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

[Northstar]

So we have two main camps here. Exaggerating the positions, we have:

Camp A: wants to leave everything how it is so it's fair for future diggers. It's not OK to cancel their free CLAMs. The stakeholders knew massive digging was a risk and accepted it. They hoped it wouldn't happen but it did. Suck it up.

Camp B: bought into CLAM and saw the price drop. To fix this, let's ban digging. Then the price can recover and we can all get rich.

Sure there are shades of grey between these extremes, involving halvenings and such like, but let's ignore those for now.

You're proposing a third camp:

Camp C: It's not fair to change the CLAM rules, but it's OK to make a new coin, let's call it doogcoin. We use a variant of the CLAM distribution method: everyone who held non-distribution CLAM outputs at lunchtime yesterday can use their CLAM private key to claim their doogcoins. Just-Dice stops using CLAM and starts using doogcoin. The CLAM rules are unchanged, everyone can keep digging their CLAM, so everyone's happy, right?

All three correct I'd say.

[...]

I'm not sure whether the "fuck you, don't answer my posts"

I prefer it the "Don't use energy answering my posts, fuck you" clause and I was trying to keep my nasty attitude off the public forums as requested by Creative.  That's why I pm'ed it.

Tbh I'd prefer for the clause to stay in effect, but really I can get the fuck over it because it's the internet and if you don't let one river flow, 10 other things branch off it.  I need to not be cranky.  I'm working on it.  I see it as you described in Camp B.

I'm really glad to see reason prevailing over emotions, you guys are all an important part of the solution to our problem due to your past contributions and I don't think any solution would be good unless all important parties are on board and we eventually reach consensus. If Iran and the US can sit down and hammer out a deal, I am sure we can find a solution to our predicament as well.

[BayAreaCoins]

   I like the camp C option, just needs a different name.  Doog is to close to Doge.  

Would the rest of the coins parameters stay the same.  like block times, staking rates etc...  

I think this conversation should take place in it's own thread perhaps if that idea wants to grow.

[nicolaennio]

Thanks for the reply, since these posts are getting gigantic, I'll try to cut a bit my replies too.

In so far as the digger is dumping and forcing the price down, yes.

The speculation "A whale is dumping down the price" which I saw in many posts and yours too, seems purely dictated by fear and not by rational thinking. If a whale is really 'forcing' the price, then no problem, in few time the price will recover.

I think the concern is that we don't have two or three years. If the price continues dropping for another year will anyone still be interested in the coin?

Please convince me this is not fearmongering, in that case I doubt the 'right' decisions will be taken.

I really do think that if the rules were changed to stop new CLAMs being dug up then there would be less supply, more demand, and an increase in price. I'm surprised you don't. As I understand it, nobody is claiming that stopping the digging wouldn't cause the price to rise. The objection is only whether it is fair to do such a thing.

More demand? Surely you can stop supply, but this doesn't mean you'll have more demand, and so you don't necessarily have an increase in price. But I can think of a way for having more demand: a low price so that people can 'buy and play on JD'

This seems to be a common misconception:

"Staking is like inflation, and inflation is bad"

I like the inflation of CLAMs, I am just saying that currently is "too much".

[chilly2k]

Camp B: bought into CLAM and saw the price drop. To fix this, let's ban digging. Then the price can recover and we can all get rich.

   Food for thought.  

   Is the problem digging or dumping?  Digging, in and of itself, will not cause the price to drop.  Dumping will.  There are several ways to end up with dumping.  

a) dig up a bunch of clams and sell them off as fast as you can.
b) own a lot of clams, then get butt hurt and dump them all on the market.
c) win a large amount on JD and dump them just to get the BTC.  
d) inherit clams, then dump them.  
e) people panicking over rumors.  

    Just throwing it out there.  

      
        

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

That "first stake or spend" is the act we are talking about changing the rules for.

Really?  During this discussion I always read "digging" as submitting a pre-May/2014 BTC wallet to receive 4.6 CLAMS per BTC address. 

I can see how you can stop somebody from getting 4.6 CLAMs from a previously unsubmitted BTC address, but how can you keep somebody from staking/spending CLAMs they already own?

[jaysabi]

I am trying to follow the discussion. Some opinions that I have (disclaimers: I own clams held in JD):

- Are CLAM holders concerned about the whale digger? I think they shouldn't. It's not a surprising fact that a whale digger arrived and the staking of clams is proceeding quite quickly, at least at the same rate as the whale is digging (even though nobody know why).

In so far as the digger is dumping and forcing the price down, yes.

I'm not sure you meant "staking" there, since it doesn't make much sense. Staking happens once per minute, by design, whoever is digging, dumping, or whatever else.

-  Are CLAM holders concerned about the "low" price? I hope nobody here really thinks to be able to modify the price (like 'pumping' it) with some smart decision about the CLAM protocol, the market will always self-correct and these kind of bubbles are common to any cryptocoin anyway.

I really do think that if the rules were changed to stop new CLAMs being dug up then there would be less supply, more demand, and an increase in price. I'm surprised you don't. As I understand it, nobody is claiming that stopping the digging wouldn't cause the price to rise. The objection is only whether it is fair to do such a thing.

- Are CLAM holders concerned about future diggings? Since the rate of staking new coins is quite high, in two or three years new dug wallets *should* be irrelevant to the overall economy.

I think the concern is that we don't have two or three years. If the price continues dropping for another year will anyone still be interested in the coin? There are hundreds if not thousands of dead altcoins out there which would be staking nicely if only anyone could be bothered to still have the wallet running.

I personally think that currently we have another more important problem: staking is going very fast (we already have more staked coins than dug ones)

This seems to be a common misconception:

"Staking is like inflation, and inflation is bad"

We feel that inflation is bad, because in the fiat world we put $1000 in a savings account, earn 2% interest on it, but in the mean time the money supply has been inflated 10% by quantitative easing. Our $1002 now has less buying power than it had before. It is a smaller percentage of the total money supply.

This is even true with PoW coins like DogeCoin. Miners get to earn block rewards forever. We buy a million DOGE, save it, and every day our million DOGE represents a smaller and smaller percentage of the money supply.

However! For PoS coins this isn't the case. We buy 1000 CLAMs, and it's 0.1% of the 1 million total money supply, say. If there's no digging, and only staking, then a year later another 500k CLAMs have been staked. But we have staked 500 of that 500k, since we are 0.1% of the staking weight. So now we have 1500 of the 1.5 million supply, and still have 0.1% of the total money supply. Sure, assuming a constant market cap the price will have decreased by 50%, but our holdings have increased by 50% too, so our net worth in CLAM has remained constant.

In this way staking is NOT the same as the inflation we see in USD, BTC, or DOGE, since the newly created coins are shared out to existing holders in proportion to their holdings.

and it seems to push owners to hoard CLAMS and hold them indefinitely.

but it shouldn't. Staking is "running to stay still". The only people you will be overtaking are those who aren't running (staking). I mean, staking isn't some magic wealth creation system. If everyone is staking, where does all that extra value come from? It doesn't. It increases the money supply while decreasing the per-unit value of that supply.

It's not value destruction as long as the economy is growing with the money supply, but exactly what economy is there underneath CLAM? I suppose a couple gambling sites could constitute an economy in the broadest measure of the word, but unless those sites grow their gambling base at the same rate as CLAM inflation, isn't inflation devaluing the coin? Perhaps CLAMs' ultimate weakness is its low utility. You just can't do much with it. Unless a (more robust) economy springs up around the coin, the current inflation rate is bound to devalue it relative to other currencies.

[whywetrance]

Could someone post an updated bootstrap?


Found 2 old doge wallets from December 2013 lol, and figured what the heck- let's see what Clam is all about.

I'm stuck on Block 600423 and about 2 weeks into syncing after using the bootstraps supplied here.


Can't wait for that 8-9 clams- not bad for an old microsd find =)




Go CLAM!

[chilly2k]

That "first stake or spend" is the act we are talking about changing the rules for.

Really?  During this discussion I always read "digging" as submitting a pre-May/2014 BTC wallet to receive 4.6 CLAMS per BTC address. 

I can see how you can stop somebody from getting 4.6 CLAMs from a previously unsubmitted BTC address, but how can you keep somebody from staking/spending CLAMs they already own?

  I think I finally wrapped my head around it.  When you submit your wallet to the client, it will generate the matched clams keys.  So your Clams client will reflect the balance as recorded in the first few clams blocks.  Nothing happens on the block chain.  Now if you leave the wallet long enough it could stake those addresses and the new balance would be reflected in a new block on the chain.  Or you could move all of your coins to a new address.  in either case once you move the balance from the origin block you can find a DIG transaction in the clams debug log.   

   Not sure if this is a fact, But I usually like to say claim, for importing the wallet, and updating your clams wallet, and Dig for the actual movement. 

I believe the thought was to, eliminate the code to move clams from blocks <  9500 or something around there.  And to fail transactions that try to do that.   

[SuperClam]

That "first stake or spend" is the act we are talking about changing the rules for.

Really?  During this discussion I always read "digging" as submitting a pre-May/2014 BTC wallet to receive 4.6 CLAMS per BTC address. 
I can see how you can stop somebody from getting 4.6 CLAMs from a previously unsubmitted BTC address, but how can you keep somebody from staking/spending CLAMs they already own?

  I think I finally wrapped my head around it.  When you submit your wallet to the client, it will generate the matched clams keys.  So your Clams client will reflect the balance as recorded in the first few clams blocks.  Nothing happens on the block chain.  Now if you leave the wallet long enough it could stake those addresses and the new balance would be reflected in a new block on the chain.  Or you could move all of your coins to a new address.  in either case once you move the balance from the origin block you can find a DIG transaction in the clams debug log.   
   Not sure if this is a fact, But I usually like to say claim, for importing the wallet, and updating your clams wallet, and Dig for the actual movement. 
I believe the thought was to, eliminate the code to move clams from blocks <  9500 or something around there.  And to fail transactions that try to do that.   

This is essentially accurate.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

That "first stake or spend" is the act we are talking about changing the rules for.

Really?  During this discussion I always read "digging" as submitting a pre-May/2014 BTC wallet to receive 4.6 CLAMS per BTC address. 

I can see how you can stop somebody from getting 4.6 CLAMs from a previously unsubmitted BTC address, but how can you keep somebody from staking/spending CLAMs they already own?

  I think I finally wrapped my head around it.  When you submit your wallet to the client, it will generate the matched clams keys.  So your Clams client will reflect the balance as recorded in the first few clams blocks.  Nothing happens on the block chain.  Now if you leave the wallet long enough it could stake those addresses and the new balance would be reflected in a new block on the chain.  Or you could move all of your coins to a new address.  in either case once you move the balance from the origin block you can find a DIG transaction in the clams debug log.   

   Not sure if this is a fact, But I usually like to say claim, for importing the wallet, and updating your clams wallet, and Dig for the actual movement. 

I believe the thought was to, eliminate the code to move clams from blocks <  9500 or something around there.  And to fail transactions that try to do that.   

Thank you for that explanation.  I guess I need to update my user name to include more of the coins I'm too dumb for.  Is there a limit on user name length?  If anyone starts posting as TooDumbForAllCoins, it's me.

[dooglus]

Why not implement said Doogcoin alongside Clam on JD, instead of in its place? Kind of like Alex's site where you can gamble a few different crypto's with one common trollbox, etc?

I just spent a few hours away from the computer thinking about things, and came to the same conclusion myself. There's no reason to switch from CLAM to the new coin when we can accept both at the same time. That way people get to lose their balance twice!

The Just-Dice codebase isn't set up to handle multiple currencies, but I can simply run two different instances like I did with the original Just-Dice and Doge-Dice sites.

[dooglus]

The speculation "A whale is dumping down the price" which I saw in many posts and yours too, seems purely dictated by fear and not by rational thinking. If a whale is really 'forcing' the price, then no problem, in few time the price will recover.

There is no question that someone with access to a lot of old BTC private keys is systematically digging and dumping distribution CLAMs. He is doing it in reverse order of the block the outputs were created in, just to be sure we know it's a single entity doing it.

I think the concern is that we don't have two or three years. If the price continues dropping for another year will anyone still be interested in the coin?

Please convince me this is not fearmongering, in that case I doubt the 'right' decisions will be taken.

I can try to convince you of the timescales. At 2015-11-13 22:51:23 the digger dug the following addresses: [x9NXaGSz] [xA9338mM] [xPWEDmTS] [xEZKQHEU] [xPosuwLa] [xNNwmVoL] [xXL7bZ5s], all of which were funded in block 5763. Click each link and check which block the addresses were funded in, and which block they were emptied in. Before that he was working on block 5764, and so on back up to the newest distribution block. If you were to dig from block 9999 back to block 5764, you would have dug 38.32% of all the distribution CLAMs. Since the whale digger's CLAMs are uniformly distributed through the initial distribution we can say with pretty good certainty that he is around 38% of the way through digging the wallet he's currently working on.

This chart shows global digging (click to enlarge):



The 'whale digger' started around Aug 21st, so it has taken him 3 months to dig 200k, representing 38% of his wallet, but note that after the first 10 days or so he slowed down a lot. In the last 77 days he has dug 135k, representing 25.8% of his wallet. Since he has 100-38.32 = 61.68% left to dig of the current wallet, and he's digging 25.8/77 = 0.335% of his wallet per day, the remaining 61.68% should take him 184 days, or 6 more months.

And that's just for the wallet he's currently digging through. We don't know if he has others. We do know that the wallet he's digging represents something like 3 to 5% of all the distribution CLAMs and so it is entirely possible that there are 10 more out there of the same size or bigger.

I really do think that if the rules were changed to stop new CLAMs being dug up then there would be less supply, more demand, and an increase in price. I'm surprised you don't. As I understand it, nobody is claiming that stopping the digging wouldn't cause the price to rise. The objection is only whether it is fair to do such a thing.

More demand? Surely you can stop supply, but this doesn't mean you'll have more demand, and so you don't necessarily have an increase in price. But I can think of a way for having more demand: a low price so that people can 'buy and play on JD'

I have stopped buying CLAMs. It makes no sense to buy them when the price is going nowhere but down. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. I'm sure that stopping the digger would stop the downward price pressure and remove the only reason I and others stopped buying CLAMs.

Price is a function of supply and demand. The price adjusts until the supply at that price is equal to the demand at that price.

This seems to be a common misconception:

"Staking is like inflation, and inflation is bad"

I like the inflation of CLAMs, I am just saying that currently is "too much".

Can you expand on that? If it's not bad, how can it be too much? Since it theoretically has no net effect on the value of your holdings what does it matter how high the staking reward is?

[dooglus]

  Is the problem digging or dumping?  Digging, in and of itself, will not cause the price to drop.  Dumping will.  There are several ways to end up with dumping.  

a) dig up a bunch of clams and sell them off as fast as you can.
b) own a lot of clams, then get butt hurt and dump them all on the market.
c) win a large amount on JD and dump them just to get the BTC.  
d) inherit clams, then dump them.  
e) people panicking over rumors.  

    Just throwing it out there.

Good point. We don't know that the digger is dumping at all.

We do know that all the coins he digs go to poloniex, and then most go to JD.

We can't tell the difference between:

  1) digger deposits to poloniex and sells CLAMs to JD investor; JD investor withdraws CLAMs to JD

  2) digger deposits to poloniex and then withdraws CLAMs to JD; the poloniex step is purely to obfuscate the link between him and his JD account

Either way, the money supply is being massively diluted by digging, and the price is dropping.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

Either way, the money supply is being massively diluted by digging, and the price is dropping.

Assuming (for the sake of argument) that this is a betting site/exchange owner acting alone.  How is the effect on supply/price different from the actions of (for the sake of argument) 1000 "real" wallet owners doing the same thing with the same CLAMs (that were really their property).  Is it the compressed time frame (3 months) that is the problem?

[dooglus]

It's not value destruction as long as the economy is growing with the money supply,

You can say it's not value destruction, but it's all least value transfer. My $1000 that I saved last year won't buy as much now as it would then. The value I have lost maybe now exists in the pocket of some government employee or central banker, so OK it wasn't destroyed. But I no longer control it.

Fiat (and Bitcoin) inflation devalues saver holdings to the benefit of the people who get the newly created money.

unless those sites grow their gambling base at the same rate as CLAM inflation, isn't inflation devaluing the coin?

No. It devalues each unit of the coin, but each (staking) holder gains units to compensate for that devaluation, resulting in 0% net value loss.

Perhaps CLAMs' ultimate weakness is its low utility. You just can't do much with it. Unless a (more robust) economy springs up around the coin, the current inflation rate is bound to devalue it relative to other currencies.

Suppose you have 100 CLAM and the price is 0.01 BTC per CLAM. You have 1 BTC worth of CLAM.

Suppose staking doubles your holding each year and halves the price each year.

By the end of the year, you'll have 200 CLAM and the price is 0.05 BTC per CLAM. You still have 1 BTC worth of CLAM.

You can cry that the price of CLAM in BTC has halved, but who cares? You still have 1 BTC worth of it, so it doesn't matter.

The only person complain is the guy who didn't bother staking for that year. He still has 100 CLAM, but now it's only worth 0.5 BTC. That's the incentive to stake.

[dooglus]

That "first stake or spend" is the act we are talking about changing the rules for.

Really?  During this discussion I always read "digging" as submitting a pre-May/2014 BTC wallet to receive 4.6 CLAMS per BTC address. 

"Submitting" is probably not helpful here. What you're doing is importing an old BTC wallet into a piece of open source software running on your own computer, which causes it to update a database on your own computer *and not tell anyone anywhere that you did so*. Until you stake or spend the coins that showed up when you imported the wallet nobody can tell that you imported the wallet. It all happens on your computer and nowhere else.

I can see how you can stop somebody from getting 4.6 CLAMs from a previously unsubmitted BTC address,

Actually, we can't. You can always use the current version of the CLAM client to import your old BTC wallet, and it will always show they you own some CLAMs. It doesn't know whether the rules will change in a future version.

but how can you keep somebody from staking/spending CLAMs they already own?

Technically, you can do it by changing the rules the client enforces. You change them to reject the spending of any output created in the first 10,000 blocks.

Ethically, perhaps you can't do it at all. That's where "Camp A" is coming from. You can't un-give people the CLAMs you already gave them.

[dooglus]

This is essentially accurate.

I'd appreciate hearing from you and xploited. Do either of you have anything to contribute to the discussion?

[SuperClam]

This is essentially accurate.

I'd appreciate hearing from you and xploited. Do either of you have anything to contribute to the discussion?

I don't believe splintering the network would be in the best interests of CLAM.
The network would be better served by a single decision and path forward that keeps the network unified.
In my honest opinion, all parties are better served with a pseudo-contentious single decision than multiple forks of the network.

That said, Just-Dice controls the majority of the staking CLAM and hence the majority of the CLAM network.
There is little the minority of solo-stakers could do to challenge such a change.

[smooth]

Camp C: It's not fair to change the CLAM rules, but it's OK to make a new coin, let's call it doogcoin. We use a variant of the CLAM distribution method: everyone who held non-distribution CLAM outputs at lunchtime yesterday can use their CLAM private key to claim their doogcoins. Just-Dice stops using CLAM and starts using doogcoin. The CLAM rules are unchanged, everyone can keep digging their CLAM, so everyone's happy, right?

Yes that is correct. Of course, you can use whatever distribution method you want for a new coin. I just suggested that mirroring the existing distribution of CLAM is superior to forking the network in an uncontrolled manner where transactions will confirm on one chain or both, causing chaos.

Anyone who wants digging to stop switches to doogcoin. Presumably JD switches to doogcoin too. I guess most CLAM holders dump their CLAM to buy more doogcoin. CLAM price goes to 0, doogcoin price goes to the moon. Is that the correct outcome? Is that what you're proposing?

Maybe that is the outcome, in which case so be it. Talk is cheap and if nobody really (as in putting money behind it) values the ideas on which CLAM is founded after all, then it will indeed go to zero. At the same time, perhaps there is some demand for a coin that is is distributed to holders of three widely held cryptos and not just the roughly 3% of holders of those coins who have dug CLAMs until now and that happens to be used on one well-known dice site, and in that case the original CLAM won't go to zero. I don't think we can really just make up the answer without actually doing the experiment.

[smooth]

That said, Just-Dice controls the majority of the staking CLAM and hence the majority of the CLAM network.
There is little the minority of solo-stakers could do to challenge such a change.

What this tells you is that the current situation where the most on the stake is on Just-Dice is completely broken. Just-Dice can effectively wipe out anyone's CLAMs (not just pre-dig) by refusing to stake on top of any blocks that move those coins. You might as well just make the whole damn thing a book entry on a Just-Dice database and dispense with the presence that there is a decentralized crypto.

Which to me is all the more reason to let the supply continue to grow so maybe, someday, there will be more coins in existence than just what people choose to invest in the JD bankroll. Granted that doesn't appear to be happening with the current digger but it at least could happen if the distribution process continues in the future.