NXT :: descendant of Bitcoin - Updated Information

[ChuckOne]

One of the things I like about NXT is that it has the potential to make mining obsolete. This whole operation even being needed seems like a waving of the white flag by POS, admitting that the network can't be secured without mining.

I think the point is that we do not want bloat the space of node just for the sake of it. Each node should contribute to the stability to the network. And to prove that, it simply has to do some sort of work.

Just having zombie nodes contributing nothing is not enough.

I'm old enough to remember going though an energy crisis. If that ever happens again a lot of people are going to be giving the stink eye to the alternative coin mining community. I mean why did we even invent all those pig-tail looking light-bulbs if this is how we're going to squander electricity?

+1

[chanc3r]

Would it help to add some more network intelligence to NXT so it became more self-organising, so the nodes were more aware that they were part of a network and integrating into that network properly makes it stronger, rather than just being, well, nodes with some connections...

At the moment the network organisation of NXT is a mystery, I don't know if nodes look for nearest nodes, and optimum number of connections based on available bandwidth, or just grab hold of any node they happen to see.

Self optimising isn't complex - it just requires each node to be a 'good neighbour' - although in our network you need to re-define the location attributes which can be ip-addr, latency etc

Some of this I can see NXT nodes do from their behaviour, but not all of it, maybe I don't know the mechanics well enough and more is going on.

Anyway I don't know if its of interest but I thought I would add it to the mix, translating what I know of the mobile world this is what self-organising characteristics would look like;

Self Configuring means new nodes shall automatically be configured and integrated into the network. This means both connectivity establishment, and download of configuration parameters. When a new node is introduced into the network and powered on, it gets immediately recognized and registered by the network. The neighboring nodes (self optimising) would then automatically adjust their technical parameters in order to balance the required coverage and capacity, and, in the same time, avoid unnecessary conflict.

Self Optimising means each node adjusts its parameters to ensure it fits in with the its immediate network neighbourhood, based on observation of neighbouring nodes and its own traffic, for example in periods of over capacity the nodes could all configure a shared sleep time to take it in turns conserving energy when there is not enough work to justify the number that are in existence.

Self Healing means when one or more nodes in the network become inoperative, failure or ddos, self-healing mechanisms aim at reducing the impacts from the failure, for example by adjusting parameters and algorithms in adjacent nodes so that other nodes can support the users that were supported by the failing node.

[ChuckOne]

If that could be solved, the lottery ticket should depend on how long a specific node was online. Here arises the question 'how can other nodes be sure that a specific node has been online this month?'

Instead of 30 days, lets make this time shorter. 24 hours?.12 hours? 6 hours? In that case, you don't have to keep track if the node awarded lottery has been running for 30 days. Just award it randomly to a node that is running at the time the award is given. The winner can be picked totally randomly.  

This will entice some people to keep NRS online, just to have a random chance at winning every few hours.

Legit. Could work for many small shareholders. Not sure if big players could outplay the smaller ones but could work for broad adoption with millions of smartphone users.

it sounds like another robin hood plan

It certainly does.

[Eadeqa]

First issue still remains: how do nodes agree on the winner?

The winner can be picked randomly by using all previous  blocks hashes (since the last winner)  as a seed to a pseudorandom generator. All nodes will agree as the answer should be the same

 

[ChuckOne]

First issue still remains: how do nodes agree on the winner?

The winner can be picked randomly by using all previous  blocks hashes (since the last winner)  as a seed to a pseudorandom generator. All nodes will agree as the answer should be the same

So, this system is highly playable. Nodes can be turn on and of, just to collect the prize AND reduce the work for the node administrator. Nodes also have to be registered in order to be selected deterministicly. I would rather have more elegant solution that favors quality (long online availability) vs quantity (many many nodes).

[Jerical13]

I will be coming out with "coins" that are actually NXT AE assets that can be mined by CPU. Every miner will need to be running a NXT node. If there is any level of market for such a coin the miners will start mining by the droves. Since the market for it is AE, we can always jump start the market by subsidizing the prices during the early days in order to ensure enough network capacity

This is another great service on top of NXT (besides the NXTopia) that stimulates the AE. +1

I like this very much.
it allows us to keep the "miners" on board and still helps secure the network without changing the core mechanics.

Elegant!

Would mining be needed for coins created on the exchange? I thought you could just "create" assets.  

It would have no value if there were a billion available to be sold, so nobody would mine that. I have to make the Asset scarce so that it behaves like PoW coin inventory, well I dont like all pre-mine, etc. so the good news is that we can define  how the mining works. Just need some tech to enforce the rules. If you think about it, even bitcoin can one day say, hey we removed the cap and now there can be 21 billion of them. There is nothing that prevents that other than the social contract, and also the fact that it would instantly destroy all credibility makes it an extremely illogical and unlikely event. As long as we can create the same dynamic with NXTcoins, it will work like other PoW coins.

James

Not really. Whoever created the currency would have control over its availability. Kind of like You are the FED. Who cares if no one mines. All of the increased value would benefit whoever created the coin. If you had a market or demand. There is more profit in creating a market than mining coins.

Really. As the creator of the currency, I can say that I would only sell any coins that I mined or purchased and that the coins that have been created by issuing, but not yet mined are off limits. I can enforce this with peer nodes verifying the balance 24/7. Any violation of this would destroy the coin. It could also be possible to use AT savings account to release the coins in a predictable and controlled fashion. That would reduce the risk to just the current batch that is being released could be misappropriated.

I want to recreate all the important characteristic of minable coins and have it exist on top of NXT. This will totally solve any network capacity issues as the miners have some pretty powerful rigs. It also allows miners to become part of the NXT economy, which I know will be a lot better than XYZ coin

James

P.S. Testnet got a block! NEW block.(5965269559946416574) vs lastblock.(4203933645799564239)

Would there be any proof of stake in your coin? What happens when the coin is mined to capacity? To me the whole issue with people who mine is that they only mine for the coins. What will happen when there are no coins left to mine? They will move on to the next coin. The whole thing about the mining logic is that they are not in it for the network (which I can understand). To me it seems that POW is not the best answer in the long term. A mined coin may get a lot of initial support but in the long run, POW is not going to compete with POS..... especially when the asset exchange allows people who don't know how to write program to create there own coins. I think for a coin to be long term successful POS or some form of rewarding has to be used to keep people using running the network once the coins are mined out. I like your idea though.

[BrianNowhere]

First issue still remains: how do nodes agree on the winner?

EDIT: Still think that having a verification of participation is needed. Just random lottery will not lead to security.

The lottery would just be basically an incentive to run an open client ie: forge. Hopefully this would lead to higher participation than you'd get without it and the added security and transaction speed would be the result.

You could do this from outside the system via a committee or something, but it would be kind of cool if it was possible to build in at the core level.

The system would just need to be able to make some random user 'king/queen for a day' and promote them to the front of the block generating line.

If there's a way to verify forging participation in the past for a certain time period, that would probably be better and make the reward time static. (making the exact time the reward/prize is released random would ensure people aren't just able to turn on the client to collect the reward cause they would not know when it's coming)  The nodes could still agree on the winner by "picking account numbers out of a hat" so to speak.

[Eadeqa]

First issue still remains: how do nodes agree on the winner?

The winner can be picked randomly by using all previous  blocks hashes (since the last winner)  as a seed to a pseudorandom generator. All nodes will agree as the answer should be the same

So, this system is highly playable. Nodes can be turn on and of, just to collect the prize.

If the winner is chosen every hour, how many nodes will turn on and off every hour? That will take more effort then keeping it on.

How about every 30 minutes?

[jl777]

I will be coming out with "coins" that are actually NXT AE assets that can be mined by CPU. Every miner will need to be running a NXT node. If there is any level of market for such a coin the miners will start mining by the droves. Since the market for it is AE, we can always jump start the market by subsidizing the prices during the early days in order to ensure enough network capacity

This is another great service on top of NXT (besides the NXTopia) that stimulates the AE. +1

I like this very much.
it allows us to keep the "miners" on board and still helps secure the network without changing the core mechanics.

Elegant!

Would mining be needed for coins created on the exchange? I thought you could just "create" assets.  

It would have no value if there were a billion available to be sold, so nobody would mine that. I have to make the Asset scarce so that it behaves like PoW coin inventory, well I dont like all pre-mine, etc. so the good news is that we can define  how the mining works. Just need some tech to enforce the rules. If you think about it, even bitcoin can one day say, hey we removed the cap and now there can be 21 billion of them. There is nothing that prevents that other than the social contract, and also the fact that it would instantly destroy all credibility makes it an extremely illogical and unlikely event. As long as we can create the same dynamic with NXTcoins, it will work like other PoW coins.

James

Not really. Whoever created the currency would have control over its availability. Kind of like You are the FED. Who cares if no one mines. All of the increased value would benefit whoever created the coin. If you had a market or demand. There is more profit in creating a market than mining coins.

Really. As the creator of the currency, I can say that I would only sell any coins that I mined or purchased and that the coins that have been created by issuing, but not yet mined are off limits. I can enforce this with peer nodes verifying the balance 24/7. Any violation of this would destroy the coin. It could also be possible to use AT savings account to release the coins in a predictable and controlled fashion. That would reduce the risk to just the current batch that is being released could be misappropriated.

I want to recreate all the important characteristic of minable coins and have it exist on top of NXT. This will totally solve any network capacity issues as the miners have some pretty powerful rigs. It also allows miners to become part of the NXT economy, which I know will be a lot better than XYZ coin

James

P.S. Testnet got a block! NEW block.(5965269559946416574) vs lastblock.(4203933645799564239)

One of the things I like about NXT is that it has the potential to make mining obsolete. This whole operation even being needed seems like a waving of the white flag by POS, admitting that the network can't be secured without mining.

I'm old enough to remember going though an energy crisis. If that ever happens again a lot of people are going to be giving the stink eye to the alternative coin mining community. I mean why did we even invent all those pig-tail looking light-bulbs if this is how we're going to squander electricity?

On the contrary, I want to rescue the computing power that is being wasted mindlessly calculating hashes. My first coin will actually productively use the computing power to solve business problems, or at least problems that directly map to a business solution. Also, instead of having 99.9% of the calculations being wasted (there is only one winner per block), my coin will have just a three way redundancy. That allows it to validate results without an unacceptable loss from redundancy.

For better or worse, the mining industry has created a monstrous computing machine. Giga, tera, peta(!) and beyond. However, all that computing on something that has no real world value. What if we can get 33% efficient use of all that computing power? How much is it worth to a business to tap into that computing power?

The market is built in for my business coin. Business will pay for the computing power in NXT(!) and this NXT gets distributed to the miners on a prorata basis as their holdings. This also means that the business that is paying for the computing power can get a discount by purchasing the business coins.

I need to finish the automated gateway so I can start on the NXTcoin platform. Actually, the code base will have a lot in common as creating peer reviewing gateways is really the same thing as peer reviewing the coins in circulation. The really cool thing is that I get to tie all the various things I am interested in and combine them all into a three layer NXTcoin system, which helps NXT network and price demand.

James

[Eadeqa]

First issue still remains: how do nodes agree on the winner?

The winner can be picked randomly by using all previous  blocks hashes (since the last winner)  as a seed to a pseudorandom generator. All nodes will agree as the answer should be the same

So, this system is highly playable. Nodes can be turn on and of, just to collect the prize.

If the winner is chosen every hour, how many nodes will turn on and off every hour? That will take more effort then keeping it on.

How about every 30 minutes?

This could  be reduced even to every single block (1 minute). Forging nodes gets some percentage and other percentage is awarded to random node that is running.

[ChuckOne]

If there's a way to verify forging participation in the past for a certain time period, that would probably be better and make the reward time static. The nodes could still agree on the winner by "picking account numbers out of a hat" so to speak.

Maybe, I should clarify something.

It is not forging and its participation that needs to be improved.

It is about having more nodes securing the network by:
 1) storing the blockchains
 2) answering requests from clients
 3) distributing block and transaction data

Furthermore, accounts != nodes. It is not about encouraging the creation of accounts but about running nodes.

[BrianNowhere]

I will be coming out with "coins" that are actually NXT AE assets that can be mined by CPU. Every miner will need to be running a NXT node. If there is any level of market for such a coin the miners will start mining by the droves. Since the market for it is AE, we can always jump start the market by subsidizing the prices during the early days in order to ensure enough network capacity

This is another great service on top of NXT (besides the NXTopia) that stimulates the AE. +1

I like this very much.
it allows us to keep the "miners" on board and still helps secure the network without changing the core mechanics.

Elegant!

Would mining be needed for coins created on the exchange? I thought you could just "create" assets.  

It would have no value if there were a billion available to be sold, so nobody would mine that. I have to make the Asset scarce so that it behaves like PoW coin inventory, well I dont like all pre-mine, etc. so the good news is that we can define  how the mining works. Just need some tech to enforce the rules. If you think about it, even bitcoin can one day say, hey we removed the cap and now there can be 21 billion of them. There is nothing that prevents that other than the social contract, and also the fact that it would instantly destroy all credibility makes it an extremely illogical and unlikely event. As long as we can create the same dynamic with NXTcoins, it will work like other PoW coins.

James

Not really. Whoever created the currency would have control over its availability. Kind of like You are the FED. Who cares if no one mines. All of the increased value would benefit whoever created the coin. If you had a market or demand. There is more profit in creating a market than mining coins.

Really. As the creator of the currency, I can say that I would only sell any coins that I mined or purchased and that the coins that have been created by issuing, but not yet mined are off limits. I can enforce this with peer nodes verifying the balance 24/7. Any violation of this would destroy the coin. It could also be possible to use AT savings account to release the coins in a predictable and controlled fashion. That would reduce the risk to just the current batch that is being released could be misappropriated.

I want to recreate all the important characteristic of minable coins and have it exist on top of NXT. This will totally solve any network capacity issues as the miners have some pretty powerful rigs. It also allows miners to become part of the NXT economy, which I know will be a lot better than XYZ coin

James

P.S. Testnet got a block! NEW block.(5965269559946416574) vs lastblock.(4203933645799564239)

One of the things I like about NXT is that it has the potential to make mining obsolete. This whole operation even being needed seems like a waving of the white flag by POS, admitting that the network can't be secured without mining.

I'm old enough to remember going though an energy crisis. If that ever happens again a lot of people are going to be giving the stink eye to the alternative coin mining community. I mean why did we even invent all those pig-tail looking light-bulbs if this is how we're going to squander electricity?

On the contrary, I want to rescue the computing power that is being wasted mindlessly calculating hashes. My first coin will actually productively use the computing power to solve business problems, or at least problems that directly map to a business solution. Also, instead of having 99.9% of the calculations being wasted (there is only one winner per block), my coin will have just a three way redundancy. That allows it to validate results without an unacceptable loss from redundancy.

For better or worse, the mining industry has created a monstrous computing machine. Giga, tera, peta(!) and beyond. However, all that computing on something that has no real world value. What if we can get 33% efficient use of all that computing power? How much is it worth to a business to tap into that computing power?

The market is built in for my business coin. Business will pay for the computing power in NXT(!) and this NXT gets distributed to the miners on a prorata basis as their holdings. This also means that the business that is paying for the computing power can get a discount by purchasing the business coins.

I need to finish the automated gateway so I can start on the NXTcoin platform. Actually, the code base will have a lot in common as creating peer reviewing gateways is really the same thing as peer reviewing the coins in circulation. The really cool thing is that I get to tie all the various things I am interested in and combine them all into a three layer NXTcoin system, which helps NXT network and price demand.

James

Seems a little similar to Ripples use of the World Community Grid (leasing CPU for medical and social research) to award XRP. If something like that could be done with business analysis or similar that would be pretty cool.

[jl777]

Really. As the creator of the currency, I can say that I would only sell any coins that I mined or purchased and that the coins that have been created by issuing, but not yet mined are off limits. I can enforce this with peer nodes verifying the balance 24/7. Any violation of this would destroy the coin. It could also be possible to use AT savings account to release the coins in a predictable and controlled fashion. That would reduce the risk to just the current batch that is being released could be misappropriated.

I think we should lend more energy and thought to this line of reasoning as it really does solve the problem of securing the network while also creating a new market at the same time.

And even if the coin fails we can always create another and another and another similar coin until we get it right.

My first coin already failed
remember nodecoin...

OK, so that was a one day proof of concept, but tinkering with actual code helps me clarify things. This multisig gateway has been a real learning experience. I think I might have solved the withdrawal trust issue almost completely! Still need to tinker a bit more...

I am much more confident in my second coin as I am designing it to have all the required features, plus it pays dividend income in NXT. This alone will make it unique and provide it with a real value. It is essentially an encapsulated web service with business value. I will have to create a platform for the coin to plug into. This will allow other people to create their own coins without having to do all the low level stuff, like enforcing coin circulation which is critical. I will also make the coin itself provide an API so that higher level services can be built on top of the coin. To top things off, I will make a super cool high level service that I think a lot of you will like.

Then with the three layer cake of yummy NXTcoin goodness as an example, especially with the money the early miners and investors will make, I am expecting enough people to "mine" to solidify NXT network.

James

P.S. I will not premine any of my coins, though I will probably mine it. I am planning on issuing NXT Asset for the NXTcoin platform. It will get a percentage of the mined coins, so nobody will have a large inventory of coins they can sell. All earned or purchased.

[jl777]

Would it help to add some more network intelligence to NXT so it became more self-organising, so the nodes were more aware that they were part of a network and integrating into that network properly makes it stronger, rather than just being, well, nodes with some connections...

At the moment the network organisation of NXT is a mystery, I don't know if nodes look for nearest nodes, and optimum number of connections based on available bandwidth, or just grab hold of any node they happen to see.

Self optimising isn't complex - it just requires each node to be a 'good neighbour' - although in our network you need to re-define the location attributes which can be ip-addr, latency etc

Some of this I can see NXT nodes do from their behaviour, but not all of it, maybe I don't know the mechanics well enough and more is going on.

Anyway I don't know if its of interest but I thought I would add it to the mix, translating what I know of the mobile world this is what self-organising characteristics would look like;

Self Configuring means new nodes shall automatically be configured and integrated into the network. This means both connectivity establishment, and download of configuration parameters. When a new node is introduced into the network and powered on, it gets immediately recognized and registered by the network. The neighboring nodes (self optimising) would then automatically adjust their technical parameters in order to balance the required coverage and capacity, and, in the same time, avoid unnecessary conflict.

Self Optimising means each node adjusts its parameters to ensure it fits in with the its immediate network neighbourhood, based on observation of neighbouring nodes and its own traffic, for example in periods of over capacity the nodes could all configure a shared sleep time to take it in turns conserving energy when there is not enough work to justify the number that are in existence.

Self Healing means when one or more nodes in the network become inoperative, failure or ddos, self-healing mechanisms aim at reducing the impacts from the failure, for example by adjusting parameters and algorithms in adjacent nodes so that other nodes can support the users that were supported by the failing node.

Please run for infrastructure committee! These are some cool ideas. We might get emergent behavior from a self-organizing network.

[BrianNowhere]

If there's a way to verify forging participation in the past for a certain time period, that would probably be better and make the reward time static. The nodes could still agree on the winner by "picking account numbers out of a hat" so to speak.

Maybe, I should clarify something.

It is not forging and its participation that needs to be improved.

It is about having more nodes securing the network by:
 1) storing the blockchains
 2) answering requests from clients
 3) distributing block and transaction data

Furthermore, accounts != nodes. It is not about to encourage the creation of accounts but of running nodes.

I thought both things were at issue. Forging rewards have been being debated here for a while, with many advocating for asking people to forge as a 'civic duty' which I don't think will work if NXT ever becomes mainstream. for one, you are asking people to broadcast their IP address which puts them at risk for DDOS attack. Even barring that, laziness is the number one reason most people will not do it.

It was my understanding that both forging and running nodes are important parts of keeping the network healthy and that both parts need some sort of incentive to get enough people to do them.

[igmaca]

can someone explain in more detail how 0.8.1e client run?
which is the file to run the client?

[BitOnyx]

I like this "movement" part of this coin. I guess creating alternative for something is kind of movement. Although I'm not sure at what part is it actually new economy. It might be more enhanced economy, more liberal, more free of government monetary policies and inflation it creates. Moment when people notice paper money we carry around has the value only created by state. With no gold, no real value behind. So why only state shall have such power.

But is it really a movement or maybe just nice slogan that would make me notice this coin among others.

[igmaca]

can someone explain in more detail how 0.8.1e client run?
which is the file to run the client?

is necessary the start.bat file

[ChuckOne]

If there's a way to verify forging participation in the past for a certain time period, that would probably be better and make the reward time static. The nodes could still agree on the winner by "picking account numbers out of a hat" so to speak.

Maybe, I should clarify something.

It is not forging and its participation that needs to be improved.

It is about having more nodes securing the network by:
 1) storing the blockchains
 2) answering requests from clients
 3) distributing block and transaction data

Furthermore, accounts != nodes. It is not about to encourage the creation of accounts but of running nodes.

I thought both things were at issue. Forging rewards have been being debated here for a while, with many advocating for asking people to forge as a 'civic duty' which I don't think will work if NXT ever becomes mainstream. for one, you are asking people to broadcast their IP address which puts them at risk for DDOS attack. Even barring that, laziness is the number one reason most people will not do it.

It was my understanding that both forging and running nodes are important parts of keeping the network healthy and that both parts need some sort of incentive to get enough people to do them.

Exactly. Both parts are needed. Separately. And incented separately.

[kknk808]

can someone explain in more detail how 0.8.1e client run?
which is the file to run the client?

if its the same as the 0.8.0e file

Put the file in your the root of the nxt folder, In your old start.bat file (or whatever you called it to start up NRS in the 0.7.* versions) where it had the old "java start.jar" stuffs. Type in  

java -Xmx1024M -cp nxt.jar;lib\*;conf nxt.Nxt

and replace whatever was in the .bat file previously.

Had to search through the thread on what to do...lol