Hypothetical New Cryptocurrency version 0.1

[Synaptic]

I mentioned in some thread about having an alternative blockchain idea. I received some messages about it, so I'm making this thread just to gauge interest in my idea. I don't feel I should give away all my ideas, but I will try to reveal as much as I can without giving away the cake. Here's some primary considerations of my hypothetical design:


1. This new ?coin involves controls that eliminate the early adopter syndrome as it's primary introductory consequence, which fosters a slower inflation rate, and prevents the perverse speculation bubble we've seen with BTC.

2. Mining is never a primary driver of block rewards in the entire life of ?coin, though there is a nominal fee, and mining does still produce ?coin, though in a much different fashion.

3. Specific block activity indicators are the basis of future block rewards. Nothing is arbitrarily set. Every reward has a logical indicator necessitating further payouts.

4. Transaction verification is carried out much quicker.

5. Pseudo-anonymity is preserved, however the option to identify exists, and offers certain advantages.


Those are some of the basics. The primary goals of of the ?coin are that:

A. Miners NEVER control the majority ?coin generation. (this is actually the secret sauce that makes ?coin so special, and I can't fully reveal how or explain it in total)

B. Because of the secret sauce of A, there will never be anyone that possesses a massive number of ?coins through ANYTHING but real economic trade.

C. Merchants are a first class citizen. There is more secret sauce that makes being a ?coin merchant very appealing, much, much more so than Bitcoin. I really hope I can eventually publish this portion, because it's the most clever and important part of what ?coin is.

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[N12]

Sounds attractive to me, though I hope you’ll find a way to publish it in detail. I’m skeptical.

[julz]

B. Because of the secret sauce of A, there will never be anyone that possesses a massive number of ?coins through ANYTHING but real economic trade.

How can a network automatically detect delivery of goods and/or services and thus distinguish 'real economic' trade  from fake trade (possibly run by a pool of systems around the globe) ? 

Unless you have a viable mechanism for this - it sounds implausible.

Ideas are cheap - implementation is king.

[Synaptic]

Sounds attractive to me, though I hope you’ll find a way to publish it in detail. I’m skeptical.

Your skepticism is not unfounded, as I personally only know how to write web apps in interpreted languages, and no idea how to code a stand-alone networked client app in an compiled language.

If this were to be actually be written, I would want it coded in Haskell (most preferable) or C, and I have only a vague grasp of how to program in either.

However, conceptually the system is sound, I assure you.  It became an obsession of mine a few months back when I was mining BTC, and I spent many many hours solving all of the possible issues for a viable, long term system (that I can't believe weren't solved to begin with, they seemed obvious to me).

I very much want to publish, but as I said in another thread, what's in it for me if all I do is publish the whitepaper without any real code to my name?  I get nothing, including the chance of no personal recognition either...

[Synaptic]

B. Because of the secret sauce of A, there will never be anyone that possesses a massive number of ?coins through ANYTHING but real economic trade.

How can a network automatically detect delivery of goods and/or services and thus distinguish 'real economic' trade  from fake trade (possibly run by a pool of systems around the globe) ? 

Unless you have a viable mechanism for this - it sounds implausible.

Ideas are cheap - implementation is king.

I mean that no-one will be able to simple put a bunch of iron on the network and amass a fortune.  The only way they will receive a "large" number of ?coins is by selling something or trading for them.

Again, mining is still "viable,"  it's just not a primary driver of the market in any critical capacity, including the "early adopter" syndrome.

[Synaptic]

Sounds attractive to me, though I hope you’ll find a way to publish it in detail. I’m skeptical.

Also, the point of this thread is to spark conversation, and maybe if people like what they're hearing, some kind of collaboration might eventually come of it.

I know how to code, but I have no way of taking on this type of project by myself.

So please, ask for as much detail as you like, and I will try to answer as far as I'm able without giving away what I feel to be the secret sauce that sets ?coin far and above Bitcoin and it's pathetic clones.

[julz]

I mean that no-one will be able to simple put a bunch of iron on the network and amass a fortune.  The only way they will receive a "large" number of ?coins is by selling something or trading for them.

Again, mining is still "viable,"  it's just not a primary driver of the market in any critical capacity, including the "early adopter" syndrome.

Without even a basic explanation of why a 'bunch of iron' (or even virtual iron) can't simulate trading under your system and therefore game your 'activity indicators' - this doesn't sound well thought out.

What is going to verify that it's real economic activity?
A central review agency? An AI you just need someone to code up for you?  A voting system of network participants? (For which you'd also need to provide mechanisms against gaming)

How is a transaction which didn't involve delivery of a good or service going to look different to the network than one that did?
How can the network know whether the 2 ends of the transaction are even genuinely distinct entities?

[Synaptic]

I mean that no-one will be able to simple put a bunch of iron on the network and amass a fortune.  The only way they will receive a "large" number of ?coins is by selling something or trading for them.

Again, mining is still "viable,"  it's just not a primary driver of the market in any critical capacity, including the "early adopter" syndrome.

Without even a basic explanation of why a 'bunch of iron' (or even virtual iron) can't simulate trading under your system and therefore game your 'activity indicators' - this doesn't sound well thought out.

What is going to verify that it's real economic activity?
A central review agency? An AI you just need someone to code up for you?  A voting system of network participants? (For which you'd also need to provide mechanisms against gaming)

How is a transaction which didn't involve delivery of a good or service going to look different to the network than one that did?
How can the network know whether the 2 ends of the transaction are even genuinely distinct entities and not agents for the one entity?

Ah, very good questions.  These were my first concerns, truly.  Unfortunately the economic activity indicators are the core of the "secret sauce" that I "developed." I feel it's clever because it maintains the decentralized nature of Bitcoin.  Part of it involves the identification scheme I mentioned, however it's not a necessity, as there is magic that I've developed that perfectly prevents gaming the system. It's really quite clever, I have to adulate about it because I'm actually quite proud of that part...

What I want to drive home though is that more processing power doesn't equate to a greater portion of the network. This was central to my design. My design is more concerned with identifying individual agents participating in the network that total hashing power. The way I account for this is unique, and doesn't have anything to do with the obvious identifiers. There is potential for abuse, but it's on par with Bitcoin's network security.

In one specific way it's superior, and that's the hypothetical 51% attack. While the 51% of Bitcoin attack is infeasible, it's still possible. With ?coin, it's most assuredly not. Let me think on this awhile and maybe I can distill it into non-technical terms that won't give it away.

[Synaptic]

Note that when I say "identifying individual agents" I don't mean breaking pseudo-anonymity. I mean it's baked into the function of the system that identifying real economic activity from automated activity is trivial. This is because the system makes certain assumptions that if resolve to being false, completely negate the intended use of ?coins to begin with.

As long as intended ?coin use resolves true, then the basis of the economic indicators will always secure the network from automated attack.

And as long as the network is secure, it can still be used for both white and black market transactions freely.  If the ?coin network security IS compromised, the state of the network reverts to essentially what the Bitcoin network is presently.

In this way, ?coins can be seen almost as an additional security layer on top of Bitcoin, geared towards merchant adoption. However there are additional advantages and features that set it even further apart from Bitcoin proper, enough that I don't even see ?coin as a Bitcoin clone.

[Synaptic]

Really?

There's THAT little interest in this particular idea?

Makes sense actually, the -coins are only popular as get-rich-quick pump and dump scams anyway, for which my ?coin would completely prevent...

[sd]

Really?

There's THAT little interest in this particular idea?

Makes sense actually, the -coins are only popular as get-rich-quick pump and dump scams anyway, for which my ?coin would completely prevent...

There is interest but without a clear plan and with no chance of an implementation this isn't going to work. New ideas are great though.

Are you saying you have some way to tell the difference between me running two miners and me running one and you running one?
Are you saying you can tell the difference between economic activity and me running a bunch of clients that just transfer money between themselves?

I don't see how you could do either of the above.

[Synaptic]

Are you saying you have some way to tell the difference between me running two miners and me running one and you running one?
Are you saying you can tell the difference between economic activity and me running a bunch of clients that just transfer money between themselves?

No, the system has no way of differentiating "miners" on the network, and it doesn't need to. "Mining" in the Bitcoin sense is of a very little importance in the ?coin system. The block rewards are generated much differently.  "Mining" will still get you ?coins, but not in the same way. That is to say, there IS an incentive to running a ?coin node besides just being able to send and receive coins, but the nature of the system ensures that it's not a method by which you will receive a greater portion of the pie by putting more nodes on the network in any significant quantity. As I said before, there is potential for abuse, but as long as there's a functioning ?coin economy, the chance of a successful attack is exceedingly negligible.

Which leads to your second question:

Yes, the system can differentiate real economic activity from artificial activity. This is a tall claim to make, assuredly. However it's not as difficult as you might expect. Again, the system makes certain assumptions that make the task much easier than accounting for every form of use that might suggest real or artificial activity. While these assumptions resolve true, certain weights are applied to certain transactions, which balance out the meaningful activity from the "noise." Hypothetically, this could be simulated, but it would have to be a extremely complex and sophisticated undertaking, as well as having an extremely large portion of the network under your control for an extended period of time (proportional to the size of the blockchain).  If such an attack were to be successful, it would mean that the ?coin economy had ALREADY failed long before the attacker(s) succeeded. In this way, if the ?coin economy were to fail then the network essentially reverts to what Bitcoin is now, with all of the same network security implications, with the added difficulty of maintaining some excruciatingly elaborate economic simulation across a majority of nodes to trick the system into believing there is still a functioning economy behind it. And at that point, who would care anyway?

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Not enough details to assess the feasibility or desirability of your system.

Perhaps some of the ideas here are relevant, where we have discussed how to reduce the amount of hashing that needs to be done for a given level of security. I suspect that your system may take into account "circulation", as I suggest here - real economic activity is determined by the total number of different coins that move around (whereas a client sending coins back and forth will draw on a limited set of coins).

[Synaptic]

Not enough details to assess the feasibility or desirability of your system.

Perhaps some of the ideas here are relevant, where we have discussed how to reduce the amount of hashing that needs to be done for a given level of security. I suspect that your system may take into account "circulation", as I suggest here - real economic activity is determined by the total number of different coins that move around (whereas a client sending coins back and forth will draw on a limited set of coins).

Yes, something akin to "proof-of-stake" is incorporated in my system, but it's executed differently than in yours and is only one facet of an overall strategy.

EDIT: Sufficed to say, you're on the right track too, and it's obvious how utterly lacking Bitcoin is in many regards.

SECOND EDIT: It should also be extremely paramount in any future crypto-currencies that "mining" be negated as a market stressor, regulator, or contributor. My design solves this elegantly, while still allowing for "mining" to be relevant, but not significant to any degree.

It's this total de-emphasis on mining that I think totally negates the possibility of my design catching on with this community, which is nothing more than a bunch of get-rich-quick maggots looking for a free ride.

[sd]

Yes, something akin to "proof-of-stake" is incorporated in my system, but it's executed differently than in yours and is only one facet of an overall strategy.

EDIT: Sufficed to say, you're on the right track too, and it's obvious how utterly lacking Bitcoin is in many regards.

SECOND EDIT: It should also be extremely paramount in any future crypto-currencies that "mining" be negated as a market stressor, regulator, or contributor. My design solves this elegantly, while still allowing for "mining" to be relevant, but not significant to any degree.

It's this total de-emphasis on mining that I think totally negates the possibility of my design catching on with this community, which is nothing more than a bunch of get-rich-quick maggots looking for a free ride.

This sounds interesting but we need the details. Maybe you should patent this? I can't think of any other way to tell us about this and still have any ownership over it.

I don't see how you could carry out some of the things you claim you can carry out but without the details I've just got guesswork to go on.

[Synaptic]

Yes, something akin to "proof-of-stake" is incorporated in my system, but it's executed differently than in yours and is only one facet of an overall strategy.

EDIT: Sufficed to say, you're on the right track too, and it's obvious how utterly lacking Bitcoin is in many regards.

SECOND EDIT: It should also be extremely paramount in any future crypto-currencies that "mining" be negated as a market stressor, regulator, or contributor. My design solves this elegantly, while still allowing for "mining" to be relevant, but not significant to any degree.

It's this total de-emphasis on mining that I think totally negates the possibility of my design catching on with this community, which is nothing more than a bunch of get-rich-quick maggots looking for a free ride.

This sounds interesting but we need the details. Maybe you should patent this? I can't think of any other way to tell us about this and still have any ownership over it.

I don't see how you could carry out some of the things you claim you can carry out but without the details I've just got guesswork to go on.

Patenting would be too much trouble.  I'm a busy man, I run a small business and have a family.  Just researching prior art would be a huge undertaking, and the application even more-so. Even then, there's no guarantee the patent would be granted, and I'm very unclear on how basing my invention on parts of the Bitcoin code would work out in the end.

Even if I were to patent it, then what?  We'd still be in the same position of needing someone to do the glut of the code necessary to publish a program...

But, if there's any programmers who would like to code such a project with me, then maybe this thread might serve a purpose.

[sd]

Patenting would be too much trouble.  I'm a busy man, I run a small business and have a family.  Just researching prior art would be a huge undertaking, and the application even more-so. Even then, there's no guarantee the patent would be granted, and I'm very unclear on how basing my invention on parts of the Bitcoin code would work out in the end.

Even if I were to patent it, then what?  We'd still be in the same position of needing someone to do the glut of the code necessary to publish a program...

But, if there's any programmers who would like to code such a project with me, then maybe this thread might serve a purpose.

So what's left? You either forget about it, publish it for free, code it yourself, or pay someone else to code it. You are not going to find someone to code it for you for free unless you can convince them it's a really good idea first, and that would require telling them all the details.

How about coding a prototype in something easy like python? It's still a serious undertaking but you should be able to do it with enough time.

[Synaptic]

Patenting would be too much trouble.  I'm a busy man, I run a small business and have a family.  Just researching prior art would be a huge undertaking, and the application even more-so. Even then, there's no guarantee the patent would be granted, and I'm very unclear on how basing my invention on parts of the Bitcoin code would work out in the end.

Even if I were to patent it, then what?  We'd still be in the same position of needing someone to do the glut of the code necessary to publish a program...

But, if there's any programmers who would like to code such a project with me, then maybe this thread might serve a purpose.

So what's left? You either forget about it, publish it for free, code it yourself, or pay someone else to code it. You are not going to find someone to code it for you for free unless you can convince them it's a really good idea first, and that would require telling them all the details.

How about coding a prototype in something easy like python? It's still a serious undertaking but you should be able to do it with enough time.

I've actually been thinking of doing a prototype in Ruby...

We'll see I guess. Probably won't become much.

I'm still happy to answer any more questions as best I can.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

It's this total de-emphasis on mining that I think totally negates the possibility of my design catching on with this community, which is nothing more than a bunch of get-rich-quick maggots looking for a free ride.

It's not supposed to catch on with the Ixcoin community, it's supposed to catch on with the Bitcoin community.


Anyway, I'm not sure I understand the problem... Do you plan to profit from being the creator of this currency? I don't see how that's possible with a decentralized currency. You should write down your system, this way you can take credit for its invention before someone beats you to it.

[Synaptic]

It's this total de-emphasis on mining that I think totally negates the possibility of my design catching on with this community, which is nothing more than a bunch of get-rich-quick maggots looking for a free ride.

It's not supposed to catch on with the Ixcoin community, it's supposed to catch on with the Bitcoin community.


Anyway, I'm not sure I understand the problem... Do you plan to profit from being the creator of this currency? I don't see how that's possible with a decentralized currency. You should write down your system, this way you can take credit for its invention before someone beats you to it.

I've already written it down. I filled about 30 pages of a college ruled notebook with the spec. It right behind me in the filing cabinet...

And I would profit because I would be first to market with associated services. My goal isn't to create a currency I can profit off of directly, like the shit-headed Bitcoiners, but a cryptocurrency so throughly desirable that the business services (which are 100% separate from the currency itself) I also have planned would likely be quite profitable for me.

However, it's important that I be the originator of the initial currency, to make sure that it's not altered before it's released and hopefully adopted.

I fear something along the lines of releasing the spec, and some asshole creating an alternative chain based on my design that omits the miner controls to allow for the disgusting profiteering and speculation of Bitcoin, which completely debases the point, and gives ?coin a bad name before it even gets off the ground.