NXT :: descendant of Bitcoin - Updated Information

[EvilDave]

is anyone here experienced with cad? does anyone know anyone who is experienced and talented with cad?

Off the top of my head, try gvans who produced the amazing NXT monolith.

[1715312494]

1715312494

[1715312494]

1715312494

[Anon136]

is anyone here experienced with cad? does anyone know anyone who is experienced and talented with cad?

Off the top of my head, try gvans who produced the amazing NXT monolith.

thanks evildave. you dont seem as evil as your name implies.

[Regulus]

Why dont we update the NXT network?

I am only waiting for client developers to say they fully support the 0.8 branch, and to have the user friendly installer packages ready, before announcing it stable. I don't think it is unstable at all.

We have to move to the 0.8 branch before I can start working on incompatible features such as adding transaction type for fractional Nxt amounts.

I have tested Nxs with 0.8.0e yesterday and did not run into any problems but have not yet pushed a new version to its repo. I will be testing more today with 0.8.1e and switching GET to POST before pushing a new version, but it should be up tonight or tomorrow.

[wesleyh]

jeanluc; do you mean we have to start like this if we want a custom properties file:

java -Dnxt-default.properties=conf/nxt-default.properties -Xmx1024M -cp nxt.jar:lib/*:conf nxt.Nxt



(because that ain't working)

[ChuckOne]

I do not understand. You create only 1 block per year. What exactly do you expect? 1000 NXTs for that?

I recently pondered about the discussion of inequality. I think it only stems from a perceived stagnation of the value associated with the amount of NXT a person has.

Let A be amount of NXTs and t1 and t2 two different timestamps. Humans cannot clearly see why A@t1 and A@t2 is a different value (in terms of goods one could buy with them). They just see A. They'd rather have a higher amount in their account (like interest in bank accounts).

One should teach people that NXT is deflationary (will they understand?). The increase in value is achieved indirectly and not by changing digits of the account balance.

No , but i expect at least 10-20 Nxt .. i'm helping the community and when i forge one block and the reward is 0 Nxt... i'm so angry  

Maybe, you could ask the committee for funding you.

This relates to the issue: nodes vs. blocks.

It seems to me that the system (reward for creating blocks == sum of fees) is quite perfect.

I dunno how to tackle rewards for running nodes without having PoW.

[Jean-Luc]

jeanluc; do you mean we have to start like this if we want a custom properties file:
java -Dnxt-default.properties=conf/nxt-default.properties -Xmx1024M -cp nxt.jar:lib/*:conf nxt.Nxt

No, I hope this should not be necessary. If both nxt-default.properties and nxt.properties are in the classpath, it will read both files, and the values in nxt.properties will override the defaults in nxt-default.properties. It is ok if nxt.properties is missing completely.

The system property should only be needed if for some reason you cannot have nxt-default.properties in the classpath, or the classloader doesn't find it, or you have some complicated setup with multiple classloaders. It is a hack.

[ChuckOne]

IMO, forging is fine. In the future, there will be supernodes (service providers) that are basically be high-bandwidth pools people can lend their stake to. This won't be a problem of centralization, because NXT is resistant even against 90% attacks. So unless 1 single pool gets that much forging power, we will be fine. These high-bandwidth pools can support 1000+ TPS easily.

- agree.

I disagree. Many nodes are important to support the network. It the 'decentralized' part. Few supernodes can easily be shutdown.

[ChuckOne]

I see no problem here. If a part of the stake becomes seized then the network will start forging with another part.

The question is "forging with what"?

If let's say 100 powerful machines are shut down by an authority and the majority of stake holders are "rich old men" who aren't that technically savvy then you are now running a network of maybe a few thousand desktop computers (or even less powerful devices) that are run by hobbyists and that is not going to do 1000+ TPS.

I am not saying the network would *die* but that it would be *seriously damaged* in terms of the TPS it could process and that in itself could cause *panic*.

1000 tps processing requires mid-level hosting hardware. Still see no problem.

After discussing this issue with CIYAM Open I got that we indeed have a problem here. If users will just lease their power and forget then one day Nxt network may die.

Sorry for my previous mistake, my English is not good enough to get some ideas clearly.

[ChuckOne]

I think we can possibly solve this by making it more profitable to be a service provider than forging and the reward should be equal for different service providers instead of being biased to those with powerful machines and massive resource, thus everyone has the incentive to be a service provider and the service would be provided in a distributed way.

Even split does not work.

[Come-from-Beyond]

I'm updating the testnet...

[CIYAM]

OK, let's try to make the notations more clear. Who are A,B,C,D? Blocks, right (not nodes)? Shall we write "A(80) B'(95) C'(10)" in your example then?

Yes they are blocks not nodes.

Maybe, define it this way:

- assume for now that we have a static picture (no transactions between accounts), and there are accounts (nodes) 1,...,N with balances M_1,...,M_N on them;

- the time is discrete, and at each moment k each (active) node j calculates its current weight W_k as a (randomized?) function of M_j and B^j_{k-1} (the previous block in the blockchain that the node j thinks to be "official")

- the network then chooses j_0 such that W_{j_0}>W_i for all i not equal to j_0, and lets the node j_0 forge the block B_k; then L_k=W_{j_0} is the weight of this block.

Now, what I don't really understand, is how a node really determines, which branch is "official"? By looking who has the majority among its neighbors in the network?

Now you lose me with the math (as I said that is not my field) - but let's try and move forwards.

There is "no official" branch.

Each node makes it's own decision about its current chain according to what it sees. So one node can end up on a "fork" and if it goes too far down that fork it may never be able to get back onto the "main chain".

So the "main chain" is the "best chain" in terms of the "weight" of every block in it.

[EvilDave]

Below u'll find a short description of the Nxt communication system. This is the 2nd plan of our decentralization. 1st one you can find here.

hours and hours of communication

Did you ever send a copy of the signed form to Steven?

Did you fill it and sent it to Steven?

So, no, I did not send the form in to Steven.  I did not know I was supposed to.

  

Wonder if I can get the above exchange printed on a t-shirt: We're so de-centralised that.....

Still, looks like it will work out in the end:

rickyjames: print the form, fill the form, scan the form, send it to Stephen Nifty was also in a phone contact with Paul, so lets wait for his news too

Done.  I am in email contact with Nifty too.

And back to the forging/running nodes issue:

I'm not technical. So you can ignore me if I say something stupid.

Isn't it possible to build something on top of NXT that can be more profitable for the forgers around us to keep the network safe?

I thought James was experimenting with such a coin earlier.

jl777 (and others) came up with the idea of rewarding people who run nodes with a colored "nodecoin", issued based on node running time.
This sidesteps the issue of forging income only going to the big fish, by also rewarding little fish who choose to run a node to help maintain the NXT network.

I know that we need to move away from the mining mindset as much as possible for NXT, but we also need to encourage network growth.
As a NXT node costs almost nothing to run (in terms of computing resources) compared to mining,  we could maybe in this way also persuade miners to run NXT nodes on their mining rigs in addition to their current mining activities.....everyone wins.

And to J-L, Pin, CfB and anyone else with an opinion...should we move to 8.0/8.1 now?

And I'm going to repeat my request for someone to step up and carry out a comprehensive audit of the NXT network:

Can someone step up and carry out a (semi-) comprehensive audit of the NXT network ?
What do we have up and running right now?

[ChuckOne]

In 0.8.1, I am adding the ability to use POST instead of GET for all API and UI methods, and optionally enforce use of POST for the methods that submit the user secret phrase. This is to prevent caching of the secret phrase in browser memory cache, and to prevent mistakes due to submitting the same request twice, as browsers are supposed to warn users when doing this with POST requests.

This wasn't possible before because everything shared the same port and POST was reserved for peer networking only. Now that the UI and API requests have their own servlets, there is no problem in making them accept both GET and POST. I am adding a nxt.properties parameter whether to enforce the use of POST for the methods that require it, or just accept both GET and POST.

I have already changed the NRS UI and the tools - admin.html, alias.html, message.html, to use only POST. Client developers preparing for the 0.8 branch should consider using POST where appropriate too.

Great. +1 for slow adaption of RESTful principles.

[ChuckOne]

Another issue that I think needs to be carefully considered is the "penalty" for not forging.

I don't see it as being necessary in that any advantage of "not forging" would require significant amount of collusion IMO to be of financial benefit (maybe someone with some math skills can work on this).

And where I see it as being problematic is that our little hobbyists are quite likely to just switch off their forger for a day if they get penalized. It may even piss them off enough to "give up forging" once again potentially hurting our network.

So in summary I think that we "don't need it" and IMO we would be better off without it.

Penalty is necessary.

[ChuckOne]

But if you forge a block now, are you able to forge the next blocks also?

yes of course

Ok. To understand it better: are we talking about penalizing or not penalizing nodes who don't forge when they should do it?

We do not want to penalize nodes but accounts.

Nodes != accounts.

[CIYAM]

Penalty is necessary.

That is not useful - please provide reasoning for your statement.

[bitcoinpaul]

Could you elaborate on "we need penalty"

[ChuckOne]

I'm not a dev and I haven't the slightest idea it is doable, but I wonder if forging could be based on the number of nodes you're connected to? Maybe with a limit beyond which you don't get additional bonus. Example: if you're connected to other 100 nodes you've ten times the chance of forging as someone connected to 10 nodes. So if the limit is 100 nodes and you want more forging power, you must set up a second node.

 

Interesting idea.

The issue here is think is: it is not that we want the same person having several nodes but different persons having a node. Redundancy and mutual control is the key.

[CIYAM]

The issue here is think is: it is not that we want the same person having several nodes but different persons having a node. Redundancy and mutual control is the key.

This doesn't parse - care to explain it again?

[Agent86]

Are other people having problems with withdrawal from Dgex?  I did instant BTC withdrawal last week (5 days) and still haven't got any BTC.  It showed up as processed on my account with a transaction ID that appears nowhere on blockchain explorer.  I got no BTC and they refuse to resend because they say it might send twice even though they know that I got nothing and obviously wanted the BTC fast.  I don't know if this is a transaction malleability issue or if they are f*ing up and screwing people, but people should be aware don't do instant BTC withdrawal from Dgex... They put up no warning even though they know of the problem.  WTF.  Other possibility is that they are just keeping my money and using confusion about transaction malleability as an excuse.  Sorry to be negative and pissed off but don't know of other reasonable recourse after exchanging emails with them and getting no reply to the last one.