[ANN] SMLY- smileycoin - for rewards in education

[marksteven]

what about this coin, is it still alive?

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[gstefans]

what about this coin, is it still alive?

Very much alive.

See the posts above.

[Haterreact]

is there any active development going on?
could we expect something from this coin in near future?

[gstefans]

is there any active development going on?
could we expect something from this coin in near future?

There is no full time programmer on this, if that is what you mean, and things always move more slowly than one would like.

That said, note that the coin is given to hundreds of new students every year. The coin is listed and has considerable volume on its main exchanges. It's tied to the tutor-web system which is in continuous use in several schools and universities, from Iceland to Kenya. This will not go away, only increase in use.

Most of our development takes place during summer. Last summer we saw two new wallets (coinomi and a breadwallet) along with some other stuff.

Next summer we're hoping to add another mining algorithm plus some new features. Our wish-list is pretty long :-)

[Haterreact]

is there any active development going on?
could we expect something from this coin in near future?

There is no full time programmer on this, if that is what you mean, and things always move more slowly than one would like.

That said, note that the coin is given to hundreds of new students every year. The coin is listed and has considerable volume on its main exchanges. It's tied to the tutor-web system which is in continuous use in several schools and universities, from Iceland to Kenya. This will not go away, only increase in use.

Most of our development takes place during summer. Last summer we saw two new wallets (coinomi and a breadwallet) along with some other stuff.

Next summer we're hoping to add another mining algorithm plus some new features. Our wish-list is pretty long :-)

thanks for reply.
I was looking into trading SMLY, i see on 3-4 occasions, there have been huge dumps. Are these dumps by development team ?or miners taking rewards according to you? Or
Is the premine been dumped? 

[gstefans]

is there any active development going on?
could we expect something from this coin in near future?

There is no full time programmer on this, if that is what you mean, and things always move more slowly than one would like.

That said, note that the coin is given to hundreds of new students every year. The coin is listed and has considerable volume on its main exchanges. It's tied to the tutor-web system which is in continuous use in several schools and universities, from Iceland to Kenya. This will not go away, only increase in use.

Most of our development takes place during summer. Last summer we saw two new wallets (coinomi and a breadwallet) along with some other stuff.

Next summer we're hoping to add another mining algorithm plus some new features. Our wish-list is pretty long :-)

thanks for reply.
I was looking into trading SMLY, i see on 3-4 occasions, there have been huge dumps. Are these dumps by development team ?or miners taking rewards according to you? Or
Is the premine been dumped? 

I can't speak for all the dumps but I know about some:

First: The premine is only used in accordance with the mandate at tutor-web.info/smileycoin - ie mostly for rewarding students and very occasionally for special projects.

Students have been awarded about 2.7 billion  SMLY and many students only redeemed their SMLY at the end of the semester causing quite a dump.

Most of these "dumps" are not really dumps - it just that the volume is so low that a sale of 1 BTC worth of SMLY seriously affects the price.

[yoohoo309]

• We really need to get into ShapeShift. Let them know that you think SMLY should be included.
• Uquid has not replied to a request to include SMLY on their card. Help us get there.
• Same with Gift Off
• etc etc

Doesn't look like there's much good talking to ShapeShift right now: https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees/status/814547116655869952

PM'd the user uquid: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=844100

Might not be much point asking GiftOff right now: https://giftoff.com/faq

Gift Off accepts digital currencies through an integration with Shapeshift.io’s awesome service. We can only accept digital currencies that are accepted by them. If you have a currency you’d like to spend at Gift Off, it’s best to get in touch with them to see if they’ll add it to their service.

Stuff is happening with SMLY, it's true    But the blocktime issues do need fixing before this coin will see volume, and thereby acceptance onto services.  And you see that HD seeds are slowly becoming standard in wallets, as well they should be.  Is there any way to have a fulltime dev, with your summer students working on stuff that the main dev isn't working on?

'fraid we won't be able to find the time/money for a full-time dev :-(

but i'm hoping the blocktime issue has been alleviated for now, just through more and stable mining...

if it will be so ..then it will be a good chance to flourish a project on right path .....

[gstefans]

The cryptopia mining pool seems to be closing down. This was a very, very nice pool: If you have any influence at cryptopia, please help us to keep this running.

[gstefans]

In the next month or two we should define exactly how we want to modify the mining algorithm and, if needed, the reward scheme.

It's really tempting to move towards a multi-algo coin. Since we only have finite resources it's also tempting to just pick a well-established second algorithm, where X11 must be a strong contender. One worry is the existence of some X11 ASICs. It would be good to get a discussion on this.

Next, we should think about whether such X11-generated blocks should have exactly the same reward type as is currently used. An argument could be made that we should do one or more of the following:

• Auto-distribute some of the block rewards to existing coin holders.
• Auto-donate some of the coins to a specified cause.

At one extreme, the miner gets very little and there will be few miners. At the other extreme we're just doing the same as before, with one more algorithm. In-between, we may be encouraging people to hold onto their coins and we may also be supporting something useful.

Let me give some background. If I were starting the SMLY today I think I would change at least the following:

• Choose a different mining algorithm (or a combination of several).
• Try to give an incentive to hold onto one's coins. I'm not convinced that the proof-of-stake approach is the way to go. My preference would be to figure out a way to take a large portion (30%?) of the mining reward and simply split this among existing owners.
• There would not be a premine.
• One would automatically funnel a large portion (30%?) of the mining rewards to a handful of addresses belonging to specified charities (the tutor-web system and the Education-in-a-suitcase, EIAS, non-profit).

In the current case there is no need to donate to the tutor-web system which owns the premine (and we can't really take that back). It would be extremely useful for EIAS to receive donations.

Similarly, suppose we figured out a way to maintain a list of all addresses containing at least x SMLY and we split 30% of the mining rewards evenly among those addresses. If this is a part of the criterion for accepting a new (X11) block, then my gut feeling says we won't have any ASICs messing up the scene. It also means we have a strong incentive to keep a whole lot of SMLY (we can discuss the numbers).

Another way to say this is that the new (X11) miners get a lower reward than the scrypt miners. Of course that will result in fewer miners bothering to mine, but it will also result in a lower difficulty.

I don't know whether this is all feasible or acceptable, but I'd like a discussion, please!

[dgmon]

It's really tempting to move towards a multi-algo coin. Since we only have finite resources it's also tempting to just pick a well-established second algorithm, where X11 must be a strong contender. One worry is the existence of some X11 ASICs. It would be good to get a discussion on this.

Next, we should think about whether such X11-generated blocks should have exactly the same reward type as is currently used. An argument could be made that we should do one or more of the following:

• Auto-distribute some of the block rewards to existing coin holders.
• Auto-donate some of the coins to a specified cause.

At one extreme, the miner gets very little and there will be few miners. At the other extreme we're just doing the same as before, with one more algorithm. In-between, we may be encouraging people to hold onto their coins and we may also be supporting something useful.

Let me give some background. If I were starting the SMLY today I think I would change at least the following:

• Choose a different mining algorithm (or a combination of several).
• Try to give an incentive to hold onto one's coins. I'm not convinced that the proof-of-stake approach is the way to go. My preference would be to figure out a way to take a large portion (30%?) of the mining reward and simply split this among existing owners.
• There would not be a premine.
• One would automatically funnel a large portion (30%?) of the mining rewards to a handful of addresses belonging to specified charities (the tutor-web system and the Education-in-a-suitcase, EIAS, non-profit).

In the current case there is no need to donate to the tutor-web system which owns the premine (and we can't really take that back). It would be extremely useful for EIAS to receive donations.

Similarly, suppose we figured out a way to maintain a list of all addresses containing at least x SMLY and we split 30% of the mining rewards evenly among those addresses. If this is a part of the criterion for accepting a new (X11) block, then my gut feeling says we won't have any ASICs messing up the scene. It also means we have a strong incentive to keep a whole lot of SMLY (we can discuss the numbers).

Another way to say this is that the new (X11) miners get a lower reward than the scrypt miners. Of course that will result in fewer miners bothering to mine, but it will also result in a lower difficulty.

Well I'm a PoS fan but it sounds like you know what you're doing so I will get by with whatever    I like the idea of coins being distributed to holders but then I'm biased    I suppose you want a way to allow other educational institutions to replenish their stockpiles a little if they adopt the SMLY system?

I don't know much about mining algos.  X11 sounds good, but there is also X13 and X15 

[gstefans]

It's really tempting to move towards a multi-algo coin. Since we only have finite resources it's also tempting to just pick a well-established second algorithm, where X11 must be a strong contender. One worry is the existence of some X11 ASICs. It would be good to get a discussion on this.

Next, we should think about whether such X11-generated blocks should have exactly the same reward type as is currently used. An argument could be made that we should do one or more of the following:

• Auto-distribute some of the block rewards to existing coin holders.
• Auto-donate some of the coins to a specified cause.

At one extreme, the miner gets very little and there will be few miners. At the other extreme we're just doing the same as before, with one more algorithm. In-between, we may be encouraging people to hold onto their coins and we may also be supporting something useful.

Let me give some background. If I were starting the SMLY today I think I would change at least the following:

• Choose a different mining algorithm (or a combination of several).
• Try to give an incentive to hold onto one's coins. I'm not convinced that the proof-of-stake approach is the way to go. My preference would be to figure out a way to take a large portion (30%?) of the mining reward and simply split this among existing owners.
• There would not be a premine.
• One would automatically funnel a large portion (30%?) of the mining rewards to a handful of addresses belonging to specified charities (the tutor-web system and the Education-in-a-suitcase, EIAS, non-profit).

In the current case there is no need to donate to the tutor-web system which owns the premine (and we can't really take that back). It would be extremely useful for EIAS to receive donations.

Similarly, suppose we figured out a way to maintain a list of all addresses containing at least x SMLY and we split 30% of the mining rewards evenly among those addresses. If this is a part of the criterion for accepting a new (X11) block, then my gut feeling says we won't have any ASICs messing up the scene. It also means we have a strong incentive to keep a whole lot of SMLY (we can discuss the numbers).

Another way to say this is that the new (X11) miners get a lower reward than the scrypt miners. Of course that will result in fewer miners bothering to mine, but it will also result in a lower difficulty.

Well I'm a PoS fan but it sounds like you know what you're doing so I will get by with whatever    I like the idea of coins being distributed to holders but then I'm biased    I suppose you want a way to allow other educational institutions to replenish their stockpiles a little if they adopt the SMLY system?

Yeah, that's one. The thing is that if we donate to a non-profit, then they can do whatever they like, whereas we're pretty tied up with the premine and can only do exactly what we've said we'd do with it. For example, EIAS might use the funds buy servers or whatever.

I don't know much about mining algos.  X11 sounds good, but there is also X13 and X15  

Yes, and we need to do a proper evaluation. We don't want to pick something too new, but e.g. the Baikal Mini Miner ASIC can apparently mine X11, X13, X14, X15, Quark and Qubit. Maybe it's not a problem - depends a bit on exactly how the blocks are generated. For example, if we redesign our wallets around the above two main points, then several things will happen and I'd expect a much-reduced incentive for X*-ASIC mining.

We need to talk about the principles of how we distribute coins to holders. We don't really want to just do this in proportion to current ownership since that gives most to the premine wallets which really should be kept out of it. So we could e.g. either distribute coins evenly to every address which has above a pre-specified minimum number, x, of SMLY, or to the top x% addresses. The problem with the latter is that it may require a sort of all addresses for every block. So why don't we try to implement something like this: If there are n addresses with at least x SMLY then they each get I/n SMLY when the next block is generated. Note that x needs to be over 24 million SMLY since that's the amount that the initial premine sent to each premine address (currently 24M is worth about $60 [corrected]).

[gstefans]

It's really tempting to move towards a multi-algo coin. Since we only have finite resources it's also tempting to just pick a well-established second algorithm, where X11 must be a strong contender. One worry is the existence of some X11 ASICs. It would be good to get a discussion on this.

Next, we should think about whether such X11-generated blocks should have exactly the same reward type as is currently used. An argument could be made that we should do one or more of the following:

• Auto-distribute some of the block rewards to existing coin holders.
• Auto-donate some of the coins to a specified cause.

At one extreme, the miner gets very little and there will be few miners. At the other extreme we're just doing the same as before, with one more algorithm. In-between, we may be encouraging people to hold onto their coins and we may also be supporting something useful.

Let me give some background. If I were starting the SMLY today I think I would change at least the following:

• Choose a different mining algorithm (or a combination of several).
• Try to give an incentive to hold onto one's coins. I'm not convinced that the proof-of-stake approach is the way to go. My preference would be to figure out a way to take a large portion (30%?) of the mining reward and simply split this among existing owners.
• There would not be a premine.
• One would automatically funnel a large portion (30%?) of the mining rewards to a handful of addresses belonging to specified charities (the tutor-web system and the Education-in-a-suitcase, EIAS, non-profit).

In the current case there is no need to donate to the tutor-web system which owns the premine (and we can't really take that back). It would be extremely useful for EIAS to receive donations.

Similarly, suppose we figured out a way to maintain a list of all addresses containing at least x SMLY and we split 30% of the mining rewards evenly among those addresses. If this is a part of the criterion for accepting a new (X11) block, then my gut feeling says we won't have any ASICs messing up the scene. It also means we have a strong incentive to keep a whole lot of SMLY (we can discuss the numbers).

Another way to say this is that the new (X11) miners get a lower reward than the scrypt miners. Of course that will result in fewer miners bothering to mine, but it will also result in a lower difficulty.

Well I'm a PoS fan but it sounds like you know what you're doing so I will get by with whatever    I like the idea of coins being distributed to holders but then I'm biased    I suppose you want a way to allow other educational institutions to replenish their stockpiles a little if they adopt the SMLY system?

Yeah, that's one. The thing is that if we donate to a non-profit, then they can do whatever they like, whereas we're pretty tied up with the premine and can only do exactly what we've said we'd do with it. For example, EIAS might use the funds buy servers or whatever.

I don't know much about mining algos.  X11 sounds good, but there is also X13 and X15  

Yes, and we need to do a proper evaluation. We don't want to pick something too new, but e.g. the Baikal Mini Miner ASIC can apparently mine X11, X13, X14, X15, Quark and Qubit. Maybe it's not a problem - depends a bit on exactly how the blocks are generated. For example, if we redesign our wallets around the above two main points, then several things will happen and I'd expect a much-reduced incentive for X*-ASIC mining.

We need to talk about the principles of how we distribute coins to holders. We don't really want to just do this in proportion to current ownership since that gives most to the premine wallets which really should be kept out of it. So we could e.g. either distribute coins evenly to every address which has above a pre-specified minimum number, x, of SMLY, or to the top x% addresses. The problem with the latter is that it may require a sort of all addresses for every block. So why don't we try to implement something like this: If there are n addresses with at least x SMLY then they each get I/n SMLY when the next block is generated. Note that x needs to be over 24 million SMLY since that's the amount that the initial premine sent to each premine address (currently 24M is worth about $60 [corrected]).

Since there are no objections, we will investigate this further. There will be several steps, with several smaller decisions to be taken underway, depending on how things work out. If the POS-style approach can be implemented by paying a fixed fee to every address containing at least e.g. 25 M SMLY, then that is very tempting. If it leads to even minor stockpiling, that has the potential to affect the price considerably.

The large pools as a bit of a problem for us since they have always jumped in with a lot of hashpower whenever SMLY mining appears profitable to them - and then they leave for another coin. Basically, their coin-switching algorithms are very inefficient and do not give anything like optimal returns to the pools' miners. It should not be a goal for us to attract this behaviour.

We could in principle move completely out of POW and to some POS scheme but an intermediate scheme with low mining rewards looks more tempting at the moment.

Having given the whole issue some thought, my suggestion today is to eventually change all mining rewards to something like 1000 SMLY (whether X11 or scrypt) and pay the rest to large wallets ("interest") and as donations. It remains to be seen whether this can be implemented, but the suggestion would be to keep track of the block when each UTXO was last touched and pay eg 4500 coins to the UTXO address over 25 M SMLY and with the oldest block. With the current number of SMLY in actual circulation, this scheme ensures that every such wallet will get several payments every day.

Someone will need to check whether there can be several outputs for the coinbase transaction in the block. I don't see that this breaks anything obvious, but you never know. If it does not, then we can implement this initially as an optional change while we're testing it and then move on to only accept blocks with this implementations (a hard fork).

In any case, adding the new algorithm (X11?) will require a hard fork.

Of course this is all still open for discussion.

Let's aim for a consensus - in this forum - by the end of March 2017. The rest will then just depend on what can actually be implemented, technically and realistically.

[dgmon]

Since there are no objections, we will investigate this further. There will be several steps, with several smaller decisions to be taken underway, depending on how things work out. If the POS-style approach can be implemented by paying a fixed fee to every address containing at least e.g. 25 M SMLY, then that is very tempting. If it leads to even minor stockpiling, that has the potential to affect the price considerably.

The large pools as a bit of a problem for us since they have always jumped in with a lot of hashpower whenever SMLY mining appears profitable to them - and then they leave for another coin. Basically, their coin-switching algorithms are very inefficient and do not give anything like optimal returns to the pools' miners. It should not be a goal for us to attract this behaviour.

We could in principle move completely out of POW and to some POS scheme but an intermediate scheme with low mining rewards looks more tempting at the moment.

Having given the whole issue some thought, my suggestion today is to eventually change all mining rewards to something like 1000 SMLY (whether X11 or scrypt) and pay the rest to large wallets ("interest") and as donations. It remains to be seen whether this can be implemented, but the suggestion would be to keep track of the block when each UTXO was last touched and pay eg 4500 coins to the UTXO address over 25 M SMLY and with the oldest block. With the current number of SMLY in actual circulation, this scheme ensures that every such wallet will get several payments every day.

Someone will need to check whether there can be several outputs for the coinbase transaction in the block. I don't see that this breaks anything obvious, but you never know. If it does not, then we can implement this initially as an optional change while we're testing it and then move on to only accept blocks with this implementations (a hard fork).

In any case, adding the new algorithm (X11?) will require a hard fork.

Of course this is all still open for discussion.

Let's aim for a consensus - in this forum - by the end of March 2017. The rest will then just depend on what can actually be implemented, technically and realistically.

I'm not really much of a miner so I will probably just go along with whatever      No objections to anything you've said so far.  I don't know what you meant by "and with the oldest block".

[gstefans]

I'm not really much of a miner so I will probably just go along with whatever      No objections to anything you've said so far. 

OK :-)

I don't know what you meant by "and with the oldest block".

Re "oldest block": Suppose miners are mining block 131 and we both have 25 M SMLY, you in address A and me in address B. Suppose also the content at your address A was last changed at block 120 but mine at block 125. If everyone else has changed the content of such addresses after those blocks, then you should get the next "interest" part of the block reward and your "most recent block" changes to 131. When block 132 comes up I will get the reward and my "most recent block" changes to 132. Someone else will now have the oldest "most recent block" and get the interest from block 133. Eventually everyone has had their "most recent block" changed and yours becomes the oldest.

If this is doable, then it should give a fair way of splitting the reward in a PoS-sort of way. The algorithm just loops through every "holding" address and rewards them in turn.

Anyone who changes the amount in an address just gets moved to the end and that's no big deal if it just happens occasionally, but if the amount in the address is bouncing all over then this is not a "holding" address.

I should add that this is not a new idea. Dash does pretty much the same thing according to this report: https://cointelegraph.com/news/fastest-crypto-for-cash-ever-dash-funds-wall-of-coins-integration

-- and that should imply that this is doable, one way or another :-)

[dgmon]

I don't know what you meant by "and with the oldest block".

Re "oldest block": Suppose miners are mining block 131 and we both have 25 M SMLY, you in address A and me in address B. Suppose also the content at your address A was last changed at block 120 but mine at block 125. If everyone else has changed the content of such addresses after those blocks, then you should get the next "interest" part of the block reward and your "most recent block" changes to 131. When block 132 comes up I will get the reward and my "most recent block" changes to 132. Someone else will now have the oldest "most recent block" and get the interest from block 133. Eventually everyone has had their "most recent block" changed and yours becomes the oldest.

If this is doable, then it should give a fair way of splitting the reward in a PoS-sort of way. The algorithm just loops through every "holding" address and rewards them in turn.

Anyone who changes the amount in an address just gets moved to the end and that's no big deal if it just happens occasionally, but if the amount in the address is bouncing all over then this is not a "holding" address.

I should add that this is not a new idea. Dash does pretty much the same thing according to this report: https://cointelegraph.com/news/fastest-crypto-for-cash-ever-dash-funds-wall-of-coins-integration

-- and that should imply that this is doable, one way or another :-)

It sounds great! 

[gstefans]

So March is almost over and there have been no objections. Also we have secured funds and people to implement stuff.

We will therefore try to implement the following changes in summer:

• Add X11 as a second mining algorithm
• Change the 10,000 SMLY block reward allocation: 1,000 to the miner; 4,500 to large SMLY holders; 4,500 as donations

A large SMLY holder is any address holding at least 25 M SMLY (i.e. untouched for some time, initially about 1.5 hours).

A collection of (10?) rotating donation addresses will be in the hands of the non-profit organisation Education in a suitcase (normally as cold storage). Suggestions on how to use the donations can be raised on this list.

[Bimmerhead]

How do you deter students from gaming the system by completing the same easy quiz over-and-over for rewards?

[gstefans]

How do you deter students from gaming the system by completing the same easy quiz over-and-over for rewards?

We've seen this a few times (we manually check the rewards on a daily basis) - and we've added sentences describing that this is an abuse of the system. The first thing is to send them an email, which is easy enough. If they continue we've reduced the reward, which is awkward but not really a problem:

The principle should be to have low rewards for a unit with small and easy content. A "unit" here is a "lecture" and when people ace it they get the maximum reward for the lecture. Lectures are grouped into tutorials and when someone aces an entire tutorial they get much more.

We have a goal of spending a certain amount per year and to get there we had to increase the lecture rewards across the board. The fact that the abuse cases lead to a reduction in a handful of lectures is therefore not a problem - it just means that some of the easy lectures have much lower rewards than the more difficult ones -- and much, much less than the tutorial rewards.

There are a few more changes on the agenda: For example, students are sometimes asked to submit new material, as new drills or as examples. We will implement high rewards when students submit good material, as determined through peer-evaluation. This is much harder to abuse and is worth much more since it also improves the system. When we get to this stage we can reduce the generic lecture awards across the board and pay more for the stuff which actually shows you are really good.

Of course we want to keep the system open. Although a user can not do the same drill multiple times for rewards, a person can register under different user names and this is rather hard to limit without reducing free access.

[Bimmerhead]

Have you thought of a way of controlling registrations through the physical distribution of anonymous accounts to students, or perhaps using kennitala as in the Auroracoin airdrop?

[gstefans]

Have you thought of a way of controlling registrations through the physical distribution of anonymous accounts to students, or perhaps using kennitala as in the Auroracoin airdrop?

No, haven't thought of this - yet 

But a kennitala or social security number wouldn't really work since we have a number of students e.g. from Kenya.

Of course we would love to see students from various slums deciding to use the system, but as far as we know, we have only had low-income students come in through various teachers in places like Kenya. Some of these instructors have just been in touch and we've set up a class for them.

There are a number of student registrations but we don't have a good overview of how far they get.