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

[P-Funk]

No, really, don't delete this post.  Chuck may be in favor of censorship but you don't have to be.  This is not a rant against a person.  I want this added as a petition to Clamour.  I can't download and run the client on my PC so how am going to create a petition?  I can't do that from the withdrawal on JD can I?

There needs to be an advisory in an anonymous way for people to register their dissatisfaction with how speech is handled in the community.  Anybody here is can be muted or banned by getting on the wrong side of Chuck or any mod.  The most important factor is that Clam largely derives its value from JD with many people making substantial investments along side Dooglus.  The actions of Dooglus, Deb and their mods directly affect the value of this crypto.  JD is a private enterprise and can make a speech policy which is deliberately restrictive of ideas they don't like.  Clam is also a private enterprise which shouldn't restrict speech or the ability of owners to handle private property in ways they see fit.  However, why shouldn't there be a discussion between two private enterprises which have a business arrangement.  This is generally how business is conducted if one company is unhappy with the actions of another which might be harmful to either or both.

It is well known that JD will give orders to alter mod behavior in the interest of business.  Why don't we gather up the info on the person sent packing, Chuck and myself.  Let us see who is contributing the most through playing, creating faucets or creating fees.  I'll go out on a limb and say the person sent packing has done more for Clam than almost anybody not directly a part of JD or a Dev.  I have a decent amount wagered and lost on the site which is probably a magnitude greater than Chuck.  So, maybe the problem is the person whose contribution seems to be banning people who actually work to make it a success.

This brings me to the second point and return to the issue of stakeholder democracy.  As stated previously, the idea generally seems grand to those deemed stakeholders or pigs found to be more equal than others.  This leads the lesser equals with little alternative but to be at the mercy of equals?  I should congratulate Clamour for not being like this in the way Marxism and various off shoots are, several people have stated this is about being unequal and securing that fact.  The fact is you have disenfranchised a large portion of the user base with this system.  I can neither vote nor add a petition for several reasons.  The first is I have no Clams and therefor any vote I cast will count for zero under the staking allocation of votes.  The second is that I am unable to run the Clam client of on my PC due to the poor DSL and wallet software drastically slowing down my rig.  I downloaded it but it never synced and is too far behind now to try again without leaving it running for sev
 eral days.  Don't even try to say download the torrent.

This system is very similar to the the early American restriction of voters to male property owners.  The U.S. and Anglosphere have the remarkable ability to reform themselves which is probably why we have avoided internal revolutions.  The unfairness of male property owners having an outsized voice in society has long been known.  In fact, we in the U.S. deliberately expressed the ability of any person 18 years or older, with very few exceptions, to cast their vote by amending the Constitution by explicitly stating it.  There are countless people whose voices are silenced even though they use Clam regularly but don't stake any.  It gets even better.  Clams is substantially more dependent on the disenfranchised then by the currently blessed stakeholders.

CC has expressed the long term problem with Clams is paying for the upkeep of the Clamchain and that long-term holders wouldn't be paying their share of the costs under the current system.  The people who do support Clams financially are those that use it as a currency on a regular basis.  I pay fees every time I conduct a transaction which is the same regardless of size.  Why don't you add up the various fees paid by wallets and see who it is that is contributing the most to health of the network.  Don't forget that owners are charged fees for withdrawing so that a person withdrawing from JD is paying that transaction cost.  Then, and this will be my next petition, is for votes to be allocated by the financial contribution each address makes for the longterm health of the Clamchain.  Hmmm, wouldn't want to emulate the more equal than equal system so how about every address that pays a fee within a window gets a vote.  We could call the system POF, Proof of Fees.  It would naturally
 be pronounced poof.

So, here we go again.  Please add the following petition to clam chain in the spirit of democracy, free speech and free enterprise:

Is this where we put proposals?  Here is mine:

Stop censoring shit you don't like

You can easily create a Clamour petition by withdrawing from JD to an off-site address with even a .001 Clam withdrawal. Follow the instructions and put the create clamour command in the Clamspeech field on the JD withdraw box.

[tspacepilot]

Can someone give me the two sentences version of who's Chuck why does navaman say he's censored?

Also, navaman, I can help you to run the clam client, it's not that hard.  Just ask questions here or in PM or in JD chat if you're stuck.  What went wrong?

Chuck is a chatmod on just-dice that apparently muted navaman and navaman feelt censored.

So, if navaman's gripe is with mods on JD, seems like he posted in the wrong thread.

[Trent Russell]

I see no evidence of that IP attempting to connect to the network.

Could it be that you have a firewall that is blocking your connection attempt?

You need to be able to make connections to port 35714 on remote hosts.

As https://github.com/nochowderforyou/clams/wiki/Testnet says:

    The P2P network connects on port 35714, instead of 31174.

You can try using 'telnet' to check whether you can connect:

$ telnet 74.207.230.61 35714
Trying 74.207.230.61...
Connected to 74.207.230.61.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]q

telnet> Connection closed.

telnet connected, so I don't think it's a firewall. Also, I do have 13 connections on the mainnet from my ip address. (It's a vps.)

I'll try again tomorrow. Thanks again for the pointers.

[dooglus]

I see no evidence of that IP attempting to connect to the network.

Could it be that you have a firewall that is blocking your connection attempt?

You need to be able to make connections to port 35714 on remote hosts.

As https://github.com/nochowderforyou/clams/wiki/Testnet says:

    The P2P network connects on port 35714, instead of 31174.

You can try using 'telnet' to check whether you can connect:

$ telnet 74.207.230.61 35714
Trying 74.207.230.61...
Connected to 74.207.230.61.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]q

telnet> Connection closed.

telnet connected, so I don't think it's a firewall. Also, I do have 13 connections on the mainnet from my ip address. (It's a vps.)

I'll try again tomorrow. Thanks again for the pointers.

I just checked, and it appears that the default ports for testnet have changed since the last official release.

I've updated the wiki page, but to fix it I think the following should work:

1) cct stop (stop testnet before messing with the ports)

2) edit clam.conf to have this instead of the existing addnode lines:

port=35714
rpcport=35715
addnode=54.247.189.77:35714
addnode=khashier.com:35714

3) cct (start testnet on the new ports)

[Kefkius]

This system is very similar to the the early American restriction of voters to male property owners.

No it is not similar. One system requires voter registration whereas the other has no inherent notion of identities or individual accounts. They're as different as chalk and cheese.

The term “petition” is semantically misleading in this context as it implies the existence of an authority able to grant the petitioner's request; no such authority can exist in a peer-to-peer networked cryptocurrency BY DEFINITION. This leads me to conclude that the approach itself rests on profoundly flawed assumptions and is unlikely to serve the advertised purpose.

There are other approaches that are suitable but I have rather a different model of the task, so it's moot whether they have any relevance to the specific context of what's intended to be achieved by the CLAMS petition approach.

Cheers

Graham

navaman makes a really interesting point when you think about it. The requirement that voters own property (the male requirement is irrelevant to my point) may have been an implementation of a Proof-of-Stake model. Owning property is akin to having a stake in the future of a country, since your property would be worth less if the country does terribly. So really, it kind of fits together, albeit not completely.

[dooglus]

navaman makes a really interesting point when you think about it. The requirement that voters own property (the male requirement is irrelevant to my point) may have been an implementation of a Proof-of-Stake model. Owning property is akin to having a stake in the future of a country, since your property would be worth less if the country does terribly. So really, it kind of fits together, albeit not completely.

Yes.

navaman complains about needing to have a stake in the coin to have a voice, but doesn't propose a better system. As Graham pointed out we can't have "one man, one vote" without requiring everyone to prove their identity. How would we prevent people from making multiple identities and getting multiple votes?

Being outraged that the people with the biggest stake have the loudest voices in the CLAMour system seems a little odd when we're talking about a proof of stake coin. Isn't the whole point of proof of stake that your stake size (rather than your hash power, or any other metric) determines the size of your influence over the network?

[Domrada]

Yes.

navaman complains about needing to have a stake in the coin to have a voice, but doesn't propose a better system. As Graham pointed out we can't have "one man, one vote" without requiring everyone to prove their identity. How would we prevent people from making multiple identities and getting multiple votes?

Being outraged that the people with the biggest stake have the loudest voices in the CLAMour system seems a little odd when we're talking about a proof of stake coin. Isn't the whole point of proof of stake that your stake size (rather than your hash power, or any other metric) determines the size of your influence over the network?

It seems to me that navaman's biggest complaint is that he is not the imperial dictator of CLAM.

[SuperClam]

navaman makes a really interesting point when you think about it. The requirement that voters own property (the male requirement is irrelevant to my point) may have been an implementation of a Proof-of-Stake model. Owning property is akin to having a stake in the future of a country, since your property would be worth less if the country does terribly. So really, it kind of fits together, albeit not completely.

Yes.
navaman complains about needing to have a stake in the coin to have a voice, but doesn't propose a better system. As Graham pointed out we can't have "one man, one vote" without requiring everyone to prove their identity. How would we prevent people from making multiple identities and getting multiple votes?
Being outraged that the people with the biggest stake have the loudest voices in the CLAMour system seems a little odd when we're talking about a proof of stake coin. Isn't the whole point of proof of stake that your stake size (rather than your hash power, or any other metric) determines the size of your influence over the network?

I don't believe his points are entirely invalid; just not very helpful.

As you and gjhiggins have put it, there is no concept of 'identity'.
I would suggest to navaman that the lack of 'identity' is a feature, not a bug.

Even if it does make difficult such ideas as "One person, one vote".

[SuperClam]

This system is very similar to the the early American restriction of voters to male property owners.

No it is not similar. One system requires voter registration whereas the other has no inherent notion of identities or individual accounts. They're as different as chalk and cheese.
The term “petition” is semantically misleading in this context as it implies the existence of an authority able to grant the petitioner's request; no such authority can exist in a peer-to-peer networked cryptocurrency BY DEFINITION. This leads me to conclude that the approach itself rests on profoundly flawed assumptions and is unlikely to serve the advertised purpose.
There are other approaches that are suitable but I have rather a different model of the task, so it's moot whether they have any relevance to the specific context of what's intended to be achieved by the CLAMS petition approach.
Cheers
Graham

Semantics, particularly when it comes to 'crypto', are difficult.

Is it a wallet, an account, or a key ring?

Even the concept of a "confirmed" transactions is somewhat misleading; understanding that 'confirmation' is statement of probabilities.


In the current situation, I understand it as a data gathering tool and a method to test the success of proposed changes.

An expression of support for a 'petition' is essentially a statement that, given the update is released, that user will update their software.

It is a means to independently prove that a threshold triggered-fork would be successful.


Imagine, for instance, how the discussion concerning BTC privacy would change if the community had provable data to show super-majority support.

It becomes much more difficult to argue against, no matter what position of 'power' one might hold.


EDIT: For the record, I wanted to name it CLAMcensus

[Kefkius]

navaman makes a really interesting point when you think about it. The requirement that voters own property (the male requirement is irrelevant to my point) may have been an implementation of a Proof-of-Stake model. Owning property is akin to having a stake in the future of a country, since your property would be worth less if the country does terribly. So really, it kind of fits together, albeit not completely.

Yes.

navaman complains about needing to have a stake in the coin to have a voice, but doesn't propose a better system. As Graham pointed out we can't have "one man, one vote" without requiring everyone to prove their identity. How would we prevent people from making multiple identities and getting multiple votes?

Being outraged that the people with the biggest stake have the loudest voices in the CLAMour system seems a little odd when we're talking about a proof of stake coin. Isn't the whole point of proof of stake that your stake size (rather than your hash power, or any other metric) determines the size of your influence over the network?

Yeah, the whole point of Proof-of-Stake. When (loosely) applied to governance of a nation, it appears that Proof-of-Stake is an undesirable system. Of course, this tells us absolutely nothing about Proof-of-Stake's viability with regard to blockchains. You have to choose to be a part of CLAM. As far as nations go, you're just kind of born into one. You can also leave the system at any time with very little effort; in fact, it only requires that you do nothing for you to cease being a part of the CLAM network.

Also, the USA never distributed land to everyone who already owned land in another country. (I wonder which country Dogecoin would be in that scenario.)

[jpcfan]

navaman makes a really interesting point when you think about it. The requirement that voters own property (the male requirement is irrelevant to my point) may have been an implementation of a Proof-of-Stake model. Owning property is akin to having a stake in the future of a country, since your property would be worth less if the country does terribly. So really, it kind of fits together, albeit not completely.

Also, the USA never distributed land to everyone who already owned land in another country. (I wonder which country Dogecoin would be in that scenario.)

my guess would be Canada



j/k

[tspacepilot]

Also, the USA never distributed land to everyone who already owned land in another country. (I wonder which country Dogecoin would be in that scenario.)

While this is clearly a tangent to the main point of the discussion, I feel compelled to point out that the land that the USA did distribute was taken by blood from the people who already lived there.

[Trent Russell]

I also thought the comparison of Proof-of-Stake to restricting voting to property owners is interesting. I tried (unsuccessfully) to shift the discussion to a different thread in the Politics section:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1301042

But maybe it's not too much of a distraction here. In the other thread I only got two replies, one of which was scary:

lets restrict it to white and maybe asian males

[Trent Russell]

I just checked, and it appears that the default ports for testnet have changed since the last official release.

I've updated the wiki page, but to fix it I think the following should work:

1) cct stop (stop testnet before messing with the ports)

2) edit clam.conf to have this instead of the existing addnode lines:

port=35714
rpcport=35715
addnode=54.247.189.77:35714
addnode=khashier.com:35714

3) cct (start testnet on the new ports)

Thanks. This does seem to make it connect, but my cct dies after about a second. I'll include the contents of my testnet/clam.conf and the output in testnet/debug.log in case it helps. I am working on something I'll want to test soon, but it wouldn't be terrible to test it at first on the mainnet.

testnet/clam.conf

Code:

testnet=1
rpcuser=clamrpc
rpcpassword=...omitted...
port=35714
rpcport=35715
addnode=54.247.189.77:35714
addnode=khashier.com:35714
daemon=1

testnet/debug.log

Code:

Clam version v1.4.17 (2015-09-23 21:07:15 -0300)
Using OpenSSL version OpenSSL 1.0.1j 15 Oct 2014
Startup time: 12/25/15 12:08:18
Default data directory /home/russell/.clam
Used data directory /home/russell/.clam/testnet
init message: Verifying database integrity...
dbenv.open LogDir=/home/russell/.clam/testnet/database ErrorFile=/home/russell/.clam/testnet/db.log
Bound to [::]:35714
Bound to 0.0.0.0:35714
init message: Loading block index...
Opening LevelDB in /home/russell/.clam/testnet/txleveldb
Transaction index version is 70509
Opened LevelDB successfully
LoadBlockIndex(): hashBestChain=0000135b14723652fecaeb07a52cebf3f69512594eae48d139956bca67552441  height=0  trust=65537  date=04/14/14 21:53:58
LoadBlockIndex(): synchronized checkpoint 0000135b14723652fecaeb07a52cebf3f69512594eae48d139956bca67552441
Verifying last 0 blocks at level 1
 block index               2ms
init message: Loading wallet...
nFileVersion = 1041700
Keys: 103 plaintext, 0 encrypted, 103 w/ metadata, 103 total
 wallet                 1301ms
init message: Loading addresses...
Loaded 0 addresses from peers.dat  0ms
mapBlockIndex.size() = 1
nBestHeight = 0
setKeyPool.size() = 101
mapWallet.size() = 0
mapAddressBook.size() = 2
AddLocal(172.246.252.93:35714,1)
IPv4 venet0:0: 172.246.252.93
AddLocal(172.246.252.96:35714,1)
IPv4 venet0:3: 172.246.252.96
AddLocal([2605:f700:80:800::4958:58fc]:35714,1)
IPv6 venet0: 2605:f700:80:800::4958:58fc
AddLocal([2605:f700:80:800::5058:e517]:35714,1)
IPv6 venet0: 2605:f700:80:800::5058:e517
init message: Done loading
net thread start
addcon thread start
opencon thread start
msghand thread start
dumpaddr thread start
Added time data, samples 2, offset -2 (+0 minutes)
receive version message: version 60014, blocks=11524, us=172.246.252.93:35714, them=0.0.0.0:35714, peer=54.247.189.77:53536

[gjhiggins]

In the current situation, I understand it as a data gathering tool and a method to test the success of proposed changes.

The data is essentially an expression of users' perceptions, perhaps even users' perceptions of others' perceptions.

The threat of perceptual distortions introduced by pluralistic ignorance is an important issue to consider, especially given the inexpressiveness of the value transfer protocol. There is no mechanism to transfer value other than that which can be described with cryptography, specifically it is incapable of transmitting the societal values that are normally mediated by all the stuff that comes with embeddedness.

The lack of identity is a double-edged sword. It protects the individual from group coercion but it also robs the individual of the essential benefits of interpersonal relations with other group members, which is where the threat from pluralistic ignorance starts to come in.

No it isn't voting, but it is opinion polling and that's not exactly an under-developed field.

An expression of support for a 'petition' is essentially a statement that, given the update is released, that user will update their software.

That's one way of viewing it. I think opinion polling is a more accurate and more useful model of what's actually going on.

It is a means to independently prove that a threshold triggered-fork would be successful.

This is a social thing in essence and so all you're ever going to have to work with are warm fuzzies (aka “statistics”).

Cheers and Season's Greetings

Graham

[dooglus]

Thanks. This does seem to make it connect, but my cct dies after about a second. I'll include the contents of my testnet/clam.conf and the output in testnet/debug.log in case it helps. I am working on something I'll want to test soon, but it wouldn't be terrible to test it at first on the mainnet.

Can you tell me which version of the client you are using? Then I'll try using the same version and see if it dies for me too.

Also, you know the "daemon=1" line makes the process detach from the terminal but keep running in the background, right? It can look like it 'died' because you get your shell prompt back, but it's still running if you check the process list. I doubt that's what is going on in this case, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

[Trent Russell]

Thanks. This does seem to make it connect, but my cct dies after about a second. I'll include the contents of my testnet/clam.conf and the output in testnet/debug.log in case it helps. I am working on something I'll want to test soon, but it wouldn't be terrible to test it at first on the mainnet.

Can you tell me which version of the client you are using? Then I'll try using the same version and see if it dies for me too.

Also, you know the "daemon=1" line makes the process detach from the terminal but keep running in the background, right? It can look like it 'died' because you get your shell prompt back, but it's still running if you check the process list. I doubt that's what is going on in this case, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

v1.4.17 -- I didn't recompile it. I just used the binary. I don't remember if it's 32 bit or 64 bit; let me know if you need me to find out. (It seems to be 32 bit based on "history | grep wget." I did a wget of the 64 bit version and then a bit later the 32 bit version. This is very likely to mean I tried the 64 bit version and it didn't work, so I fell back on the 32 bit version which did.) I could try to recompile if you think that might help. The mainnet version is working fine, though.

It's fine that you bring up that it should be running in the background, but that's not what's happening. The first time I just noticed "getinfo" still didn't work after half an hour. After that I started doing "ps aux | grep clam" to check if it's running. That's how I know it dies after a second or so.

[dooglus]

v1.4.17 -- I didn't recompile it. I just used the binary. I don't remember if it's 32 bit or 64 bit; let me know if you need me to find out. (It seems to be 32 bit based on "history | grep wget." I did a wget of the 64 bit version and then a bit later the 32 bit version. This is very likely to mean I tried the 64 bit version and it didn't work, so I fell back on the 32 bit version which did.) I could try to recompile if you think that might help. The mainnet version is working fine, though.

It's fine that you bring up that it should be running in the background, but that's not what's happening. The first time I just noticed "getinfo" still didn't work after half an hour. After that I started doing "ps aux | grep clam" to check if it's running. That's how I know it dies after a second or so.

It seems that no released version works with testnet, for at least these reasons:

1) the checkpoint list is empty, causing the crash you saw
2) the testnet genesis block hash is wrong, meaning it won't accept any blocks from peers

I tried making changes to v1.4.17 to get testnet working, but it needs more still.

I suggest building from the 'master' branch in the nochowderforyou repository if you can, and want to use testnet. Other than that I guess the answer is "no, there's no testnet available yet, but there will be in the next release".

[Trent Russell]

I suggest building from the 'master' branch in the nochowderforyou repository if you can, and want to use testnet. Other than that I guess the answer is "no, there's no testnet available yet, but there will be in the next release".

No problem. Thanks for the quick replies on a holiday. I might try to compile from the master branch in a day or two.

[SuperClam]

The data is essentially an expression of users' perceptions, perhaps even users' perceptions of others' perceptions.
The threat of perceptual distortions introduced by pluralistic ignorance is an important issue to consider, especially given the inexpressiveness of the value transfer protocol. There is no mechanism to transfer value other than that which can be described with cryptography, specifically it is incapable of transmitting the societal values that are normally mediated by all the stuff that comes with embeddedness.

A fair point.
Though, I would think that the pseudo-anonymous nature of the network would blunt social effects such as 'pluralistic ignorance'.
It is quite possible I am conceptualizing it incorrectly, however.
The good news is, of course, that CLAMour has no innate effect on the network.
Data is agnostic (though actions taken pursuant may not be).

Isn't embeddedness usually referred to as an external force causing inefficiency and false signals?
I hadn't encountered 'Embeddedness' since leaving school; I will need to brush up a bit before I feel comfortable responding.

No it isn't voting, but it is opinion polling and that's not exactly an under-developed field.

I have read talk in the past about a multi-triggered-fork bit-field in BTC (as opposed to version reporting, etc.).
And yet, I am not aware of another network that implements a provable means to gather this data.
This is particularly so for Proof-Of-Stake; to which the data is likely more useful.

Exactly how useful it is, of course, remains to be seen.

This is a social thing in essence and so all you're ever going to have to work with are warm fuzzies (aka “statistics”).

True.
Yet... warm fuzzies are almost always preferable to blind stumbling, no?

Cheers and Season's Greetings

To you as well