We definitely need to be more strategic about our marketing. This doesn’t necessarily cost money, and indeed it is the strategy and philosophy that needs work. We are currently struggling with how to retain our down-to-earth philosophy and reputation while adopting a more modern marketing strategy.
values, then principles, then practices. One will lead to the next.
I’m only a year in to knowing about the Peercoin community, but the technology clearly reflects values. State the values, you’ll see clearly how they lead to prior principles, which lead to code (past , present, and future).
then communicate it, thats the core of the marketing strategy.
Then the third-party apps and businesses will understand how to form an ecosystem aligned naturally.
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And this is basically what we’ve already been working on for the past couple years with PeerAssets, increasing applications and use cases for our blockchain.
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See?
This is exactly what I’ve been talking about for so long now.
Peercoin believed that all they had to do was come up with great technology, keep it that way, and one day when they were ready, the floodgates would open, and people would come rushing in.
It isn’t like that… Even coindesk admits it in this article:
https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-twitter-toxic-combination-troubling-future/
Every time you see the word ARDOR or IGNIS just re-insert Peercoin into the article, and the same situation applies to our community as well.
If any of you think for a moment, that the press is going to take us into adoption or a better price “when the word gets out”. It won’t.
It would be wise to start building our marketing fund now, and keep building it. We’re going to need it.
This is not true. Of course we know there is a need for marketing, but it’s difficult to do marketing until we actually have something to show off, which is why we’ve spent so much time developing over the past couple years. PeerAssets is nearly done and they’re currently doing testing on the client. Indicium would follow sometime after this. PeerAssets gives Peercoin an actual use case besides just using the blockchain to transact PPC. Peercoin by itself is not as interesting without something to secure. It was meant to be a way to secure value and tokens are an important form of value. The PeerAssets protocol is something we can use to actively market Peercoin to people and projects that want to create tokens.
If we are to find out if either alternative is a viable option for funding, then we need to do some rough math to determine an estimate for how much revenue each would generate. So first of all, this is what I came up with earlier in the thread for siphoning a percent of PoS rewards…
This means altering PoS to collect a small percent of block rewards is not worth the cost of doing the work to implement the changes. Maybe it would make a difference in the future if the value is higher, but right now it will not help matters to collect an extra 500 PPC per year.
Now we have to consider the reality of siphoning a percent of PoW rewards instead. Here was a post from @nohea that included some numbers…
If these numbers are correct, then let’s say Peercoin has about 24 PoW blocks per day, which is 1 PoW block per hour. In reality it varies, but we’ll use this number just to form a calculation since it is somewhere in the middle between 14 and 30. The PoW block reward is also dynamic and constantly changes based on the hashing power being put toward the network, so it’s difficult to get exact numbers for this. At the time of the writing of Nohea’s post though, each PoW block reward was worth about 39 PPC. If there are 24 PoW blocks in a day that is 936 PPC. If 10% of that is automatically siphoned away as a tax, that is 93.6 PPC. At the current price of about $1.90 per PPC that is $177.84 in one day. If these numbers stayed exactly the same, that is $5,513 per month and $64,991 per year.
These numbers won’t remain constant though. The number of blocks per day varies. The reward per block varies because of the dynamic PoW reward built into the protocol. Also the price per PPC and thus the dollar value of siphoned mining rewards will vary. $66,156 per year at $1.90 per PPC today could be $341,640 per year at $10 per PPC tomorrow or even $3,416,400 at $100 per PPC at a much later date. If the value per coin ever got that high then the tax could be reduced. If value fell below $1.90 per PPC then obviously the total value collected would be lower. It’s just very difficult to predict because of all the different variables in play.
What I think you can draw from these rough numbers though is that siphoning a percentage of PoW rewards would pay off much more than siphoning PoS rewards. If it was to be done, then altering PoW makes more sense as there is a much larger financial impact to be gained from doing the development work to make it happen.
The question though is what would the impact be on miner participation? It was suggested earlier in the thread that miners would just move to another network if we enforced a mandatory 10% tax on every PoW block reward. There are others on Bitcointalk and our Discord chat who said Vertcoin implemented this 10% tax and their miners ended up supporting it. The thing is Vertcoin is a PoW network, so they have way more PoW blocks to extract value from than Peercoin does.
If our miners accepted a 10% loss in reward then it would be because they see it positively impacting the price over time. If a percentage of miners did drop out and move to another network then it would result in hashing power dropping and PoW inflation increasing. This scenario would actually result in more mined coins being extracted for Foundation use. The loss of miners would not impact security directly as PoS alone secures the network and not PoW. It would however impact security indirectly through loss of entropy and it would impact the PoW inflation rate with the total supply rising faster.
So the question I think is how badly would a 10% mandatory tax on every PoW block impact mining participation? Would miners support the change like in the Vertcoin example or would they feel cheated by Peercoin and leave to mine something else?
Edit: It also does not have to be 10%. Maybe 5% is enough so that we don’t put too much financial stress on miners.
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Does anyone have any comment on the above?
Just from an incentives analysis, its interesting to think thru.
If some miners reject a mandatory tax and leave for another sha256 network, the remaining miners pay the tax but get a higher block reward. That means more for the foundation too (assuming the market price holds value).
As long as there are some miners (every 10 blocks after PoW difficulty goes down) then the entropy benefit is still there.
The nodes will have to enforce the rule of course, so participation is required.
open questions:
- Will enough nodes participate in a new miner tax?
- Will miners who disagree care enough to try and fork Peercoin chain with the prior consensus rules? I’m not sure, most are probably opportunistic by profitability - it is a margins business.
- Will it require enforcement by (now optional) sync checkpoints?
- Will Peercoin users, holders, node operators buy in or not?
Yes, this is a good point I brought up. With decreased hashing power comes an increased PoW block reward, which would benefit the foundation as it means a higher reward.
Are you referring to PoS minters here? Stakers would need to enact the rule change correct? From my understanding miners would have no say over this as stakers determine protocol rule changes.
yes, i’m referring to peercoind/peercoin-qt nodes which validate all blocks and transactions. Many (not all) are likely staking.
I agree. We need to know how to use these funds.I hope this money should be used in peercoin development and marketing, rather than on other related projects.
Would be good for this to come from the community. I have been thinking of unique and creative ways to educate new users because the technical aspects of Peercoin can be complicated for those who are not well versed in the technical side of blockchain technologies.
It would be used on all of the above. Read what I said here. Peercoin core development is vital, but so is development of our 2nd layer protocols like PeerAssets. They work to increase the tools and use cases associated with the Peercoin blockchain and those tools can be used to market Peercoin.
So the Foundation is concerned not just with core development, but with the entire ecosystem. Funds would not be given to a project like Indicium because that is a for-profit business that needs to survive based on its own merits. However the protocol that Indicium runs on (PeerAssets) would be supported because it provides a way to draw more projects to run on top of Peercoin, increasing the value of the main chain in the process.
If a PoW tax like this was to be instated then the Foundation would need to provide higher levels of transparency. This would probably include opening a public Foundation board on this forum where the community can be vocal about different topics and even use it for grant requests for projects that would help Peercoin. For example @ppcman could develop a marketing plan and post it in this board requesting funds to carry out the plan. If the board agreed then they would fund it. If not, then it would be up to ppcman to convince them further.
We would also need to have a place where we detail what funds were spent on. A tax like this without transparency wouldn’t work very well. The community would want a way to see what is going on and a way for them to be heard. Even then, it would ultimately be up to the board members to make decisions, but the community would at least have a way to influence and convince the board members.
This sounds like a good plan we should move forward with implementing it
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I think the fund’s use plan should be more detailed.The use of funds can be divided into three parts: core development, ecosystem development and marketing. Peercoin core development accounts for 50%, ecosystem development 25%, and marketing 25%. Only in this way can we effectively guarantee the efficiency of funds and reduce the malicious use of funds.
The core development is our foothold. This is a basic project. If the core development is problematic, all other projects will be meaningless.
What do you think?
The next step would probably be putting it up for a vote, but I think it needs more discussion before we do that. Early in the thread before we got sidetracked with the opt-out PoS discussion there was a lot of hesitance to this PoW tax idea. I was also hesitant, but I’m leaning more toward supporting it now as long as there are no huge security ramifications.
Why did I change my mind? I care greatly about retaining as much decentralization as possible in our network and as some have pointed out this change would impact that level of decentralization to a certain degree. PoS security would remain at the same level, but this would give the foundation board members a lot of financial power to effect change. We have seen how the Bitcoin Foundation was corrupted, so it’s clear why there is hesitation to go this route.
At the same time I believe in our current team/board members. We all have similar values and because of that I have to trust that they won’t suddenly be corrupted and become evil. I have to trust that that they will continue to care about moving us forward in such a way that retains Peercoin’s core values. Stakers will always have the option of removing this tax in the future if it doesn’t end well, but I don’t think that will be necessary. This is one of the most principled crypto communities there are and I think that will translate to the Foundation leadership as well.
The fact is we are up against unspeakable odds right now. Things have greatly changed over the past couple years. Our competition is incredibly well funded and they are outcompeting us to the point that every time I make a new announcement in r/cryptocurrency it’s obvious that people have never even heard of us. This is a travesty given Peercoin’s history. What’s more, everything costs money now. You have to pay for exchange integration and support in important apps. It is rare now that Peercoin is integrated somewhere for free. Ledger was the rare exception and it took us a whole year just to get that. I agree with ppcman that our meager voluntary donations are just no match to compete with this.
Peercoin is one of the most important innovations ever created and it cannot be allowed to go out with a whimper. We are here to provide a sustainable, distributed and censorship resistant blockchain network where all forms of value can be stored long-term. We are the best at this, yet people don’t realize it. It can provide an important service to the world, but not until we are recognized for it.
I don’t want to see our incredible volunteers suffer from burnout. If it’s a choice between allowing in some amount centralization and watching Peercoin die a slow death over time then I will choose to risk centralization. If Peercoin dies then it can’t help anyone. This tax at least gives us a fighting chance to come out of this and prove that a Foundation can stick to its values and work toward the benefit of the network. It is a risk yes, but it is much better than the alternative. I am willing to take that risk and I believe we will be just fine.
If allowed the chance, we could act as a shining example of what an open source crypto project should be like for all to see, but instead we continue to suffer needlessly without the necessary financial resources required to make an impact in this industry. I’m tired of our project not getting the recognition it deserves for its accomplishments. We invented proof of stake. We invented efficient and sustainable blockchain technology. We invented the first true distributed autonomous organization (DAO). We invented the first blockchain agnostic token protocol. And yet we receive no credit for these achievements because we have little financial resources to prop ourselves up. I think it’s time for a change. We need to do something different. We need to take a risk and I believe this may be it.
It is true that PoW is used as a mechanism to distribute new coins to new holders, but I don’t see how this tax changes that. Mining requires work to get that block reward and then it is sold on exchanges to new owners in order to pay for mining operation costs.
If this change took place these funds would be distributed to people who do a different form of work for the foundation. Those people have the choice to keep the new coins or also sell them on exchanges just like miners do. Since they are being paid for services rendered by the foundation then it is likely they will just sell and convert the PPC to fiat in order to pay their own bills, so the result ends up being the same, more PPC available for purchase on the market, just through a different path.
I think it’s also of note to say that mining is a voluntary act. If stakers change the rules of the network then certain miners don’t have to accept it if they don’t want to and can move on and leave more rewards for others as the PoW inflation rate dynamically adjusts to the change.
I think it’s difficult to know what our costs would be for each part. That would ultimately effect the percentage number. For example core development requires specialized knowledge and there are few people with that experience. We have one core developer who is open to doing paid work, so I don’t think that one person requires 50% of all funding. Any new people coming in would have to learn from the existing core developers. Plus the resources required in any specific area may change over time. Once we get caught up with the core protocol for example we will probably spend less resources on that and more on other things.
Ecosystem, which consists of building wallets, developing 2nd layer protocols (tokens, smart contracts, payment processors) is where our future lies, so 25% seems too limiting in my opinion. Core development is mostly adapting other people’s work from BTC. The 2nd layer protocols on the other hand are the unique inventions put forth by our own developers, which makes us different.
Anyway, I think it would be very difficult to do it this way because it all depends on variables, who is willing to do paid work, which projects are more urgent than others, what the time commitments are for a project as well as costs, etc… These all constantly change.
Things will change for peercoin with percent of mining going too the peercoin foundation but I believe it will be a change for the better you can’t compete and complete your vision with out being funded properly and the more peercoin increases in value the more money goes too the foundation there will be tremendous incentive too make peercoin the best coin it can possible be and the end result will be a return too being a top 25 coin on coin market cap vertcoin soared when in late 2016 early 2017 the implemented this same type of miner pct going too the foundation the vertcoin holders and the good vision too see this was the way too go and there miners and coin holders were rewarded for it we can and should do the same thing here at peercoin sky’s the limit on how good peercoin can be let’s see too it that the foundation has the funding too make great things happen for peercoin
I disagree.There is no guarantee of sub items, inefficient use of funds, and easy to cause corruption. So it becomes meaningless.
At least, it is necessary to give an appropriate proportion of distribution. I think we can ensure the development of all kinds of work. If there is no arrangement, it is hard for me to believe that funds will not be swallowed up by some rotten items. They used the help of ecosystem building as a reason to defraud the fund.
Peercoin core development : ? %
ecosystem development: ? %
marketing : ? %
You talk about this proportion
What do you mean by sub items? Are you referring to the 2nd layer networks I talked about? Because we do have plans for other protocols like this. PeerAssets is only the first and it’s the primary focus right now. Extensions to PeerAssets will be introduced in the future as well.