Hello,
I discovered Peercoin and Bitcoin at the same time in 2013, loved both, but instantly preferred Peercoin. Basically the same great story as Bitcoin, but without the energy consumption “problems”. Some don’t consider it a problem. I do because I care for our planet’s environment.
[Let’s not count on Bitcoin failing]
If you state “Peercoin needs Bitcoin to struggle or fail in order to see massive growth” you might as well stop right now. I don’t wanna be mean, but Bitcoin is not gonna struggle much (at least on a general public point of view). Bitcoin has lots of challenges to go over before it can really be a currency (it’s not yet a currency but it probably will be, see https://vinnylingham.com/bitcoin-commodity-store-of-value-or-digital-currency-93457cd27c9c#.6g94wpqlx ). But even though I personally prefer Peercoin I do believe also that bitcoin will succeed (I mean with high probability).
- Centralization of mining pools? Sure not ideal, users/miners not exactly aligned, but everybody aligned to keep bitcoin alive.
- Segwit not going through? A detail. There are ways to make it go through with less than 95%, and if no Segwit, there will be a replacement.
- Power consumption too big? Too bad for the environment, but not many people will care enough to boycott or break Bitcoin. (I would at some point but not everybody care about the environment as much as I do, it seems like )
And the “network effect” (users adoption and stability/security perception, media coverage) is now 100x ahead of any other coins. That is the current power of Bitcoin.
Anyway my point is not to discuss about Bitcoin in details, but my point is let’s really not make a Peercoin plan on Bitcoin failing. Let’s make a Peercoin plan as a healthy competitor (even if smaller) to Bitcoin. And if Bitcoin fails, Peercoin will get bigger, good, but let’s not count on that.
[Thriving as a Bitcoin competitor (and other coins competitor)]
Now I do not think that Bitcoin staying strong is a problem for Peercoin (and some other value added coins).
A coin will survive and thrive if its values resonate with a big enough community (an ecosystem of fans, developers, users) this will create a virtuous cycle of business adoption, user adoption, stacking difficulty increase, media attention, price increase/stability of 1 PPC.
Sure Bitcoin will probably resonate with the whole world, it might, in 5 years just be the most international, safe, easy to use currency.
I believe there is room for other coins with a value proposition matching the values of a given community.
We can have a world with cohabitation of several coins, for different purposes.
Walmart doesn’t prevent wholefoods to strive.
Microsoft Windows doesn’t prevent MacOSX to strive (and vice versa).
Fidelity point system 1 cent or 5 cent each act like a local currency, many people like them and use them.
You will tell me: “those are product or services, not currencies, the ideal world has one currency, period”.
It’s slightly true, but mostly wrong.
Again as soon as there is a big enough community of users who like or identify with the coin and its values and have special features or services they use then we can have a complete, healthy and sustained ecosystem. This will be “Peercoin network effect”.
[The key question: So who will use Peercoin?]
As of today Peercoin will resonate with people who wants to participate in stopping climate change (vs Bitcoin), like me. I keep holding PPCs without selling them even though the price goes down because I like this vision (story).
It will probably resonate with people who worry about security (PoS>PoW) but at this stage we still need to prove this. I’m not sure how (probably a mix of technical and political explanations and demonstrations) but as a matter of fact you still find people saying PoW is better.
Who else can this resonate with? What group of people, what communities? <- Here I would like to hear discussions
I think the discussion suggesting service added on top of Peercoin like PeerAssets (or even services within Peercoin if needed?) and such are going to the right direction. Let’s identify what community this targets and make sure it makes sense as a whole long term plan.
[How to come with a plan (a method rather than an answer)]
Just talking about what slogan is best is superficial and will not have any effect on Peercoin’s future.
I would like to come back to the train analogy mentioned earlier by ppcman (great comment), he said “We need to show where the train came from, where it is now, where it is going”. That is what I would call Peercoin story. We need to make this story clear to the world. It needs to show Peercoin’s values.
And this story is not just a pure marketing effort it has to be figured out hand in hand with the development team. It comes from strategy. Strategy in a regular company is the 1-3-5 (and more) years execution plans when Sales, Marketing, and Engineering teams or team’s leaders talk to each-other with a common vision in mind. The vision (a high level image of goals and aspirations) in a regular company, is often coming from the CEO or the founders, but can also of course come from bottom up. As soon as the vision is acknowledged throughout the whole organization, then it’s a vision, otherwise, it’s not. If no vision, no strategy, no story.
So to summary: Vision -> Strategy -> Story
- Figure out Peercoin vision. Brainstorm with Sunny King, bring your own ideas, ask the community their opinions… Or bring it back to this discussion and make it clear if it already exists?
- Put people with knowledge on all aspects of the Project (public relations, marketing, technical, etc.) together and come with a road-map (again on all aspects, hand in hand), and execution plan on the short, medium and long term.
- Figure out then from that strategy the story to tell to the public. The slogan will be a “title” of the story.
One more topic: someone mentioned they do not know of any other security algorithm than PoW or PoS, there is also PoC (as in Capacity, Storage Capacity), see for example Burstcoin: http://web.burst-team.us/ (and BTW PoC is also low energy and they have a nice infographic showing the power needed for 1 bitcoin transaction and for their coin)
And last but not least: What do you guys think of that statement it sounds like a threat who could kill or at least split the blockchain of Bitcoin, and if so probably Peercoin too as it is now: https://twitter.com/Daniel_Plante/status/816535694906519552
Is there any way to plan ahead to make this not feasible to filter Peercoin? Could be another selling point. If they technically can, China (to name just one country) will (probably) soon or later activate this kind of scheme.