[ANN][XCP] Counterparty - Pioneering Peer-to-Peer Finance - Official Thread

[prophetx]

The fact that some of the same people behind Factom were behind Mastercoin is a red flag.

Well, that's arguable. Statistically 1 in 10 projects are bound to fail anyway. And we don't know for certain who is responsible for the 'disaster'. Needless to say, all projects should be researched with proper due diligence. Many people in the crypto space seem to suffer from immediate excitement which leads them to throw money at anything, or paranoia towards failure (far less common). Emotionality is the downfall of any investor. Reliance on facts and research is always the best course of action, which lead me to XCP in the first place. There wasn't any crazy hype, there wasn't a huge crazy marketing effort, but the facts made sense. Factom should be treated the same way.

Do the facts make sense? Y/N..

Does it have a competitive advantage? Y/N.

Is there constant research and development required? Y/N (especially negative if completely NEW paths have to be researched, and the fundamentals have to be changed).

Does it require a continuous stream of funding? Y/N.

and so on..

(Ironically something I picked up from Warren Buffett, who recently called Bitcoin a 'mirage'.)

All that you are saying is right but it's not merely the fact that Mastercoin has failed but the way it has failed and above all the MaidSafe crowfunding episode with was highly unethical, to say the least.

When people are able to pull that kind of tricks over their investors and collaborators, you can start to infer what kind of humans being they are.

I also look at the intentions and behaviors of the team, it is very important.

Regarding failures stats, actually in the old VC world it broke down like this:

4 of 10 investments are complete losers
2-3 of 10 break even
2-3 of 10 make some money (ideally enough to cover the losers)
0-1 of 10 do at least 10X (this is when the VC team is really in the money)

Not sure how accurate that really is but 1 in 10 failures is definitely not something usual the start up investment space.  Angel investors would for example see an even higher failure rate.

[AlanX]

The fact that some of the same people behind Factom were behind Mastercoin is a red flag.

There isn't any intersection in the development team for Factom with the development team for Mastercoin, though I have no reason to think badly of Mastercoin's developers.

We are developing Factom in as open a fashion as possible, and are doing what we can to 1) create open access to Blockchain technology to any application, 2) avoid requiring anyone from holding our tokens to use Factom, 3) avoid centralized control and centralized points of failure, 4) provide support for ongoing development of the protocol, 5) build an open tent where anyone who wants to be involved can be.

At the end of the day, it is about the utility of the protocol, the quality of the code, and the execution of the team.  We are doing our development openly on Github. 

It is there for all to review, and for all to contribute

https://github.com/FactomProject

[prophetx]

doesn't notary chains on XCH (xcp clone for viacoin) basically do what factom says it wants to do?

or am I missing something?

no one is even really using notary chains at the moment btw (although it is a nice idea)... people are building solutions for 5 years from now is what is happening

[Equality 7-2521]

doesn't notary chains on XCH (xcp clone for viacoin) basically do what factom says it wants to do?

or am I missing something?

no one is even really using notary chains at the moment btw (although it is a nice idea)... people are building solutions for 5 years from now is what is happening

Just to expand it a bit - XCH has a "blockchain notary service" implemented and "custody chains" are in development now. Yes, this is all very close to what Factom is developing, however Factom outsources 99% of this work and data storage away from the Blockchain of choice (Viacoin, in this case) and on to their own network. You can probably roll your own in house Factom server/infrastructure too. XCH look like they will stuff everything into their Blockchain.

[charitycoin]

Dear all

I apologies for bothering you again, however I would like to ask for help with our asset on Counterparty called CHARITYCOIN.  We have created a basic platform http://charitycoin.co.uk, which enables anyone to donate to over 10,000 charities, with one simple Bitcoin transaction.  As a "reward" for donating we give our users the Counterparty based token, the token is therefore issued based on Proof of Donation (PoD).  If any of you have any ideas on how to improve our platform or could help, please contact us.

If you have the time and money, please feel free to kindly help us test our system out, by making a small donation, as little as $3 to any charity of your choice, out of over 10,000 options.  All donations are public and verifiable, ensuring that your donation always goes to the charity you have chosen

All the best

[reader31]

is there an issue with XCP deposits in BTER?...my deposit hasnt showed up after 3 days!

[prophetx]

doesn't notary chains on XCH (xcp clone for viacoin) basically do what factom says it wants to do?

or am I missing something?

no one is even really using notary chains at the moment btw (although it is a nice idea)... people are building solutions for 5 years from now is what is happening

Just to expand it a bit - XCH has a "blockchain notary service" implemented and "custody chains" are in development now. Yes, this is all very close to what Factom is developing, however Factom outsources 99% of this work and data storage away from the Blockchain of choice (Viacoin, in this case) and on to their own network. You can probably roll your own in house Factom server/infrastructure too. XCH look like they will stuff everything into their Blockchain.

i don't think that is the case my understanding is that the XCH notary just puts the hash of the document(s) onto the blockchain, which is what i thought factom does as well?  and the data storage could be anything from storj, maidsafe to my mom's hard drive.

[Equality 7-2521]

doesn't notary chains on XCH (xcp clone for viacoin) basically do what factom says it wants to do?

or am I missing something?

no one is even really using notary chains at the moment btw (although it is a nice idea)... people are building solutions for 5 years from now is what is happening

Just to expand it a bit - XCH has a "blockchain notary service" implemented and "custody chains" are in development now. Yes, this is all very close to what Factom is developing, however Factom outsources 99% of this work and data storage away from the Blockchain of choice (Viacoin, in this case) and on to their own network. You can probably roll your own in house Factom server/infrastructure too. XCH look like they will stuff everything into their Blockchain.

i don't think that is the case my understanding is that the XCH notary just puts the hash of the document(s) onto the blockchain, which is what i thought factom does as well?  and the data storage could be anything from storj, maidsafe to my mom's hard drive.

My apologies, when I said "data storage" I meant storage of the hashes. I didn't mean storage of the original data, which as you mentioned could be achieved in any way imaginable. So to summarize what I tried to say earlier:

Factom = Factom Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chain(s)) + Bitcoin Network (to notarize aggregations/snapshots of what has happened in the Factom Network)

Clearinghouse = Bitcoin Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chains)

TL;DR Factom has a dedicated off-chain (off-Bitcoin Blockchain) notary service/network, Clearinghouse doesn't (i.e. it just uses it's Viacoin Blockchain for everything).

It all comes down to questions of price/fee, security, Blockchain Bloat, trust in the given network, etc.

[prophetx]

doesn't notary chains on XCH (xcp clone for viacoin) basically do what factom says it wants to do?

or am I missing something?

no one is even really using notary chains at the moment btw (although it is a nice idea)... people are building solutions for 5 years from now is what is happening

Just to expand it a bit - XCH has a "blockchain notary service" implemented and "custody chains" are in development now. Yes, this is all very close to what Factom is developing, however Factom outsources 99% of this work and data storage away from the Blockchain of choice (Viacoin, in this case) and on to their own network. You can probably roll your own in house Factom server/infrastructure too. XCH look like they will stuff everything into their Blockchain.

i don't think that is the case my understanding is that the XCH notary just puts the hash of the document(s) onto the blockchain, which is what i thought factom does as well?  and the data storage could be anything from storj, maidsafe to my mom's hard drive.

My apologies, when I said "data storage" I meant storage of the hashes. I didn't mean storage of the original data, which as you mentioned could be achieved in any way imaginable. So to summarize what I tried to say earlier:

Factom = Factom Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chain(s)) + Bitcoin Network (to notarize aggregations/snapshots of what has happened in the Factom Network)

Clearinghouse = Bitcoin Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chains)

TL;DR Factom has a dedicated off-chain (off-Bitcoin Blockchain) notary service/network, Clearinghouse doesn't (i.e. it just uses it's Viacoin Blockchain for everything).

It all comes down to questions of price/fee, security, Blockchain Bloat, trust in the given network, etc.

what do you mean by "dedicated off chain... notary service/network"? a network of actual human notaries?

anyway i don't see the difference, one is already live and barely used (although one must keep in mind that the dev's have done little to use the funds given for XCH to promote it)

[Equality 7-2521]

doesn't notary chains on XCH (xcp clone for viacoin) basically do what factom says it wants to do?

or am I missing something?

no one is even really using notary chains at the moment btw (although it is a nice idea)... people are building solutions for 5 years from now is what is happening

Just to expand it a bit - XCH has a "blockchain notary service" implemented and "custody chains" are in development now. Yes, this is all very close to what Factom is developing, however Factom outsources 99% of this work and data storage away from the Blockchain of choice (Viacoin, in this case) and on to their own network. You can probably roll your own in house Factom server/infrastructure too. XCH look like they will stuff everything into their Blockchain.

i don't think that is the case my understanding is that the XCH notary just puts the hash of the document(s) onto the blockchain, which is what i thought factom does as well?  and the data storage could be anything from storj, maidsafe to my mom's hard drive.

My apologies, when I said "data storage" I meant storage of the hashes. I didn't mean storage of the original data, which as you mentioned could be achieved in any way imaginable. So to summarize what I tried to say earlier:

Factom = Factom Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chain(s)) + Bitcoin Network (to notarize aggregations/snapshots of what has happened in the Factom Network)

Clearinghouse = Bitcoin Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chains)

TL;DR Factom has a dedicated off-chain (off-Bitcoin Blockchain) notary service/network, Clearinghouse doesn't (i.e. it just uses it's Viacoin Blockchain for everything).

It all comes down to questions of price/fee, security, Blockchain Bloat, trust in the given network, etc.

what do you mean by "dedicated off chain... notary service/network"? a network of actual human notaries?

anyway i don't see the difference, one is already live and barely used (although one must keep in mind that the dev's have done little to use the funds given for XCH to promote it)

What I mean by "dedicated off chain... notary service/network" is captured in this image:



Factom have their own network (specifically designed for this notary service provision). The "last mile" of their protocol is to store a hash of what happened on their network in the Bitcoin Blockchain (because Bitcoin has the best security).

Currently the Clearinghouse features amount to little more than the general Proof of Existence (http://www.proofofexistence.com/) concepts/features, but on a less secure Blockchain (Viacoin). People are using Proof of Existence (see the latest registrations and confirmations).

Maybe this is the bit that you are missing - if you want to prove that a document existed, you'd better use the MOST secure Blockchain possible. Right now that is Bitcoin. That is why people use Proof of Existence and they will use Factom but they don't use the corresponding XCH features.

EDIT: This is also why the XCH notary features would be better implemented in Counterparty, because the hashes are committed to the Bitcoin Blockchain.

Also, as an aside for anyone interested, Counterparty could notarize a checkpoint hash of it's own data/database to the Bitcoin Blockchain. This could be done with Smart Contracts, for example. This could allow (potentially by SPV) for downloading CP data from any channel (torrents, usenet, radio etc.) and checking to see is that data legit by ensuring that the hash of that data matches the checkpoint hash.

TL;DR Rapid downloading of and simple authentication and verification of all Counterparty Data (up to a recent checkpoint) using an SPV client is probably possible.

[prophetx]

doesn't notary chains on XCH (xcp clone for viacoin) basically do what factom says it wants to do?

or am I missing something?

no one is even really using notary chains at the moment btw (although it is a nice idea)... people are building solutions for 5 years from now is what is happening

Just to expand it a bit - XCH has a "blockchain notary service" implemented and "custody chains" are in development now. Yes, this is all very close to what Factom is developing, however Factom outsources 99% of this work and data storage away from the Blockchain of choice (Viacoin, in this case) and on to their own network. You can probably roll your own in house Factom server/infrastructure too. XCH look like they will stuff everything into their Blockchain.

i don't think that is the case my understanding is that the XCH notary just puts the hash of the document(s) onto the blockchain, which is what i thought factom does as well?  and the data storage could be anything from storj, maidsafe to my mom's hard drive.

My apologies, when I said "data storage" I meant storage of the hashes. I didn't mean storage of the original data, which as you mentioned could be achieved in any way imaginable. So to summarize what I tried to say earlier:

Factom = Factom Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chain(s)) + Bitcoin Network (to notarize aggregations/snapshots of what has happened in the Factom Network)

Clearinghouse = Bitcoin Network (to notarize every document individually and establish/notarize the custody chains)

TL;DR Factom has a dedicated off-chain (off-Bitcoin Blockchain) notary service/network, Clearinghouse doesn't (i.e. it just uses it's Viacoin Blockchain for everything).

It all comes down to questions of price/fee, security, Blockchain Bloat, trust in the given network, etc.

what do you mean by "dedicated off chain... notary service/network"? a network of actual human notaries?

anyway i don't see the difference, one is already live and barely used (although one must keep in mind that the dev's have done little to use the funds given for XCH to promote it)

What I mean by "dedicated off chain... notary service/network" is captured in this image:



Factom have their own network (specifically designed for this notary service provision). The "last mile" of their protocol is to store a hash of what happened on their network in the Bitcoin Blockchain (because Bitcoin has the best security).

Currently the Clearinghouse features amount to little more than the general Proof of Existence (http://www.proofofexistence.com/) concepts/features, but on a less secure Blockchain (Viacoin). People are using Proof of Existence (see the latest registrations and confirmations).

Maybe this is the bit that you are missing - if you want to prove that a document existed, you'd better use the MOST secure Blockchain possible. Right now that is Bitcoin. That is why people use Proof of Existence and they will use Factom but they don't use the corresponding XCH features.

EDIT: This is also why the XCH notary features would be better implemented in Counterparty, because the hashes are committed to the Bitcoin Blockchain.

Also, as an aside for anyone interested, Counterparty could notarize a checkpoint hash of it's own data/database to the Bitcoin Blockchain. This could be done with Smart Contracts, for example. This could allow (potentially by SPV) for downloading CP data from any channel (torrents, usenet, radio etc.) and checking to see is that data legit by ensuring that the hash of that data matches the checkpoint hash.

TL;DR Rapid downloading of and simple authentication and verification of all Counterparty Data (up to a recent checkpoint) using an SPV client is probably possible.

is this a p2p network? It seems like it is not? Or is that what is mean by nodes?

I'm not missing the point that bitcoin may be more secure than viacoin, which by the way is now merged mined. I don't think that this is a big sales point as any reasonable secure blockchain network is better than a human being time-stamping a document.  Additionally, however, there are no court cases as far as I know which have set any precedent for equating block chain based time stamps to traditionally notarized documents.  Although perhaps in some recent criminal cases they may have used it as evidence that certain transactions occurred.

[Equality 7-2521]

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is this a p2p network? It seems like it is not? Or is that what is mean by nodes?

I'm not missing the point that bitcoin may be more secure than viacoin, which by the way is now merged mined. I don't think that this is a big sales point as any reasonable secure blockchain network is better than a human being time-stamping a document.  Additionally, however, there are no court cases as far as I know which have set any precedent for equating block chain based time stamps to traditionally notarized documents.  Although perhaps in some recent criminal cases they may have used it as evidence that certain transactions occurred.

Yes, it is Peer-to-Peer. Anyone can join in.

In order to power this network, Factom plans to deploy a P2P network of nodes that act as global mechanisms for keeping the system running and efficiently processing Chain updates. Fueling the top-level system will be in-house tokens known as factoids that will be exchanged for Entry Credits that are then used to input data into the system.

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/factom-white-paper-outlines-record-keeping-layer-bitcoin/

It doesn't matter if Viacoin is merge mined. This isn't about being better than a human being nor is it about setting a precedent - It is already quite obvious that this method of trusted timestamping is fundamentally sound and will be universally accepted just like digital signatures have been - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signatures_and_law.

This is all about making a user-friendly (and enterprise-friendly) system. I already use Proof of Existence (and my own version of Proof of Process) daily in a Research and Development environment. When something like Factom is set up, it will be used by many.

[pankogulo]

The last Community Update in 2014, Happy New Year all!

Counterparty Community Update, Dec 31: Counterparty Merchandise Store, Shutting Down the Old Wiki, v9.49.3 & More - http://counterparty.io/news/counterparty-community-dec-31/

[merkalor]

2015 IS XCP YEAR !!!

[pankogulo]

Happy New Year everyone and Happy 1st Anniversary Counterparty !!!

Anniversary post is coming up soon, for now here's the usual weekly development update: Counterparty Development Update: counterpartyd v9.49.3, New Features in Counterwallet, New counterblockd & More - http://counterparty.io/news/counterparty-development-update-9/

[Djinou94]

What are you think about this project?

http://www.bitnation.co/

[pankogulo]

Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of the Counterparty Project. Happy Birthday Counterparty! http://counterparty.io/news/celebrating-one-year-anniversary-of-the-counterparty-project/

[prophetx]

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is this a p2p network? It seems like it is not? Or is that what is mean by nodes?

I'm not missing the point that bitcoin may be more secure than viacoin, which by the way is now merged mined. I don't think that this is a big sales point as any reasonable secure blockchain network is better than a human being time-stamping a document.  Additionally, however, there are no court cases as far as I know which have set any precedent for equating block chain based time stamps to traditionally notarized documents.  Although perhaps in some recent criminal cases they may have used it as evidence that certain transactions occurred.

Yes, it is Peer-to-Peer. Anyone can join in.

In order to power this network, Factom plans to deploy a P2P network of nodes that act as global mechanisms for keeping the system running and efficiently processing Chain updates. Fueling the top-level system will be in-house tokens known as factoids that will be exchanged for Entry Credits that are then used to input data into the system.

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/factom-white-paper-outlines-record-keeping-layer-bitcoin/

It doesn't matter if Viacoin is merge mined. This isn't about being better than a human being nor is it about setting a precedent - It is already quite obvious that this method of trusted timestamping is fundamentally sound and will be universally accepted just like digital signatures have been - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signatures_and_law.

This is all about making a user-friendly (and enterprise-friendly) system. I already use Proof of Existence (and my own version of Proof of Process) daily in a Research and Development environment. When something like Factom is set up, it will be used by many.

you are wrong it has everything to do with how it is integrated into the current structures of civil society. just because something is obvious to you, does not make it so for 99% of the rest of the world's population.

any yes it does matter if viacoin is merge mined, and while one via tx block is less secure than a bitcoin block, within the space of 10 minutes a chain of many blocks can be more secure than 1 block.

anyway btc has its own problems of the monopolistic miner scaling problem that risks its security, so no one can safely say this experiment is the most secure chain free of risking transactional integrity yet, only time will prove that.

[deliciousowl]

Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of the Counterparty Project. Happy Birthday Counterparty! http://counterparty.io/news/celebrating-one-year-anniversary-of-the-counterparty-project/

Looking at the parallels with Bitcoin development, we can see that the law of exponential advancement is pretty much coming true. Counterparty is evolving at a faster rate, and I hope we can see mass adoption with 1-2 years. Happy Birthday to my favorite "2.0" project, which most certainly is not an altcoin. I think Satoshi would be proud

[jrmg]

Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of the Counterparty Project. Happy Birthday Counterparty! http://counterparty.io/news/celebrating-one-year-anniversary-of-the-counterparty-project/

Looking at the parallels with Bitcoin development, we can see that the law of exponential advancement is pretty much coming true. Counterparty is evolving at a faster rate, and I hope we can see mass adoption with 1-2 years. Happy Birthday to my favorite "2.0" project, which most certainly is not an altcoin. I think Satoshi would be proud

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720534.msg9939537#msg9939537

Everyone in this thread are sure Counterparty is only clone and altcoin