Devcoin

[markm]

I seriously think that we should hope devcoins will become valuable enough that we can use the standard "one fifth of a share" unit of measure to reward writing.

I get this from it taking maybe an hour or two to write a thousand words and maybe taking an hour or two to host something that needs some admin stuff done. Or lets say, one hour of work's worth of actual money to actually pay for a machine to host it on and bandwidth for it and one hour of actual work running the thing.

So one fifth of a share seems to maybe be about an hour or two of work, and even then only work that is directly on project gets to do only ten hours for a full share, tangential / external stuff a share is forty hours!

I do not know how much coins would need to be worth, or really I guess, how much one-fifth shares would have to be worth, for this to be "reasonable". Recently an off the cuff guestimate of share value by Unthinkingbit put one fifth of a share at $30. Is not $30 a decent wage for an hour or two of promoting your own ouvre or genre or whatever you want by writing about it on a hopefully someday influential wiki?

Heck, some people would pay that much or more to be permitted to post their own work / original research / anything on an influential wiki!

The hosting one gets 1/5 of a share for one has to actually be paying for bandwidth and hosting, not just doing some work-of-your-own-choosing promoting anything-of-your-own choosing...

Are things we are paying about $30 a month to have someone host and admin things they can run as a freebie on a $5/month webhosting-only account or things they'd need a $30/month virtual machine for? (In the latter case the share merely covers the machine, so their real pay is just that they get to use any spare capacity of the machine for their own uses if it does end up actually having any spare capacity...)

EDIT: Example: a "stable" node. I read recently a bitcoin node crashed because it only had 4 gigs of RAM for its virtual machine. It needed to upgrade its RAM. The sheer number of connections a backbone/fallback/DNSseed node gets eats lots of RAM. A more than four gigs of RAM virtual machine costs how much per month typically? We give one fifth of a share for maintaining one of these nodes...

(Currently number of connections is low, so currently that maybe be fine. But bitcoin nodes can find four gigs of RAM is not enough. SO if we grow well, we can expect our core nodes to need more than four gigs of RAM each.)

Oh and bandwidth! How much for a server that *really* has *genuinely* "unlimited" bandwidth to supply thousands of nodes with copies of the entire blockchain?

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

Maybe the lack of income from other sources has led to the estimations of how lucrative a wiki could become to have gotten out of synch with the nowadays lucrativeness of other projects? If we wwere running a cryptocoin exchange as well as the wki, which would make more money, I wonder? Maybe coding is no longer as non-lucrative as once it might have been? Or could be made so, if we could figure a way to get a cut for the project of the fruits of the labour/code?

You're onto something... I'd say it's hard to invent something which will bring less revenue than wiki.

An exchange... That would be good. Give Vircurex some competition.

[psybits]

I seriously think that we should hope devcoins will become valuable enough that we can use the standard "one fifth of a share" unit of measure to reward writing.

I get this from it taking maybe an hour or two to write a thousand words and maybe taking an hour or two to host something that needs some admin stuff done. Or lets say, one hour of work's worth of actual money to actually pay for a machine to host it on and bandwidth for it and one hour of actual work running the thing.

So one fifth of a share seems to maybe be about and hour or two of work, and even then only work that is directly on project gets to do only ten hours for a full share, tangential / external stuff a share is forty hours!

I do not know how much coins would need to be worth, or really I guess, how much one-fifth shares would have to be worth, for this to be "reasonable". Recently an off the cuff guestimate of share value by Unthinkingbit put one fifth of a share at $30. Is not $30 a decent wage for an hour or two of promoting your own ouvre or genre or whatever you want by writing about it on a hopefully osmeday influential wiki?

Heck, some people would pay that much or more to be permitted to post their own work / original research / anything on an influential wiki! D

The hosting one gets 1/5 of a share for one has to actually be paying for bandwidth and hosting, not just doing some work-of-your-own-choosing promoting anything-of-your-own choosing...

Are things we are paying about $30 a month to have someone host an admin things they can run as a freebie on a $5/month webhosting-only account of things they'd need a $30/month virtual machine for? (In the latter case the share merely covers the machine, so their real pay is just that they got to use any spare capacity of the machine for their own uses if it does end up actually having any spare capacity...)

-MarkM-

These are good points - why not just increase the shares for admin work etc instead of decreasing shares for writing? I was made an admin this month and I can relate that writing seems to be an easier way to earn DVC, but on the other hand Devtome does not have a lot of writers yet so it may be best to keep writers well incentivized at this stage while we build a critical mass.

[FuzzyBear]

By the way, this thread gets completely out of hand, I can't keep up with it... Did you consider making offshots?

Nah Page 100 baby

[FinShaggy]

These are good points - why not just increase the shares for admin work etc instead of decreasing shares for writing? I was made an admin this month and I can relate that writing seems to be an easier way to earn DVC, but on the other hand Devtome does not have a lot of writers yet so it may be best to keep writers well incentivized at this stage while we build a critical mass.

Yeah, it will work when 1,000 words is $30. But like you said we need more writers before we mark it down.

And we have to work on making Devcoins more popular before they will be worth that much per 1/5 share...

If you want to help make Devcoin more Valuable, read this:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=devcoin_advertising_campaign

Don't add to it yet, I have plans for that page.

[termhn]

Already posted before but it got buried under a bunch of posts:

I have another question. What exactly is eligible for a bounty? Any open source piece of software? What are the limits? Does it extend to software like a game? Thanks!

this was answered here by markm right after ur post...

Bounties are for items the devcoin project itself needs.

Things like free open source games, music, hardware, whatever, that is not something this project itself directly needs to have done, aren't rewarded with bounties they are rewarded after the fact (well, more like during the fact, I guess) by adding the creator or dev team to the receivers list.

So for example if you gather a few friends and form a team to create a free open source game, at some point along the line it might be noticed your game is popular and useful and the team is putting in 40 hours a month or more on it, and the team might be given a spot ion the receivers list; how they would divvy up the resulting coins among the members of the team is left up to them I guess, usually by putting their designated "team leader" or "lead dev" on the list and letting them divvy it up, maybe?

In the case of a huge project with a whole lot of bearing on devcoin, such as Open Transactions, a few pieces of the project each have a receivers list entry in effect; that is, something like three separate people, possibly even more (I am not sure, I know three for sure) are on the receivers list on account of the fact they are working on aspects of Open Transactions.

Bounties are for when we need something and no one is already doing it so a bounty seems necessary in order to get it done.

-MarkM-

Okay thanks. I ask because I'm working on what is going to be a free/open source game and just wondering on what qualifies/how the system works. Thanks for pointing that out and thanks for the answer, Mark

[killerstorm]

An exchange... That would be good. Give Vircurex some competition.

Exchange is problematic in many ways, there are many risks...

Unless it is a crypto exchange, like powered by colored coins (This was a shameless self-plug )

OK, I'll give you my idea: a focused, specialized wiki.

Devtome doesn't have quality of standards, so there are approximately zero reasons to search information specifically on devtome. It is theoretically possible that you will find well-researched information there, but it is also possible that you will find a stub or a low-quality article. In this way devtome competes with internet as a whole: on average, results you get on devtome won't be better that results you can get via google search.

And it is hard to compete with internet

Instead people could make sections on some specific topics and optimize for quality. E.g. a sub-wiki about Bitcoin. It should be updated very frequently, categorized very well. So that when I want to get information about Bitcoin, I have an incentive to go to devcoin-sponsored wiki and get high-quality information from it.

It it doesn't sound cool enough, it is possible to market-incentivize creation of such topical sections: people should be able to invest devcoins into such sections... money which section gets from investments goes into improvement... which brings in revenue via advertisement... and that revenue is shared with investors.

I think it is cool because people get a chance to invest into web sites they like... That's (probably) a new concept.

And it can improve quality because there will be a competition between different sections, low-quality ones will die out, and high quality ones will attract visitors... at least in theory

[markm]

These are good points - why not just increase the shares for admin work etc instead of decreasing shares for writing?

Only for the implementation-detail reason that the shares system supports 1/5 shares, and if we increased admin stipends we could end up with everything being in whole shares nothing in 1/5 shares, which would let all the code for handling 1/5 shares sit there not being used thus maybe even suffering "code rot".

Its like the divisibility of bitcoins; where you choose to put the decimal/fraction isn't really important what is important is what fraction of the 180,000,000 coins generated in a round it comes out to given how many other shares or fractions of shares exist in that round.

So, since we have 1/5 as a unit, I figured lets use it, and anything needing bigger chunks can use bigger chunks.

Maybe though not having any fractional shares is actually better than having them and all the code to handle them will no longer be needed once whole shares are puny amounts of actual money considering how many thousands of them there are in any given round...

(Using fifths will make that grand total number of shares "sound smaller" too, so maybe make it seem less daunting to people only getting one or less shares.)

-MarkM-

[twobits]

FWIW, my Chrome (OSX 10. didn't flag it, nor did my Sophos Antivirus. Cheers for finally having a DVC wallet I don't need to use the terminal to access. Now if we could get one for NMC...*dreaming*

THANKS AGAIN! 

Actully I did one for NMC awhile ago,   I suppose I could bring that up to date aswell.

[killerstorm]

I get this from it taking maybe an hour or two to write a thousand words

The elephant in the room is that quality and importance varies greatly, and so does effort...

The problem is that it is NOT additive, it is highly non-linear: sub-par content has almost no value, mediocre content has little value (there is a LOT of mediocre content on the internet), while high-quality content might have a great value...

Devtome has no incentives for high-quality content, which means you get what...?

That's basically same problem they had in Soviet Union: free market is much better at optimizing for quality/innovation than 'communism'.

[FinShaggy]

An exchange... That would be good. Give Vircurex some competition.

Exchange is problematic in many ways, there are many risks...

Unless it is a crypto exchange, like powered by colored coins (This was a shameless self-plug )

OK, I'll give you my idea: a focused, specialized wiki.

Devtome doesn't have quality of standards, so there are approximately zero reasons to search information specifically on devtome. It is theoretically possible that you will find well-researched information there, but it is also possible that you will find a stub or a low-quality article. In this way devtome competes with internet as a whole: on average, results you get on devtome won't be better that results you can get via google search.

And it is hard to compete with internet

Instead people could make sections on some specific topics and optimize for quality. E.g. a sub-wiki about Bitcoin. It should be updated very frequently, categorized very well. So that when I want to get information about Bitcoin, I have an incentive to go to devcoin-sponsored wiki and get high-quality information from it.

It it doesn't sound cool enough, it is possible to market-incentivize creation of such topical sections: people should be able to invest devcoins into such sections... money which section gets from investments goes into improvement... which brings in revenue via advertisement... and that revenue is shared with investors.

I think it is cool because people get a chance to invest into web sites they like... That's (probably) a new concept.

And it can improve quality because there will be a competition between different sections, low-quality ones will die out, and high quality ones will attract visitors... at least in theory

It's not hard to compete with the internet when you are offering money.

[FinShaggy]

I get this from it taking maybe an hour or two to write a thousand words

The elephant in the room is that quality and importance varies greatly, and so does effort...

The problem is that it is NOT additive, it is highly non-linear: sub-par content has almost no value, mediocre content has little value (there is a LOT of mediocre content on the internet), while high-quality content might have a great value...

Devtome has no incentives for high-quality content, which means you get what...?

That's basically same problem they had in Soviet Union: free market is much better at optimizing for quality/innovation than 'communism'.

This is all based on opinions of "content value".

I read the Galactic Meleui stuff and thought it was worthless, until I spoke with Mark M, and learned that he is a game developer, not just someone writing about a video game he played once. He was writing about stuff he personally made.

And I think since we have only 20ish publishers right now, all we need to be is in development of something.

The content doesn't matter, as long as the ends are parallel with the goal of the overall project, which is to develop things into the real world, unless I am mistaken, that is what I got from reading the bounties.

[markm]

Part of the overall goal in "promoting" the Galactic Milieu throughout the Devtome is that maybe, hopefully, games might eventually be able to generate revenue, and the Galactic Milieu is pretty much just a vast backdrop into which any free open source game can be plugged.

If the game doesn't fit as being a client by means of which to play some aspect of the Milieu directly, it can if nothing else be yet another of the games the characters living in the milieu can play. For example free open source poker code could enable characters to play poker with one-another. Free open source monopoly code could enable characters to sit around playing monopoly with one-another, etc.

So it basically serves as a catch-all into which any and maybe eventually all free open source games can be tossed and all of them inter-related economically by way of devcoins and/or other similar systems of wealth and value transfer, and maybe eventually even lead to at least some of them being able to ship goods back and forth between them not just transfer cryptocoins back and forth between them.

More and more can be all woven together economically by the ability of cryptocurrencies to operate independently of any particular specific game, and the more they are woven together economically maybe the more chances there might be that they will tend toward interweaving in more ways too, creating a huge tapestry of interwoven free open source games that could maybe even benefit from synergy and become more than the sum of the parts.

The more games maybe the more players, and the more players maybe the more value any/all currencies used in the multiverse of free open source games will tend to become worth, devcoin being among them of course...

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

Part of the overall goal in "promoting" the Galactic Milieu throughout the Devtome is that maybe, hopefully, games might eventually be able to generate revenue, and the Galactic Milieu is pretty much just a vast backdrop into which any free open source game can be plugged.

If the game doesn't fit as being a client by means of which to play some aspect of the Milieu directly, it can if nothing else be yet another of the games the characters living in the milieu can play. For example free open source poker code could enable characters to play poker with one-another. Free open source monopoly code could enable characters to sit around playing monopoly with one-another, etc.

So it basically serves as a catch-all into which any and maybe eventually all free open source games can be tossed and all of them inter-related economically by way of devcoins and/or other similar systems of wealth and value transfer, and maybe eventually even lead to at least some of them being able to ship goods back and forth between them not just transfer cryptocoins back and forth between them.

More and more can be all woven together economically by the ability of cryptocurrencies to operate independently of any particular specific game, and the more they are woven together economically maybe the more chances there might be that they will tend toward interweaving in more ways too, creating a huge tapestry of interwoven free open source games that could maybe even benefit from synergy and become more than the sum of the parts.

The more games maybe the more players, and the more players maybe the more value any/all currencies used in the multiverse of free open source games will tend to become worth, devcoin being among them of course...

-MarkM-

Exactly.

And you don't see that just reading Devtome, you have to look deeper, and even discuss things to learn what is being developed.

[KrLos]

sorry for beg, but i really want to try DVC, anyone can send me few? it would be awesome!

12ujQGDSNna785xCCnwRkRniNhPpgVYH8V

[markm]

The Milieu is also useful for things like developing and testing - actually deploying for real live testing with real live commerce - the Open Transactions system.

That is because on some planets, transmitting value and using tokens to represent value and so on are verbotten by that planet's "powers that be".

The Milieu should always be large enough that there will always be a planet somewhere, even if officially considered to be in a wilderness beyond the official limits of extent of the populated "by civilised species" galaxies of the Milieu, where people can operate banks and stock exchanges and token systems and value transfer systems and so on, so that such things can actually be developed, deployed, and empirically be observed and worked on in live deployment.

For example if it were not for the civilised financial services rules of the planet known as M5, we would not have the Digitalis Open Transactions server and the OTdemo Open Transactions server running so as to have been able to actually do decent testing of Open Transactions this last couple of years or so. Three cheers for the Martians!

-MarkM-

[marticps]

An exchange... That would be good. Give Vircurex some competition.

Exchange is problematic in many ways, there are many risks...

Unless it is a crypto exchange, like powered by colored coins (This was a shameless self-plug )

OK, I'll give you my idea: a focused, specialized wiki.

Devtome doesn't have quality of standards, so there are approximately zero reasons to search information specifically on devtome. It is theoretically possible that you will find well-researched information there, but it is also possible that you will find a stub or a low-quality article. In this way devtome competes with internet as a whole: on average, results you get on devtome won't be better that results you can get via google search.

And it is hard to compete with internet

Instead people could make sections on some specific topics and optimize for quality. E.g. a sub-wiki about Bitcoin. It should be updated very frequently, categorized very well. So that when I want to get information about Bitcoin, I have an incentive to go to devcoin-sponsored wiki and get high-quality information from it.

It it doesn't sound cool enough, it is possible to market-incentivize creation of such topical sections: people should be able to invest devcoins into such sections... money which section gets from investments goes into improvement... which brings in revenue via advertisement... and that revenue is shared with investors.

I think it is cool because people get a chance to invest into web sites they like... That's (probably) a new concept.

And it can improve quality because there will be a competition between different sections, low-quality ones will die out, and high quality ones will attract visitors... at least in theory

I agree that Devtome has to offer something different in order to attract visitors. I like a lot the idea of specialized sub-wikis.

[metazilla]

This seem to work for people that don't have, or delete old versions on their computer and clean out the old data directory. So it should work great for new users.  Not sure what to do about current ones yet.

Anyone knows how to export the wallet from the windows bundle, remove the windows bundle, install this version and import the current wallet?

Go to %appdata%/Devcoin, copy your wallet.dat to somewhere safe, delete the entire Devcoin folder from %appdata%, then install the new version, and copy your old wallet.dat back.

---

I agree that there should be a limit on writing (personally I think 80k is still a high limit, I'd say maybe 50k), or that the share value should be changed. The ~2000 word article I wrote on meditation took me maybe 2-3 hours to write (and I like to think that it's decent quality), while the Cryptocoin Ticker I app took me >10 hours. At this point it's much more profitable to do writing than open source development, which I think sort of goes against the idea of Devcoin. If anything, it should be equally worth someone's time to do open source development or open source writing.

Also, I agree that maybe there are better ways to generate funding/interest for the project. The hackathon idea sounds pretty cool to me.

One thing I think might help would be a site (on devcoin.org when that's up again?) where people can propose and vote on all the different bounties - eg. how many shares they are worth. At this point it's kind of hard to tell who decides this sort of stuff; it seems like right now it's Unthinkingbit and markm (who started the project AFAIK), but isn't the goal for this all to be democratically decided? I think that having to keep track of everything that's going on with the project, (bounties, client updates, etc.) in a single forum thread on bitcointalk will be a barrier to entry for some who might otherwise be interested in the project.

That said, I'd propose making a more clear bounty for an offical devcoin site (eg. devcoin.org), with clear info about the project, and maybe a section for proposing/voting on bounties.

Thoughts?

[metazilla]

sorry for beg, but i really want to try DVC, anyone can send me few? it would be awesome!

12ujQGDSNna785xCCnwRkRniNhPpgVYH8V

Just sent you 1000DVC. Welcome.

[FinShaggy]

Devcoin Promotional Thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=191136.new#new