Yeah it’s just a promise and it’s a long road indeed.
But this project is what got me involved with peercoin and what drove me to start creating PeerKeeper, Mercator and all other stuff I’m working on.
Eventually everything connects back to my first open source project: http://finfoil.io/
Anyway I just wanted to give a heads up.
Wow, what a statement. Ok… Can’t wait to find out more.
Hopefully it won’t allow botnets, because they are cpu-rich, and they gobble everything up and dump it for Bitcoin, and then into cash, which can really hurt the price of a coin.
But other than that negative aspect, I’d love to contribute some CPU to getting more PPC. 
The part that doesn’t roll off the tongue, or paint a very innovative colorful image in my mind is “immutable public ledger”
When I hear “public ledger”, I immediately think of a paper-based ledger book that only accountants and bookkeepers “use to use”.
As a member of the public, who has money, to spend money, and only cares about that aspect, a ledger system is unappealing.
Most people are familiar with credit cards, banks, savings accounts, a safe to store money, financial transactions, these are all layman terms that everyone deals with.
Ledgering and booking keeping, and accounting, is something awful and ugly, that most people try to leave to other people and the mere thought of that instantly ruins the party. It’s not fun, it’s not something that will catch the layman, and has a negative connotation to it.
I recommmend against something other than a public ledger. It’s fine, if it truly is a public ledger by design, but that’s not how I’d sell it.
I think it’s like those informercials we all see…
“They call it SHAM WOW” and not “an absorbant cloth”
“They call it CHIA PET” and not “a herb head”
“They call it a decentralized exchange” (and everyone knows what a stock exchange is)…
…but I wouldn’t call refer to Peercoin as a public ledger. Ledgers are boring… gives a connotation towards keeping track for taxation purposes, and we know how much people just love accounting and taxes. (sarcasm). It is also not interesting to regular people who would invest otherwise.
I agree, it is a mouthful and some of the words used do sound complicated and boring. How can we spice up the terms we use to describe the network while still making them accurate and obvious to people?
We want the descriptive terms to be attractive and interesting to draw people in, but at the same time we want everyone to immediately recognize what our network is designed for and what it does best.
As an example, even Jordan Lee has a specialized term he uses to describe Nu, a liquidity engine. What is a short/simple and catchy equivalent we can use to label Peercoin? I think we can still use words like immutable and public ledger as bullet points or descriptions on the website, but we still need something else that is simple that will stick in people’s minds.
If I had to choose, I would prefer using the term blockchain over ledger. Blockchain is much more of a searchable buzz word and is more attractive and interesting than ledger.
Public is important to keep. We’re trying to differentiate ourselves as being more open to people around the world than Bitcoin because the network is controlled by those who own the tokens, rather than a much smaller group that has access to the expensive resources necessary to influence the protocol. Public is also a more mainstream word than decentralized, which should give us greater appeal.
We’ve used secure since the beginning, however I think it might be time to drop it. The reason is because every blockchain project uses the word security. It is used so much in the crypto space that it should be a given by now for every project, so I don’t think adding the word in will give us any sort of benefit.
Sustainability on the other hand is different I think. Not enough blockchain projects focus on this aspect, which results in so many projects being built on the basis of short-term thinking. Most crypto projects are built on a foundation which is unsustainable in the long-term. Peercoin is the opposite, as we have made sustainability one of our core focuses because we realize that without it, there is no long-term future for Peercoin.
Also without sustainability, you don’t have long-term security, so that is just another reason to drop the word secure and only use sustainable. Without one, you can’t have the other. If Peercoin is also purposefully calling itself sustainable, I think that calls into question the sustainability of other blockchains in the minds of people who are looking for a long-term solution for hosting their service, app or DAC.
While immutability is core to Peercoin, I don’t think the meaning of the word itself is known by enough people to warrant its use here. Immutability should also be a given due to the fact it is a blockchain, so I don’t think adding it will give it much benefit, similar to the word secure. I also don’t think there should be more than three descriptive words, otherwise it will end up being too wordy and not simple enough.
I don’t know if this is attractive or catchy enough, but I think it’s more interesting than ledger and less wordy than what we had before. This is more of a stripped down version that I think includes the most important words to use out of all the ones listed previously…
Peercoin is a…
"Sustainable Public Blockchain"
Anymore descriptive words than three and I think it will be too much of a mouthful. This is about the best balance between simple and descriptive as I think I can get it. Maybe others disagree, but that is my thoughts on it.
[quote=Sentinelrv]Public is important to keep. We’re trying to differentiate ourselves as being more open to people around the world than Bitcoin because the network is controlled by those who own the tokens, rather than a much smaller group that has access to the expensive resources necessary to influence the protocol. Public is also a more mainstream word than decentralized, which should give us greater appeal.
[/quote]
Why not replace Public by cooperative?
Sustainable Cooperative Blockchain
There is no way of stopping botnets.
But this is useful work coming from a community in need for CPU power.
I can tell you that this kind of work also requires quite some amount of RAM (order of GBs) and disk space.
It is important to note that this is not about creating new coins, so the outflow is not paid by the ppc holders.
It is money flowing in from people in need of specific CPU work, where part of it will flow out to pay the executors and part will stick with the shareholders.
So in total there will be value flowing into the peercoin ecosystem rather than flowing out.
Accordingly to Gartner, the “blockchain” concept has hit peak hype cycle (http://www.coindesk.com/gartner-blockchain-hits-hype-cycle-peak/). Actually, whenever I come across the word “blockchain”, I think “scam”. Probably because it has been used over and over again by scam artists such as R3 and scam AltCoins.
My personal take on Peercoin is that it’s the first Proof-of-Stake based coin and if Proof-of-Work doesn’t work, then PoS is basically all we got (as far as I know). With the advent of Lightning Network and improved hardware/bandwidth, transacting in bitcoins could become pretty cheap (again).
In my opinion, what Peercoin has to offer is “a hedge against the possible failure of Bitcoin PoW”. But in order for peercoins not to take a hit in USD, then for this to happen bitcoins first have to become integrated into peoples lives and an infrastructure be in place so that people will exit into AltCoins instead of fiat when Bitcoin fails.
There is also the speculative component of (new rich) people getting rich in bitcoins, betting on some alternatives. I do think most of this wealth will however flow into new fresh scams, instead of old coins. Peercoin being the oldest and first real alternative to Bitcoin, could of course also see some uptake but that wont sustain it for long.
In the end Peercoin need Bitcoin to fail. For me this is not a bad thing, I see this as the main selling point of Peercoins and how it should be marketed.
EDIT: everyone who have been reading my posts over the years, know that I’ve been holding this view steadfast and never thought differently about it. regarding my analysis of “new rich being attracted to new scams” I think I’ve established a pretty good track record of calling bitcoins and peercoins price action over the years (basically I think I know what I’m talking about when it comes to speculating in value).
While cooperative is an alternative, I personally think public is the clearer word to use here. It also makes the phrase much simpler sounding when spoken or read.
[quote=icebubble]My personal take on Peercoin is that it’s the first Proof-of-Stake based coin and if Proof-of-Work doesn’t work, then PoS is basically all we got
[/quote]
Peercoin is the first PoS network and while I do think we should make that clear, I don’t think that does the best job of describing the network for people who don’t know what PoS is. What we are looking for here I think is a short descriptive phrase that we can associate with the network and use in discussion and marketing materials like the website.
Peercoin is a blockchain. It’s open and public to anyone who wants to use it or have a say in influencing the protocol. It also runs on a sustainable technology. That short three word phrase “sustainable public blockchain” I think describes the network the best way possible.
I do agree that Peercoin needs Bitcoin to struggle or fail in order to see massive growth, but it’s not going to happen at all if we don’t first try to make a name for ourselves and set our network up to succeed by focusing on developing the right technologies. We can’t sit idle for years like we were doing 6 months ago and expect massive success the moment Bitcoin fails.
People have forgotten us at this point and we have developed the reputation of shitcoin status for slacking off and giving off the appearance we are dead. If we continue to follow that same pattern of stagnation, the massive growth will go to some other well known PoS network that has put in the work instead of Peercoin.
I believe it’s vital that we continue on the path we are currently on with PeerAssets and similar technologies if we are to truly take advantage of the opportunity when Bitcoin fails. We need to be competing for a spot in the limelight with the others if we are to have any chance of people recognizing Peercoin for what it offers when the time comes. If not, we will continue to sink further into the abyss and another PoS network will win out over Peercoin in the end. We don’t get to rest.
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).
)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
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.
Outstanding comments, especially by @icebubble and @colin
Glad to hear from you two. If you want to know one thing I’ve learned since 2013 about Peercoin, is the good people it attracts.
When things get exciting in the forums, and more people get involved, our coin price often goes up.
When things go quiet, and everyone lets this run on autopilot, the price stays the same or goes down.
So I’m happy to see @icebubble and @colin contributing to this discussion. It could mean our price is going up again.
With respect, @Nagalim started this thread. We have a lot of great participation, and a lot of great comments here. I wonder if he’d like to be team leader in summarizing things and keeping track of our project progress here. Otherwise all we end up with is a lot of great discussion, but no direction, no final consensus, and nothing achieved. 
I think @colin is correct, the very next thing we need to do is:
[The key question: So who will use Peercoin?]
We shouldn’t try to change slogans or marketing plans until we really know who our target demographic is… and we shouldn’t say “any one, and every one” either…
He’s right when he says:
Let’s identify what community this targets and make sure it makes sense as a whole long term plan.
But this is what @icebubble said in September 2016:
How do you get the network effect? Well, first you have to be able to outcompete your competitor. Competitors to peercoins are among other: precious metals, USD and bitcoins. As long as Bitcoin does not fail and is cheap enough to use, why use peercoins?
–
Specializing in a particular niche market makes you innovative and sends a very clear message of what you’re aiming to do…
We also need to get past the early-adopter phase, by already proving we’ve got early-adopters and now we’re moving into mainstream adoption.
It’s obvious that Peercoin was meant to be a backbone currency, an excellent store of wealth, like gold. It wasn’t meant to compete with chains, it was suppose to work really well with other “side chains” that could use Peercoin as the main chain for consensus, etc.
Unfortunately there is one fault with all of this… chains don’t like to share, don’t like to make use of existing technologies or depend on them. Every one wants to re-invent their own wheel. Every one wants to learn how to build fire for the first time, themselves, their own way.
We’ve got a nice toasty warm fire burning in this cryptowinter. We’re ready to share it. Instead we have all these crypto competitors freezing to death while they rub sticks on their own, trying to get their own fire burning.
This is why blockchain technology is still in the caveman era with caveman mentality. We refuse to cooperate or trust each other cross-chain.
We trust Bitcoin today, but not by very much, or not for very long into the future
Summary So Far
We have attempted to generate a string of words to replace ‘digital gold’ for marketing purposes, aiming at particular target groups. There were some general agreements and some discussion about the wording and the meaning of trying to create a phrase of this sort.
Things people agreed on
We want to convey a deeper sense of what peercoin is and where it is going
‘Digital Gold’ is insufficient to describe the purpose of peercoin
This is not about logos or the motto “Secure and Sustainable”
People like the word ‘sustainable’, but ‘secure’ can probably be left out for this purpose
Everyone thinks ‘immutable’ is an ugly word
Things people had discussions about
Target Groups and My Personal Opinion
Investors, Developers, New People, Merchants, Businesses are all target groups that were brought up. In my opinion, merchants and businesses are a later phase in cryptocurrency development than we have now. New people are not very helpful, I don’t think we should focus on drawing in people that don’t know crypto at all. I think we are in a place where investors and developers are what we need to thrive. Especially developers would make us a lot stronger in 2017 with the opening of the github, and investors also tend to bring developers. Anyway, that’s my opinion on target groups.
This is exactly what I meant by saying that above. I said massive growth, meaning surpassing Bitcoin. Bitcoin is too far along at this point and the only way to surpass it at this point is if something happened to it. That doesn’t mean we should plan on Bitcoin failing and sitting around doing nothing until it does. We need to continue working in the direction we’ve been moving toward over the past 6 months, which will give us a better way to compete with the other chains at the top.
This issue more than any other will be the downfall of Bitcoin in my opinion. There is no point in supporting crypto technology that is centralized and people are fools for doing so. They will continue supporting it though because they are all invested and want to become rich. I feel there will come a time though when bad things keep getting incorporated into the protocol and everyone starts to realize Bitcoin has become completely co-opted and controlled by powerful forces that don’t have their good in mind. They will realize they have lost control of it and will go looking for another technology that is more fair to its users and gives them a voice instead of shutting them out. The PoS tech in Peercoin allows exactly this and is much more difficult for powerful forces to co-opt. Due to the alignment of users of the network providing security, it gives all its users a voice and the ability to more easily influence the direction of the protocol.
[quote=colin]
[The key question: So who will use Peercoin?]
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.
And this story is not just a pure marketing effort it has to be figured out hand in hand with the development team.[/quote]
Pretty much almost all of Peercoin’s developers have been pushing in this same direction over the past 6 months, but I’m not sure how many people have noticed this or how many have been following along, since it has mainly been happening over at peercoin.chat while our new forum is being finished. I believe our developers have a clear vision for where they’re trying to take Peercoin. The phrase I simplified in this thread “Sustainable Public Blockchain” is just a short description of that vision.
Let’s take a look at who we are currently marketing Peercoin to. Parsonage did a good job of explaining this here…
Now let’s take a look at who we should be marketing to and who we want to be using Peercoin. Once again parsonage has a great response to that, but he is responding to Cybnate’s post here…
And Parsonage’s response…
The part in bold is something very important that Parsonage is realizing. We don’t want to target these groups directly. We want to target them indirectly. We focus all our efforts on creating a sustainable public blockchain that developers can feel free to build all their creations on top of, whether it’s DACs, equity issuance for business, digital coupon tokens. Whatever it is, Peercoin will provide a platform for these people to build on.
And by doing this, these people or teams of people will want to advertise their DACs and all their efforts to the broader crypto community, indirectly advertising Peercoin in the process. We end up creating hundreds or thousands of people or groups advertising Peercoin indirectly through their own projects built on top of our chain. That is a much more sustainable and decentralized model for advertising than trying directly to do it all ourselves.
I think what you said is interesting. As I said above your quote, we are trying to create a public platform for people to develop things on top of that is also efficient and sustainable. Rather than continuing attempts at trying to reinvent the wheel, we want people to realize the perfect wheel already exists in Peercoin. Rather than try to do everything yourself, join us and build it on top of Peercoin’s platform, receive help for your idea and let’s share in the profit together through a rising valuation for Peercoin. Peercoin will then be valued by the quality and sum of all the assets secured by the chain.
Have you read Peerchemist’s post in this thread yet? He basically explains why this is true. He says that Peercoin is a better form of digital gold than both Bitcoin and gold itself. However, he also concludes the following…
This is not an exciting idea anymore, so we should refocus our marketing on things that are exciting and will increase use of our network. That said, nothing will change with Peercoin itself. It will still be designed as the best version of digital gold possible and people can still talk about it as such. The only difference is that our official marketing would focus instead on turning Peercoin into a platform for developers, researchers and visionaries. Peerchemist explained more here…
These services and applications on top of the chain will increase use of the network and as Peerchemist explains above, peercoins will be regularly consumed as a type of fuel for transactions, helping to counter inflation. Peercoin will be needed for many things, transactions, asset creation, trading of assets, dividends, voting etc… The entire system will be fueled through burning peercoins as fees.
Agreed.
Sentinels post is good enough to end this topic and be posted on Medium or something so outsiders can see it too.
For once more, to all those who have been living under a rock for last six months, Peercoin has a vision and a mid-term goal. This topic is about relaying the message to the outside world.
I’ve posted it in this very topic: Cryptoblog - notícias sobre bitcoin e criptomoedas! just before PeerAssets development has started.
As it becomes clear to attract more developers, I think once the peerassets library is ready, it ought to be ported to other platforms.
I do remember that peerkeeper is portable to android if i am not mistaken.
The library that parses the proof of timeline in the blockchain is to be written in python atm. Once there is a nice API and documentation how to work with PA, the threshold to start using PA is easier.
For now there is work made in writing a good documented PA protocol, but there is still work left to
create nice libraries for several platforms with good documented API
I’ll see where I can do my part
Great conclusion of the thread @Sentinelrv
I have nothing more to add.
PeerKeeper is written in javascript, it runs on anything that runs a browser.
Peercoin is the first known proof-of-stake implementation. That alone makes Peercoin novel.
Though why the motivation for pos? The reason is that Peercoin is a legitimate blockchain protocol.
Peercoin is the physical layer of the blockchain protocol.
PeerAssets is the TCP/IP.
New chains are the application layer.
Smart contracts are the applications.
Peercoin is a sustainable blockchain protocol.
I agree completely!
Well what can I say… I’m (1) a trader first, (2) Bitcoin maximalist second who happens (3) to be attracted to Peercoin (see point 1). It would be strange to argue that we couldn’t have several coins existing at the same time, because that is exactly what we have had the last years. But I do predict bitcoins to outperform all other coins because Bitcoin works, has great network effect which only serves to strengthen the network.
Therefor I agree with Sentinelrv, Peercoin has to fight for survival because simply existing is probably not enough. I also agree with Sentinelrv that Peercoin should be looking ahead.
Personally I would LOVE to see Peercoin interfacing with as many currencies and other financial systems as possible. Since the design of Lightning networks makes trustless cross-crypto-currency transactions possible, the Peercoin and Bitcoin network could exchange value between them in a trustless, decentralized way. Since there are no servers to protect, no regulatory costs etc, this cross-crypto network - lets just call it PeerPipes for now - could be cheaper to use then say Btc-e.com An added bonus would be that btc-e would no longer be holding peoples peercoins, mint with them, sell them to people who them keep them on the exchange to btc-e.com can mint even more with them and sell even more of them and in worst case take over the network (I’m painting a horrible picture here to drive home the point and importance of a distributed cheap exchange ala PeerPipes).
Futhermore PeerAssets could be used as collateral and then PeerPipes could be used to issue debt and so forth and so on… for sure there are a lot of things that could be done on the bleeding edge and Peercoin could be the first AltCoin to do it.
When peerkeeper is released, I can try compiling a native android version: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/getting-started.html
Can Peercoin be used to speed up Bitcoin transactions today?