[ANN] Catcoin - 0.9.1.1 - Old thread. Locked. Please use 0.9.2 thread.

[SlimePuppy]

CATs - you have a problem.  Yes, another problem.  It's not the difficulty adjustment, though a likely fix for that is on testnet.  The problem is that one of the former dev-team members has gone rogue.

Hozer installed and ran hacked code on one of three CAT seed nodes and on at least one personal catcoind.  He left it running in spite of the dev team's promise to Maverickthenoob as team leader that we would ONLY run code that's approved and pushed to catcoinofficial/catcoinrelease.  He left it running after admitting that it could cause forks on the network.  He left it running after I told him to take his nodes off-line, after Zerodrama told him to experiment only on testnet, and after Blaksmith told him to run only approved code.

On Tuesday, 7th October, the CAT network broke into at least four forks after Hozer's code, which is designed to reject blocks with too short a block time (an arbitrary choice made only by him), rejected validly mined blocks and cheated miners out of their mining profit.

Zerodrama, myself, and Blaksmith moved all of our mining equipment to GeekHash.org (losing personal time and income), and Blak leased mining equipment so that we could 51% the network back together.  It took us well into the night US Eastern time to get things stabilized.

Two hours after we thought we got things put back together, Cryptsy fell off the network and we had to work with them to get back in sync.  While some of my coins returned, I've still got about 200 CAT that are likely permanently lost.

As of today, Hozer still will not acknowledge that he broke a cardinal rule of the dev team, or that he did anything wrong by running hacked code on mainnet (and a seed node at that!), or that he owes anyone even an apology.

I've been working with Blaksmith on testnet, brainstorming fixes, testing variations, and planning with Zerodrama for deployment of a fork in time for CAT's first birthday.  Unfortunately, Hozer thinks the only way to fix the coin is to become a centralized gate-keeper by judging miners as good and bad, rejecting blocks from 'bad' miners, and by hard-coding an arbitrary 9-minute block minimum time and by rejecting valid blocks from valid miners.

The dev team does NOT condone or agree with Hozer's behavior, his poor judgement, or his tactics to either take control of or destroy this coin.  We do not agree with centralized control, arbitrary time limits, or other tactics that damage the trust of the block chain or crypto in general.

At a personal level, I considered Troy to be a friend since early on in my involvement with CAT.  He's lost my trust, my respect, and my patience.

If there's any community left, it's time to stand up and choose a way forward for CAT.  Please make your voices heard.  Thanks.

Andy

[hozer]

why cant we just get the difficulty adjustment corrected, there has got to be a dev out there who can do this surely? Is there anyone willing to do so just for the sake of this coin. The potential was massive here when originally released 'we were out to challenge dogecoin' i have a holding in this coin and still believe it can come back to life 

I have two possible solutions, however they have both been deemed as heretical by the Catcoin central planning committee.

However, since this is a decentralized system, if anyone would like to try the code I have published, they are free to do so.

You can choose either #catcoin-dev or #catoshi-dev on IRC, or join both, and make you own decisions on what approach you think will correct the difficulty adjustments.

[hozer]

Two hours after we thought we got things put back together, Cryptsy fell off the network and we had to work with them to get back in sync.  While some of my coins returned, I've still got about 200 CAT that are likely permanently lost.

If the community finds it valuable I will re-open the fork insurance process. I will need txids and ideally a debug.log from the catcoind you sent and/or received the potentially lost coins from, and a technical engineering contact at the exchange to get the appropriate log data.

[skillface]

I think we need to see more updates here on BTCTalk. I don't particularly feel like having to return to IRC in the hope that I'll see updates instead of devs and other community figures flinging shit at each other and generally acting like children all over again.

[hozer]

I think we need to see more updates here on BTCTalk. I don't particularly feel like having to return to IRC in the hope that I'll see updates instead of devs and other community figures flinging shit at each other and generally acting like children all over again.

I like to say cats are not herd animals, and the result is we are having a catfight on how to best fix the difficulty adjustments. I had hoped that with the low market cap that making some fundamental changes to the reward structure and denial-of-service defense code would be easier. But it's not, and as far as I can tell my only option now is post the code, and let the users and miners decide.

The result seems to be a lot like when Martin Luther raised criticisms of the Catholic Church and was exocommunicated, or when Edward Snowden released some embarrassing information and was called a traitor for it. Instead of fixing anything, there is FUD and namecalling, and this is repeating the same nonsense we had 6 months ago.

When I originally advocated for #catcoin-dev, there was so much noise from FUD and basically catfighting it was impossible to get anything done here. Now it's impossible to get anything done on IRC, and since I didn't bother to register the channel with freenode. Now the channel has been 51%ed by people who don't write code. There's one other cat-owner who has posted working code, and I respect his opinion, although sometimes we differ. But when we differ, the conversations are generally reasonable and grown-up. What I would like to see is a forum (IRC or otherwise), and to be a moderator, you have to point to the code you've released.

Or we do like a distributed system probably should and have multiple implementations instead of one code to rule them all. The problem is that puts more responsibility on the end-user to decide which code to run.

[hozer]

If the owner of catcoin address 9Uueyr4T8dmzeZHNhYPjYdZbPpxmE9tUMh is willing to modify their miner code to generate blocks with a minimum timestamp gap of between 1 and 9 minutes, we can unstick the blockchain and have more reasonable block times with no hardfork or orphans.

( see http://catchain.info/block/be27362249fade88cd6e51197b563e1f1dd7e13a82a5b8515c36f5d44830c926 )

Please take a look at my code on bitbucket if you need any assistance. I'dalso be willing to do a commercial GPL-exception license for the Catoshi client if you can help us out. I think the market reaction for having stable block times again will be well worth the effort.

[etblvu1]

I think we need to have a way to measure consensus on how to move forward with Catcoin. I don't think it works to give everyone equal weight (as in straight democracy), because some people are more affected than others by others what happens to this coin, and some people are more needed than others for the continued development and support of this coin. I respectfully suggest that loudness of the voice should not be the measure of anything. I propose that a small working group be formed, consisting only of those with substantial provable holdings in Catcoins, and those who have done actual coding on the Catcoin source code or related project. Input from others would be welcome as well and taken under advisement, but this core group has the most at stake (and has the power to affect the future of the coin), and should have final say. Proceeding in this way would cut down on a lot of drama and politics, and get us back on track. Everyone in the community - please comment.

Etblvu1

[vondi1122]

Keep this coin alive boys!

[hozer]

I think we need to have a way to measure consensus on how to move forward with Catcoin. I don't think it works to give everyone equal weight (as in straight democracy), because some people are more affected than others by others what happens to this coin, and some people are more needed than others for the continued development and support of this coin. I respectfully suggest that loudness of the voice should not be the measure of anything. I propose that a small working group be formed, consisting only of those with substantial provable holdings in Catcoins, and those who have done actual coding on the Catcoin source code or related project. Input from others would be welcome as well and taken under advisement, but this core group has the most at stake (and has the power to affect the future of the coin), and should have final say. Proceeding in this way would cut down on a lot of drama and politics, and get us back on track. Everyone in the community - please comment.

Etblvu1

If we're going to have a catcoin central planning committee, then let's at least make the process to be in the cabal transparent and open to anyone who wants to:

a) prove their existing catcoin holdings
b) buy cheap catcoins (and prove it)
c) buy dedicated miners, and prove you keep them mining catcoins, rather than profit switching
d) post code that does any of the above, or improves the return on investment of the dedicated catcoin miners
e) post any code at all

Also, you know something is very wrong if every working client on the network reports the same version string. That, by definition, is NOT a decentralized system.

[hozer]

I think we need to have a way to measure consensus on how to move forward with Catcoin.

The brilliance of blockchains is that consensus is measured by the blockchain proof-of-work. (in other words, the 'log2_work=' output in the debug.log file)

The way we move forward is by posting proof-of-work, and in a decentralized distributed system, we all make our own choices about what code to run to mine those proof-of-works.

May the most profitable code win.

[etblvu1]

The brilliance of blockchains is that consensus is measured by the blockchain proof-of-work. (in other words, the 'log2_work=' output in the debug.log file)

Here is something to consider - I think the idea of the blockchain being consensus based is more aspirational rather than factual. With the blockchain technology, we  can aspire to a stable situation where you have a massive number of miners and users, such that it can be said it is consensus based. But the reality is that if there are competing blockchains, it can create a lot of chaos, dissatisfied users, loss of coins, etc., so it is better to work on finding a consensus at the human level rather than at the code level. Otherwise what we get is not consensus but whoever can afford to 51% attack everyone else (which in practice means any whale that wants to get involved can single-handedly take over the coin).

Once we have the coin to the point where it has stable 10 minute blocks and functionally finally where it should have been all along, we'll have everyone running the code "by consensus" and it won't be a problem with chaos or contention. The challenge right now is to get to that point.

Etblvu1

[etblvu1]

I suggest a core team consisting of the three most active developers who have contributed code to the source code of the coin or related project; plus three largest holders of Catcoins who can prove their holdings. For any changes to take effect, it would require majority vote, which means 4 out of 6 votes. So it would be hard for any major changes to come to the coin without substantial buy-in from both developers and major coin holders. Once we have a stable coin, we can figure out a long-term governing structure, but this would give us at least the hope of moving forward with minimum of politics and chaos. Community members - please voice your opinions.

[hozer]

I suggest a core team consisting of the three most active developers who have contributed code to the source code of the coin or related project; plus three largest holders of Catcoins who can prove their holdings. For any changes to take effect, it would require majority vote, which means 4 out of 6 votes. So it would be hard for any major changes to come to the coin without substantial buy-in from both developers and major coin holders. Once we have a stable coin, we can figure out a long-term governing structure, but this would give us at least the hope of moving forward with minimum of politics and chaos. Community members - please voice your opinions.

I think what you are describing is a reasonable human-oriented approach to the problem. With 3 coders and 3 coin holders that have a good working relationship, you might disagree but at least be able to understand each other and have reasonable discussions, and then agree to work together to ensure that the group always has the capability to deploy checkpoints or lease mining to maintain the blockchain consensus. Another alternative could also be 2 coin holders, 2 coders, and 2 miners who can demonstrate they have individually mined say 10% of the blocks. But how do we include merchants or places that might want to sell goods for catcoin in this governance group? This seems to be a very important thing we are currently missing.

What about the following: always 2 coders (if we can't get at least 2 coders, the coin holder should hire someone), and 3 to 5 more people who can prove one of the following:
* large coin holdings (investor)
* mining capacity (by showing what they have mined)
* transactions (by selling/buying/trading something else with catcoin)

The ideal way I see to do this is open up your catcoin client and vote on changesets that developers have proposed. I'd be willing to implement this in the Catoshi client, but it's going to take awhile, and the code will be AGPLv3, which may not be usable for some exchanges and merchant businesses unless they buy a GPL exception license from me.

In the meantime, we can start with 2 large coin holders, and maybe mining capacity. But until those people come forward and we get a forum acceptable for discussion (is reddit acceptable because we have up/downvotes?) , we are in the wild-west where control of catcoin is determined by who's willing to 51% it.

[hozer]

I suggest a core team consisting of the three most active developers who have contributed code to the source code of the coin or related project;

etblvu, if I remember correctly you know .net, can you install https://github.com/Falkvinge/Swarmops on a server and we can see if it works?

[etblvu1]

Hozer - I agree in principle that the developer needs some way to monetize the development effort - but I respectfully suggest requiring people to buy licenses can be counterproductive (as in, exchanges may drop the coin, which would not make anybody happy). One idea is to allocate 20% of mining proceeds at the discretion of the miner, to any one or more of qualified wallets held by nonprofit entities (such as cat charities), plus we can add on that list, development team. Then there can be a regular stream of revenue, and depending on how good a job the developer does, more miners will choose to donate to the development effort (versus other nonprofits, probably we should focus on helping out literal cats, so we'd get a nice list of cat-related nonprofits participating). Your thoughts.

[hozer]

Hozer - I agree in principle that the developer needs some way to monetize the development effort - but I respectfully suggest requiring people to buy licenses can be counterproductive (as in, exchanges may drop the coin, which would not make anybody happy). One idea is to allocate 20% of mining proceeds at the discretion of the miner, to any one or more of qualified wallets held by nonprofit entities (such as cat charities), plus we can add on that list, development team. Then there can be a regular stream of revenue, and depending on how good a job the developer does, more miners will choose to donate to the development effort (versus other nonprofits, probably we should focus on helping out literal cats, so we'd get a nice list of cat-related nonprofits participating). Your thoughts.

I'd be happy to assist *another developer* to implement whatever is needed in an MIT licensed reference client. I would probably even submit my patches under said license. But if I'm the only one writing code, it's going to have a viral copyleft license so I can charge people who profit from my work by including it in something else.

What I do find rather encouraging is the market response today, and the additional mining that has shown up. I'd like to believe the market price bump is because we have been reasonable in our discussions here, AND the mining is because of the price increase. But I have no way of knowing either unless the buyers or miners say so.

But, while I'm speculating, I'd say the posts on this thread today almost doubled Catcoin's market cap.

Think what we can do if we can collaboratively develop a real, honest, transparent, and profitable business plan to build the Catcoin trade economy.

[cisahasa]

will cat stay at scrypt?

[etblvu1]

will cat stay at scrypt?

I think in all probability this aspect will not be changing any time soon. I think the focus right now will be on getting the block timings to regularize around 10 minutes.

Etblvu1

[etblvu1]

Another alternative could also be 2 coin holders, 2 coders, and 2 miners who can demonstrate they have individually mined say 10% of the blocks. But how do we include merchants or places that might want to sell goods for catcoin in this governance group? This seems to be a very important thing we are currently missing.

I think there are a lot of legitimate stakeholders in Catcoin, and it is hard to quantify their stakes - some have put in a lot of sweat equity, but do not hold very many coins; some have put in a lot of effort but have very little mining hashpower; some have more massive mining power, but may have engaged in profit switching at is hard to prove.

My thought is that it is pretty hard to fake if someone has done any substantial coding on Catcoin or related projects; and it is hard to fake how many Catcoins someone controls. That is why I think these two categories should get representation of 3 each. People who have a stake in Catcoins who want into this group can work on buying up coins to get into it that way (thereby helping to capitalize the coin market), or get busy coding (or sponsor a coder who agrees to let the sponsor sit in his position; thereby helping to jump-start the catcoin development process that has been stagnant for awhile). And also, by making this group consist solely of coders and coinholders, does not mean everyone else is shut out - it just means others contribute suggestions which will be taken under advisement by the core group.

I think code contribution is easy to verify and measure; and current coin holding is easy to verify and measure. Does anyone have ideas for any other criteria that is easy to very and measure? Otherwise, I think 3 each of these two would do nicely for our core group.

Etblvu1

[etblvu1]

I suggest a core team consisting of the three most active developers who have contributed code to the source code of the coin or related project;

etblvu, if I remember correctly you know .net, can you install https://github.com/Falkvinge/Swarmops on a server and we can see if it works?

I am taking a look at this - looks interesting - but also am not sure if I will have enough time to run it through its paces enough to put it into production. But will see what I can do.

Etblvu1