NXT :: descendant of Bitcoin - Updated Information

[pandaisftw]

This was my letter to CfB:

Hi CfB,

I need to bother you as I have no other way to contact BCNext.
Would he be ready to share all his knowledge with one person, rather than with the whole community?

We´ve grown big in the last 3 months and things are getting scattered. We need someone to organize the information, the work, the needs, the requirements and the resources in order to get to the next level. If BCNext, you or anyone else from the core team is not ready to take this role, we should pay for a professional project manager to do this.

I want (and always had this in mind) Nxt to succeed, but for this we need a few things:

a) coordination (and transparency to a certain level)
b) money
c) other, non financial resources

We have the money, and have resources (a good community, good programmers) but need coordination.

Cheers,
mcjavar

IMO, one reason why he chose to share his plan in "3 parts" is because we don't actually need those parts yet to contribute to the ultimate success of NXT. For example, we are in the process of setting up 3 committees, to fund various projects (aka, your project manager) the community sees fit. Also, various members of the community are working on other projects that are extremely exciting, like James and his AT gateway.

It's also very obvious to me that BCNext is being intentionally vague with how TF will ultimately work because he wants someone else to come to the same conclusion independently. It would be against the point to simply hand out the answer, and then everyone would just take his word for it. I like what CIYAM is doing because he is actually providing a base model to work off of. To me, this is the step in the right direction. I'm not naive enough to believe that BCNext would simply do all this without a purpose in mind.

If we don't figure out (as a community) a way for TF to work as it should, BCNext and C-f-b promised it would be released in April anyways - and I'd be willing to give them the benefit of doubt. If they end up not releasing it in April, then we should take matters into our own hands (perhaps implement CIYAM's "solution", but I'm sure we'll find a better way by then).

[Come-from-Beyond]

What is your team tasked to complete before your contract is over in April?

AE, VS and AC.

[starik69]

Some thoughts about AssetExchange (AE).

1) Unlike real stock exchanges (and FOREX) and virtual cryptocurrency/stock exchanges the launching NXT AE is very very open. Everyone can know what account owns what assets, what orders it has, what gain  or loss it get from trading.
We will have at any time full order book for any asset, full history of assets/money (NXT) flow.
So someone may make an great analytic site with stats of most profitable assets, top trading winner accounts (and may be loosers) for day/month/year. And much more! All because of all information on AE is open!

2) Why not to make a very simple bitcoin gateway?
It can be set like this:
Create NXT account A and issue asset "1BTC" in 21'000'000 quantity. They are not for sale.
Create BTC address B.
Write some code.
Announce, that anyone can send 1 (2, 3, ...) any whole number of real Bitcoins to that address and set an NXT account number in message of the transaction.
The code then periodically will check incoming transactions on address B and transfer corresponding number of "1BTC" assets to provided NXT account.
Then it can be traded on AE.
If someone wants to cashout his "1BTC" he then can transfer some quantity of his "1BTC" assets to account A and make a referenced Transaction with NXT message which contains a real BTC withdrawal address.
The code then sends real BTC (may be without some withdrawal fee to support gateway like 1% or fixed 0.01BTC) to given address.

All this can work very transparently - everyone can check amount of BTC on address B and "1BTC" on address A.

I am not a good programmer, but i think even i can program this simply on Google docs spreadsheet with API of blockchain.info and some public NXT nodes.

[rickyjames]

I thought TF would be fully implemented by April.  What should we do to help?

Start with the analysis of the code that we already have and do some improvements to forging. For example, try to get how 90% defence would work (if it works at all).

I am not capable of this, as I am not smart enough, but am willing to donate to a fund to pay for someone (or a group of people) to do it.
Is anyone ready to manage this? I am working 60 hours a week (till Nxt´s price will reach $1) so I don´t have the time for this, but as I see, without this, all the marketing work (including the upvotes and the efforts to put Nxt on more exchanges) are useless.

I still would like to see a detailed roadmap of functions to get implemented till April.

I suggest to pay a for project manager to manage Nxt for the next 6 months to avoid double-spending resources and burning resources on functions that are not needed.

+1.  This is the starting point to get out of the existential mess that has been discussed over the past ten or so pages.  

We can't depend on anything except open source code released on April 4 (I hope) that will apparently have our core feature of transparent forging non-functional(!?!) and who knows what level of comments / overview to enable understanding of how it all is supposed to work.

This is a pile of lemons as far as I am concerned, a bitter fruit,  but we have got to try and make lemonade from it.  

The key is to organize some kind of Kahn Academy system set up where we can dissect this source code when it comes out (and any documentation it contains) and try to create a training program to get a designated corps of programmers up to speed on it.  I am not a Java programmer and I have no idea how to best orient them to a specific, cryptic project.   But I do know if we don't set this training academy up to generate people capable of continuing NXT-specific cryprocurrency code development, we are going to fail.  

And if we tear into the source code like a bunch of piranha on April 4 and just make a blizzard of comments on This Monster Thread which then get lost under the weight of subsequent pages while we go off on some other tangent, then our fail will be an Epic Fail.  

Absolutely, a project manager.  But also, a training academy.  Organized now, ready to go April 4.  We need to start by either conducting a census of willing Java programmers from our own ranks, or we need to start identifying and lining up qualified professional Java programmers whose salaries we are going to pay from the NXTtechdev fund.   That's what it's there for.  

As a side prediction, I personally think the current practice of "put up a bounty for X" isn't going to work for organized core tinkering to create basic functionality.  Starting with transparent forging.  Which apparently we are going to have to get working on our own.

The second key thing is to get a set of spokespersons in place that can be seen by the public as the face of NXT.  I know we are decentralized and are supposed to eschew central leadership as part of our creed, but if we do not engage the public to embrace NXT, then NXT will fail.  And the public doesn't want to hear endless whining about mystical reclusive creators, they want to put their money into something that at least looks like it knows what it is doing.  That is the job of a spokesperson - not leadership, but to create the appearance of leadership to the public.  I am going to Texas Bitcoin Conference not as a leader within NXT but as a spokesperson for NXT.  

Project manager, training academy, spokespersons...that's enough for one post.

I don't even know how to start on the topic of project leadership.  All I know is that our competitors have it, for better or worse.

http://fusion.net/modern_life/story/ethereum-bitcoin-currency-created-19-year-372034

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/ethereum/

[mcjavar]

This was my letter to CfB:

Hi CfB,

I need to bother you as I have no other way to contact BCNext.
Would he be ready to share all his knowledge with one person, rather than with the whole community?

We´ve grown big in the last 3 months and things are getting scattered. We need someone to organize the information, the work, the needs, the requirements and the resources in order to get to the next level. If BCNext, you or anyone else from the core team is not ready to take this role, we should pay for a professional project manager to do this.

I want (and always had this in mind) Nxt to succeed, but for this we need a few things:

a) coordination (and transparency to a certain level)
b) money
c) other, non financial resources

We have the money, and have resources (a good community, good programmers) but need coordination.

Cheers,
mcjavar

IMO, one reason why he chose to share his plan in "3 parts" is because we don't actually need those parts yet to contribute to the ultimate success of NXT. For example, we are in the process of setting up 3 committees, to fund various projects (aka, your project manager) the community sees fit. Also, various members of the community are working on other projects that are extremely exciting, like James and his AT gateway.

It's also very obvious to me that BCNext is being intentionally vague with how TF will ultimately work because he wants someone else to come to the same conclusion independently. It would be against the point to simply hand out the answer, and then everyone would just take his word for it. I like what CIYAM is doing because he is actually providing a base model to work off of. To me, this is the step in the right direction. I'm not naive enough to believe that BCNext would simply do all this without a purpose in mind.

If we don't figure out (as a community) a way for TF to work as it should, BCNext and C-f-b promised it would be released in April anyways - and I'd be willing to give them the benefit of doubt. If they end up not releasing it in April, then we should take matters into our own hands (perhaps implement CIYAM's "solution", but I'm sure we'll find a better way by then).

Clear points.
I would only disagree with this:

"to fund various projects (aka, your project manager)"

It´s not my project manager. I just proposed that we need one, as I see from my experience that complex projects won´t work without centralization as all parties will have different intentions and the resources (and the result) will get scattered.

[wesleyh]

I thought TF would be fully implemented by April.  What should we do to help?

Start with the analysis of the code that we already have and do some improvements to forging. For example, try to get how 90% defence would work (if it works at all).

I am not capable of this, as I am not smart enough, but am willing to donate to a fund to pay for someone (or a group of people) to do it.
Is anyone ready to manage this? I am working 60 hours a week (till Nxt´s price will reach $1) so I don´t have the time for this, but as I see, without this, all the marketing work (including the upvotes and the efforts to put Nxt on more exchanges) are useless.

I still would like to see a detailed roadmap of functions to get implemented till April.

I suggest to pay a for project manager to manage Nxt for the next 6 months to avoid double-spending resources and burning resources on functions that are not needed.

+1.  This is the starting point to get out of the existential mess that has been discussed over the past ten or so pages.  

We can't depend on anything except open source code released on April 4 (I hope) that will apparently have our core feature of transparent forging non-functional(!?!) and who knows what level of comments / overview to enable understanding of how it all is supposed to work.

This is a pile of lemons as far as I am concerned, a bitter fruit,  but we have got to try and make lemonade from it.  

The key is to organize some kind of Kahn Academy system set up where we can dissect this source code when it comes out (and any documentation it contains) and try to create a training program to get a designated corps of programmers up to speed on it.  I am not a Java programmer and I have no idea how to best orient them to a specific, cryptic project.   But I do know if we don't set this training academy up to generate people capable of continuing NXT-specific cryprocurrency code development, we are going to fail.  

And if we tear into the source code like a bunch of piranha on April 4 and just make a blizzard of comments on This Monster Thread which then get lost under the weight of subsequent pages while we go off on some other tangent, then our fail will be an Epic Fail.  

Absolutely, a project manager.  But also, a training academy.  Organized now, ready to go April 4.  We need to start by either conducting a census of willing Java programmers from our own ranks, or we need to start identifying and lining up qualified professional Java programmers whose salaries we are going to pay from the NXTtechdev fund.   That's what it's there for.  

As a side prediction, I personally thing the current practice of "put up a bounty for X" isn't going to work for organized core tinkering to create basic functionality.  Starting with transparent forging.  Which apparently we are going to have to get working on our own.

The second key thing is to get a set of spokespersons in place that can be seen by the public as the face of NXT.  I know we are decentralized and are supposed to eschew central leadership as part of our creed, but if we do not engage the public to embrace NXT, then NXT will fail.  And the public doesn't want to hear endless whining about mystical reclusive creators, they want to put their money into something that at least looks like it knows what it is doing.  That is the job of a spokesperson - not leadership, but to create the appearance of leadership to the public.  I am going to Texas Bitcoin Conference not as a leader within NXT but as a spokesperson for NXT.  

Project manager, training academy, spokespersons...that's enough for one post.

I don't even know how to start on the topic of NXT leadership.  

Current source code (with comments) should be shared to a select group of people.

I am assuming the actual source has comments.

CFB, does it?

[Come-from-Beyond]

Current source code (with comments) should be shared to a select group of people.

I am assuming the actual source has comments.

CFB, does it?

Very little.

[mcjavar]

I thought TF would be fully implemented by April.  What should we do to help?

Start with the analysis of the code that we already have and do some improvements to forging. For example, try to get how 90% defence would work (if it works at all).

I am not capable of this, as I am not smart enough, but am willing to donate to a fund to pay for someone (or a group of people) to do it.
Is anyone ready to manage this? I am working 60 hours a week (till Nxt´s price will reach $1) so I don´t have the time for this, but as I see, without this, all the marketing work (including the upvotes and the efforts to put Nxt on more exchanges) are useless.

I still would like to see a detailed roadmap of functions to get implemented till April.

I suggest to pay a for project manager to manage Nxt for the next 6 months to avoid double-spending resources and burning resources on functions that are not needed.

+1.  This is the starting point to get out of the existential mess that has been discussed over the past ten or so pages.  

We can't depend on anything except open source code released on April 4 (I hope) that will apparently have our core feature of transparent forging non-functional(!?!) and who knows what level of comments / overview to enable understanding of how it all is supposed to work.

This is a pile of lemons as far as I am concerned, a bitter fruit,  but we have got to try and make lemonade from it.  

The key is to organize some kind of Kahn Academy system set up where we can dissect this source code when it comes out (and any documentation it contains) and try to create a training program to get a designated corps of programmers up to speed on it.  I am not a Java programmer and I have no idea how to best orient them to a specific, cryptic project.   But I do know if we don't set this training academy up to generate people capable of continuing NXT-specific cryprocurrency code development, we are going to fail.  

And if we tear into the source code like a bunch of piranha on April 4 and just make a blizzard of comments on This Monster Thread which then get lost under the weight of subsequent pages while we go off on some other tangent, then our fail will be an Epic Fail.  

Absolutely, a project manager.  But also, a training academy.  Organized now, ready to go April 4.  We need to start by either conducting a census of willing Java programmers from our own ranks, or we need to start identifying and lining up qualified professional Java programmers whose salaries we are going to pay from the NXTtechdev fund.   That's what it's there for.  

As a side prediction, I personally thing the current practice of "put up a bounty for X" isn't going to work for organized core tinkering to create basic functionality.  Starting with transparent forging.  Which apparently we are going to have to get working on our own.

The second key thing is to get a set of spokespersons in place that can be seen by the public as the face of NXT.  I know we are decentralized and are supposed to eschew central leadership as part of our creed, but if we do not engage the public to embrace NXT, then NXT will fail.  And the public doesn't want to hear endless whining about mystical reclusive creators, they want to put their money into something that at least looks like it knows what it is doing.  That is the job of a spokesperson - not leadership, but to create the appearance of leadership to the public.  I am going to Texas Bitcoin Conference not as a leader within NXT but as a spokesperson for NXT.  

Project manager, training academy, spokespersons...that's enough for one post.

I don't even know how to start on the topic of project leadership.  All I know is that our competitors have it, for better or worse.

http://fusion.net/modern_life/story/ethereum-bitcoin-currency-created-19-year-372034

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/ethereum/

PM and spokesperson are clear, but I can´t really see how this academy is supposed to work?

[mcjavar]

Current source code (with comments) should be shared to a select group of people.

I am assuming the actual source has comments.

CFB, does it?

Very little.

Will it have comments?
Will some of you take the time and add comments to it?

Or will we have to work with an "indian" code?

[wesleyh]

Current source code (with comments) should be shared to a select group of people.

I am assuming the actual source has comments.

CFB, does it?

Very little.

You are working on AE/VS/AC, but I thought BCNext was working on AC?

He should stop for a few days and

A) add comments to all code
B) make a whitepaper. He is the one that has to do it. And then we as a community will validate it.

[abctc]

AE, VS and AC.

- did you consider to rename VS -> AG (Agreement Gathering) ?

[CIYAM]

AE, VS and AC.

- did you consider to rename VS -> AG (Agreement Gathering) ?

It would suit the pattern better (that's why we have AT).

[Come-from-Beyond]

Current source code (with comments) should be shared to a select group of people.

I am assuming the actual source has comments.

CFB, does it?

Very little.

Will it have comments?
Will some of you take the time and add comments to it?

Or will we have to work with an "indian" code?

It's not India code. Jean-Luc refactored it such a way that u don't need comments.

[Come-from-Beyond]

AE, VS and AC.

- did you consider to rename VS -> AG (Agreement Gathering) ?

What for? Just to have the 1st letter "A"? What about Mixing Service then? U'll spend a lot of sleepless nights trying to find a good word that starts with "A" but is related to mixing...

[jl777]

Some thoughts about AssetExchange (AE).

1) Unlike real stock exchanges (and FOREX) and virtual cryptocurrency/stock exchanges the launching NXT AE is very very open. Everyone can know what account owns what assets, what orders it has, what gain  or loss it get from trading.
We will have at any time full order book for any asset, full history of assets/money (NXT) flow.
So someone may make an great analytic site with stats of most profitable assets, top trading winner accounts (and may be loosers) for day/month/year. And much more! All because of all information on AE is open!

2) Why not to make a very simple bitcoin gateway?
It can be set like this:
Create NXT account A and issue asset "1BTC" in 21'000'000 quantity. They are not for sale.
Create BTC address B.
Write some code.
Announce, that anyone can send 1 (2, 3, ...) any whole number of real Bitcoins to that address and set an NXT account number in message of the transaction.
The code then periodically will check incoming transactions on address B and transfer corresponding number of "1BTC" assets to provided NXT account.
Then it can be traded on AE.
If someone wants to cashout his "1BTC" he then can transfer some quantity of his "1BTC" assets to account A and make a referenced Transaction with NXT message which contains a real BTC withdrawal address.
The code then sends real BTC (may be without some withdrawal fee to support gateway like 1% or fixed 0.01BTC) to given address.

All this can work very transparently - everyone can check amount of BTC on address B and "1BTC" on address A.

I am not a good programmer, but i think even i can program this simply on Google docs spreadsheet with API of blockchain.info and some public NXT nodes.

I will be releasing a test version of automated multisig gateway this weekend. It doesnt quite work the way you describe, but it achieves the same result and with better security. You establish a BTC account for withdrawals and get assigned a custom deposit address.

After that it is all automatic. Send BTC to deposit address and BTC asset shows up in your acct. Transfer BTC asset back to issuer and BTC appears in your withdrawal address. Between deposit and transfer, it trades freely on AE.

James

[CIYAM]

It's not India code. Jean-Luc refactored it such a way that u don't need comments.

I do agree that the code that I've seen is very readable (I am not a fan of writing many comments myself - good code should make sense on its own. Comments are best reserved for special notes or kludges rather than telling you what the code does itself better).

[landomata]

Some thoughts about AssetExchange (AE).

1) Unlike real stock exchanges (and FOREX) and virtual cryptocurrency/stock exchanges the launching NXT AE is very very open. Everyone can know what account owns what assets, what orders it has, what gain  or loss it get from trading.
We will have at any time full order book for any asset, full history of assets/money (NXT) flow.
So someone may make an great analytic site with stats of most profitable assets, top trading winner accounts (and may be loosers) for day/month/year. And much more! All because of all information on AE is open!

2) Why not to make a very simple bitcoin gateway?
It can be set like this:
Create NXT account A and issue asset "1BTC" in 21'000'000 quantity. They are not for sale.
Create BTC address B.
Write some code.
Announce, that anyone can send 1 (2, 3, ...) any whole number of real Bitcoins to that address and set an NXT account number in message of the transaction.
The code then periodically will check incoming transactions on address B and transfer corresponding number of "1BTC" assets to provided NXT account.
Then it can be traded on AE.
If someone wants to cashout his "1BTC" he then can transfer some quantity of his "1BTC" assets to account A and make a referenced Transaction with NXT message which contains a real BTC withdrawal address.
The code then sends real BTC (may be without some withdrawal fee to support gateway like 1% or fixed 0.01BTC) to given address.

All this can work very transparently - everyone can check amount of BTC on address B and "1BTC" on address A.

I am not a good programmer, but i think even i can program this simply on Google docs spreadsheet with API of blockchain.info and some public NXT nodes.

Both these ideas are Excellent.

[mcjavar]

CfB, do we have an expected date for releasing the asset exchange on the main network?

[BaiMangal]

AE, VS and AC.

- did you consider to rename VS -> AG (Agreement Gathering) ?

What for? Just to have the 1st letter "A"? What about Mixing Service then? U'll spend a lot of sleepless nights trying to find a good word that starts with "A" but is related to mixing...

Agile Services?

[Come-from-Beyond]

CfB, do we have an expected date for releasing the asset exchange on the main network?

Not later than 3rd of April.