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

[thefix]

Reducing the entire problem to "(current) block-creators decide everything" is oversimplifying to a dangerous degree.

OK, so who should "decide everything", if not the coin's stakeholders?

Exactly that is what i thought too. Though i think that danger is now avoided isn't it? Price stabilizes and the fork is dead or am i missing something?

I think this is what you are missing:

Before this whale digger appeared, around 72k old addresses had been dug up. That's 2.2% of the initial distribution.

Now that the whale digger has apparently finished, around 178k old addresses have been dug up. That's 5.5% of the initial distribution.

There's 94.5% of the initial distribution still undug.

People seem to be thinking that the whale digger's 3.3% is somehow significant, rather than being only 1/30th of the initial distribution.

This is a single guy who probably abused a bunch of faucets. Think about what happens if the Silk Road wallet ever gets dug up. Or the MtGox wallet. BTC-e. SatoshiDice. MyBitcoin. Pirate's Ponzi wallet. The various big mining pools. And so on. There are many more potential whale diggers out there.

BAC was actively petitioning the government to release the confiscated Silk Road private keys so he could dig the associated CLAMs.

tl;dr: one guy digging 3.3% of the initial distribution != "danger is now avoided". His actions are tiny in the scale of things.

Edit: some people find a graphical representation easier to understand. Everyone was freaking about about the impact of the orange area, but we're supposed to somehow not worry about the yellow area?

I do agree with the sentiment that some have expressed that We Survived the Great Digging Panic of 2015 and with the right response that can make the coin stronger and more resilient. But then you still have some people approaching it more from a FUD perspective ("Okay, but what about the next whale digger?! zOMG!!"), sadly.

Why do you call that "FUD"? 94.5% of the initial distribution is still unclaimed. Are you arguing with that number, or you think it doesn't matter that this massive inflation we've just seen could happen again repeatedly in the future?

The potential for larger undug wallets has always been very clear to me without charts, but I do appreciate the PAC-MAN look! Its still a very high risk coin to purchase with all the undug wallets and a price 90% less would be more reasonable considering the total undug supply.

[thefix]

I do agree with the sentiment that some have expressed that We Survived the Great Digging Panic of 2015 and with the right response that can make the coin stronger and more resilient. But then you still have some people approaching it more from a FUD perspective ("Okay, but what about the next whale digger?! zOMG!!"), sadly.

Why do you call that "FUD"? 94.5% of the initial distribution is still unclaimed. Are you arguing with that number, or you think it doesn't matter that this massive inflation we've just seen could happen again repeatedly in the future?

Of course I'm not arguing with the number, it is clearly correct. I'm suggesting that the context is very colored by not only the recent dig (which wasn't really out of line with previous "big digs") but by the panic it created.

There was no new information to come out of this latest experience, except the reaction of the community to it. Has the total supply changed? Did anyone doubt there were people out there with many addresses? Has the fundamental truth that the more coins are dug the fewer there are left to dig changed in any way? (BTW, the same can be said about "big digs" -- the more happen, the fewer can ever happen in the future.)

Before this whale digger appeared, around 72k old addresses had been dug up. That's 2.2% of the initial distribution.

Now that the whale digger has apparently finished, around 178k old addresses have been dug up. That's 5.5% of the initial distribution.

These numbers are misleading because of staking. The latest dig was only 60% of the active supply, not 150% of it. Future digs will be even smaller relative to active supply, both because more digging has already occurred but because staking will continue to dilute undug coins.

Its not possible to know future diggs will be smaller relative to the active supply unless someone knows something the rest of us do not.

[smooth]

These numbers are misleading because of staking. The latest dig was only 60% of the active supply, not 150% of it. Future digs will be even smaller relative to active supply, both because more digging has already occurred but because staking will continue to dilute undug coins.

Its not possible to know future diggs will be smaller relative to the active supply unless someone knows something the rest of us do not.

You are correct of course. I meant to convey that digs of a given size will be smaller and smaller relative to active supply, but it is possible there will be digs that are so much larger in size that the are still larger relative to active supply than this previous one. I doubt it though, and it literally can't happen very many times just numerically. We are at almost 10% of the original supply already, meaning a dig of 60% of the active supply would now have to be almost 6% of the original supply, and that number increases every day (and certainly with every mid to large dig).

It also is a certainty that there are many coins in the original supply that literally don't exist because their now-empty private keys were not kept (or in some cases the keys were lost even though the outputs are not empty). That number also likely increases every day, though its magnitude is unknowable.

[smooth]

I think this is a situation where intent matters.
I would likely not support a proposal that changed 'digs' simply for the sake of doing so.
That said, if a strong majority supported a change, and I verified Poloniex/Cryptsy and other services with interests in CLAM did as well....
If I had good evidence that a super-super-majority of the network wanted the change, and thus a soft-fork would be easily successful, there would come a point where we simply must accept the fact that the vast majority of those who support the network want the change.
The network IS, after all, it's users.

Well said SuperClam.

I'm certainly not opposed to DoS and bloat protection either, on their fundamental merits. I will scrutinize these proposals carefully in light of the timing however. My skepticism on this matter is significant; the fundamental cost of carrying along the untouched and undug outputs is not at all high. The cost of other bloat and DoS attacks may be much higher.

[smooth]

smooth is correct in his previous argument:
As the moneysupply increases via staking and other more conventional "digs", the impact of these larger diggers necessarily goes down. 
They are simply a smaller percentage increase in a larger market.

The downside of this argument is that our inflation isn't amazingly high.
It is in fact currently lower than BTC.
Meaning that the process of walking along this path of minting the moneysupply, as it relates to damping down the effects of 'diggers', is a slow walk.

The bolded portion is very incorrect relative to the active supply. The basic staking rate of 1/min is a little over 525600 per year. The active supply is 1469483, meaning the current active supply inflation rate is 35.7%. Bitcoin's active supply is 14907525, roughly 10x larger. The BTC emission rate is 2.5/min, so 2.5x larger. Thus the active supply inflation in CLAMs is 4x higher than BTC.

At 35.7%, the staking inflation is currently a very significant rate of value erosion for undug coins, and that doesn't even factor in ongoing digging.

[dooglus]

left out of your pie chart is staked clams that are in the pool but not dug and that number is big

You're right. Let's add those in.

As of now:



One year from now:



Ten years from now:



Over time the staking overwhelms the initial distribution. But it takes a long time for staking to have any serious effect on the relative size of that undug yellow section.

[dooglus]

This. https://youtu.be/6Pnqp5n9pgE
Who can draw arrows and labels: "Doog", "Whale yellow side digger" and "CLAM community" in that short 71sec. video?

That's very funny.

I think we're at about 0:56 right now.

[SuperClam]

This. https://youtu.be/6Pnqp5n9pgE
Who can draw arrows and labels: "Doog", "Whale yellow side digger" and "CLAM community" in that short 71sec. video?

That's very funny.
I think we're at about 0:56 right now.

The pie-chart graphical representations - very helpful for people to picture the proportions we are talking about.

The video - not sure a worse video could have been chosen (though I am sure a troll is capable of it).
If you are suggesting the rock elemental/giant is dooglus... are you suggesting he is the digger?
Or, that he is the one causing the market panic?
The giant is, afterall, the one who started the boulder in it's roll towards the city.
I think that's almost certainly not true.

Further, I think the boulder could just as easily be an ill-informed decision as 'a digger'.

Regardless, it IS funny

EDIT:
Also, if you are going to make yearly predictions, you should likely also project the helpful portion of 'digs', which bring in new users and demand.
The rate is extremely hard to estimate - though I suppose we do have a slope we could hack out of the past pattern of digs if we really wanted.

Further, an expression of how large a new curious dig would be, at the end of that "1 year" and "10 year" projection, in proportion to the total currently active supply assuming the above - would be helpful.

[smooth]

Over time the staking overwhelms the initial distribution. But it takes a long time for staking to have any serious effect on the relative size of that undug yellow section.

What you don't know is how much of that yellow section actually exists, and how much would ever be dug below prices that would make everyone here very happy anyway.

The pattern we've seen, including this dig, is that higher prices have coincided with digging. It isn't a perfect correlation, but it is pretty significant. The more time goes on and the more digs there are, the more the existing undug supply is annealed such that much of it likely won't ever be dug without much higher prices (if at all)

The other issue is that this ignores the original purpose of the undug CLAMs, which is distribution. That yellow section represents what is probably a million to a few million people (no one really knows the number of crypto users). The positive effects of those people becoming aware of CLAM and some of them joining the CLAM ecosystem is potentially just as dramatic as the potential downside of those coins being dug and sold, if not more so. It doesn't need to be viewed as an enormous scary yellow monster. It could also be viewed as an enormously promising opportunity.

Zero sum thinking can be incredibly misleading, and harmful

EDIT: I see SuperClam has edited in some similar comments. Bravo.

[SuperClam]

Over time the staking overwhelms the initial distribution. But it takes a long time for staking to have any serious effect on the relative size of that undug yellow section.

What you don't know is how much of that yellow section actually exists, and how much would ever be dug below prices that would make everyone here very happy anyway.
The pattern we've seen, including this dig, is that higher prices have coincided with digging. It isn't a perfect correlation, but it is pretty significant. The more time goes on and the more digs there are, the more the existing undug supply is annealed such that much of it likely won't ever be dug without much higher prices (if at all)
The other issue is that this ignores the original purpose of the undug CLAMs, which is distribution. That yellow section represents what is probably a million to a few million people (no one really knows the number of crypto users). The positive effects of those people becoming aware of CLAM and some of them joining the CLAM ecosystem is potentially just as dramatic as the potential downside of those coins being dug and sold, if not more so. It doesn't need to be viewed as an enormous scary yellow monster. It could also be viewed as an enormously promising opportunity.
Zero sum thinking can be incredibly misleading, and harmful
EDIT: I see SuperClam has edited in some similar comments. Bravo.

Entirely "from-the-hip" guess-ti-mation:

I expect BTC is much more deflationary (especially during this earlier period of time) than anyone realizes.
I expect a solid quarter of the 'undug' are either lost or will never be bothered to claim.
This is obviously a nearly worthless guess - it could be as much as 75% or as little as say 3-5%.
You could probably get a much clearer picture by charting coin-days-destroyed vs. coin-days-in-existence in the BTC network.

This leaves 75% of it in the air, of which various amounts will belong to larger claimers and the rest to smaller claimers.

I think dooglus has good reason to be concerned with such a large amount "in the air".
The question is: is that concern sufficient to change the 'dig' process?
Possibly.
Possibly not.

And, that is exactly what CLAMour will hopefully help to reveal.
How much support is out there for such a proposal?


Without such a proposal, I intend to move forward over the coming months with a more comprehensive package that solves a host of issues, such as the fee structure, incentives, etc.
Digs would likely be tangentially affected by those changes; simply due to the fact that they make up such a large "bloat" on the chain, and represent what would possibly be considered "lost", or at least expensive, outputs.
If the change was to meet a high threshold in a soft-fork - we would have our long-term 'solution'.

Until then, we will give CLAMour a chance to inform our debate.

Hopefully in the end we come out of this with a whole host of positive changes and a polling system that is instrumental in helping us navigate these types of decidedly human problems.

[smooth]

I expect BTC is much more deflationary (especially during this earlier period of time) than anyone realizes.

I strongly suspect probably even much more deflationary than you suggest, for purposes of the CLAM distribution.

What is very important to realize that no Bitcoins (or DOGE or LTC) have to be lost for the corresponding CLAMs to be lost forever. The BTC/LTC/DOGE merely need to have moved from their original (as of early 2014) addresses and then those private keys not kept for no particular reason for the next two years, and then finally kept from now until they might otherwise end up getting claimed.

That, and the fact that smaller (Bitcoin/LTC/DOGE) wallets are more likely to simply be lost than larger ones. (People don't necessarily back up their laptops with keys for small amounts coins on there, but they do store large outputs very carefully.) Thus the fraction of outputs that are lost is certainly much higher than the fraction of coins that are lost.

I don't know how many of those "yellow" coins simply don't exist and claiming them is a literal impossibility, but has to be a lot.

[Kefkius]

I expect BTC is much more deflationary (especially during this earlier period of time) than anyone realizes.

I strongly suspect probably even much more deflationary than you suggest, for purposes of the CLAM distribution.

What is very important to realize that no Bitcoins (or DOGE or LTC) have to be lost for the corresponding CLAMs to be lost forever. The BTC/LTC/DOGE merely need to have moved from their original (as of early 2014) addresses and then those private keys not kept for no particular reason for the next two years, and then finally kept from now until they might otherwise end up getting claimed.

That, and the fact that smaller (Bitcoin/LTC/DOGE) wallets are more likely to simply be lost than larger ones. (People don't necessarily back up their laptops with keys for small amounts coins on there, but they do store large outputs very carefully.) Thus the fraction of outputs that are lost is certainly much higher than the fraction of coins that are lost.

I don't know how many of those "yellow" coins simply don't exist and claiming them is a literal impossibility, but has to be a lot.

I've personally lost several DOGE keys out of laziness (why take the time to back up 200 DOGE?), and I suspect that many others have as well. Especially the new users that the DOGE community recruits. So, FWIW, there's some anecdotal evidence of your point.

[djhomeschool]

I've personally lost several DOGE keys out of laziness (why take the time to back up 200 DOGE?), and I suspect that many others have as well. Especially the new users that the DOGE community recruits. So, FWIW, there's some anecdotal evidence of your point.

The snapshot was a year and a half ago at this point. For the most part, those hard drives are either dead, replaced, or not going to get dug anyway. Probably the big diggers at this point... will be big diggers, but for the time being, they've lost their shot at making decent money on it.

I'm in the same boat. When I did my initial dig, I think I ran like 5 addresses, 10 max, and either 1 or 2 of them paid out. Probably a lot of less experienced users sent their DOGE from their old computer to their new computer and paid the fee. You want to draw a graph, do a graph of the daily amount of CLAM digs on each day as a plot. There was probably an initial burst, some minor spikes here and there, and then just a slow steady plateau downwards to maybe 10 a day until the digger showed up. Probably a lot less. And I imagine the volume of digs per day has dropped back down to almost nothing since the digger stopped.

The probability is VERY high that the vast majority of CLAMs added to the supply over the course of 2016 will be from staking.

The coin was constructed in such a way that this was ALWAYS a possibility - it was stated in the announce. /supply on JD tells you the max possible coins. Why are we acting now like it's a big surprise? Why are we getting all bent out of shape that a big dig has upped the supply and diluted the value of the coin? It's utter nonsense. The fundamentals have NOT CHANGED. The people that got bent out of shape because the price is low for the moment are weak hands. Changing key components of the coin to satisfy them will ultimately satisfy no one.

I'll say it again, and this is not just a plug for my site, but the coin's value is what value it provides. It's been seen as only a gambling token, and that was fine. Speculators have mucked it up now in part because of the big dig and because of all the FUD (which, really, people, learn to see through that *ahem* NONSENSE already). There's only room for so many coins out there, and the ones that provide a unique value are the ones that will succeed.

The values:
steady staking coin
JD (yes, even so)
fair distribution (you COULD have some CLAM!)

Changing the rules now undermines confidence in the third item, and the coin will probably not recover from that. We shouldn't even be having a vote. If the coin is going to die BECAUSE of the way it was set up, let it die and go develop another one AFTER that point. Because to do anything other than that reeks of self-sabotage. The fundamentals of the coin are good already and eventually the FUDding will stop and the value will recover. I'm sorry it won't go back to $3 tomorrow, as much as I'd love it to. But I still buy CLAM every two weeks when I get my paycheck because I believe in it. Put your money to it. Buy CLAM and hold it and stake it and don't let the manipulators win. Enough of their nonsense. And let's find something else to do with the coin and make people aware of it - besides of course, my site. Which I ain't even saying the name of here because that's not the point.

[romjpn]

Also, I don't know if it was known, but to those saying you can't do anything but play on JD with CLAM :

https://giftoff.com/

And another casino accepting clams :
https://casino.directbet.eu/

Of course, always be careful while using new services, I've never tested those services and can't say if they are legit or not  .
The gift cards notably are mainly available only in the UK. You can search on the website, all countries available gift cards include Skype and Etsy.

[SuperClam]

Also, I don't know if it was known, but to those saying you can't do anything but play on JD with CLAM :
https://giftoff.com/
And another casino accepting clams :
https://casino.directbet.eu/
Of course, always be careful while using new services, I've never tested those services and can't say if they are legit or not  .
The gift cards notably are mainly available only in the UK. You can search on the website, all countries available gift cards include Skype and Etsy.

I personally believe that crypto is headed to a network agnostic-ish approach.
Eventually user-friendly wallets will emerge that work shapeshift.io and similar services in behind the scenes, and balances will be displayed in local fiat.

Just my two-cents

[romjpn]

Also, I don't know if it was known, but to those saying you can't do anything but play on JD with CLAM :
https://giftoff.com/
And another casino accepting clams :
https://casino.directbet.eu/
Of course, always be careful while using new services, I've never tested those services and can't say if they are legit or not  .
The gift cards notably are mainly available only in the UK. You can search on the website, all countries available gift cards include Skype and Etsy.

I personally believe that crypto is headed to a network agnostic-ish approach.
Eventually user-friendly wallets will emerge that work shapeshift.io and similar services in behind the scenes, and balances will be displayed in local fiat.

Just my two-cents

For sure, there will be that side. And big online wallet services seems wanting to head onto the FIAT denominated wallet (Circle ?) or even 100% FIAT locked, like coinapult.

[Trent Russell]

This. https://youtu.be/6Pnqp5n9pgE
Who can draw arrows and labels: "Doog", "Whale yellow side digger" and "CLAM community" in that short 71sec. video?

That's very funny.

I think we're at about 0:56 right now.

I agree the video's funny. Your reference to 0:56 is either funny or scary.

Spoiler alert: 0:56 is when the stone giant raises his eyebrow just before letting the boulder crush the city.

I'm in that city!

[SuperClam]

Does anyone know where the CLAM vector logo can be downloaded? I'm inspired to make a memorable t-shirt.

Will have to ask xploited for the logo itself.

If you know your way around a vector graphics program, here is the poster (contains the logo).

http://clamclient.com/images/posterclamsWEB.ai

[Muttley]

Also, I don't know if it was known, but to those saying you can't do anything but play on JD with CLAM :

https://giftoff.com/

And another casino accepting clams :
https://casino.directbet.eu/

Of course, always be careful while using new services, I've never tested those services and can't say if they are legit or not  .
The gift cards notably are mainly available only in the UK. You can search on the website, all countries available gift cards include Skype and Etsy.

Never used giftoff.com, but can tell you directbet is legit. Already did hundreds of bets (sportsbetting mostly and some casino) with instant payouts.
Actually, Directbet accepts CLAM only for Casino, and the admins said if they have good volume will adopt it in sportsbook too.
FortuneJack also accepts CLAM.

[blizeH]

For what it's worth I've been using giftoff for years (back when it was pock.io) and never had any problems. Converted Doge and BTC to Amazon gift cards and it's an extremely easy/quick process.