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

[xulescu]

During the April vote (around 200k MRO were mined) I and others strongly argued to make the emission twice longer and halve everyone's holdings. Alternatively, one could have doubled the emission forward (denomination) for the same net effect but without the "taking away half ma coins" factor. The second option was psychologically better.

I don't think either is an option anymore. We know the story of Monero's inception and how the curve is twice faster than it should be because thankful_for_today doubled the block frequency in the last moment without adjusting the block reward. In this sense, yes, the emission curve is wrong. However, how many of Monero's CURRENT users know that? Back then there were very few users so taking the first option would have been much less traumatic than now.

I insist that changing the emission curve is at this point to only be considered in force majeure (only if the alternative is certain death of the currency) because itself bears a tremendous risk to kill the currency. No matter what I or you or the early adopters think, for the crypto community at large changing the emission curve to favour the early adopters directly is taboo. It should not even be on the table.

Another issue that gets to me from time to time is any discussion about the "total" or "final" emission. We know and have always known that the "final" emission is infinite. Defining "final" as "when the tail starts" is inane as long as we don't know when the tail starts. The only metric we have is the emission curve (or its derivative, the block reward curve).

All three of (1) post-mine (2) moving emission around and (3) miner fee, even if they violate the emission curve, are strictly (much) more palatable alternatives to outright slowing the emission curve. And all three are strictly (much) worse than fundraising through any other methods. Even issuing MEW voting rights as a PoS asset is better, because it does not affect Monero the coin.

Sorry for the brash words but I feel this point is not getting across. Changing Slowing the emission curve is taboo. In this respect, the status quo is inherently better simply because it is the status quo. It's not my opinion, it's my opinion of the market/community opinion. You may disagree with this, but read the last pages again.

I am one of the first 50 if not fewer people involved in Monero and it is my only non-BTC holding. I will dump all and probably never touch alts again if the emission is slowed. In my mind, the risk far outweighs the benefits if things work OK. I am sure I am far from the only one in this situation.

[smooth]

changing the emission curve to favour the early adopters directly is taboo. It should not even be on the table.

I agree. But we are still left with the question of what favors the early adopters (presumably this means over later adopters?) and what does not.

Example:

I mined in block 10 hold on to my coins, never buy or sell, and never mine again.

How does shifting around the rewards in various ways (unspecified) between blocks 11 and 1 million but without changing the total number of such coins mined affect me one way or the other?

I suppose there are extreme cases where it likely does. For example, moving all the rewards to block 11 and then having no rewards. In that case, it is likely no mining occurs and the coin dies, so it does affect me.

Leaving out those obviously harmful permutations, how does this affect me as an early adopter?

[xulescu]

changing the emission curve to favour the early adopters directly is taboo. It should not even be on the table.

I agree. But we are still left with the question of what favors the early adopters (presumably this means over later adopters?) and what does not.

Example:

I mined in block 10 hold on to my coins, never buy or sell, and never mine again.

How does shifting around the rewards in various ways (unspecified) between blocks 11 and 1 million but without changing the total number of such coins mined affect me one way or the other?

I suppose there are extreme cases where it likely does. For example, moving all the rewards to block 11 and then having no rewards. In that case, it is likely no mining occurs and the coin dies, so it does affect me.

Leaving out those obviously harmful permutations, how does this affect me as an early adopter?

I have argued above that the bolded phrase is meaningless. Please read my post again.

EDIT (to prevent double post): I proved maybe ~50 pages earlier that Monero's block reward is actually a simple exponential decay once you solve the recurrence relation. This means that the emission curve is really only defined by three parameters: constant term (premine, 0), reward of first block (17.something but can be normalized to 1 for this discussion) and base of exponential (reward "decay factor", which is 1 - 2^-something * 10^-something, a value very close to 1). I claim there are good reasons for the exponential form and should not be changed. Now let's consider our options:

1. A post-mine changes the constant factor and a posteriori (i.e. for later adopters) it is the same as a premine, which is frowned upon. A 1% premine seems to be acceptable, but one of Monero's main selling points was ZERO premine. Even 0.1% is much larger than 0. As I noted before, I would accept a 1% post-mine but only if other methods of fundraising have failed.

2. Changing the normalization factor is equivalent to a redenomination. This would have been acceptable in April (second option in my previous post) but I do not believe it is the case now. I think doing this will kill the coin with p > 0.5. Increasing the normalization factor is the second option in the previous post, decreasing the normalization factor is a posteriori equivalent to a fastmine.

3. increasing the decay factor is a posteriori equivalent to a fastmine. See (2) above. Increasing the decay factor is the same situation as decreasing the normalization factor.

So to sum up, any of [increase|decrease] the [normalization|decay] factor, as well as increasing the constant factor, clearly and directly affects one of [early|late] adopters to the advantage of the other group. Fucked if you do, fucked if you don't. And in this situation, the only winning move is to not play.

[smooth]

but without changing the total number of such coins mined affect me one way or the other?

I have argued above that the bolded phrase is meaningless. Please read my post again.

Okay fair enough. Do you feel my argument is valid for Bitcoin?

I think I might argue that it isn't, because a finite supply is just as impossible for Bitcoin as it is for Monero, but they just haven't realized it yet.

[xulescu]

but without changing the total number of such coins mined affect me one way or the other?

I have argued above that the bolded phrase is meaningless. Please read my post again.

Okay fair enough. Do you feel my argument is valid for Bitcoin?

I think I might argue that it isn't, because a finite supply is just as impossible for Bitcoin as it is for Monero, but they just haven't realized it yet.

Firstly, please read my previous post again, I have written more.

What is your argument exactly? I don't care about Bitcoin, that's why I'm here. Bitcoin left the sanity world a long time ago.

[David Latapie]

Wait, Risto says you are one of the 7 developers. But you pay someone else to develop? :Mind Blown:

We do. A lot. Even by allocating as much of our time to it, we do not have enough manpower by ourselves, even including the volunteer developers. So, yes, we outsource. And outsourcing is rarely free. Remember, we don't have 5 years of Bitcoin shoulders to stand on, especially considering we are addressing issues Bitcoin did not (and may never do).
Note: this is not as much a reply to a possible troll than something that new readers would be interested in reading.

[windjc]

I am one of the first 50 if not fewer people involved in Monero and it is my only non-BTC holding. I will dump all and probably never touch alts again if the emission is slowed. In my mind, the risk far outweighs the benefits if things work OK. I am sure I am far from the only one in this situation.

I have heard this mentality over and over again from BTC turned XMR supporters. And I admit that I was a part of this group for a while.  But, I assume that you got involved with XMR either because A) You believed in the tech and realized that Bitcoin would never go the way of Anon and you wanted to be a part of a tech that could fill that market or B) you had BTC friends that recommended the coin so there was "group think" involved or C) Both.

Now the part I don't understand is, if XMR lets you down, why you would never touch other alts? XMR let me and others down and but we still believed in CryptoNote tech and the need for a real Anon to fill that market. So BBR was the choice for me - for others it was other CN coins.

Unless the only reason you got involved was "B," why would you leave CryptoNote for good?

[David Latapie]

I doubt any not technically expert from MEW will try to make changes in the technically expect of coin. Since if goes wrong price would fall and their reason why are here would go down.

It is my belief that if it is technical, this should not even be discussed in the MEW. MEW is about adoption, ecosystem, B2B. To each their own and overlap should be minimal (although probably not non-existant).

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

I agree and not only I hope but it all looks like this is the case here.

+1

[smooth]

for others it was other CN coins.

Now I know you are full of shit and just throwing FUD bombs over here.

No serious experienced players in the crypto scene are remotely interested in "other CN coins" with the possible exception of those who are interested in Bytecoin as the first technical implementation (but still would never buy it).

The only one remotely worth considering would be duckNote/darkNote and its is pretty clear that nobody takes it all that seriously. Some of us find their marketing mildly amusing, but expecting anyone to view that as a substitute for Monero is silly.

What "other" ones are there? FCN/QCN/MCN? That boat sailed a long time ago.

[aminorex]

I think developer block funding (not 100% sure about the latter) in a rather formal process which means the question won't go away and must be addressed.

It will go away if we (you) stop raising it.

Unfortunately this can't stop the discussion of the reward curve for the reason stated above.

In the MEW I suggested that emission in excess of adoption was bad because it concentrates wealth, and creates a 'common knowledge' of unfairness.  
I also suggested that the best way to fix this is not to change emission but to grow adoption faster than emission can decline.  I prefer to discuss this topic there.
I don want the subject "decided" in the public mind by bytecoin trolls.

[windjc]

for others it was other CN coins.

Now I know you are full of shit and just throwing FUD bombs over here.

No serious experienced players in the crypto scene are remotely interested in "other CN coins" with the possible exception of those who are interested in Bytecoin as the first technical implementation (but still would never buy it).

The only one remotely worth considering would be duckNote/darkNote and its is pretty clear that nobody takes it all that seriously. Some of us find their marketing mildly amusing, but expecting anyone to view that as a substitute for Monero is silly.

What "other" ones are there? FCN/QCN/MCN? That boat sailed a long time ago.

Look, I agree with you. But some people (there were discussions even with crypto colleagues of mine) invested in FCN and QCN. So I am not going to just dismiss the investments of people I personally know.

But, your right, there is only one viable alternative at this time, although I don't know much at Darknote, so I won't right out dismiss it either.

[aminorex]

I am one of the first 50 if not fewer people involved in Monero and it is my only non-BTC holding. I will dump all and probably never touch alts again if the emission is slowed. In my mind, the risk far outweighs the benefits if things work OK. I am sure I am far from the only one in this situation.

if XMR lets you down, why you would never touch other alts? ... why would you leave CryptoNote for good?

XMR was formed to avoid scams.  Everything else is a scam, or threatens a scam.  The realistic alternative is to fork XMR for fair emission.  But that is too hard (expensive) and likely to fail, due to XMRs huge lead.  Better to buy counterfeit Euros.

[jwinterm]

After messing with the other two significant Cryptonotes recently, here is my opinion on the issues du jour: emission rate change and dev compensation.

The other two, Duck/Darknote and Boolberry, currently offer more features and/or faster syncing. Darknote now has encrypted, on blockchain messaging (which seems to be possibly a bad idea if it can be spammed) and the blockchain moved out of memory (full disclosure, I don't have the wallet). Boolberry syncs extremely rapidly in comparison to Monero and offers aliasing of addresses (also maybe not a great idea).

However, the advantage Monero currently has over the other two is that it seems to have a much fairer distribution of coins. This is more difficult to analyze than traditional bitcoin clones due to the anonymous nature of the transactions.

Darknote is already 73% mined out after several months of a much smaller network hashrate compared to Monero, and I think it was something like 50% of coins emitted after only the first month. This is purportedly to head off asics before they have a chance to be designed and manufactured for cryptonight algo (assuming this ever happens), however it reeks of instamine imo, which is why I don't even bother downloading the wallet.

Boolberry is the more interesting competitor to Monero imo, despite currently having a significantly lower market cap than Darknote (I would argue this is a function of instaminers holding a large portion of coins ever mined, waiting for more buy support before dumping some/all their coins from the coin's first month of existence). However, despite Boolberry having a slower emission rate than Monero, it still has a couple of issues that make its distribution a bit more suspect than Monero's. I think the cbuchner miner/mining is viewed with more suspicion than dga's private miner, because Monero was probably already more popular when dga was mining that Boolberry currently is, in terms of miners and in terms of trade volume on exchanges. The other thing is the 1% dev fee, that zoidberg does not do a good job of explaining on the ANN page or on Boolberry's; it's supposedly voluntary, but miners can only vote to turn it up or down, not on or off, and this can only be done by solo miners or pool operators (I think, tbh I do not have a good idea how it actually works, and haven't gotten anymore info after asking on IRC).

So, that leaves Monero as the most fair. Mostly due simply to its much greater popularity and trade volume, but also due to the factors mentioned above. I just feel like messing with coin emission, or chucking in a 1% "post-mine" block, or anything else like that will greatly risk the trust that has grown around the dev team and the community in general, and would possibly create an opportunity for someone to fork Monero (or Darknote or Boolberry), and try to position itself as THE Cryptonote with a legitimately fair distribution.

tl;dr I agree with xulescu

[smooth]

Darknote is already 73% mined out after several months of a much smaller network hashrate compared to Monero, and I think it was something like 50% of coins emitted after only the first month. This is purportedly to head off asics before they have a chance to be designed and manufactured for cryptonight algo (assuming this ever happens), however it reeks of instamine imo, which is why I don't even bother downloading the wallet.

The is one of the lamest excluses for an instamine scam I've ever seen, which makes it more likely in my eyes that XDN is a CN coin-mill scam coin (I've never been 100% sure about that one, but I'd say 85% now), because: 1) they seem to have an affinity for premine/instamine scams, and 2) they seem uniquely tone deaf when it comes to the made up stories they believe the community will actually find credible.

I still like their marketing though. Clearly the best in the CN space, unless you consider XMR's non-marketing marketing.

[windjc]

I am one of the first 50 if not fewer people involved in Monero and it is my only non-BTC holding. I will dump all and probably never touch alts again if the emission is slowed. In my mind, the risk far outweighs the benefits if things work OK. I am sure I am far from the only one in this situation.

if XMR lets you down, why you would never touch other alts? ... why would you leave CryptoNote for good?

XMR was formed to avoid scams.  Everything else is a scam, or threatens a scam.  

This is propaganda that you created to protect your investment. It is non-sense and based on the absurd proposition that because you dont know who CZ is, you cant trust him. Yet you are a BTC "whale" created by SATOSHI. Hyprocisy much? Come on.

[smooth]

I think developer block funding (not 100% sure about the latter) in a rather formal process which means the question won't go away and must be addressed.

It will go away if we (you) stop raising it.

Unless the proposal is withdrawn there is a specified discussion period and a voting period that is going to happen. So this issue will be with us for some time.

I also suggested that the best way to fix this is not to change emission but to grow adoption faster than emission can decline.  I prefer to discuss this topic there.
I don want the subject "decided" in the public mind by bytecoin trolls.

Good points.

[windjc]

After messing with the other two significant Cryptonotes recently, here is my opinion on the issues du jour: emission rate change and dev compensation.

Boolberry is the more interesting competitor to Monero imo, despite currently having a significantly lower market cap than Darknote (I would argue this is a function of instaminers holding a large portion of coins ever mined, waiting for more buy support before dumping some/all their coins from the coin's first month of existence). However, despite Boolberry having a slower emission rate than Monero, it still has a couple of issues that make its distribution a bit more suspect than Monero's. I think the cbuchner miner/mining is viewed with more suspicion than dga's private miner, because Monero was probably already more popular when dga was mining that Boolberry currently is, in terms of miners and in terms of trade volume on exchanges. The other thing is the 1% dev fee, that zoidberg does not do a good job of explaining on the ANN page or on Boolberry's; it's supposedly voluntary, but miners can only vote to turn it up or down, not on or off, and this can only be done by solo miners or pool operators (I think, tbh I do not have a good idea how it actually works, and haven't gotten anymore info after asking on IRC).

So, that leaves Monero as the most fair. Mostly due simply to its much greater popularity and trade volume, but also due to the factors mentioned above.

FUD, FUD and more FUD. Everyone of these points have been made 1000 times and debunked 1001. Its propaganda to protect investments. But its propaganda in its true form.

CBuchner created a miner that was highly efficient. It is documented that he has sold all his coins, almost all of them off exchange, below current market value.

Slower emission does not mean less fairness. It means MORE fairness as the coins are harder to get and harder to hoard.

The 1% dev fee has been explained in detail. You understand it. I know you do. Its not hard to understand and the miners control it.

However, the bolded part above is true. You don't understand or are playing dumb.  This is not rocket science. This is just propaganda to protect an investment.

If you tell a lie long enough and hard enough people will believe it. Its why there was a need for crypto to begin with.

[smooth]

I am one of the first 50 if not fewer people involved in Monero and it is my only non-BTC holding. I will dump all and probably never touch alts again if the emission is slowed. In my mind, the risk far outweighs the benefits if things work OK. I am sure I am far from the only one in this situation.

if XMR lets you down, why you would never touch other alts? ... why would you leave CryptoNote for good?

XMR was formed to avoid scams.  Everything else is a scam, or threatens a scam. 

This is propaganda that you created to protect your investment. It is non-sense and based on the absurd proposition that because you dont know who CZ is, you cant trust him. Yet you are a BTC "whale" created by SATOSHI. Hyprocisy much? Come on.

It's not nonsense. Trust can't be created out of thin air, and the relationship between a coin community and a developer is a high trust one, at least before a level of maturity is reached. Much of the trust afforded to XMR is that many of the poeple behind it or early community supporters are well-known identities or persons in the community and furthermore that conspiracies of seven (who don't even know each other outside of this project) are unlikely to the point of implausibility. There is and clearly will be no scam here.

The analogy with Satoshi is off base because the initial development by Satoshi took place in a different time and place, one in which the explosion of altcoin scammers didn't yet exist. Furthermore: 1) others who were known persons quickly joined the project, and 2) Satoshi's contribution was profoundly innovative and could stand on its own. CZ's contributions have not been profoundly innovative (no slam on him, no altcoin innovations have been).

Note: I am not calling CZ a scammer here, I am saying that lack of trustability is a valid concern. But it doesn't matter what I say, the community will decide whether having known identities is important or not. Obviously over time CZ becomes a known identity so the issue becomes moot.

[windjc]

I am one of the first 50 if not fewer people involved in Monero and it is my only non-BTC holding. I will dump all and probably never touch alts again if the emission is slowed. In my mind, the risk far outweighs the benefits if things work OK. I am sure I am far from the only one in this situation.

if XMR lets you down, why you would never touch other alts? ... why would you leave CryptoNote for good?

XMR was formed to avoid scams.  Everything else is a scam, or threatens a scam.  

This is propaganda that you created to protect your investment. It is non-sense and based on the absurd proposition that because you dont know who CZ is, you cant trust him. Yet you are a BTC "whale" created by SATOSHI. Hyprocisy much? Come on.

It's not nonsense. Trust can't be created out of thin air, and the relationship between a coin community and a developer is a high trust one, at least before a level of maturity is reached. Much of the trust afforded to XMR is that many of the poeple behind it or early community supporters are known identities or even known persons.

The analogy with Satoshi is off base because the initial development by Satoshi took place in a different time and place, one in which the explosion of altcoin scammers didn't yet exist. Furthermore: 1) others who were known persons quickly joined the project, and 2) Satoshi's contribution was profoundly innovative and could stand on its own. CZ's contributions have not been profoundly innovative (no slam on him, no altcoin innovations have been).

Note: I am not calling CZ a scammer here, I am saying that lack of trustability is a valid concern. But it doesn't matter what I say, the community will decide whether having known identities is important or not. Obviously over time CZ becomes a known identity so the issue becomes moot.

Again nonsensical argument to protect your investment.  We don't need a developer name to trust them. We can watch his/her actions.

There is ZERO lack of trust when it comes to CZ. Hell, he single-handedly saved XMRs ass (again) by finding a deadly exchange bug related to all CN coins which he spent the last 36 hours helping the exchanges to fix.  And yet your still say its a VALID CONCERN?? lol

Its such a blatant attempt to protect your investment that its laughable.

[jwinterm]

After messing with the other two significant Cryptonotes recently, here is my opinion on the issues du jour: emission rate change and dev compensation.

Boolberry is the more interesting competitor to Monero imo, despite currently having a significantly lower market cap than Darknote (I would argue this is a function of instaminers holding a large portion of coins ever mined, waiting for more buy support before dumping some/all their coins from the coin's first month of existence). However, despite Boolberry having a slower emission rate than Monero, it still has a couple of issues that make its distribution a bit more suspect than Monero's. I think the cbuchner miner/mining is viewed with more suspicion than dga's private miner, because Monero was probably already more popular when dga was mining that Boolberry currently is, in terms of miners and in terms of trade volume on exchanges. The other thing is the 1% dev fee, that zoidberg does not do a good job of explaining on the ANN page or on Boolberry's; it's supposedly voluntary, but miners can only vote to turn it up or down, not on or off, and this can only be done by solo miners or pool operators (I think, tbh I do not have a good idea how it actually works, and haven't gotten anymore info after asking on IRC).

So, that leaves Monero as the most fair. Mostly due simply to its much greater popularity and trade volume, but also due to the factors mentioned above.

FUD, FUD and more FUD. Everyone of these points have been made 1000 times and debunked 1001. Its propaganda to protect investments. But its propaganda in its true form.

CBuchner created a miner that was highly efficient. It is documented that he has sold all his coins, almost all of them off exchange, below current market value.

Slower emission does not mean less fairness. It means MORE fairness as the coins are harder to get and harder to hoard.

The 1% dev fee has been explained in detail. You understand it. I know you do. Its not hard to understand and the miners control it.

However, the bolded part above is true. You don't understand or are playing dumb.  This is not rocket science. This is just propaganda to protect an investment.

If you tell a lie long enough and hard enough people will believe it. Its why there was a need for crypto to begin with.

How can it be "documented" cbuchner sold all his coins?

Also, afaik there is no detailed explanation of how the dev fee works, on either the ANN page or on boolberry.com.

Thanks for taking the time to respond in a reasonable manner, i.e. calling me devious and/or dumb for expressing my opinions.