Which altcoin features can you not live without?

[mymenace]

1. bare minimum of course is just your transactions but a better gui for marketing purposes ( i believe it would appeal more to average joe and especially if it is an app)

2. ...""so that everyone has a fair chance at creating money"... yes, alot of people do not get to mine bitcoin because of the hashrate. As well at any point in time you want new users to come on board and mine the coin to add to the network, this creates an ever increasing infrastructure that is very hard to fall down. Might even reduce that so called 51% attack if no-one is using pools and just mine with their pc or smartphone.

3. I do not really understand merge mining except that it brings more miners on board as they can mine both btc and this coin. Ultimately the miners are your infrastructure, not a prerequisite if you are able to bring new miners in at any time giving them the same chance as everyone else.

A side note -  these features all seem to me to reduce a pump and dump coin, but at the same time a profitable coin due to the fact every time you make a transaction or open the wallet it mines something no wasting money on hash rates, electricity and pc power.

A side note - i believe the payment gateway is the key to new users and profits, this will create a community that can use a coin straight away and that community can even help businesses adopt the coin by showing them a simple payment gateway for transactions.

wallet should include everything, mining, trading, purchasing, accounts, payees, messaging etc etc etc

ohh ohh and mining that is done at one hash rate only (the more hashing you throw at the coin does not matter as it will only accept the one hash rate), so that it is achievable by all. Can be mined on a smart phone and every thing i do in the wallet  gets me rewarded with coins

merge mined with bitcoin

Thank you for all the feedback, I've reduced it to the items which may warrant some discussion.

1. Swiss Army Knife / Monolithic Wallet
The introduction of all the features you mentioned feels like bloat and the introduction of many attack vectors. Whilst they are all cool/novel things, which would you say are the bare minimum requirements for the coin to have utility?

2. One hash rate only
I need to think about this properly, can you enlighten on why you suggest this, is it so that everyone has a fair chance at creating money, or are there alternative reasons?

3. Merged Mining
If we go past the specification stage and implement this, then the project will be a very long term project and aim to offer a viable alternative to bitcoin. I can see that merged mining could help the miners, and that it could theoretically make the network more secure (a higher difficulty and more hashing). But I worry that it would force fee reduction, making the network less secure, and that such tight association would be sending a message from the off that this is a second class coin, always to be subsidiary to Bitcoin.

Can you comment?

[1715542000]

1715542000

[1715542000]

1715542000

[1715542000]

1715542000

[renisel2]

I'm curious why you ask which features are important to the crypto community.  In my view, the focus on miners is probably doing a lot to hold back real innovation.  I view cryptocurrencies as being kind of like languages, in that no matter how good they are technically, their value/utility is really tied to the number of people who can be convinced to use them.  What I see in the alt-coin world is a bunch of people trying to further refine Esperanto while English (bitcoin) continues its dominance.  I do mine them, but only because some people are willing to trade BTC for them.

[lynn_402]

I'm curious why you ask which features are important to the crypto community.  In my view, the focus on miners is probably doing a lot to hold back real innovation.  I view cryptocurrencies as being kind of like languages, in that no matter how good they are technically, their value/utility is really tied to the number of people who can be convinced to use them.  What I see in the alt-coin world is a bunch of people trying to further refine Esperanto while English (bitcoin) continues its dominance.  I do mine them, but only because some people are willing to trade BTC for them.

The world would be quite boring if everyone spoke english and had the same culture, wouldn't it?

That's the relevance of altcoins; each community which has different values than the others need to have their own currency, whose economic worth reflects the magnitude of trust that each member of the community has towards each-other. That is of much help for a community to grow and realise their goals.

Hence the relevance of many altcoins, with different purpose and often different technologies.

[kalus]

faster confirms are nice, but the best part about altcoins is how they convert to bitcoin.

[coinsolidation]

2. ...""so that everyone has a fair chance at creating money"... yes, alot of people do not get to mine bitcoin because of the hashrate. As well at any point in time you want new users to come on board and mine the coin to add to the network, this creates an ever increasing infrastructure that is very hard to fall down. Might even reduce that so called 51% attack if no-one is using pools and just mine with their pc or smartphone.

3. I do not really understand merge mining except that it brings more miners on board as they can mine both btc and this coin. Ultimately the miners are your infrastructure, not a prerequisite if you are able to bring new miners in at any time giving them the same chance as everyone else.

Thank you for expanding. Most coins try to launch with a high value, on exchanges and with mining pools set up. Using Instamines, premines, IPO and other approaches to get free money. We want to do the opposite, a quiet low launch, lots of hard work, useful features, no exchange, no monetary value at inception and no pools to begin. We'll take every step we can to ensure it's a fair coin. Nothing wills top speculation, but we can take all measures possible to prevent anything untoward.

these features all seem to me to reduce a pump and dump coin

This is of primary concern, the coin should have limited monetary value and grow naturally based on merit.

A side note - i believe the payment gateway is the key to new users and profits, this will create a community that can use a coin straight away and that community can even help businesses adopt the coin by showing them a simple payment gateway for transactions.

Agreed, I've dubbed this user focussed development, lots of time spent ensuring the coin can be used as one and can be integrated easily by people. I want anything created to run entirely on its own merits as a viable alternative to the big coin(s).

I'm curious why you ask which features are important to the crypto community.

There are many experienced and valuable members here, I'm trying to reach out to find the few real users of crypto that are here, those who understand specific areas exceptionally, and those who have noticed requirements that others may have missed (or missed the importance of).

Anybody can come up with a new alt coin, but it's only worth doing if it adds utility, innovation, refinement, and value (or should I say usefulness). So trying to take time out to listen to the community and get together a proper specification before put keyboard to code.

[Keyboard-Mash]

Don't know if it's mentioned yet ..

Paid developers 

[coinsolidation]

Don't know if it's mentioned yet ..

Paid developers 

Yes we've already covered this in a different thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=656720

In short:
No premine, instamine, or IPO.
0.125% of the block reward as a tax to the development team
50% of transaction fees, halving 3 times (25%, 12.5%, 6.25%) then dropping to 0.

Many have suggested a higher % of block reward (1%), we'll confirm the actual amount if/when we get to a final specification. It will certainly be under 0.5% though.

[Keyboard-Mash]

Don't know if it's mentioned yet ..

Paid developers  

Yes we've already covered this in a different thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=656720

In short:
No premine, instamine, or IPO.
0.125% of the block reward as a tax to the development team
50% of transaction fees, halving 3 times (25%, 12.5%, 6.25%) then dropping to 0.

Many have suggested a higher % of block reward (1%), we'll confirm the actual amount if/when we get to a final specification. It will certainly be under 0.5% though.

Sure that could work. But it doesn't cover third party development, which will be the main driving force in cryptocurrency penetration in this year and the following .. and not just one centralized development team.

How can you keep them from becoming entirely closed source? Toward my point, how would you solve the problem of privatized GPU miners cornering markets? Take a look at BBR right now, over 50% of the coin is mined by Christian and Christian alone. Not all the hard-coded centralized developer fees in the world can stop that, and he's currently in a position where he would require infinite money to open source or even distribute his software.

What then?

[coinsolidation]

Sure that could work. But it doesn't cover third party development, which will be the main driving force in cryptocurrency penetration in this year and the following .. and not just one centralized development team.

Interested to hear what you class as third party development? Software, Hardware, Services, additional core development?

How can you keep them from becoming entirely closed source?

Open from the start, multiple contributors, patches from healthy up to date forks - the usual methods.

Take a look at BBR right now, over 50% of the coin is mined by Christian and Christian alone. Not all the hard-coded centralized developer fees in the world can stop that, and he's currently in a position where he would require infinite money to open source or even distribute his software.

What then?

The fee model is only to provide a fair approach to remuneration. All aspects of the project would have to be open, right from the start, including the initial requirements and proposal, even before specification happens. As we are doing here

[Este Nuno]

The fixed hash rate idea is really interesting and it sounds good except for the fact that a botnet would easily take over the network. Often the only thing that limits botnets is the fact that most of the computers in the botnet are not very powerful. But in this case it wouldn't matter at all and sheer numbers would be the only thing that mattered.

So in order for this to work the coin would absolutely have to have full protection against a >50% attack.

Interestly enough a white paper was proposed today with a solution: http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf

[Keyboard-Mash]

Interested to hear what you class as third party development? Software, Hardware, Services, additional core development?

Mycelium integration, closed source pools with their own closed source software, previous releases of cudaminer not being released for distribution and are now effectively closed source, coinmarketcap, any exchange, there are now third party sources of entire coin development who offer the source for anyone to use but not for themselves to launch a coin, claymore's GPU miners are closed source 3rd party support, nxt asset exchange, blockchain explorers not provided by the developers supporting multiple coins of choice, profitability calculators, there's just so many examples. The future of new cryptocurrencies will come to thrive on these types of offerings. This is no longer a garage project, and the number of people who have originally provided these types of services for free of charge is quickly diminishing .. to the point where coins like BBR are left to consider a hard fork because of lack of an ability to fund a third party developer.

Open from the start, multiple contributors, patches from healthy up to date forks - the usual methods.

This simplistic model is disappearing very fast, again using the BBR example. He is a very intelligent and good developer and even he cannot mitigate these risks.

The fee model is only to provide a fair approach to remuneration. All aspects of the project would have to be open, right from the start, including the initial requirements and proposal, even before specification happens. As we are doing here

The fair approach is being actively abused, and I'm trying to drive home the point that it's not just the core coin developers that will be needing paid anymore to survive. It's quickly becoming so dangerous that these people need to be compensated some how.

So what do you think is a good method to keep everyone paid? I don't think it's going to be automatic -- no amount of automated open-source coding can benefit everyone who has a say in these coins now. Some will find a way to assume control if they are not compensated.

[hellscabane]

The fixed hash rate idea is really interesting and it sounds good except for the fact that a botnet would easily take over the network. Often the only thing that limits botnets is the fact that most of the computers in the botnet are not very powerful. But in this case it wouldn't matter at all and sheer numbers would be the only thing that mattered.

So in order for this to work the coin would absolutely have to have full protection against a >50% attack.

Interestly enough a white paper was proposed today with a solution: http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf

I was wondering when someone would mention PoA. I don’t see this being implemented into Bitcoin, so there is a chance for another established alt to take it up. [Frankly, I wouldn’t trust another lame “clonecoin” with this implementation, even if it did it well. It’d essentially be another piece of crapshoot hype.]

Anyhow, with the capped hash proposal, you’ve hit it on the head. A proposal like this falls prey to the PoW uniqueness problem. The “instamining” would just shift from those with power-heavy farms to those with clouds with multiple distinguishable connections (i.e. botnets).

[coinsolidation]

There's checkpoint consensus, but then consensus allows for islands to form.

A simple technical (rather than social) solution to the 51% problem must exist, for PoW.

[Keyboard-Mash]

There's checkpoint consensus, but then consensus allows for islands to form.

A simple technical (rather than social) solution to the 51% problem must exist, for PoW.

What do you guys think about this?

Not a simple solution, but it's a big question to begin with ..

[Este Nuno]

The fixed hash rate idea is really interesting and it sounds good except for the fact that a botnet would easily take over the network. Often the only thing that limits botnets is the fact that most of the computers in the botnet are not very powerful. But in this case it wouldn't matter at all and sheer numbers would be the only thing that mattered.

So in order for this to work the coin would absolutely have to have full protection against a >50% attack.

Interestly enough a white paper was proposed today with a solution: http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf

I was wondering when someone would mention PoA. I don’t see this being implemented into Bitcoin, so there is a chance for another established alt to take it up. [Frankly, I wouldn’t trust another lame “clonecoin” with this implementation, even if it did it well. It’d essentially be another piece of crapshoot hype.]

Anyhow, with the capped hash proposal, you’ve hit it on the head. A proposal like this falls prey to the PoW uniqueness problem. The “instamining” would just shift from those with power-heavy farms to those with clouds with multiple distinguishable connections (i.e. botnets).

I don't know how viable it is in reality but the only thing I can think of to guard against this problem is a a coin that integrates human intelligence tasks in order to mine. Something like a capcha but possibly stronger than that.

[Este Nuno]

There's checkpoint consensus, but then consensus allows for islands to form.

A simple technical (rather than social) solution to the 51% problem must exist, for PoW.

What do you guys think about this?

Not a simple solution, but it's a big question to begin with ..

Oh, I didn't see your link before I posted my post above. Just started reading it now, is it related in anyway to what I said above, or is this something solved by computers?

[coinsolidation]

Interestly enough a white paper was proposed today with a solution: http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf

I was wondering when someone would mention PoA.

This bit concerns me greatly:

When the Nth stakeholder sees that the block derives her, she creates a wrapped block that extends the empty block header by including as many transactions as she wishes to include

[tromp]

This bit concerns me greatly:

When the Nth stakeholder sees that the block derives her, she creates a wrapped block that extends the empty block header by including as many transactions as she wishes to include

You mean the potential for underground websites like stakesignfavors.com popping up,
where signers can try to make a little extra money on the side?

[coinsolidation]

This bit concerns me greatly:

When the Nth stakeholder sees that the block derives her, she creates a wrapped block that extends the empty block header by including as many transactions as she wishes to include

You mean the potential for underground websites like stakesignfavors.com popping up,
where signers can try to make a little extra money on the side?

No the unwritten bit which allows not including as many transactions as desired, together with the unreferencing of the tree of transactions from the block header. Merkle root must be in there.
edit: because the transactions merkle root isn't in the header they can be added and removed at will.. it breaks the strength and the point of the blockchain.

From the many proposals I've seen, it seems apparent that Proof of Decentralization is required, as centralization is always the root of the problems. To do this blocks need to be floated around the network randomly in some way until agreed, then the next block can be started.

I can see multiple viable approaches as alternatives, which expand on PoW. For example:

nBlocks: a traditional PoW block is created and sent to the network, it is then recomputed with another hash, and repeat until n-hashes have been found, the block identifier becomes the sha256d of the concatenation of (nhash, n+1hash, ...). block-reward/n is claimed by each miner.

transactional block verification: traditional PoW block is created and sent to the network, each client which sent a transaction included in the block signs the hash with the private key they control associated with aforementioned transaction, once xx% of signatures has been received the block is accepted by the network.

combination of both of the above.

supernodes/unl, trusted nodes which much meet majority consensus that a block is good before it is accepted - perhaps with a latent design which acts a soft checkpoint for currentblock - n.

zero interest PoS and feeless transactions, discourage hoarding and just take it as a given that this computational processing is the fee for using the network.

and so on.

a side point: one cpu one vote was long gone, with the introduction of pools, which centralized the network. The pool problem is primarily a problem because it's been black boxed and miners are now "dumb" with no attachment to the network or awareness of the blockchain. If there was a way to force them to be aware of the network protocol and the chain again, it may open alternative avenues to solve the problems.

aside for tromp: you seem to have some overlap with CPoS and graph based data.. it would be interesting if the block chain was a graph instead, which was mined with cuckoo.

[jabo38]

There are three features that are extremely important. 

1. Fast
2. Cheap to use
3. Very easy to use

These are the core.  If a coin is missing one of these three, it sucks. 

Most coins suck.