Which altcoin features can you not live without?

[lynn_402]

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.

I'm curious, do you have any exemple of a coin that is expensive to use or hard to use?

[Este Nuno]

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.

I'm curious, do you have any exemple of a coin that is expensive to use or hard to use?

Bitcoin is expensive and slow.

Easy to use for the most part. But could be a lot better for the average person.

[coinsolidation]

I'm curious, do you have any exemple of a coin that is expensive to use or hard to use?

Bitcoin is expensive and slow.

Easy to use for the most part. But could be a lot better for the average person.

All of these things are subjective and depend on the use case.

Bitcoin is expensive compared to random-alt, cheap compared to paypal. Slow compared to paypal, fast compared to international wire transfer. Easy to use compared to most software in the world, difficult compared to most online payment systems.

All of these things can be addressed by supporting infrastructure, extension, or third party software.

For example, we could easily make an open source skrill or paypal which allows multiple service providers to give abstracted access to the bitcoin system, whilst remaining interoperable. Decentralized does not preclude federated, and federated does not mean centralized.

Bitcoin the protocol allows the small operator to innovate and compete with the big guys in many market places.

[Este Nuno]

I'm curious, do you have any exemple of a coin that is expensive to use or hard to use?

Bitcoin is expensive and slow.

Easy to use for the most part. But could be a lot better for the average person.

All of these things are subjective and depend on the use case.

Bitcoin is expensive compared to random-alt, cheap compared to paypal. Slow compared to paypal, fast compared to international wire transfer. Easy to use compared to most software in the world, difficult compared to most online payment systems.

All of these things can be addressed by supporting infrastructure, extension, or third party software.

For example, we could easily make an open source skrill or paypal which allows multiple service providers to give abstracted access to the bitcoin system, whilst remaining interoperable. Decentralized does not preclude federated, and federated does not mean centralized.

Bitcoin the protocol allows the small operator to innovate and compete with the big guys in many market places.

Yeah, all of that is true.

I was comparing bitcoin to altcoins like you said.

There is lots of potential still and lots of uncharted territory still in this space.

[lynn_402]

I'm curious, do you have any exemple of a coin that is expensive to use or hard to use?

Bitcoin is expensive and slow.

Easy to use for the most part. But could be a lot better for the average person.

All of these things are subjective and depend on the use case.

Bitcoin is expensive compared to random-alt, cheap compared to paypal. Slow compared to paypal, fast compared to international wire transfer. Easy to use compared to most software in the world, difficult compared to most online payment systems.

All of these things can be addressed by supporting infrastructure, extension, or third party software.

For example, we could easily make an open source skrill or paypal which allows multiple service providers to give abstracted access to the bitcoin system, whilst remaining interoperable. Decentralized does not preclude federated, and federated does not mean centralized.

Bitcoin the protocol allows the small operator to innovate and compete with the big guys in many market places.

Indeed, and businesses like Coinbase are working hard to support the infrastructure.
However, this external infrastructure seems to be adding a useless risk where we have to trust a third-party, considering that many of the features they add can be included directly in altcoins (like the faster transaction time and lower fees).

Imho, using an altcoin with better features is safer than using Bitcoin with an external app which compensates for its flaws.

[Este Nuno]

I'm curious, do you have any exemple of a coin that is expensive to use or hard to use?

Bitcoin is expensive and slow.

Easy to use for the most part. But could be a lot better for the average person.

All of these things are subjective and depend on the use case.

Bitcoin is expensive compared to random-alt, cheap compared to paypal. Slow compared to paypal, fast compared to international wire transfer. Easy to use compared to most software in the world, difficult compared to most online payment systems.

All of these things can be addressed by supporting infrastructure, extension, or third party software.

For example, we could easily make an open source skrill or paypal which allows multiple service providers to give abstracted access to the bitcoin system, whilst remaining interoperable. Decentralized does not preclude federated, and federated does not mean centralized.

Bitcoin the protocol allows the small operator to innovate and compete with the big guys in many market places.

Indeed, and businesses like Coinbase are working hard to support the infrastructure.
However, this external infrastructure seems to be adding a useless risk where we have to trust a third-party, considering that many of the features they add can be included directly in altcoins (like the faster transaction time and lower fees).

Imho, using an altcoin with better features is safer than using Bitcoin with an external app which compensates for its flaws.

That's true. And that's an interesting way to look at using altcoins. They are likely safer than using a centralised third party. So that might be a good way to market an altcoin to people using bitcoin already.

[MicroGuy]

Open source, written in Java, ability to store multiple coins in a single client.

http://altcoinpress.com/2014/04/java-client-to-put-multiple-coins-into-a-single-wallet/

[babybonobo]

http://www.reddit.com/r/perfectcoin

[Woot Manor]

Anon is a great feature, the only coin close to pulling this off is CRYPT imo.

[wzbysek]

Gridcoin

https://coinality.com/wp-content/uploads/company_logos/2014/03/gridnew21-250x250.png

Open-source, complete transparency, convenience of use, ultra fast transaction time, good cause i.e. advancing the progress of medicine, biology, climatology, mathematics, astrophysics, and more via BOINC contribution.

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, environmental science, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world.

Cryptocurrencies are not only super convenient as a form of value transfer, but can literally save the humanity and increase everyone's quality of life.

Gridcoin FTW!

[coinsolidation]

Indeed, and businesses like Coinbase are working hard to support the infrastructure.
However, this external infrastructure seems to be adding a useless risk where we have to trust a third-party, considering that many of the features they add can be included directly in altcoins (like the faster transaction time and lower fees).

Imho, using an altcoin with better features is safer than using Bitcoin with an external app which compensates for its flaws.

That's true. And that's an interesting way to look at using altcoins. They are likely safer than using a centralised third party. So that might be a good way to market an altcoin to people using bitcoin already.

Great points, thank you.

There is another option to throw in to the mix. Applications (website and services) can be designed in such a way that they interface with a users personal detail without ever having any direct control themselves, and without needing to take or store any personal information. Consider an alt with a well defined API, a personal hosted node, and various client side web services which could interface with any node defined. You would then have a range of UIs and services which respected the personal and decentralized nature of crypto currency / block chain.

Over these threads I think I've collected enough information to begin specifying a project which has some merit. Would any of you be willing to give further feedback once I've collated everything in to a rough specification?

[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).

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.

Yeah, it's a tricky problem to tackle. The idea of captcha-style verification is novel, but enabling it into a trustless sytem would be a significant hurdle to overcome.

[Este Nuno]

Indeed, and businesses like Coinbase are working hard to support the infrastructure.
However, this external infrastructure seems to be adding a useless risk where we have to trust a third-party, considering that many of the features they add can be included directly in altcoins (like the faster transaction time and lower fees).

Imho, using an altcoin with better features is safer than using Bitcoin with an external app which compensates for its flaws.

That's true. And that's an interesting way to look at using altcoins. They are likely safer than using a centralised third party. So that might be a good way to market an altcoin to people using bitcoin already.

Great points, thank you.

There is another option to throw in to the mix. Applications (website and services) can be designed in such a way that they interface with a users personal detail without ever having any direct control themselves, and without needing to take or store any personal information. Consider an alt with a well defined API, a personal hosted node, and various client side web services which could interface with any node defined. You would then have a range of UIs and services which respected the personal and decentralized nature of crypto currency / block chain.

Over these threads I think I've collected enough information to begin specifying a project which has some merit. Would any of you be willing to give further feedback once I've collated everything in to a rough specification?

I would be willing, yes. Keep us updated. It sounds interesting.

[coinsolidation]

Please see: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.0 for initial project details and discussion thread.