OK, first of all, I am deep in love with Pinkcoin. Or maybe already getting to the stage where love is being replaced with respect, admiration, understanding and so on as it goes in a good relationship.
Although I am not into girly and childish culture, this goes way beyond and made me see pink color in a whole different way (and those great marketing possibilities!). The DEVs are doing a great work and I am really glad to see someone who is seriously trying to deliver actual results rather than just talk big. Huge respect here for you guys. Yeah, you are doing for profit too, but hey no one lives from air (well some people say they are and I don't wan't to say they are liars but most of us have to feed ourselfs somehow). And at the end of the day, other people are having profits here too and if the job is done the right way, whole society might benefit a lot from these „selfish“ bastards.
Anyway, I've been creeping around for a while and Pinkcoin made me set up an account a say my bit. That is how much I fell into this.
So here is the point. When looking into the overall strategy I really like it – dropping bombs, fully baked stuff not just some halflings and being open to the maximum extent. For everyone who is serious about looking for a "value" in that today's mess, hell of a mixture. True is, that release of the anon that was more of a concept in the beginning wasn't obviously planned that way, but it turned out into a really great ANON feature leaving other coins way behind, which is fabulous.
Then we come to the contest. I understand sonysasankan is pissed off, you guys did a great job. But I also have to thank to McHammer for explaining how a normal „trader“ or passer by sees it. My belief is, that this is really the way majority (mis)understood it, which is very unfortunate. Well, yes, you might say, you don't do it for them, but the point is that you actually do, because if a majority misunderstands something, it is the coin that is punished and you certainly care for PINK, don't you.
You might see there only a short-term impact, but in reality, when people loose faith, it is damn hard to get it back. Even when it is just a misunderstanding.
So, we all know what was the problem, there was opened a contest marketed as a struggle for breaking the anon although it was actually never about breaking the anon but just about finding the password for the zip file. And these 2 are a completely unrelated things. Yes you can find the password by breaking the anon, but why would you even try to do that when there were at least 2 other super simple ways how to find the password, without even thinking about the anon. And I dare to say, that this must had been pretty obvious to anyone who ever interacted with a computer even just on a user level. And that release was the time when I was about to make my first comment too. Like, what the heck guys, are you sure? One BTC for guessing the password?
Nevermind, I understand you just wanted to make promo and people didn't get it. I would say, whatever, let's move on. Beside the fact that anon is really one of THOSE features that matter today. AND YOU HAVE A WORKING ONE! But a lot of people doubt it or don't believe it or whatever. although I personally don't care much about anon feature, it obviously helps to make impact and therefore allows to move to other, perhaps more important stuff.
Hell, I am talking too much. So let's get to the real point. I really think it would do justice to your (our;)) coin, if you make another competition, this time really for breaking the code. My suggestion how I thing this could be implemented follows:
You make anon transaction of any amount to a certain wallet. This wallet won't be zipped and hanging anywhere, because this only leads to unlocking the zip the hard way. The wallet you sent the PINK from is the one that matters. When someone brakes the anon it means, that he found out the way, how to un-anonymize the transaction and is therefore able to say with absolute certainty, where did the PINK come from. At this point he should send (no anon) a certain amount, let's say 100 000 PINK to the original wallet. When this amount comes to the original wallet, bounty (let's say 1 100 000 PINK) will be returned to the wallet that sent the agreed amount. When someone sends the amount to the wallet, he should also let everyone know on the ANN thread, incl. the info on the way of breaking the anon.
Of course, as the original wallet will most probably(?) be controlled by the devs, there is a lot of trust being placed on them by the community. Because someone might easily say, that (s)he sent the PINK to the right wallet and that the one in control of the original wallet is hiding the fact of receiving the amount. That said, once you break the code, you should be able to repeat that again and therefore verify the procedure after it's publication if anyone claims the bounty and it was not released. Besides, I believe that PINK team has the trust now, so it should be OK. Also, with the first competition, there was potentially an equal risk of the DEVs choosing different password than the one proclaimed therefore no-one being able to lockpick it - resulting in seemingly perfect anon (except for the fact that first challenge was rather about guessing the password than breaking anon
- repeating the important stuff). Yeah, and the wallet you sent the PINK from should have unspecified amount on it so that it is not possible to look it up in the richlist.
I guess yo guys see the difference, you would send your money only at the moment you are really sure about the wallet – meaning you broke the anon. Or you would have at most, say 10 guesses, to stay in the black numbers. Depends on the ratio of bounty x the amount of PINK one has to send to the original wallet.
Or you can just create some web app, where you can make guesses, but again, guesses must be paid.
In this case, all PINK from invalid guesses might go right to the charity, which would be nice. This can be done also in the first case, but we all would have to agree, that if we receive unexpected bonus of the size corresponding with the competition (which might easily happen
), we forward it to some donation wallet.
Or you can anon-resend the amount to another wallet every month and reveal the wallet address that was the original one so that everyone sees, that the wallet actually exists.
You are welcome to elaborate any way you want on this proposal. Seems to me like something to be easily implemented with a possibly noticeable impact.
If you read it all the way here, congrats, hope it was worth it, if not, sorry for your time. But, stay PINK.
Oh and pointing at some older post, supporting the PC → PINK transition – them gotta love it.
