The Cypherfunks[FUNK]: a coin for a global band! Talking v2. Join! 80+ songs

[simondlr]

It will be okay Simon, the coin may have broken but the idea is priceless. My brother is getting married today, so I'll be busy until next week. Until then cheer up bro! Everything will work out fine.

Thanks man! Have fun!

So. Seems the coin is hashing along okay.

What I'd like to try and you guys have to work with me here (say it's stupid or awesome), is perhaps relaunch the coin. Have had several people tell me they didn't get involved due to the high coin supply. Another thing is: the mining part as distribution mechanism is not correlated at all to the "music making" part. So while PoW is cool for (reasonably) "fair" distribution, it doesn't have anything to do with the music making.

So, here's what I'm thinking. We relaunch the coin and do the following.

We create a pool of money that is for the FUNK1 owners. Anything after a certain block is not valid. Anything before a certain block IS valid. If you BURN the old FUNK (send it an non-usable address to destroy it), and prove you owned that address it was sent from (signing the key), I will distribute from this pool, the amount you are owed. This will be kept open for at least 6 months.

The coin supply will be much lower. Max 4 million (after PoW). After that, it will be moved to PoS with an inflation of 1% - 8%. Proof of Stake has additional incentives in this ecosystem, because 1) those who have FUNK, gets more FUNK. In other words, those musicians who have been tipped the most, will get more over time. It rewards the musicians, not the miners. We will have much more time as we don't have to contend with the inflationary pressures anymore. Music making takes time. Days, weeks, and even months. Pressure from markets need to be more relaxed. Keeping the coin supply lower, means we can hopefully also stay in the BTC markets. It's annoying to have to buy LTC or Doge to buy/sell FUNK.

So. The split will be as follows. 2M will be divided amongst the previous owners. A set exchange rate will be determined once it's decided at which block FUNK1 will end. Then for 4 weeks, we will have a PoW stage, where the rest of the 2M will be mined. From then onwards, it will be pure PoS.

I consider this pretty decent. Those who stuck around. Those who were vested in it have 2M of the new coins (if they burn it). But we want new blood and incentives for new people to mine and get involved and thus release 50% to them.

The PoW stage will hopefully be multi-algo (if we can find a coin that has done in such a way), otherwise we'll find a scrypt or X11 coin and fork from there.

So, at the end, we will hopefully have a much better "coin" part:

1) More time. We don't have to contend with a huge influx of coins the whole time.
2) Musicians can earn more FUNK through staking, not the miners.
3) Less supply so we stay in the BTC markets (not into LTC or Doge).
4) A second go!

Any ideas, or thoughts, or changes you can recommend, please do. I'll try and find time to get around to the technical parts. Once we agree on a roadmap, I will make it official. I will then dev the coin to match the requirements. And from then I will announce at which block the old FUNK won't be able to be exchanged to the new FUNK. Then when the block hits, I will then announce the date of the new coin's launch.

[jwinterm]

I think it's a pretty good plan. Not so crazy about only four week mining period, as that seems pretty short, but I guess we've already seen that maybe we don't want mining to go on for four years, so maybe that is a happy medium. Maybe we can just make much smaller reward, and make it a bit longer, or halve after every four weeks or something. I like the multi-algo idea, and I think we should try and get some cpu only algo to make it accessible to more people (but then things become complicated and maybe less accessible to non-nerd people). Anyway, I'll give it some more thought and try to post a bit longer reply in next couple days.

[n00bnoxious]

I agree with the majority of what you've said here entirely. The only concern I have about any of it is the max 8% interest... Make sure you've taken into consideration the inflation rates of fiat currencies.... Countries with 8% inflation are NOT financially healthy. Inflation doesn't mean "free money" as everybody seems to think, it actually devalues your currency pretty hugely - as we've seen by the accidental inflation of FUNK1.

Perhaps consider a model like Vericoin's - dynamic staking interest - the more people staking the higher the interest, up to a maximum of around 3%. That keeps it well within developed countries' inflation rates (1-5%) and also double-incentivises the staking activity, yet again discouraging pointless dumping.

The starting PoW is a very good idea, but I'd consider not using X11 - every X11 coin gets whale raped from inception. There are FPGAs floating around now even... Although perhaps having multi-algo might offset this somewhat, and may in fact provide some kind of fairness - rather than just giving GPU miners or ASIC owners all the coins. If all else fails perhaps CPU with an entirely new algorithm might even be an option, especially as the PoW will be so limited. Then *anybody* with a computer could join in.... PoW CPU is destined to end up being a home for GPUs at least if not ASICs, but CPU, if not given time or incentive to be attacked by botnets may be a good option.

Just MHO though, so feel free to rip my ideas apart :-)

[n00bnoxious]

I think we should try and get some cpu only algo

Great minds think alike, jw ;-)

But in all seriousness this could be a real option... CPU mining is SOOOO much easier to get working than GPU for the "average" user (not "crypto" user). We could even provide a fully featured GUI CPU miner *with* the initial release.... I encourage people to check out minergate, the CryptoNote mining site - they have a custom Qt based miner that pretty much wraps the existing cryptonight CPU miner in a nice GUI.

I've actually been working on a custom, secure algo of my own recently... More than willing to share my work (privately)

[jwinterm]

I think we should try and get some cpu only algo

Great minds think alike, jw ;-)

But in all seriousness this could be a real option... CPU mining is SOOOO much easier to get working than GPU for the "average" user (not "crypto" user). We could even provide a fully featured GUI CPU miner *with* the initial release.... I encourage people to check out minergate, the CryptoNote mining site - they have a custom Qt based miner that pretty much wraps the existing cryptonight CPU miner in a nice GUI.

I've actually been working on a custom, secure algo of my own recently... More than willing to share my work (privately)

awesome n00b. I was thinking cryptonight, since that is for all intents and purposes (and intensive purposes) cpu only. There are currently closed source amd miners and very early stage open source nvidia miners, but neither is leaps and bounds faster than a decent i7. Not sure how difficult it would be to implement into a more traditional btc clone tho...

[BuckSnot]

Well just found ya all on LTB ;] I'm into making music and mining crypto, knot really good at either but sounds like this is a place I should B!

[simondlr]

Well just found ya all on LTB ;] I'm into making music and mining crypto, knot really good at either but sounds like this is a place I should B!

Welcome!

I agree wrt CPU algo. It can be ASIC-resistant as possible, as the PoW period is short. I think 4 weeks is fine. The people that will want to mine can get their fair share I reckon?

@nox. A new algo would add some buzz around the relaunch. I'll ping you about it! And yes. Preferably keep interest below 4% I reckon. Will take a look at Vericoin's dynamic staking as well.

This is probably going to take some time, but I'll try to fit time in to do that!

I'm excited!

[groggin]

 it is exciting.    might it be worth considering a higher interest rate for the first 1 - 3 years to encourage holding?

[simondlr]

 it is exciting.    might it be worth considering a higher interest rate for the first 1 - 3 years to encourage holding?

Good point! Worth looking into.

At the very least, we can then improve the coin's economics. So if the price goes it's due to less demand, not more supply.

However, we probably only have 1 shot at this. We still need to do extra effort to make the coin useful above and beyond an improvement in the economics of it. Worth another go.

[simondlr]

btw. Here is the LetsTalkBitcoin episode! http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-122-curiousity-discovery-and-music.

Hopefully I came across well.

btw. Michael, your tune is on there!

[n00bnoxious]

I was thinking cryptonight, since that is for all intents and purposes (and intensive purposes) cpu only.

This is the case, but the very fact that the GPU miner for cryptonight is closed source, and the guy who wrote it flat out refuses to make Linux or Mac clients for it is utterly out of order, so I'd steer clear as this makes a mockery of fair play. I mean even a precompiled Linux binary I'd be happy with, rather than just basically being a bit rude about Linux users which is all that I've seen from the guy who made it.

Thinking maybe a variant of cryptonight, to avoid Windows GPU miners from getting such a distinct advantage. Perhaps we could combine my work with cryptonight to keep it CPU friendly and unrapeable by this guy's Windows miner. In fact given the algos I've been using, I think the algorithm's name would be seriously epic incorporating the word "night" :-D

I think if we provided CPU mining software for all OS variants open sourced, and provided for Linux, Windows and OSX on launch, this would not only be extremely fair, but the 4 week mining length would also likely be too short for anybody to produce a working GPU miner that was any more efficient than just sticking a bunch of CPUs on it.

Thoughts?

[simondlr]

I was thinking cryptonight, since that is for all intents and purposes (and intensive purposes) cpu only.

This is the case, but the very fact that the GPU miner for cryptonight is closed source, and the guy who wrote it flat out refuses to make Linux or Mac clients for it is utterly out of order, so I'd steer clear as this makes a mockery of fair play. I mean even a precompiled Linux binary I'd be happy with, rather than just basically being a bit rude about Linux users which is all that I've seen from the guy who made it.

Thinking maybe a variant of cryptonight, to avoid Windows GPU miners from getting such a distinct advantage. Perhaps we could combine my work with cryptonight to keep it CPU friendly and unrapeable by this guy's Windows miner. In fact given the algos I've been using, I think the algorithm's name would be seriously epic incorporating the word "night" :-D

I think if we provided CPU mining software for all OS variants open sourced, and provided for Linux, Windows and OSX on launch, this would not only be extremely fair, but the 4 week mining length would also likely be too short for anybody to produce a working GPU miner that was any more efficient than just sticking a bunch of CPUs on it.

Thoughts?

Sounds good! I'll read up more on cryptonight!

So. I've been thinking. Want to get some thoughts on this. I quite like Vericoin's network-dependent-interest. For those that don't understand it: if more people have their wallets open and contributing to Proof-of-Stake, the higher the whole network's interest rate (up to max of 3%). In terms of FUNK: this encourages holding the coin, and the whole network is encouraged to hold it. However, this is perhaps counter-intuitive, as you want musicians to tip other musicians. One such option, to encourage it would be to include Fluttercoin's proof of transaction. Except that only works for PoW blocks. I'm not sure if it works with PoS blocks (will have to figure out). However, I have a simpler solution. We cap the coin-age to a reasonable period.

After that point, your chance to solve PoS blocks won't increase. So, you can still hold on, and generate new PoS blocks, but it doesn't get substantially easier to do so, thus coins be spent.

So basically. Using network-stake-dependent interest along with a cap on coin age. Thoughts?

[groggin]

 including PoT would be grand.   

              a wallet like hobonickles w/coin control + multiwallet?

[mckmuze]

Hey, sorry for being absent for a bit, had a lot of stuff on my plate. So Simon, I love where your going, I also think proof of transaction would be awesome. I think we should create a way for people to upvote versions of songs or song ideas using funk. We could even allow people to contribute album art that could be upvoted as well. Each upvote could cost some of the coin. One of many ideas, I am going to try to engage with you a bit more now that Im starting to get things somewhat in order.


Also, as a collaboration tool for sharing tracks that I think would work great is, bittorrent sync. I really like it, it may be a great way to share libraries or samples. I just started using it with a friend, its pretty convenient.

I suggest stating the openness of style or genera. Are we allowing hip hop, rap, is it only funk music, are we strictly playing with a funk style to match the currency? Are you thinking of re branding and just calling them "notes" by chance? lol

I felt like I had to keep the funk style and not branch out when I first came on. I know your not forcing people to play funk music, but it has a feeling of restriction, that was just a first impression I had.

Other than that, I love where your going with this.
Cant wait to get some time to chat about some of the ideas I spoke about..

[mckmuze]

We really should utilize a similar faucet system for distribution based on consuption of content and contribution, like LTBcoin is doing. Incentiveized consumption is going to be a big trend as we move forward with crypto and micro payments. May as well jump on it now instead of doing faucets and what not.

[simondlr]

We really should utilize a similar faucet system for distribution based on consuption of content and contribution, like LTBcoin is doing. Incentiveized consumption is going to be a big trend as we move forward with crypto and micro payments. May as well jump on it now instead of doing faucets and what not.

I thought naming it FUNK might think it should be restricted to funk (as in the genre). Hopefully that's okay now. I am thinking perhaps changing the currency code (not the band name) to something new, so that people don't confuse old addresses for new addresses. Suggestions are welcome. Perhaps a more neutral name. BEATS? Other suggestions?

Last night, I spent considerable time thinking again. With a PoS currency, the incentives are more aligned towards the creators. As those that get rewarded (say through tipping), get rewarded in turn through the staking. It's better than PoW. However, ideally, as you mentioned, being rewarded for producing & consuming the music is what would be the best aligned incentives. LTBCoin does this through centralized issuance. This model works, and is fine. However, I still really like, and want to try at least keep it as decentralized as possible.

However, trying to tie in content production & consumption (of a specific format as well: music) into the blockchain tech is not easy. In fact, if you solve this, it could be huuuge. I've had ideas like: how can you prove you've tipped music? how can you prove you've listened to a song? how can you prove you've made music? etc. All difficult problems.

The halfway point with PoS, and especially Vericoin's network-depedent stake is great. Network dependent is nice, because it encourages the community to stay "up" and thriving.

So, the 2nd best bet is to design the economics of the coin in such a way that those who produce get rewarded (there should be incentives to give coins to people who produce), but at the same time reward those who have already contributed. That's why a coin-age cap is nice. If you hold 40% of the coins, your coin-age cap will increase quite quickly, so there's more incentive to tip new productions as it won't increase your staking power.

Just an fyi. I'm working out the details in my spare-time (busy full-time with a new start-up). Once done, I'll post the details here. We can critique details (such as coin-age caps, time of PoW, etc, coin-cap, etc). If most is happy, I'll do an official "project plan" announcement (as altcoins like to do these days) with a guide on what's going to happen.

EDIT:

What we can do wrt to a faucet type system. Each new musician gets a once-off payout from an artist pool (will be backwards compatible). We set it to something like 200 musicians. So, for example, the 4M coins could be broken into the following:

1.5M FUNK1 coins.
1M artist pool. To be distributed to each musician that contributes. 1M/200 = 5000 each. This will of course be centralized (and issued by me). It will be transparent, open and verifiable.
1.5 PoW coins.

And then staking?

[n00bnoxious]

how can you prove you've made music?

... SNIP ...

1M artist pool. To be distributed to each musician that contributes. 1M/200 = 5000 each. This will of course be centralized (and issued by me). It will be transparent, open and verifiable.

Ok my 2 sats:

You can prove you've made any individual original piece by producing a cryptographic signature of the original file, although I'm still not sure how this could be translated into a decentralised reward mechanism without opening security/legality issues though.

Centralisation does suck, but I'm having extreme trouble wrapping my head around an actually decentralised way to do so without screwing up the blockchain. It may be a huge job, but perhaps new tx types, like Namecoin uses for name_new, name_firstupdate etc...

Just spitballing ideas, could we integrate some kind of decentralised voting mechanism for reward of artists? This could integrate with the in-wallet player concept nicely at least - people can upload files and signatures, but unless it gets majority-voted it'll get pruned perhaps? Obviously there is room for abuse, but if the network is strong enough (perhaps we open up staking when people are playing music or something) then it should be able to withstand it.

[soundposition]

First of all I really like where this discussion is going! It's like a Jekyll Island style meeting for musicians.  

Are you all familiar with NXT coin? It's a 100% PoS coin, with the third highest market capitalization and climbing. It's a good example of how PoS works well. They don't have a coin-age limit so spending is somewhat discouraged, but the demand goes through the roof with a good PoS.. BTW, That's proof of stake - not piece of ...  or proof of steak

Back to seriousness...

However, trying to tie in content production & consumption (of a specific format as well: music) into the blockchain tech is not easy. In fact, if you solve this, it could be huuuge. I've had ideas like: how can you prove you've tipped music? how can you prove you've listened to a song? how can you prove you've made music? etc. All difficult problems.

How to prove you've made music? Trusted Timestamp:
https://www.btproof.com/

I'm pretty sure any digital information can be put on a blockchain. Perhaps this is where something like Etherium is useful?
https://www.ethereum.org/

As for a new name for the band, how about Cryptotunes? Since Tunes can be any style, and people could mine Tunes - literally!

Keep it coming!

[n00bnoxious]

I'm pretty sure any digital information can be put on a blockchain.

This has been tried numerous times, and it either ends up with gargantuan amounts of blockchain bloat and/or a blockchain full of links to illicit content - hence my comments about the voting mechanism... In order for a bad actor to get dodgy data into the blockchain, they'd have to 51% the network... This would be greatly reduced if we offer staking, as we don't even need miners by that point.

I think this is really leaning towards PoS being the only sensible model, and I am distinctly intrigued by FLT's PoT. Here's the recently released v2 whitepaper by the way - the links on their ANN are broken at the moment: http://www.fluttercoin.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/proof-of-transaction-v2-r.pdf

Perhaps a PoT transaction (or "tip") could be thought of as a vote of some kind?

As for a new name for the band, how about Cryptotunes? Since Tunes can be any style, and people could mine Tunes - literally!

I like it...

[soundposition]

Make sure you've seen my above post about NXT coin etc.. I'm imaging a client somewhat like the NXT client, which can be installed on just about anything that 'forges' - not mines coins. I liked that term they came up with - 'forged' because it distinguishes it from mining in that a PoS coin only 'mines' when you actually have coins in your wallet and run the client. It has a 'alias' system so you can turn a piece of information into a NXT address basically.. I'm wondering how 'aliases' could be used with music. Like what if an address was a song, and a place to tip musicians.

Okay.. Kind of scattered here, but imagine a client that allows you to upload music to the blockchain, and when your music gets played/liked the musician gets tipped. Now the blockchain being full of music, would need to be stored P2P on multiple servers like the way Electrum wallet works..  Basically you don't want to download the entire soundcloud database on your computer which is what you basically would end up with. You just want a software program to interface with this giant blockchain.

I'm thinking of a mish mash of ideas, so take what you want and leave the rest..

Oh, and I see Soundcloud, and iTunes going the way of the dinosaur if we do this right... This will be the future - Our Future!