[ANN][CLAM] CLAMs, Proof-Of-Chain, Proof-Of-Working-Stake, a.k.a. "Clamcoin"

[smooth]

I don't think a idea of a time-based-fee is bad but there is a major problem with deciding what it should be. I mean you can just make up any number you want, but if you are going to bless the idea what the economic holy water of eliminating externalities it should bear some relationship to the actual cost and I don't see any way whatsoever to do that. (Otherwise you are just adding an externality, possibly larger than the one you eliminated.) For one thing the actual cost depends on the number of nodes that are storing it.

As far as there being a cost for waiting longer to dig, that already exists. It's called staking and is a very large cost right now. Over time it will get somewhat smaller. A page or two back we roughly estimated it at about 4% per month. I don't know if that is actually very accurate.

[SuperClam]

I don't think a idea of a time-based-fee is bad but there is a major problem with deciding what it should be. I mean you can just make up any number you want, but if you are going to bless the idea what the economic holy water of eliminating externalities it should bear some relationship to the actual cost and I don't see any way whatsoever to do that. (Otherwise you are just adding an externality, possibly larger than the one you eliminated.) For one thing the actual cost depends on the number of nodes that are storing it.
As far as there being a cost for waiting longer to dig, that already exists. It's called staking and is a very large cost right now. Over time it will get somewhat smaller. A page or two back we roughly estimated it at about 4% per month. I don't know if that is actually very accurate.

The concept revolves around attempting to estimate supply.

That is where equilibrium (and the possibility of blocksize, which I was trying to avoid) comes in.  
The amount that should be charged is the amount that the market is willing to bear.  

For any given level of supply (or demand) there is a point on the opposing demand (or supply) curve at which equilibrium is reached.
Where the amount suppliers are willing to supply at a given rate is equal to the amount demanders are willing to demand at that same rate.

If we set a window adjusting supply(block space) inverse to demand(which is in turn the inverse of fee) we reach a point at which the fee charged is the point of equilibrium between the amount demanded and supplied at the given fee.

In short, market/tx demand decides the block size.
Demand is influenced inversely by fee rate.
Block size and fee rate increase in tandem until demand == supply.


At least that is the best I can explain the idea after 36 hours or so awake.


EDIT: There also a few alternative possibilities, such as coin-days-destroyed.  In which case, a modulation of coin-days-destroyed would be used to measure network demand for transaction space, adjusting fees accordingly.

[smooth]

I don't think a idea of a time-based-fee is bad but there is a major problem with deciding what it should be. I mean you can just make up any number you want, but if you are going to bless the idea what the economic holy water of eliminating externalities it should bear some relationship to the actual cost and I don't see any way whatsoever to do that. (Otherwise you are just adding an externality, possibly larger than the one you eliminated.) For one thing the actual cost depends on the number of nodes that are storing it.
As far as there being a cost for waiting longer to dig, that already exists. It's called staking and is a very large cost right now. Over time it will get somewhat smaller. A page or two back we roughly estimated it at about 4% per month. I don't know if that is actually very accurate.

The concept revolves around attempting to estimate supply.

That is where equilibrium (and the possibility of blocksize, which I was trying to avoid) comes in. 
The amount that should be charged is the amount that the market is willing to bear. 

For any given level of supply (or demand) there is a point on the opposing demand (or supply) curve at which equilibrium is reached.
Where the amount suppliers are willing to supply at a given rate is equal to the amount demanders are willing to demand at that same rate.

If we set a window adjusting supply(block space) inverse to demand(which is in turn the inverse of fee) we reach a point at which the fee charged is the point of equilibrium between the amount demanded and supplied at the given fee.

In short, market/tx demand decides the block size.
Demand is influenced inversely by fee rate.
Block size and fee rate increase in tandem until demand == supply.


At least that is the best I can explain the idea after 36 hours or so awake.

1. It is still an externality because the suppliers in your model are not the ones incurring the cost.

2. How do you also meet equilibrium between current supply and costs (bandwidth, processing, block space if finite, etc.) and current demand.  The current fee is closer to the this (as opposed to UXTO storage supply). I'm not sure it is possible to do both, but even if you did you still have a problem with #1

[SuperClam]

I don't think a idea of a time-based-fee is bad but there is a major problem with deciding what it should be. I mean you can just make up any number you want, but if you are going to bless the idea what the economic holy water of eliminating externalities it should bear some relationship to the actual cost and I don't see any way whatsoever to do that. (Otherwise you are just adding an externality, possibly larger than the one you eliminated.) For one thing the actual cost depends on the number of nodes that are storing it.
As far as there being a cost for waiting longer to dig, that already exists. It's called staking and is a very large cost right now. Over time it will get somewhat smaller. A page or two back we roughly estimated it at about 4% per month. I don't know if that is actually very accurate.

The concept revolves around attempting to estimate supply.

That is where equilibrium (and the possibility of blocksize, which I was trying to avoid) comes in. 
The amount that should be charged is the amount that the market is willing to bear. 

For any given level of supply (or demand) there is a point on the opposing demand (or supply) curve at which equilibrium is reached.
Where the amount suppliers are willing to supply at a given rate is equal to the amount demanders are willing to demand at that same rate.

If we set a window adjusting supply(block space) inverse to demand(which is in turn the inverse of fee) we reach a point at which the fee charged is the point of equilibrium between the amount demanded and supplied at the given fee.

In short, market/tx demand decides the block size.
Demand is influenced inversely by fee rate.
Block size and fee rate increase in tandem until demand == supply.


At least that is the best I can explain the idea after 36 hours or so awake.

1. It is still an externality because the suppliers in your model are not the ones incurring the cost.

2. How do you also meet equilibrium between current supply and costs (bandwidth, processing, block space if finite, etc.) and current demand.  The current fee is closer to the this (as opposed to UXTO storage supply). I'm not sure it is possible to do both, but even if you did you still have a problem with #1

Regardless, you end up picking two "sane" points and drawing a line or curve between them - which is arbitrary.
No more arbitrary than drawing a line via block height and charging a 100% fee to outputs prior to that block height, a.k.a. Removing claims.

It isn't perfect - but, if done right I think it would work.
It is an alternative I was writing up a proposal for - and certainly not agreed to as a plan.

That makes it fundamentally clay, which can be molded and polished by more refined ideas.

[chriswen]

HOWEVER, if this promise threatens to destroy the entire CLAM network, which it does, then I feel any and all changes to prevent this not only justified but also necessary.

Why?
Perhaps it is better to just move on. You know, like a bad relationship.
If you think CLAMs is mortally wounded by this digger (and potentially others like it) then just LET IT DIE.
Have you read Antifragility? Failure of components is absolutely essential to a larger healthy system. Trying to bail out bad ideas with any sort of desperate measures is not helpful, it is harmful. Let the experiment run its course and learn from it.
There are thousands of coins, hundreds of them are somewhat active. I think there are good things about CLAM and I've said so, but if it dies because the distribution turns out to have been fatally bad, then life will go on and, then we all learned something valuable from it. The knowledge of which ideas seemed to be good and which bad will live on.

Well, this is an option, for sure.
However, CLAM s been one of my 3 favorite PoS coins and I would not like to see it die, especially not cause the whole point of CLAM dying s to let 1 single guy fill up his pockets. If we let do that, what does it say about us, the community? What does it say about CLAM devs? My entire life I have followed a simple logic, if something s broken, let s try to fix it. If not, don't fix it.
If I am the only one from the entire community being upset about this development, I wont mention it anymore. I don't want to be the only one who s been rocking the boat. As I say, I ll survive my personal loss but I would rather not to reduce the list of favorite PoS coins from 3 to 2.

I do not, personally, believe this is an existential issue.
The process of re-adjustment during this period of increased supply will be painful - however.

I do not believe CLAM is nearly as fragile as some have claimed during this issue.
That said, again, this is painful.

In the end, the only way that CLAM "dies" is if every single user stops using it.
Possible? Yes.
Likely? I don't believe so.

The question is:
Can we get some common sense changes implemented without sacrificing our ideals?
How strong is the community and how well does it survive this temporary haircut?

In the end, preserving ideals and the promises of the network while simultaneously supporting users is a problem of creativity and labor.
Problems of creativity and labor are solvable.

Let me get back to my initial premise. We KNOW he s not going to stop dumping for at least next 2-4 months, based on his previous behavior. Knowing that, why would I or you or anyone else buy a single CLAM until we re 100% sure he and others like him are done? There s no point buying if you know bottom s not even close.

If you think CLAM can survive these 2-4 months, suffering this 10% per day price drops, OK, you know much more about CLAM mechanics then I do and I ll accept that. However, based on my previous experience, I have not been able to find a single coin which was dumped from high price to extremely low price and then recovered. Once the community loses hope and leaves, they do not come back. Look at Paycoin. The price was $15, pumped and pumped, the community was huge, then they lost trust into the coin, due to that scammer but they lost trust. Now, under new and honest management, the price is 2 cents. People simply do not come back.

I m just afraid CLAM might suffer similar faith. On the other hand, I m certainly not going to argue about it, being a relatively new CLAM community member and I ll leave ti to more experienced ones. I m out.

Yes I think CLAM will be able to survive 2-4 months. Eventually we'll reach a short term equilibrium. And if people believe in CLAMs and JD long term they'll realize that CLAMs were undervalued during this period and they'll buy in.

Also 10% per day price drops for the next 2-4 months is an exaggeration.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

I will bet all my CLAMs (currently zero) that btcxpress is behind this digging/dumping.

I will bet all my DOGE (currently zero) that btcxpress will claim to be behind it, even if he is not.

[smooth]

I don't think a idea of a time-based-fee is bad but there is a major problem with deciding what it should be. I mean you can just make up any number you want, but if you are going to bless the idea what the economic holy water of eliminating externalities it should bear some relationship to the actual cost and I don't see any way whatsoever to do that. (Otherwise you are just adding an externality, possibly larger than the one you eliminated.) For one thing the actual cost depends on the number of nodes that are storing it.
As far as there being a cost for waiting longer to dig, that already exists. It's called staking and is a very large cost right now. Over time it will get somewhat smaller. A page or two back we roughly estimated it at about 4% per month. I don't know if that is actually very accurate.

The concept revolves around attempting to estimate supply.

That is where equilibrium (and the possibility of blocksize, which I was trying to avoid) comes in. 
The amount that should be charged is the amount that the market is willing to bear. 

For any given level of supply (or demand) there is a point on the opposing demand (or supply) curve at which equilibrium is reached.
Where the amount suppliers are willing to supply at a given rate is equal to the amount demanders are willing to demand at that same rate.

If we set a window adjusting supply(block space) inverse to demand(which is in turn the inverse of fee) we reach a point at which the fee charged is the point of equilibrium between the amount demanded and supplied at the given fee.

In short, market/tx demand decides the block size.
Demand is influenced inversely by fee rate.
Block size and fee rate increase in tandem until demand == supply.


At least that is the best I can explain the idea after 36 hours or so awake.

1. It is still an externality because the suppliers in your model are not the ones incurring the cost.

2. How do you also meet equilibrium between current supply and costs (bandwidth, processing, block space if finite, etc.) and current demand.  The current fee is closer to the this (as opposed to UXTO storage supply). I'm not sure it is possible to do both, but even if you did you still have a problem with #1

Regardless, you end up picking two "sane" points and drawing a line or curve between them - which is arbitrary.
No more arbitrary than drawing a line via block height and charging a 100% fee to outputs prior to that block height, a.k.a. Removing claims.

Removing claims is certainly arbitrary, no argument there. I question whether doing the same thing by dressing it up in fancy economic terms is really any different.

Also, I don't understand how this addressed what I said above. In my first comment I said you could pull numbers out of the air but there was no reason to think that would actually improve an externality, especially when it doesn't even address the structure of the externality (much less its magnitude).

[smooth]

Yes I think CLAM will be able to survive 2-4 months. Eventually we'll reach a short term equilibrium. And if people believe in CLAMs and JD long term they'll realize that CLAMs were undervalued during this period and they'll buy in.

Well look as the price drops if people want to play or invest on JD (or if other CLAM services develop) and don't already have CLAMs, then not only will they need to spend less BTC to absorb the dumper's CLAMs, but they will have to buy more CLAMs to do what they wanted to do in the first place (say invest 10 BTC in JD bankroll). I agree an equilibrium will be reached.

I also think there may be more to the dumping than just the digger. Nearly all alts being in the shitter over the past month for example.

[PolarPoint]

The things that change are:
1) the percentage of time each unit of value spends maturing (this goes down the more you split)
2) the amount of CPU it takes to check for staking opportunitys (this goes up the more you split)
3) the size of the transaction when you eventually want to spend your coins (this goes up the more you split)
So that's the tradeoff - balance 1 against 2 and 3.

I read that staking 10 to 50 clams is a good number to start. I also read that splitting balance into different address may increase chance to stake. I now have 10 clams in one address, I can buy some more to increase my chance, do I send my new clams to a same or new address or should I split them into many address holding 5 each?

[gjhiggins]

HOWEVER, if this promise threatens to destroy the entire CLAM network, which it does, then I feel any and all changes to prevent this not only justified but also necessary.

Perhaps it is better to just move on. You know, like a bad relationship.

Well, this is an option, for sure.

...

If I am the only one from the entire community being upset about this development, I wont mention it anymore.

It doesn’t look like an option to me, merely an anodyne observation drawn from an idly unsupported analogy.

But no, you're not the only one with concerns. I share your concerns (perhaps not as keenly, I admit) but am reluctant to simply pitch up to such a meandering discussion. Speculation on the motivations or future actions of the digger is condemned to remain exactly that, speculation. The model provides no useful predictive component.

Of considerably more use would be some glimmering of understanding of the collective and individual perceptions formed by those who are directly or indirectly affected by the change. The fact that upwards of 2500 altcoins have been launched to little significant effect suggests to me that the phenomenon doesn’t have a core explanation rooted in either economics or cryptography and I've found that discussions which fail to acknowledge this factor are inevitably doomed to peter out without establishing anything useful.

Out of sheer bloody-mindedness (or perhaps a slightly wider perspective, or perhaps even the fact that I grok TANSTAAFL), I maintain my CLAMS locally in a running node. It’s not that I mistrust dooglus, far from it, but even he admits that bulking up on JD might not be all that good for CLAMS’ long-term health as a cryptocurrency and I can’t gainsay his argument. In consequence, I heartily welcome the recent initiatives to improve CLAMS overall UX.

Each launched altcoin has the capacity to become a separate collective intelligence. Some starting conditions might appear to be more favourable than others but it’s way too early to be making those kind of calls on a phenomenon that we can barely characterise, let alone understand. fwiw, my take on it is that it’s an unfortunate instance of stigmergy arising from the imprint left by the import of contaminating aspects of Bitcoin’s irredeemably flawed distribution. Unfortunately, it seems to be an inherent contamination for any “proof-of-chain” approach that piggybacks on Bitcoin’s distribution.

I’m more interested in the perception of CLAMS’ brand values and how they’re interpreted in relation to the current context. The JD-herd mentality suggests that the intention behind CLAMS distribution has faltered; from the nether regions, it seems as we’re only just now seeing serious attempts to promote the advanced features of CLAMS that make it a worthwhile currency to use rather than hodl. Had that effort been instigated earlier, JD would likely be playing less of a role in the coin’s economics and users would be holding different perceptions of CLAMS attractiveness, perceptions less likely to be disrupted by manipulations of the exchange fiat conversion rate.


Cheers

Graham

[BayAreaCoins]

Can we have elections on who controls the Superclam account?  (Please come on over and vote if you would like to have a vote: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1212422.msg12721665#msg12721665)

I think CLAM would have a much brighter experience if we had different people in the proper positions of power.

CreativeClam would you consider making your own Bitcointalk account in order to make post on your opinion rather than on the OP shared account?

[andulolika]

Can we have elections on who controls the Superclam account?

I think CLAM would have a much brighter experience if we had different people in the proper positions of power.

I believe that The Great Clam should be a council instead of a single entity.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

Can we have elections on who controls the Superclam account?

I think CLAM would have a much brighter experience if we had different people in the proper positions of power.

CreativeClam would you consider making your own Bitcointalk account in order to make post on your opinion rather than on the OP shared account?

I'll control it if no one else wants to.

[ryanb]

can someone post a link for the bootstap please?

[BayAreaCoins]

can someone post a link for the bootstap please?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=623147.msg9772191#msg9772191

[BayAreaCoins]

I've created a poll to see if people would like to elect the SUPERCLAM captain.

Please drop by and vote.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1212422.msg12721665#msg12721665

[P-Funk]

Given:

-that the large digger is bleeding buy support dry and dropping the market price more and more, and will continue to do so at a steady pace using a script for possibly a year at current pace
-JD, its owner and community of investors and gamblers (plus a few other gambling sites) are supermajority stakeholders in the Clam network, and care about the value of Clams

it's rational to want to do something about the situation. To remove digging altogether would remove Clams' best and unique feature, so it is not a reasonable option. As Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies have built-in reductions in their distribution methods, I believe it is reasonable to propose reducing dig rewards to half at (about) 1.5 years from the release of Clams, and continue to halve the dig reward every 1.5 years from now on. I'm not a programmer, but I imagine reducing the dig reward could be done by imposing a 50% (and later 75% and so on) fee on transactions from the original distribution outputs that gets paid to a burn address. Assuming the software is ready to go, this can be announced a month or so ahead of the fork to make things fair for everyone, including the large digger.

 The counter-argument to this is that changing the network rules now would somehow violate the sanctity of the network. That opinion, in my own opinion, is unnecessary fundamentalism. Software and cryptocurrency networks can evolve, and I believe the supermajority of Clam stakeholders do not share that fundamentalist position.

[kito]

I do not view the whale digger to be a problem- its supply and demand.

The rise in clams initial value was probably due to early adopters not wanting to sell any coins.  To me, it would be better for a coin to not rise or fall too much because both causes problems.  When I see rise in price of clams without any new uses for clams, I usually think the problem is there is not enough coin supply to meet new user demand. So it encourages a hoarding feedback loop with no actual value behind it.  Falling has an opposite feedback loop.  The whale digger can be viewed as both helping to distribute clam supply cheaply to new users, and a destroyer of the coin value to older users.

I bought clams for many reasons- mostly to support the idea of POWS. I probably will hold and buy some more on the way down as long as I view coin as secure and following its original goals.  As long as the whale follows the rules they should be allowed to do anything they want. Nothing is wrong with this. Since there is not a lot of uses for clams atm, it makes sense to me why the whale digger would want to sell.  The short term view would be to sell your clams into btc or fiat and wait for prices to stablize.  If you do not like the Whale digger, the best attack on the whalers would be to provide new uses for clams.  A light weight android client for example would be great way to make clams more usable/  tradable.

[PolarPoint]

If you do not like the Whale digger, the best attack on the whalers would be to provide new uses for clams.  A light weight android client for example would be great way to make clams more usable/  tradable.

I am new to clams and I have to agree that their should be more uses for clams other than bet on just-dice. The wallet is not a huge problem since the blockchain is only 700M. The bootstrap made the download fairly easy and fast.

[BayAreaCoins]

If you do not like the Whale digger, the best attack on the whalers would be to provide new uses for clams.  A light weight android client for example would be great way to make clams more usable/  tradable.

I am new to clams and I have to agree that their should be more uses for clams other than bet on just-dice. The wallet is not a huge problem since the blockchain is only 700M. The bootstrap made the download fairly easy and fast.

If you plan on building a CLAM service you'd better warm up to the Kings and Queens of CLAM or "they" will blackball your legit service if they don't agree with your private business plan.

I would not recommend people to build on CLAM at this point until some major changes happen. (Speaking from experience)