[PRE-ANN][ZEN][Pre-sale] Zennet: Decentralized Supercomputer - Official Thread

[HunterMinerCrafter]

You either get my point and agree, or get my point and disagree. The bottom line is if the btc gonna cost 1000$ next year then I could buy X3 times the amount of process power / service on Zennet than I am now with the same btc.

I "get" your point, but I neither agree nor disagree because your point doesn't even apply to the question, here.

Of course no one stops you from investing your dollars and I didn't say it is a bad idea, what I said is that spending btc now could cost you in the long term..

Or BTC "could" crash back to $100 in which case spending btc now could save you in the long term.  My crystal ball is on the fritz, so I can't say for sure which of us is right on this point.

It doesn't matter, though....

Again, the USD value of BTC doesn't actually even factor into the consideration.  The concern is not what BTC does relative to USD, but what BTC and ZEN do relative to EACH OTHER.  Nothing more.

Fiat money only comes into the picture if our intended trade somehow involves an exchange of it.  Buying ZEN with BTC has nothing at all to do with USD or anything else at all but ZEN and BTC.

You didn't answer the question!  If fiat currency never existed at all does your reasoning still hold?

The price of milk in Ireland says nothing about the rationality of a decision to trade Btc for Zen.  By your logic if I think that the price of milk in Ireland is going to go down then spending BTC for ZEN could cost me in the long run, because the value of BTC relative to the value of milk in Ireland will go up.

This is obviously absurd.

Why should it be any less absurd if we replace "milk in Ireland" with USD?

[NILIcoin]

You either get my point and agree, or get my point and disagree. The bottom line is if the btc gonna cost 1000$ next year then I could buy X3 times the amount of process power / service on Zennet than I am now with the same btc.

I "get" your point, but I neither agree nor disagree because your point doesn't even apply to the question, here.

Of course no one stops you from investing your dollars and I didn't say it is a bad idea, what I said is that spending btc now could cost you in the long term..

Or BTC "could" crash back to $100 in which case spending btc now could save you in the long term.  My crystal ball is on the fritz, so I can't say for sure which of us is right on this point.

It doesn't matter, though....

Again, the USD value of BTC doesn't actually even factor into the consideration.  The concern is not what BTC does relative to USD, but what BTC and ZEN do relative to EACH OTHER.  Nothing more.

Fiat money only comes into the picture if our intended trade somehow involves an exchange of it.  Buying ZEN with BTC has nothing at all to do with USD or anything else at all but ZEN and BTC.

You didn't answer the question!  If fiat currency never existed at all does your reasoning still hold?

The price of milk in Ireland says nothing about the rationality of a decision to trade Btc for Zen.  By your logic if I think that the price of milk in Ireland is going to go down then spending BTC for ZEN could cost me in the long run, because the value of BTC relative to the value of milk in Ireland will go up.

This is obviously absurd.

Why should it be any less absurd if we replace "milk in Ireland" with USD?

The main reason to buy Zen with your BTC is to diversify your investment portfolio. holding everything in bitcoins is just stupid in terms of every investment model.
 
Now the question is why Zen and not Darkcoin or a share of google.
The choice to invest in crypto is a combination of risk factor and  belief in the crypto  decentralized social/economic revolution.

Short sighted people would say that involving "moral" standards in an investment is stupid, well it is just like any risk factor. When looking at the big picture, I would do much better for my children's future investing in improving a system that will guarantee a better chance for them to buy a home, than to investing in making enough money that will be able to buy them a home 20 years from now.

But since we are a short sighted creature and more so since we haven't been able to device an economic system that incentives in the short term, the long term goals like nature do,  I will focus on the short term benefit of investing in zen coin.

Zen coin s a product, not merely a coin. it is the key to a contract between someone who have computing power and someone who need computing power. It is a powerful key for something almost every person in the civilized world can use, and it is a product no one has created before.

If  diversify your BTC  investments is the thing then Zent  would be that thing. It is the first crypto-product that is reaching the heights of bitcoin. It offers a decentralized revolution to one of the most important resource of our time. Computation.

[HunterMinerCrafter]

The main reason to buy Zen with your BTC is to diversify your investment portfolio. holding everything in bitcoins is just stupid in terms of every investment model.

THIS!

I'm all for believing in the future of bitcoin.  I'm even all for (currently) considering btc the most valued thing!  However to consider it as the *only* thing of value is irrational.

Mishax's base premise only holds soundly if we consider BTC to be the only thing of value.  His reasoning falters, however, when he suggests as his secondary premise that one should invest USD into Zen instead of bitcoin.  By his own logic, one should not buy Zen at all, they should spend all of their USD on Bitcoin.  They should also trade their house, their possessions, their wife and kids, and their own body for bitcoins.

This is as all at least as absurd as considering the price of milk in Ireland.

Now can we get off of this silly valuation talk and get back to Zennet discussions, please? 

[ohad]

Now can we get off of this silly valuation talk and get back to Zennet discussions, please?  

Some economical aspects on Zennet (will slowly make this list longer):

1. If you hire 10 or 100 computers for the same task, the latter option will indeed run ~10 times faster, yet you will pay exactly the same thanks to the stationarity of the pricing algo.
2. Entities who buy a lot of Zencoins, usually do it in order to calculate something, hence spread them back to the people right away.
3. Hoarding coins by the providers is bounded, unlike other coins. Bitcoin has no apparent 'upper limit'. But Zencoin cannot worth 'too much': roughly saying, it cannot make the home pc cost more than aws, since the competition will balance such a situation. (leaving aside that zennet being more expensive than aws is hypothetically possible, if zennet gives more speed etc. and actually worths more).
4. Zencoin less depends on variables exogenic to the computation market, since it should not be used for other cases like buying coffee or car.
5. The growth of the amount of hardware is maybe the world's most craziest thing over the last decades.
6. Zennet presents a novel pricing formula, which can be used to price other assets as well, even when the underlying components of value are totally unknown. http://zennet.sc/zennetpricing.pdf
7. The amount of fortune being wasted by idle computers is unimaginable.
8. The micropayments algorithm assures a frictionless (no fee, off-chain) transfer of coins every few seconds or even less.
9. The waste of thrown out old computers turns out to be huge and toxic. Once they'll be able to generate income, less PCs will be damped.
10. Zennet is about 30% more efficient than AWS because of new-generation virtualization technology.
11. It's a totally free market. Anyone can set their price freely, while the payment is p2p with no middle fees at all (except standard tx fees).
12. Zennet breaks big monopolies and spreads a lot of fortune to the people.
13. One of the pricing algorithm advantages is ability to optimally take into account variances between hardwares, or between different times over the same hardware.

[gatra]

interesting, but if people put their computational resources for hire, then those won't be available for securing the network (ie calculating POW), and vice versa. So there may be a conflict that jeopardizes the security of the network....

what? did you say delegated pos?   get out...c'mon... really?

[ohad]

interesting, but if people put their computational resources for hire, then those won't be available for securing the network (ie calculating POW), and vice versa. So there may be a conflict that jeopardizes the security of the network....

what? did you say delegated pos?   get out...c'mon... really?

will be happy to discuss the coin infrastructure.
so, why not dpos?

in addition, this contradiction is 'virtual' in case where tx fees are most (or all) of the incentive

[jdebunt]

Published the pre-sale press release here :

http://www.cryptoarticles.com/press-releases/zennet-decentralized-cloud-network-releases-details-of-zencoin-presale

Writeup for Bitcoinist will follow over the next few days

[ohad]

Published the pre-sale press release here :

http://www.cryptoarticles.com/press-releases/zennet-decentralized-cloud-network-releases-details-of-zencoin-presale

Writeup for Bitcoinist will follow over the next few days

Appreciated

[HunterMinerCrafter]

1. If you hire 10 or 100 computers for the same task, the latter option will indeed run ~10 times faster, yet you will pay exactly the same thanks to the stationarity of the pricing algo.

Assuming that the providers are evenly priced and reliable, of course.

2. Entities who buy a lot of Zencoins, usually do it in order to calculate something, hence spread them back to the people right away.
3. Hoarding coins by the providers is bounded, unlike other coins. Bitcoin has no apparent 'upper limit'. But Zencoin cannot worth 'too much': roughly saying, it cannot make the home pc cost more than aws, since the competition will balance such a situation. (leaving aside that zennet being more expensive than aws is hypothetically possible, if zennet gives more speed etc. and actually worths more).

I'm not sure that it really bounds in this way, because both spot price of the coin itself and provider rates can change.  If hoarders drive the price of the coin up the pricing of the resources will simply go down correspondingly, no?  I'm actually very interested to see how this dynamic plays out in the end.  There are a few different potentialities and I'm not sure if there is a meaningful parallel that could be studied first.

4. Zencoin less depends on variables exogenic to the computation market, since it should not be used for other cases like buying coffee or car.

People likely will anyway.  I suspect that speculative traders will be the largest externally influencing factor.  This is just a hunch.

5. The growth of the amount of hardware is maybe the world's most craziest thing over the last decades.

No, the craziest thing is probably the amount of wasted energy this mass of hardware has burned through while sitting idle!   

6. Zennet presents a novel pricing formula, which can be used to price other assets as well, even when the underlying components of value are totally unknown. http://zennet.sc/zennetpricing.pdf

Is the intent still to have this pricing model be just a "helpful tool" and not a mandate?  I still think this would be very important, and being able to script alternative pricing models would be very nice to have in addition.

[ohad]

1. If you hire 10 or 100 computers for the same task, the latter option will indeed run ~10 times faster, yet you will pay exactly the same thanks to the stationarity of the pricing algo.

Assuming that the providers are evenly priced and reliable, of course.

what's nice is that you get this speed for free. currently no pricing model supports that. and Zennet's one is still the most fair around. all thanks to the usage assumptions (heavy distributed computations), which I plan to write a more detailed comment about here, later.

2. Entities who buy a lot of Zencoins, usually do it in order to calculate something, hence spread them back to the people right away.
3. Hoarding coins by the providers is bounded, unlike other coins. Bitcoin has no apparent 'upper limit'. But Zencoin cannot worth 'too much': roughly saying, it cannot make the home pc cost more than aws, since the competition will balance such a situation. (leaving aside that zennet being more expensive than aws is hypothetically possible, if zennet gives more speed etc. and actually worths more).

I'm not sure that it really bounds in this way, because both spot price of the coin itself and provider rates can change.  If hoarders drive the price of the coin up the pricing of the resources will simply go down correspondingly, no?  I'm actually very interested to see how this dynamic plays out in the end.  There are a few different potentialities and I'm not sure if there is a meaningful parallel that could be studied first.

yet it's bounded, isn't it?

4. Zencoin less depends on variables exogenic to the computation market, since it should not be used for other cases like buying coffee or car.

People likely will anyway.  I suspect that speculative traders will be the largest externally influencing factor.  This is just a hunch.

The coin is degined for micropayments. I'm not sure (yet don't know) if it'll be economic or convenient or safe for other uses.

5. The growth of the amount of hardware is maybe the world's most craziest thing over the last decades.

No, the craziest thing is probably the amount of wasted energy this mass of hardware has burned through while sitting idle!  

that's crazy and that's the craziest, indeed.

6. Zennet presents a novel pricing formula, which can be used to price other assets as well, even when the underlying components of value are totally unknown. http://zennet.sc/zennetpricing.pdf

being able to script alternative pricing models would be very nice to have in addition.

planned from day 1

[xenmaster]

https://i.imgur.com/O49JIWT.png]

"Zennet has the potential to drastically reduce the cost of computational power and bring new magnitudes of speed to HPC consumers": http://cryptobizmagazine.com/zennet-decentralized-cloud-network-releases-details-of-zencoin-presale/

[ohad]

I'd like to point out two subjects that answer many FAQ:


Why fixed amount of Zencoins?

I came into understanding that generating new coins is a fiction, if we want to keep the market non-skewed and fair. Since, if new coins are generated, the optimal fairness strategy will be to spread them proportionally between all coin holders. But then, we actually did nothing. It's like adding a zero to all accounts on a certain currency. Hence, without making skewed distribution, coin generation is meaningless.

Zennet Design's Main Assumption

Zennet's design relies on a main assumption, which states that Zennet is intended only for massive distributed computational jobs. We assume that publishers (bidders) are aware of this assumption and do not rent computers unless they:

1. Need 'a lot of' computers (say at least dozens, of course it depends).

2. The work is divided into many small parts, where we anticipate from each computer to finish one job in a reasonably short (say < 5sec) time. This is partially like saying "your algorithm should be well-distributed rather than only artificially 'distributed', not to mention parallel".

This might sound restrictive, but in fact, even nowadays most of the money spent on the software world, is for such huge and distributed jobs. Just read about Apache Hadoop which is only part of what Zennet can support. World Community Grid is another example.

The assumption may also sound innocent, but it has strong implications. Let me state some:

1. We may assume that the time until a single small job finishes is not interesting, but the number of small jobs finished. This leads to the pricing model, in which we can get a unique and optimal solutions from linear operators (which are always preferred because of normality, generalization ability and more), while taking into account even totally unknown variables. for more information see this doc.
Without the main assumption, linearity would be lost, and we come to a yet unanswered difficult question in economy and computer science. Nevertheless, our linear algorithm is novel.

2. If a computer suddenly shuts down, or somehow not functioning as well, the loss is small by all means. People frequently ask me "what if it's a full night of computation, and the computer turned down in the middle of the night? All the data will be lost.". The answer is that such distributed application is not really distributed, and for sure - not well distributed. Distributed computations should be broken into small enough parts, as a mainstream and important practice in this world.

3. Say we have 1000 small jobs. If we distribute them among 10 or 20 computers, the latter will be as twice as faster, of course, yet we will pay the same amount of coins on both cases. Speed comes for free. This is due to the ability to price the usage in time independent units, which is justified only if the main assumption is satisfied.

4. The main assumption opens many possibilities to reduce the expectation of the risks' costs.  For example, a publisher can rent, say, 10K hosts, and after a few seconds drop the less-efficient 50%. Another risk-decreasing behavior is that each provider works simultaneously for several publishers. Say each work for 10 publishers in parallel, so the risk to both sides decreases 10 fold.



PS
I've added some more to the 'economical aspects' comment above, and will continue adding.

[CoinHoarder]

I think DPoS is a nice choice of consensus algorithms. It is very fast and efficient, and would be perfect for a project like this. You should look into using the "Bitshares toolkit" to see if it might give you a head start on what you are trying to accomplish.

This is a very ambitious and interesting project.. I will be following along and I wish you luck!

Here is more info on the Bitshares Toolkit:

Wiki: https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares/wiki
Github Repo: https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares

[gatra]

interesting, but if people put their computational resources for hire, then those won't be available for securing the network (ie calculating POW), and vice versa. So there may be a conflict that jeopardizes the security of the network....

what? did you say delegated pos?   get out...c'mon... really?

will be happy to discuss the coin infrastructure.
so, why not dpos?

in addition, this contradiction is 'virtual' in case where tx fees are most (or all) of the incentive

dpos has the drawbacks of pos while adding centralization.

If you had PoW, I see many cool forms of arbitrage happening: being a provider and "outsourcing" to cheaper providers, using coins to pay a provider to mine coins for you, etc.

The coin is degined for micropayments. I'm not sure (yet don't know) if it'll be economic or convenient or safe for other uses.

what does this mean? I can't think of any design decision that would be influenced by that, because... aren't micropayments handled off-chain?
You may want a fast block generation rate, but, what else?

[HunterMinerCrafter]

HI GATRA!

dpos has the drawbacks of pos while adding centralization.

I agree, and am/will-be trying to deter Ohad from going dpos over the course of our irc discussions.  I'm personally not as concerned with the "drawbacks of POS" (particularly in this case) as I am with the "adding centralization" but I understand that both concerns are quite valid.

If you had PoW, I see many cool forms of arbitrage happening: being a provider and "outsourcing" to cheaper providers, using coins to pay a provider to mine coins for you, etc.

Possibly, but it is likely that the system will be self-balancing such that the arbitrage smiles are very rare and short lived.  If a publisher could profitably mine with some providers' resource then rationally that provider would pull that resource from the network and instead apply it to the same mining process themselves for even greater profit - as they will not need to be paying some provider's fee on top.  In fact, this briefly came up in discussion just yesterday, after someone out there (and "out there", heh) mistakenly inferred that people might rent resource to mine bitcoins - in something of a decentralized cloud mining style - which is ofc highly irrational.

The coin is degined for micropayments. I'm not sure (yet don't know) if it'll be economic or convenient or safe for other uses.

what does this mean? I can't think of any design decision that would be influenced by that, because... aren't micropayments handled off-chain?
You may want a fast block generation rate, but, what else?

No, the micropayments will be on-chain!  Precisely the reason that this system uses zencoin instead of bitcoin or othercoin is because it will require a chain specifically oriented toward facilitating continual micro-payments for accounted resource.

This was one of the most difficult points for Ohad to get across to me, but since he has I now agree with him... the particular nature of this coin/network likely makes it of lesser utility for general purpose use.  I'm sure it will still see general purpose use, especially for things like services/add-ons related to zennet itself but the architecture is being assembled explicitly without this being a design goal, unlike most coins.

[dallyshalla]

do you have a github with some code?

[NILIcoin]

HI GATRA!

dpos has the drawbacks of pos while adding centralization.

I agree, and am/will-be trying to deter Ohad from going dpos over the course of our irc discussions.  I'm personally not as concerned with the "drawbacks of POS" (particularly in this case) as I am with the "adding centralization" but I understand that both concerns are quite valid.

If you had PoW, I see many cool forms of arbitrage happening: being a provider and "outsourcing" to cheaper providers, using coins to pay a provider to mine coins for you, etc.

Possibly, but it is likely that the system will be self-balancing such that the arbitrage smiles are very rare and short lived.  If a publisher could profitably mine with some providers' resource then rationally that provider would pull that resource from the network and instead apply it to the same mining process themselves for even greater profit - as they will not need to be paying some provider's fee on top.  In fact, this briefly came up in discussion just yesterday, after someone out there (and "out there", heh) mistakenly inferred that people might rent resource to mine bitcoins - in something of a decentralized cloud mining style - which is ofc highly irrational.

The coin is degined for micropayments. I'm not sure (yet don't know) if it'll be economic or convenient or safe for other uses.

what does this mean? I can't think of any design decision that would be influenced by that, because... aren't micropayments handled off-chain?
You may want a fast block generation rate, but, what else?

No, the micropayments will be on-chain!  Precisely the reason that this system uses zencoin instead of bitcoin or othercoin is because it will require a chain specifically oriented toward facilitating continual micro-payments for accounted resource.

This was one of the most difficult points for Ohad to get across to me, but since he has I now agree with him... the particular nature of this coin/network likely makes it of lesser utility for general purpose use.  I'm sure it will still see general purpose use, especially for things like services/add-ons related to zennet itself but the architecture is being assembled explicitly without this being a design goal, unlike most coins.

If I may, I just dont get why do you think that the coin will not have a general use  Yes it is design specifically for a servicing a particular system' but if it is traded on the exchange markets, even P2P and  there is a demand for the service which that coin mediate, my corner store may have a difficult time accepting it but maybe as payment in the university it will be accepted with much joy. and if all universities and student take it' the corner store will too. All services and related applications of accessibility will follow as well as hoarders.
Basically other than say it for the sake of laws and out of respect for paid lawyers',there is absolutely no reason to consider that not to be a good desirable means of exchange, store of value' and so very important' a unit of account that is related to a real basic commodity. (back to bean coins basically)

[gatra]

No, the micropayments will be on-chain!  Precisely the reason that this system uses zencoin instead of bitcoin or othercoin is because it will require a chain specifically oriented toward facilitating continual micro-payments for accounted resource.

Hi HunterMinerCrafter!
Your connection to this coin makes me have more confidence on it, however I see lots of aspects that are not yet clear and still undefined. I still wouldn't put my money on it.

See this:

8. The micropayments algorithm assures a frictionless (no fee, off-chain) transfer of coins every few seconds or even less.

Another concern is how would the reputation system work.

Best regards!
Gatra

[HunterMinerCrafter]

If I may, I just dont get why do you think that the coin will not have a general use

Of course I do think it will!  I was just pointing out that where most coins treat this as a primary design goal, zennet treats this more as just a secondary concern and doesn't sacrifice other goals for it, which *might* end up making it less suitable for such purposes, for the reasons Ohad pointed out.

[ohad]

If I may, I just dont get why do you think that the coin will not have a general use

Of course I do think it will!  I was just pointing out that where most coins treat this as a primary design goal, zennet treats this more as just a secondary concern and doesn't sacrifice other goals for it, which *might* end up making it less suitable for such purposes, for the reasons Ohad pointed out.

Note the following fact: assume we're using regular POW based blockchain. since we use rapid payments for small amounts, we can use short block time (say 1min), which will of course increase the probability of the risk of double spending, but the expectation of the risk is low since we talk about small amounts. hence, buying a car with zencoins might not be as safe as people regular to.

it's one point where taking care of the certain use might make the coin inadequate for other uses.

say the coin is working just like Bitcoin, just with short block time, and an attacker could tamper the network for one hour.  the loss for home pc will be no more than a few dollars worth, if not less than one dollar. This is an extreme case, of course, and might be even too extremely simplified to be possible.