by network.

If checkpointing server can be stolen and it would not make any difference, then what is the point (pun not intended) of having a checkpointing server at all?

It contradicts itself - if this checkpointing server is so important for security, then how can the theft of this server not compromise security in any way?

And here in lies the problem of having a centralized master node.

Now it boils down to mainly physical security. Our current banking system already has that problem. Only difference is they have the status quo and resources to protect their systems and Peter doesn't.

QUESTION: What would happen if the master node were to crash? Would the network come to a halt? Who or what would decide the depth of checkpointing and validate the checkpoints?

Please read Balthazar's teachings in this thread , you guys need to learn , I'm not a particularly intelligent being and i can seem to understand it.

the other point is , that of course um,...well, just this:

A nations currency supply is "issued" and wait for it , its "issued" into debt, and has "interest" added to it, it is issued by a central authority.

now i know Bitcoin is very controlled and centralized , Bitcoin is really actually centralized because of the very few that hold so many, but that aside , not even Bitcoin as flawed as it is is a "central issuing authority"

so:

How do you even start to compare the two?   

{and i assume you are not stupid}

so to be very clear in my question:

How can you compare a National issuance of central currency INTO DEBT, though the creation of a Bond and then a shell game "open market operation" and then Currency issued/monetaized as a "loan" with "interest" added , for then that to be multiplied by the Fractional reserve system, with the only way of a human to get "currency" is the expend labor or energy or borrow it AGAIN , after it was borrowed into existence, with the double whammy , and wait for this ... the new borrowed money adding to the currency supply and essentially inflating the current actual supply thus meaning the existing human loses more standard of living?

to and with

Advanced Centralized Checkpoints?

[smoothie]

There is no way to "have fun", even if checkpointing server will be stolen from the DC. If you would try to change checkpoints in the past, such attempts will be rejected by network.

If checkpointing server can be stolen and it would not make any difference, then what is the point (pun not intended) of having a checkpointing server at all?

It contradicts itself - if this checkpointing server is so important for security, then how can the theft of this server not compromise security in any way?

And here in lies the problem of having a centralized master node.

Now it boils down to mainly physical security. Our current banking system already has that problem. Only difference is they have the status quo and resources to protect their systems and Peter doesn't.

QUESTION: What would happen if the master node were to crash? Would the network come to a halt? Who or what would decide the depth of checkpointing and validate the checkpoints?

Please read Balthazar's teachings in this thread , you guys need to learn , I'm not a particularly intelligent being and i can seem to understand it.

the other point is , that of course um,...well, just this:

A nations currency supply is "issued" and wait for it , its "issued" into debt, and has "interest" added to it, it is issued by a central authority.

now i know Bitcoin is very controlled and centralized , Bitcoin is really actually centralized because of the very few that hold so many, but that aside , not even Bitcoin as flawed as it is is a "central issuing authority"

so:

How do you even start to compare the two?  

{and i assume you are not stupid}

so to be very clear in my question:

How can you compare a National issuance of central currency INTO DEBT, though the creation of a Bond and then a shell game "open market operation" and then Currency issued/monetaized as a "loan" with "interest" added , for then that to be multiplied by the Fractional reserve system, with the only way of a human to get "currency" is the expend labor or energy or borrow it AGAIN , after it was borrowed into existence, with the double whammy , and wait for this ... the new borrowed money adding to the currency supply and essentially inflating the current actual supply thus meaning the existing human loses more standard of living?

to and with

Advanced Centralized Checkpoints?

Follow me carefully, the way I was comparing them is as follows:

Master Node -> Physical Machine -> Physical Security -> How Banks are secured mainly.

They enforce their PAPER by the status quo of having physical security in the form of Guns, Guards, Walls, Etc.