[SKY] Skycoin Launch Announcement

[iamback]

Whereas, I have an idea how to get off the ground immediately without any IPO funding (or very small funding maybe $100,000 max) and generate $billions in revenue for the developers over time in order to actually change the world.

Would you share what is that idea? I am sure many potential investors would fine useful that info to understand what could be on the table in case you are in the team.

I am hesitant to explicitly spell out the idea in public, although I've already alluded to it in public. Any one that was really astute and read my posts carefully would already have deduced it.

I am hesitant because if we have multiple copies of people trying to do the same idea, then it won't have the focus and inertia to get off the ground.

I would prefer to spell out the idea in private to those whom I trust and who "need to know", i.e. those who would be significant early investors and to the developers I would be working with.

It is much more efficient to do a Private Placement, than an IPO. The IPO in my idea would occur naturally after launch in the purchase of the coins for a necessary use of the coins. The coins would be dolled out at a rate that insures the price is going up, because the users will have no choice but to purchase coins otherwise they can't use the thing they VERY MUCH NEED.

That should be enough hints already actually.

As what I can see, the developers are overly invested in their consensus algorithm and want to focus their effort there.

Thus I agreed with chompZ that they should just proceed. And I should step away and go try to find a way to get my idea implemented.

I am teased by their apparent technical capabilities and their recognition of how bad the situation is. But they think they've found the Holy Grail with their consensus algorithm, so I guess we just are not going to be able to agree on the priorities.

Afaics, they have not provided to me a BitMessage key to communicate privately. No pressure. I must respect their right to set their own priorities. So I think we have a decision now? I can leave now?

[BlackShibe1]

Where can i find my seed per favor?

[esuncloud]

I sent 3 messages to the address provided. 4 hours have passed since the 1st one, but I haven't received anything so far.

me too, and the IPO is finally handled manually after some many delays?

[iamback]

First of all, I don't fully know who the developers are, how many of them there are, who else is involved behind the scenes, and what their true plans are. For example, I don't know all the details about coin issuance and IPO. Often a non-PoW scheme is a cover for a way to monopolize the coins, because they are not distributed via the decentralized debasement of PoW. That was one of the flaws of or issues with PoS. If these specifics have been clearly mentioned in the OP then my apology for missing it.

So it is possible that anything I write might be falling on deaf ears because I may in essence be going against a pump-and-dump in great disguise (but I am not accusing them of that! just stating the possibilities that one must ponder). However, I will for the moment assume the developers are sincere (and naive?), because I detect some what appears to be idealistic motivation in their posts. So I want to help them not waste their time (if their motivation is really changing the world and not just a quick buck).

Taleb's Anti-fragility (i.e. autonomy) is why decentralized consensus is not decentralized

Thus, I want to make one more concise attempt to convince the developers that decentralized consensus is a lie, and that the only true decentralization arises from a plurality of competing choices.

In essence, all the arguments for a decentralized consensus remaining stable (resilient) against centralization are the stance that the majority (of nodes or participants) will "vote" (or "follow") for honesty over malfeasance. Even skycoin's prior post in essence makes that analogous argument in support of the robustness of the proposed Obelisk consensus algorithm in the worst case scenarios.

The problem with consensus is that it is a "winner take all" paradigm, i.e. by definition there is no way for a minority opinion to be heard. Thus the minority can not act on its wisdom and must instead follow the ("Too Big To Fail") herd. So for example, if a minority sees that the consensus is being gamed some how, and wants to break away (vote with their feet) they can not. Rather they have to try to prove to the majority what is happening and get the majority motivated to act. Doesn't that sound a lot like what we do now trying to convince our relatives of the problems with malfeasance in central banking, politics, etc and instead they either ignore us or they adopt Marxist objectives which further the concentration of wealth, e.g. "blame it all on the 1%, while we demand a government that gives us everything for free because we are poor and redistribution is justified!".

Whereas when there are competing choices, this is truly decentralization because the minority can autonomously break away to a choice that performs better, and the minority becomes more profitable ("smaller things grow faster, saplings grow to trees but trees don't grow to the moon"). For example right now you want to be discarding your Western citizenship and attaining citizenship in the small state of Singapore.

In our case, I have proposed a platform for competing currencies. One of the key elements of my proposal is to have the ability to purchase a unit in any currency that tracks (via options betting) any unit-of-account (e.g. USD or Bitcoin) that you desire. Thus you no longer are tied to the speculative value of the competing currencies if you don't desire to be, and thus there is no longer a need for the market to choose a "winner take all" because everyone can vote for the currency they feel is best managed while sharing a common unit-of-account across multiple currencies. This is the paradigm in money that has never been tried in the history of mankind.

I also proposed that fundamental building block is a secure communication network with hidden servers. Tor is broken. From this communication network, we can actually drive the demand for a cryptocurrency far beyond Bitcoin's current markets. I have vaguely alluded to the details of that and withheld perhaps some details.

For example, let's say a cryptocurrency was run by one group behind a hidden server. For as long as they publish all of the transactions and ledger then it can be verified whether they are honest, the same as Bitcoin's peers verify. If that central server is dishonest, the users can move their value out of that currency. But the users holding the pegged unit-of-account lose no value in doing so. The options traders take all that risk and will be the ones who predict in advance which currencies are well managed.  (btw, this also resolves many of the fundamental issues that plague Ethereum's designs). Even if the controllers of a centralized server tried to block all transactions and lock up the value, they could only succeed in destroying all the value in the coin and thus destroying their own power and reputation. Thus options traders would seek to verify the safeguards in place for the management of the currency.

This is very similar to the way decentralized consensus works in that if some nefarious group tries to take control of the consensus network, then the majority is expected to recognize this and fork away from that. The salient difference is that in my proposal of multiple competing currencies, it is actually very feasible for the minority to vote with their feet. It is an entirely autonomous action (i.e. it maximizes degrees-of-freedom)[1]! No amazing technical assumptions are required. They simply sell the coin that has problems. And the users who are holding pegged units-of-account don't incur any loses.

And there is nothing in my proposal that says the competing currencies can be PoW, PoS, Obelisk, consensus currencies. My proposal sits at a higher-level abstraction.

For me this is a no brainer clear direction. It beats the pants off anything else out there in the crypto world right now.

[1]

CoinJoin doesn't scale and/or it leaks anonymity (e.g. to the masternodes). It is not an autonomous block chain mixing thus it is inferior to one ring signatures. One time ring signatures can be implemented to be prune-able. ...IMO you are entirely missing the point... Degrees-of-freedom and innovation is where all prosperity originates. Inflation and deflation have nearly nothing to do with it, because innovation is: http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Knowledge_Anneals unexpected random chaotic fitness created from multitudes of random path dependencies that can only exist in the bottom-up free market And innovation far outstrips the factors you are modeling. I would like to get to the point of how to create decentralized money. I believe that is only achieved through a paradigm that enables multiple competing currencies, not through a winner take-all collective consensus (which I believe will always be a lie about decentralization). Specifically I have asserted (as well did Satoshi and Moldberg) that a widely adopted unit-of-account is the paramount factor in money (so that volatility is not a factor). Domestic businesses don't worry about the international dollar exchange rate. They can plan unfettered by that volatility. All your top-down, cathedral models won't help you. Enable the free market to experiment and innovate. Don't try to proclaim you know the perfect design for all. http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Knowledge_Anneals Knowledge Anneals Unsophisticated thinkers have an incorrect understanding of knowledge creation, idolizing a well-structured top-down sparkling academic cathedral of vastly superior theoretical minds. Rather knowledge primary spawns from accretive learning due to unexpected random chaotic fitness created from multitudes of random path dependencies that can only exist in the bottom-up free market. Top-down systems are inherently fragile because they overcommit to egregious error (link to Taleb's simplest summary of the math). Given Kurzweil's sensationalized magnum opus is the technological singularity, it is surprising that he is apparently not well studied in the field of social knowledge formation. Update: you are modeling the factors that were more paramount in the Industrial Age where fixed capital investment was a limiting factor on innovation. We are entering the Knowledge Age where all one needs is a computer and their mind.

[skycoin_xtc]

i'm on osx 10.10

Downloading Go source...
Installing go1.4...
 * Compiling...
Installing skycoin to $GOPATH
GOPATH is not set
Installing or updating skycoin dependencies
xargs: go: No such file or directory
Done
Do './run.sh -h' to confirm it is installed. This runs the daemon.
README.md has further instructions for building and running the gui.

not sure if commands are different on OS X, but this is what you need to do

source "$HOME/.gvm/scripts/gvm" && gvm use go1.4
compile/get-dependencies.sh
compile/install-to-gopath.sh

then, you should be able to run wallet, generate addresses, etc.

[Bitseed]

In our case, I have proposed a platform for competing currencies. One of the key elements of my proposal is to have the ability to purchase a unit in any currency that tracks (via options betting) any unit-of-account (e.g. USD or Bitcoin) that you desire. Thus you no longer are tied to the speculative value of the competing currencies if you don't desire to be, and thus there is no longer a need for the market to choose a "winner take all" because everyone can vote for the currency they feel is best managed while sharing a common unit-of-account across multiple currencies. This is the paradigm in money that has never been tried in the history of mankind.

What would the "common unit-of-account" be? Would it be a common coin to the platform, like Ripple or Bitshares, issued in a private offering and subsequent ICO? Or would it be distributed with some sort of proof of work? It could be a basket of assets, like shares in a hedge fund.

I do think that as Bitcoin becomes more 'mainstreamed' that the early adapters will transfer their value to another blockchain which reflects the original goals. There may be more than one alternate blockchain chosen.

The decentralized consensus problem reminds me of firefly synchronization in nature. Netlogo has a simulation written for it, http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Fireflies .  When the simulation is run, regions develop which are synchronized prior to the entire group of fireflies synching. These remind me of forks in blockchains. The parameters and code can be changed in the simulation, such as sensing range of fireflies and phasing thresholds of time through flash cycle for when to reset flash to sync. For some settings of the parameters, global sync is never reached. Video of real fireflies synching is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Vy7NZTGos . Some latency across the group can be observed, with the upper left flashing slightly ahead of the lower right.

[digi123]

Hello skycoin,

I have no hope of purchasing any of these coins as I have no idea what to do as it all seems far to much of an involved and complicated process to purchase any.

I have been following Skycoin for quite some time and was very excited about it.
When you first mentioned the price @ .10 cents I found it hard to understand the justification of such a high price with 100 million coins to be released and being at the initial offerings. I thought you may have brought the price down.
I would still like to purchase some but I will purchase far less than I would have originally as it is such a high risk at this stage.

I wish you could somehow make this process of coin purchase far easier so people like myself have a chance to purchase a few.

Thanks.

[iamback]

I think this is too much of me spamming Skycoin's thread. They have been enormously patient with my too numerous posts in their thread. Unless the developers engage me in further discussion, I kindly ask that any further discussion directed at me be move to another thread. Simply provide a link here or in PM please. Feel free to create a discussion thread.

In our case, I have proposed a platform for competing currencies. One of the key elements of my proposal is to have the ability to purchase a unit in any currency that tracks (via options betting) any unit-of-account (e.g. USD or Bitcoin) that you desire. Thus you no longer are tied to the speculative value of the competing currencies if you don't desire to be, and thus there is no longer a need for the market to choose a "winner take all" because everyone can vote for the currency they feel is best managed while sharing a common unit-of-account across multiple currencies. This is the paradigm in money that has never been tried in the history of mankind.

What would the "common unit-of-account" be? Would it be a common coin to the platform, like Ripple or Bitshares, issued in a private offering and subsequent ICO? Or would it be distributed with some sort of proof of work? It could be a basket of assets, like shares in a hedge fund.

None of those. I had already mentioned "option bets".

My idea is decentralized option bets, with two parties taking opposing positions on the move of the currency relative to the specified unit-of-account exchange rate. Leverage relative to exchange rate movement could vary for different bets. When the currency declines in value (an asymmetry in the opposing risks), then the difference has to be taken from the margin posted to make the 3rd party holder of the unit-of-account constant in value. There needs to be auto-settlement so that if the posted margin is depleted, the unit-of-account contract is settled instantly. Afaics, there could be built automated bots which settle and recontract the unit with a new free market bet with new margins posted.

The free market of bid and ask should determine the bets. So the asymmetry will be factored in by the free market of bid and ask.

In other words, I propose an option system where there is no centralized counter party risk. The protocol makes sure settlement occurs before margin is depleted.

We could create a common trading platform for all these competing currencies, i.e. decentralized exchanges with the appropriate logic and APIs. In essense, Skycoin and some of jl777's work for NXT are mentioning some of these similar ideas about decentralized exchanges and platforms for multiple currencies, but afaics they have missed slightly the key insights of what we really need. (Btw, I am still in communication with jl777, but I am not aligned with him and these ideas do not originate from discussion with him)

I am not an expert on options, so perhaps my idea is flawed?

Afair, the BitShares BitUSD functioned differently but I don't recall all the details. (I might go look up the details and edit this post later)

Edit#1: the flaw in my idea is that no one will buy these options because someone else can offer another set of options with the same features that do not have the asymmetric loses (given to the holder of the unit-of-account when the exchange rate declines). The holder would need to pay some cost for the others to take on this asymmetric risk. The holder would have to weigh this cost against the risk (cost) of holding the unit-of-account in its normal form, e.g. USD in a bank. Note we are moving towards negative interest rates so it will actually cost money to store your fiat in a bank or sovereign bonds.


Edit#2: silly me. All I am really advocating is that users can buy puts. The standard models for options apply. The carrying cost of the put will be relative to the volatility of the exchange rate. I think the Black–Scholes model applies.

https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/derivative-securities/Black-Scholes/v/implied-volatility

Edit#3: Okay I see that what we originally told Daniel Larimer (bytemaster) in this forum in 2013 was finally accepted as reality and so they adjusted their design to use a price feed:

http://docs.bitshares.org/content/price_stability.html

So the buyer of the unit-of-account is essentially buying a put (the right to sell his currency for a constant price relative to the unit-of-account) and the other party (is not a short seller!) is buying a call, i.e. is paid a carrying cost for offering to buy that currency at the strike price. A decentralized exchange would match buyers of these puts and calls, where the bid and ask would be for the carrying costs. If the current exchange price is the implied strike price, bids and asks would need to be updated as often as the exchange price changes (but this is conceptually no different than when strike prices are constant and bid and asks change constantly as the market price changes). There would be different contracts for different expirations.

So all BitAssets are is an attempt at a decentralized options market. But it is only for their currency and not a platform for competing currencies. And they are using a single price feed voted on by consensus, whereas I proposed that there be different contracts for different price feeds so that each contract can use a different price feed server (more degrees-of-freedom).

Edit#4: there is another wrinkle that can be considered. It is possible to give some of the upside to the buyer of the unit-of-account, so they have no risk to the downside, but retain some of the upside appreciation if the currency they hold  appreciates. But this will increase the carrying cost, i.e. the price the buyer needs to pay for the unit-of-account insurance. Rather the buyer could also obtain the same effect by holding some portion in the unit-of-account (without upside) and some in the uninsured holding of the currency.

Edit#5: the market for buyers of such unit-of-account contracts are people who want to diversify their (e.g. USD) holdings into crypto-currency without the volatility risk, i.e. they want the advantages of anonymity, autonomy, instant transactions, without the volatility of crypto-currency. Or for example, you want to invest in Bitcoin, but you like the anonymity and instant transactions of an altcoin, so you can get both for a carrying cost, where the carrying cost is related to the volatility of that altcoin relative to the unit-of-account chosen. Thus altcoins can compete to gain marketshare and thus less volatility.

Bottom line is competing currencies as true decentralization and more degrees-of-freedom instead of "one size fits all, one winner forced on everyone".

[cryptrol]

...
Afaics, they have not provided to me a BitMessage key to communicate privately.
...

It's in the OP.

[reverse02]

not sure if commands are different on OS X, but this is what you need to do

source "$HOME/.gvm/scripts/gvm" && gvm use go1.4
compile/get-dependencies.sh
compile/install-to-gopath.sh

then, you should be able to run wallet, generate addresses, etc.

thank you!

now ... when i want to build the client .. it says:

Compiling with go
# github.com/skycoin/skycoin/src/cipher/secp256k1-go
exec: "o32-clang": executable file not found in $PATH
go compilation failed

[skycoin_xtc]

now ... when i want to build the client .. it says:

Compiling with go
# github.com/skycoin/skycoin/src/cipher/secp256k1-go
exec: "o32-clang": executable file not found in $PATH
go compilation failed

not sure

if you've done everything mentioned previously, the client should be installed already

did you try running the wallet, generating addresses, etc. immediately after the last step?


fresh install

Linux:
sudo apt-get install curl git mercurial make binutils gcc bzr bison libgmp3-dev -y

OS X:
brew install mercurial bzr

git clone https://github.com/skycoin/skycoin.git
cd skycoin
./setup.sh

source "$HOME/.gvm/scripts/gvm" && gvm use go1.4
compile/get-dependencies.sh
compile/install-to-gopath.sh

Generating Addresses, public keys, private keys:  
go run ./cmd/address_gen/address_gen.go --help

Running Skycoin Full Node:  
go run ./cmd/skycoin/skycoin.go -web-interface=true
then go to: 127.0.0.1:6420 (or 6402)

[skycoin_xtc]

Has skycoin launched?
How to get a million skycoins or even 100k skycoins?
Where do i buy

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=380441.msg10555070#msg10555070

[freigeist]

And yes we are headed into a shit storm and need to get focused on the priorities that make the most significant impact against what we are facing within a year. Consensus algorithms are not the highest priority near-term need. The major need is anonymity of the communication network. We don't have that on the internet and we REALLY NEED IT BADLY.

Is this what are you talking about?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=960490.0

I mean this:

http://bitcoindark.pw/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/crossing_the_last_mile_-_telepathy_2014-11-04.pdf

[reverse02]

if you've done everything mentioned previously, the client should be installed

did you try running the wallet, generating addresses, etc. immediately after the last step?


fresh install

Linux:
sudo apt-get install curl git mercurial make binutils gcc bzr bison libgmp3-dev -y

OS X:
brew install mercurial bzr

git clone https://github.com/skycoin/skycoin.git
cd skycoin
./setup.sh

source "$HOME/.gvm/scripts/gvm" && gvm use go1.4
compile/get-dependencies.sh
compile/install-to-gopath.sh

Generating Addresses, public keys, private keys:  
go run ./cmd/address_gen/address_gen.go --help

Running Skycoin Full Node:  
go run ./cmd/skycoin/skycoin.go -web-interface=true
then go to: 127.0.0.1:6420 (or 6402)

when you say "brew install mercurial bzr"
you mean i should install brew first, right?
so i installed HOMEBREW (http://brew.sh)
then i cloned the skycoin git
then i run the setup.sh

(meanwhile tells me:
Installing gvm and go1.4
ERROR: Already installed!
Already installed!
Installing skycoin to $GOPATH
skycoin already exists in GOPATH
/Users/xxxx/.gvm/pkgsets/go1.4/global/src/github.com/skycoin/skycoin -> /Users/xxxx/skycoin
Installing or updating skycoin dependencies
github.com/nictuku/dht (download)
github.com/golang/glog (download)
github.com/golang/groupcache (download)
github.com/jackpal/bencode-go (download)
github.com/nictuku/nettools (download)
github.com/youtube/vitess (download)
github.com/lonnc/golang-nw (download)
github.com/op/go-logging (download)
github.com/skycoin/gnet (download)
github.com/skycoin/encoder (download)
github.com/skycoin/pex (download)
github.com/stretchr/testify (download)
github.com/skycoin/encoder
github.com/skycoin/pex
github.com/skycoin/gnet
Done)

then i run that line: source "$HOME/.gvm/scripts/gvm" && gvm use go1.4
(tells me:
Now using version go1.4)

then this one: compile/install-to-gopath.sh
(tells me:
skycoin already exists in GOPATH
/Users/xxxx/.gvm/pkgsets/go1.4/global/src/github.com/skycoin/skycoin -> /Users/xxxx/skycoin)

now if i put: ./gui.sh build
(tells me the same like before:
Compiling with go
# github.com/skycoin/skycoin/src/cipher/secp256k1-go
exec: "o32-clang": executable file not found in $PATH
go compilation failed)

that one: go run ./cmd/address_gen/address_gen.go --help
(tells me:
# github.com/skycoin/skycoin/src/cipher/secp256k1-go
In file included from ../.gvm/pkgsets/go1.4/global/src/github.com/skycoin/skycoin/src/cipher/secp256k1-go/secp256.go:10:
In file included from ././secp256k1/src/secp256k1.c:6:
In file included from ././secp256k1/src/num_impl.h:12:
In file included from ././secp256k1/src/num.h:13:
././secp256k1/src/num_gmp.h:8:10: fatal error: 'gmp.h' file not found
#include <gmp.h>
         ^
1 error generated.)

sorry to bother you, if i m doing something wrong

[skycoin_xtc]

when you say "brew install mercurial bzr"
you mean i should install brew first, right?
so i installed HOMEBREW (http://brew.sh)

no

i mean use the exact command

now if i put: ./gui.sh build

when you're at this point, don't do ./gui.sh build

either generate addresses or run wallet

follow the exact steps from previous post, don't skip any commands

i have informed the dev to comment just in case i'm missing something

[Momimaus]

windows executable: http://128.199.188.22:1337/

======
double click the "skycoin.exe" file and then visit http://127.0.0.1:6420

I installed the windows executable.
I opened the Ip-address and I see an address.

Is it alright or not? Can I use it for the IPO?

Where do I get my personal key from?

[skycoin_xtc]

Is it alright or not? Can I use it for the IPO?

yes

Where do I get my personal key from?

C:\Users\"YOUR USER"\.skycoin\wallets

inside wallets folder you'll find all the wallets you have created through the browser (.wlt files)

you can open these files with notepad; they include the seed, address & pub/priv keys
only one address per seed generated in browser at this stage

note:  these .wlt files are not encrypted; make encrypted backups

[Bitseed]

I think this is too much of me spamming Skycoin's thread. They have been enormously patient with my too numerous posts in their thread. Unless the developers engage me in further discussion, I kindly ask that any further discussion directed at me be move to another thread. Simply provide a link here or in PM please. Feel free to create a discussion thread.

I would like to continue to discuss your ideas. We can start another thread to pursue it.

[freigeist]

I think this is too much of me spamming Skycoin's thread. They have been enormously patient with my too numerous posts in their thread. Unless the developers engage me in further discussion, I kindly ask that any further discussion directed at me be move to another thread. Simply provide a link here or in PM please. Feel free to create a discussion thread.

I would like to continue to discuss your ideas. We can start another thread to pursue it.

Please post the link of the new thread here if gets started or send it in PM
so that I can follow.

Thanks. 

[Momimaus]

Is it alright or not? Can I use it for the IPO?

yes

Where do I get my personal key from?

C:\Users\"YOUR USER"\.skycoin\wallets

inside wallets folder you'll find all the wallets you have created through the browser (.wlt files)

you can open these files with notepad; they include the seed, address & pub/priv keys
only one address per seed generated in browser at this stage

note:  these .wlt files are not encrypted; make encrypted backups

Really? All this talking about security stuff: "Nothing is save, etc."
And now we create wallets with secret keys in plain text, unencrypted without a password???
Even if I delete them now or store them in TrueCrypt or USB-Stick, it could be already stolen.