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

[PhantomPhreak]

Can @phantomphreak please address the claims made by ethereum founder in bitcoin magazine?

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/9671/ethereum-next-generation-cryptocurrency-decentralized-application-platform/

It seems he thinks among many things that bitcoin is not suitable to be treated as an underlying base  protocol.

Bitcoin is of course not an ideal transport layer, but it is certainly workable. The 'no SPV clients' issue, for instance, may be easily avoided by asking for consensus from a federation of servers together trusted to report accurate balances, and lots of people use full-blockchain clients anyway, even though the time to initialise Bitcoind is many times longer than the time to initialise counterpartyd after that. I'm quite sure that the benefits of building on Bitcoin, not the least of which are much increased development speed and security, do indeed outweigh the costs.

[halfcab123]

@phantomphreak needs to get up on an interview panel! Like on this video

BitShares(Protoshares)
Mastercoin
Ethereum

People from these foundations talk for over an hour. Very uhh.. confusing ? haha, but interesting.
http://youtu.be/w-9miCOsg4g

[rotalumis]

Can @phantomphreak please address the claims made by ethereum founder in bitcoin magazine?

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/9671/ethereum-next-generation-cryptocurrency-decentralized-application-platform/

It seems he thinks among many things that bitcoin is not suitable to be treated as an underlying base  protocol.

One of the main reasons:

Simplified Payment Verification (see the bitcoin whitepaper Section 8 ) becomes not usable. Since the miner will not verify whether a XCP transaction is valid like they do in bitcoin transactions, to check the validity of a XCP transaction, we have to track up to the very beginning (the address sent to burn address). This requires each client to download and keep the whole blockchain.

In Ethereum, they seems to find a way to solve this problem.

Detail can be found in their whitepaper: http://www.ethereum.org/ethereum.html

Personally, I don't think this is something will make Mastercoin/XCP not usable. It just increases the downloading and parsing time.

Would it be possible to have a checkpoint file that is signed by the XCP devs that clients could load instead of the entire blockchain?
For ease of use, this is almost a requirement as few normal people will wait for hours and hours for the initial sync up

It's possible, but it will not be decentralized if there's a checkpoint. People has to trust the one who publish the checkpoint. However, I think it could be very useful to provide some trustworthy services keeping some snapshots, therefore most average users can choose to trust these services and shortcut their parsing and verification. Those trustworthy services cannot cheat others for a long time as long as there're some independent clients choose to verify transactions all by themselves.

Could the network provide feedback on any checkpointed file to make sure it is valid? Presumably there will always be counterpartyd's that parsed the full blockchain, so before any checkpoint file is trusted locally and used, it could make sure it is valid by checking with the overall network.

Assuming it is published on counterparty.co, matches sig, odds are very good it is valid, plus it is only for initial install. So, after quick install, check with network to make sure nobody goofed when uploading the checkpoint file. If it all checks out, then BAM! we saved 17 hours of blockchain sync time without any risk

James

The problem is that even if we use a checkpoint, the size of a checkpoint file for counterparty will be much larger than a checkpoint of BTC. A checkpoint of BTC is just the hash of current block, but a checkpoint of counterparty has to snapshot the balance of each address and the status of each order, bid, broadcast etc.

There is a very elegant solution (theoretically) to this problem. Decentralise the checkpointing. A DAC (Decentralised Autonomous Community/Corporation/Company, for those who aren't familiar with the concept) could ensure that a checkpoint that has been arrived at by consensus is published/broadcast.

For those of you whose eyes glaze over when they see the acronym "DAC", picture this please:

I install my "Counterparty-qt". During installation it asks me "Do you want to run a full node?". I say yes because I personally don't care about "downloading and parsing time". This installs a DAC add-on with my Counterparty-qt.

I run Counterparty-qt. In the background a checkpoint of the system is periodically being updated (presumably by block).

My CP-DAC (CounterParty-DAC) is talking to every other CP-DAC on the network. They reach a consensus of the checkpoint of the system. The DACs then publish both the checkpoint (as a torrent perhaps?) and the checksum for it (for further verification).

Those individuals choosing to run Counterparty-qt without supporting the decentralised check-pointing add-on can just download that checkpoint torrent as their starting point. This would allow them to get up and running almost immediately.

The beautiful thing here is that after the checkpoints for every block so far (and checksums corresponding to them) are published, more people could run the DAC from those points onwards at less expense (bandwidth and processing power) and contribute to the decentralised checkpointing.

Feel free to ask me any questions about this.

So, does the Counterparty Project want to have the first useful DAC as well as the first useful decentralised exchange?

TLDR: A light-weight Counterparty Protocol client is possible by utilising a DAC.

This appears to be the approach Chris Odom of Monetas explains they are using in their Open Transactions implementation of decentralized trust systems, when he talks of having "a pool of servers you don't need to trust individually".

Chris Odom - North American Bitcoin Conference [28 mins] -- it's a very interesting watch.

[Patel]

I should be getting the links from the press release distribution service today for the article which was published. Stay tuned, I will post them here.

====

Selling 1k XCP for 5btc

[halfcab123]

Chris Odom looks so drunk haha

[Patel]

Chris Odom looks so drunk haha

lol your right, I heard this the first time, without seeing the video but I think he is drunk lol

[520Bit]

Code:

c:\counterpartyd_build>c:\python32\python.exe setup.py
2014-02-04 08:04:22,448|DEBUG: base path: 'c:\counterpartyd_build'
2014-02-04 08:04:22,451|DEBUG: dist path: 'c:\counterpartyd_build\dist'
2014-02-04 08:04:22,451|DEBUG: env path: 'c:\counterpartyd_build\env'
2014-02-04 08:04:22,451|DEBUG: bin path: 'c:\counterpartyd_build\bin'
2014-02-04 08:04:22,453|INFO: Installing Counterparty from source...
2014-02-04 08:04:23,124|INFO: Checking out/updating counterpartyd:master from gi
t...
2014-02-04 08:04:23,125|DEBUG: RUNNING COMMAND: cd "c:\counterpartyd_build\dist\
counterpartyd" && git pull origin master
From https://github.com/PhantomPhreak/counterpartyd
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
2014-02-04 08:04:26,660|INFO: WINDOWS: Installing Required Packages...
2014-02-04 08:04:26,660|DEBUG: RUNNING COMMAND: c:\python32\Scripts\easy_install
.exe virtualenv==1.10.1 pip==1.4.1
Searching for virtualenv==1.10.1
Best match: virtualenv 1.10.1
Processing virtualenv-1.10.1-py3.2.egg
virtualenv 1.10.1 is already the active version in easy-install.pth
Installing virtualenv-script.py script to c:\python32\Scripts
Installing virtualenv.exe script to c:\python32\Scripts
Installing virtualenv-3.2-script.py script to c:\python32\Scripts
Installing virtualenv-3.2.exe script to c:\python32\Scripts


Using c:\python32\lib\site-packages\virtualenv-1.10.1-py3.2.egg
Processing dependencies for virtualenv==1.10.1
Finished processing dependencies for virtualenv==1.10.1
Searching for pip==1.4.1
Best match: pip 1.4.1
Processing pip-1.4.1-py3.2.egg
pip 1.4.1 is already the active version in easy-install.pth
Installing pip-script.py script to c:\python32\Scripts
Installing pip.exe script to c:\python32\Scripts
Installing pip-3.2-script.py script to c:\python32\Scripts
Installing pip-3.2.exe script to c:\python32\Scripts


Using c:\python32\lib\site-packages\pip-1.4.1-py3.2.egg
Processing dependencies for pip==1.4.1
Finished processing dependencies for pip==1.4.1
2014-02-04 08:04:29,095|DEBUG: RUNNING COMMAND: c:\python32\Scripts\pip.exe inst
all appdirs==1.2.0
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): appdirs==1.2.0 in c:\p
ython32\lib\site-packages
Cleaning up...
2014-02-04 08:04:30,650|WARNING: Deleting existing virtualenv...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 488, in <module>
    main()
  File "setup.py", line 479, in main
    create_virtualenv(paths, with_counterwalletd)
  File "setup.py", line 277, in create_virtualenv
    create_venv(paths['env_path'], paths['pip_path'], paths['python_path'], path
s['virtualenv_args'], 'reqs.txt')
  File "setup.py", line 264, in create_venv
    _rmtree(env_path)
  File "setup.py", line 67, in _rmtree
    _rmtree(fullpath)
  File "setup.py", line 65, in _rmtree
    rmgeneric(fullpath, f)
  File "setup.py", line 49, in rmgeneric
    import win32api, win32con
ImportError: No module named win32api

c:\counterpartyd_build>

What does the error mean - 'ImportError: No module named win32api'? How to fix it?

Please see https://forums.counterparty.co/index.php/topic,22.msg79.html#msg79

Thanks, xnova. I re-installed "Python Win32 Extensions", it works now. Waiting for syncing all the blocks.

Code:

Broadcast: 'CoinDesk BPI USD' = 874.0758 from 1CeQHd59TFKWQzsWYDXc9NDX2ooMSRpiqi
 at 2014-01-16T12:00:03+08:00 with a fee multiplier of 0.0010 (ac46f5e1...b80f54
b1)
Broadcast: 'Block Hash (00000000ef3f9…a8a918998cdb8) Even/Odd' = 2.0 from 15cdA
QmmBrz1BEVtipaQ1dVHtTwmfcxzw5 at 2014-01-16T12:00:03+08:00 with a fee multiplier
 of 0.0010 (373b2d4a...5e5e415b)
Block: 280743
Block: 280744

[halfcab123]

I'm thinking functional alcoholic ? 

[StarenseN]

Hello,

• I've build my own installer (Windows) from git source up-to-date.
• BitcoinQT is launched and up-to-date

Then when I want to launch the counterpartyd.exe, I have this error:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console3.py", line 2
7, in <module>
    exec(code, m.__dict__)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\counterpartyd.py", line 22, in
 <module>
    from lib import (config, api, zeromq, util, exceptions, bitcoin, blocks)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\zeromq.py", line 14, in <m
odule>
    import zmq
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\__init__.py", line 29, in <module>
    from zmq import core, devices
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\core\__init__.py", line 26, in <module
>
    from zmq.core import (constants, error, message, context,
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 22, in <module>
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 14, in __bootstrap__
ImportError: DLL load failed: Module not found

Can someone help ?

[Patel]

Was there an error in how blockscan was calculating the amount of outstanding XCP? Yesterday the amount outstanding was 2,648,755.92 and today it is 2,638,379.28. Not a huge difference but I am just wondering what happened.

mtbitcoin did a purge, to bring the correct balances after some bug fixes

[Patel]

Hello,

• I've build my own installer (Windows) from git source up-to-date.
• BitcoinQT is launched and up-to-date

Then when I want to launch the counterpartyd.exe, I have this error:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console3.py", line 2
7, in <module>
    exec(code, m.__dict__)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\counterpartyd.py", line 22, in
 <module>
    from lib import (config, api, zeromq, util, exceptions, bitcoin, blocks)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\zeromq.py", line 14, in <m
odule>
    import zmq
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\__init__.py", line 29, in <module>
    from zmq import core, devices
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\core\__init__.py", line 26, in <module
>
    from zmq.core import (constants, error, message, context,
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 22, in <module>
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 14, in __bootstrap__
ImportError: DLL load failed: Module not found

Can someone help ?

Download the prereq's at http://counterpartyd-build.readthedocs.org/en/latest/BuildingFromSource.html#id1

[StarenseN]

Hello,

• I've build my own installer (Windows) from git source up-to-date.
• BitcoinQT is launched and up-to-date

Then when I want to launch the counterpartyd.exe, I have this error:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console3.py", line 2
7, in <module>
    exec(code, m.__dict__)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\counterpartyd.py", line 22, in
 <module>
    from lib import (config, api, zeromq, util, exceptions, bitcoin, blocks)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\zeromq.py", line 14, in <m
odule>
    import zmq
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\__init__.py", line 29, in <module>
    from zmq import core, devices
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\core\__init__.py", line 26, in <module
>
    from zmq.core import (constants, error, message, context,
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 22, in <module>
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 14, in __bootstrap__
ImportError: DLL load failed: Module not found

Can someone help ?

Download the prereq's at http://counterpartyd-build.readthedocs.org/en/latest/BuildingFromSource.html#id1

Hi patel,

everything has been downloaded and installed + reboot... Do you think one of these is missing ?

[Patel]

Hi patel,

everything has been downloaded and installed + reboot... Do you think one of these is missing ?

Are you sure you have pyzmq installed correctly?

[rotalumis]

I'm quite sure that the benefits of building on Bitcoin, not the least of which are much increased development speed and security, do indeed outweigh the costs.

To expand on this a little, the biggest danger with Ethereum is that its scripting language is Turing Complete, and so it's defenses against any exploit conceivable are only as secure as the sandbox that contains the running scripts.

Here's an interesting discussion thread on the topic of Ethereum vs Bitcoin.

The post below by Adam Back is kind of a TL;DR about the dangers of Ethereum (though don't miss Gavin Andressen and Vitalin Buterik duking it out a bit further down the thread):

From another thread:

Thanks d'aniel.  My initial feeling is that Turing-completeness is not necessary for bitcoin and would very likely lead to unforeseen problems and instability (mostly related to the halting problem).  Money isn't a computer.

They [meaning Etherium] address halting by fee paying for interpreter cycles.  When the fee runs out the contract is stopped.

But there are obviously interpreter escape dangers, which are harder to contain for a stateful, looping, low level (byte code like) language.  Look at the history of java sandbox escapes.  People say that was mostly due to call outs to complex native library have to look through the (large!) CVE database on JVM to figure out the stats.  Also the pressure may have been lower.  If you get real money under it all kinds of resources and unrevealed 0-days can leak out of the woodwork and create the new target for grey and black hats some of whom are world class at this stuff.  Or even from national security network intrusion insiders with Snowden-level access or the people developing and selling grey market 0-day to the intelligence community etc.  Those people are fallible humans too - they may succum to the financial motive, or the people who developed and sold them the 0-days may find a new monetization model, or second use for them (they cant "forget" them after sale).

There have also been VM escapes from full hw abstraction vms (i mean not just API sandbox light linux-in-linux virtuozzo but actual whole OS in the container).

And finally bitcoin scripting is functional, stateless and non-looping (non TC in fact also) for a reason.  Bitcoin doesnt (and I think its intentional) have even extrospection.  There are grey-goo outcomes if you are not careful with even something as constrained as an extrospection op code to existing language.   There will be whole classes of not yet imagined grey goo opportunities lurking in a full TC language.  You cant easily systematically defend against whole classes of such issues without intentional constrained language.

Here's a thread started by Greg to explore grey-goo outcomes from extended scripting:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=278122.0

Greg Maxwell also noted the elevated risk of forks developing.  If there is any deviation in script outcome and being more complex there is more risk there also.  eg tracking how many cycles through a JIT executed/CSE optimized etc version as super-majority of nodes MUST interpret the script to the same byte code instruction, or one version can return true, another false etc.

I discussed these risks with Vitalik and he is a very smart guy, so obviously they'll try to do what they can to contain them, but you know bitcoin is the highest assurance sw dev and QA risk on the planet by orders of magnitude.  So it maybe a time for risk containment rather than risk LoC and API size expansion, I am already worried on bitcoin about base band-processors hacks, 0-day OS and CPU hacks, and thinking a more zero-trust more air-gap model needs to be the objective.

If hypothetically ethereum grew to large adoption (litecoin level say) and then there was enough motivation and something failed hard, there are potential whole system value loss, hard fork and other failure modes.  It seems to have by design, ongoing higher surface area security & value safety risk

Also btw Dan Kaminsky said he spent 4 months trying to hack bitcoin (network stack, overflow on messages, the usual host-security 0-day discovery process) and he failed.  He's one of the best host security guys and the experience impressed him.  Its not a simple thing to make a network stack that bullet proof, most even hard core programmers cant do it.  You probably have to practice 0-day development to some depth to even understand fully the risks and defense landscape.  Bitcoin got there with a really solid start from Satoshi and a bootstrap period where other bugs were fixed before the pressure built up to $10b.

I am not going to comment for now on the funding model  They are somewhere between the others and I am sure Vitalik has his eye on actual innovation as well, because knowing him he lives for tech challenge.

I think anything that needs to be done, can be done in a bitcoin centric backwards compatible evolutionary way using eg 1-way peg and other related features while maintaining value firewalls between long term holders and people using newer features.

But clearly other than the security containment, zero-defect in flight once live, and grey-goo risks, Ethereum can create some fun self-extensibility with a loose analog of like introspection, late binding, eval and dynamically loadable code languages.  We do have to be clear that the cost is the towards opposite end of the spectrum, though lower than activeX and executing native code delivered over the network.  Fun possibilities but a big security job.

Adam

[Patel]

Can you put miners fee at 0.0002 for XCP transactions?

[mtbitcoin]

Was there an error in how blockscan was calculating the amount of outstanding XCP? Yesterday the amount outstanding was 2,648,755.92 and today it is 2,638,379.28. Not a huge difference but I am just wondering what happened.

This is the total available balance as reported by the counterparty client (SUM(amount) from balances table). The available balance should vary from time to time depending on if any XCP is locked up in transactions like buy/sell/bet,etc ....or any XCP fees deducted

[mtbitcoin]

Was there an error in how blockscan was calculating the amount of outstanding XCP? Yesterday the amount outstanding was 2,648,755.92 and today it is 2,638,379.28. Not a huge difference but I am just wondering what happened.

mtbitcoin did a purge, to bring the correct balances after some bug fixes

Thanks

I think whenever someone places an order or makes a bet those funds are deducted from balance as well

Yes, that is correct as stated in the previous post above. This is just a simple metric to see the overall transaction activity at any one time

[Patel]

From Masterxchange

============

Hello Patel,

We are following closely the development of Counterparty.

For now, we are busy adding a couple of other coins and increasing overall usability on masterXchange but adding XCP is the next path we could follow if there is enough incentive.

Thanks for the heads up and please feel free to give us more suggestions in the future.

Eldido

[StarenseN]

Hello,

• I've build my own installer (Windows) from git source up-to-date.
• BitcoinQT is launched and up-to-date

Then when I want to launch the counterpartyd.exe, I have this error:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console3.py", line 2
7, in <module>
    exec(code, m.__dict__)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\counterpartyd.py", line 22, in
 <module>
    from lib import (config, api, zeromq, util, exceptions, bitcoin, blocks)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\zeromq.py", line 14, in <m
odule>
    import zmq
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\__init__.py", line 29, in <module>
    from zmq import core, devices
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\core\__init__.py", line 26, in <module
>
    from zmq.core import (constants, error, message, context,
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 22, in <module>
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 14, in __bootstrap__
ImportError: DLL load failed: Module not found

Can someone help ?

Does exist a better step by step Counterparty on windows installation ?

This is showing the same error after reinstalling by following the doc here:
- http://counterpartyd-build.readthedocs.org/en/latest/BuildingFromSource.html#on-windows

[mtbitcoin]

Hello,

• I've build my own installer (Windows) from git source up-to-date.
• BitcoinQT is launched and up-to-date

Then when I want to launch the counterpartyd.exe, I have this error:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console3.py", line 2
7, in <module>
    exec(code, m.__dict__)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\counterpartyd.py", line 22, in
 <module>
    from lib import (config, api, zeromq, util, exceptions, bitcoin, blocks)
  File "C:\counterpartyd_build\dist\counterpartyd\lib\zeromq.py", line 14, in <m
odule>
    import zmq
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\__init__.py", line 29, in <module>
    from zmq import core, devices
  File "C:\Python32\lib\site-packages\zmq\core\__init__.py", line 26, in <module
>
    from zmq.core import (constants, error, message, context,
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 22, in <module>
  File "ExtensionLoader_zmq_core_error.py", line 14, in __bootstrap__
ImportError: DLL load failed: Module not found

Can someone help ?

Does exist a better step by step Counterparty on windows installation ?

This is showing the same error after reinstalling by following the doc here:
- http://counterpartyd-build.readthedocs.org/en/latest/BuildingFromSource.html#on-windows

make sure you have all the pre-requisites installed as per the instructions