[ANN] Catcoin - Scrypt meow!

[tx42]

In fact, I came into the channel to continue development work, but you sent a message into the public development channel accusing me of causing discord and confusion among investor types and that in essence I was as ignoramus with no knowledge of economics, etc.

That about sums it up.

[zerodrama]

I have absolutely no idea what's going on anymore. Could explain in simple terms what's happening? TL:DR.

Developers do not all agree on the best approach to fix the coin. Some developers want to implement and push for a new hard fork without public discussion. Other(s) want to keep the community informed on the alternatives and form a consensus, so we do not have another badly executed fork. I believe all are doing what they think best for the coin.

This is pseudodemocratic bullshit. Public discussion is fine as long as it doesn't slow development. We are using information from various coins to make decisions. But there is a concerted effort to present decisions through some sort of grade school version of the United Nations.

The problem is as follows:

1. It's not coin hoppers.
2. It's the volatility of the difficulty adjustment.
3. Windows wallets are a catastrophic process and that process should be repaired as soon as possible after the fork.
4. The speed with which pools can update and people can be ready for the fork determines the fork block.

[etblvu1]

The problem is as follows:

1. It's not coin hoppers.
2. It's the volatility of the difficulty adjustment.
3. Windows wallets are a catastrophic process and that process should be repaired as soon as possible after the fork.
4. The speed with which pools can update and people can be ready for the fork determines the fork block.

Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.

I agree with you that the problem is not coin hoppers per se, and that it is difficult to build Windows QT clients. I am in the process of reaching out to coin developers to help with that.

I do not agree that volatility in the difficulty adjustment is necessarily a problem. If the marketplace is volatile, the difficulty value ideally should be allowed to reflect that. Otherwise, the primary people profiting from the coin are those taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities, and not people who support the coin. There are some technical reason why we'd put some limitations on how quickly difficulty values can reflect what is happening on the coin network, but quick changes in the difficulty is not inherently a problem.

For example, if we wake up tomorrow, and saw that Catcoins went up in value by a factor of 100, it's on the news, it's a meme that's catching on, because some clever marketing coup from a fellow Catcoin supporter, whatever the difficulty level is at right now, it is going to be ridiculously profitable for anyone with a mining rig to point it to the Catcoin network and start mining. In this situation, it is not necessarily a "problem" for the difficulty level to rise about 100x to meet the new market conditions, as quickly as possible. Until it does adjust, we suffer hyperinflation perhaps at the rate of a block being solved every 6 seconds. Now, there is no guarantee that the coin will stay this valuable long-term. Maybe in a couple of weeks, the fad starts to wear off and there is some panic selling and the price drops off to former levels. It is not a problem for the difficulty to then drop back down to 1/100th, again as quickly as possible. If not, we may be seeing block times reaching into the tens of hours. If we put code in there to interfere with the dynamics of the difficulty adjusting itself to emerging market conditions quickly, it may or may not be very harmful, but at least these types of scenarios deserves some attention and discussion rather than being dismissed out of hand.

I respectfully submit that undesirable things such as too-long time to transactions being confirmed, miners getting paid only 50% of what was promised to them, insufficient interest in keeping long-term miners active, etc., are really the result of noise in the sensor of the coin that was designed to detect market conditions. We are getting feedback noise in the form of offering people a lot of coins to show up short-term, so they show up for that reason and not for the reason of what is occurring in the exchanges. If we take away the noise, what remains are valid market signals. The optimal response to a noisy headphone may not be to turn down the volume or to cut the wire - it may be to locate the source of the noise and eliminate that, so the beautiful music can come through loud and clear.

Thank you,

Etblvu1

[SlimePuppy]

I have absolutely no idea what's going on anymore. Could explain in simple terms what's happening? TL:DR.

Nullu,  I've done my best to communicate to all involved exactly what's happening.   We have a fix, it's being tested on a testnet.  As soon as we can get a windows wallet compiled we can notify everyone and we can fork.

Unfortunately, the battle isn't being lost to compilers and code, it's being lost to a member here that's continuing to sow discontent here in public after he was tossed from the dev area.

Please please please everyone - get your information from one of the active developers:  Maverickthenewb, hozer, zerodrama, or skillface.

etblvu1 is working against the wishes of the devs and against the wishes of this community.  His plan has been critiqued here for weeks and has been found to be unacceptable by all that have a clue about ALL crypto - not just about CAT.  I ignore him on IRC and I highly recommend that everyone ignore him here as well.

I'm sorry folks - this royally sucks.  After all we've done and all we've got through it would be really sad to lose the cat because of the ego of a single forum member.  Please do not let that happen.

Andy

[SlimePuppy]

I have absolutely no idea what's going on anymore. Could explain in simple terms what's happening? TL:DR.

Developers do not all agree on the best approach to fix the coin. Some developers want to implement and push for a new hard fork without public discussion. Other(s) want to keep the community informed on the alternatives and form a consensus, so we do not have another badly executed fork. I believe all are doing what they think best for the coin.

This is a bald-faced lie.  The developers actually DO agree and have the plan coded and in testing.

That's really why I got into the sausage earlier - everyone agrees - all!  that we need a 1-block difficulty re-adjust with a simple moving average 'tail' for balance.  Period.  That is the fix!  The ONLY area we differ on is the length of the 'tail' - the moving average length - that's necessary to give the best stability.  And that, folks, is EXACTLY why we have a testnet and are testing the solution.

[SlimePuppy]

So basically we have everyone doing their own thing? The exact same problem we had with the last fork.

NO Nullu, we absolutely do NOT have everyone doing their own thing.  The actual developers are working on a 1 block retarget with a moving average tail and a movement limit.  Period.

This is exactly why I keep suggesting that you go directly to the people doing the work.  Let me give you a hint - it's not etblvu1!

This has become a debate about the inherent flaws in cryptocurrency, rather than a debate on how to fix Catcoin.

YES!  And that's a problem!  This is why I wasted your time with the story of my intro to this community and to the discontent being caused by all the various stories sailing by here!  Please do NOT fall for rumors or guesses or people actively trying to kill this coin - if you want to know what the devs are doing and what they think TALK TO THEM!  etblvu1 does not speak for ANY of them!

[etblvu1]

This is a bald-faced lie.  The developers actually DO agree and have the plan coded and in testing.

Since you conveniently only include in your list of developers who agree with you, it is of course easy for you to make this statement. But your method of arbitrarily choosing who is and is not a legitimate developer, is disingenuous. You have no way to know if I will not announce having successfully run a testnet with my proposed code - or what I am doing to reach out to developers outside the catcoin community to help. It is quite presumptuous on your part to assume you know and can make a list of the totality of every developer who is working on Catcoins.

I hereby pledge that I will not take unilateral action to announce any hard fork or otherwise change the coin, without getting substantial consensus from the community. I also pledge that I will endeavor to support and improve upon what is the most likely to make the coin successful - and furthermore pledge to support even a second best or third best option, if doing so will help form a consensus to move forward. I also commit to hold the result of using any of my code, to the standard of the benchmarks I have proposed. I invite others involved in Catcoin development to use those benchmarks to determine whether or not the code implemented has successfully achieved what the coin promised to deliver; or if they do not agree with the benchmarks, propose better benchmarks.

If you want to be constructive and move things towards a consensus, please consider matching my pledges.

Thank you,

Etblvu1

[zerodrama]

This is a bald-faced lie.  The developers actually DO agree and have the plan coded and in testing.

Since you conveniently only include in your list of developers who agree with you, it is of course easy for you to make this statement. But your method of arbitrarily choosing who is and is not a legitimate developer, is disingenuous. You have no way to know if I will not announce having successfully run a testnet with my proposed code - or what I am doing to reach out to developers outside the catcoin community to help. It is quite presumptuous on your part to assume you know and can make a list of the totality of every developer who is working on Catcoins.

I hereby pledge that I will not take unilateral action to announce any hard fork or otherwise change the coin, without getting substantial consensus from the community. I also pledge that I will endeavor to support and improve upon what is the most likely to make the coin successful - and furthermore pledge to support even a second best or third best option, if doing so will help form a consensus to move forward. I also commit to evaluate the success of any potential solution that involves my code, as a means to evaluate if it was successful or not, in delivering what the coin has promised to deliver. I invite others involved in Catcoin development to abide by them or if they do not agree with the benchmarks, propose better benchmarks.

If you want to be constructive and move things towards a consensus, please consider matching my pledges.

Thank you,

Etblvu1

Man I appreciate your talent for presenting ideas but your CSI procedural round table nonsense misrepresents the process. There is no lack of consensus. There is no lack of progress. There is not even lack of communication, despite claims.

Your posts are again, pseudodemocratic bullshit. The community wants a BTC clone. The community does not want coin from space. Are we going to vote on the value of pi now?

The community has had 382 pages to throw in views contrary to the BTC clone idea. The community doesn't need to vote. They could have voted with dissenting opinions and discussion. They want a BTC clone.

Our biggest issue is the Windows wallet.

The consensus which is drawn from discussions on other coin boards with other coin communities:
1 block retarget
36 block average
12% limit

[SlimePuppy]

This is a bald-faced lie.  The developers actually DO agree and have the plan coded and in testing.

Since you conveniently only include in your list of developers who agree with you, it is of course easy for you to make this statement. But your method of arbitrarily choosing who is and is not a legitimate developer, is disingenuous. <snip>

I hereby pledge that I will not take unilateral action to announce any hard fork or otherwise change the coin, without getting substantial consensus from the community. I also pledge that I will endeavor to support and improve upon what is the most likely to make the coin successful - and furthermore pledge to support even a second best or third best option, if doing so will help form a consensus to move forward. I also commit to hold the result of using any of my code, to the standard of the benchmarks I have proposed. I invite others involved in Catcoin development to abide by them or if they do not agree with the benchmarks, propose better benchmarks.

If you want to be constructive and move things towards a consensus, please consider matching my pledges.

Thank you,

Etblvu1

No.  It's presumptuous of you to keep acting as if you're doing anything productive.  I know that during the times I've been on IRC, a number of members - folks actually coding and working - have asked you to stay on topic or leave the channel.  This is simple fact.

And no, I will not agree to your 'pledge' because it's nothing more than a scam.  It says, in effect, that you will not fork or change the coin unless you can cause so much discontent or otherwise scare the membership away that you'll fork what's left.

You could, on the other hand, have taken our advice from days and weeks ago - simply start your own coin and your own pool - then you can make it do whatever you want.

The fact remains that the people actively working on fixing this coin do not see any value in your proposal.  If they did, you'd be working there to orchestrate the next fork.  Because you cannot and they are not, you have no choice but to keep pounding away in the 'court of public opinion'.  Either way, you'll attain the goal of assuaging your ego and killing CAT as she stands.

I seriously hope you fail, because neither CAT nor her community deserves this fate.

[etblvu1]

Man I appreciate your talent for presenting ideas but your CSI procedural round table nonsense misrepresents the process. There is no lack of consensus. There is no lack of progress. There is not even lack of communication, despite claims.

Your posts are again, pseudodemocratic bullshit. The community wants a BTC clone. The community does not want coin from space. Are we going to vote on the value of pi now?

The community has had 382 pages to throw in views contrary to the BTC clone idea. The community doesn't need to vote. They could have voted with dissenting opinions and discussion. They want a BTC clone.

Our biggest issue is the Windows wallet.

The consensus which is drawn from discussions on other coin boards with other coin communities:
1 block retarget
36 block average
12% limit

This is probably an adequate solution and I can potentially support it as a short-term solution subject to verifying by benchmark that it is doing what we expect once implemented. But on the "Bitcoin clone" idea, unless you are going to make the case that the BTC development team will be implementing "1 block retarget 36 block average 12% limit" as an improvement over the current 2,016 retarget, talk of this being an exact Bitcoin clone seems a bit disingenuous.

I understand that you find the LLACCA concept feels like it is from "outer space." I take that as a compliment. It means it is uncomfortable, paradigm-shattering, controversial, etc. and not something to be implemented on a whim. But it does not follow that it is a bad idea. It also does not follow that it was not put on the table.

You may believe this is unrealistic, but I do believe that the LLACCA concept (or more likely, the Loyalty Credit system which is the more complete solution) once proven to work as intended, will be copied by other altcoins, and eventually become incorporated into the Bitcoin code. So the intent to maintain "Bitcoin clone" status is there on my part.

The Bitcoin clone status was actually broken when the last hard fork changed the retargeting time from 2,016 (the Bitcoin formula), to 36 - and I opposed making this change even publicly predicting that a wild oscillation in difficulty would result from this unwise hard fork. However, that is done, and ancient history. There is currently no proposal is on the table to bring back 1,016 block retarget. When the 36 block retarget was implemented, it was promised that this would "fix" the excessive difficulty issues, but it did not end up  fixing that issue. This alone justifies the idea that any future change should be evaluated using a explicit benchmark establishing performance we expect to get after implementing changes. I simply proposed a set of benchmarks based on the original Bitcoin specifications which are still in place (50 coins produced per 10 minutes, on average), and I do not understand why this benchmark idea (a completely separate proposal from LLACCA)  is so controversial, unless there is expectation the code will fail to deliver the results implicitly promised.

Thank you,

Etblvu1

[kisa2005]

@zerodrama, slimepuppy

true point that community wants rather BTC clone, however what etblvu1 is pointing out is that a BTC (nearly) clone without some systematic loyalty credit solution might not survive price and diff swings under the current and likely future market conditions, and he is trying to make community aware of that. You folks on dev channel don't take him seriously, perhaps somewhat biased by the communication style he's chosen and the fact that a rather uniform group working hard in one direction quite naturally opposes disruptive proposals. It seems that you have now reasonably strong moment behind your moving average fix and that etblvu1 at the time being unlikely to gather enough support for his innovation, which also may have unkown risks. So why don't Cats go along with the more standard, "mitigating" solution for now, and keep watching in the coming weeks how the coin evolves and market reception to that solution is? If we then see new and dangerous issues on the horizon which etblvu1 warned of, then you guys not run away but start talking to etblvu1 seriously and work together on a new resolution, if then is not too late. (I am hearing from strong experts that CAT-like altcoin have inherent problem with even tiny litecoin pools being able to destabilise and destroy the coin, and various types of forking don't resolve that. Hoping so much this won't be the case, but who knows a more revolutionary remake might still be required in the future). On the other hand, if dev channel current proposal starts to work well, and expectations of extreme conditions recede, then etblvu1 please support constructive efforts and promotion for the coin going forward, for a while removing focus from your, possibly ingenious, proposal. Again, I stress, we need to get over personal differences at this stage - no need for further infighting while Doge just launched a spaceship! Please everyone just holds back being offensive, doesn't react defensively and just mentally get open to consider viable compromises... All Cats will then win and would be able refocus on promotion and services. Cheers

[zerodrama]

@zerodrama, slimepuppy

true point that community wants rather BTC clone, however what etblvu1 is pointing out is that a BTC (nearly) clone without some systematic loyalty credit solution might not survive price and diff swings under the current and likely future market conditions, and he is trying to make community aware of that.

I've seen feathercoin get attacked. We made similar changes here.

The difficulty swing reflects the volatility allowed in the code. We're choking that.

As for the bitcoin clone status: Does Buckingham Palace stop being Buckingham Palace because the guards are checked every 10 minutes instead of every 2 weeks?

[etblvu1]

@zerodrama, slimepuppy

true point that community wants rather BTC clone, however what etblvu1 is pointing out is that a BTC (nearly) clone without some systematic loyalty credit solution might not survive price and diff swings under the current and likely future market conditions, and he is trying to make community aware of that.

I've seen feathercoin get attacked. We made similar changes here.

The difficulty swing reflects the volatility allowed in the code. We're choking that.

As for the bitcoin clone status: Does Buckingham Palace stop being Buckingham Palace because the guards are checked every 10 minutes instead of every 2 weeks?

I realize that my warning will probably not be heeded this time around, but for the record - this choking does smooth out difficulty changes which is beneficial as long as market prices remain about the same - but is definitely detrimental and will cause severe hyperinflation if the coin price goes up significantly in a short time, and severely long block solution times if the coin price goes down significantly. A properly flexible solution would allow the difficulty to go up 100x fairly quickly if the market price goes up 100x, and drop to 1/100th fairly quickly if the market price goes down to 1/100th (just to take an extreme example) - while at the same time encouraging long-term miners to mine and profit from the coin - while at the same time not creating incentives for short-term miners to only intermittently mine - and not the least - long-term miners be paid what they were promised by the coin specs instead of hearing a bunch of meaningless doublespeak about being paid by block time (whatever that means).*

The Buckingham Palace analogy is cute, but not applicable. The 2,016 retargeting specification is prominent a part of the recipe for Bitcoins, as are other parameters like coins per block, time between blocks, maximum coin supply of 21 million, and so on. You can say that in your opinion, this particular line item is less important than the others, but you cannot prove that you are more correct than someone who opines that deviating from the coin spec by generating 200 coins per block is less significant a change than changing the retargeting from 1,016 to 36, or lifting the 21 million coin supply cap. If the 2,016 retarget was not significant, then it would have been left out of front page of the specifications. But that is long gone, and not coming back anytime soon, so we have to live with that.

Thank you,

Etblvu1


* Since I said "for the record" I will not delete what I said before (just show a strike-out to save people time) - but I am always verifying my and checking my assumptions, and it appears upon checking the math 1.12 ^ 36 > 4.00, so the proposed formula does provide even a faster adjustment to market conditions than what is currently in place, so I hereby officially retract my warning regarding having insufficient flexibility on the difficulty retarget, and apologize for any inconvenience this lack of enough due diligence on my part on checking the math may have caused.

[Percy520]

Totally agree with kisa2005. We all want cat coin to be very success so please work together and solve the difference by a mature way.

[etblvu1]

Totally agree with kisa2005. We all want cat coin to be very success so please work together and solve the difference by a mature way.

Also agreed.

[zerodrama]

Totally agree with kisa2005. We all want cat coin to be very success so please work together and solve the difference by a mature way.

Also agreed.

Not to nitpick etblvu1, but it's 2016 not 1016.

I have an answer to your concern about price increases: usage paths other than dumping. If the price jumps and the coins are produced at a consistent rate above the 10 minute level, that's ok. I have uses for this coin that will take the coin elsewhere, other than dumping. A rise in price will increase circulation rather than perpetuating the rabid monkey speculation trap we see elsewhere. At that point we will see that price increases temporary increase difficulty, but because coins are spent rather than dumped the deviation from 10 minute blocks will stimulate level headed business development.

The price increase is only a problem in a dump oriented currency. You will find that won't be the case once I've built the markets I intend to set up.

[mavis369]

I'll give my 2 pen'orth, not of any relevence, but.... I held Catcoin from December, 700+, I bought at 002, then I watched the price go down and down. Then Friday, I thought I would cut my losses, I sold them, dirt cheap. I was going to use the little money left to put into another coin. But about 3 hours after selling, for some reason I bought some more, 700+ again, on Coinedup, so I must think something of the coin? Anyway my concern is the long time for confirmations, I bought the Cats at Coinedup, and I thought I would transfer them to Cryptsy. I did this yesterday, about 5 in the evening, just checked Cryptsy now, and they still have not transferred yet, 4 confirmations, 15 odd hours later. Maybe these long confirmation times are putting people off??? Anyway, that is my gripe over for the moment.

[etblvu1]

I'll give my 2 pen'orth, not of any relevence, but.... I held Catcoin from December, 700+, I bought at 002, then I watched the price go down and down. Then Friday, I thought I would cut my losses, I sold them, dirt cheap. I was going to use the little money left to put into another coin. But about 3 hours after selling, for some reason I bought some more, 700+ again, on Coinedup, so I must think something of the coin? Anyway my concern is the long time for confirmations, I bought the Cats at Coinedup, and I thought I would transfer them to Cryptsy. I did this yesterday, about 5 in the evening, just checked Cryptsy now, and they still have not transferred yet, 4 confirmations, 15 odd hours later. Maybe these long confirmation times are putting people off??? Anyway, that is my gripe over for the moment.

Yes, that is a problem right now. It will be resolved soon.

Etblvu1

[etblvu1]

Totally agree with kisa2005. We all want cat coin to be very success so please work together and solve the difference by a mature way.

Also agreed.

Not to nitpick etblvu1, but it's 2016 not 1016.

I have an answer to your concern about price increases: usage paths other than dumping. If the price jumps and the coins are produced at a consistent rate above the 10 minute level, that's ok. I have uses for this coin that will take the coin elsewhere, other than dumping. A rise in price will increase circulation rather than perpetuating the rabid monkey speculation trap we see elsewhere. At that point we will see that price increases temporary increase difficulty, but because coins are spent rather than dumped the deviation from 10 minute blocks will stimulate level headed business development.

The price increase is only a problem in a dump oriented currency. You will find that won't be the case once I've built the markets I intend to set up.

Thank you for catching that (1,016 vs 2,016), I made a typo and copied my own typo. I went back and edited it to fix the error.

I have since retracted my statement of concerns about insufficiently fast adjustment. At 12% adjustment per block, it would only take about 12 blocks to make the same 400% correction it now takes 36 blocks to take; and by the 41st block, the adjustment can reach 10,000% of the starting point. So I no longer have any concerns about there being insufficient flexibility as far as the 1 block / 36 block average / 12% limit formula. I am still concerned that this may not be the perfect solution since it does not directly address incentives, but that is a small concern compared to how the current software is behaving.

[zerodrama]

Totally agree with kisa2005. We all want cat coin to be very success so please work together and solve the difference by a mature way.

Also agreed.

Not to nitpick etblvu1, but it's 2016 not 1016.

I have an answer to your concern about price increases: usage paths other than dumping. If the price jumps and the coins are produced at a consistent rate above the 10 minute level, that's ok. I have uses for this coin that will take the coin elsewhere, other than dumping. A rise in price will increase circulation rather than perpetuating the rabid monkey speculation trap we see elsewhere. At that point we will see that price increases temporary increase difficulty, but because coins are spent rather than dumped the deviation from 10 minute blocks will stimulate level headed business development.

The price increase is only a problem in a dump oriented currency. You will find that won't be the case once I've built the markets I intend to set up.

Thank you for catching that (1,016 vs 2,016), I made a typo and copied my own typo. I went back and edited it to fix the error.

I have since retracted my statement of concerns about insufficiently fast adjustment. At 12% adjustment per block, it would only take about 12 blocks to make the same 400% correction it now takes 36 blocks to take; and by the 41st block, the adjustment can reach 10,000% of the starting point. So I no longer have any concerns about there being insufficient flexibility as far as the 1 block / 36 block average / 12% limit formula. I am still concerned that this may not be the perfect solution since it does not directly address incentives, but that is a small concern compared to how the current software is behaving.

Yeah, if you follow the calculus, you'll see it's less flexible but more responsive. So in effect even your concern about inflation is resolved, because although it's less flexible, it's more responsive and that means they can't just milk us and leave us in shock, like they have been.