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

[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)

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[dooglus]

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?

It doesn't matter whether you use one address or many. What matters is the size of each unspent output in your wallet.

If you send 10 CLAMs to the same address 5 times, you don't end up with a single 50 CLAM output at that address. You end up with 5 outputs each worth 10 CLAMs. Those 5 outputs will stake just as well as if you had sent them to 5 different addresses.

Turn on coin control in your CLAM client settings and it will let you look at your unspent outputs.

[PolarPoint]

If you send 10 CLAMs to the same address 5 times, you don't end up with a single 50 CLAM output at that address. You end up with 5 outputs each worth 10 CLAMs. Those 5 outputs will stake just as well as if you had sent them to 5 different addresses.

Turn on coin control in your CLAM client settings and it will let you look at your unspent outputs.

Noted, I will turn on coin control and check.
Are you saying that 2 unspent outputs of 5 clams each stake better than 1 unspent output of 10 clams?

[dooglus]

Are you saying that 2 unspent outputs of 5 clams each stake better than 1 unspent output of 10 clams?

Yes, but only because when the 10 CLAM output stakes you whole 10 (actually, 11 after staking) CLAM wallet is tied up for 8 hours while the newly staked output matures.

If your wallet was split into two 5's, when one of them stakes, the other one isn't frozen, only half your value is locked up waiting 8 hours to mature.

[dooglus]

I'm happy to see so much discussion about the current "digger situation" - even though I don't see much in the way of consensus forming...

It can be implemented with various levels of complication and reach; from the extremely simple to all encompassing.
We will talk about a more simple implementation at the moment (which doesn't include block size at all).
I've chosen to go this route as the more complicated versions will only confuse what is already a rather complicated change.
Further, the additional complication concerns fee markets, bloat, DDoS and a variety of other issues which are not currently being discussed.

Can you say more about how the fee-per-block would be decided upon in the absence of a dynamic block size?

You've talked in the past about the fee being set by the market based on supply and demand which I understood to be based on recent block sizes. How does that work in this simplified proposal?

I'm unclear as to whether the fee-per-block would be required by new consensus rules, or be more like bitcoin fees, where miners set whatever fees they like.

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

I don't think I understood this point.

The suppliers are the stakers, and the cost is incurred by anyone running a full node.

But anyone running a full node can stake if they choose to, and would be helping the network if they did.

So who is incurring the cost of storing unspent outputs without also supplying the service of securing the network, except for those who choose not to contribute to securing the network for whatever reasons?

Or is your argument that the costs are shared equally between all stakers, but the fees are shared in proportion to staker balance? Because that's just how PoS works. Already the cost of running a staking node is independent of the number of coins being staked whereas the rewards for doing so are proportional to the number of coins being staked.

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.

Indeed. I have been selling some of my CLAMs on the way down. It is clear that the digger has many more CLAMs to dig, and we have no reason to believe that he won't keep dumping them, and so it seems rational to sell high and buy back lower once the dumping is over.

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

It already is. CLAM operates on consensus, not as a dictatorship. Creative couldn't force through an unpopular change even if she wanted to. The community would refuse to switch to the net version. The same goes for JD. JD currently has a majority of the staking CLAMs, but if it tried to force through an unpopular change I'm sure it would soon find itself being the sole staker on an irrelevant side fork.

The question of whether everyone automatically has the right to advertise their service in this thread's OP is separate from the running of the CLAM network itself. This is Creative's thread. If you don't like it, make your own.

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.

I also feel that something should be done, if CLAM is to remain something that people want to use. The current massive ongoing dig appears to be worth something like 500k CLAMs, and started when the active supply was something like twice that, and so it will end up adding 50% to the active supply.

Note that although it appears significant, that 500k CLAMs represents only around 3% of the initial distribution. There is another 12 million CLAMs out there still waiting to be dug up. There is no guarantee that the current 500k CLAM dig is the last big dig, or even the biggest one. There are very likely huge numbers of CLAMs waiting to be dug from other old wallets - think of the MtGox wallet, the SilkRoad mixer wallet, various other mixing services and other black market sites, BTC-e, satoshidice, and many others. So while it's possible that we get through this current dig and still have some investors brave enough to hold CLAM throughout, will they stick around the next time it happens, or the time after that?

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.

The network rules have changed a few times in the past already. "Proof-of-working-stake" itself wasn't part of the original rules. Initially staking rewards were based on the age of the output that staked, meaning there was no incentive to stake your coins 24/7 - you could check in once a month, claim your stakes, then turn the wallet off again without incurring much if any penalty. There was also a staking lottery adding after launch, where the staking reward was pseudo-randomly assigned, ranging from 0.1 to 1000 CLAMs, and later the lottery was turned off. So there is no "sanctity of the network" in that sense. The rules have been changed before and can be changed again, so long as there is consensus to do so.

I don't see any real difference between changing the rules to say "your 4.6 CLAM dig is only worth 2.3 CLAM now because we had a halving last week" and changing them to say "your 4.6 CLAM dig is only worth 2.3 CLAM now because of blockchain storage fees". In either case the guy digging his CLAMs only gets half as many, and he presumably doesn't care why.

[YoyodyneSystems]

Don't over-complicate the solution and don't be overly idealistic.
Not directed at any particular idea, and not meant to be rude, but keep it in mind as a mantra.

I have seen many devs, coins, and communities make this mistake time and time again.
The simplest and fastest implemented ideas that actually make a big difference are the best ones.

[dooglus]

Don't over-complicate the solution and don't be overly idealistic.
Not directed at any particular idea, and not meant to be rude, but keep it in mind as a mantra.

I have seen many devs, coins, and communities make this mistake time and time again.
The simplest and fastest implemented ideas that actually make a big difference are the best ones.

Well, the simplest and fastest idea to implement is always "do nothing", closely followed by "cut off all digging with a hard fork".

Neither seems optimal.

[BayAreaCoins]

It already is. CLAM operates on consensus, not as a dictatorship. Creative couldn't force through an unpopular change even if she wanted to. The community would refuse to switch to the net version. The same goes for JD. JD currently has a majority of the staking CLAMs, but if it tried to force through an unpopular change I'm sure it would soon find itself being the sole staker on an irrelevant side fork.

How many coins is JD staking again a day?  1300 of 1440?

Clam feels like a dictatorship for sure at this point and is absolutely centralized.

Example:

Oh, wait. It's YOUR site, and YOU get to decide what you list and what you don't? Good. Same with Creative's OP post. It's up to her what she lists and what she doesn't.

My site is a private service.  Not a open source community project with select power trips.

[dooglus]

It already is. CLAM operates on consensus, not as a dictatorship. Creative couldn't force through an unpopular change even if she wanted to. The community would refuse to switch to the net version. The same goes for JD. JD currently has a majority of the staking CLAMs, but if it tried to force through an unpopular change I'm sure it would soon find itself being the sole staker on an irrelevant side fork.

How many coins is JD staking again a day?  1300 of 1440?

Clam feels like a dictatorship for sure at this point and is absolutely centralized.

Re-read what I said. JD only has that many CLAMs because people agree with how JD acts. If JD was to attempt to make an unpopular change to the CLAM rules I'm sure it would quickly lose its position as majority staker.

[bitbabba]

if it is true that this price cratering is due to ONE big whale digger! I guess that obviously something must be done to prevent further actions like this from him or any other whale digger that mybe do not know yet to have so much power into the clams network! Even an hard fork at this point could be better than the actual situation

Regards

[romjpn]

As an investor I'd say just cut the digging. That's indeed a big problem that a single person or a single group can be in control of so much CLAMS suddenly. But I'm not wise enough to say if it's good for CLAM long term.
Short-term that would make investors happy though...
It seems that the digger is letting the price going up a little again though for the moment.

[smooth]

I don't think I understood this point.

The suppliers are the stakers, and the cost is incurred by anyone running a full node.

Yes

But anyone running a full node can stake if they choose to, and would be helping the network if they did.

No. You have to also have coins to stake. Even if you have a few coins you are not a significant staker and have no significant say in the decision whether to include transactions (the next block will just include them even if you don't, and you will still incur the storage cost).

Unless you want the system to concentrate into one where only the largest stake holders actually run nodes and stake. (Not so different from the present, but is this really the ideal?)

Even then, there is a time disparity. Storage costs are paid to the staker now, but costs are incurred by anyone running a node in the future (or alternately in the past if you view the fee as backward-looking which seems to be implied by the structure). Again, trying to bring these into equilibrium has consequences that are probably not what is desired (set of node operators and stakers becomes static).

[SuperClam]

I don't think I understood this point.
The suppliers are the stakers, and the cost is incurred by anyone running a full node.

Yes

But anyone running a full node can stake if they choose to, and would be helping the network if they did.

No. You have to also have coins to stake. Even if you have a few coins you are not a significant staker and have no significant say in the decision whether to include transactions (the next block will just include them even if you don't, and you will still incur the storage cost).
Unless you want the system to concentrate into one where only the largest stake holders actually run nodes and stake. (Not so different from the present, but is this really the ideal?)
Even then, there is a time disparity. Storage costs are paid to the staker now, but costs are incurred by anyone running a node in the future (or alternately in the past if you view the fee as backward-looking which seems to be implied by the structure). Again, trying to bring these into equilibrium has consequences that are probably not what is desired (set of node operators and stakers becomes static).

Interesting point - though this has a positive impact on the utxo assuming an implementation of pruning.
The concept was conceived "backward" as you suggest; with the anticipation that once an output was "under-water" it would be pruned and attributed as fee.

[SuperClam]

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that the idea I attempted to outline in THIS post is not perfect.

It needs tweaking, as smooth has identified, to match our intentions as closely as possible with the actual outcome.
Perfection may not be possible; or, a better idea may emerge.

Much like distribution, where it would have made more sense to walk around and hand a paper-wallet to every individual person in the world, we only have access to a small toolbox of variables.  From these variables, our mission is to create incentives that most closely match our vision.  These incentives include protection against DDoS and bloat attacks, improved security and decentralization of block creation, resistance to censorship and interference in the peer-to-peer system, resource efficiency, and economic sustainability.

I know many are afraid.
I personally believe that we will get through this; and, more importantly, be stronger for it.

I can't prove that - and I don't expect nor want you take my word for it.
But, I believe it.

We will make wise choices together, weather the storms that it makes sense to weather, battle those that must be fought and emerge with better software, a stronger network and, inevitably, whether by patience or struggle, one less digger.

[smooth]

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that the idea I attempted to outline in THIS post is not perfect.

Just to clarify I wasn't suggesting it shouldn't be done (I think I even said that in the first message) or that it shouldn't be done if it can't be perfect. I was only pointing out some of the perhaps less obvious complications with it.

I'm also skeptical to the extent that the intent is to kill off unclaimed CLAMs in (large) part or whole in order to drive the current price higher. On top of potentially killing trust by creating a precedent of tinkering with parameters when some investors don't happen to like what the market is doing to the price, the magnitude of the fee to do that would have to be quite large to make a big dent in a 4.6 CLAM UXTO being held for a couple of years, and that would likely have big impact on other uses of the coin.

But if the intent and magnitude of it is in line with actual costs and making the coin more efficient and therefore more valuable, then it seems like a good direction to pursue.

One other complication by the way is that a large stakeholder can simply mine his own transactions without broadcasting them, and keep the fee. Or even make a deal with a large stakeholder to mine the transactions and rebate much of the fee. Unless there is a large demand for transactions and/or a small block size, the cost of doing this remains close to zero.

I personally believe that we will get through this; and, more importantly, be stronger for it.

I think that is very possible and good reason to not try to prop up the price with tinkering. Consider if nothing radical is done and the coin still gets through it. The added value from proven resiliency will be significant.

[gordob]

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that the idea I attempted to outline in THIS post is not perfect.

It needs tweaking, as smooth has identified, to match our intentions as closely as possible with the actual outcome.
Perfection may not be possible; or, a better idea may emerge.

Much like distribution, where it would have made more sense to walk around and hand a paper-wallet to every individual person in the world, we only have access to a small toolbox of variables.  From these variables, our mission is to create incentives that most closely match our vision.  These incentives include protection against DDoS and bloat attacks, improved security and decentralization of block creation, resistance to censorship and interference in the peer-to-peer system, resource efficiency, and economic sustainability.

I know many are afraid.
I personally believe that we will get through this; and, more importantly, be stronger for it.

I can't prove that - and I don't expect nor want you take my word for it.
But, I believe it.

We will make wise choices together, weather the storms that it makes sense to weather, battle those that must be fought and emerge with better software, a stronger network and, inevitably, whether by patience or struggle, one less digger.

I think we should start focusing on the positive, how do i propose that?
- Success is all about the community, instead of focusing about the clam digger, let's focus on ways 'as suggested' on improvements for clam.
1. Let's handle these improvements via a clam voting system on the chain (ledger) (focus our energy in the positive places & earn the respect of a strong community)
2. Let focus on marketing clam and growing the clam community, the price currently supports growing a huge community for long-term growth.
- Market, spread the word about clam, couldn't be a better time
- let's encourage further development of apps utilizing clam - i for one would support new initiatives in this regard as i am sure many will.

In my opinion, by looking at the above, focus heavily on the community and keeping clam's integrity in-tact - will show everyone that clam is in it for the long haul

thx

[crazyivan]

I repeat again, I have a feeling we re dealing with the person, the digger, who simply does care about anything at all but unloading every single CLAM he s about to get his hands on.
The data from the last couple of weeks support that. FFS, he s making the market drop at 10-25% PER DAY. Yes, @chriswen, you responded to my post about 10% per day drop as being exaggeration. Well, CLAM has gone down 25% today, compared to yesterday. Let see what s going to happen tomorrow but according to the sell side at Polo, it s gonna be the same, if not even worse. Buy orders have dropped to 35 BTC cause no single sane person s going to buy having in mind his actions.

I agree with one of the previous posts about the simplest solution being the best one, that s Occam's razor, among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. What is the simplest solution in our case, which ll prevent him from destroying the market? Obviously a hard fork which would cut all digging.

This is not something unheard of, other coins do it as well. If there s some external issue which hampers development of the coin, you fix it. I see TEK community s been discussing a similar hard work solution due to certain number of individuals trying to influence the system by intentionally and artificially increasing PoS TEK difficulty by splitting their holding into dozens of small blocks. There s one guy holding 500k of TEK, all divided in 1k blocks. The more competing blocks are there trying to stake, the higher is the PoS difficulty.

I know some of you re going to say I am too pessimistic but I strongly feel, if devs dont react, we ll have CLAM at 0.0001 by the end of this week and there will be NO return after that cause even at that price, he wont stop. HE WILL NOT STOP as long as he can get 1/10 of cent from each of this CLAM.   

[dooglus]

One other complication by the way is that a large stakeholder can simply mine his own transactions without broadcasting them, and keep the fee. Or even make a deal with a large stakeholder to mine the transactions and rebate much of the fee.

I think the intention is that that would be addressed by smoothing the fee payout over time.

For example, each block you stake gives you 10% of the "reward pool", leaving the other 90% in the pool. So any unusually big fee can't be claimed by the person paying the fee. He gets only 10% of it back. I guess the fee could even only be added to the pool N blocks after it is staked, so the fee payer doesn't even get to keep that 10% by withholding his transaction until he can stake.

[smooth]

One other complication by the way is that a large stakeholder can simply mine his own transactions without broadcasting them, and keep the fee. Or even make a deal with a large stakeholder to mine the transactions and rebate much of the fee.

I think the intention is that that would be addressed by smoothing the fee payout over time.

For example, each block you stake gives you 10% of the "reward pool", leaving the other 90% in the pool. So any unusually big fee can't be claimed by the person paying the fee. He gets only 10% of it back. I guess the fee could even only be added to the pool N blocks after it is staked, so the fee payer doesn't even get to keep that 10% by withholding his transaction until he can stake.

How much would your stake get back?

[dooglus]

Nothing justifies 20-30% drop per day. No sane investor s gonna sell that way.

Buy orders have dropped to 35 BTC cause no single sane person s going to buy having in mind his actions.

You seem to be saying that at the current price it would be insane to sell and also insane to buy.

How do you feel about holding?