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

[TrueCryptonaire]

Personally my gain from the coin currently is more or less 0 financially - the investors and developers are kind of in the same boat.

I have promised to donate 5 btc when Monero's price is above 0.1 BTC at Poloniex (assuming no force majore effect).
And if it goes even significiantly further from that, expect me to donate more.

Now it is needed some big money investors to drive the market cap up - that's it.
Perhaps a company wants to invest in XMR to gain control of a significiant part of Moneros - say 1 million Moneros (roughly 25 % the existing coins).
That type of investors will drive the price up and at least my donations/further investments in the technology starts running.
There are plenty of fiat money - and people who think they missed bitcoin-train so potential there surely is.

[OrientA]

- a one-time bonus block that gives coins to the development (similar to premine that the other coins have, but "post-mine" and smaller in percentage);
- Permanent diversion of some % of the block rewards to the development;
- Slowing of emission curve, whose side effect would be that coins mined prior to the change would be considered a sort of fast mine. At this point it might be able to rally the owners of the privileged coins to donate large chuncks to the developers, since their remaining coins may likely gain in value.

can we get a serious discussion on the way to finance the development? Do we need a new thread for that?

I think the last point is the not practical/ ethical. The other two suggestions are interesting, both having it pros and cons.

I'm curious why you think #1 and #3 (or #2 for that matter) are ethically different.

I view #1 and #3 as part of a package that moves part of the emission curve forward (by paying out coins ahead of schedule) and part of it backward (by slowing down the rest). The effects somewhat balance out.

Practical is another matter. I guess that depends a lot on what the various stakeholders support.

Slowing down the emission is a good idea to distribute the coin for longer period. We can achieve that by increasing the block time from 1 min to 3 min. We can implement that with 1 second block time increase per week. When XMR is adopted more in commerce, we can reduce the block time slowly, from 3 min to 1 min. The main reason to do that is that I found there is no transaction in most of the mined blocks.

[smooth]

There have been several instances of people suggesting a bounty for an open source optimized AMD miner with the mining fees going to the devs.
This can provide  a long term development fund without the devs to be seen a begging. Kindly consider this option too. This seems to have much less cons than pros.

There already is a bounty for an AMD miner, just as there was for an NV miner (it was awarded to tsiv).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=656841.0

There has been zero interest on that thread for a long time though. Perhaps we should cancel the bounty and start some new initiative.

[smooth]

Slowing down the emission is a good idea to distribute the coin for longer period.

The speed of the curve and the speed of the blocks are independent. There is a very good chance we will reduce the speed of blocks for technical reasons as you suggest, and also as you suggest they can and likely will be sped up again in the future, but in doing so (both ways) we will adjust the rewards in an offsetting manner to retain the same curve (e.g., blocks taking twice as long would have twice the reward).

[smooth]

Do we need a new thread for that?

Only if a becomes a high volume topic.

[sparky999]

I think your entering very dangerous territory by suggesting changes to core features of the coin. MEW will have significant power over the DEV team since holders can effectively collude to blackmail DEV's into following their suggestions since other wise they can dump coins and slash market prices.

MEW's role should be in helping the economy grow and business' develop not in suggesting changes to the core fundamentals of the coin. For better or worse the emission curve and block rewards are what they are and that is how they should remain.

If you actually knew about MEW, these kind of blackmailing actions are forbidden and wont ever be tolerated by its members.

Be careful who's posts you decide to jump on. Not everyone is a troll.

[sparky999]

Slowing down the emission is a good idea to distribute the coin for longer period. We can achieve that by increasing the block time from 1 min to 3 min. We can implement that with 1 second block time increase per week. When XMR is adopted more in commerce, we can reduce the block time slowly, from 3 min to 1 min. The main reason to do that is that I found there is no transaction in most of the mined blocks.

Adjusting the emission in anyway is a terrible idea. I don't know if those suggesting it are simply selfish, incompetent or just have an overwhelming sense of grandeur.

[generalizethis]

I think your entering very dangerous territory by suggesting changes to core features of the coin. MEW will have significant power over the DEV team since holders can effectively collude to blackmail DEV's into following their suggestions since other wise they can dump coins and slash market prices.

MEW's role should be in helping the economy grow and business' develop not in suggesting changes to the core fundamentals of the coin. For better or worse the emission curve and block rewards are what they are and that is how they should remain.

To counteract this shouldn't a place for the miners and exchanges be given special consideration? At the very least the miners; they run the network and keep the coins secure. The Devs should always have full control until the coin is in fact decentralized. Just thinking out loud, so forgive if I've got it wrong.

[sparky999]

If the desire is to raise funds for development there is a clear way for this to be done and that is for either a fixed or % based fee be added to every and all transactions the network performs.

[smooth]

Slowing down the emission is a good idea to distribute the coin for longer period. We can achieve that by increasing the block time from 1 min to 3 min. We can implement that with 1 second block time increase per week. When XMR is adopted more in commerce, we can reduce the block time slowly, from 3 min to 1 min. The main reason to do that is that I found there is no transaction in most of the mined blocks.

Adjusting the emission in anyway is a terrible idea. I don't know if those suggesting it are simply selfish, incompetent or just have an overwhelming sense of grandeur.

Or perhaps you think presenting an incomplete list is if it were complete is a good tactic for marginalizing those who disagree with you. It isn't.

[sparky999]

when did I say you were a troll, you are implying that mew will be used to blackmail the developers, this is absurd.

everything will be discussed but not really implemented, changing emission is a fatal blow to monero everyone knows that, one thing that can be done is rising the block time and the reward accordingly so emission stay the same but the blocks take more time.

I'm not implying it will be, I'm implicitly stating that it could potentially happen.

Any basic study of human psychology will tell you that the chance is non-zero.

Let the DEV's work on the code and let MEW build a viable peripheral economy.

[sparky999]

Slowing down the emission is a good idea to distribute the coin for longer period. We can achieve that by increasing the block time from 1 min to 3 min. We can implement that with 1 second block time increase per week. When XMR is adopted more in commerce, we can reduce the block time slowly, from 3 min to 1 min. The main reason to do that is that I found there is no transaction in most of the mined blocks.

Adjusting the emission in anyway is a terrible idea. I don't know if those suggesting it are simply selfish, incompetent or just have an overwhelming sense of grandeur.

Or perhaps you think presenting an incomplete list is if it were complete is a good tactic for marginalizing those who disagree with you. It isn't.

It is at least as fair a tactic as forming a collective of owners to influence the direction the core DEV's take.

To be clear I am Pro Monero and Pro MEW - what I am not in favour of is the two ever imparting influence on each other with respect to core features of the coin.

[varun555]

If the desire is to raise funds for development there is a clear way for this to be done and that is for either a fixed or % based fee be added to every and all transactions the network performs.

What's wrong with this idea?

[fluffypony]

If the desire is to raise funds for development there is a clear way for this to be done and that is for either a fixed or % based fee be added to every and all transactions the network performs.

That's the current proposal on the table that is most universally liked, completely optional and configurable (default on @ 50% match tx-fee) per-tx donation. However, it is going to be an extremely sluggish way of fundraising, as it will only grow as the number of tx's grow. The counter-balance to this would be for people to set their donation % to, say, 150% or 200% of tx fees in the short-term, and then decrease that in future.

[smooth]

If the desire is to raise funds for development there is a clear way for this to be done and that is for either a fixed or % based fee be added to every and all transactions the network performs.

This has a lot of problems, one of them being that any reasonable fee right now (when funds are needed) would raise very little. Another is that fees are so small this would create a lot of dust and therefore destroy a lot of the value, since the inherent cost in handling dust is high. To avoid this we would have to greatly increase the block time to ensure a large number of transactions per block.

It has been proposed to me privately that we could issue a crypto asset backed by a portion of transaction fees. That more potentially addresses the first issue but not the second.

[sparky999]

If the desire is to raise funds for development there is a clear way for this to be done and that is for either a fixed or % based fee be added to every and all transactions the network performs.

That's the current proposal on the table that is most universally liked, completely optional and configurable (default on @ 50% match tx-fee) per-tx donation. However, it is going to be an extremely sluggish way of fundraising, as it will only grow as the number of tx's grow. The counter-balance to this would be for people to set their donation % to, say, 150% or 200% of tx fees in the short-term, and then decrease that in future.

The benefit of this model is that it has bilateral motivation. It motivates MEW to build the surrounding economy to increase transaction volume and it encourages DEV's to write good code to make the network more usable. I agree the LAG in between is an annoyance but that is all that it is and you could argue the LAG also increases DEV motivation and if nothing else certainly makes them more personally invested.

Configurable with default set to on seems like the most viable of the options, although compulsory is a close second.

[smooth]

If the desire is to raise funds for development there is a clear way for this to be done and that is for either a fixed or % based fee be added to every and all transactions the network performs.

That's the current proposal on the table that is most universally liked, completely optional and configurable (default on @ 50% match tx-fee) per-tx donation. However, it is going to be an extremely sluggish way of fundraising, as it will only grow as the number of tx's grow. The counter-balance to this would be for people to set their donation % to, say, 150% or 200% of tx fees in the short-term, and then decrease that in future.

What is currently envisioned is doing it in a GUI client (more or less necessary to include the concept of people setting their own donation level), which would be even worse than a blockchain based method in terms of the amount raised because a good many of the transactions on the network now are not created by a human using a GUI. Thus the amount raised in the near term would be even more negligible. Of course it could grow in time.

It does address dust since the wallet could just keep track of the donation amount and send it occasionally in larger chunks.

I also think a lot of people would turn it off. The experience with p2pool where an extremely high percentage of users turn it off does not encourage me. That is a very valuable piece of software that provides a critical counterbalance against centralization of pools yet most users were so cheap they essentially killed the project by turning off donations.

[sparky999]

I also think a lot of people would turn it off. The experience with p2pool where an extremely high percentage of users turn it off does not encourage me. That is a very valuable piece of software that provides a critical counterbalance against centralization of pools yet most users were so cheap they essentially killed the project by turning off donations.

I tend to agree with you, economics would suggest that the fee be default On but configurable and in the event that system failed then moving to a compulsory fee model. I think in practicality jumping straight to the compulsory fee model may just save time.

[sparky999]

Transaction fees were always meant to be adjusted over time by the DEV team I think even a compulsory fee should have little to no negative impact on the economy where as changing the emission curve, which is a core original feature, changes the parameters by which every current owner of Monero agreed to be a part off.

The sanctity of the original features be they good or bad must be respected.

[smooth]

The sanctity of the original features be they good or bad must be respected.

Seriously now, this is a piece of software, not a religious doctrine. That it function well takes precedence over sanctity, and if something is broken, perhaps by design, we should fix it.

That does not mean that something necessarily is broken, but "sanctity" precludes even considering it.