Devcoin

[caston]

Are you guys ready to start these discussions on the Devcoin forums?

I also want to know if you have read my proposal that instead of merging Devcoin with Bitcoin to make another currency called DevToken. Devtoken is merged with Devcoin. When you mine for DevCoins you also create Devtokens. Devtokens are a currency that the projects that receive Devcoin shares use to trade with each other. They probably are of no interest to investors or to hired contributors that would prefer coins but they are perfect for transactions between open source projects.

[twobits]

I tried mining today,  and found two blocks.  Had one up to 2/unconfirmed,  but then they all of the sudden went to 0 and orphan status.   Only see one connection.  No idea what happened, except I guess  someone else made a block and did not add in mine?

[caston]

Ok this is probably going to annoy you guys and I do apologise but I really think it needs to be this way for the project to succeed. I'm not even a programmer and i'm more of a hardware, web, OS/application support guy but I did do some programming when I was a teenager and in my early 20's. Anyway I have setup a git repository at:

https://github.com/caston/devcoin

The changes I have made are to the share line in main.cpp

static const int64 share = initialSubsidy * 1 / 10;

and I have been changing the makefiles to build devcoind instead of bitcoind


So what I basically want to do is change the share so that miners keep 90% of what they mine and 10% goes to the open source projects. By doing this I think we will actually collect more devcoins overall because more people will mine. Its the same as if a country has a high tax rate no one wants to work or run a business there.

I haven't started trying to mine with this change and I am not sure what will happen if I do. My assumption is though that it would only work if all the other miners made this change too.

Now I think we can double make up for this. There has been talk of moving devcoin to merged mining. I think this is a horrible thing to do because people have been using their hardware and electricity to mine coins as an extractive currency and now you are suggesting turning those coins into mere tokens. Investors will have very little interest in tokens and thus there will be little prospects of a high exchange value.

This is not to say that tokens are not very useful. They have an excellent niche of allowing trade between projects that are operated for "purpose" rather than for "profit".

So to "double make up " for the reduced levy we start a new currency called DevToken. DevToken starts off as a token currency since day one so none of the miners are losing wealth over this. Devtokens are merged mined with Devcoin. So you mine for devcoins and Devtokens are also created.

So the miners keep 90% of their devcoins and 10% go to opensource projects but to "double make up" for this 100% of the devtokens can go to open source projects. The tokens are of little interest to investors but perfect for allowing open source projects to trade with each other. So they can hire a person from another project to work on something for their project and vise versa.

The collected devcoins that go to projects helps the people with their real life expenses e.g. food, rent, electricity.

But if we consider the people working on these open source projects are working for the public good. They may be doing more than writing software for instance developing a way of automatically fabricating food and clothing.

We are doing something much more radical here. We are actually creating the means of separating public services from the state. After this happens we get things like health care and education light years more advanced than anything that exists today. This will truly help us become a more advanced civilisation.

[Unthinkingbit]

I have also added more to the thread on the forum discussing merged mining. I have made a proposal not to merge with Bitcoin but instead of start a new purpose built currency called tokencoin that will be merged mined with Devcoin.
..

Once merged mining is well tested by someone else and devcoin is well tested, an attempt will be made to add merged mining to devcoin.  If successfull, the client and daemon would be changed so that in several months, long enough for almost everyone to have updated the devcoin client and daemon, the mining share would be lowered and the developer share increased.  The only reason the developer share was not initially set to something really high like 95%+, was because of the risk of double spending due to low difficulty.

All merged mining does is increase the difficulty to increase the resistance to double spending attacks.  It does not make one coin like another, if devcoin uses bitcoin for merged mining devcoin does not become an extractive currency, if devcoin uses namecoin for merged mining devcoin does not become a domain name currency.

The tokencoin rules would be different to the Devcoin rules. For example 100% of tokencoins would be donated to open source projects but the miner would have a few choices. The default choice would be to let them be allocated according to the receiver csv files just like the Devcoin levy but if the miner wants to chose what projects these go to they can. For instance if he/she really wants to support the reprap hacker lab in his/her city he/she could allocate x percent to that project.

When planning devcoin I considered giving miners the option of which project they want to send the open source share to.  The problem is that an attacker could make an open source project that would barely qualify for devcoins.  Then they would rent hash power and direct their entire share to their own project.  Since they would be getting 100% of the generation and honest miners would be getting 10% of the generation, the attacker would make far more profit per hash and would therefore be stealing from the rest of the miners.  Because of the enormous incentive they would get to mine, they would mine an increasing amount, eventually selling so many devcoins the price would decrease and eventually go to zero.

That's why every miner is forced to give their share to the same receivers as everyone else.

..
The changes I have made are to the share line in main.cpp

static const int64 share = initialSubsidy * 1 / 10;

Devcoin is enforced sharing, a minimum of 90% of each block must be shared with the correct receivers or it is rejected.  That is the point of devcoin.

Devcoin is not a charity currency where miners are asked to donate; all miners must donate at least 90% of the blocks to the receivers on the list.  Miners could choose to donate more if they wanted to, but there is no reason for them to do this and they do not get anything more by donating more.

[caston]

Once merged mining is well tested by someone else and devcoin is well tested, an attempt will be made to add merged mining to devcoin.  If successfull, the client and daemon would be changed so that in several months, long enough for almost everyone to have updated the devcoin client and daemon, the mining share would be lowered and the developer share increased.  The only reason the developer share was not initially set to something really high like 95%+, was because of the risk of double spending due to low difficulty.

All merged mining does is increase the difficulty to increase the resistance to double spending attacks.  It does not make one coin like another, if devcoin uses bitcoin for merged mining devcoin does not become an extractive currency, if devcoin uses namecoin for merged mining devcoin does not become a domain name currency.

What it does is it reduces the cost of producing them to zero as they get produced when mining bitcoins and people are already mining the bitcoins for profit. They are no longer DevCoins they are now merely BitTokens.

The tokencoin rules would be different to the Devcoin rules. For example 100% of tokencoins would be donated to open source projects but the miner would have a few choices. The default choice would be to let them be allocated according to the receiver csv files just like the Devcoin levy but if the miner wants to chose what projects these go to they can. For instance if he/she really wants to support the reprap hacker lab in his/her city he/she could allocate x percent to that project.

When planning devcoin I considered giving miners the option of which project they want to send the open source share to.  The problem is that an attacker could make an open source project that would barely qualify for devcoins.  Then they would rent hash power and direct their entire share to their own project.  Since they would be getting 100% of the generation and honest miners would be getting 10% of the generation, the attacker would make far more profit per hash and would therefore be stealing from the rest of the miners.  Because of the enormous incentive they would get to mine, they would mine an increasing amount, eventually selling so many devcoins the price would decrease and eventually go to zero.

That's why every miner is forced to give their share to the same receivers as everyone else.

Ok replace the word "would" with "could potentially" obviously if it proves to difficult it would continue work as it does currently but at the same time if we do find a way of allowing this that is not highly prone to fraud then we should implement it. It probably means making qualification for funding much more rigorous and after that puts some rules on the transparency of accounting. Projects also need to help other projects with their goals in exchange for dev tokens and vise versa or they lose their share of devcoins.

Don't forget this is only the DevTokins which are of little interest to investors and assumingly of little interest to thieves as well who would care more about coins.

..
The changes I have made are to the share line in main.cpp

static const int64 share = initialSubsidy * 1 / 10;

Devcoin is enforced sharing, a minimum of 90% of each block must be shared with the correct receivers or it is rejected.  That is the point of devcoin.

Devcoin is not a charity currency where miners are asked to donate; all miners must donate at least 90% of the blocks to the receivers on the list.  Miners could choose to donate more if they wanted to, but there is no reason for them to do this and they do not get anything more by donating more.

I just don't see how this is going to lead to widespread adoption. Sure lots of people ran seti and folding @ home without financial gain but if there was alternatives to these projects that paid ludicrous amounts of cash or even just enough to pay their hardware costs then people would have jumped to those instead.

[Unthinkingbit]

I tried mining today,  and found two blocks.  Had one up to 2/unconfirmed,  but then they all of the sudden went to 0 and orphan status.   Only see one connection.  No idea what happened, except I guess  someone else made a block and did not add in mine?

I just briefly ran devcoin-qt and got one only connection.  However everything seemed ok, the block number was 8,192.

Is mining working for you now?

[caston]

I tried mining today,  and found two blocks.  Had one up to 2/unconfirmed,  but then they all of the sudden went to 0 and orphan status.   Only see one connection.  No idea what happened, except I guess  someone else made a block and did not add in mine?

I just briefly ran devcoin-qt and got one only connection.  However everything seemed ok, the block number was 8,192.

Is mining working for you now?

I have stopped mining, shutdown the daemon and closed the open virtual server port that I had opened for Devcoin on my ADSL modem/router. The difficulty will be stuck where it is now for a long time unless the share is massively reduced from 90% to something more like 10%

[Unthinkingbit]

I have stopped mining, shutdown the daemon and closed the open virtual server port that I had opened for Devcoin on my ADSL modem/router. The difficulty will be stuck where it is now for a long time unless the share is massively reduced from 90% to something more like 10%

The share will continue at 90% until merged mining is working, at which point the share will increase towards 100%.  This is the point of devcoin.

[Unthinkingbit]

I have stopped mining, shutdown the daemon and closed the open virtual server port that I had opened for Devcoin on my ADSL modem/router. The difficulty will be stuck where it is now for a long time unless the share is massively reduced from 90% to something more like 10%

If you do not want to participate in devcoin, you would no longer an administrator.  Which means that you would have to transfer all the coins you get from being an administrator and all your purser coins, in the receiver_2 round from block 8,000 to block 12,000 to the active developers.  You would not be an administrator or purser in the receiver_3 and succeeding rounds.

Do you want to participate in devcoin; or, start transferring your purser and administrator coins?

[caston]

I have stopped mining, shutdown the daemon and closed the open virtual server port that I had opened for Devcoin on my ADSL modem/router. The difficulty will be stuck where it is now for a long time unless the share is massively reduced from 90% to something more like 10%

If you do not want to participate in devcoin, you would no longer an administrator.  Which means that you would have to transfer all the coins you get from being an administrator and all your purser coins, in the receiver_2 round from block 8,000 to block 12,000 to the active developers.  You would not be an administrator or purser in the receiver_3 and succeeding rounds.

Do you want to participate in devcoin; or, start transferring your purser and administrator coins?

Yes, that's what I was thinking. I was in the middle of writing a message but I got interrupted by people asking me to do help move rugs and tables around. I'm going to have a much needed social night with friends then i'll come back tomorrow and we'll discuss this further. At this point I may be interested in forking the project if we can't come to an agreement.

I was going to make up some pie charts to illustrate some of my points but I have to go and catch a train now.

[Unthinkingbit]

Yes, that's what I was thinking. I was in the middle of writing a message but I got interrupted by people asking me to do help move rugs and tables around. I'm going to have a much needed social night with friends then i'll come back tomorrow and we'll discuss this further. At this point I may be interested in forking the project if we can't come to an agreement.

I'm glad you're willing to talk.

I stand by what I wrote.

I was going to make up some pie charts to illustrate some of my points but I have to go and catch a train now.

I will not change anything about devcoin.  Please do not spend your time trying to illustrate points on my account.

[markm]

Pie charts without data seem like pointless armchair-theorising, better would be simply change the port numbers and the four byte handshaking sequence and the name (maybe call them TOKEns or something? ) and when we make a forex app they can both run in the market, it will be interesting to see which ends up with better exchange rate against which other currencies.

Let miners vote with their hash rates and developers vote with their developments and we'll see whether artists and writers and coders and marxists (couldn't resist since mining seems to be a "own the means of production even if you are an unskilled worker" thing) and musicians prefer a chain that benefacts them or a chain that benefacts miners.

This could be fun. If you like I will grab your code from git and add these additional changes that will free it to soar as itself being itself.

Do you even want or need the receiver files stuff or do you want that changed too? I have no problem hosting a receiver file for your project as well as the one I already host for the devcoin project.

I might even mine on your chain some, what the heck, always nice to pick up some almost-free coins or tokens as an early adopter before the means of production owner types come along and muscle in on the action with their obscene amounts of hash power insisting that since they own the muscle they should rule the economy. (Charles Atlas & Rambo versus Einstein & Fermi, championship match of the millenia! )

-MarkM-

[caston]

Yes, that's what I was thinking. I was in the middle of writing a message but I got interrupted by people asking me to do help move rugs and tables around. I'm going to have a much needed social night with friends then i'll come back tomorrow and we'll discuss this further. At this point I may be interested in forking the project if we can't come to an agreement.

I'm glad you're willing to talk.

I stand by what I wrote.

I was going to make up some pie charts to illustrate some of my points but I have to go and catch a train now.

I will not change anything about devcoin.  Please do not spend your time trying to illustrate points on my account.

I was looking for a new block chain type project. I jumped into namecoin fairly early but regret not hashing more than I did. I saw group coin which was I think 50/50 and I thought that would be ok as I would at least get 50% and they could still go up in value. I tried out groupcoin after knotworking helped me and I started hashing. Then he said to try devcoin and I was like "umm maybe tomorrow" while I was happily hashing away at groupcoin. Then I read that groupcoup was being replaced by devcoin and I decided  to try to get it up and running and see what it would be like. Then I got told about the bounties and stuff and I got pretty excited and kind of got the wrong idea about devcoin. Which is why I got so excited and started setting up forums and everything.

That's cool if you want to keep devcoin as it is. I thought of another suggestion but you probably still won't be interested. Basically let the user (miner) adjust how much they donate. Maybe make the default 90% or 50% and they could adjust it down to 10% if they really like. That way you still get some contributions from the people that aren't willing to give all the coins away.
The other suggestion is to let developers register .dev domains using a similar method to .bit

Anyway as for the forums and wiki. I am running them on my nearlyfreespeech account. If you like I could give you adjunct member access to the virtual servers and or I could just make you guys admins (I mean inside the forum and wiki software) on both.  Or if you prefer you can grab the domain and the content and put it somewhere else. Totally up to you.

[caston]

Pie charts without data seem like pointless armchair-theorising, better would be simply change the port numbers and the four byte handshaking sequence and the name (maybe call them TOKEns or something? ) and when we make a forex app they can both run in the market, it will be interesting to see which ends up with better exchange rate against which other currencies.

Let miners vote with their hash rates and developers vote with their developments and we'll see whether artists and writers and coders and marxists (couldn't resist since mining seems to be a "own the means of production even if you are an unskilled worker" thing) and musicians prefer a chain that benefacts them or a chain that benefacts miners.

This could be fun. If you like I will grab your code from git and add these additional changes that will free it to soar as itself being itself.

Do you even want or need the receiver files stuff or do you want that changed too? I have no problem hosting a receiver file for your project as well as the one I already host for the devcoin project.

I might even mine on your chain some, what the heck, always nice to pick up some almost-free coins or tokens as an early adopter before the means of production owner types come along and muscle in on the action with their obscene amounts of hash power insisting that since they own the muscle they should rule the economy. (Charles Atlas & Rambo versus Einstein & Fermi, championship match of the millenia! )

-MarkM-

Mark, that would be excellent. I will need to think up an original name as well. I would love to if possible use a different hashing algorithm.

One day I hope to start one called biocoin which will use some kind of genetic hashing algorithm.  The kind of hardware that would work best for mining on this would be the computational devices used in DNA sequence analysis. Kind of like how mining bitcoin is said to be the fastest way to pay for your graphics card for a bioinformatics start-up company it could be the fastest way to pay for their DNA sequence analysis machine.

[Unthinkingbit]

That's cool if you want to keep devcoin as it is.

That is what I will do.

I thought of another suggestion but you probably still won't be interested.
..

Indeed, I am not interested.

Anyway as for the forums and wiki. I am running them on my nearlyfreespeech account. If you like I could give you adjunct member access to the virtual servers and or I could just make you guys admins (I mean inside the forum and wiki software) on both.  Or if you prefer you can grab the domain and the content and put it somewhere else. Totally up to you.

Thank you for the offer.  I am not interested but someone else may be.


Now and for the rest of generation round 2 you will be getting 5,625 devcoins per block over and above your developer share for being a purser and administrator.  Since you are no longer a purser and administrator those devcoins are not yours.  It is necessary for you to return those coins, you would do it by sending it to Mark or I and we would in turn send it to the active developers.

The total amount of devcoins you will have earned is 200,000 for your informative post + 1,000,000 for your induction + 5,625,000 for your round two share = 6,825,000.  Since you make an average of 7,812.5 devcoins per round, that means that you can keep what you get from the the last 874 rounds of generation.  To start you will have to return all the devcoins you have.  Then, every roughly 400 blocks until at last block 11,126 you must send all your devcoins at the time to Mark or I.  If you think this obligation is too onerous, that is the responsibility you took when you accepted being a purser.  If you do not want to send the devcoins every 400 blocks, you can export your private key and send it to Mark or I and we will transfer out the devcoins until round 11,126.

To any potential future pursers, being a purser is a big responsibility, do not take it if you do want a big responsibility.

[twobits]

I tried mining today,  and found two blocks.  Had one up to 2/unconfirmed,  but then they all of the sudden went to 0 and orphan status.   Only see one connection.  No idea what happened, except I guess  someone else made a block and did not add in mine?

I just briefly ran devcoin-qt and got one only connection.  However everything seemed ok, the block number was 8,192.

Is mining working for you now?

Seems some mined blocks did take, but it 2/3rds become orphaned. 

[twobits]

Pie charts without data seem like pointless armchair-theorising, better would be simply change the port numbers and the four byte handshaking sequence and the name (maybe call them TOKEns or something? ) and when we make a forex app they can both run in the market, it will be interesting to see which ends up with better exchange rate against which other currencies.

Let miners vote with their hash rates and developers vote with their developments and we'll see whether artists and writers and coders and marxists (couldn't resist since mining seems to be a "own the means of production even if you are an unskilled worker" thing) and musicians prefer a chain that benefacts them or a chain that benefacts miners.

This could be fun. If you like I will grab your code from git and add these additional changes that will free it to soar as itself being itself.

Do you even want or need the receiver files stuff or do you want that changed too? I have no problem hosting a receiver file for your project as well as the one I already host for the devcoin project.

I might even mine on your chain some, what the heck, always nice to pick up some almost-free coins or tokens as an early adopter before the means of production owner types come along and muscle in on the action with their obscene amounts of hash power insisting that since they own the muscle they should rule the economy. (Charles Atlas & Rambo versus Einstein & Fermi, championship match of the millenia! )

-MarkM-

I like the idea of competing block chains, which is why I downloaded and compiled devcoin to start with.  I imagine it will get mined if it supports merged mining,  but I don't yet see it acquiring an exchange to fiat currencies. 

Rather then just changing the port numbers, how about making one merged client that can support both (and more) currencies,  using parametrized config files or modules, and multiplexing over the same port?

[markm]

I like the idea of competing block chains, which is why I downloaded and compiled devcoin to start with.  I imagine it will get mined if it supports merged mining,  but I don't yet see it acquiring an exchange to fiat currencies. 

Rather then just changing the port numbers, how about making one merged client that can support both (and more) currencies,  using parametrized config files or modules, and multiplexing over the same port?

Use multicoin-qt and multicoind would probably make sense to pick up the parameters from config file stuff, also the merged mining if that is working for them now.

Exchanging to fiat currencies is a painful can of worms, part of the need for lots of different blockchain based tokens coins whatever is to get away from fiat currencies and all the crap associated with them. If only a few of the blockchains bother to maintain an exchange directly to and from fiat and being able to exchange to and from fiat is so darn important or valuable then those that do might find their exchange value tending to be higher than that of ones that do not. That is fine. When I stumbled upon bitcoin in the first place I was looking for software that would allow players to buy and sell things located in different places, and most of those things were expected to be in places where the planet known as Earth is thought to be a myth, so it was quite expected that most of those places would not be featuring currencies from planet earth in their "stock exchanges" (where by stock exchange is meant generically the forex, commodity, bond, stock etc market; prerequisite facility being bank though interestingly maybe not market so maybe commodity market need not be assumed).

Leaving fiat out of it is great, it is part of what makes bitcoin and namecoin stand out from the crowd, as those two become gateway coins or tokens, the "chips" players who are planning to "cash out" are likely to value more than various "chips" players who are in for the long haul or in for reason other than to suck the livelihood out of the peasantry, using currency to exploit them and import all of value from them and export any famines and droughts to them and so on.

Some people actually prefer that value be acquired locally within a world or nation or community instead of being beamed in from firstworldia by aliens/foreigners who never come right down in the trenches / dungeons/ paddies getting muddy / killing monsters / planting rice and pulling weeds with the locals on an equal bases of an equal among equals. For this reason (though admittedly also others) one already sees some worlds / universes whose players/inhabitants are told by their rulers / power that be / oppressors not to sell local valuables in return for fiat currencies from the planet known as Earth.

-MarkM- (Like the Iron Curtain but maybe Iron Screen? Glass Screen? Glass Wall? Fourth Wall? Virtual Curtain?)

[Unthinkingbit]

Then I got told about the bounties and stuff and I got pretty excited and kind of got the wrong idea about devcoin.

You have the wrong idea about devcoin and the wrong idea about being a purser.

The coins you get into your purser account are not yours, they are for the other developers.  Since you have not returned them, you are now taking devcoins from open source developers.

You must now send your private purser key to Mark or I.  It should take less than ten minutes to extract.  If you have any trouble extracting it, please post your issues and someone will help you.

If you did not answer because you were busy, that's fine; but please answer quickly, this issue must be resolved soon.

[caston]

Yes I am at work and just logged in as its quiet at this time of night. I definitely did not intend to steal anything. Please let me know what you need me to send to where. What do you mean private purser key?

I am just going back and reading your posts. Boy you sound angry dude. Sorry if I have upset you. You can have back all the devcoins if you like. I'm not even going to do any sums.

My most recent wallet.dat files are at home of course so please wait until I get home. Then its probably better if I sleep before sending them to you to ensure I don't make a mistake so I do this when I am fresh. If you want to send me any instructions to help me do this then that would be excellent.

To confirm some more details though I was mining first on a machine with 2 6870's which is the one that generated the address I gave you which the bounties and everything else went to. The other machine was my main machine which I later started mining on with a 6950. I believe it has about 2 million devcoins but I will need to double check when I get home. Do you want these as well or just all the devcoins from the first machine?

I may be able to send coins to you when I get home but I usually get home from work about 1am. I work a long way from home and don't own a car so get home via train and bus.