FairCryptocurrency Committee - FairLaunch Approval - Please Read

[BitJock-e]

So should we just refer to it as the FairCoin Committee?

we can also refer to it as FairCoin Association, Union, Trust, Council, Commission, Group, or Board.

FairCrypto, FairCurrency, FairCryptocurrency as not all cryptos are coins, but yeah committee or similar.

You are onto something.

Drop the "coin" part of the name completely so it does not sound like YACC (yet another cryptocoin).

We should discuss the finalize the name over PM to avoid squatters.

[BitJock-e]

I love this idea, but with so many shitcoins already on the market and so many shitcoins being created all the time, there have to be other criterium.

I think a huge obstacle is going to be getting an exchange on board. Cryptsy and CoinedUp keep adding new shitcoins. BTC-e hasn't added any new coins in some time. While a huge obstacle to tackle, any foundation is going to have to either a) promote an exchange that uses ONLY FairCoin approved coins; or b) create an exchange that ONLY adds approved coins.

Creating an exchange would be the best solution, it would be an elite club that only coins of the highest standards will be permitted to trade upon.

This would obviously be a large undertaking, but not impossible.

[FrigidWinter]

2) FairCoin source coin for Sha-256, Scrypt, Scrypt-Jane and Blake.

What do you mean by this?

[tokyoghetto]

2) FairCoin source coin for Sha-256, Scrypt, Scrypt-Jane and Blake.

What do you mean by this?

well, most coins are just clones of other coins, so they inherit certain traits that make them prime for scams. FairCoin can develop source code for coins that meet the guidelines, so that devs can launch coins with having to change very little code.

FairCoin  can also just set guidelines for devs to follow, and we can ignore having to develop source code for devs. This allows devs to have more freedom over the code they write. Remember that Faircoins intention is to weed out the scam coins that have the following traits:

Heavy Premines
Instamining
Front loaded Block Rewards.

Coins will never be equal. People with more hashing power will always get more coins then smaller miners. Better traders will always win against amateur traders. But I think that we can agree that when a few people control a large percentage of any coins existing money supply, they artificially suppress price, control supply/demand and in the end kill off coins before they gain any traction.

[singula]

Releasing "fair code template" would require probably one template for each PoW algo (scrypt, sha256, ...) and would require someone to maintain it and merge useful changes from bitcoin, litecoin and other coins ... potentially quite a lot of ongoing work.

I suggest rather just publish some guidelines with explanation why to stick with them, like:

your initial difficulty should be set between X and Y.
This would be harder to tune, but I'd say the really absolute minimum would be so that with original dev's mining hardware the coin would be mined at half speed, or more if the coin is preannounced, even more if massively hyped.
OTOH, if the diff is set too high and none of the initial miners can't find a single block in an hour, then the coin will probably fail horribly too ....

your retarget should be small enough to mitigate any instamine attempts on coin launch (if too many miners join to push block times to few seconds, the coin should adapt quickly), or to avoid coin being unmineable if to many miners leave for another coin (remember Catcoin? )

your block times should be reasonable. I'd say 30 seconds minimum, unless you greatly improve the protocol to allow smaller times without excessive forking
(6 seconds like 1st iteration of Nutcoin is not a good idea, as it resulted everybody mining millions, but unspendable, as the wealth was only on their own fork of the chain)

[StewartJ]

This is an awesome idea! Long overdue.

I volunteer to be on the approval board.

Predictably and sadly I can see lots of miners giving push back because they
have the most to lose. They are the ones who create the scam coins, build the hype,
sell them overpriced to the coin threads, and then dump them on the exchanges.

My only advice is keep it simple, don't get bogged down in minutia.

Refine the basic principles to follow to achieve Faircoin status, and create a trusted board of members who can approve or disapprove.

Let's do this!

[BitJock-e]

Predictably and sadly I can see lots of miners giving push back because they
have the most to lose. They are the ones who create the scam coins, build the hype,
sell them overpriced to the coin threads, and then dump them on the exchanges.

Let's do this!

This community needs to make a decision, keep going down this current path, or start regulating itself.

I have been running online communities since the late 90's and there always comes a time when you need to lay down the law, or you fall into complete chaos.

Lets settle on the name via PM, Ill get a site up and running.

[Cryddit]

It is important to me that the 'Fair Cryptocurrency Committee' or whatever it is eventually called, it should not strictly limit itself to simplistically judging whether a new issue follows particular rules.  I will explain why using a concrete example.

I've been working on an alt cryptocurrency, but with some major changes to the usual algorithms.  I'm concerned that some deliberate choices made for maximal fairness and for the long-term good of a cryptocurrency, with no intent of personal profit, could disqualify it  from being considered a 'fair coin'.  Note that these are not the only major changes made; merely those made specifically for the sake of fairness.  

Firstly, there will be little or no mining, meaning that maybe 10% of block awards or maybe no block awards at all will be available merely for having compute power.  All, or all the rest, will be distributed via proof-of-stake only.  For at least 90% of the blocks a smartphone with a permanent Internet connection should have as much chance of getting a block as a ten thousand dollar server.  

Secondly, if there is mining, it will not be anything that can be done with ASICs or GPUs.  This is because I believe in fairness.  These things are two or three orders of magnitude faster, for the money, than non-specialized equipment, and I do not want to support a specialized class of miners.  They tend to cause more problems than they are worth, especially when operating en masse, and it is both unfair and counterproductive in my estimation to exclude (by overwhelming) that fraction of the public that uses normal computers from mining.  Finally, miners who own specialized equipment are primarily those who are mining for profit only, and who can be expected to simply dump coins as fast as they mine them in order to buy Bitcoin.  They represent a drag on a coin's value, not an asset.

Thirdly, I object strongly to any pressure to allow mining pools, if mining is allowed at all.  Mining pools in my estimation represent an existential threat to cryptocurrencies; first in terms of centralization, second in terms of logistics by screwing horribly with the difficulty as they jump on and off and overwhelming the probably-small server infrastructure of a fledgling currency, and third in their propensity to attract miners who believe that no other cryptocurrency exists for any reason other than to dump it on the market in order to buy Bitcoin.  

Fourth, as is necessary with proof-of-stake, there will be a ridiculously large premine.  My intent is to distribute about a million units *WIDELY* (to at least a hundred thousand pubkeys) before even announcing.  People who check will mostly discover that they already own the corresponding privkey to at least one of them.  Some will own more than one; that is unfair, but can't be helped.  To the extent that addresses are held by those who do not participate, the coins that those nonparticipants could otherwise claim will (mostly) eventually be claimed on a random basis by those who do participate.  The initial blocks will be created with a script that permits more and more addresses to spend the coinage as time goes on;  each month, about ten percent of them will become spendable by an additional existing key, until the distribution is complete or until they have gone through seven keys each.  Those who participate will occasionally "inherit" a distribution award from those who do not.

During the first year about 30 thousand coins (that is, three percent of the existing million) will be created.  Thereafter each year will see three percent more coins created than the previous year.   So, 3 percent long term inflation after the initial distribution.  But absolutely no relevance to anything like a 'halving time' or 'ultimate total number of coins' criterion that a committee is likely to come up with.  This is specifically to avoid an initial phase of very high rewards, because that would attract pump'n'dumpers rather than people who simply want a currency to use.

Now, I believe that this outlines a plan for a very "fair" cryptocurrency.  In fact fairness is one of my *PRIMARY* intents in creating it.  But I also believe that because it works differently from the expected model, it is very unlikely to meet any set-in-stone criterion of "fairness" based on the usual set of expectations.  

Therefore I ask that whatever else you decide here the committee should remain free to exercise human judgement as to whether a new issue is fair, rather than merely interpreting narrow rules.

[BitJock-e]

Now, I believe that this outlines a plan for a very "fair" cryptocurrency.  In fact fairness is one of my *PRIMARY* intents in creating it.  But I also believe that because it works differently from the expected model, it is very unlikely to meet any set-in-stone criterion of "fairness" based on the usual set of expectations.  

Therefore I ask that whatever else you decide here the committee should remain free to exercise human judgement as to whether a new issue is fair, rather than merely interpreting narrow rules.

Great feedback here so far!

I think the term "fair" should be swapped with "safe".

Fair is a relative term, its the safety of the novices coming in here every day that is the main objective.

[tk808]

Hire me, i'll make you a pro site

[nastybit]

This whole idea is useless, 99.9% alts are made to make profit quickly, aka pump-and-dump.
Making a "foundation" doesn't make any sense, if there is something good about an alts everybody can objectively recognized it.
I haven't seen one in months

[evoked22]

strength in numbers, if the numbers are wrong they wont make it to the exchange and will die out naturally I believe.

lol so you're saying no scamcoins have made it too exchanges? non with hiddden premines? pump n dump dev's? ....yeah sure 

Ofcourse they have. But they are there because of the peoples demand. Which goes back to my original point which is if the demand exists then it should be able to continue. If a coin has no value and has a lot of followers then oh well, let them figure it out for themselves. You never know one of those people might create a service that will make the coin become very useful.

All im saying is that you never know, and this form of policing kills creativity and the free market.

You should put this effort into removing mastercoin  or if you really care by going through the forums and manually comment on any new coins to alarm the new users.

[StewartJ]

This whole idea is useless, 99.9% alts are made to make profit quickly, aka pump-and-dump.
Making a "foundation" doesn't make any sense, if there is something good about an alts everybody can objectively recognized it.
I haven't seen one in months

LOL.... this is why we need a standard.

We are not stopping anyone from mining, selling or owning scam coins, just
helping others make a "safer" investment in alt coins.

[tokyoghetto]

exactly. its not policing because we don't enforce any laws. There is no consequence to anyone launching coins without seeking approval. However, we can influence good devs to launch quality products that others can really put their support behind. This should diminish the amount of scamcoins being released and create legit coins that have a chance of becoming Bitcoin 2.0.

[tokyoghetto]

Now, I believe that this outlines a plan for a very "fair" cryptocurrency.  In fact fairness is one of my *PRIMARY* intents in creating it.  But I also believe that because it works differently from the expected model, it is very unlikely to meet any set-in-stone criterion of "fairness" based on the usual set of expectations.  

Therefore I ask that whatever else you decide here the committee should remain free to exercise human judgement as to whether a new issue is fair, rather than merely interpreting narrow rules.

You have made a valid point. Each coin should be looked at on a case by case scenario. This is why FairCoin would need a combination of trusted senior members and jr members to review and vote on if the coin merits FairCoin Approval. Its clear that your development approach is sound and not just some fly by night rush scamcoin launch. Good devs can wait a day or two to let FairCoin look at the project before they launch, and use FairCoin to give their project more merit. 

[StewartJ]

Are scam coin developers and miners really this scared of a little Fair or Safe
coin advisory, a warning label?

We must be on the right track.

[tokyoghetto]

Hire me, i'll make you a pro site

Once we get an actual name down and secure the domain, we can discuss site design. Compensation would be through donations. I feel that people who wish to donate their time and energy into this project would like to see altcoins succeed and not just use altcoins as a way to become BTC/FIAT rich.

[hypostatization]

What is fair is subjective.

I think this idea has the best intentions, but is conceptually flawed. Future currencies would be judged by the established norms of today.

Consider Bitcoin being declared a scam at its outset. It was judged by the dominant understanding of currency that existed at that point in time time. It still is declared a scam by many. I believe this foundation has potential to stand in the way of innovation.

Is anything that radically departs from the current dominant mining model a scam---or is it possible for fair and viable currencies to pursue alternatives?

Mining itself has concerns that must be considered. (botnets? asic? ghash.io? centralization?)

Bitcoin is beginning to gain mainstream traction. It is not that Bitcoin used to be a scam and now isn't; instead, understanding of Bitcoin has grown. Usage and those willing to take risk developed that understanding, and disseminated the knowledge they gained. Understanding the mechanics of a new currency can take a long period of time, in order to for individuals to judge its fairness.

I think NXT is a great example of potential innovation that may be threatened. NXT began as closed source. It radically departs from the traditional crypto currency mining model. If it is flawed for those reasons, then it may still bring tremendous value in concepts that can be adapted to other new systems. NXT is in its infancy, and understanding has barely started. I think the crypto currency community benefits at large by things like NXT, MasterCoin, eMunie, and Ripple being pursued by those that believe in each respective system and accept the risks of their involvement.

How can you avoid an overly restrictive definition of fairness?

Ultimately, anyone can create a service that pumps out clones coins that meet the proposed standards. I see this proposal as further encouraging the homogenization of crypto currency. It encourages a single point of failure in the path of innovation.

I appreciate the motivations, and agree on that level, but do not see this as solving any more problems than it creates.

[tokyoghetto]

Are scam coin developers and miners really this scared of a little Fair or Safe
coin advisory, a warning label?

We must be on the right track.

I believe you are correct. If you notice when these crapcoins first launch, all the new members shout "Good Coin" and "This should be good" before the dev has even launched the source code. All they care about is mining and dumping. In order for these scams to work, they depend on the uninformed public to believe them that the coin is good.

All you hear is "to da moon" and "don't sell cheap" and "this coin will do this trust me". Out right scams. All while they are just waiting for an exchange to pick up the coin so they can dump and move on. If we succeed in educating people about the scams and allowing good projects to really shine, these scams will go the way of the dodo bird.

no exchanges will pick them up, no miners will mine, no one will do google docs exchanges. The scammers and mine/dump folk will only trade amongst themselves and slowly even they will stop.  

[nastybit]

This whole idea is useless, 99.9% alts are made to make profit quickly, aka pump-and-dump.
Making a "foundation" doesn't make any sense, if there is something good about an alts everybody can objectively recognized it.
I haven't seen one in months

LOL.... this is why we need a standard.

We are not stopping anyone from mining, selling or owning scam coins, just
helping others make a "safer" investment in alt coins.

Only idiots can throw money at something they have no knowledge about, no standard can help idiots
Look at the passwords people use. Do they know they have to use a strong long password with a mix of chars numbers and symbols? Yes but they don't