EDIT: This video is launched!
Excellent, a few comments and ideas below. Apologies in advance for any undue nit-picking. Suggested deletions crossed out, additional text in bold, and any remarks by myself in italics.
+++
Hi, I’m Chronos, and welcome to Part 1 of the Peercoin Primer. Peercoin is one of the world’s most established cryptocurrencies, and each video in this series will explore a different aspect of it.
Show overview onscreen:
- Part 1: Launch
- Part 2: Security
- Part 3: Benefits
- Part 4: Economics
- Part 5: Legacy
These videos are designed to be watched in any order, so feel free to jump directly to what most interests you . In this video, we’re going to go way back to the Peercoin launch in the year 2012, and talk about Peercoin’s origin story. Then we’ll explore how new coins get distributed, and finally, we’ll cover the value proposition of Peercoin – what makes it stand out, in my opinion, in a sea of competing cryptocurrencies.
When I’m learning about a new coin, the first thing I want to know is, how was it launched, and how were the coins distributed, so let’s start with that.
Back on August 10, 2012, Peercoin developer Sunny King posted in the bitcoin forums, announcing that the project was getting close to release. The founders actually started their work based on the bitcoin codebase, which had already been running for over three years at the time, and they made some fundamental changes to its security model to create a new coin, Peercoin. There was no initial coin offering, or premine, or developer tax – the new project was completely open source and community-driven. On August 19, the blockchain was launched. Sunny King and the development team had no advantage in mining the new coins as they had already made the source code publicly available.
To give you an idea of how established Peercoin is today, consider that only a tiny handful of blockchains existed in 2012: Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Namecoin were the big players. This is several years before Ethereum had been created, making Peercoin one of the most long-lasting and enduring coins in existence.
If a cryptocurrency is to be reputable, it must have a fair distribution that is wide enough to ensure that the coin supply doesn’t get concentrated into the hands of too few people. This is especially important for a cryptocurrency like Peercoin, where the coin holders are responsible for securing the network. But blockchains secured by proof-of-stake have a serious problem, because there is no easy way to fairly distribute the initial coin supply. This is because, in a proof-of-stake network, new coins just come from existing coins, so an initial supply has to be created right at the start, from scratch.
[NBChronos might want to place extra emphasis on the two words I’ve put in italics, to make the distinction between the two types of new coins super clear].
To solve this problem, Peercoin’s founders used a combination of proof-of-stake for network security, and proof-of-work for distribution, using the same mining algorithm as bitcoin. Proof-of-work miners are always rewarded with new Peercoins that are generated by the network. In fact, Peercoin mining continues today, providing a gradual trickle of fresh coins. Peercoin mining’s importance in supplying new coins will decrease over time, but mining Peercoin will always be possible. This helps to bring new miners into the ecosystem, and keep the economy flowing. And most importantly, the first coins went to the first miners on the network, which I think is a key ingredient of a fair launch.
NB I don’t think the last sentence is necessary, as we’ve established that the initial mining was fair. I think a better concluding sentence might be: And very importantly, new coins from mining are usually sold direct into the marketplace which helps keep the network decentralised.
So, what makes Peercoin unique? It is the absolute first cryptocurrency to use Proof of Stake as a security mechanism for the blockchain. This revolutionary security model has a huge number of advantages, which we’ll explore in the “Benefits” video in this series. But first, in the next video, we’ll cover exactly how Proof of Stake keeps Peercoin secure.
If you have any questions or comments, post below the video. I’m Chronos. Thanks for watching!
I’ve incorporated most of Robert’s feedback. I also made some small edits of my own.
Hi, I’m Chronos, and welcome to Part 1 of the Peercoin Primer. Peercoin is one of the world’s most established cryptocurrencies, and each video in this series will explore a different aspect of it.
Show overview onscreen:
- Part 1: Launch
- Part 2: Security
- Part 3: Benefits
- Part 4: Economics
- Part 5: Legacy
In this video, we’re going to go way back to the Peercoin launch in the year 2012, and talk about Peercoin’s origin story. Then we’ll explore how new coins get distributed, and finally, we’ll cover the value proposition of Peercoin – what makes it stand out in a sea of competing cryptocurrencies.
When I’m learning about a new coin, the first thing I want to know is, how it was launched, and how the coins were distributed, so let’s start with that.
Back on August 10, 2012, as Bitcoin was well on its way to global recognition, another anonymous developer named Sunny King posted in the bitcoin forums, announcing that his project was nearing its release window. The two founders, Sunny King and Scott Nadal, based their work for this project on the bitcoin codebase, which had already been running for over three years at the time. Together, they made some fundamental changes to bitcoin’s security model, in the process creating a new coin, Peercoin.
For Peercoin there was no initial coin offering, or premine, or developer tax – the new project was completely open source and community-driven. On August 19, the blockchain was launched. Sunny King and his development team had no advantage in mining the new coins as they had already made the source code publicly available.
To give you an idea of how established Peercoin is today, consider that only a tiny handful of blockchains existed in 2012: Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Namecoin were the big players. This is several years before Ethereum had been created, making Peercoin one of the longest-lasting and enduring cryptocurrencies in existence.
If a cryptocurrency is to be reputable, it must have a fair distribution that is wide enough to ensure that the coin supply does not get concentrated into the hands of too few people. This is especially important for a cryptocurrency like Peercoin, where coin holders are the ones responsible for securing the network. However blockchains secured by proof-of-stake have no easy way to fairly distribute the initial coin supply. This is because, in a proof-of-stake network, new coins can only be created from existing coins, so an initial supply first needs to be created right at the start, completely from scratch.
To solve this problem, Peercoin’s founders used a combination of proof-of-stake for network security, and proof-of-work for coin distribution, using the same mining algorithm as bitcoin. Proof-of-work mining was used as a mechanism to distribute the initial peercoin supply in a way that was more fair than simply selling coins to investors, which is a distribution method many projects use today. About one month after the initial launch, the first proof-of-stake block was minted, and from there proof-of-stake slowly took over as the only mechanism providing network security for the Peercoin blockchain.
Peercoin mining still continues today however, always providing a gradual trickle of fresh coins. Peercoin mining’s importance in supplying new coins will decrease over time, but mining Peercoin will always be possible. This helps to bring new miners into the ecosystem, and keeps the economy flowing. And most importantly, new coins are usually sold by miners directly into the marketplace, which has the effect of slowly decentralizing the blockchain over time by getting more coins into the hands of new owners who can help secure the network through proof of stake.
So, what makes Peercoin unique? It is the absolute first cryptocurrency to use Proof of Stake as a security mechanism for the blockchain. This revolutionary security model has a huge number of advantages, which we’ll explore in the “Benefits” video in this series. But first, in the next video, we’ll cover exactly how Proof of Stake keeps Peercoin secure.
If you have any questions or comments, post below the video. I’m Chronos. Thanks for watching!
I think we should add something to create a mental association between Satoshi and King…
Back on August 10, 2012, as Bitcoin was well on it’s way to global recognition, another anonymous developer named Sunny King posted in the bitcoin forums, that his project nearing release…
@zattack I incorporated your feedback.
@RobertLloyd, I expanded the script some in my post above to explain how the initial supply was created by PoW and how PoS activated about a month later and slowly took over as the only security mechanism for Peercoin. Can you please review the changes I made? I don’t see any reason to expand this particular script any further than this.
I’m in the process of editing the other scripts as well. I’ll post updated versions as I get to them.
1 Like
Thanks Sentinel. For future reference, unless Chronos challenges them, please implement ALL my changes, and propose further changes (or challenges) of your own in a new post.
I realise that the script needs another read-through and edit, but this needs to be done in stages. If you edit the script directly, you’re effectively re-writing it, meaning I have to go back and start again.
For example:
“announcing that the project was getting close to release”
has become
“announcing that his project was nearing its release window”.
That change is harmless, but seemingly minor changes can have a material effect. For instance, “The founders” has become “The two founders, Sunny King and Scott Nadal”. The effect of this is that, just for a moment, attention is shifted from what Peercoin is, to who launched it, which I think we should steer clear of. We can’t not refer to Sunny King the anonymous founder, but no-one cares who Scott Nadal is, and stating his name adds nothing to the case for Peercoin (no disrespect, if Scott’s reading!)
A more important example is that two references to security have been added, the effect of which is to take attention away from the launch. Security is the topic of chapter two.
Unfortunately, my printer is bust, so I’ll have to wait until Monday before I can print out these out.
@RobertLloyd, I added the formatting below to make it easier for you. I also made a couple changes based on what you said above.
Launch
Hi, I’m Chronos, and welcome to Part 1 of the Peercoin Primer. Peercoin is one of the world’s most established cryptocurrencies, and each video in this series will explore a different aspect of it.
Show overview onscreen:
- Part 1: Launch
- Part 2: Security
- Part 3: Benefits
- Part 4: Economics
- Part 5: Legacy
In this video, we’re going to go way back to the Peercoin launch in the year 2012, and talk about Peercoin’s origin story. Then we’ll explore how new coins get distributed, and finally, we’ll cover the value proposition of Peercoin – what makes it stand out in a sea of competing cryptocurrencies.
When I’m learning about a new coin, the first thing I want to know is, how it was launched, and how the coins were distributed, so let’s start with that.
Back on August 10, 2012, as Bitcoin was well on its way to global recognition, another anonymous developer named Sunny King posted in the bitcoin forums, announcing that his project was nearing its release window. His project was based on the bitcoin codebase, which had already been running for over three years at the time. Sunny King made a number of fundamental changes to the security model, in the process creating a new coin, Peercoin.
For Peercoin there was no initial coin offering, or premine, or developer tax – the new project was completely open source and community-driven. On August 19, the blockchain was launched. Sunny King and his development team had no advantage in mining the new coins as they had already made the source code publicly available.
To give you an idea of how established Peercoin is today, consider that only a tiny handful of blockchains existed in 2012: Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Namecoin were the big players. This is several years before Ethereum had been created, making Peercoin one of the longest-lasting and enduring cryptocurrencies in existence.
If a cryptocurrency is to be reputable, it must have a fair distribution that is wide enough to ensure that the coin supply does not get concentrated into the hands of too few people. This is especially important for a cryptocurrency like Peercoin, where coin holders are the ones responsible for securing the network. However blockchains secured by proof-of-stake have no easy way to fairly distribute the initial coin supply. This is because, in a proof-of-stake network, new coins can only be created from existing coins, so an initial supply first needs to be created right at the start, completely from scratch.
To solve this problem, Peercoin’s founder used a combination of proof-of-stake for network security, and proof-of-work for distribution, using the same mining algorithm as bitcoin. By utilizing proof-of-work mining, Peercoin created a wider and fairer initial distribution for itself than what could have been achieved through the simple selling of coins to investors.
Peercoin mining still continues today, always providing a small trickle of fresh coins. Its importance in supplying new coins will gradually decrease over time, but mining Peercoin will always be possible. This helps bring new miners into the ecosystem, and keeps the economy flowing. And most importantly, new coins are usually sold by miners directly into the marketplace, which has the effect of slowly decentralizing the blockchain over time by getting more coins into the hands of new owners who can help secure the network through proof of stake.
[I want this last sentence to remain as I’ve written it above. I understand it speaks about security, which is featured in the next video, however PoW distribution directly impacts security. It’s easiest to get this point across in this video, rather than rehashing stuff from this video in the next. I removed the other security reference you mentioned however.]
So, what makes Peercoin unique? It is the absolute first cryptocurrency to use Proof of Stake as a security mechanism for the blockchain. This revolutionary security model has a huge number of advantages, which we’ll explore in the “Benefits” video in this series. But first, in the next video, we’ll cover exactly how Proof of Stake keeps Peercoin secure.
If you have any questions or comments, post below the video. I’m Chronos. Thanks for watching!
1 Like
This looks ok to me.
I’ve taken out the previous bold, etc. and used bold for fresh suggestions. Most of it is the same, just a slight tightening of a few words. I’ve taken out the release “window” bit (in case it makes Chronos sound like a management consultant!)
There are two substantial points I would raise: can we provide a couple of statistics to show the mining proportion of new coins a few years ago, and what it is now?
The other point is: I don’t like “keeps the economy flowing”, as it does not mean anything. This part could be rephrased:
This helps bring new miners into the ecosystem, and keeps the economy flowing. And most importantly, whose new coins are usually sold by miners directly into the marketplace, which has the effect of slowly decentralizing the blockchain over time by getting more coins into the hands of new owners - who can help secure the network through proof of stake.
+++++++
Launch
Hi, I’m Chronos, and welcome to Part 1 of the Peercoin Primer. Peercoin is one of the world’s most established cryptocurrencies, and each video in this series will explore a different aspect of it.
Show overview onscreen:
Part 1: Launch
Part 2: Security
Part 3: Benefits
Part 4: Economics
Part 5: Legacy
In this video, we’re going to go way back to the Peercoin launch in the year 2012, and talk about Peercoin’s origin story. Then we’ll explore how new coins get distributed, and finally, we’ll cover the value proposition of Peercoin – what makes it stand out in a sea of competing cryptocurrencies.
When I’m learning about a new coin, the first thing I want to know is, how it was launched, and how the coins were distributed, so let’s start with that.
Back on August 10, 2012, as Bitcoin was well on its way to global recognition, another anonymous developer named Sunny King posted announced in the bitcoin forums announcing that his a new project was nearing its release window. His project was based on the bitcoin codebase, which had already been running for over three years at the time. Sunny King made a number of fundamental changes to the security model, in the process creating a new coin, Peercoin.
For Peercoin there was no initial coin offering, or premine, or developer tax – the new project was completely open source and community-driven. On August 19, the blockchain was launched. Sunny King and his development team had no advantage in mining the new coins as they had already made the source code publicly available.
To give you an idea of how established Peercoin is today, consider that only a tiny handful of blockchains existed in 2012: Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Namecoin were the big players. This is several years before Ethereum had been created, making Peercoin one of the longest-lasting and enduring cryptocurrencies in existence.
If a cryptocurrency is to be reputable, it must have a fair distribution that is wide enough to ensure that the coin supply does not get concentrated into the hands of too few people. This is especially important for a cryptocurrency like Peercoin, where coin holders are the ones responsible for securing the network. However blockchains secured by proof-of-stake have no easy way to fairly distribute the initial coin supply. This is because, in a proof-of-stake network, new coins can only be created from existing coins, so an initial supply first needs to be created right at the start, completely from scratch.
To solve this problem, Peercoin uses founder used a combination of proof-of-stake for network security, and proof-of-work for distribution, using the same mining algorithm as bitcoin. By utilizing proof-of-work mining, Peercoin created a wider and fairer initial distribution for itself than what could have been achieved through an initial offering the simple selling of coins to investors.
Peercoin mining still continues today, always providing a small trickle of fresh coins. Its importance in supplying new coins will gradually decrease over time, but mining Peercoin will always be possible. This helps bring new miners into the ecosystem and keeps the economy flowing. And most importantly, new coins are usually sold by miners directly into the marketplace, which has the effect of slowly decentralizing the blockchain over time by getting more coins into the hands of new owners who can help secure the network through proof of stake.
So, what makes Peercoin unique? It is the absolute first cryptocurrency to use Proof of Stake as a security mechanism for the blockchain. This revolutionary security model has a huge number of advantages, which we’ll explore in the “Benefits” video in this series. But first, in the next video, we’ll cover exactly how Proof of Stake keeps Peercoin secure.
If you have any questions or comments, post below the video. I’m Chronos. Thanks for watching!
Peerchemist has reviewed the first two scripts and wants us to have @Chronos move forward with producing them. Basically we will release the videos one at a time, instead of all together. This will allow us to put something out there while still giving us time to finish the final 3 scripts.
My only issue is that I’m not sure yet if I want to keep everything the way it is or split the 5th video into two. If I did that, there would end up being 6 videos in total. Video 5 would be about scalability and video 6 would be about store of value.
However I’m not sure if I want to do this yet. It depends on if I have enough room in the 5th video to fit what I want. So I will hold off on a decision about this until the end of the weekend. We can’t start recording until we know for sure, since it needs to be reflected in the topic overview in the beginning of each video.
I’ll incorporate your changes here in a couple hours.
1 Like
Launch
Hi, I’m Chronos, and welcome to Part 1 of the Peercoin Primer. Peercoin is one of the world’s most established cryptocurrencies, and each video in this series will explore a different aspect of it.
Show overview onscreen:
Part 1: Launch
Part 2: Security
Part 3: Benefits
Part 4: Economics
Part 5: Legacy
In this video, we’re going to go way back to the Peercoin launch in the year 2012, and talk about Peercoin’s origin story. Then we’ll explore how new coins get distributed, and finally, we’ll cover the value proposition of Peercoin – what makes it stand out in a sea of competing cryptocurrencies.
When I’m learning about a new coin, the first thing I want to know is, how it was launched, and how the coins were distributed, so let’s start with that.
Back on August 10, 2012, as Bitcoin was on its way to global recognition, another anonymous developer, Sunny King, announced in the bitcoin forums that a new project was nearing release. His project was based on the bitcoin codebase, which had already been running for over three years at the time. Sunny King made a number of fundamental changes to the security model, in the process creating a new coin, Peercoin.
For Peercoin there was no initial coin offering, or premine, or developer tax – the new project was completely open source and community-driven. On August 19, the blockchain was launched. Sunny King and his team had no advantage in mining the new coins as they had already made the source code publicly available.
To give you an idea of how established Peercoin is today, consider that only a tiny handful of blockchains existed in 2012: Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Namecoin were the big players. This is several years before Ethereum had been created, making Peercoin one of the longest-lasting and enduring cryptocurrencies in existence.
If a cryptocurrency is to be reputable, it must have a fair distribution that is wide enough to ensure that the coin supply does not get concentrated into the hands of too few people. This is especially important for a cryptocurrency like Peercoin, where coin holders are the ones responsible for securing the network. However blockchains secured by proof-of-stake have no easy way to fairly distribute the initial coin supply. This is because, in a proof-of-stake network, new coins can only be created from existing coins, so an initial supply first needs to be created right at the start, completely from scratch.
To solve this problem, Peercoin uses a combination of proof-of-stake for network security, and proof-of-work for distribution, using the same mining algorithm as bitcoin. By utilizing proof-of-work mining, Peercoin created a wider and fairer initial distribution for itself than what could have been achieved through an initial offering of coins to investors.
Peercoin mining still continues today, always providing a trickle of fresh coins. Its importance in supplying new coins will gradually decrease over time, but mining Peercoin will always be possible. This helps bring new miners into the ecosystem, whose new coins are usually sold directly into the marketplace. This has the effect of slowly decentralizing the blockchain over time by getting more coins into the hands of new owners - who can help secure the network through proof of stake.
So, what makes Peercoin unique? It is the absolute first cryptocurrency to use Proof of Stake as a security mechanism for the blockchain. This revolutionary security model has a huge number of advantages, which we’ll explore in the “Benefits” video in this series. But first, in the next video, we’ll cover exactly how Proof of Stake keeps Peercoin secure.
If you have any questions or comments, post below the video. I’m Chronos. Thanks for watching!
This script is now complete. If anything changes, it might be the title of the 5th video in the topic overview, but overall we are done with it.
2 Likes
Fantastic. I’d like to suggest a few small changes.
- Remove “in the process” to improve the flow. “Sunny King made a number of fundamental changes to the security model,
in the processcreating a new coin, Peercoin.” - Use present tense in one sentence, to be consistent with the rest of the script. “Peercoin
createdcreates a wider and fairer initial distribution for itself than what could have been achieved through an initial offering of coins to investors.” - Change the title of Part 5 to Mission (from Legacy), per the excellent suggestion of @RobertLloyd.
- Add a few commas. This will only affect the subtitles.
Let me know if these small changes are acceptable. After I hear back, we’ll move to recording. Thanks!
3 Likes
I agree with the changes proposed by Chronos.
Excellent work, guys - it has taken some time, but given the future value and reach of this video, it is well worth it.
1 Like
I think you can go ahead with this one @Chronos. I don’t want to hold it up any longer. I will do my best to condense everything in script 5. I have script 4 to look over still and then I will get to that.
Eventually, I will probably make an updated version of Peercoin University and include a lot of this stuff that may be missing or better explained.
Recording is complete on this video. I took the liberty of making two other minor changes. Let me know if this is a problem.
- Change “usually” to “often” to soften the claim, since the sales ratio is not known: “This helps bring new miners into the ecosystem, whose new coins are
usuallyoften sold directly into the marketplace.” - Add the word “then” to improve the flow: “This has the effect of slowly decentralizing the blockchain over time by getting more coins into the hands of new owners, who can then help secure the network through proof of stake.”
Total length is three and a half minutes. We are now moving to the editing stage for this video.
4 Likes
Good spot.
@Chronos, I was just wondering something. I know in some of your videos like one minute crypto you speak very fast. In these videos are you slowing it down some? For these it’s probably best to take it slow and use plenty of pauses where necessary (which give the viewer a temporary moment to reflect before moving to the next point). It helps increase comprehension of what is being spoken about.
Great question. We definitely slowed the frenetic speed as compared to the One Minute Crypto videos. I think you’ll appreciate the more moderate pacing. 
I just sent a link to a draft of this video to @Sentinelrv. He will distribute it for feedback to those as he sees fit, and it will be publicly launched very soon!
1 Like