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

[deliciousowl]

Well, the Counterparty dev team prioritizes security so we should really not be rushing them.  

I too would like to know about the release date. This is not to say we want a rushed release to mainnet but some sort of expected (or estimated) timeline would be helpful.

Maybe it will be mentioned in the next community update.

[jrmg]

1 XCP sent to jepjep. Sorry SalimNagamato too big post count My orginal post was also removed by Bitcoin Forum moderator 

"A reply of yours, quoted below, was deleted by a Bitcoin Forum moderator. Posts are most frequently deleted because they are off-topic, though they can also be deleted for other reasons. In the future, please avoid posting things that need to be deleted."

[PhantomPhreak]

FYI, I've been getting a lot of questions recently about when we're going to deploy the contracts system on mainnet. We're definitely planning on releasing it before March 1st, though if we're reasonably lucky we'll do it well before then. Of course, security is our highest priority and we won't make anything live until we're certain that it's ready for prime time, but we're very close to having a production-ready system.

[pankogulo]

Hi guys, here the new post - Counterparty Community Update, November 19th: AMA, Smart Contracts, From the Web & more: http://counterparty.io/news/counterparty-community-update-november-19/

[getts]

Has anyone looked into how Blockstream may be incorporating any of Counterparty's coding?  It appears that many of their goals in functionality are the same.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/blockstream-billionaire-entrepreneurs-betting-big-bitcoin/

As a potential investor in Counterparty, I continue to find a number of other "competitive" threats to the scarcity of proprietary properties that would be required to drive the price much higher.  If it becomes a question of first to market, does that trump the late comers or copy cats that are much better funded to establish predominate market position?

[BldSwtTrs]

Has anyone looked into how Blockstream may be incorporating any of Counterparty's coding?  It appears that many of their goals in functionality are the same.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/blockstream-billionaire-entrepreneurs-betting-big-bitcoin/

As a potential investor in Counterparty, I continue to find a number of other "competitive" threats to the scarcity of proprietary properties that would be required to drive the price much higher.  If it becomes a question of first to market, does that trump the late comers or copy cats that are much better funded to establish predominate market position?

I would bet on the first-to-market as long as they are technically competent. We see time and time again that money does not determine the outcome more than working code. This I think is a result of the fact that code is not capital intensive. Talent + motivation > money. Add to that free and open source software and a culture where people who have talent and motivation tend to clump together (Bitcoin, and now in Counterparty) and I don't care if you have a billion dollars. That money can't code.

Sidechains are far from done imho, it requires a fork plus it threathens the proven incentive model of BTC. This is not trivial and I am personnally against.

Actually Counterparty maybe be one of the biggest argument for why BTC doesn't need Sidechains.

[Equality 7-2521]

According to Peter Todd sidechains can be implemented with the Ethereum style scripts. Wouldn't it be fitting if the first public test of a sidechain were to happen with XCP?  

I was thinking this myself. I've been posing the question "What is the absolute simplest way to implement a sidechain now?".

Some thoughts:

Counterparty itself is already arguably a type of sidechain (albeit an embedded one) with a one-way peg (i.e. irreversible, can't redeem the burned BTC with XCP).

The real challenge is to perform the two-way peg. Or... two one-way pegs that both know what is going on and can update balances accordingly. Since the Smart Contracts can observe external information they could definitely implement sidechains.

The most exciting thing from a Counterparty perspective would be a way to lock some BTC (without burning it) in the Bitcoin Blockchain such that it instantiated a 1-to-1 asset balance (called, say, CounterBTC) in the Counterparty Protocol. This would allow for a frictionless way to use Bitcoin within Counterparty (the Holy Grail).

Peter Todd's "checklocktimeverify" BIP would go a long way towards making this a reality.

[GeminiSimba]

Has anyone looked into how Blockstream may be incorporating any of Counterparty's coding?  It appears that many of their goals in functionality are the same.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/blockstream-billionaire-entrepreneurs-betting-big-bitcoin/

As a potential investor in Counterparty, I continue to find a number of other "competitive" threats to the scarcity of proprietary properties that would be required to drive the price much higher.  If it becomes a question of first to market, does that trump the late comers or copy cats that are much better funded to establish predominate market position?

I would bet on the first-to-market as long as they are technically competent. We see time and time again that money does not determine the outcome more than working code. This I think is a result of the fact that code is not capital intensive. Talent + motivation > money. Add to that free and open source software and a culture where people who have talent and motivation tend to clump together (Bitcoin, and now in Counterparty) and I don't care if you have a billion dollars. That money can't code.

Sidechains are far from done imho, it requires a fork plus it threathens the proven incentive model of BTC. This is not trivial and I am personnally against.

Actually Counterparty maybe be one of the biggest argument for why BTC doesn't need Sidechains.

Exactly, if anything Counterparty's success will completely undermine the "need" for something like sidechains to exist. People keep talking about moving counterparty over to sidechains once they are invented but it's like why? Why should we lower the security of Counterparty assets by moving them off the bitcoin blockchain just because google is funding that project (blockstream)? One thing I've learned overtime in this space is that when it comes to platforms, those who simply come out with working systems without taking money from "investors" will almost always come out on top. I understand some people look at counterparty itself as a company, but these are coders simply building a platform for which actual companies can prosper on.

So when you say things like "as a potential investor in counterparty..i'm worried about their proprietary..." this is already the wrong attitude. You are not communicating to a company that has a business plan to sell a product and make money....you are communicating to the protocol world and in the world of coders NOTHING IS PROPRIETARY. Everything can be copied, investing in counterparty or bitcoin is like trying to invest in TCP-IP or HTML, these are things that in the past you could not even invest in if you wanted to but today the game is changed. If you want a reason to invest in the counterparty protocol that reason will have to simply be for you to ask yourself;
 "Do I believe that the most profitable companies in the digital currency space will be built on this counterparty platform in the future or not?"
and if the answer is Yes, then buy as much xcp as you can, if the answer is no, then invest in another protocol.

[weex]

According to Peter Todd sidechains can be implemented with the Ethereum style scripts. Wouldn't it be fitting if the first public test of a sidechain were to happen with XCP? 

...
The most exciting thing from a Counterparty perspective would be a way to lock some BTC (without burning it) in the Bitcoin Blockchain such that it instantiated a 1-to-1 asset balance (called, say, CounterBTC) in the Counterparty Protocol. This would allow for a frictionless way to use Bitcoin within Counterparty (the Holy Grail).

Peter Todd's "checklocktimeverify" BIP would go a long way towards making this a reality.

The sidechains paper's "Appendix A Federated peg" describes using "a trusted federation of mutually distrusting functionaries [that] evaluate the script and accept by signing for an ordinary multisignature script". What if the Counterparty protocol was able to be stand in for those functionaries?

[baddw]

An alt-coin becomes a digital asset on counterparty

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/scotcoin-migrates-altcoin-counterparty-digital-asset/


Instructions on how they intend to move off their local ledger into counterparty platform listed on the scotcoin website - by burning scotcoins - http://scotcoin.org/

Nice.  I'm just wondering how long it'll be before Maidsafe migrates over to Counterparty and puts the final nail in the Mastercoin coffin.

[romerun]

I guess sidechain eta is probably about 1.5 years, if it ever happens, and it will be a different world by then.

If it becomes a question of first to market, does that trump the late comers or copy cats that are much better funded to establish predominate market position?

as the general rule. First move advantage trumps everything unless the catchers can come up with blown away benefits. Modified clone can't surpass the original, because if it happens, it will break trust on both, and money is trust.

[jrmg]

FYI, I've been getting a lot of questions recently about when we're going to deploy the contracts system on mainnet. We're definitely planning on releasing it before March 1st, though if we're reasonably lucky we'll do it well before then. Of course, security is our highest priority and we won't make anything live until we're certain that it's ready for prime time, but we're very close to having a production-ready system.

Thanks this is good to know how long it will take. Are there any schedule for Chinese wallet update and are there coming webpage and faq sections same time with Chinese?

[xnova]

FYI, I've been getting a lot of questions recently about when we're going to deploy the contracts system on mainnet. We're definitely planning on releasing it before March 1st, though if we're reasonably lucky we'll do it well before then. Of course, security is our highest priority and we won't make anything live until we're certain that it's ready for prime time, but we're very close to having a production-ready system.

Thanks this is good to know how long it will take. Are there any schedule for Chinese wallet update and are there coming webpage and faq sections same time with Chinese?

Counterwallet is already available in Chinese (click the language flag in the upper right on the login screen, or visit it from a browser where the language is set to Chinese).

Regarding the main website and FAQs, we don't have any current plans for a full translation of our website to Chinese, however, we would be interested in the possibility if there was a Chinese user who would be interested in helping out here (we are in the process of updating our copy at this time, and the copy undergoes periodic revisions, so we'd be looking for someone we can work with to keep the Chinese version of the site up to date).

[prophetx]

Hi guys, here the new post - Counterparty Community Update, November 19th: AMA, Smart Contracts, From the Web & more: http://counterparty.io/news/counterparty-community-update-november-19/

might also want to do a weekly short post "for beginners" in "tool tips" style, etc.  that we can share out and pique people's interest  -  a lot of new people won't get all this other stuff


maybe the main blog is not the right venue for it, etc.  but there needs to be drip engagement for people with lower attention spans.

[heunland]

I would like to announce a 15 XCP Bounty for completing the German translation of Counterwallet, and another 15 XCP for the Finnish translation!

https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/counterwallet/

I know it's not much, but I hope it can provide at least some motivation to contribute to open-source.  

I´m interested in german translation. Please contact me if you haven´t found anyone else yet for that language.

[getts]

Analysis Please:

The White Paper for Paycoin just came out. https://c91475e716c8925e05c6-d2659d433205cf4410415f8dd63807af.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/Paycoin_Whitepaper.pdf   (starting on about page 16, the descriptions overlapping Counterparty-like functionality is addressed)

To cut to the chase, there are a number of functionalities that appear to be very similar to Counterparty.   Maybe too early to tell, but does anyone believe that this has been originally coded, or "lifted" from the work Counterparty has so brilliantly developed?

BTW, the Vice Chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, Stuart Fraser, is apparently providing $100 million+ in venture capital.  https://twitter.com/GTAUKSTER

[GeminiSimba]

Analysis Please:

The White Paper for Paycoin just came out. https://c91475e716c8925e05c6-d2659d433205cf4410415f8dd63807af.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/Paycoin_Whitepaper.pdf   (starting on about page 16, the descriptions overlapping Counterparty-like functionality is addressed)

To cut to the chase, there are a number of functionalities that appear to be very similar to Counterparty.   Maybe too early to tell, but does anyone believe that this has been originally coded, or "lifted" from the work Counterparty has so brilliantly developed?

BTW, the Vice Chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, Stuart Fraser, is apparently providing $100 million+ in venture capital.  https://twitter.com/GTAUKSTER

getts....do you work for hashcoin? After your last message about them I decided to do some research on them, guess what if you type www.hashcoin.com it takes you to...Paycoin!
in other words they changed their name from hashcoin to paycoin now, also it means you keep bringing up this same coin for some odd reason...

[pankogulo]

Hi guys, here the new post - Counterparty Community Update, November 19th: AMA, Smart Contracts, From the Web & more: http://counterparty.io/news/counterparty-community-update-november-19/

might also want to do a weekly short post "for beginners" in "tool tips" style, etc.  that we can share out and pique people's interest  -  a lot of new people won't get all this other stuff


maybe the main blog is not the right venue for it, etc.  but there needs to be drip engagement for people with lower attention spans.

Good idea, would r/CounterpartyXCP work for that? It doesn't get a lot of traffic but if we share it across it might.

[getts]

No, I don't work for them or have any affiliation.  However, I am an investor embarking on building a portfolio of alt coins.  

So far, I have only been inspired enough to buy Bitcoin over the past few months.  However, I recognize some of the shortcomings and flaws.  Counterparty was the first alt coin that I have actually considered buying because these features are game changers in so many ways.   But I have not yet pulled the trigger as I am trying to understand and consider any other options and what will make this coin a superior investment over others that will be claiming many of the same properties.

[Come-from-Beyond]

The contract code is totally independent of the reorg code, which does a complete reparse of all transactions each time.

How are you going to solve such the problem (not very related to your reply but logically follows from it):

Some (most of?) contracts have state that must be stored or recomputed every time a node is launched. Recomputation is impractical for big number of active contracts, storing seems to be a better way. Storing the state locally is much cheaper than storing on the blockchain, but it means that a new node have to download the blockchain and recompute all state changes of all the contracts from the very beginning. At some point amount of computations may become very big slowing down blockchain analysis (recomputation) greatly.

Bitcoin already has the problem of ever-growing blockchain (low bandwidth problem), Counterparty adds the problem of ever-growing number of computations required for catching up the network (slow processor problem). Luckily processor speed grows faster than bandwidth but if max rate of blockchain growth is limited by 1 MB block limit, max contract complexity is not limited. A bad choice of fee for contract execution (similar to gas in Ethereum) may make it cheap to create such contracts that won't allow to compute them with the rate of 10 min/block. In this case we will observe "black hole" effect, blocks will be generated faster than analyzed and new nodes (and existing ones) won't be able to keep up the rate.

Does anyone know a possible solution to the problem described above?