NXT :: descendant of Bitcoin - Updated Information

[bitcoinpaul]

I think NXT's best chance of achieving fast transactions is to offload them onto a parallel blockchain which is secured selectively by large stakeholders using high end hardware.

I would like to offer up a suggestion as to how the Nxt project could move forward in a way that can please both those wanting high performance and those wanting forging on low-grade hardware whilst at the same time solving the initial distribution *problem*.

The suggestion is NXG (Nxt Green or Nxt Gen if you prefer) which would be a separate currency to NXT but still based on NxtCore.

So what are the current ideas?

• Implement TF (which are the different options?) or not?
• Pool forging or not
• Parallel Blockchains (with NXT as mainblockchain snapshot function and base currency) for different purposes/countries
• Parallel Blockchains for different currencies and forging incentives (NXT = high speed, high TPS)

I'm a little overwhelmed. Could somebody help out?

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[windjc]

Well, I am back from Texas Bitcoin Conference and it was an extremely interesting experience.

Marketing NXT at TBC was a frustrating experience.   Wed night late I went around and put the NXT brochure out on literally 1600 chairs in preparation for the next day.  At noon on Thurs I went around and picked up the unused ones.  We probably only had 100 or so that were kept.  Of course the conference only had around 600 people, far less than expected.  I have made arrangements to ship the rest out to NxtMinnow for San Francisco.  

The exhibitor area was kind of a joke.   Very few tables, very few people went through it.  I was wrong to push for a separate NXT table earlier, it would have been a waste.    

I was on the cryptocoin panel discussion which I think went very well.  The video will be out in a few days and I'll post a link.  There were maybe 30 guys in the audience and on a show of hands probably only 5 had even heard of NXT.

I made a lot of good contacts, including a writer for Bitcoin Magazine with whom I had a very long talk about NXT.  He is going to write an article on us.  This is probably the number one positive thing for NXT that has come out of the conference.

The interest in Etherium in the Bitcoin community is extremely strong.  This is a trend to watch.

People want to hear confident leaders on a stage.  People want to hear confident leaders  on a stage.  People want to hear confident leaders  on a stage. 

The thing that has surprised me most, the biggest insight of all, is how few people care about the technical side of Bitcoin.  Over 95% of the people there view Bitcoin as a social/political phenomenon and wouldn't care if it were powered under the hood by three witches cackling around cauldron of witches' brew.  Talking about the advantages of transparent forging over competitive mining or PoW vs. PoS or trusted gateways or pretty much anything we discuss in this forum is totally irrelevant to them and actually to the future of NXT.

We will only get the attention of the mass community of Bitcoiners if we come up with a marketing theme / campaign that engages people to adopt NXT.  The will not adopt NXT because it is better or technically superior.  They will only adopt NXT if it meets a need of theirs that Bitcoin does not already currently meet.  

This is why Doge is so popular and is even surpassing Bitcoin in many ways.  Doge meets a social need to feel connected to something warm and fuzzy that Bitcoin does not.

I am at a loss to figure out how NXT can pull off a similar viral meme feat.  But we need to figure that out, fast.

If and when NXT launches its decentralized exchange and when that exchange actually allows people to trade crypto back and forth for next to free, THEN NXT will get a lot of attention. That couple with a large marketing campaign in China would draw a lot of interest. Momentum feeds momentum in this industry.

Ethereum has excitement now because its new. That's the only reason why. No one really understands it. What NXT needs is utility, an exchange where people can freely trade peer to peer. If we get that it could be a game changer.  People are interested in what they can use, not in theories.

Once Etherium launches it will be in the same boat as NXT now. It will eventually have to have utility.

Look at Namecoin. It's all theoretical. And thus it is stagnant.

[landomata]

If and when NXT launches its decentralized exchange and when that exchange actually allows people to trade crypto back and forth for next to free, THEN NXT will get a lot of attention. That couple with a large marketing campaign in China would draw a lot of interest. Momentum feeds momentum in this industry.

Ethereum has excitement now because its new. That's the only reason why. No one really understands it. What NXT needs is utility, an exchange where people can freely trade peer to peer. If we get that it could be a game changer.  People are interested in what they can use, not in theories.

Once Etherium launches it will be in the same boat as NXT now. It will eventually have to have utility.

Look at Namecoin. It's all theoretical. And thus it is stagnant.

+1

Edit: Things don't always go according to rosy plans...we all saw what happened to Etherium's IPO.

[wesleyh]

I imagine a passphrase generator integrated in Nxt clients, similar to the one used in Electrum client for Bitcoin, with state of the art random generator and possibly a larger dictionary (Electrum uses 1600 words).
Passphrases are as strong as random alphanumeric passwords but are much easier to write and to learn by memory.

It could work in 3 steps:

Ok, I want exactly THIS in the NRS Client with wesleys user interface. Maybe an optional encrypted wallet file. Who's with me? Raise your +1s.

Will do (diceware first).

[Eadeqa]

Did mintpal refund people the money?

Demand your money back if you paid them for listing Nxt

[marcus03]

I imagine a passphrase generator integrated in Nxt clients, similar to the one used in Electrum client for Bitcoin, with state of the art random generator and possibly a larger dictionary (Electrum uses 1600 words).

Hi, I really like your idea and wan't to implement that in Offspring (actually already did that with the Eglish list). It seems there are lists of words for most languages http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html available.

I would like some input on the algorithm to combine the words and if and how to generate entropy with the mouse. It does for sure look really interesting to the average user (moving your mouse around to generate a password) but does it make a difference in the case of Curve25519 between doing that and using SecureRandom?

Also great care is put into correctly providing a seed to the PRNG in SecureRandom and you are warned against providing your own seed (which is basically what you do when you move your mouse around and call SecureRendom.setSeed([MOUSE MOVEMENT ENTROPY]) ), so what is more secure? Default (and optimized) SecureRandom or SecureRandom with mouse movement as seed?

Code:

DiceWords words = new DiceWords();
SecureRandom rand = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG", "SUN");
   
byte[] bytes = new byte[8];
rand.nextBytes(bytes); // initialize seed
   
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < 12; i++) {
  String word = words.getDiceWd(rand.nextInt());
  sb.append(word).append(' ');
}
sb.deleteCharAt(sb.length() - 1);
String passphrase = sb.toString();

Edit: changed the algorithm to explicitly use SHA1PRNG instead of the platform default, call to nextBytes is to force PRNG to seed itself securely

What does your implementation of words.getDiceWd look like?

[Eadeqa]

Will do (diceware first).

Why bother with diceware? Pick easy word dictionary so it's easy to remember and type. Use Electrum dictionary

https://raw.github.com/spesmilo/electrum/master/lib/mnemonic.py

By the way, you don't need more than 1626 words to get 128-bit entropy with 12 words, so words should be short and easy to type and remember

[igmaca]

Only TL;DR version, coz noone would read a full one.

This proposal would make sense?
what do you think?

Sorry dude, I have a feeling not many guys read your long hard to understand posts.

I'm thwarted at not being able to provide possible solutions  

[verymuchso]

What does your implementation of words.getDiceWd look like?

It picks directly from an array of words. Why?

[CIYAM]

• Implement TF (which are the different options?) or not?
• Pool forging or not
• Parallel Blockchains (with NXT as mainblockchain snapshot function and base currency) for different purposes/countries
• Parallel Blockchains for different currencies and forging incentives (NXT = high speed, high TPS)

I'm a little overwhelmed. Could somebody help out?

It is a lot to take in and what I am proposing is a way to try and "satisfy everyone" which of course will never actually work (but if we can "satisfy most" then that would be a big improvement).

The parallel blockchains is an idea that I think can help us toward our seemingly schizophrenic goals (to be both a Raspberry Pi friendly "eco-coin" and a "blistering TPM monster") as well as help TF in places where internet to the "outside" is at times blocked or generally slowed down.

It also makes sense that if we decided to launch a parallel blockchain for a non-TF coin then we could also address the issue of "initial distribution" that seems to bug a lot of people (and has led to various clones).

[Fatih87SK]

Alright guys. Ready to test. I have no Idea how an Asset Exchange should work so if I can manage to trade there we are good  

Please send some; 13446574264376578657

[zorke]

I'd just like to make a statement about the "initial distribution problem" if I may.

The initial stakeholders don't owe anyone here a goddamn thing. They took the huge risk by buying in early while everyone else called NXT a scam coin. They are under NO obligation to re-distribute the wealth to all those, including me, who missed out because of cynicism or ignorance or whatever. If NXT becomes a huge success, they and they alone deserve to be hugely rewarded for taking that risk. they have every right as free citizens of planet earth to do damn well whatever they please with their windfall.

That being said, if these stakeholders hope to see their investment mature to the point where they'll be able to perhaps buy a trip on Branson's Spaceship one day, they should invest in the future health of NXT in whatever way they see fit based on their own rational self interest.

There's no shortage of affordable NXT on the market. If you want some it's ripe for the picking on an exchange at mere pennies apiece. It's not too late to possibly book your own seat on a future Virgin voyage by simply not making the same mistake twice, taking a risk and buying some NXT. Then and only then will it will be your turn to decide how to invest your hard won investment in a way that you feel will make NXT grow even more.

I'm not a libertarian personally, but I really can't think of anything more free market than the way NXT has unfolded. I have no problem with the original folks being HUGELY rewarded because if they do then I'll be doing pretty good myself. It surprises me to see so many people in this community asking for socialism and redistribution of the wealth.

I am not saying that they should give out charity to all of us, I am saying that they should invest into product that they are also holding and holding by far the most comparing to all of us here. I mean this is a common sense. People that won't do that are by definition selfish, they don't want to part ways with one cent of their money and they don't want to contribute anything to the community by working here with us.
Sorry, but to me all of this makes no sense!
For example, Klee is definitely not one of those people!!

[zorke]

I've got a lot of catching up to do in this thread, also.  For now, I will say a few things off the top of my head.  

First, we have got to pay more attention to NXT as a 1st generation coin, and call it a coin, without "quotation marks" or apologies.  We need vendors to accept it and people to want it.  NXT cannot be mined and the ability to forge it requires one to buy it on an exchange first.  We have to give people a reason to buy NXT.  That reason cannot be as a stake to forge more NXT because without exception newcomers are dramatically disappointed when they figure out the true numbers that underlie NXT forging. Doge has a fun factor.  NXT has zero fun factor.  It is a frustrating experience all the way thru - getting a client set up and running, dealing with a super long password or losing all your NXT if you don't, realizing you're not going to make anything of true value by forging with small stake quantities, asking yourself what can you do with this coin you just bought....  Repeat:  NXT is frustrating, Doge is fun.  WE MUST LEARN FROM DOGE AND BE FUN.

Second, we have got to identify just what is 2nd generation about this coin that we really truly are going to support.  Mixing/Zerocash anonymity?  Peer to peer AE?  Multisig gateways to other coins?  Transparent forging TF to get high transaction speed?  Multiple blockchains?  Pruning the main blockchain?  BCNext's latest out-of-left-field proposal for instant transactions based on some kind of multiple account?  Jesus, even the guy with the secret plan is proposing new ideas before completely revealing his old ideas.  This gives me a headache and a stomach ache at the same time.  

TF and 1000TPS is what sold me on this coin and is the ONLY feature we have that is above and beyond all Bitcoin clones and even Etherium on the horizon.  I get that 1000TPS would take dev work, but I thought TF was a done deal.  Now it's not?

Third, we have got to pull together as a team and FOCUS.  FOCUS.  FOCUS.  Maybe the funding committees are the start of this.  I hope so.   I would go so far to say that there needs to be yet another committee election, for a leadership committee, one with no money or unspent NXT behind it at all, just the raw power to say "NXT IS GOING TO DO THIS."  and whose members then can stand up on a stage, virtual or real, in front of people and tell them that NXT is on a course to SOMEWHERE.

Maybe I'm just in dictator withdrawal from pushing the election over the goal line.   Maybe sleep will help.  G'nite.

Ricky I agree with you 100%. Leadership is the most important and we are surely lacking it. I recommend you for this committee.

[marcus03]

What does your implementation of words.getDiceWd look like?

It picks directly from an array of words. Why?

How do you map the integer type parameter down to the range of items in the dictionary?

[antanst]

Only TL;DR version, coz noone would read a full one.

Noone read this one either, I bet, because what you're saying doesn't make sense. But you're persistent, I'll grant you that :-)

[igmaca]

Only TL;DR version, coz noone would read a full one.

@ jl777
Quote from: jl777 on March 08, 2014, 01:59:10 PM

We need high TPS and also support lightweight nodes

This proposal would make sense?
what do you think?

Probably unlikely to have TF & high TPS and lightweight 'forging' nodes.  As clients, fine.

As I see it, high TPS and reliable TF will require nodes with substantial network and computer hardware.

Think about it.

The benefit of TF is that the forging node is known, and includes (at minimum) account and IP address.

This means the 'bad guys' also know who will forge.  A external bad actor who wishes the network harm simply continues to cycle a DDOS (network AND application-level) to the next forger.  Only substantial expertise and equipment can mitigate that risk.

i propose two types of nodes

raspberry pi node that suports TF
special hubs node that suports TPS

one Raspberry pi node to forge must be active.
if a raspberry pi node gets forge shares its fee with other nodes Raspberry Pi grouping. (which are grouped in one of the 1,000 nodes ultra hight TPS)


when raspberry pi node have success in forging special node to belonging raspberry pi node forges too

[Eadeqa]

I imagine a passphrase generator integrated in Nxt clients, similar to the one used in Electrum client for Bitcoin, with state of the art random generator and possibly a larger dictionary (Electrum uses 1600 words).

Hi, I really like your idea and wan't to implement that in Offspring (actually already did that with the Eglish list). It seems there are lists of words for most languages http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html available.

I would like some input on the algorithm to combine the words and if and how to generate entropy with the mouse. It does for sure look really interesting to the average user (moving your mouse around to generate a password) but does it make a difference in the case of Curve25519 between doing that and using SecureRandom?

Also great care is put into correctly providing a seed to the PRNG in SecureRandom and you are warned against providing your own seed (which is basically what you do when you move your mouse around and call SecureRendom.setSeed([MOUSE MOVEMENT ENTROPY]) ), so what is more secure? Default (and optimized) SecureRandom or SecureRandom with mouse movement as seed?

Code:

DiceWords words = new DiceWords();
SecureRandom rand = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG", "SUN");
    
byte[] bytes = new byte[8];
rand.nextBytes(bytes); // initialize seed
    
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < 12; i++) {
  String word = words.getDiceWd(rand.nextInt());
  sb.append(word).append(' ');
}
sb.deleteCharAt(sb.length() - 1);
String passphrase = sb.toString();

Edit: changed the algorithm to explicitly use SHA1PRNG instead of the platform default, call to nextBytes is to force PRNG to seed itself securely

If you are using Java's SecureRandom, you don't need entropy from mouse.  SecureRandom uses  /dev/random on Linux and probably CryptGenRandom on Windows. The entropy comes from hardware, things like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptGenRandom

The current process ID (GetCurrentProcessID).
The current thread ID (GetCurrentThreadID).
The tick count since boot time (GetTickCount).
The current time (GetLocalTime).
Various high-precision performance counters (QueryPerformanceCounter).
An MD4 hash of the user's environment block, which includes username, computer name, and search path. [...]
High-precision internal CPU counters, such as RDTSC, RDMSR, RDPMC
[omitted: long lists of low-level system information fields and performance counters] Source: Writing Secure Code, Second Edition. ISBN 0-7356-1722-8.

I think entropy from mouse is needed for javascript (like wesleyh client) -- not for Java's SecureRandom

As for words, as I said, don't use cryptic words from diceware. 1626 simple words dictionary will just work fine for 128-bit entropy.

[VanBreuk]

If and when NXT launches its decentralized exchange and when that exchange actually allows people to trade crypto back and forth for next to free, THEN NXT will get a lot of attention. That couple with a large marketing campaign in China would draw a lot of interest. Momentum feeds momentum in this industry.

Ethereum has excitement now because its new. That's the only reason why. No one really understands it. What NXT needs is utility, an exchange where people can freely trade peer to peer. If we get that it could be a game changer.  People are interested in what they can use, not in theories.

Once Etherium launches it will be in the same boat as NXT now. It will eventually have to have utility.

Look at Namecoin. It's all theoretical. And thus it is stagnant.

+1

Edit: Things don't always go according to rosy plans...we all saw what happened to Etherium's IPO.

+1 to the +1.

AE is an extremely useful feature with immediate application that will boost Nxt. Lots of work already on the table. Testing is progressing nicely. If we release the new integrated client and at least one functional AE gateway, people will start enjoying Nxt.

Pooled forging will hardly attract new users. AE can easily get more people involved, and seriously spread usage while other decisions are made.

I hope any leaders stepping in will recognize and endorse this.

[wesleyh]

I think entropy from mouse is needed for javascript (like wesley client) -- not for Java's SecureRandom

As for words, as I said, don't use cryptic words from diceware. 1626 simple words dictionary will just work fine for 128-bit entropy.

Actually, newest browsers have crypto.getRandomValues - so no mouse movement needed in those cases. Of course still necessary for older browsers.

[Uniqueorn]

The initial stakeholders don't owe anyone here a goddamn thing. They took the huge risk by buying in early while everyone else called NXT a scam coin. They are under NO obligation to re-distribute the wealth to all those, including me, who missed out because of cynicism or ignorance or whatever. If NXT becomes a huge success, they and they alone deserve to be hugely rewarded for taking that risk. they have every right as free citizens of planet earth to do damn well whatever they please with their windfall.

I'm not sure if you just ran out of psych-meds or if you're sucking up to the big holders, but your statements are insane.
They took a "huge risk" ? 50 dollars for 15 million NXT or so is a "huge risk" ?
*Most* of those who "missed out" was people who didn't see the thread or came too late because BCNext shutdown the IPO hastily.
I have used the arguments you are regurgitating too many times in the last 3 months of marketing and arguing with skeptics, so I know them in and out.
This isn't about big stakeholders handing out NXT to random people, but to FUND marketing, FUND development, FUND incentives for people to give a fuck of NXT's health.

And it's also about fairness. Right now most of the stakeholders are just like the CEOs of Walmart. They take all the money and let people do all the work.

How you can justify the idea that because they invested 50 dollars they have this deep deserving right to be millionaires while those who make NXT worth milliones should get none is baffling.

It sounds like you've seen a 5 minute clip of Milton Friedman and think that this trickledown economy is a law of physics. Insane.