Request for Proposals

[Nolybab]

i have been noodling the best way to get started with my project. my goal is to buy 150 BitCoins. i'm even willing to pay a premium (approximately $375-USD per block, or $7.50-USD per BTC). the key is that i need 3-clean blocks, not just 50 bitcoins and call it a block. furthermore, i want a message embedded in each block when they are generated. i realize that i will have to pay for the blocks in advance, and possibly wait for some time to actually receive the blocks. But by paying a premium and paying up front, this should 'lock-in' the price, regardless of spikes or dips during generation time.

furthermore, i am willing to disclose a bit more about my project with those willing to help me decide exactly what I should embed as a message. i know some of the required data i will need, but someone more knowledgeable in BitCoin code internals might also have some good suggestions.

Additionally, i may wish to immediately purchase another $100 BTC, which i will be using as bounty to help with various BitCoin related development projects i need done.

i will not deal with anyone that does not have a good reputation. i need to be able to trust that when i give my money, eventually i will get my BitCoin blocks, signed and delivered.

In your proposal reply, please briefly describe:

• per-block cost
• estimated timeline for delivery of 3 blocks
• your experience with bitcoin miner or client code
• your experience with bitcoin forks and alternate currencies
• summary of reputation or references
• summary of main BitCoin skillsets (e.g. BerkeleyDB, C++, P2P Protocols, etc)
• preferred method of payment
• anything else you feel I should know/consider
• guarantee that block will have EXACT message embedded (i WILL reject any block not properly signed)

i'm not in a big rush, but this is something i'd like to get completed, properly and within a reasonable amount of time.

thanks for your consideration.

[Stephen Gornick]

i am willing to disclose a bit more about my project

Anyone care to speculate as to why someone would require blocks mined with no transactions?

Perhaps for numismatic purposes?

[Stephen Gornick]

Anyone care to speculate as to why anyone would require that the blocks be mined with no transactions?

Perhaps for numismatic purposes?

i did not write i wanted blocks mined without any transactions.

I see, my misunderstanding.  I thought "clean blocks" meant "no transactions" (other than the one with the message).

what i wrote is that i want to buy a block of coins and have a specific data-message embedded in the block upon creation. then i want the entire block transferred to one of my accounts in a single transaction.

Hmm ... well, if you are just describing the address that the 50 BTC are generated for, that can be any bitcoin address, so the miner could just stuff in your address as the one that earns the generated coin.  (It still takes 120 blocks to confirm like any other new generated coins take).

[Nolybab]

so as i understand, when a miner creates a new block by solving the proof-of-work, the miner is able to send 50BTC to an account, as well as embed up to ~1MB of 'extra data', correct? I'm still trying to understand the block formation, the merkle root and the relation. What i'm trying to get my hands on is a root instance. Not as great as having a genesis block, of course, but a block So what I get is 50BTC in my account and some data in the blockchain.

so there's a question: what type of data can one embed in the block (plain text?). i know the whole "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" hard-coded comment in the genesis block(s) satoshi generated...so could i embed json, for example? maybe 64k? maybe more?

btw: i mistakenly deleted my previous long-winded post (too many edits, accidentally clicked delete)...

[Stephen Gornick]

so as i understand, when a miner creates a new block by solving the proof-of-work, the miner is able to send 50BTC to an account,

Well, the 50 BTC doesn't have to be to just one address -- it an be generated to multiple addresses, like how Eligius offers it, for instance.  

as well as embed up to ~1MB of 'extra data', correct? I'm still trying to understand the block formation, the merkle root and the relation. What i'm trying to get my hands on is a root instance. Not as great as having a genesis block, of course, but a block So what I get is 50BTC in my account and some data in the blockchain.

so there's a question: what type of data can one embed in the block (plain text?). i know the whole "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" hard-coded comment in the genesis block(s) satoshi generated...so could i embed json, for example? maybe 64k? maybe more?

Ya, ... well bitcoin wasn't built to be a data archive service and while technically you can probably do what you want, know that you'll be pissing off a few people doing so.  Particularly those who are waiting for their transactions to get included and your blocks just made them wait even longer.

But here's another variation:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47283.0

Topics like this have come up before:
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/18
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2901.0

[Nolybab]

stephen, thanks for the information. the more i think about the situation, the more I like the idea of an empty block with no transactions. I know it would likely piss a lot of people off, but what's 3 blocks in the grand scheme of things. also, i'm pretty sure i won't need even 1k of data, i just wanted to know how much. also, i see the data must be base58 encoded, apparently.

so can someone do this for me?

ultimately, my goal is to start another currency, like namecoin, only I want everything in my block-chain to be backed by bitcoins. For instance, consider, with 1 BTC input into my economy, i could generate any one of the following:

1 platinum = 1 BTC
10 titanium = 1 BTC
100 gold = 1 BTC
etc...
10000000 copper = 1 BTC
100000000 satoshi = 1 BTC

i won't get into all the details, but basically, what i wanted to do is record this information in the block-chain...think of it like some type of a 'patent' where anyone by one process would be able to determine the ratio of BTC to new currency denominations by checking the block chain. for example:

{
  realm: "Satoshi Land",
  base: "BTC",
  equivalencies: [{name:"platinum", value:100000000}, {name:"titanium", value:10000000}...],
  ...
}

then, how will i use the blocks? essentially, in the new fork that I create (think namecoin), i would put in let's say 9 BTC to create a full set of denominations (e.g. one coin for each level, so i'd only have 100 gold, for example, 10000000 copper, etc )...then i can use these as 'rewards and incentives' in a social network, and develop the new currency based upon being backed by 'satoshi'. for example, maybe when you +1 or 'like' something then the system could transfer 1--5 satoshi (or gold or even titanium) to that person, based upon selections...also, the system will periodically 'reward' people for certain actions or by chance to increase money-flow (not money creation). there would be no money creation, but simply money injection. for instance, if one person just needed to have 100 gold today, then they could put in 1 BTC and instantly convert that to 100 gold within the system. this would serve the basis for building up virtual world economies (everything is made of something). from this we can build meaningful reward systems, etc.

from this perspective, satoshi is like a super-string...the 'stuff' that makes everything up. so by depositing a bitcoin, i can literally convert magical satoshi to anything i want, be it base metals such as gold/silver, etc, to equivalences of wool or cotton.

in this way, it would be possible to base any currency upon any other currency, so long as they are ultimately backed by BTC. Also, at any time anyone could audit the main account to make sure that the money is locked in.

i'm not explaining it well because i am rushed this morning (running late for work), but the more i think about what you've written, the more I like the idea of a clean block, no transactions, so that nothing else references that block.

but let me just conclude by saying that I understand that BitCoin is NOT intended to support micro- or nano-transactions...that's the focus of my work is to enable that to happen, but not in the BitCoin blockchain, but by modeling a distributed database and attacking the problem from another standpoint. so in this way, we convert from a 'mining' economy to a transactional economy...

i know my writing isn't as concise as i'd like, but hopefully you can get the gist of what i'm proposing (still working on a formal 'white-paper' to explain it better). But in the meantime, I'd like to arrange to but the clean blocks. If i have to then i'll just buy the coins and work from there. But i'd prefer to find a way to do it such that the BTC are locked-in and backing the new currency. At any time, someone could withdraw all their gold (or silver or titanium, etc) and have it converted to BTC, destroying the virtual good. based upon this approach, if i can get the distributed database right and optimize the transactional throughput, then it would be possible to create virtual goods based upon virtual goods (e.g. to make a magical amulet, maybe it requires 1 satoshi-emerald, 10000 satoshi-essence and 10 satoshi-gold).

anyway, hopefully you have some additional insight that may help me on my journey.

[rjk]

Not sure what the point is, really.

[Nolybab]

Not sure what the point is, really.

the point is, that for BitCoin to thrive, it's going to have to go mainstream at some point. judging by what i've researched, BitCoin will NOT support micro- or nano-transactions efficiently...anything below .1BTC isn't really feasible on a mass scale (think visa volume of transactions), and BitCoin would NOT scale efficiently. and people don't want to wait 1+ hours for a transaction to go through so they can but a sandwich that take 5 minutes to prepare.  but i don't want to start with merchants. i'm looking at social networking and rewards. so if i am going to build a virtual economy based on virtual goods, then what backs the value of those virtual goods? for instance, in mafia wars, what makes that Kodiak Bear or the Red Coats valuable? answer: nothing but the players deciding they want to buy these goods, or the value in the properties of the game (attack, defense, etc). but i want to build a virtual economy based ENTIRELY upon BitCoin. not one satoshi or gold piece, strip of cloth or magical gem would exist, except for that it is backed by BTC...

as a use-case, consider the idealized satoshi-emerald (as i imagine it). such an emerald might be within the following economy:

100000000 satoshi
10000 ruby
100 sapphire
10 emerald

so in this economy, to build an especially rare satoshi-emerald, i would first have to collect 10000000 satoshi and convert that into an emerald. that would take a lot of work to amass that much satoshi, especially converting down to convert back up...but trading up 10 sapphire for an emerald would not create a satoshi-emerald. anyway, that's just one creative example. but what i'm proposing would allow me to at least create a classification of virtual goods, based upon some relative values. maybe i create two cars, a VW and a Porsche, but the VW is equivalent to a copper in that economy, but the Porsche is equivalent to a gold (just as a rough example).

anyway, there is a madness to my method. but is it really so hard to see that virtual goods are a HUGE opportunity? and is it so pointless to concern oneself with micro and nano-transactions? maybe not to a miner...but there's more to BTC than mining, especially in the coming future, as the reward keeps halving and we inch closer to the date when it will no longer be profitable to mine and only transaction fees will keep the system afloat. If i'm right, what i have planned would allow us to transition to a state where we have isolated islands of trade that allow for micro and nano-transactions based on incentive, reward and virtual goods, without taxing the blockchain (except, perhaps if you count the initial msg as spam). if i'm right, then this could also transform how Miners work with alternate currencies as auditors, more or less and get paid very good transaction fees for the processing/archival of pruned block info.

[rjk]

Not sure what the point is, really.

the point is, that for BitCoin to thrive, it's going to have to go mainstream at some point. judging by what i've researched, BitCoin will NOT support micro- or nano-transactions efficiently...anything below .1BTC isn't really feasible on a mass scale (think visa volume of transactions), and BitCoin would NOT scale efficiently. and people don't want to wait 1+ hours for a transaction to go through so they can but a sandwich that take 5 minutes to prepare.  but i don't want to start with merchants. i'm looking at social networking and rewards. so if i am going to build a virtual economy based on virtual goods, then what backs the value of those virtual goods? for instance, in mafia wars, what makes that Kodiak Bear or the Red Coats valuable? answer: nothing but the players deciding they want to buy these goods, or the value in the properties of the game (attack, defense, etc). but i want to build a virtual economy based ENTIRELY upon BitCoin. not one satoshi or gold piece, strip of cloth or magical gem would exist, except for that it is backed by BTC...

as a use-case, consider the idealized satoshi-emerald (as i imagine it). such an emerald might be within the following economy:

100000000 satoshi
10000 ruby
100 sapphire
10 emerald

so in this economy, to build an especially rare satoshi-emerald, i would first have to collect 10000000 satoshi and convert that into an emerald. that would take a lot of work to amass that much satoshi, especially converting down to convert back up...

anyway, there is a madness to my method.

I understand your method, but I question the need of another currency. Could you not use one of the myriads of alternative currencies?

And lets assume that suddenly your currency became popular for microtransactions. Why would it not suffer from the same scalability problems are Bitcoin itself?

[Nolybab]

I understand your method, but I question the need of another currency. Could you not use one of the myriads of alternative currencies?

And lets assume that suddenly your currency became popular for microtransactions. Why would it not suffer from the same scalability problems are Bitcoin itself?

well at least i'm explaining the method ok tell me, are any of the myriad of other currencies guaranteed to be backed in BTC? do they have a method for distributing the database to support micro- and non-transactions properly and efficiently?

obviously, i would need to modify the miner slightly, but the optimizations would be to transaction throughput and sharding/distributing the database for routing/processing transactions. the fact is that there is no efficient way to create a virtual good directly with BTC, or to trade those virtual goods. nevertheless, proof of work can help with that, assuming we also have some sort of a database, even if it's centralized. but i am not an advocate of centralization, and plan to attack this in a decentralized way. there are also some considerations with regard to trust, etc.

So it's not so much just another currency, it's a different way of approaching the situation. so let's say i create 100 gold...then in my graph database, i create 100 new gold vertices, with all the requisite properties defined for that virtual good. each vertices is its own entity and moves from user to user. it's only ever destroyed if someone converts it to BTC and withdraws it (note about what to do with meta-data for 'recycled' virtual goods stripped of value--i.e. the garbage heap).  if we adopt just a few standards, then anyone, in a similar manner, would be able to create any new virtual good, based upon combinations of satoshi or other virtual goods. so imagine you cannot make a magical amulet without the satoshi-emerald, and the satoshi-essence 'ingredients'...that would mean you would have to 'venture' to the other realm and acquire that ingredient (interdependent economies). there are many other very interesting phenomenon that occur in the 'game', such as economy drain (when goods are converted from one realm to another), etc. but the key is that everything that is, from satoshi. satoshi is like an alchemy base element that lets you create anything, and gives everything created a CONCRETE minimum value, regardless of what it cost you to acquire. if you get 100 gold by helping with community moderation, for example, then you can convert it to BTC and withdraw your amount, or you can use that gold with other virtual goods to build new virtual goods...making any sense at all?

If executed properly, i could see BTC backing up every virtual good in every online game in the near future, all without taxing the original blockchain (other than some limited bloat due to 'good contract' registration in origination blocks. wouldn't that be something?

[Nolybab]

surely someone has an offer, right? It's only a total of 250 BTC at a premium, with special (small) messages encoded in 3 blocks coinbase: (preferably blocks with no transactions). Perhaps $7.50 just isn't a good enough incentive? while i'm trying to figure out the 3-block issue, i'll just acquire the other 100 BTC through MTGOX (they seem reputable). I might head into IRC #bitcoin-dev and see if anyone there might be interested in taking me up on my offer and get me my signed blocks

[cbeast]

I don't mean to be off topic, but I am curious why people would do this. There are miners out there already mining without verifying transactions. Are any of them putting extra information in the blocks?

[eroxors]

You may have a hard time finding someone willing to do this... basically few people solo-mine anymore, so you'll either need to find a pool-operator or a huge operation to do it for you and the problem is, it isn't really worth their time to do it.

[Stephen Gornick]

i won't get into all the details, but basically, what i wanted to do is record this information in the block-chain...think of it like some type of a 'patent' where anyone by one process would be able to determine the ratio of BTC to new currency denominations by checking the block chain. for example:

{
  realm: "Satoshi Land",
  base: "BTC",
  equivalencies: [{name:"platinum", value:100000000}, {name:"titanium", value:10000000}...],
  ...
}

then, how will i use the blocks? essentially, in the new fork that I create (think namecoin), i would put in let's say 9 BTC to create a full set of denominations (e.g. one coin for each level, so i'd only have 100 gold, for example, 10000000 copper, etc )...then i can use these as 'rewards and incentives' in a social network, and develop the new currency based upon being backed by 'satoshi'. for example, maybe when you +1 or 'like' something then the system could transfer 1--5 satoshi (or gold or even titanium) to that person, based upon selections...also, the system will periodically 'reward' people for certain actions or by chance to increase money-flow (not money creation). there would be no money creation, but simply money injection. for instance, if one person just needed to have 100 gold today, then they could put in 1 BTC and instantly convert that to 100 gold within the system. this would serve the basis for building up virtual world economies (everything is made of something). from this we can build meaningful reward systems, etc.

from this perspective, satoshi is like a super-string...the 'stuff' that makes everything up. so by depositing a bitcoin, i can literally convert magical satoshi to anything i want, be it base metals such as gold/silver, etc, to equivalences of wool or cotton.

in this way, it would be possible to base any currency upon any other currency, so long as they are ultimately backed by BTC. Also, at any time anyone could audit the main account to make sure that the money is locked in.

Ok, I see where your thinking is, but you appear to be making this much more complicated than is necessary.

Perhaps there is some info in here that will help:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Smart_Property
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2631
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=72022.0
 - http://people.scs.carleton.ca/~clark/papers/2012_fc_pres.pdf (CommitCoin)

I presume you see the benefit of putting this message in the coinbase for a block is that you then have the message made accessible (e.g., via an API) and immutable.  But really all you are trying to do is to timestamp a document that can be parsed, to make that document easy to locate (in the same block as the coins), and to exclusively associate that document with some generated bitcoins.

Is this correct?