Bitmark

[Este Nuno]

So i think best would be:

Perhaps there is another option.

1. I the primary first developer mine for myself, as others do.
2. We set up a "developer fund" address, or addresses, which are locked until a specific date, myself and other miners can contribute BTM to it as they see fit.

I am +1 to this approach, as it is simple, reasonable and fair.

Let us resolve this quickly, with +1's.

That works but I've read a few times on here that donation based projects often have a really hard time in Bitcoin at least. Maybe it will be different here though(hopefully).

On the topic of mining: I've never done any serious mining and don't have a rig capable of mining anything significant. I just rent scrypt hash through a website and point it at a Bitmark pool when the time comes, correct? Is it that simple?

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[coinsolidation]

So i think best would be:

Perhaps there is another option.

1. I the primary first developer mine for myself, as others do.
2. We set up a "developer fund" address, or addresses, which are locked until a specific date, myself and other miners can contribute BTM to it as they see fit.

I am +1 to this approach, as it is simple, reasonable and fair.

Let us resolve this quickly, with +1's.

That works but I've read a few times on here that donation based projects often have a really hard time in Bitcoin at least. Maybe it will be different here though(hopefully).

On the topic of mining: I've never done any serious mining and don't have a rig capable of mining anything significant. I just rent scrypt hash through a website and point it at a Bitmark pool when the time comes, correct? Is it that simple?

Yes, when there is a pool. Otherwise to your own RPC enabled Bitmark instance, many scrypt rigs do support solo mining, but some do not.

I also do not have any mining equipment, ironically, I wish I did have a scrypt rig now.

I am hoping that since the value should be low to start, reasonable donations should be easy to achieve. Remember 10000 BTC bought a single pizza at one point, to achieve even 35,000 BTM over the next 18 months should be achievable, that's only 2.5 days of mining rewards.

We need a few more +1's before this is agreed.

Also a gentle reminder that we still need 0.2 btc to secure everything needed to launch the coin properly. Due to this change, the code is ready and we can launch as soon as we've secured a dedicated server.

[pandher]

I gave it a deep thought

I was unable to think of any other viable method to secure future development funding other than donations. The taxation idea was good but cannot be adopted for reasons described by keyboard-mash and consolidation.

In this case where brutal fairness is of utmost importance [has to be, to grow in this chaos] i go with donations.

The down side about donations is that they rarely meet the total needed funding [if] there is no incentive for an individual. If we can offer something in return, i can see healthy donations incoming

For ex - bitcointalk has a lot of members who donated BTC for developent of the forum, they all have a donator tag after their handles. Maybe we can decide something like this later on.

For now +1 from me

[tobeaj2mer01]

Can we mine this coin now?How?

[coinsolidation]

Pandher, thank you for your valuable input. I am keen to follow the notion of donors being credited publicly, but have not decided exactly which form this will take. Certainly documentation and future websites will have a proud list of donors, that much is for sure.

Tobeaj2mer01, soon. First we must secure the remaining budget requirement (BTC0.2) so that network is stable and well seeded from launch, and so that we have the resources required to do this properly. Shortly after, we will launch the client and main chain. Everything is already tested and ready. 24-48 hours after securing a server, enough time to install what is needed, mine two genesis blocks, and give fair warning here to those following.

I should mention explicitly, I may have before, that any surplus donations received will be used to hire scrypt mining equipment to point at the Bitmark network, any BTM mined would be sent to the foundation address(es).

I am comfortable moving ahead with the suggested donations to the foundation approach for a long term development fund. Unless anybody explicitly says it is a bad idea, with reasonable rationale as to why. Otherwise consider this to be agreed.

[Este Nuno]

Can we mine this coin now?How?

No, not yet. It's still in development.

But it's coming along quite well so far so follow along in the thread here and you'll be able to mine soon.

[tobeaj2mer01]

Pandher, thank you for your valuable input. I am keen to follow the notion of donors being credited publicly, but have not decided exactly which form this will take. Certainly documentation and future websites will have a proud list of donors, that much is for sure.

Tobeaj2mer01, soon. First we must secure the remaining budget requirement (BTC0.2) so that network is stable and well seeded from launch, and so that we have the resources required to do this properly. Shortly after, we will launch the client and main chain. Everything is already tested and ready. 24-48 hours after securing a server, enough time to install what is needed, mine two genesis blocks, and give fair warning here to those following.

I should mention explicitly, I may have before, that any surplus donations received will be used to hire scrypt mining equipment to point at the Bitmark network, any BTM mined would be sent to the foundation address(es).

I am comfortable moving ahead with the suggested donations to the foundation approach for a long term development fund. Unless anybody explicitly says it is a bad idea, with reasonable rationale as to why. Otherwise consider this to be agreed.

Thanks for the response, I am an investor not a miner, I can help the good coin to become stronger, I think we have the same purpose, it's making cryptocurrency help people in life, make the world better.

[coinsolidation]

I responded to tobeaj2mer01 privately also as he sent me a PM.

Something I said privately, which I realise I have not said publicly is as follows:

I have not entered in to this (Bitmark) lightly, and have organized my life so that for the next year or more I will be financially secure enough to commit most of my time to this effort. During which time the project should begin to fund it self through fair increase in value of BTM itself.

All I can suggest to anybody who is an investor looking for an IPO, is that you consider pointing some rented miners at the coin when it is launched, or buying some coins from those who do... and if you feel strongly enough that the project is worthy, to donate a small percentage of what you would have otherwise invested in an IPO.

[coinsolidation]

I may have found a solution to this problem. Let me propose it to you all and see what you think.

Rather than premining for an IPO, we reverse it.

So any "reverse-IPO" investments are spent on mining rigs for when the network goes live. The BTM created is then split fairly between the investor(s), and a small percentage, say 5%?, sent to the bitmark foundation addresses, to be locked for a period of time and used in the future for development.

This way the network is supported, the coins distributed fairly between investors and miners, and the project secures long term funding.

What do you think?

If this were to go approved by the community and go ahead, then the donors so far would be included in the reverse-ipo. A total of 0.6 BTC would be removed from the total funds acquired to cover the resources required to launch the project mentioned earlier.

rather than having the coin "raped" with a huge hash rate at first, we would propose to have a fair amount of hashing power on the network for longer

[tobeaj2mer01]

I may have found a solution to this problem. Let me propose it to you all and see what you think.

Rather than premining for an IPO, we reverse it.

So any "reverse-IPO" investments are spent on mining rigs for when the network goes live. The BTM created is then split fairly between the investor(s), and a small percentage, say 5%?, sent to the bitmark foundation addresses, to be locked for a period of time and used in the future for development.

This way the network is supported, the coins distributed fairly between investors and miners, and the project secures long term funding.

What do you think?

If this were to go approved by the community and go ahead, then the donors so far would be included in the reverse-ipo. A total of 0.6 BTC would be removed from the total funds acquired to cover the resources required to launch the project mentioned earlier.

rather than having the coin "raped" with a huge hash rate at first, we would propose to have a fair amount of hashing power on the network for longer

This community is democratic , I think you can raise a vote in the community regarding this.
Another thing I want to say
if there is a development fund, there is no worry about hardware, domain names etc, you can even hire some guys for the development, I am aware of some good coins dead due to lack of money, Bitmark is a good coin, I hope it has a good future,  and I admire all you done for this coin.

[tobeaj2mer01]

I have a suggestion regarding the mining, I am aware of green mining will be used in EXO, it's beneficial to spread the coin to more guys, if more and more guys mine and use this coin, it will become stronger and stronger.

Green mining: http://wiki.exocoin.org/index.php?title=green_mining

[coinsolidation]

Thank you for your suggestions.

Funded development: One principal of the bitmark project is that any value associated with BTM should have been earned rather than predetermined or artificially inflated. It stands to reason that if development is good and the project is focused, then the BTM acquired by myself privately, and the BTM in the development fund, will have enough value to hire or buy whatever is needed as the project progresses. I really appreciate that this is of concern to many of you, it shows that you too want a stable long term coin.

Innovations: The other principal of the bitmark project is to use what is proven, mature it, and be relatively stable. Coin based innovation is for other projects, we have a proven groundwork ready, and we will work hard to extend this with a new API and focus on ease of adoption.

I really respect and love innovation, following it closely including green mining, but it is not for this project, as innovations are proven in alternative currencies, and if they offer beneficial utility to users, then they will be adopted in the future.

As an example, I am commenting in another thread for another coin which launched on BTER today, with more than 80 BTC invested so far, and 5000 expected! In the thread we are discussing rudimentary simple design decisions and things which have been done incorrectly, really basic stuff like having https on a web wallet,  how to store a long passphrase without cookies, and how to use public key cryptography (on which crypto coins are built!). Bitmark is not that kind of project.

We will earn value through hard work, technical maturity, utility, and by focusing on users and adoption.

We just need a little bit of help to get running, a minuscule amount in comparison to common IPOs.

Hopefully this is in no way dismissive, as I hope to foster discussion rather than discourage it. Each decision should be questioned, as no person is infallible.

[coinsolidation]

Update
I am pleased to announce, that thanks to a 0.1 BTC donation from Este Nuno we now have enough to secure a dedicated server for the project today, and maybe also a domain name for the project website and first dns-seeder.

It has become a reality. 

We will provisionally schedule the launch for saturday, with confirmation later today. Much depends on whether the community feels the "reverse-ipo" mentioned before is worth doing or not.

[Este Nuno]

I think the reverse-IPO idea sounds like a good one.

Has it ever been done before?

It sounds like a logical idea for a PoW coin that requires funding upfront. It seems pretty fair to me.

[coinsolidation]

I think the reverse-IPO idea sounds like a good one.

Has it ever been done before?

It sounds like a logical idea for a PoW coin that requires funding upfront. It seems pretty fair to me.

I've created a thread for the concept PROPOSAL: An alternative to IPO for PoW coins so it can be discussed separately and within the context of multiple coins.

No idea if it has been done before, if it has we can be sure someone will say.

[Este Nuno]

I PM'd coinsolidation some of my thoughts on Bitmark at this point and he suggested I post them in the thread as well so here they are. I appreciate any thoughts that anyone has. And coinsolidation already replied with some of his thoughts but maybe he'll post them here too as well if he wants to:


As to where Bitmark stands in the cryptocurrency market, I see the current situation as a spectrum with the 'bleeding edge' coins like NXT, Qora, CryptoNote coins leading the way on the far left side with brand new code and ideas. And Bitcoin on the far right side of that spectrum acting as a solid reliable base with little to no innovation. Bitcoin development being more defensive since the stakes are much, much higher and there is no mandate on the developers end to do anything other than protect the integrity of the Bitcoin protocol and associated code.

So with the coins on the left side of the spectrum pushing forward with new untested technology there's obviously more risk than there is with Bitcoin which has been around for about 5 years now and been thoroughly tested by millions(probably?) of people.

Now since the nature of the cryptocurrency community is one of open source and shared ideas and innovation and that gives an advantage to 'second movers' so to speak who can also benefit from new technology as it's developed. Not only is the technology itself open and freely usable, but by the time it's proven to be useful it's also been tested in real world conditions enough to have a much lower probability of having some catastrophic issue that would derail it.

With Bitmark I see it sitting in the middle of that spectrum building off the foundation that Bitcoin provides while also observing and analysing the evolution of cryptocurrency technology. This way Bitmark can implement innovation with much lower risk while still being far beyond Bitcoin since Bitcoin is more or less constrained by its own size.

The biggest concerns I have for Bitmark in it's current state are these:

1. Unless there is easy access to scrypt ASICs for everyone to rent I worry that one or two individuals who are in possession of those devices before the mass propagation of ASICs to the general public could dominate the hashing. They could use that hashing power for malicious purposes but I think it's more likely that they would just monopolize the mining and probably hoard the coins while waiting for the project to progress.

2. This one I'm not really qualified to speak on but I've seen some people imply that the Bitcoin codebase is somewhat antiquated and actually implementing a lot of upgrades is extremely challenging and in some cases not possible without major revisions or complete rewrites. I'm not sure about how true this is but I would appreciate your thoughts on that matter.

[coinsolidation]

Thank you so much for this feedback, it's exactly the kind of discussion which benefits a project.

With Bitmark I see it sitting in the middle of that spectrum building off the foundation that Bitcoin provides while also observing and analysing the evolution of cryptocurrency technology. This way Bitmark can implement innovation with much lower risk while still being far beyond Bitcoin since Bitcoin is more or less constrained by its own size.

Almost exactly as I see it. I would clarify:
1. Bitmark will implement proven and useful innovations from alts, if and only if they increase the usability of bitmark as a currency, so no token things like chat.
2. Any Bitmark innovations will be in making it more accessible and simpler to integrate with, i.e. focussed on adoption, technically the user interface and API.

The biggest concerns I have for Bitmark in it's current state are these:

1. Unless there is easy access to scrypt ASICs for everyone to rent I worry that one or two individuals who are in possession of those devices before the mass propagation of ASICs to the general public could dominate the hashing. They could use that hashing power for malicious purposes but I think it's more likely that they would just monopolize the mining and probably hoard the coins while waiting for the project to progress.

2. This one I'm not really qualified to speak on but I've seen some people imply that the Bitcoin codebase is somewhat antiquated and actually implementing a lot of upgrades is extremely challenging and in some cases not possible without major revisions or complete rewrites. I'm not sure about how true this is but I would appreciate your thoughts on that matter.

1. It is possible, more likely to be 5-10 individuals though, and for hoarding not malicious purposes, as there is nothing to be malicious about with a zero value coin. This itself, the zero value, should hopefully mitigate the risk of excessive hoarding. We must factor in the cost of mining and length of time to a return. In this economy who is willing to mine for weeks in order to hold a coin for a few years? Not many, and not at such a speed that they would dominate the network.

This is speculation with some reasoning, we do not know what will happen but can try to influence things or mitigate risks.

Perhaps the proposal I made about reverse-ipo/ipm can have some impact, ensuring that hashing power is distributed evenly over the first weeks and months..

Some observations: hoarding and dumping is natural, the dumping distributes coins to new adopters, so does have some value. People will always speculate, either by mining or buying, there is not much we can do. There are lots of ASICs to rent, short term it is insignificant, long term has a more noticeable associated cost. People have always been rewarded by adopting early in to successful projects.

2. As a programmer I cannot see anything lacking, it works, it's modern, it's updated daily, and most importantly it is future and backwards compatible with possibly the highest quality assurance in the world. The developers focus on streamlining it and making it more useful, rather than bloating it up with "innovation". I've been a senior level programmer since the 90s and rate it higher than any other project I've encountered. There is some truth the code could have been developed differently, more modular, perhaps in the way an enterprise project would be, but there are major benefits to having simple reduced code, much easier to debug, easier to read, and critically far less bugs. I am happy using it for sure, and comfortable modifying it as I have been.

Thanks again and these are not definitive answers, they are personal, fallible, opinions. It will take a community effort to iron out the faults.

[Triffin]

A 'one click' download, easy to use brain wallet ..
( Use the NXT wallet as your template )
Which still needs a security step from within the wallet to authorize a withdrawal of coins ..

Mass adoption = simple functional idiot proof wallet

Triff ..

[Este Nuno]

Thank you so much for this feedback, it's exactly the kind of discussion which benefits a project.

With Bitmark I see it sitting in the middle of that spectrum building off the foundation that Bitcoin provides while also observing and analysing the evolution of cryptocurrency technology. This way Bitmark can implement innovation with much lower risk while still being far beyond Bitcoin since Bitcoin is more or less constrained by its own size.

Almost exactly as I see it. I would clarify:
1. Bitmark will implement proven and useful innovations from alts, if and only if they increase the usability of bitmark as a currency, so no token things like chat.
2. Any Bitmark innovations will be in making it more accessible and simpler to integrate with, i.e. focussed on adoption, technically the user interface and API.

The biggest concerns I have for Bitmark in it's current state are these:

1. Unless there is easy access to scrypt ASICs for everyone to rent I worry that one or two individuals who are in possession of those devices before the mass propagation of ASICs to the general public could dominate the hashing. They could use that hashing power for malicious purposes but I think it's more likely that they would just monopolize the mining and probably hoard the coins while waiting for the project to progress.

2. This one I'm not really qualified to speak on but I've seen some people imply that the Bitcoin codebase is somewhat antiquated and actually implementing a lot of upgrades is extremely challenging and in some cases not possible without major revisions or complete rewrites. I'm not sure about how true this is but I would appreciate your thoughts on that matter.

1. It is possible, more likely to be 5-10 individuals though, and for hoarding not malicious purposes, as there is nothing to be malicious about with a zero value coin. This itself, the zero value, should hopefully mitigate the risk of excessive hoarding. We must factor in the cost of mining and length of time to a return. In this economy who is willing to mine for weeks in order to hold a coin for a few years? Not many, and not at such a speed that they would dominate the network.

This is speculation with some reasoning, we do not know what will happen but can try to influence things or mitigate risks.

Perhaps the proposal I made about reverse-ipo/ipm can have some impact, ensuring that hashing power is distributed evenly over the first weeks and months..

Some observations: hoarding and dumping is natural, the dumping distributes coins to new adopters, so does have some value. People will always speculate, either by mining or buying, there is not much we can do. There are lots of ASICs to rent, short term it is insignificant, long term has a more noticeable associated cost. People have always been rewarded by adopting early in to successful projects.

2. As a programmer I cannot see anything lacking, it works, it's modern, it's updated daily, and most importantly it is future and backwards compatible with possibly the highest quality assurance in the world. The developers focus on streamlining it and making it more useful, rather than bloating it up with "innovation". I've been a senior level programmer since the 90s and rate it higher than any other project I've encountered. There is some truth the code could have been developed differently, more modular, perhaps in the way an enterprise project would be, but there are major benefits to having simple reduced code, much easier to debug, easier to read, and critically far less bugs. I am happy using it for sure, and comfortable modifying it as I have been.

Thanks again and these are not definitive answers, they are personal, fallible, opinions. It will take a community effort to iron out the faults.

Yes I agree that at this point there are lots of different ideas being thrown around in the altcoin world regarding bringing new features to coins and a lot of those are not something that would belong on Bitmark. What I have in mind at this point is mainly major innovations like coloured coins/asset exchange and anonymity features.

Anonymity for example is still a very hotly debated subject with no technology being clearly superior or secure at this point. The one that seems to be in the front at the moment is the CryptoNote technology but there is apparently a large issue with it not being sustainable due to blockchain bloat. So it's a good thing that we can stand by and watch how this develops while not rushing into something that's not ready.

I wasn't aware that scrypt ASICs were available for rent yet(I don't follow mining though) so that's good news if they'll be available.

Good to hear that you are happy with the codebase and don't foresee any major issues modifying it in the future.

[DarkhorseofNxt]

Very interesting project. Watching this.