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

[relm9]

Even if cityglut told me to stop posting, I can't just sit down while watching XCP falling apart.

Having 200 non technical people trying to protect their 2 burnt BTC insulting the BTC devs and adding their irrelevant 2 cents is the way to go, definitely.

Back to reality, no one from the core devs has been consulted, and they can get rid of the 'XCP parasite' in one commit if they want.

It was an interesting project, with talented devs, but the greed and overall retardness of the so called 'community' on top of the terrible lack of communication in general was the last nail in the coffin.

Time to dump until the news spreads, and move to something else. Thanks for the five folds profit. Hopefully Ether or whatever will make things right, control their community, and have a clear communication with all people involved.

No thanks. Funny thing is, you complain about the people weighing in on matters they don't understand and you aren't much different. I'm glad you dumped all your XCP though since you clearly no longer believe in the project.

[kdrop22]

PM each other for communication is more suitable for this stage.

+1
This seems to be the best option right now, for the Counterparty devs and Bitcoin devs to engage via private channels.
The back and forth on the threads will not contribute to a productive dialog.

[led_lcd]

Hi Jeff, Bitcoin developers (who may wish to join in or read this discussion) and Luke,

Thanks for taking the time to stop by the thread.

I'm an active community member here in Counterparty. I come from an finance background in IT systems development and I wanted to explain in my opinion in a business context on why Counterparty is a "good thing" for Bitcoin. There are tangible positive benefits to Bitcoin for the 80 btyte footprint that Counterparty is requesting. Two factors that will bring increased adoption for Bitcoin is utility and liquidity. These two factors are current barriers for sophisticated and institutional investors in Bitcoin.

a) Utility - The lack of derivatives and the ability to properly hedge one's position against volatility is a barrier to Bitcoin adoption. Building these instruments directly on the blockchain lowers the friction of adoption of these instruments and will bring direct liquidity to Bitcoin (see next point).

b) Liquidity -Illiquidity of the Bitcoin markets contributes to the volatility of the value of Bitcoin as an asset. Furthermore, institutional and large investors are wary of holding assets that they cannot liquidate without affecting the underlying value. Inflows and outflows into the instruments and assets held in Counterparty will most likely flow through the native economy on which they are based - Bitcoin.

The effect of the above two points cannot be understated. It has the potential to motivate a large number of bystanders to participate in Bitcoin. By working with meta-applications such as Counterparty, Bitcoin's value within the financial system can gain traction whilst at the same time Bitcoin may continue to develop independently.

Counterparty wishes to increase the value of the Bitcoin network by sending financial transactional data. I understand that Bitcoin will be moving to floating fees and the size of OP_RETURN(s) could certainly be taken into consideration. Nodes can also immediately prune OP_RETURN thus lowering the burden of Counterparty on participating full nodes.

Counterparty isn't asking for special treatment. We wish to be good caretakers of the underlying network on which we are reliant.

Regards,

[miscreanity]

It seems to me that stress testing proof of concepts would go far in settling the issue -- let's get some real data to see whether CheckMultiSig or OP_RETURN (40 or 80 byte) causes more problems.

[Luke-Jr]

It seems to me that stress testing proof of concepts would go far in settling the issue -- let's get some real data to see whether CheckMultiSig or OP_RETURN (40 or 80 byte) causes more problems.

You're talking as if there are only two options...
But feel free to test any combination of implementations! That's what testnet is for...

[sherlock421]

 我是觉得未开比特币还真的可能没落，也许要发生黑天鹅事件，一直冥冥中觉的，就像当年的网景
嗯 ALTCOIN中应该出黑马 我一直都这么认为 自从玩比特
就像英伟达替代3D巫毒一样
XCP如果能迁移 未必不是好事
焉知非福
说不定能拯救一大批握有XCP的人
 就像当年一个阻止了花园IPO的  虽然那人本意非解救众生
结果 也拯救了一大批想买入花园矿机IPO的比特持有者
而且重新建链也可以考虑啊，最重要的是分布式交易的理念
求高手翻译一下，也算提提意见，集思广益，一个意见也做参考一下嘛

[halfcab123]

[...]
It will be much easier if you can freely use all the space you need without worrying about paying fees for expensive space in Bitcoin's chain.
[...]

The core devs' views seem at odds with the founder's — Opposite ends of the spectrum even. Not only was Satoshi advocating the use of Bitcoin's blockchain to store data, he wanted it cheaper! How about them apples ?

(Quote in reference to BitDNS.)

Edit: I understand that Counterparty stores data in the chain in such a way that was not meant to be used. Have you seen how quickly the developers of this initiative have moved forward ? Do you appreciate the movement of 2.0 projects ? Let's stop arguing about the technicalities for just a moment; Let's talk about "where do we go from here," with this innovative project ? Can we work together to come up with a solution ? Because to be quite honest; it seems as though the core developers have found a nest of mice in the attic and want to exterminate and carry on business as usual. Do I so boldly surmise that the Mastercoin team has a hand in this sabotage ? Mastercoin has to store its transactions in the Bitcoin blockchain too. Are they going to be wiped out as well ?

[bitwhizz]

Counterparty was originally designed to use the OP_RETURN output to store all of its message data, which I feel is very elegant, and leaves a minimal impact on the blockchain.

Message data does not belong in the blockchain, only financial transactions.

[davidpbrown]

If this does pose such a dilemma, would it be trivial to jump to a new chain like Devcoin, that uses the same addresses as Bitcoin? I imagine the utility of XCP and others like MSC would be sufficient that there was merge mining enough to support it and that would release any perceived stress on BTC and still allow any interaction with BTC that was needed. Doing so would engage a new audience of miners too, which might be a boon.

[led_lcd]

Counterparty was originally designed to use the OP_RETURN output to store all of its message data, which I feel is very elegant, and leaves a minimal impact on the blockchain.

Message data does not belong in the blockchain, only financial transactions.

<meme snipped>

This deserves further explanation without the meme.

Every Counterparty message is a financial transaction. From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction:

A financial transaction is an agreement, communication, or movement carried out between a buyer and a seller to exchange an asset for payment.

If it is unclear that any of the messages in Counterparty does not constitute a financial transaction, I would be happy to explain.

The message that may be the most vague is the "broadcast" so I will explain it here. The "broadcast" is a communication of pricing information from a tertiary party that is used for resolution of bets and CFDs in Counterparty.

Pricing information that is recorded in an immutable ledger is essential. During the global financial crisis, the regulatory agencies called up every counter party to Lehman Brothers. Every trade with Lehman Brothers had to be revealed and the market data used to price the deal was required to reconstruct the pricing of the trade.

[led_lcd]

If this does pose such a dilemma, would it be trivial to jump to a new chain like Devcoin, that uses the same addresses as Bitcoin? I imagine the utility of XCP and others like MSC would be sufficient that there was merge mining enough to support it and that would release any perceived stress on BTC and still allow any interaction with BTC that was needed. Doing so would engage a new audience of miners too, which might be a boon.

From a business point of view it wouldn't make sense unfortunately.

• The liquidity of the underlying asset on which Counterparty is based will directly influence acceptance and utility. The USD denominated derivatives market is larger than say the CAD market.
• The market capitalization of the blockchain upon what Counterparty is based must be significantly higher than Counterparty. Otherwise, it would be economically viable to attempt to attack the known weaknesses in the blockchain protocol and gain a disproportionately larger advantage in Counterparty.

[r0ach]

Does anyone know the legality of the devs getting rid of something within the protocol which is non consentual to other users of bitcoin, it can;t be legal

there must be regulations in place

Not kidding, I honestly did laugh while reading this.

XCP people threatening lawsuits over their choice of poor design implementation that leaves them vulnerable to any whim the BTC devs might have for changing protocol.

Counterparty might provide benefits, so it would probably be good if it succeeds, but this is not a viable argument route haha.

[davidpbrown]

• The market capitalization of the blockchain upon what Counterparty is based must be significantly higher than Counterparty. Otherwise, it would be economically viable to attempt to attack the known weaknesses in the blockchain protocol and gain a disproportionately larger advantage in Counterparty.

If the chain was strictly following updates from BTC, it would be no weaker than if it was on BTC, the only risk might be a 51% attack but an established merge mined chain like DVC perhaps doesn't have that anyway?

Obviously I no dev but could you create a 100% PoS that mapped addresses to BTC?[/list]

[bitwhizz]

Does anyone know the legality of the devs getting rid of something within the protocol which is non consentual to other users of bitcoin, it can;t be legal

there must be regulations in place

Not kidding, I honestly did laugh while reading this.

XCP people threatening lawsuits over their choice of poor design implementation that leaves them vulnerable to any whim the BTC devs might have for changing protocol.

Only threats which exist are from the bitcoin devs and their hostility towards innovation
, I just want know what protects bitcoin protocol from its devs, and what protects other protocols/companies/organisation with vested interest (both in time and finance), from the devs

[davidpbrown]

Only threats which exist are from the bitcoin devs, I just want know what protects bitcoin protocol from its devs, and what protects companies with vested interest, from the devs

.. the ability to move offchain at will?.. If the company and chain are as one, there is no conflict.

[halfcab123]

There is always the option to create our own protocol (coin,) to build on. One that meets the specific needs of Counterparty improving greatly on Bitcoin, and then allowing 3 - 6 months for the difficulty to get to a point where, security is feasible enough to start running counterpartyd on it; perhaps Counterparty could run on top of XCP, which would be a clone of some other coin that meets our needs or possibly a modded version. <thoughts @ 7am>

[bitwhizz]

There is always the option to create our own protocol (coin,) to build on. One that meets the specific needs of Counterparty improving greatly on Bitcoin, and then allowing 3 - 6 months for the difficulty to get to a point where, security is feasible enough to start running counterpartyd on it; perhaps Counterparty could run on top of XCP, which would be a clone of some other coin that meets our needs or possibly a modded version. <thoughts @ 7am>

No as mentioned before, counter party needs a robust system like bitcoin to operate

[halfcab123]

There is always the option to create our own protocol (coin,) to build on. One that meets the specific needs of Counterparty improving greatly on Bitcoin, and then allowing 3 - 6 months for the difficulty to get to a point where, security is feasible enough to start running counterpartyd on it; perhaps Counterparty could run on top of XCP, which would be a clone of some other coin that meets our needs or possibly a modded version. <thoughts @ 7am>

No as mentioned before, counter party needs a robust system like bitcoin to operate

Robust because of the hashrate of the network which provides the security. That is most certainly something that can be recreated in time.

[TheMightyX]

Does anyone know the legality of the devs getting rid of something within the protocol which is non consentual to other users of bitcoin, it can;t be legal

there must be regulations in place

Not kidding, I honestly did laugh while reading this.

XCP people threatening lawsuits over their choice of poor design implementation that leaves them vulnerable to any whim the BTC devs might have for changing protocol.

Only threats which exist are from the bitcoin devs and their hostility towards innovation
, I just want know what protects bitcoin protocol from its devs, and what protects other protocols/companies/organisation with vested interest (both in time and finance), from the devs

It's funny you and others should say this.

I've been asked by many different people on many different occasions about the longevity of bitcoin (apparently I am the resident bitcoin guy  ).
If you had asked me a year ago I would have said bitcoin was the way of the future. Now I have to honestly tell people, "I'm not so sure if bitcoin will be the defacto crypto currency of the future". There is still the possibility, but not with the current generation of bitcoin developers it seems.

I've found myself repeating to them the fact that the current generation of bitcoin developers seem very conservative and close minded. People find this confusing since they view bitcoin itself as such an innovative concept.
These bitcoin developers treat any proposed change to the "original vision" of bitcoin as an attack on bitcoin itself.
The counterparty devs should have known this before even asking the bitcoin devs to change anything.


Maybe what these devs don't understand is that when you stop growing and innovating you start losing (microsoft vs apple anyone?).

As I understand it XCP is in no danger. They will just continue on with the method they are using now (regardless of how ideal or efficient it may be). The devs certainly won't risk changing their precious original concept just to thwart Counterparty. And if something is changed, we will adapt. Etherium plans to use their own block chain, why can't we? yes its extreme, but the option is there. It would certainly make downloading the blockchain a lot less painful.

[led_lcd]

• The market capitalization of the blockchain upon what Counterparty is based must be significantly higher than Counterparty. Otherwise, it would be economically viable to attempt to attack the known weaknesses in the blockchain protocol and gain a disproportionately larger advantage in Counterparty.

If the chain was strictly following updates from BTC, it would be no weaker than if it was on BTC, the only risk might be a 51% attack but an established merge mined chain like DVC perhaps doesn't have that anyway?

Obviously I no dev but could you create a 100% PoS that mapped addresses to BTC?[/list]

Yes, the first point is a good one. I would still be concerned that the merge mined chain would fall out of favor (a side effect of the low market cap).

I'm not sure about the second point. I'd also have to divert the question to someone who could answer it.