[ANN] FACTOM - Introducing Honesty to Record-Keeping

[tempus]

With Paul Snow stating M2 will be a big accomplishment,
can someone ELI5 M2 and the importance of it (bolded part)?


Milestone 2 will have a couple of major components. First will be the deployment of a Entry Credit store, where users can buy Entry Credits (basically access to the protocol) without touching any sort of tradable token. The second will be the release of the consensus algorithm, the software supporting distributed processing of the Factom protocol. We are working to have the first release candidate of the consensus algorithm by the end of the year...

I'm not a technical guy, so my explanation is too superficial. But basically it's about decentralizing the system. Factom will run on 32 federated servers. And if I'm right, Milestone 2 is about the protocol to make that possible (consensus of servers). M3 will be about the election mechanism, because those who use the protocol will also elect the federated servers and the audit servers (with EC's if correct).

[D-Lux]

Does anyone know if there's a way to tell the total number of FCT holders? Esp that change over time / historical? Thanks in advance.

[Nxtblg]

Wowie, what a ride! I've been playing the Lending market for most of the day (off and on) and the daily rates have been HUGE. As I write, the low offer's 0.1298% per day...and I have lotsa loans at above that rate.

Funny how Facton's market has been unusual: in that, the short sellers - over the longer term - act a lot like dumb money. I've been not only lending my Factom but also loading up more when the rates got above ~0.4% daily. Relative to the stock market, it's pretty weird. In stock-market land, the short sellers tend to be the smart money. At Polo, not so much. From what I've seen, short sellers' dumping have just held back Facton's rise. They haven't put any long-term dent in it; they've just acted as roadblocks.

The wind is definitely a tailwind...

[D-Lux]

With Paul Snow stating M2 will be a big accomplishment,
can someone ELI5 M2 and the importance of it (bolded part)?


Milestone 2 will have a couple of major components. First will be the deployment of a Entry Credit store, where users can buy Entry Credits (basically access to the protocol) without touching any sort of tradable token. The second will be the release of the consensus algorithm, the software supporting distributed processing of the Factom protocol. We are working to have the first release candidate of the consensus algorithm by the end of the year...

I'm not a technical guy, so my explanation is too superficial. But basically it's about decentralizing the system. Factom will run on 32 federated servers. And if I'm right, Milestone 2 is about the protocol to make that possible (consensus of servers). M3 will be about the election mechanism, because those who use the protocol will also elect the federated servers and the audit servers (with EC's if correct).

Yeah, I think this is basically right. Blazin888 also has a helpful overview in the first post of this new thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1521895.0

[BrianDeery]

hello Brian,
do i understand correctly that when i use factoidpapemill,i can create a new adress with a private key and safely
can send my factoids to this adress from a exchange?
Without doing or downloading another program from factom ,factomd,walletapp ect....
Than i can do this first and later try to get the wallet working.
thanks

the papermill will create the public and private keypairs.  It does not require the blockchain in order to use.  it can be imported into a wallet later and used to create transactions.

Before I would send any factoids to the paper wallet, I would import the private key into walletapp.  if the public key on the paper matches the public key in the wallet, it should be safe enough to send.  you do not need the blockchain or factomd running in order to import a private key.

if you are worried about local attackers, you can run a CD based linux distro with the computer hard drive disconnected.  this will stop the private key from being saved locally.  download and install the factomd binaries then run walletapp.

[Mimir]

 M2 will open the door to much broader adoption and a lot of new, easier-to-use and more-advaced capabilities

This is what matters though in the long term, its pointless obsessing over day to day movements, or finding meaning in an orderbook.

Does anyone know if there's a way to tell the total number of FCT holders? Esp that change over time / historical? Thanks in advance.

Total number of FCT or FCT holders? anyone can create as many wallets as they want, wouldn't say its easily tracked.

"When we get the Milestone 2 out the door, that will be my biggest win this year. ... We are at the very, very edge here, and so ... that will probably be a capstone for this year as well as many other years. It will be something I'm very proud of."

So M3 is a few years off? And theres no new factoids created/paid to the servers until then?

[MyFarm]

So M3 is a few years off? And theres no new factoids created/paid to the servers until then?

No.  M2 is the harder milestone.  M3 will simply decentralize the system.

If/when M2 works, the real fun starts.

[crazyivan]

How come there s no media coverage for recent China related stuff? Portals present whenever somebody gets robbed 2 BTC in Madagascar and they do not show something this big?

[Blazin8888]

sold on news   very nice profits. - will keep buying steem

[oneyesoneno]

How come there s no media coverage for recent China related stuff? Portals present whenever somebody gets robbed 2 BTC in Madagascar and they do not show something this big?

i did personally on my blog (indonesia) 
http://www.oneyesoneno.com/2016/08/kolaborasi-datayes-dan-factom-akhirnya-diumumkan.html

[wannarahaa]

And there it is:





DataYes + Factom Announce Collaboration

Immutable Stock Market Data Is Now Available To the World

Factom & DataYes are pleased to announce that together they have published onto the Factom blockchain pricing data for the 3,000 most valuable Chinese stocks. Program developers now have a powerful new tool for connecting their financial applications to the new world of blockchain technology.

This massive dataset of more than 10,000,000 records and growing, offers an amazing way for applications to verify and audit the world’s financial systems with more transparency and confidence than ever before.

“Some of the largest stock markets and the most valuable companies in the world are in China and so we believe it’s important to make their pricing data available to developers on a blockchain.” Said David Johnston, Chairman of the Board at Factom

“Today the exchanges send out the ‘mark to market’ price and we record them in blockchain as a two-step process. As Blockchain technology matures in the future, all transactions will be recorded on the blockchain, and the “mark to market” stock price as we know today will be evolved to ‘mark to blockchain’ naturally in one step.” Continued George Hu, General Manager at DataYes.

You can see the growing number of entries for DataYes the below chart.

(...)


About DataYes DataYes is China’s first open and big data information platform, curating both structured and unstructured data from across the globe covering key economic metrics as well as industry, company, e-commerce, search and social media data. It is a treasure box full of raw materials for artificial intelligence and quantitative investment research. DataYes is China’s leading edge financial technology company founded by a group of experts in the fields of finance and internet technology. It is invested by Wanxiang Group, one of China’s largest non-state-owned conglomerate. DataYes’ headquarter is located in Shanghai Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone, and has an office in Silicon Valley. For more information on DataYes, visit datayes.com.

(...)

https://www.factom.com/datayes-factom-announce-collaboration/

RT: https://twitter.com/factom/status/763388834096812033

Sell on news???

Everyones own choice. I never sell on good news. I would only sell if I believe to see bad signs because this are just the first steps. The real show will begin when the system is totally finished. Factom can grow for years.

Good and potential coin, don't sell and hold for long term. For bad coins, sell on the news.

Some may still sell on news, also in Factom. But maybe sold because they were "bored" and didn't understand that Factom is very reliable on delivering. More good news can be expected, M2 could come out at any time, and what I believe since the latest China-news: There may be some chances to get on other and maybe bigger exchanges in China and the more partnerships they have over there, the more attention Factom will get and the more sense it would make to provide Factoids to a larger audience - also to get external Developers in who can build Applications on top of it.

At least I don't believe the next time, weeks and months, will be boring.

The price is going down, imo this is people sell in the news, and it looks like sell on the news is correct, sell at 0.0045, and rebuy under 0.003, more factom.

[schnib]

Can anybody explain in easy words :

What is the difference in buying Factom / Factoids ?!? on an exchange like polo and invest in the Series A on BnkoftheFuture?

And how many Factom Coins will there ever be created ? Is there any distribution roadmap?

Why does the Coins have any value at all , where are they used for ? Same principle like gas in ethereum ?

[crazyivan]

And there it is:





DataYes + Factom Announce Collaboration

Immutable Stock Market Data Is Now Available To the World

Factom & DataYes are pleased to announce that together they have published onto the Factom blockchain pricing data for the 3,000 most valuable Chinese stocks. Program developers now have a powerful new tool for connecting their financial applications to the new world of blockchain technology.

This massive dataset of more than 10,000,000 records and growing, offers an amazing way for applications to verify and audit the world’s financial systems with more transparency and confidence than ever before.

“Some of the largest stock markets and the most valuable companies in the world are in China and so we believe it’s important to make their pricing data available to developers on a blockchain.” Said David Johnston, Chairman of the Board at Factom

“Today the exchanges send out the ‘mark to market’ price and we record them in blockchain as a two-step process. As Blockchain technology matures in the future, all transactions will be recorded on the blockchain, and the “mark to market” stock price as we know today will be evolved to ‘mark to blockchain’ naturally in one step.” Continued George Hu, General Manager at DataYes.

You can see the growing number of entries for DataYes the below chart.

(...)


About DataYes DataYes is China’s first open and big data information platform, curating both structured and unstructured data from across the globe covering key economic metrics as well as industry, company, e-commerce, search and social media data. It is a treasure box full of raw materials for artificial intelligence and quantitative investment research. DataYes is China’s leading edge financial technology company founded by a group of experts in the fields of finance and internet technology. It is invested by Wanxiang Group, one of China’s largest non-state-owned conglomerate. DataYes’ headquarter is located in Shanghai Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone, and has an office in Silicon Valley. For more information on DataYes, visit datayes.com.

(...)

https://www.factom.com/datayes-factom-announce-collaboration/

RT: https://twitter.com/factom/status/763388834096812033

Sell on news???

Everyones own choice. I never sell on good news. I would only sell if I believe to see bad signs because this are just the first steps. The real show will begin when the system is totally finished. Factom can grow for years.

Good and potential coin, don't sell and hold for long term. For bad coins, sell on the news.

Some may still sell on news, also in Factom. But maybe sold because they were "bored" and didn't understand that Factom is very reliable on delivering. More good news can be expected, M2 could come out at any time, and what I believe since the latest China-news: There may be some chances to get on other and maybe bigger exchanges in China and the more partnerships they have over there, the more attention Factom will get and the more sense it would make to provide Factoids to a larger audience - also to get external Developers in who can build Applications on top of it.

At least I don't believe the next time, weeks and months, will be boring.

The price is going down, imo this is people sell in the news, and it looks like sell on the news is correct, sell at 0.0045, and rebuy under 0.003, more factom.

I see u re a newbie. This generally works with a lot of pump and dump coins but with Factom is a bit different. Wait till Monday and you ll understand why.

[tempus]

Can anybody explain in easy words :

What is the difference in buying Factom / Factoids ?!? on an exchange like polo and invest in the Series A on BnkoftheFuture?

And how many Factom Coins will there ever be created ? Is there any distribution roadmap?

Why does the Coins have any value at all , where are they used for ? Same principle like gas in ethereum ?

Factom has two parts:

1. The open-source-system - the Blockchain, the protocol

2. Factom as a company


Factoids belong to 1.

Shares belong to 2.


Factoids are something like the system-currency. The main purpose is: About 73.000 new FCT's per month as payment for those who run the federated servers.

But also: Whenever Customers purchase Entry Credits, Factoids are converted into Entry Credits and consumed/burned - out of the system.


That means:

On one side is Factoid-creation ("Inflation"): 73k Factoids per month
On the other side is consumption: Factoid-to-Entry-Credit-conversion - burning

That also means:

The higher the demand for EC's, the more Factoids will be burned, the higher the price has to rise or otherwise more Factoids would be burned than new created.  



Who wants to know what Entry Credits are and what advantages they have:


(...)

Entry credits are created out of factoids (by burning them) at an exchange rate dictated by the system, but they can't be turned back into factoids

Entry credits can be created ahead of time to lock in their factoid-entry credit exchange rate, and used later down the line

The exchange rate is tweaked by the system to stabilise the price of entry credits, while still allowing factoids to be a free-floating currency

Entry credits can only be spent (burned) to store entries into Factom - they can't be spent elsewhere

Entry credits are not transferable - they can only be spent by the account that received them during the factoid->entry credit conversion

These restrictions create a few interesting features for the system that I don't see explored much in other cryptocurrencies:

It is possible to put a large amount of entry credit tokens on a hot wallet without worrying much about theft - any would-be hacker wouldn't be able to cash out the stored value, only spend it. This makes production servers much less of a target for attacks.

Being able to lock in the price of the tokens ahead of time means companies can budget ahead of time and don't have to worry about token volatility

Having the exact amount of tokens in an account, one always knows how many transactions they can perform in the system before running out
http://bravenewcoin.com/news/transactional-currencies-entry-credits-and-gas/

[oneyesoneno]

Can anybody explain in easy words :

What is the difference in buying Factom / Factoids ?!? on an exchange like polo and invest in the Series A on BnkoftheFuture?

And how many Factom Coins will there ever be created ? Is there any distribution roadmap?

Why does the Coins have any value at all , where are they used for ? Same principle like gas in ethereum ?

The more organizations use Factom to record their data....
the more factoid is burned along the process.
Hence Factoid supply will keep decreasing.

And the interesting part is the entry credit (EC) which is convert from Factoid
is always cost $0.01 per entry...
so even the price of factoid is skyrocketing to planet mars or to another universe
it still wont effect their partner's cost for inputting data.

This is actually good...
their business is not effected by the price of factoid....
they don't care if 1 factoid is $1000...
business still run...
and there's always a need for factoid.

Please correct me if i am wrong in any way since I just get into Factom like 2months ago...

[shanem]

Unless Factom releases M2 in the next few weeks, FCT will go back down to below 0.003. Factom rarely gets a sustained pump like ETH. The last huge pump was the one in the March when FCT got pumped from 0.0025 to above 0.008.

[D-Lux]

And the interesting part is the entry credit (EC) which is convert from Factoid
is always cost $0.01 per entry...
so even the price of factoid is skyrocketing to planet mars or to another universe
it still wont effect their partner's cost for inputting data.

This is actually good...
their business is not effected by the price of factoid....
they don't care if 1 factoid is $1000...
business still run...
and there's always a need for factoid.

Please correct me if i am wrong in any way since I just get into Factom like 2months ago...

I think this is basically correct, though I believe (also: correct me if I'm wrong plz) that the main point of EC is the ability to "lock in" a price, which implies that the cost to use the Factom system will actually vary over time. Some notes I took in the past, from various sources:

Paul Snow: “The Federated Servers set the exchange rate of Factoids to Entry Credits. They do so to maintain a constant real world cost for Entry Credits, around 1/10 of a cent today. ... Someone that wants to use the Factom protocol never has to touch a tradable token. They can provide an Entry Credit address to a third party that converts Factoids to Entry Credits to charge their Entry Credit Address.”

So it looks like the price of Entry Credits remains effectively constant, but the price of Factoids varies according to the market.

Snow: “By allowing servers to set the conversion rate from Factoids to Entry Credits, Entry Credit value can be kept absolutely stable relative to dollars (or some other currency) in the real world, no matter what happens with the Factoid token. This is important for applications, because it allows them to plan their costs over time without worry about currency value fluctuations.”

Snow: “As we onboard a number of sizable applications next year, and as we flush out the rest of the protocol, I believe the token price will take care of itself.”

Snow: “But to build a decentralized protocol, the incentive must be paid out by the protocol itself. As we have built it, each server gets paid the factoid token, and they can in fact never hand them to anyone at all, and sell Entry Credits by converting said tokens into Entry Credits as they make their sales. But notice they cannot sell more Entry Credits than they earned, so they cannot abuse the rest of the network by over selling Entry Credits. ... Furthermore, the protocol can be used to select servers and boot servers out. Because the code is managing all of this, no coordination with the servers is required to participate, and no coordination with the servers is required if a server leaves. ... But if a server didn't care to go into that business, they can transfer the right to sell Entry Credits to someone else that does. How? By simply selling their factoids to the aspiring Entry Credit store. And again, the store cannot over sell Entry Credits, since the factoids naturally handle the accounting. ... This is because Factoids neatly represent the right to obligate the protocol.”

Snow: “The token supply can grow (if speculators drive up the price) until the price stabilizes. And the token supply can fall (if speculators drive the price down) until the price stabilizes. But in both cases, the stable price is when the value of the token matches the money real applications are spending to buy Entry Credits in order to put data into the protocol. That is because the 73K factoids generated each year naturally trends to the value of the factoids drained from the supply to write into the protocol. If people are spending 1 million dollars to put data into factom per year, then 73K factoids should be worth 1 million dollars.”

So it appears the price of Factoids is directly related to the extent of their real-world use.

There's also a helpful discussion here, with Brian Deery providing some clarifications:

https://www.reddit.com/r/factom/comments/436cj9/entry_credits_and_factoids/

[willowfoot]

http://thedashtimes.com/2016/08/11/datayes-and-factom-collobrate/

"As Blockchain technology matures in the future, all transactions will be recorded on the blockchain,
and the “mark to market” stock price as we know today will be evolved to ‘mark to blockchain’ naturally in one step"

[Cryptorials]

Unless Factom releases M2 in the next few weeks, FCT will go back down to below 0.003. Factom rarely gets a sustained pump like ETH. The last huge pump was the one in the March when FCT got pumped from 0.0025 to above 0.008.

That's my bet, I sold and am hoping to buy back at that price.

[D-Lux]

Unless Factom releases M2 in the next few weeks, FCT will go back down to below 0.003. Factom rarely gets a sustained pump like ETH. The last huge pump was the one in the March when FCT got pumped from 0.0025 to above 0.008.

That's my bet, I sold and am hoping to buy back at that price.

I don't know ... that could happen but I think it's risky. Seems like awareness is reaching a tipping point. Among other metrics:

http://redditmetrics.com/r/factom
[click on "Total Subscribers"]

Plus bnktothefuture fundraising news will probably be announced early next week. And M2 is looking imminent. Given the likely price rise from these announcements, I personally would reconsider trying to shave a few percentage points off the buy-price now vs. risking missing out on a big rise. It may work out, but I think it's a very risky strategy. Hope whatever you choose works out for you, though.