ORA:: Development discussion thread

[fragORA]

Nice piece Kora and very impressive paper nio.

To me a few of the most important features of a new coin in the current climate are...

1. Ease of use. A lot of coins are striving for this at the moment, but nobody has really cracked it yet. We should aim for a system that is as easy to use as gmail for instance.

2. Security. Again this has to be bullet proof but easy for the end user to implement. No paper wallets or offline wallets. 2FA is probably a must.

3. Clean UI . Some coins are integrating chat and secure email etc, but I feel that these are not necessary and there are plenty of 3rd party apps that would probably do a better job

[Mac Red]

Excellent job nio, I think everyone's appreciating the level of structure you're bringing to the project.
We got a terrific start and things will only get more interesting from here.

@Kora
I fully agree we need to focus on what we'd like Ora to do. Like for example mixing functions from various coins to create something better. This way we can pinpoint the next steps more accurately. I also agree we need to trust those who are experts in their fields like nio to do their thing. We should however all voice our opinions.

[zhile11911]

the doc is so detail . thanks for nioccoin do this job.

 

[bob131313]

Great job. I think our biggest goal should be to have clear deliverables.  Meet the core goal of being a decentralized secure crypto currency and release. After the wallet is online and the chain is healthy, take the time to build up a new release with a plan to develop all the cool things.
Follow the KISS model and get something working that is strong and extensible.

Just my 2 cents.

[Kora]

I had a dev idea today that I'd like to share. The goal of PoW mining is to encourage people to run the coin P2P software to firstly secure the network, and then as a mechanism to distribute the coin supply. With PoS the coins have all been created with the genesis block, so the incentive for people to run the software comes from forging revenue.

If there was another reason that motivated people to run the coin software 24/7, then we could ensure the network was being secured, and maybe we could divert the forging transaction fees into a community pool, or donate them to charity ... or do any of a number of other things.

I'm not a dev, but on my PC there are a number of programs that I run 24/7, and if ORA incorporated the functionality of one of those programs then I'd be doing my bit to secure the network without any financial incentive required.

Is it feasible to consider combining the basic functionality of an ORA node with another piece of software that people run for its own sake? We could strip out the user GUI, and just release an ORA node software bundle that people would run 24/7 to get the functionality of the 'host' software.

Host software could be things like:
- antivirus
- torrent client
- system utilities like backup, defrag etc
- screensaver
- stock ticker desktop widget
- could even be a full linux distro, or Apache webserver software, or some other back end software that runs 24/7 with an ORA node built in

Is this too far fetched? I'm in brain storming mode, and maybe this is a ridiculous idea, but it seems much of the economics of crypto is based around motivating people to run the P2P software as much as possible. Why not attach ORA to some other software that people run anyway, then the economics of ORA can be completely different.

[curT]

What about a system that  send x ORA to every running wallet on a random time every 24h ?

[nioccoin]

Nice piece Kora and very impressive paper nio.

To me a few of the most important features of a new coin in the current climate are...

1. Ease of use. A lot of coins are striving for this at the moment, but nobody has really cracked it yet. We should aim for a system that is as easy to use as gmail for instance.

2. Security. Again this has to be bullet proof but easy for the end user to implement. No paper wallets or offline wallets. 2FA is probably a must.

3. Clean UI . Some coins are integrating chat and secure email etc, but I feel that these are not necessary and there are plenty of 3rd party apps that would probably do a better job

Thanks for your input fragORA.  Here are some things to ponder:

1.  I am a devotee of ease of use.  When considering ease of use, it all just make sense:  if something is easy to use, it will be used, and widely dispersed.  Look at picasa.  I hate it, personally for reasons that have to do with one nagging feature.  But it brought easy photo enhancement to millions of soccer moms and others who are not a traditional marketing target for the likes of Adobe photoshop (which I prefer for some tasks, and abhor for others).  Look at picasa's UI.  The top left corner has a palette of photo enhancement quick-selects that give the user live previews of the current picture in the main window, and what it looks like with each photo.  It's brilliant in its simplicity, and is handy for quick redeye fixes or twitter and facebook photo mashups.
They found a market niche and filled it.

2.    Ease of use and high security are always at cross purposes.  The division between how much to "hold the users' hands" and giving them ease and freedom is vast.  One thing we could entertain would be to focus more design attention to usability engineering.  I for one am weary of the tiresome cloned interface of most coins.  My vision for Ora's UI is much grander than that, but my vision is for Ora to have much grander features, too, so it goes hand in hand.  I'm not thinking megacoin, either.
But even then there are issues with familiarity.  Until very recently M$ was persuading windows devs to stick with the canonical menu system (file, edit, view, etc) instead of getting fancy.  The reason is familiarity.  If you do something cute, it my be the coolest app in the world but the average joe won't find it intuitive or familiar.
I'm also considering a skinnable UI, so that anyone could write a skin to appeal to lower-end users, such as a skin with large colourful buttons and simple-simon navigation.
Just like writing a novel, we need to ask the question, "who is our audience" or "who do we want to be our audience?"
M$ spent millions studying how ppl used their office suite, and in the end changed from the menu system to what I think was the office productivity equivalent of windows 8:  they made it suck starting in about ms office 2005/7 with the toolbuttons and other nonsense.  Their UE studies showed that the new system was "better".  Lots of office faithful begged to differ.  Windows 8 took away the start button because their studies showed nobody ever used it.  Windows 8 failed in part because though nobody used the start button, they used it as a polar star for navigation.

3.  My vision for a clean ui, and by clean ui I mean uncluttered with unnecessary features, is simple:  switch-selectability.  That means it can be feature rich, but the end user has complete control over what features are enabled, via a control panel.  We could also have feature templates, such as sets of features that are enabled by default.  So for someone who just wants secure chat and email, a "communications" template could be selected, and they could happily chat their heart out.  Someone who wants to trade coins could have a "traders" template that kills off all else but what is necessary to trade.  The user could have granular control over what features are used, and how cluttered their UI is.
The only downside to this type of thing is user support (in a commercial app this is nightmarish).  For instance, a vid showing install and usage would likely not match what the end user's interface looks like.  I believe support could be gotten around simply by making a usage vid for the "out of box" Ora app, with the assumption that if you are advanced enough to turn on the advanced features, you are advanced enough to know how to use the advanced features.  Of course, the wiki could have all sorts of tutorials for turning on and using each feature.

OTOH, don't mistake my intent.  I'm not inspired to throw a bunch of features at the wall to see what sticks.  I want Ora to be succinct in its features, so that it satisfies some clearly-defined needs or wants.  I don't care what we add so much as caring about whether what we add is either necessary or elegant (gives Ora a marketing edge).  Sometimes you have to add features that are common just because all the other apps have them, or more frequently, because users may respond to features that are more blingy than useful.

kind regards,
nio

[nioccoin]

Excellent job nio, I think everyone's appreciating the level of structure you're bringing to the project.
We got a terrific start and things will only get more interesting from here.

@Kora
I fully agree we need to focus on what we'd like Ora to do. Like for example mixing functions from various coins to create something better. This way we can pinpoint the next steps more accurately. I also agree we need to trust those who are experts in their fields like nio to do their thing. We should however all voice our opinions.

Yes!  Ideally we want to take the best features and practices from multiple coins, leave out their faults, add in our own features, and build Ora up.  Then we will have oragenesis, which is "orogenesis" without the "faults" 
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/orogenesis

kind regards,
nio

[nioccoin]

Great job. I think our biggest goal should be to have clear deliverables.  Meet the core goal of being a decentralized secure crypto currency and release. After the wallet is online and the chain is healthy, take the time to build up a new release with a plan to develop all the cool things.
Follow the KISS model and get something working that is strong and extensible.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks bob...

We will have clear deliverables, and I will enforce a pretty strict system to prevent scope and feature creep.  The process is as or more important than the software, because it inspires confidence and instills trust in a coin.  Once we know what we are building, we will put a mORAtorium (I'm on a cheesy roll) on new ideas being implemented (we will of course always accept change and feature requests).  Any new ideas after that will be deferred to the next major release, unless the community decides it is too important to live without,and then I will produce a report about how it will affect the budget and/or schedule.

As for your suggestion that we take the atomic option of building a nucleus, and later adding in the electron cloud, I'm not opposed to it.  It has some advantages doing it this way (reduced time to market).  And some disadvantages, too, such as being prosaic at the start.  I think that's more a marketing decision than a programming one.

kind regards,
nio

[nioccoin]

I had a dev idea today that I'd like to share. The goal of PoW mining is to encourage people to run the coin P2P software to firstly secure the network, and then as a mechanism to distribute the coin supply. With PoS the coins have all been created with the genesis block, so the incentive for people to run the software comes from forging revenue.

If there was another reason that motivated people to run the coin software 24/7, then we could ensure the network was being secured, and maybe we could divert the forging transaction fees into a community pool, or donate them to charity ... or do any of a number of other things.

I'm not a dev, but on my PC there are a number of programs that I run 24/7, and if ORA incorporated the functionality of one of those programs then I'd be doing my bit to secure the network without any financial incentive required.

---snip-----

Is this too far fetched? I'm in brain storming mode, and maybe this is a ridiculous idea, but it seems much of the economics of crypto is based around motivating people to run the P2P software as much as possible. Why not attach ORA to some other software that people run anyway, then the economics of ORA can be completely different.

So, the problem or challenge is how to get users to run the wallet all the time and thereby help keep Ora secure?  Here are some ideas:

1.  This could be solved by defaulting the Ora daemon to start when the computer starts, by default.  The way I see it, we are responsible for making Ora secure.  More nodes means more security, so why not enforce "always on" or "on by default"?  That also solves the problems with blockchain downloading: like a torrent, it is more secure with more peers.  Just like your antivirus, you know it's always on for security, so you don't mind that it comes on all the time, every time.  I think users would understand this with Ora, too.
An alternative to this would be making two versions of an Ora wallet, one called "Ora-regular wallet" that doesn't turn on automatically.  The other could just be called "Ora Secure Wallet", and it contains the auto-on feature.  Which one would you download??

2.  If we add the right features, we will create industry in the coin such that some nodes will be on all the time to capture revenue, or use a trust system in which they are rewarded.   For instance, XC does this by "paying" some nodes to be essentially always on.  Those nodes must have a minimum of 500XC in order to act in that capacity.

kind regards,
nio

[DarkhorseofNxt]

I had a dev idea today that I'd like to share. The goal of PoW mining is to encourage people to run the coin P2P software to firstly secure the network, and then as a mechanism to distribute the coin supply. With PoS the coins have all been created with the genesis block, so the incentive for people to run the software comes from forging revenue.

If there was another reason that motivated people to run the coin software 24/7, then we could ensure the network was being secured, and maybe we could divert the forging transaction fees into a community pool, or donate them to charity ... or do any of a number of other things.

I'm not a dev, but on my PC there are a number of programs that I run 24/7, and if ORA incorporated the functionality of one of those programs then I'd be doing my bit to secure the network without any financial incentive required.

---snip-----

Is this too far fetched? I'm in brain storming mode, and maybe this is a ridiculous idea, but it seems much of the economics of crypto is based around motivating people to run the P2P software as much as possible. Why not attach ORA to some other software that people run anyway, then the economics of ORA can be completely different.

So, the problem or challenge is how to get users to run the wallet all the time and thereby help keep Ora secure?  Here are some ideas:

1.  This could be solved by defaulting the Ora daemon to start when the computer starts, by default.  The way I see it, we are responsible for making Ora secure.  More nodes means more security, so why not enforce "always on" or "on by default"?  That also solves the problems with blockchain downloading: like a torrent, it is more secure with more peers.  Just like your antivirus, you know it's always on for security, so you don't mind that it comes on all the time, every time.  I think users would understand this with Ora, too.
An alternative to this would be making two versions of an Ora wallet, one called "Ora-regular wallet" that doesn't turn on automatically.  The other could just be called "Ora Secure Wallet", and it contains the auto-on feature.  Which one would you download??

2.  If we add the right features, we will create industry in the coin such that some nodes will be on all the time to capture revenue, or use a trust system in which they are rewarded.   For instance, XC does this by "paying" some nodes to be essentially always on.  Those nodes must have a minimum of 500XC in order to act in that capacity.

kind regards,
nio

More nodes keeps the chain healthy and secure. But how do you reward these nodes? Must be attractive and practical.

Also nioc, just thinking, is it possible to have a platform and features that act like plugins. Like the iphone / android ui feature. So most of the features can be added like an app. And that also may bring in more devs to work or bring in some new features. Ora wallet becomes like a smart platform. What do you think about this?

This is the idea. Maybe the exchanges can do an "app" and integrate with the wallet directly or any other feature.

[Kora]

Nice piece Kora and very impressive paper nio.

To me a few of the most important features of a new coin in the current climate are...

1. Ease of use. A lot of coins are striving for this at the moment, but nobody has really cracked it yet. We should aim for a system that is as easy to use as gmail for instance.

2. Security. Again this has to be bullet proof but easy for the end user to implement. No paper wallets or offline wallets. 2FA is probably a must.

3. Clean UI . Some coins are integrating chat and secure email etc, but I feel that these are not necessary and there are plenty of 3rd party apps that would probably do a better job

Thanks for your input fragORA.  Here are some things to ponder:

1.  I am a devotee of ease of use.  When considering ease of use, it all just make sense:  if something is easy to use, it will be used, and widely dispersed.  Look at picasa.  I hate it, personally for reasons that have to do with one nagging feature.  But it brought easy photo enhancement to millions of soccer moms and others who are not a traditional marketing target for the likes of Adobe photoshop (which I prefer for some tasks, and abhor for others).  Look at picasa's UI.  The top left corner has a palette of photo enhancement quick-selects that give the user live previews of the current picture in the main window, and what it looks like with each photo.  It's brilliant in its simplicity, and is handy for quick redeye fixes or twitter and facebook photo mashups.
They found a market niche and filled it.

2.    Ease of use and high security are always at cross purposes.  The division between how much to "hold the users' hands" and giving them ease and freedom is vast.  One thing we could entertain would be to focus more design attention to usability engineering.  I for one am weary of the tiresome cloned interface of most coins.  My vision for Ora's UI is much grander than that, but my vision is for Ora to have much grander features, too, so it goes hand in hand.  I'm not thinking megacoin, either.
But even then there are issues with familiarity.  Until very recently M$ was persuading windows devs to stick with the canonical menu system (file, edit, view, etc) instead of getting fancy.  The reason is familiarity.  If you do something cute, it my be the coolest app in the world but the average joe won't find it intuitive or familiar.
I'm also considering a skinnable UI, so that anyone could write a skin to appeal to lower-end users, such as a skin with large colourful buttons and simple-simon navigation.
Just like writing a novel, we need to ask the question, "who is our audience" or "who do we want to be our audience?"
M$ spent millions studying how ppl used their office suite, and in the end changed from the menu system to what I think was the office productivity equivalent of windows 8:  they made it suck starting in about ms office 2005/7 with the toolbuttons and other nonsense.  Their UE studies showed that the new system was "better".  Lots of office faithful begged to differ.  Windows 8 took away the start button because their studies showed nobody ever used it.  Windows 8 failed in part because though nobody used the start button, they used it as a polar star for navigation.

3.  My vision for a clean ui, and by clean ui I mean uncluttered with unnecessary features, is simple:  switch-selectability.  That means it can be feature rich, but the end user has complete control over what features are enabled, via a control panel.  We could also have feature templates, such as sets of features that are enabled by default.  So for someone who just wants secure chat and email, a "communications" template could be selected, and they could happily chat their heart out.  Someone who wants to trade coins could have a "traders" template that kills off all else but what is necessary to trade.  The user could have granular control over what features are used, and how cluttered their UI is.
The only downside to this type of thing is user support (in a commercial app this is nightmarish).  For instance, a vid showing install and usage would likely not match what the end user's interface looks like.  I believe support could be gotten around simply by making a usage vid for the "out of box" Ora app, with the assumption that if you are advanced enough to turn on the advanced features, you are advanced enough to know how to use the advanced features.  Of course, the wiki could have all sorts of tutorials for turning on and using each feature.

OTOH, don't mistake my intent.  I'm not inspired to throw a bunch of features at the wall to see what sticks.  I want Ora to be succinct in its features, so that it satisfies some clearly-defined needs or wants.  I don't care what we add so much as caring about whether what we add is either necessary or elegant (gives Ora a marketing edge).  Sometimes you have to add features that are common just because all the other apps have them, or more frequently, because users may respond to features that are more blingy than useful.

kind regards,
nio

Great post nio!

I agree 100% on your focus on ease of use. I think that's been the key to Google & Apple success, especially Google. In my job I regularly have to instruct novice users on how to navigate around the internet, and while for most tech oriented people the Google phenomenon might seem to depend on their page rank and adsense algorithms, and the effectiveness of their technology, for the vast majority of average users the power of Google comes from two key areas not related to the tech under-the-hood.

1 - super clean & simple design
2 - Google 'charm', 'character' & 'personality' from the Google logo, and their many 'tribute' versions

Google crushed all its rivals in search because compared to the competition like Yahoo, Excite & Altavista, Google search was ultra 'friendly', and ultra obvious.

The Google search page is a design masterpiece IMO, and compared to all the cluttered overly busy home pages of late 90's search rivals, Google was, and still is, an oasis of user friendliness. You can literally show the Google search screen to anyone from a 3 year old to someone in their 80's, and nearly everyone will instantly know what to do (type in the box), and almost as important, the Google logo makes most people 'feel' something positive - fun, relaxed, quirky, playful, happy - so it helps put a freaked out computer newbie more at ease, so they're much more open to the idea that they can use the tool effectively. The Google logo is a bit like a warm up joke for a serious public speaker, it puts novice users in a good frame of mind to 'engage' with what's on offer. Show a novice user Yahoo, and it's a totally different matter, they baulk and feel intimidated.

Simplicity with a bit of 'personality' is a great design goal, especially for the millions of people who will use ORA who know nothing about  crypto, blockchains, P2P, etc

[nioccoin]

I had a dev idea today that I'd like to share. The goal of PoW mining is to encourage people to run the coin P2P software to firstly secure the network, and then as a mechanism to distribute the coin supply. With PoS the coins have all been created with the genesis block, so the incentive for people to run the software comes from forging revenue.

If there was another reason that motivated people to run the coin software 24/7, then we could ensure the network was being secured, and maybe we could divert the forging transaction fees into a community pool, or donate them to charity ... or do any of a number of other things.

I'm not a dev, but on my PC there are a number of programs that I run 24/7, and if ORA incorporated the functionality of one of those programs then I'd be doing my bit to secure the network without any financial incentive required.

---snip-----

Is this too far fetched? I'm in brain storming mode, and maybe this is a ridiculous idea, but it seems much of the economics of crypto is based around motivating people to run the P2P software as much as possible. Why not attach ORA to some other software that people run anyway, then the economics of ORA can be completely different.

So, the problem or challenge is how to get users to run the wallet all the time and thereby help keep Ora secure?  Here are some ideas:

1.  This could be solved by defaulting the Ora daemon to start when the computer starts, by default.  The way I see it, we are responsible for making Ora secure.  More nodes means more security, so why not enforce "always on" or "on by default"?  That also solves the problems with blockchain downloading: like a torrent, it is more secure with more peers.  Just like your antivirus, you know it's always on for security, so you don't mind that it comes on all the time, every time.  I think users would understand this with Ora, too.
An alternative to this would be making two versions of an Ora wallet, one called "Ora-regular wallet" that doesn't turn on automatically.  The other could just be called "Ora Secure Wallet", and it contains the auto-on feature.  Which one would you download??

2.  If we add the right features, we will create industry in the coin such that some nodes will be on all the time to capture revenue, or use a trust system in which they are rewarded.   For instance, XC does this by "paying" some nodes to be essentially always on.  Those nodes must have a minimum of 500XC in order to act in that capacity.

kind regards,
nio

Also nioc, just thinking, is it possible to have a platform and features that act like plugins. Like the iphone / android ui feature. So most of the features can be added like an app. And that also may bring in more devs to work or bring in some new features. Ora wallet becomes like a smart platform. What do you think about this?

This is the idea. Maybe the exchanges can do an "app" and integrate with the wallet directly or any other feature.

You are reading my mind on plugins.  The beauty of this approach is we create a core wallet with an API, and anyone can build a plugin, for fun or profit.  If someone creates a killer plugin and others think it's worth a fistful of money, then it can even be sold; or traded for work on a project; or donated.

This adds a financial incentive for others to add value to Ora.  For mainstream features that are more mission critical or should be included in the base product, we could offer a power bounty for a new feature (it will be forbidden to be sold), and release the kracken.

The downside is this adds complexity to the product, making it much more difficult to design, build, and maintain.  I would have to figure out how to deal with the intricacies of this model, especially in terms of security, but also in terms of bloating the blockchain and enforcing a usability standard on all plugins.

kind regards,
nio

[DarkhorseofNxt]

Probably we can accomplish it step by step. First a wallet that is running with nodes. Stabilise that can do some basic transaction. Then ora 2.0 comes with all the fancy plugin ideas.

Edit : also please consider adding multisig for public accounts.

[ObscureBean]

I had a dev idea today that I'd like to share. The goal of PoW mining is to encourage people to run the coin P2P software to firstly secure the network, and then as a mechanism to distribute the coin supply. With PoS the coins have all been created with the genesis block, so the incentive for people to run the software comes from forging revenue.

If there was another reason that motivated people to run the coin software 24/7, then we could ensure the network was being secured, and maybe we could divert the forging transaction fees into a community pool, or donate them to charity ... or do any of a number of other things.

I'm not a dev, but on my PC there are a number of programs that I run 24/7, and if ORA incorporated the functionality of one of those programs then I'd be doing my bit to secure the network without any financial incentive required.

---snip-----

Is this too far fetched? I'm in brain storming mode, and maybe this is a ridiculous idea, but it seems much of the economics of crypto is based around motivating people to run the P2P software as much as possible. Why not attach ORA to some other software that people run anyway, then the economics of ORA can be completely different.

So, the problem or challenge is how to get users to run the wallet all the time and thereby help keep Ora secure?  Here are some ideas:

1.  This could be solved by defaulting the Ora daemon to start when the computer starts, by default.  The way I see it, we are responsible for making Ora secure.  More nodes means more security, so why not enforce "always on" or "on by default"?  That also solves the problems with blockchain downloading: like a torrent, it is more secure with more peers.  Just like your antivirus, you know it's always on for security, so you don't mind that it comes on all the time, every time.  I think users would understand this with Ora, too.
An alternative to this would be making two versions of an Ora wallet, one called "Ora-regular wallet" that doesn't turn on automatically.  The other could just be called "Ora Secure Wallet", and it contains the auto-on feature.  Which one would you download??

2.  If we add the right features, we will create industry in the coin such that some nodes will be on all the time to capture revenue, or use a trust system in which they are rewarded.   For instance, XC does this by "paying" some nodes to be essentially always on.  Those nodes must have a minimum of 500XC in order to act in that capacity.

kind regards,
nio

Also nioc, just thinking, is it possible to have a platform and features that act like plugins. Like the iphone / android ui feature. So most of the features can be added like an app. And that also may bring in more devs to work or bring in some new features. Ora wallet becomes like a smart platform. What do you think about this?

This is the idea. Maybe the exchanges can do an "app" and integrate with the wallet directly or any other feature.

You are reading my mind on plugins.  The beauty of this approach is we create a core wallet with an API, and anyone can build a plugin, for fun or profit.  If someone creates a killer plugin and others think it's worth a fistful of money, then it can even be sold; or traded for work on a project; or donated.

This adds a financial incentive for others to add value to Ora.  For mainstream features that are more mission critical or should be included in the base product, we could offer a power bounty for a new feature (it will be forbidden to be sold), and release the kracken.

The downside is this adds complexity to the product, making it much more difficult to design, build, and maintain.  I would have to figure out how to deal with the intricacies of this model, especially in terms of security, but also in terms of bloating the blockchain and enforcing a usability standard on all plugins.

kind regards,
nio

Wow that's an amazing idea, a wallet with an API would be out of this world  The possibilities are endless.
My main concern is security, the plugins would have to be thoroughly checked before they're released. But if you can pull this off, I think it'll be a massive step for cryptos in general.

[nioccoin]

Probably we can accomplish it step by step. First a wallet that is running with nodes. Stabilise that can do some basic transaction. Then ora 2.0 comes with all the fancy plugin ideas.

Edit : also please consider adding multisig for public accounts.

I will very likely implement multisig, or some similar solution.  It falls under our previously-discussed MFA scheme, specifically under the "something you have" category.


Anyone hungry for a can of worms?  Here is one I wrote earlier in 2014.  It is an excerpt from one of my unpublished white papers.  This explains why I am not fond of the whole multisig (escrow) solution for commerce, though it is still valid for theft prevention.

I have reread this dozens of times, hoping for a lightbulb to come on, in an attempt to solve this issue in a decentralized manner.  (Proof of Trust is an elephant name for the as yet-to-be-determined solution to this puzzle):


(the markup in this is because it was written in TeX)

\section{Talk more about proof of trust}

Proof of Trust is not a new innovation, but a ubiquitous one.  The inspiration comes from human observation.  We are social creatures, and with that social imperative comes the issue of trust.  We all come from parents who may or may not have been trustworthy.  We all have had friends, spouses, and family, some of whom have betrayed the trust vested in them.  Officials betray trust all the time.  What is needed is not to cast trust out, but to embrace proof of trust, and then still prepare for its unwinding.  Proof of trust, like an SSL cert or trusted algorithm can sometimes be found wanting.  When you read Satoshi's seminal work - he discusses the problem of trust in regards to financial transactions.  But his solution is inadequate because it is one-sided.  His Bitcoin system is designed for trusted transactions, but in his Introduction he writes "Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers."

Wait, this sounds as if Bitcoin does not use cryptography to eliminate trust!  Exactly.  It is one hand clapping.  It solves only the merchant's trust problem.  The buyer must \textit{hire} a trusted partner to escrow the transaction or otherwise certify the goods are as described.  What is an escrow system but a third party that provides the trust component?  Would anyone trust an escrow whose main office is a travelling carnival?  So even Bitcoin does not eliminate trust.  And that is not what it is trying to do, but it is not accurate to say that Bitcoin fixes the trust issue.  What Bitcoin does is fix the \textit{seller's} risk in the protocol, and the buyer's commodities are of unknown risk, pending a second financial transaction procured by the buyer to the escrow system!!!  Alibaba at long last has an escrow system that works seemingly well, and it places the onus on the seller to deliver the goods prior to the escrow releasing the money.  But it increases the cost of doing business for the buyer and the seller.  The seller will raise his price to accommodate the new basis in cost to his business.  One way or the other, the buyer will end up paying the difference.

Further, it is clear from this that the trust part of the equation is necessarily centralized, if not by one company by a dozen, but still far less than the decentralized peers that secure the blockchain.  Supposing there exists one escrow service that sifts Bitcoins and goods, attempting to satisfy both sides of the transaction.  That entity will necessarily need to sit at the crossroads of the physical and digital boundaries, unless the goods being purchased are themselves digital.  Therefore, that escrow entity must be physically centralized, and how will they be trusted?  Won't they have to post a bond of some sort to certify their business as legitimate, and purchase insurance on the goods they hold?  Won't they need to satisfy not only the financial authorities as well as the commodity authorities?  It seems that an escrow service is not nearly as trivial as was envisioned.  The Alibaba system is a good example, but notice they provided it to satisfy the buyer for a very good reason.  Fraud from the seller side was rampant, causing the reduction of trade.  The frauds were hurting the legitimate buyers and sellers.  The escrow service put the onus of trust on the sell side, because the fraud wasn't bad money per se, but bad or grossly misdescribed or fraudulent goods.  What if the money is fraudulent?  In Bitcoin, it doesn't matter. If the Bitcoin is stolen, it is spendable without recourse.

But if the money is held in abeyance, that completely defeats the elegance of the fast payments upon which Bitcoin is based.  The point is that one of the best parts of Bitcoin is in reality not feasible, and not usable, because it defeats itself in practice.  As has been discussed, where Bitcoin is most interesting (purchasing goods), it is least useful, and where it is most useful (transferring money), it is prosaic, offering little benefit to the user and, as of recently, incurring a capital gains tax that makes the baseline expense of using it at least 15\% more expensive than cash.

Even if it was trivial, being at the crossroads of the physical and digital worlds requires real expenses, for facilities, for employees, and the like.  Therefore, it would seem that the purchaser will pay additional fees, probably in excess of what the transaction would have cost using a credit card or cash at the local brick and mortar warehouses.

In sum, trust cannot be decentralized when it must cross the physical boundary.

This was written some time ago, and some of my opinions have changed, so consider this nioccoin version 1.0.  But I still am haunted by the problem of having to centralize trust.  That hasn't worked out too well for the payment card industry, and even SSL companies have been robbed blind, causing heartache, or heartbleed, as the case may be 

As long as we are dealing in physical goods, I don't think we can solve this problem "online".

Here's my vision for "the" winning currency:  In-person transactions using digital anonymous payment, where the buyer can inspect the physical goods, and the seller can confirm the payment on the spot.  No escrow needed.  No credit card with your name on it, and being asked for your photo id.  95% of all commerce still takes place locally anyway.  Digital cash needs to behave almost exactly like real cash for the buyer, and be verifiable instantly by the seller, no less than if you pay the seller with a crisp new hundred-pound note and he has to use a special pen to mark it to check for counterfeit.



kind regards,
nio

[Mac Red]

A new place to discuss Ora is up!
http://www.oraforum.org/

This of course doesn't mean we'll stop any discussion here; it's just an extra place to help gather and build the community.

// Mac

[bernard75]

A new place to discuss Ora is up!
http://www.oraforum.org/

This of course doesn't mean we'll stop any discussion here; it's just an extra place to help gather and build the community.

// Mac

I hope we will continue here, not really a big fan of looking in different places for the same info.

[Mac Red]

A new place to discuss Ora is up!
http://www.oraforum.org/

This of course doesn't mean we'll stop any discussion here; it's just an extra place to help gather and build the community.

// Mac

I hope we will continue here, not really a big fan of looking in different places for the same info.

Well one of the best things about having our own forum is being able to find info quicker and easier. We'd have needed one sooner or later anyway to stay organized.
How useful it'll be in the near future is up to everyone.

[Kora]

Probably we can accomplish it step by step. First a wallet that is running with nodes. Stabilise that can do some basic transaction. Then ora 2.0 comes with all the fancy plugin ideas.

Edit : also please consider adding multisig for public accounts.

I will very likely implement multisig, or some similar solution.  It falls under our previously-discussed MFA scheme, specifically under the "something you have" category.


Anyone hungry for a can of worms?  Here is one I wrote earlier in 2014.  It is an excerpt from one of my unpublished white papers.  This explains why I am not fond of the whole multisig (escrow) solution for commerce, though it is still valid for theft prevention.

I have reread this dozens of times, hoping for a lightbulb to come on, in an attempt to solve this issue in a decentralized manner.  (Proof of Trust is an elephant name for the as yet-to-be-determined solution to this puzzle):


(the markup in this is because it was written in TeX)

\section{Talk more about proof of trust}

Proof of Trust is not a new innovation, but a ubiquitous one.  The inspiration comes from human observation.  We are social creatures, and with that social imperative comes the issue of trust.  We all come from parents who may or may not have been trustworthy.  We all have had friends, spouses, and family, some of whom have betrayed the trust vested in them.  Officials betray trust all the time.  What is needed is not to cast trust out, but to embrace proof of trust, and then still prepare for its unwinding.  Proof of trust, like an SSL cert or trusted algorithm can sometimes be found wanting.  When you read Satoshi's seminal work - he discusses the problem of trust in regards to financial transactions.  But his solution is inadequate because it is one-sided.  His Bitcoin system is designed for trusted transactions, but in his Introduction he writes "Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers."

Wait, this sounds as if Bitcoin does not use cryptography to eliminate trust!  Exactly.  It is one hand clapping.  It solves only the merchant's trust problem.  The buyer must \textit{hire} a trusted partner to escrow the transaction or otherwise certify the goods are as described.  What is an escrow system but a third party that provides the trust component?  Would anyone trust an escrow whose main office is a travelling carnival?  So even Bitcoin does not eliminate trust.  And that is not what it is trying to do, but it is not accurate to say that Bitcoin fixes the trust issue.  What Bitcoin does is fix the \textit{seller's} risk in the protocol, and the buyer's commodities are of unknown risk, pending a second financial transaction procured by the buyer to the escrow system!!!  Alibaba at long last has an escrow system that works seemingly well, and it places the onus on the seller to deliver the goods prior to the escrow releasing the money.  But it increases the cost of doing business for the buyer and the seller.  The seller will raise his price to accommodate the new basis in cost to his business.  One way or the other, the buyer will end up paying the difference.

Further, it is clear from this that the trust part of the equation is necessarily centralized, if not by one company by a dozen, but still far less than the decentralized peers that secure the blockchain.  Supposing there exists one escrow service that sifts Bitcoins and goods, attempting to satisfy both sides of the transaction.  That entity will necessarily need to sit at the crossroads of the physical and digital boundaries, unless the goods being purchased are themselves digital.  Therefore, that escrow entity must be physically centralized, and how will they be trusted?  Won't they have to post a bond of some sort to certify their business as legitimate, and purchase insurance on the goods they hold?  Won't they need to satisfy not only the financial authorities as well as the commodity authorities?  It seems that an escrow service is not nearly as trivial as was envisioned.  The Alibaba system is a good example, but notice they provided it to satisfy the buyer for a very good reason.  Fraud from the seller side was rampant, causing the reduction of trade.  The frauds were hurting the legitimate buyers and sellers.  The escrow service put the onus of trust on the sell side, because the fraud wasn't bad money per se, but bad or grossly misdescribed or fraudulent goods.  What if the money is fraudulent?  In Bitcoin, it doesn't matter. If the Bitcoin is stolen, it is spendable without recourse.

But if the money is held in abeyance, that completely defeats the elegance of the fast payments upon which Bitcoin is based.  The point is that one of the best parts of Bitcoin is in reality not feasible, and not usable, because it defeats itself in practice.  As has been discussed, where Bitcoin is most interesting (purchasing goods), it is least useful, and where it is most useful (transferring money), it is prosaic, offering little benefit to the user and, as of recently, incurring a capital gains tax that makes the baseline expense of using it at least 15\% more expensive than cash.

Even if it was trivial, being at the crossroads of the physical and digital worlds requires real expenses, for facilities, for employees, and the like.  Therefore, it would seem that the purchaser will pay additional fees, probably in excess of what the transaction would have cost using a credit card or cash at the local brick and mortar warehouses.

In sum, trust cannot be decentralized when it must cross the physical boundary.

This was written some time ago, and some of my opinions have changed, so consider this nioccoin version 1.0.  But I still am haunted by the problem of having to centralize trust.  That hasn't worked out too well for the payment card industry, and even SSL companies have been robbed blind, causing heartache, or heartbleed, as the case may be 

As long as we are dealing in physical goods, I don't think we can solve this problem "online".

Here's my vision for "the" winning currency:  In-person transactions using digital anonymous payment, where the buyer can inspect the physical goods, and the seller can confirm the payment on the spot.  No escrow needed.  No credit card with your name on it, and being asked for your photo id.  95% of all commerce still takes place locally anyway.  Digital cash needs to behave almost exactly like real cash for the buyer, and be verifiable instantly by the seller, no less than if you pay the seller with a crisp new hundred-pound note and he has to use a special pen to mark it to check for counterfeit.



kind regards,
nio

Very interesting topic nio! I agree that decentralised 'proof-of-trust' might be impossible to guarantee, but I think decentralised 'probability-of-trust' is very attainable using reputation systems, especially if the reputation is itself attached to something valuable, like a 'reputation' coin.

I think Bitmark is trying something interesting with their 'Marking' proposal - https://github.com/project-bitmark/marking/wiki

Maybe an acceptable situation for both sellers & buyers of physical goods can be found using a reputation system where the costs associated with breaking a previously earnt good reputation is made prohibitively high, compared to the potential gain from defaulting on an agreed sale or exchange. We all know that a scammer can reboot a new identity on a market like ebay any time they choose, but they can't take any 'good reputation' with them into the next 'life'. If that good reputation was actually exchangeable into another asset, then an honest buyer/seller could literally bank their good reputation from time to time, and a dishonest act would literally cost the offender real value.

Of course honest people can fall on hard times and get tempted to act dishonestly if they're in desperate circumstances, and genuine scammers can 'imitate' an honest trader to 'set up' for a big scam later on (like zipllibrary who did the shareXchange scam), but if the loss in monetary reputation was close in value to the size of a particular trade then the other party could say with a higher 'probability' that the likelihood of getting scammed was a lot smaller than if the other party had just cashed in some of their 'reputation coins'.

I think loss of reputation capital *could* be used as an effective disincentive against rogue behaviour, and it could be monetized using a crypto currency

Can we have a reputation coin built into ORA somehow?