Appeal to the community for the development of MC2 and related technologies

[tacotime]

Short version

I'm currently a graduate student who is planning to move into hacking on cryptocurrencies full time.  I've been an active member of the community for approximately 3 years now and have conceptualised cryptocurrency ideas through the input of the community on a working project called MC2.  I have the backing of Conformal Systems, owners of Coinvoice and creators of btcd, who will provide quality control for code written in the implementation of these ideas.

(1) What models work for the community to fund cryptocurrency development and make it worthwhile for you to contribute? One model explored so far is the idea of stake tickets redeemed for coins in the developed cryptocurrency. Are there any others that work better?
(2) What do you want to see from a project like this? What kind of engagement do you want to see? What kind of structures should we build to accommodate what's lacking in the community?

I will be at the Texas Bitcoin Conference if anyone would like to meet up with me there and discuss things with me, and I'm trying to be more active in my IRC channel (#mc2) and -wizards on freenode.  As I live in the greater Toronto area, I will also be making an effort to attend the local meets at Bitcoin Decentral on a regular basis if this becomes my full time work.  I haven't had the opportunity to delve into cryptocurrencies nearly as much as I'd like to, and I'm hoping with the support of the community, I can make this into a career.

Long Version

Most of you here know of me, have seen me post over the past couple of years, have heard of my specifications for MC2, or have used GUIMiner-scrypt.

I'm hoping that the end of this month will mark the beginning of a transitioning period in my life: the move away from graduate school and into professional cryptocurrency development.

After much review of my situation over the past month, I have decided that I would prefer to drop out of my graduate program and code for the community if possible.

Likewise, I don't want this money to come from a company -- I want it to come from the community.  There has been a large amount of interest lined up in the early donation of BTC to me and my developers to create MC2, with the promise of stake tickets (eventual coins) in return.  This is somewhat similar to the Ethereum fundraiser, but I don't know if it's considered the ideal situation for you guys, or what you consider to be a fair and balanced initial distribution in exchange for the input required to pay the developers.  Most certainly I did not want something like 5% or 10% of the total quantity of coins being in a central foundation's hands by 5 or 10 years time.  I intended to cap individual contributions to $5 k USD, to allow group buys on the forum for smaller quantities through some of these eligible individuals, and to cap contributions by developers themselves to $10 k USD.

I want you guys' feedback on what you think is far and reasonable, for instance, the premine perhaps being 3% of the total amount of coin issued after 10 years, whether or not the code should be initially released FOSS to prevent forking, and so on.  If it's not released FOSS, we will allow periodic audits by security firms and trusted members of the community prior to and after release, until the period it becomes FOSS.

Basically, though, the people who offered to help me in the beginning and who've stood beside me and supported me and my ideas will be the first ones allowed to donate.  And, I think that's fair.

There are many ways this money could be stored.  I think the best idea is to put it in P2SH multisig addresses, where the sender transmits it to this address and in order for it to be spent the sender, myself, and whoever other trusted members of the community we choose will all have to sign for the money before it will be sent anywhere.  To mitigate volatility, we can also transfer a small amount of BTC to a P2SH address to use as a deposit, that goes towards the full amount required in fiat later.  In this way, we can use the blockchain as the escrow for the community funds, so that even if you send us the money, we can never spend it to fund ourselves without your consent later.  In this way, we can also schedule the transmission of funds on an as needed basis.

If/when I start working on full time development, I would give major contributers a phone number with which to contact me, and ready access to communicate with me over IRC as well to keep the development process as transparent as possible.  Distribution of funds would be on an as needed basis: if one of my developers needs to get paid for the month, we would contact the sig holder of the multisig address, and move a small amount of money at a time in exchange for a small amount of tickets at a time, and people would know exactly where their money was going.

Even though my quoted starting wage was $60-80 k USD, I'm not comfortable starting at the high end for the community's sake, because I don't know how this will turn out.  I will commit to these things:
1.) I will request a starting wage of $60 k USD via donations to begin work on this project in March for a 1 year duration.  As I want some stake in MC2 as well, I'll only ask for $50 k USD and myself assume $10 k USD of stake tickets (as if I had donated $10 k USD myself).
2.) I will be the lowest paid programmer on my team.
3.) If for some reason the project falls through, any code generated non-publicly will be released to the community and remaining funds will be returned to their original owners.

I want to make the stipulation that the community will be hiring me through donation, and that there is no promise of future value for any prospective premine system, and no promise that working code will be delivered at the end of this.  It's a donation to help fund innovation in the community and to help generate more cryptocurrency developers with the experience required to maintain the financial systems of the future.

To leave my graduate studies would be a gigantic leap for me, and leaves me with no real guarantee of financial stability beyond the next year (at least, from my current vantage point).

So, how do you all, as a community, feel about me working for some of you for the quantities of funds?  How do you feel about small premines distributed over a series of years being used to fund a new coin?  What else do you want to see in launches of funding for new coins?  What do and don't you agree with?

I'm not a marketing person or really even a businessperson, so I'm not going to sell this to you as anything but what it is -- a system of donations that goes to funding some research and implementation in the cryptocurrency community.  It's my dream to work modestly for the benefit of the community, and to learn progressively more about cryptography and novel decentralized payment systems.

------------------------------

Contact me via BitMessage: BM-NBKELZ4Ri3paEF71Yr2xxp3wFB7uioZ9
or by IRC: irc.conformal.com:6697 (SSL required) in #mc2 or freenode #mc2

Original MC2 thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=169204

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[JessicaMILFson]

You have my support Taco.

You've been an outstanding active member of the community with many active contributions. The whitepaper that you presented is also solid and this endeavor is not a pump and dump scheme at all. You really want to develop the best coin possible.

For that, I am in.

[xwebnetwork]

You have had and will continue to have my support.

[Stark-Fujikawa]

Sent you a few messages via pm and bitmessage. Still behind this project and hoping to contribute as soon as I can.

[hellscabane]

You definitely have my support on this! I feel that if you're not satisfied with your graduate studies then do what will bring satisfaction; especially since you have a route that you can pursue right now. One of the biggest shames in life is to pull back and be afraid to chase a dream.

You've done a bunch of awesome things for the community (just regarding alt cryptos: your posts on making a scrypt mining rig and then following that with a scrypt GUI-Miner)! And your whitepaper for MC2 is really solid and you did great discussing the questions in that thread about the concept and the whitepaper. I'm sure there will be tons of support for you on this.

[edok]

I commend you and completely support this. If you ever need marketing help (which I doubt) I'd be happy to lend my services. Question, if you are able to create it sooner than a year will you release it?

[JessicaMILFson]

What's the distribution chart and ETA for the project?

[MsCollec]

I'm a huge fan, I will continue to support MC2

[Lawyer]

Here's the whitepaper in question:

http://mc2.xwebnetwork.com/storage/mc2_0.05.pdf

[tacotime]

Thanks for all the nice words, everyone.  I really appreciate them.

It's not exactly a donation, as we do get coins in return for our contributions, maybe he will post the crowdfunding rubic for you guys to see.

Sure,
This is what I had going out in the newsletter:

Code:

Tier	Donations (USD)		Tickets		Coins		USD per Coin
1	0 – 250,000		92,160		23,040,000	0.0108506944
2	250,000 – 375,000	40,320		10,080,000	0.01240079365
3	375,000 – 437,500	17,640		4,410,000	0.0141723356
4	437,500 – 500,000	13,720		3,430,000	0.01822157434

Total issued via stake tickets: 40,960,000

To compare, here are the amount of total coins from PoW and PoS combined every year for 10 years:

Code:

Year	Coins
1	187,006,965
2	359,622,322
3	518,953,616
4	666,023,156
5	801,774,578
6	927,078,896
7	1,042,740,095
8	1,149,500,286
9	1,248,044,469
10	1,339,004,928

This image shows the estimated percentage of coins generated through the sales of early stake tickets:


Donations would be first come, first serve, and coins get more expensive as we move past out initial minimum funding.

We're capped at $0.5 m USD.

Individual contributions are capped at $5k USD.

Developer contributions are capped at $10k USD and are removed from what they would be paid (including for myself).

These coins are redeemed between years 0-3 in an approximately linear distribution (so that no one donating can immediately dump a mass amount of coins into the market).

[tacotime]

I commend you and completely support this. If you ever need marketing help (which I doubt) I'd be happy to lend my services. Question, if you are able to create it sooner than a year will you release it?

It will be launched as soon as the PoS and "finite mini blockchain" systems are complete and 100% functional.  Decentralized reserve system will be an addon that will be launched afterwards in a version update.

What's the distribution chart and ETA for the project?

See above.  Conformal thinks with 2-3 more skilled devs that we can launch in 6 or so months after testing and security audits, with the reserve system launching in about 12 months and receiving the same treatment.

[_ingsoc]

I'll put up a form tomorrow if anyone wants to submit name suggestions. MC2 has worked well for a project name, but if we're thinking about a larger general audience (and the future outside of Bitcointalk), we'd need something that works there. Once we have that ironed out, we can set up all the community avenues and get this thing going for March! You can also PM names to me if you'd like in the meantime.

[JessicaMILFson]

Thanks for all the nice words, everyone.  I really appreciate them.

It's not exactly a donation, as we do get coins in return for our contributions, maybe he will post the crowdfunding rubic for you guys to see.

Sure,
This is what I had going out in the newsletter:

Code:

Tier	Donations (USD)		Tickets		Coins		USD per Coin
1	0 – 250,000		92,160		23,040,000	0.0108506944
2	250,000 – 375,000	40,320		10,080,000	0.01240079365
3	375,000 – 437,500	17,640		4,410,000	0.0141723356
4	437,500 – 500,000	13,720		3,430,000	0.01822157434

Total issued via stake tickets: 40,960,000

To compare, here are the amount of total coins from PoW and PoS combined every year for 10 years:

Code:

Year	Coins
1	187,006,965
2	359,622,322
3	518,953,616
4	666,023,156
5	801,774,578
6	927,078,896
7	1,042,740,095
8	1,149,500,286
9	1,248,044,469
10	1,339,004,928

This image shows the estimated percentage of coins generated through the sales of early stake tickets:


Donations would be first come, first serve, and coins get more expensive as we move past out initial minimum funding.

We're capped at $0.5 m USD.

Individual contributions are capped at $5k USD.

Developer contributions are capped at $10k USD and are removed from what they would be paid (including for myself).

These coins are redeemed between years 0-3 in an approximately linear distribution (so that no one donating can immediately dump a mass amount of coins into the market).

That's a lot of coins generated per annum. Do you think it's really best to do it this way? Market Cap would be huge in order to get significant traction.

[tacotime]

That's a lot of coins generated per annum. Do you think it's really best to do it this way? Market Cap would be huge in order to get significant traction.

Well, it can be adjusted by an order of magnitude in base 10 if you guys want it to be, e.g. 18,700,697 coins in the first year.  This doesn't affect market capitalization against USD or BTC though, just the price per coin.

[Luckybit]

Thanks for all the nice words, everyone.  I really appreciate them.

It's not exactly a donation, as we do get coins in return for our contributions, maybe he will post the crowdfunding rubic for you guys to see.

Sure,
This is what I had going out in the newsletter:

Code:

Tier	Donations (USD)		Tickets		Coins		USD per Coin
1	0 – 250,000		92,160		23,040,000	0.0108506944
2	250,000 – 375,000	40,320		10,080,000	0.01240079365
3	375,000 – 437,500	17,640		4,410,000	0.0141723356
4	437,500 – 500,000	13,720		3,430,000	0.01822157434

Total issued via stake tickets: 40,960,000

To compare, here are the amount of total coins from PoW and PoS combined every year for 10 years:

Code:

Year	Coins
1	187,006,965
2	359,622,322
3	518,953,616
4	666,023,156
5	801,774,578
6	927,078,896
7	1,042,740,095
8	1,149,500,286
9	1,248,044,469
10	1,339,004,928

This image shows the estimated percentage of coins generated through the sales of early stake tickets:


Donations would be first come, first serve, and coins get more expensive as we move past out initial minimum funding.

We're capped at $0.5 m USD.

Individual contributions are capped at $5k USD.

Developer contributions are capped at $10k USD and are removed from what they would be paid (including for myself).

These coins are redeemed between years 0-3 in an approximately linear distribution (so that no one donating can immediately dump a mass amount of coins into the market).

That's a lot of coins generated per annum. Do you think it's really best to do it this way? Market Cap would be huge in order to get significant traction.

If you want to make the coin attractive to investors the most important factor isn't the total number of coins. The total number of coins can be infinite or have a low cap depending on the psychological impact you want to have. Peercoin for example has an infinite total number but inflation is limited at the rate of Moore's law. The ASICs being used will eventually give Peercoin among the lowest inflation rates there is and so it's actually a better investment than Litecoin.

The area where there is no room for negotiation is the inflation rate. The inflation rate should be kept nice and low and taper off after the first year so that while you don't have to put a cap on the total amount of coins (or if you have a cap it does not have to be something you reach in the next 100 years).

For example if the cap is 50 million but the inflation rate is 500,000 coins a year it's going to take over 100 years to reach 50 million. I think the only reason coins have to inflate is to attract new people to the idea. Bitcoin had to inflate at a high rate early on because no one knew what Bitcoins were and they had to be given away to get people to use them.

Now if you have a high inflation rate all it causes is pump and dumps. It's not like altcoins need marketing anymore because everyone knows about cryptocurrency now.

40,960,000 coins issued through stake tickets is a lot. My opinion is let the demand determine the supply. But it can reach a return on investment if the inflation rate from mining is kept low. These are just my opinions and everyone is free to have their own.

[tacotime]

40,960,000 coins issued through stake tickets is a lot. My opinion is let the demand determine the supply. But it can reach a return on investment if the inflation rate from mining is kept low. These are just my opinions and everyone is free to have their own.

Cunicula was originally in favour of stemming the initial issuance to a period of 10 years.  In the paper, it's described as 27 years to 1%, after which the inflation of the supply because to increase exponentially (but slowly), similar to fiat but slower.  This will make mining continually attractive, because it does not rely on fees.  Mainly it's designed to to supplement Bitcoin as a goto point inbetween that of equity and actual fiat (in response to criticisms like these), and indeed, with the decentralized reserve system, intends to have an in place public oracle system to hold fiat within the chain itself.

Time-to-1% inflation (TT1%?) can be tweaked to whatever, so if you guys want a faster distribution, this can be done.  Initial issuance must also be tweaked if you want it to stay at a 3%/10y target.  It is a delicate issue though; adjusting decreases in inflation so that they occur very rapidly can lead to accusations of a ponzi scheme e.g. protoshares.

[JessicaMILFson]

Nice to see that there's an active discussion going on. How do others that have posted in this thread feel about the current inflation and issuance?

[Stark-Fujikawa]

I still would like to translate the whitepaper into Dutch. Tacotime mentioned I should ask ingsoc_ for the file, so I figured I'd ask here now that I think about it. Has the paper been finalized yet?

[tacotime]

I still would like to translate the whitepaper into Dutch. Tacotime mentioned I should ask ingsoc_ for the file, so I figured I'd ask here now that I think about it. Has the paper been finalized yet?

Yes, you can ask him for it now.  There are a few changes that need to be made to the PoS file for it to work that I've realized since then, and the PoW method is not finalized, but it should still be able to stand on its own.  The final version will come out with the coin on release.

[cubicdissection]

I've not heard of you before but I read the whitepaper and your ideas look great.  I'd be interested in contributing.