Nxt :: NXTcash - progress and discussion

[tyz]

interesting project. i will follow the progress and good luck.

[jl777]

What is the feeling of everyone about integrating zerocoin into the NXT mainnet after testing?

Since we cant integrate C++ code into the NXT core, it would have to be put into the gateways and clients for peer validation. If we put NXTcash validation into NODEcoin also, we would get a large scale peer reviewed NXTcash. Essentially it would be a NXTcash blockchain on top of NXT that is enforced by NODEcoin. We might not have to store the large 30K proofs in the blockchain, not sure on this yet but there is a promising approach using gateway that could encapsulate the large proofs. I am hopeful that we will be able to submit to jean-luc and all Java set of mods to the NXT core that will support NXTcash. In March.

This technique could be expanded to add other blockchains that could be totally independent unto themselves, or be interwoven with NXT blockchain via gateway.

I used to think gateways were just boring deposit/withdrawal functionality. Now I am realizing that a gateway can be used to bridge the gap between a lot of things that are not NXT with NXT. By doing so, NXT gets effectively extended.

James

[superresistant]

Please define NODEcoin. Is it going to mix together with NXTcash ?

I've seen some message about it like :

nodecoin has a very good purpose as it will allow all of the non-hallmarked nodes to earn something for being part of the network, even if they wont ever be able to directly forge a block, they will earn nodecoins. Generous donators can then fund a NXT dividend to flow through the nodecoins. Maybe we run forging with a non-profit model. All excess transaction fees after paying for the cost of the hallmarked servers gets distributed to nodecoin owners.

The goal is to get people forging. If we make it in their financial interest to forge with a consistent generation of NODEcoin, then I think a lot of people will forge rather than not forge. Especially if the NODEcoins end up being worth more than the expected forging income, then the whole "pool" issue is moot.

I will be creating NODEcoin 2.0, which in addition to rewarding people for forging, will be actively validating all gateway transactions and will generate alerts if it ever detects any funny business. As long as the gateway monitors are happy, all is well. I dont expect more than an occasional yellow alert, when there is a network glitch and a transaction has to be manually resent. With the malleability issue, we need to be careful about blindly trusting any request for manual payment.

[Armando]

Almost missed it. Idea is great, when should we espect the working version?

[jl777]

Almost missed it. Idea is great, when should we espect the working version?

March

[jl777]

Please define NODEcoin. Is it going to mix together with NXTcash ?

I've seen some message about it like :

nodecoin has a very good purpose as it will allow all of the non-hallmarked nodes to earn something for being part of the network, even if they wont ever be able to directly forge a block, they will earn nodecoins. Generous donators can then fund a NXT dividend to flow through the nodecoins. Maybe we run forging with a non-profit model. All excess transaction fees after paying for the cost of the hallmarked servers gets distributed to nodecoin owners.

The goal is to get people forging. If we make it in their financial interest to forge with a consistent generation of NODEcoin, then I think a lot of people will forge rather than not forge. Especially if the NODEcoins end up being worth more than the expected forging income, then the whole "pool" issue is moot.

I will be creating NODEcoin 2.0, which in addition to rewarding people for forging, will be actively validating all gateway transactions and will generate alerts if it ever detects any funny business. As long as the gateway monitors are happy, all is well. I dont expect more than an occasional yellow alert, when there is a network glitch and a transaction has to be manually resent. With the malleability issue, we need to be careful about blindly trusting any request for manual payment.

NODEcoin will do things to enhance the NXTblockchain and to reinforce forging. The NODEcoin will do valuable things for the NXT network and as such I believe people will bid for them in the NXT Asset Exchange. So, it would have some resale value, but its not like it will become the national currency of <small country>. Of course, who knows what crypto speculators will do.

It wont be very CPU or network intensive, so just let it run in the background and you will start earning NODEcoins. Obviously no premine, no ipo, just launch and let the mining commence. The fewer people mining, the higher the payout and probably a bit of a decline in "block reward" over time. Not exponential decay though, I hate that.

James

P.S. Almost forgot about original question. I am redesigning NXTcash so that it will utilize a gateway for part of the functionality and that will benefit from peer reviewed data, which I plan to put into NODEcoin.

[Sebastien256]

Please define NODEcoin. Is it going to mix together with NXTcash ?

I've seen some message about it like :

nodecoin has a very good purpose as it will allow all of the non-hallmarked nodes to earn something for being part of the network, even if they wont ever be able to directly forge a block, they will earn nodecoins. Generous donators can then fund a NXT dividend to flow through the nodecoins. Maybe we run forging with a non-profit model. All excess transaction fees after paying for the cost of the hallmarked servers gets distributed to nodecoin owners.

The goal is to get people forging. If we make it in their financial interest to forge with a consistent generation of NODEcoin, then I think a lot of people will forge rather than not forge. Especially if the NODEcoins end up being worth more than the expected forging income, then the whole "pool" issue is moot.

I will be creating NODEcoin 2.0, which in addition to rewarding people for forging, will be actively validating all gateway transactions and will generate alerts if it ever detects any funny business. As long as the gateway monitors are happy, all is well. I dont expect more than an occasional yellow alert, when there is a network glitch and a transaction has to be manually resent. With the malleability issue, we need to be careful about blindly trusting any request for manual payment.

NODEcoin will do things to enhance the NXTblockchain and to reinforce forging. The NODEcoin will do valuable things for the NXT network and as such I believe people will bid for them in the NXT Asset Exchange. So, it would have some resale value, but its not like it will become the national currency of <small country>. Of course, who knows what crypto speculators will do.

It wont be very CPU or network intensive, so just let it run in the background and you will start earning NODEcoins. Obviously no premine, no ipo, just launch and let the mining commence. The fewer people mining, the higher the payout and probably a bit of a decline in "block reward" over time. Not exponential decay though, I hate that.

James

P.S. Almost forgot about original question. I am redesigning NXTcash so that it will utilize a gateway for part of the functionality and that will benefit from peer reviewed data, which I plan to put into NODEcoin.

Concerning nodecoin, will there be upper limit to the number of nodecoin? One must be carefull to the initial parameters of the coin because the parameters must be set so that there is always a reason to "mine" nodecoin (always a reason to protect the network). If a upper limit is reach eventually in the number of coin, there will be no reason to mine nodecoin, as no more nodecoin will ever be generate.

I would rather use a reward method inverserly proportional to the number of node "mining". Something like, [reward per block] = X/(number of node mining)^Y, where X and Y are constant. This would be similar to primecoin, which the reward is inversely proportional to the difficulty square (i.e. X=999 and Y=2, for primecoin).

What is your thought on this James.

[jl777]

Please define NODEcoin. Is it going to mix together with NXTcash ?

I've seen some message about it like :

nodecoin has a very good purpose as it will allow all of the non-hallmarked nodes to earn something for being part of the network, even if they wont ever be able to directly forge a block, they will earn nodecoins. Generous donators can then fund a NXT dividend to flow through the nodecoins. Maybe we run forging with a non-profit model. All excess transaction fees after paying for the cost of the hallmarked servers gets distributed to nodecoin owners.

The goal is to get people forging. If we make it in their financial interest to forge with a consistent generation of NODEcoin, then I think a lot of people will forge rather than not forge. Especially if the NODEcoins end up being worth more than the expected forging income, then the whole "pool" issue is moot.

I will be creating NODEcoin 2.0, which in addition to rewarding people for forging, will be actively validating all gateway transactions and will generate alerts if it ever detects any funny business. As long as the gateway monitors are happy, all is well. I dont expect more than an occasional yellow alert, when there is a network glitch and a transaction has to be manually resent. With the malleability issue, we need to be careful about blindly trusting any request for manual payment.

NODEcoin will do things to enhance the NXTblockchain and to reinforce forging. The NODEcoin will do valuable things for the NXT network and as such I believe people will bid for them in the NXT Asset Exchange. So, it would have some resale value, but its not like it will become the national currency of <small country>. Of course, who knows what crypto speculators will do.

It wont be very CPU or network intensive, so just let it run in the background and you will start earning NODEcoins. Obviously no premine, no ipo, just launch and let the mining commence. The fewer people mining, the higher the payout and probably a bit of a decline in "block reward" over time. Not exponential decay though, I hate that.

James

P.S. Almost forgot about original question. I am redesigning NXTcash so that it will utilize a gateway for part of the functionality and that will benefit from peer reviewed data, which I plan to put into NODEcoin.

Concerning nodecoin, will there be upper limit to the number of nodecoin? One must be carefull to the initial parameters of the coin because the parameters must be set so that there is always a reason to "mine" nodecoin (always a reason to protect the network). If a upper limit is reach eventually in the number of coin, there will be no reason to mine nodecoin, as no more nodecoin will ever be generate.

I would rather use a reward method inverserly proportional to the number of node "mining". Something like, [reward per block] = X/(number of node mining)^Y, where X and Y are constant. This would be similar to primecoin, which the reward is inversely proportional to the difficulty square (i.e. X=999 and Y=2, for primecoin).

What is your thought on this James.

With 1 billion coins, an average of 100,000 per day will last a long time.
I think starting at 250,000/day and gradually reducing to 100,000 per day is a good starting point to think about.
Also, I think it makes sense to scale the payout based on the number of active NXT accts.
Unlike other coins, it is possible to recirculate nodecoins (or any other NXTcoins), by having the issuer buy them back. Kind of like a stock repurchase that corporations do.

I want to make sure nodecoin has a tangible value so I will be calling for donations that will go into a nodecoin repurchase acct, probably the same acct as originally issues the asset. This will provide a price floor and demand.

So, if the network needs a boost, pop in NXT to the repurchase fund and nodecoin price goes up, more miners mine. Though I will make the nodeminer very lightweight so there is no reason not to be running it in the background

James

[BitJohn]

Cryptsy NXT integration almost complete.

[wakasaki808]

Cryptsy NXT integration almost complete.

Woo

[jl777]

I have made an internal proposal to the NXTcash team using the latest source code that will allow us to make a release that can be considered for mainnet use. Not sure how long it will take as I will need to start and finish Nodecoin 2.0 to fully implement the proposed NXTcash solution, not to mention a fair amount of work in the client code.

Before you say, "but we can't store the giant zeroknowledge proofs in the NXT blockchain!", let me say that the method I am proposing does not need to store the big proof in the blockchain, just the NXTcash minting and spending events. Still working out all the kinks, but I am optimistic.

<shameless plug>
Show your support for NXTcash, donate to completion bounty fund 13313092584524529006
</shameless plug>

The way I see this working is that from the client you can directly mint new NXTcash, in increments of 100NXT. This will create private files that are encrypted and stored on your computer (and USB backup). Now the files on your USB are just like cash. You can then go to any other computer and launch the NXTcash spending app. You tell it what NXT acct (different one) to fund with the private files on USB.

At this point, we can go in two possible ways, one way is to have the new NXT acct funded with NXT, or it could be NXTcash asset. We are assessing the tradeoffs between the two approaches, but either way, funds have gone from the initial acct to the new account, without any identifiable information being leaked!

What you do with your NXTcash is your business. Anything you do from the alter-ego acct is all publicly viewable, but the key is that nobody can identify who is controlling that new account.

James

[superresistant]

The way I see this working is that from the client you can directly mint new NXTcash, in increments of 100NXT. This will create private files that are encrypted and stored on your computer (and USB backup). Now the files on your USB are just like cash. You can then go to any other computer and launch the NXTcash spending app. You tell it what NXT acct (different one) to fund with the private files on USB.
At this point, we can go in two possible ways, one way is to have the new NXT acct funded with NXT, or it could be NXTcash asset. We are assessing the tradeoffs between the two approaches, but either way, funds have gone from the initial acct to the new account, without any identifiable information being leaked!
What you do with your NXTcash is your business. Anything you do from the alter-ego acct is all publicly viewable, but the key is that nobody can identify who is controlling that new account.

What is the advantage of NXTcash-asset instead of funding the new account directly ?

[jl777]

The way I see this working is that from the client you can directly mint new NXTcash, in increments of 100NXT. This will create private files that are encrypted and stored on your computer (and USB backup). Now the files on your USB are just like cash. You can then go to any other computer and launch the NXTcash spending app. You tell it what NXT acct (different one) to fund with the private files on USB.
At this point, we can go in two possible ways, one way is to have the new NXT acct funded with NXT, or it could be NXTcash asset. We are assessing the tradeoffs between the two approaches, but either way, funds have gone from the initial acct to the new account, without any identifiable information being leaked!
What you do with your NXTcash is your business. Anything you do from the alter-ego acct is all publicly viewable, but the key is that nobody can identify who is controlling that new account.

What is the advantage of NXTcash-asset instead of funding the new account directly ?

less changes to NXT core

[superresistant]

less changes to NXT core

If no drawback for the user then go for asset but I already see a disadvantage, it is hard for some people to understand the concept of asset (compared to currency). I they don't understand it, they won't use it.

I say this because few people saw me asking questions on this thread and then PMed me to ask what's an asset.

The more noob-proof the better.

[bitcoinpaul]

Noob proof is better. But every code snippet in nxt core must be bullet proof. That's always the ultimate goal. How messy would it get in the nxt core for the no-asset solution?

[chinajsntwzq]

Sent 2,000 from 12348614373637738998.

Best of luck with this exciting project! Good luck!

chinajsntwzq

[CoinTropolis_JustaBitTime]

Cryptsy NXT integration almost complete.

Thanks BitJohn!

[jl777]

Noob proof is better. But every code snippet in nxt core must be bullet proof. That's always the ultimate goal. How messy would it get in the nxt core for the no-asset solution?

Not that messy, but it also requires an additional handshake step.

User -> gateway -> NXT core -> credit user with real NXT

vs.

User -> gateway credit user with NXTcash asset. <time passes, maybe asset changes hands> asset -> NXT core -> credit real NXT

Fewer steps for there to be problems with network.

James

[jl777]

Quote from: Mario123 on Today at 05:45:58 PM
Quote from: jl777 on Today at 05:42:29 PM

NXTcash is zerocoin integrated into NXT. We are finalizing the design for a method that will allow us to use the current libzerocoin alpha without any changes to the NXTcore. A person would mint a zerocoin and pay NXT to register it. He will then have private data that can (should) be used on a different computer with different IP to redeem the private data into NXT into a totally different account.

Theoretically, there would not be any way to get more than a statistically random guess as to who funded the NXTcash redemption.

James

Can you describe in a few simple words, how NXTcash works?

edit: Not how to use it. How it works!
You would need to use a NXTcash enhanced client

1. You would start a command that says "mint X amount of NXT to NXTcash"
This generates private and public data, the public data is broadcast onto the blockchain
Now you have private files that contain the value of the NXTcash that you "minted"

2. The client should have a convenient, "copy NXTcash to USB drive" command

Z. <time passes and presumably from a different computer on a different IP address using a different NXT acct>

You start a command that says "redeem X amount of NXTcash"
It prompts you for the USB drive with NXTcash on it, here is where it uses the data on the blockchain and the private files to calculate a zeroknowledge proof. Basically heavy duty math algos that can be submitted for verification that you have indeed paid the matching amount of NXT for the NXTcash private files. Once they are validated, you get the NXT and destroy the private data so nobody can link you to the serial number, which gets published on the blockchain as "spent" serial number

Now the NXT that originally was in the first NXT acct has been teleported to the new NXT acct without anyway for anybody to do more than a statistical random guess as to where the NXTcash that funded the new account came from

Without step Z, there is no way to be anonymous. You certainly dont want to redeem the NXTcash from the same computer or same IP address. Maybe somebody who is expert at using Tor via proxy servers can achieve step Z without changing computers or locations, I dont know, I dont have any experience with those sorts of things. I believe that we have a right to privacy. What we do with our money is our business and NXTcash allows us to do this, which is something no other crypto or any fiat method other than cash itself can do. Actually fiat cash has serial numbers and those can be traced. The NXTcash has serial numbers too, but it is only revealed AFTER it is spent. Nobody knows who minted the specific serial number.

With step Z, the link is totally broken between the source of the NXT and the destination account. So, you could mail the USB drive to somebody you trust and they could do the redemption and other than people that know who you are mailing things to, nobody would know that you sent money.

James

[xyzzyx]

1. You would start a command that says "mint X amount of NXT to NXTcash"
This generates private and public data, the public data is broadcast onto the blockchain
Now you have private files that contain the value of the NXTcash that you "minted"

2. The client should have a convenient, "copy NXTcash to USB drive" command

Z. <time passes and presumably from a different computer on a different IP address using a different NXT acct>

You start a command that says "redeem X amount of NXTcash"
It prompts you for the USB drive with NXTcash on it, here is where it uses the data on the blockchain and the private files to calculate a zeroknowledge proof. Basically heavy duty math algos that can be submitted for verification that you have indeed paid the matching amount of NXT for the NXTcash private files. Once they are validated, you get the NXT and destroy the private data so nobody can link you to the serial number, which gets published on the blockchain as "spent" serial number

Now the NXT that originally was in the first NXT acct has been teleported to the new NXT acct without anyway for anybody to do more than a statistical random guess as to where the NXTcash that funded the new account came from

Without step Z, there is no way to be anonymous. You certainly dont want to redeem the NXTcash from the same computer or same IP address. Maybe somebody who is expert at using Tor via proxy servers can achieve step Z without changing computers or locations, I dont know, I dont have any experience with those sorts of things. I believe that we have a right to privacy. What we do with our money is our business and NXTcash allows us to do this, which is something no other crypto or any fiat method other than cash itself can do. Actually fiat cash has serial numbers and those can be traced. The NXTcash has serial numbers too, but it is only revealed AFTER it is spent. Nobody knows who minted the specific serial number.

With step Z, the link is totally broken between the source of the NXT and the destination account. So, you could mail the USB drive to somebody you trust and they could do the redemption and other than people that know who you are mailing things to, nobody would know that you sent money.

James

There's another way to pass the NXTcash/zerocoin to another account without it being traceable that doesn't require a USB drive in step Z.

You could issue a mint NXTcash op on account A and specify to the client that account B should receive it.  The client would encrypt with account B's public key the private zerocoin data that would otherwise have been transfered using a USB stick in step Z, and place the encrypted data into the blockchain using AM.  On account B, you could decrypt the AM payload using B's private key when you want to spend/redeem the NXTcash for NXT.

The AM doesn't need to be (mustn't be) casually connected to account B.  You just need to have the client for account B scan the blockchain for all AM payloads generated by account A and attempt to decrypt.  Only the valid ones will decrypt to meaningful NXTcash info that is able to be redeemed.