Cool, OK let me summarize (trying to use my “outside world” point of view).
[Targets]
Priority Targets:
Developers who can add value to the network.
Businesses/individuals who will benefit from actually using services on top of Peercoin (Peerassets, etc.)
Secondary targets: (Will not come without more value created by the “priority targets”)
Price speculators
Investors
Miners
Merchants
Early users (fan, like current real world bitcoin users)
Regular users (Peercoin as a currency)
[Vision (to relay to public in an attractive manner (website update?))
I’m both trying to figure out the vision from what everybody wrote, and to filter what I think from an outside point of view would be attractive.
Sustainable.
Thanks to PoS the network doesn’t eat much resources. Explain on website: how much now and how does it evolves with growth? It would be good to evaluate this in kWh per transaction or something. Can someone evaluate? (I’m aware that this will be very approximate as it depends on what machine users are staking)
Decentralized/secure.
Why is it better than PoW? Because PoW pools and so gets dangerously close to 51% attacks (BTW when Peercoin convey public messages, it should never directly attack or insults other coins. Only when needed, make a neutral and unbiased statement.)
extra concern: Top 100 Peercoin addresses own 65% of the coins and top 10, 40% (and this is increasing over the years). Any way to address those concerns?
Immutable. (thanks to its security)
Immutability is a capital value. And I think that the general public (even a good amount of enthusiasts) seem to not grasp the implications. Look at the ETH vs ETC phenomenon. ETC difference (vs ETH) is their immutability pledge (and some monetary policy).
So maybe not a bad idea to explain it using other words than immutable as some suggested.
Interest Alignement
Again thanks to PoS, each user is minting from their wallet securing the network without the need to pool.
Peercoin is backbone / protocol level
I think that is very important to be clear to the public about this point. (I know it’s been the vision from the beginning but it always need to be clearly explained on the website imho)
Every new service added on top of Peercoin is what will make it strong: PeerAssets, Lightning, etc…
Message: we are welcoming new developers.
(Then “is peercoin digital gold or not? Is it a “store of value” or not?” is just noise and doesn’t need to show up on website. If the site is clear enough about Peercoin vision and technical facts, users will be able to judge this for themselves, imho.)
Bitcoin’s chain frequently gets “late blocks” which can be annoying when you are sitting in front of a Bitcoin ATM waiting for block confirms for a deposit to the machine.
This happens, because Bitcon’s block size is limited in space (so is Peercoin’s, keep reading though).
…but due to the heavy transaction traffic Bitcoin receives, and also due to the Proof-of-Work mining requirement, certain hashes can be difficult to solve.
Peercoin on the other hand, rarely has late transactions. Our blocks rarely get full, and we’re only dependant on Proof-of-Stake, which is a fairly easy solve due to coinage increasing the chances.
So if you had to move a large transaction without waiting, I’d recommend Peercoin to move it, and not Bitcoin.
On the other hand, if you wanted to do a small Micro transaction (I’d recommend Bitcoin)
You did a good job Colin. So has Sentinelrv. Some of this information needs to be supplementary information for any slogan we come up with.
I suggest that we need some thing other than a “whitepaper” which only describes the protocol.
(Would be helpful for our whitepaper to be updated as well while we’re doing this… it still calls us ppcoin)
How about calling it the “gold paper” of Peercoin, where we describe it’s current market, it’s featureset, and all the things we’ve said in here. Keep it brief, only about 3-4 pages long.
The whitepaper would be read by tekkies
The goldpaper would be read by investors and users
Calling this new document a gold paper leaves a nice connotation in your mind as well.
Yeah, on second thought those words seem unnecessary. Does it really matter if you’re first? As long as the network works correctly and is sustainable, that’s all that really matters. This Peercoin was first message doesn’t really seem to matter.
So just to be clear, are you suggesting to keep the word the?
I like the sustainable chain. It’s good to go beyond the needs and wants and address the main challenge which is “bootstrapping over time” … sustainability addresses that.
Sustainability remains a complex concept. Might be good to find a less complex term. Evergreen? I don’t know.
How about this:
1 . “A Gateway to the digital currency world, one that will not fail you and your digital assets. Better than cash, better than gold, better than bitcoin.”
We know that the other cryptocurrencies have 51% attack flaws. Every time it happens, the bitcoin price drops and we lose our money, so we have to move our money in and out from bitcoin due to fear. Financial brokers love this because they can take some percentage from us every time you move your money. It will happen again and again until we become slaves to the bank. People are scared of losing value. I think this will put our best advantage straight on the table, while at the same time make other currency looks so bad.
2 . “Why risk your hard earned money to the bitcoin 51% attack possibility? It is only a matter of time until you lose everything. With Peercoin, your digital asset is safe, because we are protected. Better than cash, better than gold, better than bitcoin.”
3 . “Shielded from 51% attack”, “We are protected from 51% attack, forever”, “Better than bitcoin, goodbye 51% attack”, “We keep your asset safe from 51% attack”, “Don’t wait until it is too late, 51% attack will happen one day. Stay safe with Peercoin”, “Peercoin is made safer, faster, cheaper than bitcoin for your hard earned assets” . Seems like people are really scared by the 51% attack, so I think we should focus on this niche market.
It’s easier for us to eat bitcoin, because they know more about crypto. Let bitcoin do the marketing for noobs, because they need those elementary school education. We take bitcoin’s follower, because they understand that bitcoin is not enough for them. We educate the elementary school girls/boys and make them junior high school graduates.
If we explain this “Junior High School” materials to noobs, they will not even understand, and they probably will choose bitcoin in the end because they are more familiar with it (Because they are noobs and a Kindergarten graduate)
So I feel that we must focus our target market is bitcoiners instead of the mass. This is probably why since 4 years ago, Peercoin is slow to pick up. It is because the mass are still in the elementary school. Now is the right time for us to educate them with our higher education.
I just read this so this is probably a late suggestion. Rule of thumb in marketing is “it is better to be first than to be better.” Removing a key differentiation in our copy is a huge mistake in my opinion.
Thanks for the suggestion @DigiX. No it’s not too late and it has been some months that I’ve had some more time to think about this. What I had above “The Sustainable Public Blockchain” now sounds a little awkward to me. It contains two back to back descriptive words (sustainable and public) that when put together makes it sound like too much of a mouthful, so I believe something needs to be dropped here.
After your suggestion I searched more about how it’s better to be first than better and I came across this from a marketing book…
The first two laws listed speak directly to Peercoin
The law of leadership - it is better to be first than it is to be better: “The basic issue in marketing in creating a category (i.e. a given type of product or service) you can be first in. It’s the law of leadership. It’s better to be first than it is to be better. It’s much easier to get into the mind first than it is to try to convince someone you have a better product than the one that did get there first.”
The law of the category - if you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
Peercoin was not the first blockchain and it was not the first public blockchain. Both of those categories can be claimed by Bitcoin. However Peercoin is the first sustainable blockchain.
This rule is important as well…
The law of focus - the most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind (i.e. the way that Coke ‘owns’ the word ‘cola’, or Xerox owns ‘copier’).
For Peercoin that word is Proof of Stake. It is a little complicated though because Ethereum has moved into our spot with this, however Peercoin was still first and it has a 5 year history of security to back it up. We need to take our mantle back and own this word in people’s minds.
So rethinking this over the past several months I’ve come to the conclusion that we should drop the word public. Lots of other blockchains are public as well, and Bitcoin was the first of them. We can still include it in longer paragraphs or descriptions of the network, but I don’t think it’s that important of a word to prominently display in a slogan or title.
Sustainability on the other hand is the definition of what separates Peercoin from the competition. And sustainability is not possible without proof-of-stake, which we were first in. So I believe I’ve settled with the following phrase…
Peercoin The First Sustainable Blockchain
It also has the benefit of flowing together more smoothly when said aloud than what I had previously come up with.
It should definitely be mentioned that Peercoin was first. Just look at Bitcoin, it is relatively easy these days to create a technical more advanced coin than Btc but that’s not what maters. It’s about branding and just the name Bitcoin and that it invented crypto maters.
No immediate suggest yet, though would be better to find another word to replace sustainable. Something newer to describe energy efficiency or sustainability or even another word that would somehow fit. Sustainability seems like an overused word at the moment. Also, peeercoin is more than just energy efficient sustainability. There is the miner versus minting decision making process as well as the notion of backbone currency. Something stronger is needed.
I think that’s the wrong way. It’s not marketing to change sustainable just because other copy it we have to use the marketing to show that Peercoin is truly sustainable coin and not just some shitcoin that needs attention. Mercedes also uses the slogan “The best or nothing” and doesn’t change it if VW uses “Das Auto” but the use their commercials to show why they are “The best” or VW uses their to show why a VW is “Das Auto”.
Yes, so the slogan mentioning sustainability as I wrote it above would be listed at the very top of the website underneath the main logos. Then every piece of information on the home page below that will explain why this is true of Peercoin.
It needs to be presented in a balanced, marketable, easy to understand visual way that includes both graphics and text that help tell the story. Long paragraphs of text won’t sell it. The basic crypto user needs to be able to come away with a decent understanding of Peercoin without having to read long texts. However, for the advanced user we should link to different parts of our wiki that explain concepts in greater detail. This way there is something for both kinds of users, basic and advanced.
Sustainability encompasses the backbone argument as well. Just as PoS minting leads to long-term sustainability/security for the blockchain, so too does the 0.01 kb/ppc transaction fee prevent the blockchain size from growing unsustainably. Once Peercoin is higher in price, the fee will help protect the decentralization of the network by raising the cost of transactions and forcing most of them to occur off-chain while the main chain is used mostly as a settlement network for moving large funds around.
PoS is there to prevent competition from centralizing the network over time. The backbone model is there to prevent Peercoin from centralizing due to blockchain size. Both aspects protect the decentralized security of the network, and thus its sustainability over the long-term. So I think this phrase covers most of the main points. We will need to figure out how to use the website to expand on the initial slogan though so all this is made clear.
Sustainability doesn’t just refer to the energy efficiency of PoS minting. It refers to the ability of the network to operate in a sustainable manner so that it can survive indefinitely. This includes all aspects of Peercoin that help to make it possible for the network to continue running over the next 100 years and beyond. It encompasses everything that makes it future proof.
While there are certainly other PoS coins and even clones of Peercoin itself, I’m not mentioning that others are also using the word sustainable.
I am saying that sustainable might not be the appropriate term. There is a social and governance side to blockchains. For example, one of the bullet points to include is the equal opportunity distribution via mining.
If the community is ok with sustainable also being used for sustainable governance, I suppose that’s ok, assuming that’s the intention.
Typically, words such as fair, equal vote, or democracy or similar terms might be used. So I mentioned that if possible find another word besides sustainable.
Can we somehow include “aging coin” into the marketing slogan? thinking out loud but something like below:
PeerCoin introduced the first concept of Aging Coins (i.e. PoS) for providing better security and sustainability to the network, which also provide users with more valuable coins in the long run.
Also to be honest when I was looking for an alternative coin I was more concerned about centralization of Bitcoin than its eco-friendly!