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

[chriswen]

One thing about using the client is that you can stake your blocks right after.  I think it should stake easily because its been a long time.  While I did use the client I made the mistake of sending straight to JD.  quite unfortunate. 

I think you've got it backwards.

You seem to be saying that the coins you dig up will stake quickly because they're old, but age isn't a factor in staking, only size.

When you invest in JD you immediately start receiving a share of the staking rewards, whereas coins arriving in your own wallet won't start staking for 4 hours (if they were sent to you) or for 510 blocks (if they are immature after staking).

(The coins you send to JD also won't start staking for 4 hours, but that cost is shared between all the investors).

I like just-dice and the way it is but the system you are talking about is a (small) loss for people invested who don't withdraw their CLAM.

First of all there is the 10% lost.  Actually its not exactly 10% lost.  If the site is unprofitable you won't need to pay staking fees.

The other loss is that your clams might not always be staking because money is constantly being invested and withdrawn.  But you do get the benefit of getting staking rewards of people who do not invest.  And you also get the bonus of liquidity.  While there is a small loss because people are always moving coins around you have the ability to move it at any time and get stake rewards right up till withdrawal.

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[picolo]

One thing about using the client is that you can stake your blocks right after.  I think it should stake easily because its been a long time.  While I did use the client I made the mistake of sending straight to JD.  quite unfortunate. 

I think you've got it backwards.

You seem to be saying that the coins you dig up will stake quickly because they're old, but age isn't a factor in staking, only size.

When you invest in JD you immediately start receiving a share of the staking rewards, whereas coins arriving in your own wallet won't start staking for 4 hours (if they were sent to you) or for 510 blocks (if they are immature after staking).

(The coins you send to JD also won't start staking for 4 hours, but that cost is shared between all the investors).

I like just-dice and the way it is but the system you are talking about is a (small) loss for people invested who don't withdraw their CLAM.

First of all there is the 10% lost.  Actually its not exactly 10% lost.  If the site is unprofitable you won't need to pay staking fees.

The other loss is that your clams might not always be staking because money is constantly being invested and withdrawn.  But you do get the benefit of getting staking rewards of people who do not invest.  And you also get the bonus of liquidity.  While there is a small loss because people are always moving coins around you have the ability to move it at any time and get stake rewards right up till withdrawal.

I would be in favor of not giving stacking rewards for CLAM that cannot stack but I don't feel strongly about it.
What about allowing investors not to invest for bets of more than a certain number of CLAM : you could invest only for bets of less than 1 CLAM or less than 10 CLAM, if someone bets more you don't win or lose.

[dooglus]

First of all there is the 10% lost.  Actually its not exactly 10% lost.  If the site is unprofitable you won't need to pay staking fees.

That used to be true, but isn't any longer.

The 10% fee is taken off before the staking reward is allocated to investors now, not at the end of the month. The rewards are then not subject to further commission charges (your 'base' figure increases as each reward is added, resulting in a zero gain in commission-able profit). It changed when I added the /offsite functionality. I had to rework how rewards are allocated. They used to be just added to the bankroll like any other site gain, but that doesn't work when I want to only share it between the onsite investments.

[dooglus]

I'm concerned that clam is in danger of a blockchain fork. I'm hesitant to bring it up, but if I'm right, then something can and should be done to prevent it.

I mentioned above that I got "stuck" on a block from Jan 18 and fixed it by basically starting over. I was using clam-1.4.4 on Ubuntu. Still using 1.4.4 yesterday I got stuck again, this time at block 309743. From debug.log :

I've seen the client get stuck after a block it mined was orphaned before too, and mentioned it to the developers on the IRC channel. I don't now if it was taken seriously or not. This was before v1.4.4 was released by the way, so I'm not convinced it's a new issue.

For the record, JD is running an older version of clamd and still has over 50% of the staking weight. So if the problem *is* specific to v1.4.4 then it shouldn't be a problem, since over 50% of the network isn't running v1.4.4.

[dooglus]

I would be in favor of not giving stacking rewards for CLAM that cannot stack but I don't feel strongly about it.

I answered this in the JD thread. I don't want to spam up the CLAM thread with Just-Dice stuff.

[Trent Russell]

I'm concerned that clam is in danger of a blockchain fork. I'm hesitant to bring it up, but if I'm right, then something can and should be done to prevent it.

I mentioned above that I got "stuck" on a block from Jan 18 and fixed it by basically starting over. I was using clam-1.4.4 on Ubuntu. Still using 1.4.4 yesterday I got stuck again, this time at block 309743. From debug.log :

I've seen the client get stuck after a block it mined was orphaned before too, and mentioned it to the developers on the IRC channel. I don't now if it was taken seriously or not. This was before v1.4.4 was released by the way, so I'm not convinced it's a new issue.

For the record, JD is running an older version of clamd and still has over 50% of the staking weight. So if the problem *is* specific to v1.4.4 then it shouldn't be a problem, since over 50% of the network isn't running v1.4.4.

Thanks for letting me know. Do you usually announce when JD updates to a new version? It seems like the safest thing for small stakers like me to do is update around the same time as JD. Actually, maybe the version of clam JD is running could be on the JD FAQ.

[dooglus]

Thanks for letting me know. Do you usually announce when JD updates to a new version? It seems like the safest thing for small stakers like me to do is update around the same time as JD. Actually, maybe the version of clam JD is running could be on the JD FAQ.

I made a whole bunch of changes to clamd shortly before launching JD with CLAM. It was missing a lot of the features I needed to do what JD does (manage a shared wallet without disturbing the staking outputs more than necessary, split large deposits into multiple small outputs when staking them, report on the amount earned from staking, track the money supply, etc.) so I added them.

I contributed almost all of my changes back upstream, but apparently not all of them, so at some point I'm going to have to check which of my changes aren't in the latest official release and either merge them in or decide I don't need them. That's a job I've been putting off, but I'll get to it sooner or later.

So currently JD is running something which claims to be "BlackCoin version v1.4.2.1-468-g21ff975-dirty" when I run it with --help. The "BlackCoin" string has presumably been fixed in a recent release. I think what I'm running is based on the last release before ClamSpeech started actually working.

Speaking of which, I don't really understand the concept of ClamSpeech. I don't know if "expression of religious freedom - budhism" is a template which is meant to be replaced by an actual expression of religious freedom, or if that is a self-referential expression of freedom, but I was wondering whether it might be appropriate to use the most recently uttered line from the Just-Dice chat tab in each block that JD stakes. Then the blockchain contains real speech (however dumb), not just canned text, which presumably strengthens the argument that the blockchain is "speech".

[xoxoll]

Hard to stake if block explorer always 7 blocks ahead.

[chriswen]

Speaking of which, I don't really understand the concept of ClamSpeech. I don't know if "expression of religious freedom - budhism" is a template which is meant to be replaced by an actual expression of religious freedom, or if that is a self-referential expression of freedom, but I was wondering whether it might be appropriate to use the most recently uttered line from the Just-Dice chat tab in each block that JD stakes. Then the blockchain contains real speech (however dumb), not just canned text, which presumably strengthens the argument that the blockchain is "speech".

Putting JD chat on the blockchain would be interesting.

[picolo]

Thanks for letting me know. Do you usually announce when JD updates to a new version? It seems like the safest thing for small stakers like me to do is update around the same time as JD. Actually, maybe the version of clam JD is running could be on the JD FAQ.

I made a whole bunch of changes to clamd shortly before launching JD with CLAM. It was missing a lot of the features I needed to do what JD does (manage a shared wallet without disturbing the staking outputs more than necessary, split large deposits into multiple small outputs when staking them, report on the amount earned from staking, track the money supply, etc.) so I added them.

I contributed almost all of my changes back upstream, but apparently not all of them, so at some point I'm going to have to check which of my changes aren't in the latest official release and either merge them in or decide I don't need them. That's a job I've been putting off, but I'll get to it sooner or later.

So currently JD is running something which claims to be "BlackCoin version v1.4.2.1-468-g21ff975-dirty" when I run it with --help. The "BlackCoin" string has presumably been fixed in a recent release. I think what I'm running is based on the last release before ClamSpeech started actually working.

Speaking of which, I don't really understand the concept of ClamSpeech. I don't know if "expression of religious freedom - budhism" is a template which is meant to be replaced by an actual expression of religious freedom, or if that is a self-referential expression of freedom, but I was wondering whether it might be appropriate to use the most recently uttered line from the Just-Dice chat tab in each block that JD stakes. Then the blockchain contains real speech (however dumb), not just canned text, which presumably strengthens the argument that the blockchain is "speech".

CLAM and just-dice in CLAM are still a work in progress but it is functionning well so far so it should grow bigger and better.

[inkha]

You can check the value of your clams and find some other useful links and information on Claams.com

[popolite11]

You can check the value of your clams and find some other useful links and information on Claams.com

That is an good option to check it.

[chilly2k]

Each CLAM has a certain chance of staking each 16 seconds. If you only try to stake half the time, you will stake about half as often. In that sense it's like proof-of-work. If age mattered then you could shut down your wallet most of the time, let the age build up, then once a week run it and let all your outputs stake, collecting the potential built up during the downtime. That's no longer how it works.

   Excellent explanation Doog.  I knew age was no longer a factor, but not the why piece. 

It's to bad we can't somehow track the time actually staking and make that part of the factor.  Now it's all random, each block of clams has the same chance as all the others.  I believe this is hurting the smaller stakers.  I know eventually it will all even out, but in the shorter term they are not seeing a benefit to staking on their own.
So if you had the weight increase and then reset once a block is staked, more smaller investors might buy into staking.  It wouldn't cause them to get more shares, just more regularity.   

   I don't profess to really understanding how clams actually stake.  But if there was some way to factor in the weight while still keeping it somewhat random, that would be cool.
Maybe have a way to know when the client first connects to the network, and use that as the basis for the stake time weight.  Each time it connected it would reset to 0.   

 This doesn't really affect me, I've just changed my mindset from staking X per day to staking Y per week.  Since Just-Dice started I can no longer expect to stake a somewhat constant amount a day (+/- 30%). but for a week it's pretty regular (+/- 30%). 
     

[inkha]

You can check the value of your clams and find some other useful links and information on Claams.com

That is an good option to check it.

Thanks I can improve upon CLAAMS.com also if you have any feature request cheers

[aukusti]

I'm trying to claim some clam from my old doge wallet and nothing seems to happen when I import the wallet.dat and enter the password for it. Am I doing something wrong here or am I just too impatient? There definitely were some doge in that wallet on 12th of May

[SuperClam]

I'm trying to claim some clam from my old doge wallet and nothing seems to happen when I import the wallet.dat and enter the password for it. Am I doing something wrong here or am I just too impatient? There definitely were some doge in that wallet on 12th of May

If you are certain that the given wallet.dat file contains keys corresponding to unspent outputs on May 12th:

The debug.log file should contain a short report concerning the import.  Please ensure no keys were "skipped".
If the keys were imported successfully, try restarting the client with the rescan flag.

If you are still having problems, please stop in to #clams on freenode IRC; haven't had a single claim we haven't been able to figure out yet

[Vortex20000]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3gfntBEI3Aw

Made me thi k of you twats

Well, thanks for the laugh, uglyvagina.

[dooglus]

   Excellent explanation Doog.  I knew age was no longer a factor, but not the why piece. 

I'm not exactly sure about the 'why' myself. The previous way was being abused by some kind of block-withholding and timewarp attacks, and a whole bunch of upstream changes were merged in to the CLAM client. It's hard to know which of them were brought in because they were a good idea, and which were just merged because they were there.

It's to bad we can't somehow track the time actually staking and make that part of the factor.  Now it's all random, each block of clams has the same chance as all the others.  I believe this is hurting the smaller stakers.  I know eventually it will all even out, but in the shorter term they are not seeing a benefit to staking on their own.
So if you had the weight increase and then reset once a block is staked, more smaller investors might buy into staking.  It wouldn't cause them to get more shares, just more regularity.   

A block's chance is proportional to its size. It's not true that "each block of clams has the same chance as all the others". If it did, everyone would do best by splitting their 1 CLAM into a million tiny blocks and the blockchain would get very bloated as a result.

If weight increased with age, it might well become not worth staking most of the time. Why waste all that CPU time checking for staking opportunities every 16 seconds if you can just shut staking down and check for staking opportunities once per day? It seems like it's best for the network to have as many people staking as possible, but maybe it doesn't make a difference.

   I don't profess to really understanding how clams actually stake.  But if there was some way to factor in the weight while still keeping it somewhat random, that would be cool.
Maybe have a way to know when the client first connects to the network, and use that as the basis for the stake time weight.  Each time it connected it would reset to 0.   

Bear in mind that the whole thing has to work without trust on a decentralised network. How am I to know when your client connected to the network and that you didn't just write a program that fakes it?

[dooglus]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3gfntBEI3Aw

Funny video. Overweight middle-aged men acting dumb always make me laugh (do you see what I did there?)

[Baljourn]

Is there anyone else having problems with wallet v. 1.4.4 not staking?  I was doing fine until two days ago, which is the last time the wallet has staked.  Could it be that I just am that unlucky or is there something I'm missing?