[XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency

[smooth]

Regarding donations - we already have about 20% of the Monero owners joining MEW. If we get this number to about 50%, then it will be easier to fund development as a community effort because there is no free riding.

Sure there is. If you get 60% then you have 40% free riding. That not only reduces funding by 40%, it reduces it more because the 60% are less likely to want to carry the weight for the other 40%.

I'm certainly not discouraging the effort though, I'm all in favor of trying things that might work.

[xulescu]

Regarding donations - we already have about 20% of the Monero owners joining MEW. If we get this number to about 50%, then it will be easier to fund development as a community effort because there is no free riding.

Sure there is. If you get 60% then you have 40% free riding. That not only reduces funding by 40%, it reduces it more because the 60% are less likely to want to carry the weight for the other 40%.

I'm certainly not discouraging the effort though, I'm all in favor of trying things that might work.

I'm sorry, I must be misunderstanding something here. Are you suggesting a miner-dictated mandatory tax?

I am all for default-on developer-team donation together with transaction fees as long as the option is clearly presented in the wizard (as per the new wallet screenshots). But I am all against making it mandatory (even with the miners' blessing).

[rdnkjdi]

Is there any way to tell (I know this is probably a stupid question) - how many transactions a day there are in monero right now?

monerochain.info seems to be down.

[smooth]

Regarding donations - we already have about 20% of the Monero owners joining MEW. If we get this number to about 50%, then it will be easier to fund development as a community effort because there is no free riding.

Sure there is. If you get 60% then you have 40% free riding. That not only reduces funding by 40%, it reduces it more because the 60% are less likely to want to carry the weight for the other 40%.

I'm certainly not discouraging the effort though, I'm all in favor of trying things that might work.

I'm sorry, I must be misunderstanding something here. Are you suggesting a miner-dictated mandatory tax?

I am all for default-on developer-team donation together with transaction fees as long as the option is clearly presented in the wizard (as per the new wallet screenshots). But I am all against making it mandatory (even with the miners' blessing).

I'm not suggesting anything, particularly in the above reply. He was talking about a voluntary group of large participants making donations. He's saying that if you get 50% participation in such a group there is no free riding, and I don't agree with that.

I separately commented that I don't think there is anything terrible about BBR's miner-voted and and miner-paid donations, and we should consider it if other measures fail to generate sufficient funding. Lack of funding means lack of development and lack of development means this coin never becomes useful (I don't consider it particularly useful in its present form). That benefits no one.

I'm all in favor of trying other things like crowdfunding too. We're reaching the point where it isn't reasonable to just keep doing what we've been doing and expect it to work, when it basically hasn't worked for the past six months.

[smooth]

Is there any way to tell (I know this is probably a stupid question) - how many transactions a day there are in monero right now?

There was when monerochain.info was working but it stopped working several days ago. If I remember correctly the number was around 1700, which fits with a casual glance at the blockchain, since that's slightly over 1 tx per block.

At this point you would have to write some kind of code or script to collect the data from the blockchain itself on your node. You could also turn on level one logging (which reports among other things, transactions) and then parse the log files. That's probably easier.

[xulescu]

I separately commented that I don't think there is anything terrible about BBR's miner-voted and and miner-paid donations, and we should consider it if other measures fail to generate sufficient funding. Lack of funding means lack of development and lack of development means this coin never becomes useful (I don't consider it particularly useful in its present form). That benefits no one.

I did miss something - you were talking about a mining fee. I am generally OK with that, and I believe both the miner-voted miner-paid and tx-fee-donations can be used if necessary.

However, I believe it is essential for community trust that the development fund is made transparent before that.

[rdnkjdi]

Is there any way to tell (I know this is probably a stupid question) - how many transactions a day there are in monero right now?

There was when monerochain.info was working but it stopped working several days ago. If I remember correctly the number was around 1700, which fits with a casual glance at the blockchain, since that's slightly over 1 tx per block.

At this point you would have to write some kind of code or script to collect the data from the blockchain itself on your node. You could also turn on level one logging (which reports among other things, transactions) and then parse the log files. That's probably easier.

So even if all transaction fees were funneled into the dev fund - even at .01.  That's just 510 XMR per month.

[smooth]

I separately commented that I don't think there is anything terrible about BBR's miner-voted and and miner-paid donations, and we should consider it if other measures fail to generate sufficient funding. Lack of funding means lack of development and lack of development means this coin never becomes useful (I don't consider it particularly useful in its present form). That benefits no one.

I did miss something - you were talking about a mining fee.

In my response to rpietila, I wasn't. He was talking about the workgroup of large participants making donations, and that is what my reply was about. That has nothing to do with mining.

[RentaMouse]

I don't know how it compares to other activities but certainly in the world of altcoins the general attitude to donating time/money seems to be that its something best left to other people. I recall the p2pool dev saying that less than 0.1% of miners using his code left the optional dev donation enabled and he would probably stop development unless more funding was forthcoming. Some form of compulsory "tax" may be necessary for Monero, but it has to be as fairly distributed as possible.

Adding a 1% dev tax to mined blocks will not be popular, for a start if the miners are running at a 5% profit margin then that is reduced by 20%, and they will ask what are the traders and investors being made to donate? To help protect the network we want to keep the total hashrate high as it makes it much harder for people to try exploits against it, so should be careful of introducing anything which reduces mining profitability too much.

I havent thought about how technically feasible it is but maybe the fairest way to raise funds would be to introduce some sort of "post-mine", e.g. every 500 blocks there is a magic block which mines an extra 500XMR straight to the dev fund. Of course it increases the total coin supply and thus reduces the value of every XMR by a fraction, but at least that effect is spread across every user of the coin and hopefully is more than compensated for by the resultant dev effort.

[Triffin]

Raising Development Funds ..

Take a cue from Wall St ..
Do a secondary offering ..

Sell an additional 100,000  MRO at 90% of the 20 day moving average of prices ..
So, if the 20 day moving average is 390000 sat ..
Sell 100,000  MRO for 351000 sat ..
All proceeds go to dev fund ..
You could probably do this via an exchange or on NXT AE for a nominal fee ..

Triff ..

[Anon136]

I don't know how it compares to other activities but certainly in the world of altcoins the general attitude to donating time/money seems to be that its something best left to other people. I recall the p2pool dev saying that less than 0.1% of miners using his code left the optional dev donation enabled and he would probably stop development unless more funding was forthcoming. Some form of compulsory "tax" may be necessary for Monero, but it has to be as fairly distributed as possible.

Adding a 1% dev tax to mined blocks will not be popular, for a start if the miners are running at a 5% profit margin then that is reduced by 20%, and they will ask what are the traders and investors being made to donate? To help protect the network we want to keep the total hashrate high as it makes it much harder for people to try exploits against it, so should be careful of introducing anything which reduces mining profitability too much.

I havent thought about how technically feasible it is but maybe the fairest way to raise funds would be to introduce some sort of "post-mine", e.g. every 500 blocks there is a magic block which mines an extra 500XMR straight to the dev fund. Of course it increases the total coin supply and thus reduces the value of every XMR by a fraction, but at least that effect is spread across every user of the coin and hopefully is more than compensated for by the resultant dev effort.

So this isnt an argument against anything you said specifically. Just commentary that was inspired by it.

If you add a 1% tax the effect wouldnt be to reduce miner profits from 5% to 4%. 5% is the marginal rate at which new miners tend not to join in and existing miners tend not to bail, generally. miners would still take 5% profit, there would simply be fewer of them is all. We would in essence be trading network security in exchange for development. A worthy trade off so long as our network was not at any point in the future 1% less secure than it needed to be inorder to resist an attack.

The important point, i think, to be made is that perhaps good and correct arguments may be lost on the crowd. It may not matter whether the arguments are correct if the crypto public views this as sufficiently scandalous.

every 500 blocks there is a magic block which mines an extra 500XMR straight to the dev fund.

this would be awful. we must not breach the trust that there will be X number of monero in circulation on x given date. people who invested, invested based on those assumptions. They made very crucial financial decisions based on those assumptions. x percent of what goes to the miners in the future is different, we have no pact with those miners, they can jump on or off at any time, its not as if they spent millions on cryptonight asics. investors have made a commitment that future miners have not. they can just react in real time based on constantly evolving incentive structures, just as they always have been doing. breaching the trust with people who have already invested is completely different in this respect.

[xulescu]

Sell an additional 1,000,000 MRO at 90% of the 20 day moving average of prices .. All proceeds go to dev fund ..

I will consider this sarcasm, because you can't possibly be suggesting an impromptu premine.

Some form of compulsory "tax" may be necessary for Monero, but it has to be as fairly distributed as possible.

Any compulsory tax erodes community trust, because it is still essentially a pre/post/fiatmine.

...some sort of "post-mine", e.g. every 500 blocks there is a magic block which mines an extra 500XMR straight to the dev fund

The emission curve must not change under any circumstances (except for long term behaviour). Remember how tense was the proposal to flatten the emission curve back in the beginning. I supported the change but ultimately it felt through. The opposite move will be viewed from outside as greedy and scammy even if I, you, or any of the old monerists feel it is fair.

Adding a 1% dev tax to mined blocks will not be popular, for a start if the miners are running at a 5% profit margin then that is reduced by 20%, and they will ask what are the traders and investors being made to donate?

Generally I agree with the miner tax as long as miners vote to soft-fork to the tax code. There could be some interplay with the pools also donating to the same fund - people could feel "double-taxed".

I believe the best option is to piggyback on the transaction fees. For instance, since the transaction fee hike after the spam attack, miners have seen a small increase in margins that retracted somewhat as more miners joined and drove the difficulty up. So no matter how the fees are reduced it will drive miners out. But suppose that the fees will be 0.02-0.2 XMR instead of 0.01-0.1 XMR and the fee was split equally between the miners and the devs. The transaction fee is not part of the social contract; the miners are in the same situation as if the fee was halved and the devs were getting nothing (except a slight decrease in transaction count - but since the change from 0.005 to 0.1 reduced transactions by ~25% that will not be significant); furthermore, the fees are small compared to the coinbase - XMR is still in the same regime as BTC.

I could further argue that there is consensus about the fee escalation tragedy of the commons in this thread and that is the main reason why Monero will have a perpetual debasement. If fees are to be kept NOT an incentive for the miners generally then their main purpose is spam protection. I used to think transaction fees should eventually be replaced with proof-of-work -- instead, they could entirely go to the dev team, with or without proof-of-work.

Please critique.

[aminorex]

Sup with the boolbery XMR beef, lol

it is largely a figment of the imaginations of the criminal attackers of xmr.  occasionally their sockpuppetry has successfully trolled some of the less clever and rational boosters - such as myself - but we're largely immune now.  TWDNKUMUS

[smooth]

Sell an additional 1,000,000 MRO at 90% of the 20 day moving average of prices .. All proceeds go to dev fund ..

I will consider this sarcasm, because you can't possibly be suggesting an impromptu premine.

I don't think anyone's ideas should be ridiculed. That doesn't mean they should or will be adopted, but an open forum for brainstorming is a good thing.

...some sort of "post-mine", e.g. every 500 blocks there is a magic block which mines an extra 500XMR straight to the dev fund

The emission curve must not change under any circumstances (except for long term behaviour). Remember how tense was the proposal to flatten the emission curve back in the beginning. I supported the change but ultimately it felt through. The opposite move will be viewed from outside as greedy and scammy even if I, you, or any of the old monerists feel it is fair.

I remember that the thread/vote was sabotaged by BCN shills. We didn't know then what we know now about the organized effort to create shill clones and generally poison the atmosphere for anyone competing with the 82% premine.

So I wouldn't rule out anything on the basis of that experience if a credible alternative decision method can be set up to prevent ballot stuffing and other shill behavior (this is hard).

Adding a 1% dev tax to mined blocks will not be popular, for a start if the miners are running at a 5% profit margin then that is reduced by 20%, and they will ask what are the traders and investors being made to donate?

Generally I agree with the miner tax as long as miners vote to soft-fork to the tax code. There could be some interplay with the pools also donating to the same fund - people could feel "double-taxed".

I don't see anyone being double charged. Pools are "miners" from the point of view of the network and would be charged. People who "mine" on pools (some have called these "hashers") aren't miners from the point of view of the network and would not be charged, but some or all of the donation paid by pools would likely be passed on to them.

[transaction fee-based funding]

Please critique.

My initial critique would be that based on the numbers someone posted earlier, transaction fees don't add up to very much funding. I'm not sure that the added complexity and effort to implement it, plus potential negative incentives on use due to higher fees, would be worthwhile relative to the amount raised.

[rdnkjdi]

So I wouldn't rule out anything on the basis of that experience if a credible alternative decision method can be set up to prevent ballot stuffing and other shill behavior (this is hard).

I know wouldn't be popular but I would opt for a burn vote (1 monero=1 vote) on any future decisions like the emission curve.  If bytecoin shills want to derail at least they'll have to donate.

Proceeds are burned or go to dev fund.

[generalizethis]

Is there any swag we can offer up for a donation drive/auction?  This won't solve the problem of dev-costs long term, but could provide a bump until the GUI is up--which should generate a price raise and alleviate cost concerns if the increase matches expenses. Just throwing things out there, so don't be too critical.

[smooth]

Is there any swag we can offer up for a donation drive/auction?  This won't solve the problem of dev-costs long term, but could provide a bump until the GUI is up--which should generate a price raise and alleviate cost concerns if the increase matches expenses. Just throwing things out there, so don't be too critical.

Swag meaning logo gear and such? That was in the latest missive.

[drawingthemoon]

Sup with the boolbery XMR beef, lol

it is largely a figment of the imaginations of the criminal attackers of xmr.  occasionally their sockpuppetry has successfully trolled some of the less clever and rational boosters - such as myself - but we're largely immune now.  TWDNKUMUS

You can put a chameleon to shame mate Is BBR no longer hurting XMR adoption or you just play snake in Polo trollbox and show a different color on forums?  

[aminorex]

i was talking hyperbolic smack when i said 50%, sorry.  but the point about socializing development remains:  it is a value-destroyer.  you know the kind of inefficiencies it engenders. moreover, i don't think the magnitude of the revulsion it would inspire is properly appreciated.  i am not even an ancap ideologue, merely a sympathizer, and it makes me nauseous.  and it is not presently sufficient in the magnitudes mooted...it doesn't actually solve the problem.

market-based incentives are largely untried.  they do not suffer the pitfalls of socializing. it takes some effort to organize them, but not a lot.  certainly no due diligence has yet been done to form targeted and accountable feature delivery bounties, which seem to me the most obvious and likely successful method of efficient funding. i am vastly more likely to make a substantial commitment when i am able to gauge the benefit.  asking me to trust you is unlikely to inspire my confidence.

[generalizethis]

Is there any swag we can offer up for a donation drive/auction?  This won't solve the problem of dev-costs long term, but could provide a bump until the GUI is up--which should generate a price raise and alleviate cost concerns if the increase matches expenses. Just throwing things out there, so don't be too critical.

Swag meaning logo gear and such? That was in the latest missive.

Yeah, saw that with the 15% going to devs. I'm talking SWAG like a vacation at a castle or a piece of memorabilia--something someone will pay a premium for and feel good that they're supporting the devs at the same time. Wish I could offer something, but all I've got is used books and none of them are signed or valuable--well, other than to me.