rpietila Altcoin Observer

[bigj]

Thoughts on this whitepaper draft from Skycoin?

Completely new system of distributed consensus. Makes me a bit nervous, but I'd like to hear what other people think.

https://github.com/skycoin/whitepapers/blob/master/README.md

It seems quite complex,

By constructing the network link adjacency matrix, we can compute the Eigenvalue centrality measure which measures the influence of each node. We can cluster the graph and find the influential subclusters of nodes and then sampling nodes from the subclusters can determine if global consensus has been reached.

and as some wise person probably once said,

A complex system can fail in an infinite number of ways.

I haven't read the full Skycoin manual, but I sounds pretty much like a copy-paste coin based on PTS or BTSX ideas (/code?) ... Is my assumption right or wrong?

[SlipperySlope]

Thoughts on this whitepaper draft from Skycoin?

Completely new system of distributed consensus. Makes me a bit nervous, but I'd like to hear what other people think.

https://github.com/skycoin/whitepapers/blob/master/README.md

It seems quite complex,

By constructing the network link adjacency matrix, we can compute the Eigenvalue centrality measure which measures the influence of each node. We can cluster the graph and find the influential subclusters of nodes and then sampling nodes from the subclusters can determine if global consensus has been reached.

and as some wise person probably once said,

A complex system can fail in an infinite number of ways.

I haven't read the full Skycoin manual, but I sounds pretty much like a copy-paste coin based on PTS or BTSX ideas (/code?) ... Is my assumption right or wrong?

I studied the introduction to the Skycoin paper and skimmed the rest. It may indeed prove better than Satoshi's Bitcoin with regard to securing the network at lower cost.

The system that I'm developing forks Bitcoin and other major PoW coins into separate networks, I avoid the Byzantine Generals problem by using authenticated cooperating agents rather than anonymous competing nodes. If distributed uncoordinated behavior is designed out of the system, then there is no need for distributed consensus.

I take a conventional high performing global financial network architecture, and adapt it to maximally preserve the Satoshi Social Contract, e.g. the user experience. My technique permits instant, certain-to-be-in-the-blockchain transactions with 100x lower fees. How? Because a nomadic mint agent creates new blocks for a widely replicated, non-forking, canonical blockchain with trivial PoW effort. The block reward fees pay qualified full node operators to secure the distributed peer network using conventional data security methods, e.g. TLS/SSL, DDoS filtering, fail-over, network operations centers, security intrusion detection and mitigation, customer service, etc.

[Este Nuno]

authenticated cooperating agents rather than anonymous competing nodes.

Who authenticates them? And how? The DAC?

[SlipperySlope]

authenticated cooperating agents rather than anonymous competing nodes.

Who authenticates them? And how? The DAC?

I have a self-signed root X.509 certificate that I use to generate intermediate certificates that in turn allow distributed servers (GitHub) to generate X.509 certificates for each node, i.e. the operator, and for each agent role. There will be numerous certificates in the system. I use TLS/SSL to authenticate both endpoints of a network connection, so each party knows who it is communicating with - knows the other node, knows the software agent in the node, and knows the role, e.g. skill set, that the particular agent is using.

End users with an SPV wallet, i.e. not a full node, connect without additional encryption to DDoS-protected portals that are certain paid full nodes in the system.

[dewdeded]

Easy question, easy answer?

What's up with DarkCoins price? Why it is imploding? Any reasons?

[rpietila]

Easy question, easy answer?

What's up with DarkCoins price? Why it is imploding? Any reasons?

Only its rise needs to have reasons. Fall is the natural consequence that it ever got off from the ground in the first place.

[rdnkjdi]

Easy question, easy answer?

What's up with DarkCoins price? Why it is imploding? Any reasons?

IMO people are getting out in anticipation of it being passed by Monero or BTCD.  When/if that happens - DRK is over imo...

[Brilliantrocket]

Does anyone know how many of Monero's 7 devs are full time?

[binaryFate]

Easy question, easy answer?

What's up with DarkCoins price? Why it is imploding? Any reasons?

In terms of anonymity (*the* thing people were considering when giving DRK any value), its lower technology compared to the existing offer (= cryptonote/monero) does not justify a price that was based on being *the* anonymous coin forever, with all the big media hype.

The vast majority of the reasonably successful altcoins go through the same cycle. All the time you have people wondering why the price tanks (and then sinks) so much, while in fact they should have wondered first why the price was so high in the beginning.
With darkcoin as with the other historical "big" short term success, you simply have more people asking themselves these questions, but there's fundamentally no difference with the hundreds of not-so-interesting weekly new coins, really.
Just a matter of scale: time scale, market cap scale, number of holders scale. But fundamentally it's all the same: when something does not deserve its price it's a mistake to ask yourself questions when the price goes down, as it's too late and it's not the relevant question.

[rpietila]

As regards what is money, only the gold medal is worthwhile. Silver is already cheap as shit. Bronze is not even counted since 2000 years.

=> Invest only in coins that have potential to be #1, or at least, #2. Others will just die.

[infofront]

As regards what is money, only the gold medal is worthwhile. Silver is already cheap as shit. Bronze is not even counted since 2000 years.

=> Invest only in coins that have potential to be #1, or at least, #2. Others will just die.

Do you think monero has the potential to be at least #2?

[rpietila]

As regards what is money, only the gold medal is worthwhile. Silver is already cheap as shit. Bronze is not even counted since 2000 years.

=> Invest only in coins that have potential to be #1, or at least, #2. Others will just die.

Do you think monero has the potential to be at least #2?

I think it has 10% chance to be #1 and 50% to be #2 in a few years.

[AlexGR]

Easy question, easy answer?

What's up with DarkCoins price? Why it is imploding? Any reasons?

A few big dumps with thin book. Probably the pumping whale exiting which still has quite a few DRK.

Remember DRK was at 0.001x from Feb to mid-April. So a range of 0.0045-0.006 is still 4-5x which massively outperforms most major altcoins in the last 4 months, despite being down from its ATH.

As I see it, the problem with the DRK pumping is that it came in a period where DRK wasn't ready for prime time. It was back in RC1/RC2 and with the various hiccups in masternode payments it was treated like a final product. Too much pressure on development etc.

Development has actually gone far better now that the price is lower and the spotlight / huge pressure is off.

Easy question, easy answer?

What's up with DarkCoins price? Why it is imploding? Any reasons?

In terms of anonymity (*the* thing people were considering when giving DRK any value), its lower technology compared to the existing offer (= cryptonote/monero) does not justify a price that was based on being *the* anonymous coin forever, with all the big media hype.

If you can't trace who sends to who, except if you are the NSA who can crack IP obfuscation technologies, then I'd say for all practical intents and purposes DRK and Cryptonote coins are the same in terms of practical anonymity. Nobody can (practically) crack them in high mixing settings. DarkSend+ (as of RC4) is not DarkSend (RC3 and prior) anymore.

If you have an NSA-proof coin you are in a different game altogether. Otherwise, if nobody except the NSA can crack it, then in terms of commercial applications DRK has the edge due to being BTC-compatible + scalable / prunable.

Heck, if the IP obfuscation protocol of DRK succeeds where TOR or I2P fails, it might even become the first coin that offers some meaningful NSA-resistance.

[othe]

Easy question, easy answer?

What's up with DarkCoins price? Why it is imploding? Any reasons?

A few big dumps with thin book. Probably the pumping whale exiting which still has quite a few DRK.

Remember DRK was at 0.001x from Feb to mid-April. So a range of 0.0045-0.006 is still 4-5x which massively outperforms most major altcoins in the last 4 months, despite being down from its ATH.

As I see it, the problem with the DRK pumping is that it came in a period where DRK wasn't ready for prime time. It was back in RC1/RC2 and with the various hiccups in masternode payments it was treated like a final product. Too much pressure on development etc.

Development has actually gone far better now that the price is lower and the spotlight / huge pressure is off.

Looks like some money is moving to bitcoin dark from drk imho, just my gut feeling. Prolly just shortterm.

then in terms of commercial applications DRK has the edge due to being BTC-compatible + scalable / prunable

Do you really think that having to premix coins is an advantage to a passive technology where u can just send them without ever caring about how it works?

[Lohoris]

I think it has 10% chance to be #1 and 50% to be #2 in a few years.

I can't imagine a scenario were Bitcoin gets surpassed unless it is destroyed for some reason.

So my question is: your "10% Monero #1" scenario implies "Bitcoin dead", or something else?

[rpietila]

I think it has 10% chance to be #1 and 50% to be #2 in a few years.

I can't imagine a scenario were Bitcoin gets surpassed unless it is destroyed for some reason.

So my question is: your "10% Monero #1" scenario implies "Bitcoin dead", or something else?

Currently the scenario would be that Bitcoin becomes the government crypto, and the free world would adopt Monero. If the free world is larger than government, then it is possible that both of them flourish, even if Monero actually becomes larger.

[smooth]

I think it has 10% chance to be #1 and 50% to be #2 in a few years.

I can't imagine a scenario were Bitcoin gets surpassed unless it is destroyed for some reason.

I think your imagination is lacking.

Bitcoin is still tiny compared to fiat as was discussed quite a few pages ago on this thread. If one believes the "network effect trumps all" argument then Bitcoin's network effect is so much vastly smaller than fiat (many, many orders of magnitude), then Bitcoin could not possibly ever succeed at all.

Many Bitcoin supporters hedge this by saying that Bitcoin can succeed despite being so far behind fiat in network effect because it can be transmitted electronically, because it is decentralized or some such argument. These are all arguments of the form "system A with smaller network effect can defeat system B with larger network effect if A is sufficiently better than B."

A system that is sufficiently better than Bitcoin could defeat Bitcoin in my opinion. What is meant by "better" according to the market, is very difficult if not impossible to determine in advance. To be able to do so would be a form of central planning.

It is plausible that better fungibility and privacy (Monero solves this), with better end-state economics (Monero possibly solves this), or perhaps more robust decentralization (Monero doesn't solve this, though the end state economics could help), could be sufficiently better. It is not plausible that, for example, encrypted chat is sufficiently better.

[Este Nuno]

then in terms of commercial applications DRK has the edge due to being BTC-compatible + scalable / prunable

Do you really think that having to premix coins is an advantage to a passive technology where u can just send them without ever caring about how it works?

No, but the BTC compatible thing is a pretty big advantage. That's a lot of compatible infrastructure.

Not defending DRK though. That's obviously going no where. But I did like their idea about creating a new high speed tor. But that's not really going to make it a long term currency.

[ArticMine]

I think it has 10% chance to be #1 and 50% to be #2 in a few years.

I can't imagine a scenario were Bitcoin gets surpassed unless it is destroyed for some reason.

I think your imagination is lacking.

Bitcoin is still tiny compared to fiat as was discussed quite a few pages ago on this thread. If one believes the "network effect trumps all" argument then Bitcoin's network effect is so much vastly smaller than fiat (many, many orders of magnitude), then Bitcoin could not possibly ever succeed at all.

Many Bitcoin supporters hedge this by saying that Bitcoin can succeed despite being so far behind fiat in network effect because it can be transmitted electronically, because it is decentralized or some such argument. These are all arguments of the form "system A with smaller network effect can defeat system B with larger network effect if A is sufficiently better than B."

A system that is sufficiently better than Bitcoin could defeat Bitcoin in my opinion. What is meant by "better" according to the market, is very difficult if not impossible to determine in advance. To be able to do so would be a form of central planning.

It is plausible that better fungibility and privacy (Monero solves this), with better end-state economics (Monero possibly solves this), or perhaps more robust decentralization (Monero doesn't solve this, though the end state economics could help), could be sufficiently better. It is not plausible that, for example, encrypted chat is sufficiently better.

Monero offers some critical advantages over Bitcoin that have nothing to do with privacy / fungibility.
1) Adaptive limits. This means no fixed 1 MB blocksize limit. There a significant greater than zero chance that Bitcoin will choke on this, since there is a very significant degree of dissent in the Bitcoin community.
2)1 min confirmation times. Some may say this is too short because of the risk of orphan blocks, but my belief is that orphan blocks is a small price to pay for the much superior user experience.

I doubt that regulators will treat Monero any differently from Bitcoin since they will focus on on and off ramps. As for the NSA attempting to unravel ring signatures, or I2P it is possible, but unlikely. They have way easier ways to obtain the needed information in over 98% of cases by just obtaining it from Apple, Microsoft or Google using the PRISM program.

[kelsey]

As regards what is money, only the gold medal is worthwhile. Silver is already cheap as shit. Bronze is not even counted since 2000 years.

=> Invest only in coins that have potential to be #1, or at least, #2. Others will just die.

Couldn't disagree more ie first statement, yet silver is for many and varied reasons better for use as money then gold (eg less likely for gov confiscation, industrial usage more important then gold so always will have a stable floor value).

your only reasoning for the other way round is the price vs USD ie silver is atm "cheap as shit"....thats almost non argument when it comes to use as a currency