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

[avkinp]

Win8, using windows installer. Two days ago my 1BTC was burned somehow(spent a few days reading forum doing something). Today after reinstall last version of counterpartyd try to burn from other address same wallet on same PC got following error:

Code:

C:\Program Files\counterpartyd>counterpartyd burn --from MY2NDADDSAMEWALLET --quantity 1.00
Confirm? (y/N) y
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console3.py", line 2
7, in <module>
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\counterpartyd.py", line 511, i
n <module>
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\bitcoin.py", line 260, in
transmit
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\bitcoin.py", line 64, in r
pc
lib.exceptions.BitcoindError: {'message': 'TX rejected', 'code': -22}

C:\Program Files\counterpartyd>

What is it and how to fix it?

[xnova]

Win8, using windows installer. Two days ago my 1BTC was burned somehow(spent a few days reading forum doing something). Today after reinstall last version of counterpartyd try to burn from other address same wallet on same PC got following error:

Code:

C:\Program Files\counterpartyd>counterpartyd burn --from MY2NDADDSAMEWALLET --quantity 1.00
Confirm? (y/N) y
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console3.py", line 2
7, in <module>
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\counterpartyd.py", line 511, i
n <module>
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\bitcoin.py", line 260, in
transmit
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\bitcoin.py", line 64, in r
pc
lib.exceptions.BitcoindError: {'message': 'TX rejected', 'code': -22}

C:\Program Files\counterpartyd>

What is it and how to fix it?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=307079.0
or http://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoind+tx+rejected+code+22

Make sure you're not trying to burn freshly minted/deposited coins that don't have at least a few confirms.

[reader31]

Can feeds or bets _automatically_ reference the price of an asset in open orders or last trade?

Hey guys even i'm curious about this...can the devs clarify this? thx

[PhantomPhreak]

Can feeds or bets _automatically_ reference the price of an asset in open orders or last trade?

Hey guys even i'm curious about this...can the devs clarify this? thx

No, they cannot. The values of feeds are, as it were, manually chosen, and bets are made only on feeds. Of course, you can script counterpartyd to do whatever you want here.

[hozer]

I think XCP is a very promising project and I think I will do something on it (maybe an counterparty explorer soon).

Nonetheless, I don't think this project is able to give you huge return (more than 10x) like Nxt, so please be warned if you want to be rich over-night.

The reason is simple. Since this is an open-source project, so anyone could replicate it without any cost. They just need to create a new un-spendable address and then there's another XCP-2, XCP-3. Once people find the price of XCP is too high, they can freely goes to XCP-2 and XCP-3.

The smart or sneaky part of Nxt is that they postpone opening their source until the price is already more than 1000x. For master-coin, they have no code at all even at current stage.

Therefore, XCP in my opinion is the most honourable project and it's the project really want to create a decentralized market rather than a be-rich-soon game (the only other one similar is colored-coin).

Any thinking about this is welcome, especially from the developers.

Thanks for the kind words!

The Counterparty team makes no promises regarding returns-on -investment. Our goal. moreover, was not to make investors rich overnight, but rather to create a working and relatively full-featured client, and to that extent returns-on-investment were secondary. At the same time, however, I believe that the situation you describe does not preclude XCP significantly increasing in value. Specifically, unless a Counterparty fork offers some real technical improvement, I think that XCP-2, etc. will be minted only when Counterparty has proved itself a financial success. And even if a Counterparty fork does offer technical advantage, the importance of being the first Counterparty must not be forgotten. In my opinion, certain alt-coins offer definite advantages over Bitcoin (e.g. faster block-time), and yet Bitcoin has still increased in value and the alt-coin market has, in my opinion, at least for now, proven itself to be by-and-large a bubble. Nothing suggests to me that the situation wouldn't be same if alt-Counterpartys were to appear.

There're years between bitcoin and its copicats, so bitcoin has enough time to grow. XCP, however, may have only months to be mature enough to secure the first arriver advantage. Nonetheless, I agree with you that there're still considerable upsite for XCP, because people will copy it and will to burn for the copicat only after XCP is successful and the price is high enough.

I'm just saying that the price will not increase as much as Nxt (>1000x) and all investors had better to keep this in mind IMHO.

I suppose this is a good time to announce my intent to borrow some of all of the counterpartyd code and put it in my catbox development tree ( https://bitbucket.org/dahozer/catcoin ) .

I was going to say sandbox, but it's going to be crap until either:
a) I get a consulting/development contract to work on this full time
b) I can make enough offering and trading counterparty commodities futures (I need some buyers who want to take physical delivery of Iowa soybeans)

[cityglut]

I think XCP is a very promising project and I think I will do something on it (maybe an counterparty explorer soon).

Nonetheless, I don't think this project is able to give you huge return (more than 10x) like Nxt, so please be warned if you want to be rich over-night.

The reason is simple. Since this is an open-source project, so anyone could replicate it without any cost. They just need to create a new un-spendable address and then there's another XCP-2, XCP-3. Once people find the price of XCP is too high, they can freely goes to XCP-2 and XCP-3.

The smart or sneaky part of Nxt is that they postpone opening their source until the price is already more than 1000x. For master-coin, they have no code at all even at current stage.

Therefore, XCP in my opinion is the most honourable project and it's the project really want to create a decentralized market rather than a be-rich-soon game (the only other one similar is colored-coin).

Any thinking about this is welcome, especially from the developers.

Thanks for the kind words!

The Counterparty team makes no promises regarding returns-on -investment. Our goal. moreover, was not to make investors rich overnight, but rather to create a working and relatively full-featured client, and to that extent returns-on-investment were secondary. At the same time, however, I believe that the situation you describe does not preclude XCP significantly increasing in value. Specifically, unless a Counterparty fork offers some real technical improvement, I think that XCP-2, etc. will be minted only when Counterparty has proved itself a financial success. And even if a Counterparty fork does offer technical advantage, the importance of being the first Counterparty must not be forgotten. In my opinion, certain alt-coins offer definite advantages over Bitcoin (e.g. faster block-time), and yet Bitcoin has still increased in value and the alt-coin market has, in my opinion, at least for now, proven itself to be by-and-large a bubble. Nothing suggests to me that the situation wouldn't be same if alt-Counterpartys were to appear.

There're years between bitcoin and its copicats, so bitcoin has enough time to grow. XCP, however, may have only months to be mature enough to secure the first arriver advantage. Nonetheless, I agree with you that there're still considerable upsite for XCP, because people will copy it and will to burn for the copicat only after XCP is successful and the price is high enough.

I'm just saying that the price will not increase as much as Nxt (>1000x) and all investors had better to keep this in mind IMHO.

I suppose this is a good time to announce my intent to borrow some of all of the counterpartyd code and put it in my catbox development tree ( https://bitbucket.org/dahozer/catcoin ) .

I was going to say sandbox, but it's going to be crap until either:
a) I get a consulting/development contract to work on this full time
b) I can make enough offering and trading counterparty commodities futures (I need some buyers who want to take physical delivery of Iowa soybeans)

EDIT: Sorry, I misunderstood.

[mr_random]

How can I burn a bitcoin for XCP using Electrum? I don't have Bitcoin-qt installed and downloading the fullblockchain will take ages on my internet connection.

[PhantomPhreak]

How can I burn a bitcoin for XCP using Electrum? I don't have Bitcoin-qt installed and downloading the fullblockchain will take ages on my internet connection.

Electrum isn't supported (currently). You can use Blockchain.info to burn, however.

[jimhsu]

The explorer seemed to indicate that burns with different inputs or more than one output to non-sending address were invalid. The only definitive confirmation though is to check the counterpatyd client.

PS The explorer seems to be down, last time I checked.

PSS I think it wouldn't be hard to programmatically check every address you get from that table with counterpartyd, and get the burn amount. In fact, an even easier way is to check the counterpartyd logfile, which has a pretty structured log syntax that you can turn into data with a few string commands. Of course this will require running bitcoind and counterpartyd on your remote server.

Example from log file:

...
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Block: 278930
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 1GSJoRMuFEqtx3e4UjmfZiNonoGrHnt5Wv burned 1.0 BTC for 1443.63636364 XCP (b8a27744…79d741e4)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 146FcHjXUSiJMcYWE7WKPBKSvvCedi2YuA burned 1.0 BTC for 1443.63636364 XCP (e62cd3f0…88fc3542)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 18tJnidmGRi4QxAFmUQgwdQMJm9tRVZotp burned 0.9999 BTC for 1443.492 XCP (cd68e0a1…13c4f575)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 1NULPePYzi8oz6r8D2pgKjfAcJjXQGKasc burned 0.30370714 BTC for 438.4426712 XCP (d29b8039…972e4573)
2014-01-06-T10:30:28Central Standard Time Block: 278931
2014-01-06-T10:30:31Central Standard Time Block: 278932
2014-01-06-T10:30:39Central Standard Time Block: 278933
2014-01-06-T10:30:40Central Standard Time Block: 278934
2014-01-06-T10:30:41Central Standard Time Block: 278935
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Block: 278936
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Burn: 1NFga6ZVsrx9wP4uRg6rNzD9drbdz5hbsA burned 0.99909597 BTC for 1441.78631162 XCP (460f00fc…c4605fbc)
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Burn: 1NDBXUBa1DPbPbxLEA8r8FJufzNdrT9Pb7 burned 0.9941 BTC for 1434.57667273 XCP (93a7209d…b2c95f7f)
2014-01-06-T10:30:46Central Standard Time Block: 278937
2014-01-06-T10:30:47Central Standard Time Block: 278938
...

[PhantomPhreak]

The explorer seemed to indicate that burns with different inputs or more than one output to non-sending address were invalid. The only definitive confirmation though is to check the counterpatyd client.

PS The explorer seems to be down, last time I checked.

PSS I think it wouldn't be hard to programmatically check every address you get from that table with counterpartyd, and get the burn amount. In fact, an even easier way is to check the counterpartyd logfile, which has a pretty structured log syntax that you can turn into data with a few string commands. Of course this will require running bitcoind and counterpartyd on your remote server.

Example from log file:

...
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Block: 278930
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 1GSJoRMuFEqtx3e4UjmfZiNonoGrHnt5Wv burned 1.0 BTC for 1443.63636364 XCP (b8a27744…79d741e4)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 146FcHjXUSiJMcYWE7WKPBKSvvCedi2YuA burned 1.0 BTC for 1443.63636364 XCP (e62cd3f0…88fc3542)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 18tJnidmGRi4QxAFmUQgwdQMJm9tRVZotp burned 0.9999 BTC for 1443.492 XCP (cd68e0a1…13c4f575)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 1NULPePYzi8oz6r8D2pgKjfAcJjXQGKasc burned 0.30370714 BTC for 438.4426712 XCP (d29b8039…972e4573)
2014-01-06-T10:30:28Central Standard Time Block: 278931
2014-01-06-T10:30:31Central Standard Time Block: 278932
2014-01-06-T10:30:39Central Standard Time Block: 278933
2014-01-06-T10:30:40Central Standard Time Block: 278934
2014-01-06-T10:30:41Central Standard Time Block: 278935
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Block: 278936
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Burn: 1NFga6ZVsrx9wP4uRg6rNzD9drbdz5hbsA burned 0.99909597 BTC for 1441.78631162 XCP (460f00fc…c4605fbc)
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Burn: 1NDBXUBa1DPbPbxLEA8r8FJufzNdrT9Pb7 burned 0.9941 BTC for 1434.57667273 XCP (93a7209d…b2c95f7f)
2014-01-06-T10:30:46Central Standard Time Block: 278937
2014-01-06-T10:30:47Central Standard Time Block: 278938
...

That's all correct, but if you want to do something like that programmatically, the best way is probably to query counterpartyd's JSON-RPC API or access the SQLite3 database directly.

[xnova]

The explorer seemed to indicate that burns with different inputs or more than one output to non-sending address were invalid. The only definitive confirmation though is to check the counterpatyd client.

PS The explorer seems to be down, last time I checked.

PSS I think it wouldn't be hard to programmatically check every address you get from that table with counterpartyd, and get the burn amount. In fact, an even easier way is to check the counterpartyd logfile, which has a pretty structured log syntax that you can turn into data with a few string commands. Of course this will require running bitcoind and counterpartyd on your remote server.

Example from log file:

...
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Block: 278930
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 1GSJoRMuFEqtx3e4UjmfZiNonoGrHnt5Wv burned 1.0 BTC for 1443.63636364 XCP (b8a27744…79d741e4)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 146FcHjXUSiJMcYWE7WKPBKSvvCedi2YuA burned 1.0 BTC for 1443.63636364 XCP (e62cd3f0…88fc3542)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 18tJnidmGRi4QxAFmUQgwdQMJm9tRVZotp burned 0.9999 BTC for 1443.492 XCP (cd68e0a1…13c4f575)
2014-01-06-T10:30:27Central Standard Time Burn: 1NULPePYzi8oz6r8D2pgKjfAcJjXQGKasc burned 0.30370714 BTC for 438.4426712 XCP (d29b8039…972e4573)
2014-01-06-T10:30:28Central Standard Time Block: 278931
2014-01-06-T10:30:31Central Standard Time Block: 278932
2014-01-06-T10:30:39Central Standard Time Block: 278933
2014-01-06-T10:30:40Central Standard Time Block: 278934
2014-01-06-T10:30:41Central Standard Time Block: 278935
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Block: 278936
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Burn: 1NFga6ZVsrx9wP4uRg6rNzD9drbdz5hbsA burned 0.99909597 BTC for 1441.78631162 XCP (460f00fc…c4605fbc)
2014-01-06-T10:30:44Central Standard Time Burn: 1NDBXUBa1DPbPbxLEA8r8FJufzNdrT9Pb7 burned 0.9941 BTC for 1434.57667273 XCP (93a7209d…b2c95f7f)
2014-01-06-T10:30:46Central Standard Time Block: 278937
2014-01-06-T10:30:47Central Standard Time Block: 278938
...

That's all correct, but if you want to do something like that programmatically, the best way is probably to query counterpartyd's JSON-RPC API or access the SQLite3 database directly.

I highly advise querying the JSON RPC API. That is the standard method moving forward to for a 3rd party application to get any information out of counterpartyd. We will be adding documentation around it shortly, but currently, you can see the calls possible from here: https://github.com/PhantomPhreak/counterpartyd/blob/master/lib/api.py

(just call those like you'd call any JSON RPC function, after using a jsonrpc client to connect, similar to bitcoind).

Right now the port, hostname it binds to is hardcoded (this will change shortly). For more information, see https://github.com/PhantomPhreak/counterpartyd/blob/master/lib/api.py#L79

[mr_random]

How can I burn a bitcoin for XCP using Electrum? I don't have Bitcoin-qt installed and downloading the fullblockchain will take ages on my internet connection.

Electrum isn't supported (currently). You can use Blockchain.info to burn, however.

Thank you. Reading the guide to burn via Blockchain.info, I think I understand all of the steps and I am going to try a test amount first but what I don't understand is how to claim my XCP after I have burned my BTC?

Can you please explain this?

[Chang Hum]

How is it proven that you can't access the funds at the burn address?

[jimhsu]

How is it proven that you can't access the funds at the burn address?

The problem can otherwise be expressed as the amount of time that would be required to generate a vanity address of that length (length 27 excluding the checksum). For each character in the vanity address, it takes 58x the computational power. Considering vanitygen rates, we're talking billions of years even with the entire power of the bitcoin network at your disposal. With that much hashpower, it would be vastly more profitable (by dozens of orders of magnitude) to mine.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9408/how-does-vanitygen-calculate-difficulty

There's a difference between theoretically possible, and what can be considered a reasonable probability in the likely lifetime of human civilization. Note that as long as this address doesn't spend coins (it can't), even quantum computing will fail to make an appreciable difference. (See stackoverflow for more info).

Essentially how such addresses are generated:
1. Start with some sort of obviously nonrandom string (1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX)
2. Append dummy checksum to string (e.g. 111111)
3. Base58 decode the above to get network version + RIPEMD160 hash + "checksum"
4. Try at most 16^8 ( = 2^32) (correct me on this) checksums to determine one that corresponds to a valid address; typical videocard (500 Mh/s) could probably do this in seconds.
5. Output the valid address, which has neither an associated pubkey or privkey.

It's quite interesting to say the least. I can't say I understand the technical details completely though, so people can correct me on this.

Essentially, if coins are spent from such addresses, then bitcoin as a while is broken and we should move on to something else.

[Chang Hum]

How is it proven that you can't access the funds at the burn address?

The problem can otherwise be expressed as the amount of time that would be required to generate a vanity address of that length (length 27 excluding the checksum). For each character in the vanity address, it takes 58x the computational power. Considering vanitygen rates, we're talking billions of years even with the entire power of the bitcoin network at your disposal. With that much hashpower, it would be vastly more profitable (by dozens of orders of magnitude) to mine.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9408/how-does-vanitygen-calculate-difficulty

There's a difference between theoretically possible, and what can be considered a reasonable probability in the likely lifetime of human civilization. Note that as long as this address doesn't spend coins (it can't), even quantum computing will fail to make an appreciable difference. (See stackoverflow for more info).

Thanks for explaining

[jimhsu]

How can I burn a bitcoin for XCP using Electrum? I don't have Bitcoin-qt installed and downloading the fullblockchain will take ages on my internet connection.

Electrum isn't supported (currently). You can use Blockchain.info to burn, however.

Thank you. Reading the guide to burn via Blockchain.info, I think I understand all of the steps and I am going to try a test amount first but what I don't understand is how to claim my XCP after I have burned my BTC?

Can you please explain this?

After you get your burn confirmed, check http://www.counterparty-explorer.com/ to see if your address pops up. To actually claim your coins, you need a counterpartyd install and wait for bitcoin 0.9 to be released to spend.

[PhantomPhreak]

How is it proven that you can't access the funds at the burn address?

The problem can otherwise be expressed as the amount of time that would be required to generate a vanity address of that length (length 27 excluding the checksum). For each character in the vanity address, it takes 58x the computational power. Considering vanitygen rates, we're talking billions of years even with the entire power of the bitcoin network at your disposal. With that much hashpower, it would be vastly more profitable (by dozens of orders of magnitude) to mine.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9408/how-does-vanitygen-calculate-difficulty

There's a difference between theoretically possible, and what can be considered a reasonable probability in the likely lifetime of human civilization. Note that as long as this address doesn't spend coins (it can't), even quantum computing will fail to make an appreciable difference. (See stackoverflow for more info).

Essentially how such addresses are generated:
1. Start with some sort of obviously nonrandom string (1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX)
2. Append dummy checksum to string (e.g. 111111)
3. Base58 decode the above to get network version + RIPEMD160 hash + "checksum"
4. Try at most 16^8 ( = 2^32) (correct me on this) checksums to determine one that corresponds to a valid address; typical videocard (500 Mh/s) could probably do this in seconds.
5. Output the valid address, which has neither an associated pubkey or privkey.

It's quite interesting to say the least. I can't say I understand the technical details completely though, so people can correct me on this.

Essentially, if coins are spent from such addresses, then bitcoin as a while is broken and we should move on to something else.

That's pretty much what I did, except I didn't brute force anything for step 4---I just calculated the checksum directly.

[led_lcd]

The problem can otherwise be expressed as the amount of time that would be required to generate a vanity address of that length (length 27 excluding the checksum).

[...]

It's quite interesting to say the least. I can't say I understand the technical details completely though, so people can correct me on this.

Essentially, if coins are spent from such addresses, then bitcoin as a while is broken and we should move on to something else.

I like the explanation. I just wanted to clarify though, the confidence we have that the BTC is unspendable is an expression of probability not an amount of time.

The probability of finding the private key for a single address is very low given the current knowledge about the algorithm and available computational power. Given the very low probability, the likelihood of finding the private key would on average take large amounts of time. Time is how vanitygen expresses the probability.

It is possible with very (very) low probability that someone could find the key after just one attempt.

[jimhsu]

@PhantomPhreak can you share how the checksum is calculated directly? I looked through the tools, but didn't understand.

@led_lcd yes, indeed it's a fun mathematical exercise to calculate just how unlikely such an occurrence is. We're talking about "number of atoms in the universe" scales here.

[PhantomPhreak]

@PhantomPhreak can you share how the checksum is calculated directly? I looked through the tools, but didn't understand.

The same way that you would check that the one you brute-forced was correct... (It's just the first four bytes of a hash of the first part of the address.)