NXT :: descendant of Bitcoin - Updated Information

[^[GS]^]

I wrote most of the db code yesterday and today, and I am running it for the first time now. Let's see how many stack traces I find in the log tomorrow morning. Hope to have it ready for release by the end of the week.

Update: No errors in the logs on my two machines. I even forged a few blocks with 0.7.0. Tried loading the blockchain from scratch with -Xmx256M, didn't go out of memory, but feels slower because the database doesn't get enough cache in this case (db cache is set to 50% of the available memory).

Get State:
{ "lastBlock": "6196662565553489403", "numberOfAliases": 56879, "lastBlockchainFeeder": "184.166.159.100", "numberOfBlocks": 58509, "numberOfPeers": 776, "totalMemory": 238551040, "numberOfUnlockedAccounts": 0, "freeMemory": 46919888, "maxMemory": 238551040, "numberOfTransactions": 115865, "numberOfUsers": 0, "version": "0.7.0", "numberOfOrders": 0, "totalEffectiveBalance": 98535822400, "time": 6293793, "availableProcessors": 4, "numberOfAssets": 0, "cumulativeDifficulty": "1812805398112686", "numberOfAccounts": 21966 }

I also updated the javadoc at https://nxt.airdns.org:7875/doc/ to the latest 0.7.0.

excellent progress!
when will be able to use it?

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[Come-from-Beyond]

2 days have passed. Looks like we decided who will keep the unclaimed coins?

[jl777]

Quick question about coin mixing for anonymity (too early for my brain):

1. You send NXT to coin mixer (special account, hardcoded in source code)
2. The NXT will get forwarded, in random fractions, throughout the following 1440 blocks to the receiver
3. NXT Amount varies maybe 5%

Does this make sense? Is this even possible?

If it isnt zeroknowlege proofed, then some knowledge is leaking. Not sure how much with your setup, but big bad agency will be able to start building correlations and before long small knowledge leakage becomes full path tree.

[pinarello]

If the network didnt check the forgers work than forgers could just publish false answers every time and claim the transaction fees anway. meaning they would have no incentive to actually execute the code.

The whole idea has security implications that we haven't even considered yet. This will turn out to be real bad for Nxt if malicious nodes  are able to steal money.  

There are many other things in the pipeline:

- Distributed Storage - In progress
- Multi-signatures - In progress
- Blockchain Shrinking - In progress
- Two-phase Payments - In progress
     Software supported escrow transactions
- Voting System - In progress
- Reputation System - Will be implemented after Voting System
     Account trust rating system.  Check if sellers on the distributed exchange have a good history, if stock issuers pay dividends and if gateways honor their asset redemptions.
- Decentralized Mixing Service - Concept not ready - Cryptographers please contact core dev team members
- Distributed Computing - Concept not ready
- Smart Contracts - Concept not ready

Why not work on these?

It appears cfb has very short attention spam. Last week it was zerocoin, and now it's built in VM.

I hope he doesn't follow through this and  focuses on finishing things already listed. Maybe more trusted developers should be added to the team. Looking at his posting history, I will vote for "CIYAM Open".

I agree. Although the things discussed here can be pretty nice for the future as of today we don’t have something that is finished and polished for (mass) adoption.  
This we have to do ourselves, hereby I am thinking about a usable client.
I am tend to say we have a fork here of people that are looking into the future and people that focus on NXT todays value.

Either way I am in long so I don’t worry to much, but I do understand people losing patience selling NXT to buy other coins, so be prepared for a little dip but don’t worry future is bright as you can see in this thread, a lot of devs talking about things…

and it is good for mass distribution isnt it.

[jl777]

2 days have passed. Looks like we decided who will keep the unclaimed coins?

Almost.
Now we need to see if klee, bybitcoin and neer.g are all willing. If not, then pouncer is alternate.

To simplify, probably makes sense to divide total in 3 equal parts. Thats really close to marketing allocation and depending on infrastructure costs the tech committee can balance funds with infrastructure committee to make sure everything is funded properly

James

[bitcoinpaul]

2 days have passed. Looks like we decided who will keep the unclaimed coins?

Almost.
Now we need to see if klee, bybitcoin and neer.g are all willing. If not, then pouncer is alternate.

To simplify, probably makes sense to divide total in 3 equal parts. Thats really close to marketing allocation and depending on infrastructure costs the tech committee can balance funds with infrastructure committee to make sure everything is funded properly

James

Equal portions. They can arrange it among themselves how to fund.

[pinarello]

Edit: I think it would be really cool to do to Etherium what XCP did to mastercoin
Edit2: Plus I think CfB was getting bored doing easy stuff, this is not so easy

Forget  Etherium. Nxt has first mover advantage. Finish the client and "features" that are already listed before introducing even new "me too" complexities with so many security and performance implications.    If CFB is so easily bored, he should add more developers to the team to work on things that are already in the pipleline.

+1

[bitcoinpaul]

Edit: I think it would be really cool to do to Etherium what XCP did to mastercoin
Edit2: Plus I think CfB was getting bored doing easy stuff, this is not so easy

Forget  Etherium. Nxt has first mover advantage. Finish the client and "features" that are already listed before introducing even new "me too" complexities with so many security and performance implications.    If CFB is so easily bored, he should add more developers to the team to work on things that are already in the pipleline.

+1

That shouldn't stop us from thinking and developing more ideas and features, should it? What I wouldn't want is if someone was dedicated to a dev project and suddenly just ignores it for another 'cool feature' and so on.

[gimre]

Guys, if u offer an instruction set, please, provide a simple program. The task of this program is to pay dividends to accounts owning a particular asset at block N.

I assume issuer would send such a program and transaction itself would include full amount of dividends.
Transaction would reference Arbitrary Message sent earlier probably to Genesis Account. AM would contain info about dividend per share and asset Id.

High level code, that should be compiled to VM language...

Code:

txId = getReferencedTransaction()  # to obtain id of AM
desc = getAmData(txId)

# the following should return map id -> amount of shares
shareholders = getAssetShareholdersAtBlock(desc['assetId'], 50000)
for shareholderId,shareholderShare in ipairs(shareholders) do
  addBalance(shareholderId, shareholderShare * desc['dividendPerShare'])
end

note, that:

• amount sent in tx can't be "added" to recipient account (also where the tx should be send to?)
• when doing addBalance, VM would have to check it there is enough NXTs in transaction, if not, whole program would be "rolled back"

P.S. embedding lua, as someone suggested might indeed be way to go, and there's LuaJ, so integration should be easy (OFC we would send lua or java bytecode not the script itself)

[Jean-Luc]

excellent progress!
when will be able to use it?

Bug CfB to port his asset exchange bugfixes and APIs from 0.5.9 to 0.6.0, this is what I am waiting for, then we will get rid of the obsolete 0.5.x.

[xyzzyx]

High level code, that should be compiled to VM language...

Code:

txId = getReferencedTransaction()  # to obtain id of AM
desc = getAmData(txId)

# the following should return map id -> amount of shares
shareholders = getAssetShareholdersAtBlock(desc['assetId'], 50000)
for shareholderId,shareholderShare in ipairs(shareholders) do
  addBalance(shareholderId, shareholderShare * desc['dividendPerShare'])
end

What language is this, Lua?

Heh.  I assumed he wanted the program written in the low-level VM code.  Mind if I translate yours into the simple RISC VM opcodes?

[gimre]

Mind if I translate yours into the simple RISC VM opcodes?

don't mind at all

[Come-from-Beyond]

excellent progress!
when will be able to use it?

Bug CfB to port his asset exchange bugfixes and APIs from 0.5.9 to 0.6.0, this is what I am waiting for, then we will get rid of the obsolete 0.5.x.

Btw, what do u think of the approach when dumb actions, like an attempt to cancel a non-existent bid order, r processed without sanity checks? The fee is paid, transaction is added to the block but the state is not changed.

[xyzzyx]

Mind if I translate yours into the simple RISC VM opcodes?

don't mind at all

Thanks.  I don't know Lua.  Is there a good Lua reference on the web you would recommend?

[Eadeqa]

At worst you can stop using this setup if its not good, so I dont see how it is any worse.

If it doesn't work, it would be a waste of resources that could have been spent on finishing the laundry list of "features" not implemented yet.

Instant Transactions - Requires peer review
- Decentralized Marketplace / Auction - In progress
     Buy or sell goods/services in a distributed manner.  All listings are broadcast to all nodes on the network in P2P fashion.
- Distributed Storage - In progress
- Multi-signatures - In progress
- Blockchain Shrinking - In progress
- Two-phase Payments - In progress
     Software supported escrow transactions
- Voting System - In progress
- Reputation System - Will be implemented after Voting System
     Account trust rating system.  Check if sellers on the distributed exchange have a good history, if stock issuers pay dividends and if gateways honor their asset redemptions.
- Decentralized Mixing Service - Concept not ready - Cryptographers please contact core dev team members
- Distributed Computing - Concept not ready
- Smart Contracts - Concept not ready

The code that the node is running is also open source. It would be tested and so the only way I can think of that the node doesnt send the request to the service is if the server crashes.

I suspect some nodes could just collect transaction fees without forwarding the request to the "hub". Even worse, the node could send a fake transaction to the "hub". It takes bitcoin miners 10 minutes to confirm a transactions, so the Nxt network would not  know the node sent a fake transaction for at least 10 minutes -- at least after one confirmation on bitcoin's blockchain. 

I personally would trust that a peer reviewed open source solution that takes into account the Evil Bobs of the world will be more trustworthy that trusting some random employee at some random company. But, hey that's me. Maybe I am becoming a cryptoanarchist?

Absolutely not. Without some mathematical/cryptographic guarantee, I would take a trusted gateway over anonymous node. You need to provide mathematical proof to show such a system will work, and I doubt it will ever work without scam risk (or just technical failure)

  

[NxtChg]

Might I suggest that you do not hold your breath as you wait for the apology?

I obviously can’t stay in a community where four words and a stupid smiley makes somebody wish you death and don’t even think about apologizing (don’t bother doing it now in case your consciousness suddenly wakes up, it’s too late).

And I am tired of being one guy on the other side of everybody else. A cohesive community is much more important than stupid arguments.

So that’s the end for me.

Please withdraw all your money from the exchange, it will be closed in a few days.

Thank you to those people who said kind words.

And thank you to the people who were always nice to me, you know who you are, I am going to miss you.

[jl777]

At worst you can stop using this setup if its not good, so I dont see how it is any worse.

If it doesn't work, it would be a waste of resources that could have been spent on finishing the laundry list of "features" not implemented yet.

Instant Transactions - Requires peer review
- Decentralized Marketplace / Auction - In progress
     Buy or sell goods/services in a distributed manner.  All listings are broadcast to all nodes on the network in P2P fashion.
- Distributed Storage - In progress
- Multi-signatures - In progress
- Blockchain Shrinking - In progress
- Two-phase Payments - In progress
     Software supported escrow transactions
- Voting System - In progress
- Reputation System - Will be implemented after Voting System
     Account trust rating system.  Check if sellers on the distributed exchange have a good history, if stock issuers pay dividends and if gateways honor their asset redemptions.
- Decentralized Mixing Service - Concept not ready - Cryptographers please contact core dev team members
- Distributed Computing - Concept not ready
- Smart Contracts - Concept not ready

The code that the node is running is also open source. It would be tested and so the only way I can think of that the node doesnt send the request to the service is if the server crashes.

I suspect some nodes could just collect transaction fees without forwarding the request to the "hub". Even worse, the node could send a fake transaction to the "hub". It takes bitcoin miners 10 minutes to conform the transactions, so the Nxt network would not  know the node sent a fake transaction for at least 10 minutes.

I personally would trust that a peer reviewed open source solution that takes into account the Evil Bobs of the world will be more trustworthy that trusting some random employee at some random company. But, hey that's me. Maybe I am becoming a cryptoanarchist?

Absolutely not. Without some mathematical/cryptographic guarantee, I would take a trusted gateway over anonymous node. You need to provide mathematical proof to show such a system will work, and I doubt it will ever work without scam risk.

  

If nobody can figure out how to make it safe, then hub services would need to be for non-critical stuff, like sending an email.

We would have to put into the NXT core the ability to do offchain transactions? If a forging node claims to have done something when it didn't then it would need to be punished. We could always delay the payout of the fee until it is verified.

Getting late, so need help from smarter guys to solve these issues

Are you saying you wouldnt trust something like:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Zero_Knowledge_Contingent_Payment#Zero_knowledge_proof_to_binding

James

[swartzfeger]

Quick question about coin mixing for anonymity (too early for my brain):

1. You send NXT to coin mixer (special account, hardcoded in source code)
2. The NXT will get forwarded, in random fractions, throughout the following 1440 blocks to the receiver
3. NXT Amount varies maybe 5%

Does this make sense? Is this even possible?

If it isnt zeroknowlege proofed, then some knowledge is leaking. Not sure how much with your setup, but big bad agency will be able to start building correlations and before long small knowledge leakage becomes full path tree.

Not sure if this has popped up:

http://crypto.stanford.edu/~xb/fc12/bitcoin.pdf

Check section 7, Improving Anonymity with Reduced Trust (starts on page 12 of 15 in PDF)

[jl777]

Might I suggest that you do not hold your breath as you wait for the apology?

I obviously can’t stay in a community where four words and a stupid smiley makes somebody wish you death and don’t even think about apologizing (don’t bother doing it now in case your consciousness suddenly wakes up, it’s too late).

And I am tired of being one guy on the other side of everybody else. A cohesive community is much more important than stupid arguments.

So that’s the end for me.

Please withdraw all your money from the exchange, it will be closed in a few days.

Thank you to those people who said kind words.

And thank you to the people who were always nice to me, you know who you are, I am going to miss you.

Huh? Somebody gave you a death threat? That's crazy. There are always people say stuff they dont mean.

You have always been honest with your opinion and upfront with your views. I respect that. Would be a loss, truly.

Reconsider. You are not always the lone wolf, there are times we fully agree. Opposing views are good as usually better solution comes out.

James

P.S. plus the poll you made, you won by landslide so my opinion not alone

[swartzfeger]

Might I suggest that you do not hold your breath as you wait for the apology?

I obviously can’t stay in a community where four words and a stupid smiley makes somebody wish you death and don’t even think about apologizing (don’t bother doing it now in case your consciousness suddenly wakes up, it’s too late).

And I am tired of being one guy on the other side of everybody else. A cohesive community is much more important than stupid arguments.

So that’s the end for me.

Please withdraw all your money from the exchange, it will be closed in a few days.

Thank you to those people who said kind words.

And thank you to the people who were always nice to me, you know who you are, I am going to miss you.

This sucks, because I was just going to ask you about this --

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mwh/papers/gpads.pdf

-- to see if it was relevant to your earlier Merkle tree comments.

Sorry to see you go, but threats aren't funny.