[NXT] Testnet for Automated Transactions (AT) - Turing Completeness for Nxt

[ChuckOne]

For all to think about it and to support the AT Team.

source https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/so-where-does-at-go-from-now/msg58143/#msg58143

Concerns and issue; compiled from a discussion with JL.

The team around AT needs to answer these questions during the testing period of AT.



0) Problem is not to achieve something with AT, but how to restrict AT scripts to avoid inconsistent results: cf. below


1) We need to make it safe in certain ways:
 - restricting AT scripts - transactions validation?
 - can a script create other scripts (viruses)?
 - access on core resources - querying them
 - using core capabilities - like methods of the Account class and so on

2) Scalability:
 - re-executing the script on every node?
 - better of avoiding it?
 - some sort of easy proof that the script was executed correctly?

3) Code complication
 - minimizing the core code
 - if script is using internal core methods, core modifications will be necessary everywhere -> first step: using regular transactions, second step: creating custom transactions, third step: introducing custom objects

4) How to start a script?
 - by transaction?
 - by height trigger?
 - by what else?

5) Scientific research done?

6) How to do debugging?
 - Who called what when and why?
 - different languages in use

7) How to do updating a AT script?

How to migrate running/active AT scripts once the underlying program found flawed and a new version is/will be deployed?

9) Atomicity
 - Are scripts atomic?
 - How to achieve atomicity?
 - How to split up atomicity within one script?
 - When is the output of a script accepted, i.e. changes balances and the like? (turing complete -> Halting problem etc.)
 - rollback necessary?

10) What is the output of a script?
 - a sequence of regular Nxt transactions?
 - using custom transaction types?
 - directly manipulating the Core Objects like Account, Aliases, Orders etc. etc.

11) What is the input of a script?
 - block headers?
 - confirmed transactions?
 - raw transactions?

12) When calling internal methods like DigitalGoodsStore.deliver(), how to we enforce rules that are set by the corresponding transaction type?


That is it for now. Keep you updated.

[Daedelus]

Reserved   

[Come-In-Behind]

NXT is a shitcoin. It's kind of laughable. I'm sure the developers know by now that their distributing the entire 1billion NXT that was issued out on Day 1, to under 75 people has doomed NXT from the start....

No matter what features NXT adds, it will always fail because of it's beginnings. Face it, only an extremely small majority of people control most of the NXT coins in existence and by the very small trading volume seen on NXT(even with it's decent sized marketcap), we can all see that those people are reluctant to sell their coins/ease the extreme unfairness present, making NXT one of the most "centralized" alt-coins ever made.

[Daedelus]

[Fearful regurgitation of increasing irrelevance from the last 12 months]

Time will tell.


After 3 months of development, Nxt's answer to Ethereum will be on public testnet very soon.


The date is published if you know where to look.

[Snail2]

What are these ATs? Is this something like a direct debit or something like a trading bot?

[Daedelus]

What are these ATs?

Here it from the horses mouth here: http://www.nxtcommunity.org/nxt-podcast/whats-nxt-automated-transactions-explained


*Trustless* is the key word.


From http://ciyam.org/nxt/nxt_at.html, here are 3 examples.

****
Use Case #1: Lottery

Create a "lottery" program which will pay out its balance to a "winner" automatically once per week.

To purchase a "ticket" a Nxt user would send X NXT to the "lottery AT account" (where some of this amount may
be needed to pay for running the AT). The "ticket" itself would be the hashed result of the ticket owner's id
(i.e. account #) added with the block id that occurs 1440 blocks *after* the purchase block (as the id of the
block that far ahread is understood to be unpredictable, however, this needs thorough mathematical analysis).

Use Case #2: Dormant Funds Transfer

Create a program that if not notified before a certain period of time will transfer its funds to one specific
account. The notification mechanism will be via an AM transaction and the content of the AM (if not empty) is
a new address to payout to.

Use Case #3: Project Crowdfunding Agent

Create a program that will at a certain time check if it has a balance greater than or equal to a target that
was hard-coded into it. If the required balance level has been reached then all funds will be then sent to an
account hard-coded into it. If the required balance has not been met then each tx sender will be refunded the
amount they sent (tx fees may also need to be considered).
***

[krb91]

[Fearful regurgitation of increasing irrelevance from the last 12 months]

Time will tell.


After 3 months of development, Nxt's answer to Ethereum will be on public testnet very soon.


The date is published if you know where to look.

Will it offer every feature Ethereum promises?

[fivebells]

Is there a public branch containing the AT code developed so far?

[TaunSew]

NXT is a shitcoin. It's kind of laughable. I'm sure the developers know by now that their distributing the entire 1billion NXT that was issued out on Day 1, to under 75 people has doomed NXT from the start....

No matter what features NXT adds, it will always fail because of it's beginnings. Face it, only an extremely small majority of people control most of the NXT coins in existence and by the very small trading volume seen on NXT(even with it's decent sized marketcap), we can all see that those people are reluctant to sell their coins/ease the extreme unfairness present, making NXT one of the most "centralized" alt-coins ever made.

As well they seem to be increasingly breaking the law.  There's drugs and other illegal activity on the digital marketplace.   The asset exchange is bypassing the SEC.  NxT is now planning to bring in an illegal lottery and an illegal poker service.  The lead developer is hiding in a pseudo-Communist country called Belarus and even if he went full public he would never be prosecuted and if indicted wouldn't be expatriated to court in the United States.  If he does go to jail then it would be by the Belarusian authorities accusing him of laundering money or being involved with some kind of criminal activity.


 I think these are all barriers towards getting any recognition or investment from serious parties.  If you noticed on a lot of the crypto news websites - they refrain from mentioning NxT unless money gets stolen.



Not saying this as a good or a bad thing, rather apathetic about it.  NxT looks like it's aiming to be equivalent of a 4Chan Crypto currency and only time will tell if it will work.  

NxT used to be $90-$110 million at its' peak and I would be really surprised if it reclaims that former capitalization, more features or not.  NxT started to lose a lot of capitalization when the public became aware of its' distribution (alienation #1) and after the digital marketplace I noticed their capitalization actually went down (alienation #2.  Against predictions of it going up, probably because people didn't want to hold a coin that is used by drug dealers.  Could be comparable to how Bitcoin boomed after the Silkroad was shut down.).

[bluemeanie1]

Automated Transactions was an attempt to implement ideas similar to those discussed in early Ethereum discussions.

Ian Knowles and a Greek named Vasilis issued an asset called NxtAT that was somehow related to the production of these features.

NxtAT seems to have disappeared.  http://is.gd/mxGIU7

the current capitalization of NxtAT is roughly $486,000 USD.

the issuer account has, at the time of writing, a balance of 1,368,473.02 NXT.  https://nxtblocks.info/#section/accountId/NXT-RZ9H-H2XD-WTR3-B4WN2

[bluemeanie1]

NxT used to be $90-$110 million at its' peak and I would be really surprised if it reclaims that former capitalization, more features or not.  NxT started to lose a lot of capitalization when the public became aware of its' distribution (alienation #1) and after the digital marketplace I noticed their capitalization actually went down (alienation #2.  Against predictions of it going up, probably because people didn't want to hold a coin that is used by drug dealers.  Could be comparable to how Bitcoin boomed after the Silkroad was shut down.).

did you see my chart?

[bluemeanie1]

BM I'm not sure you can take credit for that - there was a lot of things happening in June.  The rebound in June was probably a pump & dump  by the whales who had cashed out to BTC back in February and were trying to make even more off a dead cat bounce.  Then you had other incidents in June which included you, Cointropolis, et cetera, and then the trend was worsen in July when stuff like Klee's hack occurred.

I was the one who came out against Cointropolis.

At the time of my arrival and roughly a week or two into it, I really had no idea what was going on.  The moment I realized it was a ponzi scheme I posted here.  Then my problems started.

The entire incident involving jl777 transpired within a few weeks of meeting him.

[fivebells]

Automated Transactions was an attempt to implement ideas similar to those discussed in early Ethereum discussions.

Ian Knowles and a Greek named Vasilis issued an asset called NxtAT that was somehow related to the production of these features.

NxtAT seems to have disappeared.  http://is.gd/mxGIU7

the current capitalization of NxtAT is roughly $486,000 USD.

the issuer account has, at the time of writing, a balance of 1,368,473.02 NXT.  https://nxtblocks.info/#section/accountId/NXT-RZ9H-H2XD-WTR3-B4WN2

I really don't have a dog in this fight, but some people do still seem to be developing Automated Transactions.

[Daedelus]

[Fearful regurgitation of increasing irrelevance from the last 12 months]

Time will tell.


After 3 months of development, Nxt's answer to Ethereum will be on public testnet very soon.


The date is published if you know where to look.

Will it offer every feature Ethereum promises?

AFAIK, Ethereum offers a Turing complete language to create smart contracts. Google tells me Ethereum says Ethereum has 0 features, it is a platform to build on.

In this respect, Nxt Automated Transactions is Ethereum. Nxt has a working product in alpha and not only slideshows. And Nxt is also a platform to build on by third party developers (see the famous work of JL777 for proof).



Additionally,


I) Ethereum will use it's own custom scripting language. When it is released, maybe a couple dozen people will be able to use it and create contracts in Ethereum. Nxt AT is written in low level language (machine code) and CIYAM himself says in the podcast above that it will take very little to convert to C initially and then other languages as they progress.

So within a few weeks of release, there is likely to be tens of thousands of existing programmer that already have the skills needed to write smart contracts in Nxt AT.  


ii) Ethereum always have to be Turing Complete with its transactions, it has all the bells and whistles in every transaction. This has a computational cost. Nxt AT just has Turing Complete transactions to be processed when it is necessary.

Think of Ethereum as the big RV, you can go camping and it has everything you need but popping into town to pick up a few things from the shops is laborious and cumbersome.

Think of Nxt as a fast sports car and Nxt AT as a trailer. Nxt sports car can be used for day to day transactions (popping to the shops), then you just hitch the Nxt At trailer onto Nxt when you need to for more complex turing complete transactions (like going camping).

Nxt AT is designed to be the best of both worlds.

[Daedelus]

I really don't have a dog in this fight, but some people do still seem to be developing Automated Transactions.

I would give you a +1 if I could for doing your own research

You might be interested in the machine code testing and results for Nxt AT: http://ciyam.org/nxt/

If you want more information on the innards, the best person to contact is btc2nxt at nxtforum.org. He is the one who most commonly gives updates in the thread you posted above.


Edit: Nevermind, I see you have already registered and asked questions

[ShroomsKit_Disgrace]

This project could be a BOOM for NXT.

Any date for the first "tests"?
Following closely!

[Daedelus]

This project could be a BOOM for NXT.

Any date for the first "tests"?
Following closely!

15 Oct. It has been in private testing for a couple of months, it will be on public testnet on the 15th Oct.


https://nxtforum.org/automated-transactions/information-of-the-at-project/msg113168/#msg113168

[ShroomsKit_Disgrace]

15 Oct?
Sounds perfect! 

[5000Bitcoins]

Seems very similar to XCRs custom made blockchains. Can you explain the difference?

I think XCRs will see more developer use and support because of it's low cap high potential aswell as it hasn't dwelled into every bit of business and copied every idea out there in crypto there is, also can build what nxt build in it and vice versa. So I think both will find a nische in the market with XCR winning as it is the core function intended which will get most focus. Also not having a flawed initial distribution making new contributors/investors scared.

No harm meant in my post even though maybe it's phrased that way, good luck. Exciting

[bluemeanie1]

Automated Transactions was an attempt to implement ideas similar to those discussed in early Ethereum discussions.

Ian Knowles and a Greek named Vasilis issued an asset called NxtAT that was somehow related to the production of these features.

NxtAT seems to have disappeared.  http://is.gd/mxGIU7

the current capitalization of NxtAT is roughly $486,000 USD.

the issuer account has, at the time of writing, a balance of 1,368,473.02 NXT.  https://nxtblocks.info/#section/accountId/NXT-RZ9H-H2XD-WTR3-B4WN2

I really don't have a dog in this fight, but some people do still seem to be developing Automated Transactions.

Any statements from Ian Knowles regarding this?