Quark investors - Quark information on cycles and the push to move towards PoS.

[digitalindustry]

first lets start with some history :



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Stealth Phase -------------------------------------| Attention| ----------Main phase ----------------------| Blowoff -------       | >>>>>>> return to mean < as stated in the first video by myself -



sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 word is it not ?


Currently you can see from the graph above we are in "despair" mode right now - and on Reddit there is a move by the reddit goers to push for a hard fork to PoS.

I've been following Reddit for this reason and i've followed it from day one, now there are a lot of voices that were silent on lots of topics that seem to be pretty vocal on the idea of a move to PoS -

of course many mean well , but obviously we saw this played out with  "Project Salt" previously in which their panicked rush at that time was to "fork the currency" to "save Quark" and bring equity to the world : D

if you are a veteran of the crypto industry you know how flawed PoS is form a strictly economic basis, thats not to say it doesn't work in some cases, and i even support PoS designs because i like some of the the ideas.

but of course what makes Quark exceptional and unique are the things that a few people would like to see taken away form it -

so here are some points :

- PoS unless the stake rate is moved to 100 or 200% Pa will not (in my opinion) provide for any limited bump in the price.

- PoS combined with the full distribution such as Quarks would likely have the opposite effect. the price will go down as large holder could generate most of the stake.

- PoS could lead to the currency forking as if it is not carried out by professional developers would lead to all sorts of zany consequences .

- PoS complicates the original simplicity of Quark.

other points -

The fear is overblown because we are in despair phase (see chart) - i have solutions and I intent to work closely with core people and slowly grow that team bigger. ( those i have spoken to know what i mean)

The fear comes though the lack of education , do we want the least educated around Cryptocurrency deciding on a fork to PoS ?

i'm very much against this move but if the community here pushes for it  

(I'm sorry Reddit does not count in development matters because you have to come here and show your forum account and your history on this forum )

if this community peers where to push for PoS, then i will begrudgingly accept it  after all lets face it my % gain on Quark is something that is a part of history now probably only match by the Bitcoin and Litecoin devs.  (and a few others)

so long term i'm agnostic - there will always be another currency the Quark design is the superior fundamental design, a move away from that associated with the brand "Quark " would be humorous and silly, but if it is done i'd have to accept that. : )


now what can be done for our perceived problem?

many things and i will contact members of our community soon.  : D

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Summary - Please give feedback on a move to PoS for Quark  the number to the right of your logo or non logo will matter and your history of comments on here will matter.  : D

[reRaise]

I would like to quote some from community members

Two side of any coin including cryptocoin.

Quark is the first rather successful effort to make a cryptocurrency according to macroeconomic theory and human experience in this field. In fact Satoshi made bitcoin as a program not a money. His ideas in computer science are brilliant but economic ones are rather amateur. To name a few economic flaws:

Large average transaction time. Considering the security there is no difference between 10 1-minute blocks and a 10-minute one. It’s equally difficult to find either of them and reverse a transaction. But for end user it’s better to have freedom of choice in security-time trade-off.

Lame hashing algorythm which produce ASIC mining industry with huge entering treshold and centralization.

Economically weak initial distribution model, resulting with degradation of miners from partners in decentralized consensuns as a mechanizm of network self-control to profit-seeking looters who give a crap on benefits of cryptocurrency, paradigm-shift and thw whole cryptocoin idea.

One could find others but these are the most conserning ones in our time, roughly 5 years since Bitcoin genesis block.

Quark tried to solve this issues and offered the following:

30 sec block time which results in average transaction confirmation time in range of 10-15 sec which is appropriate for an everyday trade.

6 “non-NSA” hashes which provide a better realization of “one CPU equals one vote” rule completely forgotten in SHA256 or Scrypt-secured coins (“one ASIC datacenter equals one vote”).

Fast inintial distribution model with 0.5% inflation rate in long run. It should secure investors and supportes funds from devaluation through new coin minting and coin mass growing.

Excluding fast block time which is proven working, other measures mostly do solve issues they intend to solve but produce other problems and challenges.

Right now [27 of May 2014] the main problem for Quark is completely hoppible situation in mining. Pool coinmine.pl generate from 60% to 70% of blocks and we have roughly 500 i7-class CPUs hashing ATM. So, we could experience a 51% attack virtually at any moment. And even assuming pool operator completely honest it’s very easy for someone to DDOS the location of major hashrate and attack Quark with no more than half a thousand CPUs. It’s a small botnet or a not very large corporate network -- e.g. Microsoft has 1200 000 server nodes, Google -- 800 000. The reason for such a pathetic situation is generally the initial coin distribution model, which generate very few Quarks, not enough to feed profit-seeking commercial miners. Just an other side of one of the greatest advantage of Quark.

Considering this we can conclude that right now Quark is unsecure at all and it would be highly unreasonable to use it for large transactions.



To fight this we of course could use new pools, donation mining, but these are half-measures. We can’t gather more computing power than a large corporate network on a donation basis.

The problem is fundamental and will stay long-term, so the solution must be fundamental. I think the only viable option is Proof-of-Stake (PoS), the form of mining when a probability of block generation increases dramatically with increase of coins in the wallet of miner. TO day this technology has already proven itself with a several years of operating in probably a hundred of coins. I know no serious issues reported or acknowledged security concerns.

Moreover, PoS is viable economically, as it reward long-term coin supportes and provide income on capital. Also PoS stimulate people to maintain full nodes which favorably affects network integrity and security.

Still, PoS is not ideal because it give a significant share of block and coin generation to coin bags with large wallets. But it could be adjusted to reduce such factor. For example the network could provide even tiny amount of coins generated this way and the process will be still continuing since the costs is almost zero. Or amount of PoS generated coins and/or probability of block finding may be depend nonlinear from wallet. Anyway we could find some intelligent and economically justified solution.

I believe the community must reach a consensus on this matter. We can’t build a succesful coin without an appropriate security basis. And we need to prove the world that we are able to handle such security problems.

and also this

I agree PoS solves a lot of problems, namely the security of the network.
This is an opportunity to implement a fairer distribution of stake rewards based on wallet size.
We could have a max stake reward based on wallet sizes of say 200,000.
Such that if someone has 100,000 coins stakes at 0.4%: (400 coins), someone who has 200,000 coins would receive a max stake at 0.4% (800 coins.) someone who has 300,000 coins would receive a max stake at ~0.266% (800 coins)
Large wallet holder receives the full 0.4% stake on their first 200k coins only.
This gives incentive for smaller wallet holders to stake (and secure the network) increasing decentralization and doesn't reward super large wallet holders 'unfairly'.

and a little more controverse

Guys, I appreciate the discussion and voting on POS, but do realize that this is not the only way to do things, it does come with its own set of issues, and it is NOT a trivial undertaking. I have multiple times posted the list below with the intention of sparking discussion on alternative measures to implement to ensure blockchain security. Please join me in discussing these and other alternatives that you can think of as well.

*1. Jackpot related mining rewards - if we can get the Grotto Lotto jackpots raised then we can produce mining incentive by paying people indirectly through grotto lotto. This is a stop gap solution until our valuation is high enough.

Proposed Goal - 20K starting point for jackpots each month going forward. We need help funding this.

*2. Mining software that allows easy access to GPU mining on multipools that pay out in Quark and that also donate 10-20% of mining power to the Quark network. There is a practical means of implementation of this - I may have found someone to code this for us now.

We have a community member now actively looking at doing this for us

*3. ? Merge mined coin. Lots of issues including constant dumping, the fact that its value is tied to investment,which would be hard to obtain if all it is is a mining token for Quark.

I don't think this option is likely viable currently but would appreciate suggestions on implementation

Currently NO. Current situation is not the best, but POS is a tough question too with its own vices. Currently what comes in mind:
Forking issues, POS is really hard to maintain, it was proven buy quite a lot of coins. Getting in functioning correctly could be tough thing. This is very big concern, because at this stage if we would have forking issues this could effectively kill Quark and push it into oblivion. Currently QRK network is stable and never required dev to fix it. Its a big deal. Once we turn to POS problems can arise at any moment and without dedicated(not hired for one time) competent dev we could be unable to fix it at all.
Requires hardfork. This is also not a benefit. This requires all services to support our fork. And for example if coinmine.pl refuses to update than our POS is screwed.

Different emission model. POS will increase inflation and actually will eliminate one of Quarks USP - constant mining rate (or EQ reward as some calls it). In this terms Quark will lose its identity to an extent (there are quite a bit coins with POS+POW design and fast mining schedule - CGB for example)

So my point is that we should try everything in our capabilities to solve network security issue prior to hard forking to POS. Hardforking is always last resort, when everything else does not work, its obviously not the case as we are only starting to work towards fixing this issue. I invite everyone to join a discussion started by Vic
http://www.reddit.com/r/QuarkCoin/comments/26lj2g/hashrate_non_pos_supporting_measures/
Lets work together and look at the problem from different angles, only that way we can find optimal solution.

[dragonseer]

- PoS complicates the original simplicity of Quark.

This is enough of a reason for me to say no to PoS. Very much against. If someone asks me what Quark is, I'd say it is like Bitcoin, but it's faster and more secure. Obviously there are concerns about incentives for miners ensuring network security but I mean it's intrinsically more secure due to the algorithm, it's part of the design. I still don't think people outside of the crypto community understand what Proof of Stake is, and yet it is people outside of the crypto community that we want to discover this coin.

[digitalindustry]

No problem - ReRaise - but i have a further question  :

if PoS provides for more security how come advanced check-pointing was conceived with PoS only - do you think this was because of the experimental nature of PoS  ?

genuine question i appreciate your feedback -

[DeathAndTaxes]

if PoS provides for more security how come advanced check-pointing was conceived with PoS only?

Because it isn't. PoS suffers from a "nothing at risk" problem.  An attacker can use coins they no longer have but did have at one point in the past to attack the network.  Actually there is no reason to not do this.  If the attacker is unsucessful well they lose nothing in the attempt and if they are successful they get all their coins "back" (that they may have lost, had stolen, or sold).  Checkpoints limit how far back the chain can be reorged but they don't solve the nothing at stake problem, only limit the extent of the damage.

[reRaise]

No problem - ReRaise - but i have a further question  :

if PoS provides for more security how come advanced check-pointing was conceived with PoS only - do you think this was because of the experimental nature of PoS  ?

genuine question i appreciate your feedback -

I got you, but PoW is great if the network can be secured, see Bitcoin. But what if the network isn't being secure enough by the miners? Quark is a great coin with some thoughtful features like random hashing giving only a 30 seconds window to an attacker with use of market and macroeconomic theory in this field of knowledge. But right now it's quite weak and could face an attack pretty easily. Let's admit it and work this out. Like it said in the quote you can’t build a succesful coin without an appropriate security basis. What do you suggest to fix this issue and what is your opinion on merge mining with Bitcoin?

Here are some non PoS supporting measures http://www.reddit.com/r/QuarkCoin/comments/26lj2g/hashrate_non_pos_supporting_measures/

[BugSpirit]

PoS provides:
-- additional security (different source of blocks)
-- reward for long-term adopters and holders
-- economical stimulus to maintain a full node

PoS if implemented won't spoil Quark monetary model (0.4% or 0.5% inflation p.a. is a little price)
PoS don't even connected with price or a position on a graphics. It's pure techical issue, an additional layer of security, an important one on a low hashrate.

PoS suffers from a "nothing at risk" problem.  An attacker can use coins they no longer have but did have at one point in the past to attack the network.  Actually there is no reason to not do this.

And this is serious. Need to do some research.

[greentea]

I like POS coins, but I'd hate QRK to move in that direction just because of the recent POS craze.

Quark is Quark because of it's unique random/hashing algo, if that could somehow be preserved along with POS then maybe it wouldnt be a bad idea.

[digitalindustry]

if PoS provides for more security how come advanced check-pointing was conceived with PoS only?

Because it isn't. PoS suffers from a "nothing at risk" problem.  An attacker can use coins they no longer have but did have at one point in the past to attack the network.  Actually there is no reason to not do this.  If the attacker is unsucessful well they lose nothing in the attempt and if they are successful they get all their coins "back" (that they may have lost, had stolen, or sold).  Checkpoints limit how far back the chain can be reorged but they don't solve the nothing at stake problem, only limit the extent of the damage.

thank you for this feedback -


I of course understand this, and for the PoS positive for Quark people i have to say the lower hash rate is in many ways a part of the game, i think what we have to do as a community is (as ReRaise has put forward there) work together.

in the long term, What i did was a sociological experiment we were all a part of it - we introduced a lot of people that new nothing about crypto to crypto, people claim Doge did that , i would argue Doge introduced a lot of facebook users and maybe some forum goers.

Quark achieved a pretty big goal, and now its time to "come back home" in a respect where we know what its all about, i see Quark as a reserve currency now, i will be using it as that also and people will see what we will achieve in the future.

in the end again when the price inevitably rises there will be those that never listened and we will move into a slight exuberance again.

honestly i see everything as it should be.

certainly some more pools with innovative incentives could help, but its  part of a decentralized community equilibrium, i just can't justify throwing that equilibrium out for a perceived threat based on a despair cycle.

[dE_logics]

What about this?

[reRaise]

What about this?

If PoS can be killed with 1% of all coins then why doesn't someone do this? If succeeds all PoS coins would crash since it's a huge flaw and a broken model, i think it should be tested or put up a bounty for someone to try it. You should repost the link in this section to raise this issue to the public since it has more traffic so that people could try to come up with a fix and then maybe quark could consider PoS.

[pabloangello]

So we are waiting till next bubble?

[quarkfx]

Quark achieved a pretty big goal, and now its time to "come back home" in a respect where we know what its all about, i see Quark as a reserve currency now, i will be using it as that also and people will see what we will achieve in the future.

in the end again when the price inevitably rises there will be those that never listened and we will move into a slight exuberance again.

honestly i see everything as it should be.

certainly some more pools with innovative incentives could help, but its  part of a decentralized community equilibrium, i just can't justify throwing that equilibrium out for a perceived threat based on a despair cycle.

Kolin, I agree on the point, that one shouldn´t act based on a short term emotion, but I strongly disagree with your opinion that everything is as it should be:

1. Currently we have a low hashrate which makes the coin susceptical for 51% attacks. Changes of difficulty will affect the hashrate but since the price is low it won´t lead to real improvements.
2. In fact, we aren´t a decentralized community: More than 51% of the hashrate is centered in one pool. Technical issues or abuse would affect Quark directly
3. There is no public long-term plan for core development, while there are some innovative concepts out there with development backing

What the community lacks is perspective and we won´t build that by pretending that things are fine. Even if Quarks´ core is solid and advanced I don´t think that this will be enough in the competition we currently
have in crypto. As you know, even good ideas won´t survive just for the sake of it, people need to adopt them and what they need is a smart concept with a convincing vision for the future. I think we need to work on the latter and we need to work on additional features like sidechains, smart contracts, colored coins. They may be gadgets right now, but they will be part of cryptos future.

What we should do in my opinion

1. Discuss POS/POW hybrid solutions that will allow us to keep a constant inflation and don´t give huge advantages for large wallets (maximum reward was mentioned, there are other possible solutions)
2. Find competent and dedicated developers who are willing to work with us for at least 2 years. Quark has much to offer when it comes to promotion and networking, I think we are way beyond the vast mayority of all coins. Combined with good developers this will allow for a major rise in adoption so there is a mutual interest.
3. Find ways to give the community full control and transparency with regard to the process of development. This will boost trust in long term support.

I agree that the major problem is not the code but the trust in the currency. We need to back the trust with some real assets. I say, let´s do it.

[Netnox]

^ Strongly agree

[digitalindustry]

Quark achieved a pretty big goal, and now its time to "come back home" in a respect where we know what its all about, i see Quark as a reserve currency now, i will be using it as that also and people will see what we will achieve in the future.

in the end again when the price inevitably rises there will be those that never listened and we will move into a slight exuberance again.

honestly i see everything as it should be.

certainly some more pools with innovative incentives could help, but its  part of a decentralized community equilibrium, i just can't justify throwing that equilibrium out for a perceived threat based on a despair cycle.

Kolin, I agree on the point, that one shouldn´t act based on a short term emotion, but I strongly disagree with your opinion that everything is as it should be:

1. Currently we have a low hashrate which makes the coin susceptical for 51% attacks. Changes of difficulty will affect the hashrate but since the price is low it won´t lead to real improvements.
2. In fact, we aren´t a decentralized community: More than 51% of the hashrate is centered in one pool. Technical issues or abuse would affect Quark directly
3. There is no public long-term plan for core development, while there are some innovative concepts out there with development backing

What the community lacks is perspective and we won´t build that by pretending that things are fine. Even if Quarks´ core is solid and advanced I don´t think that this will be enough in the competition we currently
have in crypto. As you know, even good ideas won´t survive just for the sake of it, people need to adopt them and what they need is a smart concept with a convincing vision for the future. I think we need to work on the latter and we need to work on additional features like sidechains, smart contracts, colored coins. They may be gadgets right now, but they will be part of cryptos future.

What we should do in my opinion

1. Discuss POS/POW hybrid solutions that will allow us to keep a constant inflation and don´t give huge advantages for large wallets (maximum reward was mentioned, there are other possible solutions)
2. Find competent and dedicated developers who are willing to work with us for at least 2 years. Quark has much to offer when it comes to promotion and networking, I think we are way beyond the vast mayority of all coins. Combined with good developers this will allow for a major rise in adoption so there is a mutual interest.
3. Find ways to give the community full control and transparency with regard to the process of development. This will boost trust in long term support.

I agree that the major problem is not the code but the trust in the currency. We need to back the trust with some real assets. I say, let´s do it.

I generally agree with you QuarkFx and respect your opinion - i will talk to you via email on some of the solution i have in mind, not that they are secret but just in regard to development etc.

[ThePurplePlanet]

PoS provides:
-- additional security (different source of blocks)
-- reward for long-term adopters and holders
-- economical stimulus to maintain a full node

PoS if implemented won't spoil Quark monetary model (0.4% or 0.5% inflation p.a. is a little price)
PoS don't even connected with price or a position on a graphics. It's pure techical issue, an additional layer of security, an important one on a low hashrate.

PoS suffers from a "nothing at risk" problem.  An attacker can use coins they no longer have but did have at one point in the past to attack the network.  Actually there is no reason to not do this.

And this is serious. Need to do some research.

1 and 3 are wrong. Does not provide additional security for reasons DAT stated... Also there is no economical stimulus to maintain a full node people will use pools like Pools like PoW. the misinformation in this subforum is insane!

[Y3llowb1ackbird]

I worry that changing Quark to PoS would make it complicated to newcomers. To the average consumer, PoW is hard enough to understand, but I think it makes sense at least. I think that Quark has the bare bones of something great--fast transactions, secure network, best distribution model around. We don't need to reinvent the wheel; we just need to put some air back in the tires.

I think working on getting mining pools set up (great work by Cashmen) is where we should focus our efforts. Vic had some great ideas on reddit. Orm also had some excellent ideas, which I will quote here.

1.Foundation buy different GPU miners and the community can buy shares/contracts. The shares can also be sold at QEX (like cryptsy is doing with the mine1 and mine2). The foundation creates a special page with mining statistics. Mining can be combined with more profitable coins. The payout of the contracts can be daily and is dependent what is mined and always in Quark.

2. Create a mining pool with different levels of hashing rates. If I mine with a I5 I don't want to be mixed with "heavy GPU" miners then my mining share is not visible anymore. In this way you make it also more fun for people who contributes with low hashing power (which I think is just as important for the distrbution as the miners who contribute with high hashing power)

I know I don't have a lot of posts on this forum, but I'm pretty sure most people know who I am so whatever. It's hard enough keeping up with reddit, IRC, Trello, Email without having to follow forums as well.

[BitRock]

if PoS provides for more security how come advanced check-pointing was conceived with PoS only - do you think this was because of the experimental nature of PoS  ?

That isn't true. Feathercoin also has advanced check-pointing. Even quarkcoin has automatic checkpoint.

[BitRock]

if PoS provides for more security how come advanced check-pointing was conceived with PoS only?

Because it isn't. PoS suffers from a "nothing at risk" problem.  An attacker can use coins they no longer have but did have at one point in the past to attack the network.  Actually there is no reason to not do this.  If the attacker is unsucessful well they lose nothing in the attempt and if they are successful they get all their coins "back" (that they may have lost, had stolen, or sold).  Checkpoints limit how far back the chain can be reorged but they don't solve the nothing at stake problem, only limit the extent of the damage.

Please tell us which PoS coin has been attacked by so called "nothing at risk" problem.

[BitRock]

- PoS complicates the original simplicity of Quark.

This is enough of a reason for me to say no to PoS. Very much against. If someone asks me what Quark is, I'd say it is like Bitcoin, but it's faster and more secure. Obviously there are concerns about incentives for miners ensuring network security but I mean it's intrinsically more secure due to the algorithm, it's part of the design. I still don't think people outside of the crypto community understand what Proof of Stake is, and yet it is people outside of the crypto community that we want to discover this coin.

Can you claim that quark is more secure than bitcoin based on the current network hashrate?