[XMR] Monero Speculation

[GingerAle]

This isn't a starting point?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=976071.0

TheKoziTwo also released some code.

I agree they should be easier to find. Probably some kind of merchant resources page on the web site should list these, but then you still have to find the resources page...

To hell with "finding web pages."  ANGTFT

It should all be in the [ANN] post, or at most a click away.

The [ANN] is overdue for an update, if not a complete overhaul.

It should be spiffed up with all these new bells and whistles!   

I've found the next best thing to an ANN is your signature. Put some useful links in there. Signatures come up in google search results (i think), like the rest of the stuff on this forum. Hack the system, baby!

And now back to the weather. We might get some increased buying pressure as people start moving monero into monerodice, because people love making money with money.

[newb4now]

It seems the price is picking up at  the moment! DASH is going down and LTC as well. Maybe XMR can have some benefits from these drops.

In the long run Monero will do well assuming the level of current development continues.

We all know DASH is trash (and their new model of increased mining rewards going to masternode owners discourages adoption by new small users) buts its decline does not have a direct impact on Monero. 

I have never been good at predicting what will happen with LTC so I have no comment on that.

[MalMen]

This isn't a starting point?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=976071.0

TheKoziTwo also released some code.

I agree they should be easier to find. Probably some kind of merchant resources page on the web site should list these, but then you still have to find the resources page...

For reference, link to my integration: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg11108919#msg11108919

TheKoziTwo  nice, i was hopping to do something similar, i will take a look on the code when i have more free time and contribute where i can

[Blawpaw]

It seems the price is picking up at  the moment! DASH is going down and LTC as well. Maybe XMR can have some benefits from these drops.

In the long run Monero will do well assuming the level of current development continues.

We all know DASH is trash (and their new model of increased mining rewards going to masternode owners discourages adoption by new small users) buts its decline does not have a direct impact on Monero. 

I have never been good at predicting what will happen with LTC so I have no comment on that.

Yeah! Hard to predict what will happen to LTC; but XMR will be a good candidate as a substitute for Dash, that's for sure.

At least it has a reasonable amount of volume to do some good trades.

[ArticMine]

It seems the price is picking up at  the moment! DASH is going down and LTC as well. Maybe XMR can have some benefits from these drops.

In the long run Monero will do well assuming the level of current development continues.

We all know DASH is trash (and their new model of increased mining rewards going to masternode owners discourages adoption by new small users) buts its decline does not have a direct impact on Monero.  

I have never been good at predicting what will happen with LTC so I have no comment on that.

Yeah! Hard to predict what will happen to LTC; but XMR will be a good candidate as a substitute for Dash, that's for sure.

At least it has a reasonable amount of volume to do some good trades.

The advantage that Monero currently has over virtually every POW coin and this includes Bitcoin, is that Monero has a current working solution to the scaling of blocksize question. One needs two things 1) Adaptive limits 2) A tail emission. Solving this problem without a tail emission is far from obvious, In fact I am not even convinced one can even create a viable fee market in the absence of an emission. There is a reason why there is so little progress with the blocksize debate in Bitcoin.

[americanpegasus]

The advantage that Monero currently has over virtually every POW coin and this includes Bitcoin, is that Monero has a current working solution to the scaling of blocksize question. One needs two things 1) Adaptive limits 2) A tail emission. Solving this problem without a tail emission is far from obvious, In fact I am not even convinced one can even create a viable fee market in the absence of an emission. There is a reason why there is so little progress with the blocksize debate in Bitcoin.

It sounds like you're saying that it's impossible to solve the blocksize limit without having a tail emission.  If that is what you're saying, will you elaborate please? 
 
I do understand that both of those are advantages that Monero has to bitcoin and I think they will play more of a factor going forward. 
 
Also, do you think that Satoshi believed bitcoin could work with transaction-fee only mining and as a deflationary asset... or was it intentionally crippled from the beginning?

[XMRpromotions]

The advantage that Monero currently has over virtually every POW coin and this includes Bitcoin, is that Monero has a current working solution to the scaling of blocksize question. One needs two things 1) Adaptive limits 2) A tail emission. Solving this problem without a tail emission is far from obvious, In fact I am not even convinced one can even create a viable fee market in the absence of an emission. There is a reason why there is so little progress with the blocksize debate in Bitcoin.

It sounds like you're saying that it's impossible to solve the blocksize limit without having a tail emission.  If that is what you're saying, will you elaborate please?  
  
I do understand that both of those are advantages that Monero has to bitcoin and I think they will play more of a factor going forward.  
  
Also, do you think that Satoshi believed bitcoin could work with transaction-fee only mining and as a deflationary asset... or was it intentionally crippled from the beginning?

Like ArticMine I like the xmr tail emission schedule for the reasons he stated. I also agree that based on CURRENT transaction volume a fee only model will not work (miners would not be profitable at any reasonable btc transaction fee level).

However I do not think it was "intentionally crippled from the beginning". Satoshi clearly thought that transaction volume had the potential to scale exponentially. I read something about his prediction for a decade or two out (if anyone recalls this please help find the quote) where he though transaction volume would be VERY high or approaching zero. Either transaction volume scales high enough to support miners at reasonable tx fee levels or btc fails. He may not have known which would occur but he certainly did not "intentionally cripple" btc.

edit:
Found the quote. My memory was pretty close:

Quote from:  Satoshi Nakamoto
Feb. 14, 2010: Right.  Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating.  In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes.  I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48.msg329#msg329

[GingerAle]

The advantage that Monero currently has over virtually every POW coin and this includes Bitcoin, is that Monero has a current working solution to the scaling of blocksize question. One needs two things 1) Adaptive limits 2) A tail emission. Solving this problem without a tail emission is far from obvious, In fact I am not even convinced one can even create a viable fee market in the absence of an emission. There is a reason why there is so little progress with the blocksize debate in Bitcoin.

It sounds like you're saying that it's impossible to solve the blocksize limit without having a tail emission.  If that is what you're saying, will you elaborate please? 
 
I do understand that both of those are advantages that Monero has to bitcoin and I think they will play more of a factor going forward. 
 
Also, do you think that Satoshi believed bitcoin could work with transaction-fee only mining and as a deflationary asset... or was it intentionally crippled from the beginning?

I only recently started to understand this logic, so here's my attempt at explaining it. Basically, if you have a hard blocksize limit, you can charge fees to enter the block - because space in the block is precious. Hence, the system can sustain itself via fees. If you have an adaptive blocksize limit, space in the block is *not* precious, therefore, there's no real driving force to maintain fee pressure. Thus, with an adaptive blocksize, you need to always provide a block reward, because the space in the block doesn't become rare as time goes on. Indeed, the more the network is used, the bigger the blocks get.

I think, part of the the disconnect in the system re: fees and size is that size of transaction != value being transferred, for any coin network. Those currently using the new wallet sweep_dust (or whatever) can attest that these tiny outputs make huge transactions and are worth crap.

I do sincerely believe that Satoshi believed bitcoin could work with transaction-fee only mining, and a hard blocksize limit. I was going to launch into the differences in visions of things, but thats been discussed elsewhere to death.

[Melbustus]

... (if anyone recalls this please help find the quote)...

I put a number of the blocksize-relevant Satoshi quotes into one post a few months ago. Maybe one of them is what you're thinking of: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11625671#msg11625671

[XMRpromotions]

... (if anyone recalls this please help find the quote)...

I put a number of the blocksize-relevant Satoshi quotes into one post a few months ago. Maybe one of them is what you're thinking of: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11625671#msg11625671

I already found the quote I was looking for (edited my post above) but thanks for creating this list. It is useful (and does contain the quote I wanted!)

[smooth]

Satoshi clearly thought that transaction volume had the potential to scale exponentially.

The volume of transactions doesn't really matter. If there is no pricing power then it is a break even proposition. You can't break even on each unit and "make it up in volume". As a break even proposition, it can't be used to pay for hashing. It merely pays to actually process the transactions, not to secure the chain.

Look satoshi left for reasons undisclosed before the project was complete, or even in a workable state to scale up at all. That is quite clear. Quoting him now like he had it all figured out is just not logical.

[TrueCryptonaire]

Okay looks like I have been succesful in pushing into Monero some steam and the community is here getting back to high level of activity.
Now I need to take a break from the markets and do mathematics excercises so I am not planning to buy coins now - but I ain't dump either. 

I purchased yesterday and a day before yesterday slightly less than 29 000 XMR.

[piebeyb]

still holding the bag for monerocoin, and are in trade XMR/BTC was very quite profitable

[illodin]

We all know DASH is trash (and their new model of increased mining rewards going to masternode owners discourages adoption by new small users) buts its decline does not have a direct impact on Monero. 

Why would new small users care what % of the block reward goes to miners, and what % goes to masternodes (except that miners are known to autodump on the exchanges causing downward pressure on the new small user's freshly acquired holdings)? They might care what % goes to blockchain governed development projects though (which is 10% currently) as those funds will ensure the development won't grind to a standstill while waiting on individuals' donations or some other uncertain sources.

[smooth]

We all know DASH is trash (and their new model of increased mining rewards going to masternode owners discourages adoption by new small users) buts its decline does not have a direct impact on Monero.

Why would new small users care what % of the block reward goes to miners, and what % goes to masternodes (except that miners are known to autodump on the exchanges causing downward pressure on the new small user's freshly acquired holdings)?

If I were a new user of a coin that really hadn't gotten much of anywhere in the world yet, I would prefer to pay a low price than a high price. The last thing I would want to do is to have to bid up and pay a premium to convince an existing hoarder to part with some of his stash at a profit.

Mining as a mechanism of distribution works equally well whether new users mine themselves or rely on economic specialization in which professional miners are motivated sellers on an exchange and new users are willing buyers.

(Security is probably better in the former case, but that's another story.)

[languagehasmeaning]

We all know DASH is trash (and their new model of increased mining rewards going to masternode owners discourages adoption by new small users) buts its decline does not have a direct impact on Monero.

Why would new small users care what % of the block reward goes to miners, and what % goes to masternodes (except that miners are known to autodump on the exchanges causing downward pressure on the new small user's freshly acquired holdings)? They might care what % goes to blockchain governed development projects though (which is 10% currently) as those funds will ensure the development won't grind to a standstill while waiting on individuals' donations or some other uncertain sources.

If I wanted to start mining DASH (or any coin) I would want to receive as much as possible of the block reward and not be forced to give a lot (miners only get to keep of block rewards 45%.... WTF) of it to someone else against my will.
https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=8585240
45%   Mining Reward
45%   Masternode Reward for Proof-of-service
10%   Decentralized Governance Budget

The fact that most masternodes are owned by small number of early adopters who were in on the insta mine (and subsequent maximum xcoin/dark/dash supply reduction which increased their percentage ownership of all coins to exist in the future) adds insult to injury.

I think the majority of the DASH community (which was not in on the instamine and therefore being rewarded by this madness) has an IQ lower than most of the crypto community.

Donations for development are important. that we can agree on. Monero has a voluntary system that is not forced on all miners. Miners are free to donate as much or as little as they like without a huge % of their mining reward being taken away

[smooth]

The advantage that Monero currently has over virtually every POW coin and this includes Bitcoin, is that Monero has a current working solution to the scaling of blocksize question. One needs two things 1) Adaptive limits 2) A tail emission. Solving this problem without a tail emission is far from obvious, In fact I am not even convinced one can even create a viable fee market in the absence of an emission. There is a reason why there is so little progress with the blocksize debate in Bitcoin.

It sounds like you're saying that it's impossible to solve the blocksize limit without having a tail emission.  If that is what you're saying, will you elaborate please? 

Impossible is a strong word and it is rarely possible to actually prove something impossible.

What we do know is that people have been going around and around on these issues for years (ArticMine is more expert than I am on the history of how long and how many times this has been debated) with few if any compelling solutions. What Monero has come up with seems to be pretty close to the system that is most consistently constructed with all the pieces fitting together and might have a good possibility to work. It doesn't suffer from glaring flaws like someone needing to pick magic numbers on the block size nor failure of the penalty mechanism once the rewards run out nor expecting an open competitive market to offer excess profits for no particularly good reason.

This doesn't mean that it will work, but I really don't see any specific alternative proposals that don't rely far more on essentially blind faith.

[rpietila]

I would have supported a higher tail emission. For some above-obvious reason, zero inflation does not guarantee value appreciation, where positive inflation sometimes seems to do it.

For instance CKG was mined from 0 to 1,000,000 units in Oct/2014-Mar/2015. Since then, the inflation has been zero.

The price increased from 50,000 to 500,000 in the first period, and since then, only from 500,000 to 615,000 (so hardly anything, only 23% in 6 months..).

I bet the price will start to increase again right when we start inflation again! 

[americanpegasus]

The only core flaw I can still see in Monero is no way to incentivize full nodes unless they are also miners.  
  
You'll have to excuse my recent crusade on this topic, and I know we have spoken about this before.  I believe last time the consensus was that perhaps a feature could be added into Monero GUI to send optional donations to full nodes along with transaction fees.  
  
I feel like this would be better than nothing, but I still think this issue should be revisited (especially in light of Adam Back's recent comments: http://coinjournal.net/adam-back-on-the-overlooked-importance-of-full-nodes-in-bitcoin/)  
  
I'm not saying drop the database optimization and GUI for this, but I would like the community to continue brainstorming on ways to make this happen in the Monero universe.  We already have a TKO on all other cryptos; if we can figure out a way to financially compensate full nodes that will go from a Technical Knockout to a Triple Knockout (even a lottery system is better than nothing...  Run a full node for a chance to have all node donations for the week deposited into your address).  
  
Of course, I'm aware it's important we don't break faith with the social contract, nor try to do too much with the core Monero protocol.  Simple is best....  So maybe a voluntary donation system built into the GUI really is the most elegant solution.  
  
I still want to hear if anyone has any other ideas though.  

[smooth]

The only core flaw I can still see in Monero is no way to incentivize full nodes unless they are also miners.  

Longer term I think the best way to incentivize nodes that don't exist for some other purpose (mining or people -- or perhaps only businesses -- who want to fully verify their own transactions) is with a fee-for-service model. So if people are connecting as clients to full nodes because they are using lightweight wallets or something like that, they can pay a small fee for that service. At which point supply and demand should work out the necessary incentives. If you can stream payments to a cam girl with streamium, you can stream payments to a node for syncing your wallet.

Monero is far from being able to actually do micropayments like this with something like payment channels but this is a matter of implementation and not a design flaw or problematic social contract issue that could become a potential catastrophe.