[ANN] [VIA] ★ Viacoin ★ ~ the future of digital currency ~ ★

[PilotofBTC]

I have some more questions for the community.

A few people mentioned giving out bounties for tasks to help grow viacoin adoption/community. What kind of things (and amounts) were you guys thinking about?

I'm not sure about that. But, I think it depends on the project.

Also, I would suggest people do stuff that doesn't try to replace main stream. Like one alt coin I sadly was involved with had a guy creating an ebay like web site that used the alt coin. The problem is, there is no way this site would replace ebay. Now, come up with something that allows me to pay for the ebay bids with Viacoin... that can help.

Also, I love the concept of purse.io... perhaps we can approach them to support Via coin as well. That site is what I think is a great idea.

So, yea, I think bounty size depends on project size and complexity. I know in the NXT world the bounties were generally done by the top wales, because they new giving out bounties for projects that will help grow adoption would only help increase the value of the coin. Of course, NXT was a bit different since it spawned 100% of the coin at genesis so bounties also increased distribution.

Do we have any community funds? Or a board that controls them and offers bounties and accepts bounty requests, etc?

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[GooseNL]

Everybody basically can make a wiki page. You just need to know how to add information.
To make a decent wiki page can cost some hours or some days of work and can always be expanded based on the most recent news.
Four examples below show how different and individual it can be per crypto currency.
Btw, why is there no wiki page of Peter Todd?

Someone can design a wikipage for VIA and connect intelligent to Google. So if you Google bitcoin, then high on top is referred to VIA wiki or website. It is also possible to make links from terms like 'blockchain', 'virtual currency', 'open source' etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
Contents
1 Design
        1.1 Block chain
        1.2 Units
        1.3 Ownership
        1.4 Transactions
        1.5 Mining
        1.6 Supply
        1.7 Transaction fees
        1.8 Wallets
        1.9 Privacy
        1.10 Fungibility
2 History
3 Economics
        3.1 Classification
        3.2 Buying and selling
        3.3 Price and volatility
        3.4 Speculative bubble dispute
        3.5 Ponzi scheme dispute
        3.6 Value forecasts
        3.7 Obituaries
        3.8 Reception
        3.9 Acceptance by merchants
        3.10 Financial institutions
        3.11 As investment
        3.12 Venture capital
        3.13 Political economy
4 Legal status and regulation
        4.1 Australia
        4.2 China
        4.3 European Union
        4.4 G7
        4.5 Iceland
        4.6 Russia
        4.7 Taiwan
        4.8 United States
        4.9 Vietnam
5 Criminal activity
        5.1 Theft
        5.2 Black markets
        5.3 Money laundering
        5.4 Ponzi scheme
        5.5 Malware
6 Security
        6.1 Unauthorized spending
        6.2 Double spending
        6.3 Race attack
        6.4 History modification
        6.5 Selfish mining
        6.6 Deanonymisation of clients
7 Non-bitcoin applications of the block chain
8 In the media
9 Bibliography
10 See also
11 Notes
12 References
13 External links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litecoin
 History
2 Development
3 Differences from Bitcoin
4 Transactions
    4.1 Addresses
    4.2 Confirmations
5 Wallets
6 Exchanges
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkcoin
1 Overview
1.1 Darksend
1.2 Masternodes
1.3 X11
1.4 Dark Gravity Wave (DGW)
2 History
3 References
4 External links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaidSafe
1 History
2 Mechanism
3 Technical Details
3.1 Terminology
3.2 Clients
3.3 Client Applications
3.4 File storage
3.5 Data security
3.6 Storage cost and credits
4 Claimed Innovations
4.1 Reliable UDP (rUDP)
4.2 Kademlia Routing Improvements
4.3 Data Vaults
4.4 Passport
4.5 Cross Platform Drive
4.6 Self-Encrypted Data
5 Applications
5.1 Device and OS Independent Data Access
5.2 Home NAS Providers
5.3 Search Providers
5.4 Data Storage / Sync Providers
5.5 Video Providers
5.6 Big Data Analysis Providers
5.7 Virtual Currency Providers
5.8 Single Sign On Systems
6 References
7 External links

Ripple doesn't have just a wiki page, but also a wikiripple, which is more advanced and complex, like Bitshares. This is a great example of users friendly information, well organised.  It is just to show how information about VIA can be well organised and serve as an attractive tool.
Doge, Myriadcoin and Peercoin have smaller wiki pages, but their wikipage could be taken as a starting point.

[btcdrak]

Do we have any community funds?

There is 1MM VIA.

[wom1979]

1 Million VIA in the budget - GOOD! – the chicken and the egg. Spend on bounties whilst value is low and technically use excessive amounts or implement strategies to install confidence and awareness back which “may” affect price meaning the budget is stronger…

Overall members are showing more interest and therefore more confidence in communication is growing. A cheap way to do this would be through updates. Simple brief and easy to read (almost as if they are being explained to a child) a simple stupid approach.  Techno speech just closes down anyone outside who may show an interest.

Someone mentioned a story board – a brilliant idea - I believe this should be comical and informative for someone who hasn’t even heard of crypto before…  However this will cost if it is going to be any good.

Updates – people have been requesting a White Paper for a while now. This could be the Key
My understanding is that this could significantly promote VIA as it will give potential supporters an understanding of what to expect and when.
-Upcoming Security features
-Potential investment plans
-Plans for the budget
-i.e next Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4


Other updates should be explained/advertised in the most professional and most basic form:
-What change has been made?
-Why has the change been implemented?
-Who the change will affect (i.e end user)?
-How the end user will benefit?

This could help us to have targets and push things to be met and worked towards.

Regular updates, I believe are essential.  Could there be say bi weekly updates etc.?
People need you to sell your POSITIVE plans and thoughts before they support this in full.

PRIORITIES
1.   Raise awareness through an update on what is happening and is planned for VIA (FREE) - (EDIT) Even if the update includes "we are closely reviewing how we communicate the key points of VIA, reward contributions and achievements as well as measure success" etc
2.   ?

Regards

[Primitive]

Do we have any community funds?

There is 1MM VIA.

what is the status of the ~600BTC from the ICO? 

[derrend]

Fellas, if you want to see a price rise let me know and I'll sell my stake which usually sends the price soaring.
Alternatively if you wish to see the price decline I can continue holding my stake which has not yet failed to send the value plummeting.

I'm an atheist you see.

[yogg]

Hello everybody  
I am happy to introduce Altdice to the Viacoin community.
It's a provably fair dice game pretty much like Satoshi Dice and Just-Dice.

http://via.altdice.net

Onchain game rules :

To place a bet, choose your favorite odds and send a transaction from your wallet to the associated game address, with an amount anywhere from min bet to the max bet.
A Lucky number between 0 and 65535 will be picked up for you, based on your bet transaction ID. (Provably fair, of course)
If your Lucky number is below the target number you bet on, then you win your bet amount * Prize Multiplier which is paid out directly to your wallet.
If you lose, you get 0.001 VIA back to your wallet.

The game requires 1 Viacoin confirmation to process a bet. 98% expected payout. 2% edge house.
Come and multiply your VIAs ! You can wager up to 25,000 VIA per single bet !

Offchain game rules :

With the Offchain game, you can deposit any amount of coins on the website, and then bet without using the blockchain.
The algorythm is also provably fair and you can claim free coins from the Offchain game faucet.
After you make a deposit, you can choose to bet exactly as you like, with your favorite odds. You can try out different betting patterns with the automated betting feature !
When you have finished playing, you can withdraw the coins to any address you want.

Share sale :

We are selling 25% of our future Viacoin profit. We are looking to raise a total of 80,000 VIA to offer higher betting limits.
Act fast if you want to grab a piece of the action before it's gone !

Please visit http://altdice.net/share.php for more informations.

---------------------------------------------------

I wish endless fun to players and the best of luck on AltDice

Feel free to send a PM or Contact Us for whatever reason. Feedbacks are always welcome !

[masternode]

Do we have any community funds?

There is 1MM VIA.

what is the status of the ~600BTC from the ICO?  

The fact that Drak remains silent and doesn't answer the specific question above (re: ~600 btc ICO funds) is VERY telling.  I've asked him directly in the past about returning remaining ICO funds to investors/coin holders and his reponse has been that he never presented this as an investment.  This is one of the MAJOR reasons why I (and Otoh as well) have no confidence in him or the project, because his lack of response to questions like this clearly show the project is simply a coin grab for him.  Drak sees the ICO funds as his own and not for use in advancing the coin, and that is simply disgusting.  He'll likely come out and say he delivered VIA and XCH as promised, but the idea that you can take so much of other people's money and deliver two failed projects (clones for that matter that have clearly failed to get traction) and then say he is deserving of hundreds of thousands of dollars people entrusted him with to advance the coin is seriously delusional. Then saying that 1MM Via are community funds perpetuates this scam, because you'd have to be a fool to not realize that Drak is really offering nothing.  1MM Via is practically worthless since there is literally no market to sell into, and it's comical for him to think this miserable amount will somehow do anything reasonable to help advance the coin.  PR and marketing costs actual money, not unsellable VIA.  And if he sold that 1MM VIA to try and pay anyone the most it could generate is 3.5 BTC or roughly $900 USD (as that's how much it would take to move the price down to ZERO on Bittrex at the time of writing this).  Compare that to the roughly 400 BTC (or around $100K) that should still remain from the ICO funds and which should be used to advance the coin, and then you can really get a clear perspective on what he is doing.

Unless Drak can a.) show he is willing to use the remaining ICO funds to advance the coin, b.) give us some transperency on what funds have previously been spent on, and c.) have someone the community trusts handle finances moving forward, then you should see him as nothing more than a con man / theif.  Sigh.

[iCEBREAKER]

Unless Drak can a.) show he is willing to use the remaining ICO funds to advance the coin, b.) give us some transperency on what funds have previously been spent on, and c.) have someone the community trusts handle finances moving forward, then you should see him as nothing more than a con man / theif.  Sigh.

This line of complaint is rich coming from someone who supports the DashcoinDark instamine.

Compared to Duffman's 2 million free DashcoinDarks, VIA's ICO is a shining example of transparency.

Drak has already explained how he's been spending lots of money to keep VIA's technology state-of-the-art, and that you are a pursuing a vendetta:

Masternode approached me right at the beginnings of viacoin. He was very personable and friendly, and explained he was a big gun behind Darkcoin (and others) and had lots of experience in the startup world and would like to help viacoin succeed. He said he had lots of powerful connections and could help spread adoption really quickly. Naturally, I took him as an advisor and accepted him into my confidence. He said “I don’t want to try to force you to do stuff, just let me give you advice as an experienced investor in startups”, so it seemed like the right and beneficial thing to do.

At this point, however, I believe he did this to position himself such he would be privy to sensitive tradeable information in advance. Of course, being involved in the deals meant that he would be privy to certain information first. I was completely clear with masternode that anything we discuss for viacoin must remain confidential until we agreed to make it public.

Alarm bells began to ring for me when he started sharing privileged information with me about other projects his associates were involved in. I became concerned he might actually be using his position with viacoin to his advantage and leaking to his group. I gradually pulled back and stopped sharing details with him or asking for advice. Ultimately, he resented me for this and we had a hard falling out because I was no longer being forthcoming. This culminated in strongarm threats that “things will get ugly” and that he would make sure I would “never work in this space again” if I didn’t cooperate.  I thought he wanted out of viacoin so I offered to contact him with an OTC buyer. He refused.

So now, masternode is misrepresenting and casually leaking sensitive things in the works, proving that he doesn't care about viacoin or anyone else. It is a personal vendetta disguised under the pretense of “informing the community”, even promoting darkcoin in this forum. He’s treating our decentralized community like a startup that he can shut down at whim. As someone recently pointed out in the thread, the bitcoin protocol was designed to be robust against centralization. Once you start the network, you can’t just turn it off like you turn off your phone. This is the beauty of decentralized systems - no single actor can take it down.

So moving forward, I have read the forum carefully and I take it as a positive sign that people still have passionate opinions on  viacoin’s future success. I believe we can have a good discussion about how to move forward constructively with the project.

I understand people are not happy with the price of viacoin - that’s not really under my control; even bitcoin has it’s ups and downs just like any market. I have yet to sell any viacoin. We could even agree Bitcoin has been bleeding for 15 months despite wide adoption and publicity. This is why I am not entirely convinced that price will be affected by promotion but I do agree adoption is the key to everything and have quietly been doing my part to get adoption, successfully and unsuccessfully.

I think we would all like to spend our time focusing on the future and how to make viacoin better. I’ve been allocating most of my time in development and working out various deals. I prefer to under promise and over deliver. But now, I’d like to concentrate on how to grow the community and encourage adoption because listening to everyone, it seems that is what the community wants. I understand that this bear market can be a tough time for many investors, so I will be spending more time on the forums to discuss your concerns.

Viacoin is a decentralised community, but the the core of viacoin is the network. A strong secure network is the keystone. That is why I have been concentrating on building the foundations and the viacoin network has been going from strength to strength. Viacoin is well maintained and up to date with all the new features and bug fixes from Bitcoin 0.10. We have had 5 software major releases of the viacoin in 8 months. The network runs at about ~700GH/s and is mined by some of the biggest bitcoin mining companies in the world! One of them is f2pool Discus Fish.

When choosing a blockchain, there are actually very few that could be considered remotely secure based on network hash. Viacoin is definitely one of those now.

I am also disappointed at the attempts to downplay Peter Todd’s achievements for viacoin or say that he gets paid for “doing nothing”. Peter’s hard work on viacoin is well documented and its unnecessary to attack him to leverage an issue with me.

CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/10/01/petertodd-dev-update.html

http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/11/13/petertodd-dev-update.html

Discourage NOPs reserved for soft-fork upgrades https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5000#issuecomment-58889473

Accept any sequence of PUSHDATAs in OP_RETURN outputs https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5079
SCRIPT_VERIFY_MINIMALDATA unittests https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/cd9114e5136ecc1f60baa43fffeeb632782f2353 (also see my comments https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5065#issuecomment-59100744 on the pull-req)

Check against MANDATORY flags prior to accepting to mempool https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5253 and Fixed a DoS attack! Also see related post http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06466.html on the bitcoin-dev mailing list.

BIP62/STRICTENC review and tests https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5247

Discourage fee sniping with nLockTime

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2340#issuecomment-58617533


http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/12/25/petertodd-dev-update.html

micropayment channel demo https://github.com/petertodd/checklocktimeverify-demos/blob/master/micropayment-channel.py

Near-zero fee transactions with hub-and-spoke micropayments http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06576.html

Setting the record straight on Proof-of-Publication http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06570.html

The relationship between Proof-of-Publication and Anti-Replay Oracles http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06617.html

I know some of that stuff is not very sexy. It’s not fancy anon or dubious instant confirmations. But they are essential improvements and bug fixes that contribute to the robustness of the network, which is the core of the project.

So regarding CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY. I am sure most people dont understand how important this new opcode is. It might seems like an obscure technical feature. But that is exactly how P2SH (multisig) started out. It was added to bitcoin with great urgency because the developers thought it was essential for bitcoin. Well they were right, but no-one even care for 2-3 years. Then multig started to be talked about in early 2014, and now in 2015, it have been implemented in just about every major wallet for bitcoin. Adoption of technology can take time.

Who has been involved with viacoin and clearinghouse? Well Grynn San helped a lot pre-release of viacoin and for a few months afterwards. He is unfortunately a diabetic and had severe complications which mean he has been unable to work much. Grynn was paid (what masternode said about debt is completely false). Maran also worked on ClearingHouse to implement the Blockchain Notary as a paid developer. Reorder from 1GH has been instrumental to the project and works as an unpaid volunteer. We discussed this and he did not want remuneration. Peter of course is chief scientist and gives advice as a paid consultant. Esotericizm was involved in making a mobile wallet for viacoin on Android.

I’ve worked very hard doing what I set out to do. It’s involved lots of long hours and sleepless nights. Maintaining this sort of thing requires a lot of thought, care and discussions because consensus systems are hard and one needs to be careful about the effects on the network.

I have always just quietly worked on things without much fanfare. I prefer to under promise and over deliver. I have evangelised viacoin a lot in the background. For example, I got adoption at woodwallets; coinpayments.net, the altcoin version of bitpay; and giffoff (was pock.io) which allows purchase of 1500 variety of giftcards payable with viacoin. A friend of mine got viacoin added to Litepay, a fiat gateway in Europe for viacoin. I just went ahead and did these things. I frankly don’t understand why the community isn’t doing the same. If everyone made an effort to get one merchant each to adopt viacoin… our collective voice would be deafening.

So overall, just like bitcoin, it really is up to the community to band together to evangelize viacoin. A few people have contacted me with ideas on how to kick start this a bit more which I am keen on exploring. So let’s discuss the nuances.

I am going to be more active on the forums, especially to facilitate the future plans. I had always envisioned crowdsourcing evangelism from the community instead of relying on a single whale early adopter and I believe that together we can make that happen.

So while I would prefer to focus on the technical stuff (stick to what I’m good at), I acknowledge that that people would appreciate discussing future positive plans for viacoin during the difficult times of the bear markets.

The problem is that things like CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY are over your head, so leave the legitimate coins alone, go back to the DashcoinDark thread, and play with your Masternodes.

[masternode]

I've responded to this and welcomed Drak to give ANY example of priveledged info that he claims I've ever shared with him.  He cannot. What he has said in his/your previous post is an outright lie.  But you can believe what you want.

You seem to be trying to redirect the conversation away from some simple facts around VIA that I point out, mostly that Drak refuses to support the advancement of VIA with the ICO funds intended for that purpose, and his offer that 1M VIA could be used as community funds is laughable.  What do you have to say about those two specific points?  Or are you going to try and digress again and somehow use another coin that I support as a case for ignoring what Drak is doing with the ICO funds?

I've asked nothing unreasonable AT ALL.  If he is truly honorable, then it should be easy to just get a trusted member to handle finances, show where money has been spent, and agree to spend the money intended for advancing the coin for that purpose moving forward.  

[InfiniteRadio]

Drak probably lost it trying to play bitfinex with Cobain and the others...of he still has the funds I could see him relishing in the FUD because well...what would 100btc do to the via market? A shit ton...the trick is to balance the pump and the people who will use it to exit...

[iCEBREAKER]

You seem to be trying to redirect the conversation away from some simple facts around VIA that I point out, mostly that Drak refuses to support the advancement of VIA with the ICO funds intended for that purpose, and his offer that 1M VIA could be used as community funds is laughable.  What do you have to say about those two specific points?  Or are you going to try and digress again and somehow use another coin that I support as a case for ignoring what Drak is doing with the ICO funds?

I've asked nothing unreasonable AT ALL.  If he is truly honorable, then it should be easy to just get a trusted member to handle finances, show where money has been spent, and agree to spend the money intended for advancing the coin for that purpose moving forward.  

"Outright lie?"

Are you saying that CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY is an outright lie?  I must admit not being sufficiently Toddcore to experiment with this new option myself.  But it sounds cool and hella cyber, like something Transformers would do or say or fight about, so I want (at an emotional level) it to be true.

Is nLockTime an outright lie also?  I'll feel silly if it is, for reasons already explained.  But enough of this unprecedented direction towards simple facts around VIA.

If DashcoinDark's instmined had been acquired honestly in the scrupulous manner of VIA's ICO, I might have put a few coins into it.

But it wasn't, and yet, you still heap praise and lavish support on that other project.

This speaks to your credibility, which I must evaluate when you insist I critically re-evaluate Drak's with an eye towards finding fault and dishonor.

[Primitive]

You seem to be trying to redirect the conversation away from some simple facts around VIA that I point out, mostly that Drak refuses to support the advancement of VIA with the ICO funds intended for that purpose, and his offer that 1M VIA could be used as community funds is laughable.  What do you have to say about those two specific points?  Or are you going to try and digress again and somehow use another coin that I support as a case for ignoring what Drak is doing with the ICO funds?

I've asked nothing unreasonable AT ALL.  If he is truly honorable, then it should be easy to just get a trusted member to handle finances, show where money has been spent, and agree to spend the money intended for advancing the coin for that purpose moving forward.  

"Outright lie?"

Are you saying that CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY is an outright lie?  I must admit not being sufficiently Toddcore to experiment with this new option myself.  But it sounds cool and hella cyber, like something Transformers would do or say or fight about, so I want (at an emotional level) it to be true.

Is nLockTime an outright lie also?  I'll feel silly if it is, for reasons already explained.  But enough of this unprecedented direction towards simple facts around VIA.

If DashcoinDark's instmined had been acquired honestly in the scrupulous manner of VIA's ICO, I might have put a few coins into it.

But it wasn't, and yet, you still heap praise and lavish support on that other project.

This speaks to your credibility, which I must evaluate when you insist I critically re-evaluate Drak's with an eye towards finding fault and dishonor.

IceBreaker, do you read the posts before you respond?  Masternode wasn't saying that CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY is a lie.  I won't bother explaining what he did say - you should take the time to read it yourself.

Are you not curious about the 600BTC funds?  Do you think Drak spent 600BTC implementing CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY?

Why not join us in asking for clarification from Drak on the use of those funds.  If you hold VIA, you should be as concerned as we are about this issue.

Why not support our request for transparency on VIA instead of deflecting the question and ripping on Darkcoin?

[iCEBREAKER]

Do you think Drak spent 600BTC implementing CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY?

Why not join us in asking for clarification from Drak on the use of those funds.  If you hold VIA, you should be as concerned as we are about this issue.

I sold all my other altcoins, and even some BTC, in order to buy more XMR at the gift-from-Goddess price of ~0.001.  So I no longer possess a single VIA or XCH, although I still in word and spirit support the project for my original reasons.

I surmise Drak 1) has better things to do than GAAP paperwork, and 2) spent funds commensurate with a top tier dev's expected salary range in order to implement CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, nLockTime, and the rest of the extra-fancy stuff Peter and the other guy have done.  Plus plenty more for basic research into tree chains.  Which I am in favor of, despite the exorbitant and most likely unrecoupable expense.  Go huge, or go home.   

When you send a general into the field, it is expedient to support him and his judgment to the hilt.  Not second-guess and audit him while in the breach.  Given insufficient succor at critical junctures, morale wanes and the enterprise suffers ignominious collapse.  Gentlemen, we are teetering on the edge of such an ill-fated outcome!

Please forgive my obnoxious intrusion, and endeavor to work things out with Drak.  I believe the VIA/XCH projects are worthwhile in the long term, despite the predictable differences and ensuing rancor to be expected at these early and middle stages.

Hug it out.  Air (in an appropriate venue) the grievances.  Make a fresh start.  Try to remember why VIA and XCH are marvelous ideas and fueled such a bell-ringing ICO in the first place.  I want to buy back into this project, not write it off as yet another false start that dissolved in a cloud of crypto-drama.

Best,

-iB

[spartak_t]

In the mean time I'll buy some more.

[InfiniteRadio]

You seem to be trying to redirect the conversation away from some simple facts around VIA that I point out, mostly that Drak refuses to support the advancement of VIA with the ICO funds intended for that purpose, and his offer that 1M VIA could be used as community funds is laughable.  What do you have to say about those two specific points?  Or are you going to try and digress again and somehow use another coin that I support as a case for ignoring what Drak is doing with the ICO funds?

I've asked nothing unreasonable AT ALL.  If he is truly honorable, then it should be easy to just get a trusted member to handle finances, show where money has been spent, and agree to spend the money intended for advancing the coin for that purpose moving forward.  

"Outright lie?"

Are you saying that CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY is an outright lie?  I must admit not being sufficiently Toddcore to experiment with this new option myself.  But it sounds cool and hella cyber, like something Transformers would do or say or fight about, so I want (at an emotional level) it to be true.

Is nLockTime an outright lie also?  I'll feel silly if it is, for reasons already explained.  But enough of this unprecedented direction towards simple facts around VIA.

If DashcoinDark's instmined had been acquired honestly in the scrupulous manner of VIA's ICO, I might have put a few coins into it.

But it wasn't, and yet, you still heap praise and lavish support on that other project.

This speaks to your credibility, which I must evaluate when you insist I critically re-evaluate Drak's with an eye towards finding fault and dishonor.

"ToddCore" ... that is funny

of course its already perfectly there in urbandictionary

   
"toddCORE"

To be intence and deadly at the same time.

WOW! that kid is so toddCORE!
i wanna be like him!
by philis kane July 04, 2008

[chompyZ]

A little transparency goes a long way...

masternode's tl;dr question is simple:

* Do the 610BTC (i.e. or what's left of them) belong to BTCdrak, or do they belong to the community?

Imho, it's a legit question, and we, as a community, deserve an honest strait tl;dr answer. Yes or No... Personal insults will not get us anywhere...
On this note, I have to admit, that until masternode and barabbas started raising questions, I was confident that the 610BTC (i.e. or what's left of them), were community funds...

[GooseNL]

I organised some of the key points of one of the latest posts by Drak. Maybe other info could be added to get a more complete and up to date picture of the VIA project, for example about Notary.

Decentralised system
The Bitcoin protocol is designed to be robust against centralization. Once you start the network, you can’t just turn it off like you turn off your phone. This is the beauty of decentralized systems - no single actor can take it down.

Strong secure Network and decentralized community
VIACOIN is a decentralised community, but the core of VIACOIN is the network. A strong secure network is the keystone. Building the foundations and the VIACOIN network has been going from strength to strength. VIACOIN is well maintained and up to date with all the new features and bug fixes from Bitcoin 0.10. VIACOIN had five software major releases in 8 months.
The network runs at about ~700GH/s and is mined by some of the biggest Bitcoin mining companies in the world. One of them is f2pool Discus Fish.
Maintaining VIACOIN requires a lot of thought, care and discussions, because consensus systems are hard and one needs to be careful about the effects on the network.
When choosing a blockchain, there are actually very few that could be considered remotely secure based on network hash. VIACOIN is definitely one of those.

Peter Todd’s (chief scientist) achievements for VIACOIN so far
Core of the VIA-project: Essential improvements and bug fixes that contribute to the robustness of the network.
1. CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY
http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/10/01/petertodd-dev-update.html
http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/11/13/petertodd-dev-update.html

2. Discourage NOPs reserved for soft-fork upgrades
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5000#issuecomment-58889473

3. Accept any sequence of PUSHDATAs in OP_RETURN outputs
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5079
SCRIPT_VERIFY_MINIMALDATA unittests https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/cd9114e5136ecc1f60baa43fffeeb632782f2353 (also see my comments https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5065#issuecomment-59100744 on the pull-req)

4. Check against MANDATORY flags prior to accepting to mempool
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5253
Fixed a DoS attack! Also see related post on the bitcoin-dev mailing list.
http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06466.html

5. BIP62/STRICTENC review and tests
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5247

6. Discourage fee sniping with nLockTime
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2340#issuecomment-58617533
http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/12/25/petertodd-dev-update.html

7. Micropayment channel demo
https://github.com/petertodd/checklocktimeverify-demos/blob/master/micropayment-channel.py

8. Near-zero fee transactions with hub-and-spoke micropayments
http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06576.html

9. Setting the record straight on Proof-of-Publication
http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06570.html

10. The relationship between Proof-of-Publication and Anti-Replay Oracles
http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06617.html

CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY
Regarding CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY. Probably not many people understand how important this new opcode is.*) It might seems like an obscure technical feature. But that is exactly how P2SH (multisig) started out. It was added to bitcoin with great urgency because the developers thought it was essential for bitcoin. No-one cared for 2-3 years. Then multisig started to be talked about in early 2014, and now in 2015, it has been implemented in just about every major wallet for bitcoin. Adoption of technology can take time.

Core-Development team
BTCdrak
Priority is to focus on the technical stuff and to be on forums to facilitate future plans.
Peter Todd
Core Mission: ‘Making Viacoin be preferred over Bitcoin is an unfinished work-in-progress; I'm not going to say otherwise’ (Peter Todd on Twitter September ’14)
Contributers Development
Grynn San: pre-release of VIA and for a few months afterwards.
Maran: ClearingHouse to implement the Blockchain Notary.
Reorder from 1GH has been instrumental to the project.
Esotericizm: mobile wallet for viacoin on Android.
VIA Community
Just like Bitcoin, it is up to the community to band together to evangelize VIACOIN.
The challenge is how to grow the community and encourage adoption.
Adoption starts with crowdsourcing evangelism by the VIA-community.
1Million VIA is available to stimulate adoption.

VIACOIN adoption
- Woodwallets
- Coinpayments.net, the altcoin version of bitpay
- Giffoff (was pock.io) which allows purchase of 1500 variety of giftcards payable with viacoin
- Litepay, a fiat gateway in Europe for VIACOIN


*) When BTCDrak is explaining BIP66 as: ‘It's a maintenance release that restricts valid signatures to exactly what is mandated by DER encoded signatures to make the consensus rules not depend on OpenSSL's signature parsing.’, it is clear that the whole blockchain technology goes far beyond my current understanding and I guess that of many other investors.

[weedo84]

Hi there, 

In all fairness, he did point out what he will do with the ICO funds- not in the professional way a business start-up might, but he did.

 I recall him mentioning he will use them for living expenses and project support, this might not sound too good for some because it's not detailed.. but just like how this whole Viacoin project started- it required a level of trust, because again.. it did not initiate the same way a business would.  The same people that tried to analyze his personality or see what kind of person Drak is before investing plus seeing what he has to offer are mainly silent, because they aren't surprised- if they're honest with themselves.

I myself see him truly working on it, especially when inspired. But from what I gathered- he's dedicated to this and it's his life. Meaning he could take a month off if he wants to, but I know he'll go 100% when he gets into it- for me that's enough if I'm patient and not looking for a quick return.  No promises from the very beginning.

 Adding pressure on a guy that wants to make this work and had created this is not helpful to the cause and I would rather have Drak's method over a Syscoin method any-day.

[weedo84]

Also, another thing is that what Viacoin has, is strong developer support (see drak's github), which nowadays are much more valuable than marketing support.  That means that the grounds on which this project is on would hold up much more strongly than many when marketing kicks in  within it.. organically.

 This whole crypto-thing is honestly childish if I'm honest, it's a playground for short-term projects that want to make a few hundred thousand within a couple of months off of kids. It'll end soon, but what'll last, if any.. are the projects that are looked after by many developers and are platform oriented with room to tweak- that's where I see this project going along with 1 or 2 others.