State of the Coin : Feedback needed!

General
41

[quote=“intristin, post:37, topic:3660”]Ok guys, I’m gonna be lurking in these forums. I have converted all my peercoin holdings to bitcoin in the last hour. I have repointed my miners to Antpool. I really do belive that peercoin could be the future of cryptocurrency. But the truth is peercoin needs more development, it needs a roadmap, it needs CPR at this point. The development is dead, the community is dead, but at first sign of life I will be back. I really belive your code is better than Bitcoin, your future can be better, but this is a financial product at the end of the day, and a year and a half between releases is unacceptable. The lack of communication is unacceptable. The lack of even a public roadmap is unacceptable. Maybe it’s acceptable to all of you, but not for me. Good luck, I hope you guys can turn it around, and if you can, I will be back. :-/ Hire more developers, I have no doubt that Sunny King is a Genius, but one man, no matter how smart he is can not bring this back, he needs help. Get him help, or this coin die.

PS: And for god sakes, fix the ticker or remove it from the template, it makes this website look like a 4th grade project that got a D-.[/quote]

Thank you for your feedback.
I understand your reasoning.
We share a common information basis, but come to different conclusions and that’s ok!It seems we have different expectations.
You know, a (big?) part of all the decision making (which coin to prefer) is close to religious belief or preference for political parties/orientations.

I’m into Peercoin and I doubt that can be changed.
But I don’t feel like I have no reason for that.

On the contrary, I look forward to seeing discussion about voting (on blockchain) or distributing information (as hash of an external statement/message) while minting. I hope it will become a part of Peercoin and will try to do my part to make that possible.

As long as this community can be described like this:

I don’t know why to leave.

If you are looking for something blockchain based with steady and rapid development, with a vision, lots of communication, a road map and where the community is also great, have a look at https://discuss.nubits.com :wink:
But be warned:
Nu is a business.
The shares (NSR) of that business might skyrocket or hit the bottom hard.
Before you consider becoming NSR holder, please realize this is something that requires activity and attention - NSR holders are ultimately responsible for their business!

Still I consider Nu’s prospect better than Bitcoin’s (which I consider doomed - a train wreck waiting to happen due to economical reasons).
Fixing Bitcoin is hard or impossible.
Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin users are only tied loosely with each other by economical incentives, but without proper feedback loops.
Bitcoin works well if the price rises.
Bitcoin has a hard time if the price falls and stays low. This has not always been true, but it is since mining Bitcoin is a multi million Dollar business.
Fixing Nu is possible as long as the NSR holders find the right way.
Have a look at the development and its pace as well as the radical changes that were made at Nu: History of the Nu Network

I rather see you lurking here and contributing at Nu than “losing” you to Bitcoin (the quasi religious thingy, you see?) :wink:
…if you visit the NuBits forum frequently you might start to think differently about Peercoin’s development speed :smiley:

42

I personnaly think that Bitcoin will still be the clear crypto-currency leader for the years to come.
Lots of funds are being invested in Bitcoin and quite a bunch of very very talented people are working on it.

And some projects like the Bitcoin Lightning Network would definitely be very useful to Peercoin as a backbone currency.
But for this to happen we need to implement at least BIP 62, 65, 68 et 112 into Peercoin.
These BIPs will probably be available in next Bitcoin core release v0.12.

43

[quote=“mably, post:42, topic:3660”]I personnaly think that Bitcoin will still be the clear crypto-currency leader for the years to come.
Lots of funds are being invested in Bitcoin and quite a bunch of very very talented people are working on it.
[…][/quote]

But Bitcoin’s security completely relies on the miners.
Did you ever read this: Reddit - Dive into anything ?

Related information: Litecoin’s recent coinbase reward halving was compensated by the LTC price: It’s Not Too Late To Save Ethereum - #22 by masterOfDisaster - The Lounge - NuBits Forum

Bitcoin’s security depends on the same to happen to the BTC price in approximately 40 weeks from now.

For convenience:

In difference to recent significant price drops in Bitcoin's history the situation might be more complicated now. It mght be more complicated, because Bitcoin mining is no longer something that single enthusiasts do on their GPU rigs, FPGAs or Avalons. Bitcoin mining has been converted to a business. A business that needs to generate revenue. That revenue is generated by mining and an appropriate combination of selling the Bitcoins to cover costs (purchase, operating, etc.) and keeping the Bitcoins for speculating purposes. With plummeting prices there's a point at which the mined Bitcoins don't even cover the cost of operating the mining devices. Somewhere close to that point the mining devices need to be shut off.

The thing is: the block chain is secured by the PoW mining. The difficulty drops as a result of turned off miners.
But the mining hardware is still there, available, with who-knows how many PH/s (in case of a Bitcoin mining data centre that was shut down).
That is not only a threat for other coins that have a SHA256 PoW, it poses a thread to Bitcoin itself.

This threat is based on the scenario in which a mining facility operator might be desperate by having invested hundreds of thousands of USD, maybe even millions and not knowing how to cover the costs.
It would be good for that operator to at least cover the costs of building that facility.
Assuming that the mining would have been done by selling a part of the Bitcoins and keeping some for speculation that could be achieved by selling those kept Bitcoins.
That might be an explanation for this downward spiral we see at Bitcoin’s price for some time now.
Dropping prices cause more Bitcoins to be sold until there are no left in the pockets of that operator.
Now begins the real threat - not for the operator and not in terms of selling pressure at the markets.
That operator now has an incentive to use the hardware for attacking the network trying to cover his loss.
If it’s just a small mining data centre with only a few PH/s, that wlll hardly be successful.
If it’s a big one it will be dangerous.
This is the ugly face of the combination of centralization and the need for expensive specialized mining hardware. The little guy can’t do anything to leverage the effects of big mining data centres going wild.
Under normal circumstances big players have no incentive to go wild. Instead they have an incentive do to the best to protect their investment.
Under extraordinary cirumstances it might be different.

That’s sad but true.

You can downvote me to hell now.
You can do so, because you hate what I say.
You can do it because I made you afraid.
But you can hardly do it, because all of it is nonsense and lacks comprehension.

44

Hey [member=11595]masterOfDisaster[/member], Bitcoin is not just Proof-of-Work.

As I said earlier hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in Bitcoin, some of the best crypto-currency experts are being paid to work full-time on it, Bitcoin has by far the stronger network effect and the more users, just check the daily number of transactions over the last months.

So nobody will let it die anytime soon. Even if they have to switch to PoS oneday. At least, don’t bet your life on it.

45

One problem with Bitcoin is the controversy surrounding protocol changes. There was controversy around P2SH, and now there’s controversy around increasing the block size. Imagine if people wanted to switch to Proof-of-Stake. That would cause a massive conflict between stakeholders. I don’t think Bitcoin could survive that. People who wanted PoS would avoid the conflict and just move over to a PoS coin I would expect.

46

[quote=“mably, post:44, topic:3660”]Hey [member=11595]masterOfDisaster[/member], Bitcoin is not just Proof-of-Work.

As I said earlier hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in Bitcoin, some of the best crypto-currency experts are being paid to work full-time on it, Bitcoin has by far the stronger network effect and the more users, just check the daily number of transactions over the last months.[/quote]
I agree with everything you say.
But still I think this conclusion is not valid:

The Pow is only secure as long as the majority of the miners stays there.
As soon as a majority drops off the network and waits for the difficulty to adjust, that majority is in the position to prepare a >50% attack (if the operators collude to do that; the economical incentive for that can be found in my last post).

Switching to PoS is close to impossible in my opinion.
PoS has been bashed too much by the Bitcoin die-hard believers.
Who would believe that PoS were better than PoW?
And even if Bitcoin switches to PoS - what will the payment processors and the rest of the infrastructure do - will they switch to “PoS” Bitcoin or stay at “PoW” Bitcoin?
There will be 2 types of Bitcoin until that fight is settled.
The answer to that question highly depends on whether they have an incentive to continue PoW (maybe they own miners) or switch to PoS (they could hold BTC).
Have a look at the discussion about the Bitcoin block size limit.
Can you really imagine a switch to PoS if (not) adjusting the maximum block size is such a mess?

The only consensus mechanism that I’d be aware of (for the sake of Peercoin) and that could make me fear for Peercoin’s superiority in terms of security and sustainability is close to perishing: Slimcoin’s proof of burn (PoB).
The incentive to secure the blockchain with proof of burn is so much stronger than with proof of stake.
After the Slimcoins have been burnt, they start to decay. You can only mint (in the PoB process) as long as you have “burned SLM”.
If you shut down your minter, the SLM continue to decay.
You will not only receive no reward, you have lost your burned coins if you don’t mint continuously.

With PoS (Peercoin style) it doesn’t matter when you get your reward. If you don’t mint for years and turn on your minter, you’ll get your 1% annually.
All you lose is composite interest.
That’s no strong incentive to mint.
The main incentive is securing the blockchain by minting (to secure the own Peercoins).

That incentive is present at Slimcoin as well. But it’s leveraged by the economical incentives of the PoB process.

If only few SLM are burnt, the PoB difficulty is low. That creates an incentive to burn SLM and mint.
As soon as the SLM are burned, the owner of the “burnt SLM” mints.
He/she wants to collect rewards - ideally in excess to the amount of SLM that have been burned.

So I’d be afraid of Slimcoin, but not of Bitcoin.
A lot of money is invested in Bitcoin.
That will not save it from the misaligned incentives for securing the blockchain.

Bitcoin will fail - only I don’t know when.
But I can tell you that the BTC price needs to increase by way more than $100 (random number between $0 and $250; I have no knowledge to compute the details) while the difficulty needs to remain quite stable if Bitcoin wants to survive the next coinbase reward halving unharmed.

Have a look here from time to time:

47

[quote=“mably, post:24, topic:3660”]Hi [member=30128]glv[/member], I was wondering if it would be hard to add the possibility of appending a custom user defined token to the coinbase scriptSig when minting a block.

Somewhere probably around here: https://github.com/glv2/peerunity/blob/master/src/main.cpp#L3998
Could be at first initialized from a command line argument: https://github.com/glv2/peerunity/blob/master/src/init.cpp#L618-L619

Some block explorers display the scriptSig value as text like https://chainz.cryptoid.info/ppc/ http://i.imgur.com/Ci8giig.png

It’s the solution adopted by BIP-100 to allow block size voting by miners: https://github.com/jgarzik/bip100/blob/master/bip-0100.mediawiki

It would allow minters (and possibly miners) to express themselves about the future of Peercoin for example.

What do you think? Could it be added to Peerunity? Thanx for your answer.[/quote]

It would probably not be too difficult to do…

48

some valid points by totalb00n why bitcoin could fail if the price stays low at the next halvening

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/3jhawb/bitcoin_miners_are_losing_millions_due_to_80/cuqblyd?context=3

No because you earn more by helping the network than trying to attack the network.

Not if the Bitcoin price is so low that you won’t have a positive ROI.
I’m not talking about the guy next door having a 2 TH/s rig in the apartment. I’m talking about mining data centres.

As such a miner

you need to pay the power for operating the mining devices
you need to pay building occupancy expenses
you need to pay employees
you might want to have some amortization of you investment in miners

You haven’t really understood that there will be a price level at which miners will desperately search for escape scenarios.
Attacking the network is one of them.
…and after the attack they can still mine other compatible PoWs :wink:

The price level is reached when with mining BTC the costs for doing that can’t be paid and the hardware isn’t amortized, maybe with credits left to pay for the purchase.
This is for sure an individual level depending on the mining operation and depending on the probability of a successful attack.
Still this threat is new - it’s here since mining has become a business.

wrt incentives: I remember reading from SK that he is rethinking how to get minters to mint. Something for v06 possibly

49

[quote=“thehuntergames, post:48, topic:3660”]some valid points by totalb00n why bitcoin could fail if the price stays low at the next halvening

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/3jhawb/bitcoin_miners_are_losing_millions_due_to_80/cuqblyd?context=3

No because you earn more by helping the network than trying to attack the network.

Not if the Bitcoin price is so low that you won’t have a positive ROI.
I’m not talking about the guy next door having a 2 TH/s rig in the apartment. I’m talking about mining data centres.

As such a miner

you need to pay the power for operating the mining devices
you need to pay building occupancy expenses
you need to pay employees
you might want to have some amortization of you investment in miners

You haven’t really understood that there will be a price level at which miners will desperately search for escape scenarios.
Attacking the network is one of them.
…and after the attack they can still mine other compatible PoWs :wink:

The price level is reached when with mining BTC the costs for doing that can’t be paid and the hardware isn’t amortized, maybe with credits left to pay for the purchase.
This is for sure an individual level depending on the mining operation and depending on the probability of a successful attack.
Still this threat is new - it’s here since mining has become a business.

wrt incentives: I remember reading from SK that he is rethinking how to get minters to mint. Something for v06 possibly[/quote]

All valid points, I’m very worried about the halving personally. If the price of Bitcoin doesn’t at least double before that event I think a large chunk of the mining rigs in the world will shut down, which would make a 51% attack easier to do. :cry: At the end of the day most of that hash power is to make money. I personally don’t plan to leave my stake in Bitcoin any longer than I have too.

50

It’s for that and nothing else.
If you want to have a PoW that does more than secure a blockchain, have a look at Primecoin or Gridcoin.

Even USD might be a better plan for the next 12 months - unless you want to gamble on the rising BTC price.

51

[quote=“masterOfDisaster, post:46, topic:3660”]With PoS (Peercoin style) it doesn’t matter when you get your reward. If you don’t mint for years and turn on your minter, you’ll get your 1% annually.
All you lose is composite interest.
That’s no strong incentive to mint.[/quote]

Volatility is an incentive to mint at least somewhat regularly. When the price spikes, you want to be ready to sell some of your coins quickly without waiting to mint a block first. And if you did not mint for say 2 years, you lose 2%.

During the last spike up to 0.003 I moved half of my Peercoins to BTC-e, losing almost 1 year of coin age. When my coins arrived at BTC-e, the price was already down to 0.002x, so I did not sell my coins, but still the coin age was lost!

An easy way to incentivice permanent minting is a maximum reward (Novacoin, Bottlecaps, Hobonickels and many more) or constant reward (Clams, Orbitcoin). Such designs also have some negative aspects, but peercoin could hardfork to such reward shemes in the future if consensus is reached.

By the way, it seems that postponing cold minting to version 0.6 was a wise decision by Sunny. Neucoin has implemented it. They need to catch up from behind, so they are less risk-averse and don’t mind to be the test-bed for cold minting. Once it works fine for Neucoin, we can then implement it in Peercoin.

52

I was watching Ulterior States https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=137&v=yQGQXy0RIIo

There Andreas says he sees bitcoin as a network protocol like TCP-IP.
I’d like to add that there’s noting sexy about TCP-IP, but the fact that we nowadays have applications such as voice and videos running on top is very cool. And so is with peercoin and applications such as peershares and peermessages. Peercoin’s focus is on being long term durable, secure and decentralised. Let others focus on the applicability of that.

I dont agree that bitcoin can scale to Visa levels btw. Butthats another story.

53

[quote=“thehuntergames, post:52, topic:3660”]I was watching Ulterior States https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=137&v=yQGQXy0RIIo

There Andreas says he sees bitcoin as a network protocol like TCP-IP.[/quote]

It looks like Andreas reads peercointalk from time to time to get some inspiration;)

[quote=“masterOfDisaster, post:12, topic:3166”][…]
Peercoin might once for crypto coins be what TCP/IP is for the internet: a technology so much is based on, but that gets rarely even recognized.

If this metaphor is close to what will be, we need value that is built on Peercoin, because Peercoin alone (not being used for anything) is close to useless - just like the existence of TCP/IP is, if you don’t use it to send packets anywhere.
We need to find ways to utilize Peercoin’s strength in being secure and sustainable.
We need to transfer value using Peercoin (send TCP/IP packets).
We need to find or develop businesses, services that have the need to transfer value (create those TCP/IP packets).
This is a way to undermine the power that banks and governments have, to make the people a bit more free than they are now.[/quote]

Sustaining Bitcoin is too expensive for it to act as such a protocol.
Sustaining Peercoin is inexpensive :wink:

54

the TCP/IP is catching on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXLSVMSvFH8 around the 21minute mark

too bad Tuur is still heavy on btc. It is a religion.

55

Let us follow the one true god of PoS for the PoW is dark and full of terror!

56

eh I am happy with peercoin the reality is 99% of crypto dont get backbone, but financial institutions and large transfers needs will

57

About Bitcoin switching to PoS. I think it’s very possible that there will someday be an attempt to create a Bitcoin blockchain fork secured via Proof-of-Stake.

What would be even more interesting is to create a marketing campaign announcing this in advance. The marketing campaign should go something like this: “Let’s come together an make Bitcoin, the greatest crypto currency of them all, environmentally sound. If You’re a Bitcoin owner you can help reduce Bitcoins reliance on energy to secure itself AND make a profit as well. Instead of paying FEES to Bitcoin miners, you will in the future be able to make money on just owning bitcoins. This technology, proven robust over time (Peercoin, Etherium and Nu) makes it possible. Just install this patch (link) and turn your mining machines to PoS-FriendlyPool (link). By the time industrial miners have made your personal machine obsolete, you will no longer need them nor your old machine. Instead of loosing money on paying bitcoins fees, make money on Bitcoin by help securing it. The best part is, it is FREE. The only thing you have to do is to run this wallet (link) and wait for other Bitcoiners to also do that, then when enough people are doing it the network will switch to PoS and you will start to make money. You don’t loose anything by running this new wallet, and if you do you stand a chance of making a tremendous amount of money just by owning bitcoins and also help make Bitcoin the worlds most energy efficient new money. No risk, no cost and a great way of making money on your bitcoins - the future crypto currencies today.”

Of course the price of bitcoins will be destabilized as the PoS part of the network catches on and crypto currencies already running PoS will profit.

58

This is an interesting thread.

I do think Sunny King is Peercoin’s lifeline right now. Certainly if he were no longer working on it somebody else would pick up the project, but that may change it entirely.

I’ve always liked the style with which SK has developed this coin.

He doesn’t seem to give a shit about the price.
He doesn’t seem to give a shit about marketing.
He doesn’t seem give a shit if you understand what he has in mind for Peercoin or not.
He lays his cards on the table and if you can’t read them then he doesn’t have time to explain it to you.

He just develops the coin and watches as the ecosystem unfolds.

In my mind this is a mark of true objectivity. He knows why he’s developing Peercoin and he knows that ultimate trust in the network’s security will come through having a consistently stable network. He knows that all he has to do is follow through, then the project’s success is a gimme. So why bother with the politics? I can definitely see Peercoin evolving into a true store of wealth for big value holders and transactors as long as SK or somebody who shares his vision is at the helm.

59

Excellent thread and it has reassured me to trust my research so far that I should invest in peercoins as a long/medium term investment and just use bitcoins as an easy way of converting from GBP. Just waiting for my Raspberry Pi to arrive so I can set up a permanent minter to help the network, though I will need to wait the required 30 days so see you again in January!

60

Have you guys been sleepwalking for the past year while the xt fork debate went on and on at bitcoin?
Whilst it is not quite as old as all the gold in fort knox, the position of bitcoin in the set of cryptocurrencies is beginning to look relatively heavy, immutable, shiny, and yellow. (well only kidding about those last two). That is, one would not expect to fork a 5x10^5 Thash/s sha256d cryptocurrency to a less hashed one.

As I see it, all of the cryptocurrencies are massively undervalued this year because the banks don’t own them. Rather than squeaking at [btc], how about you lot start to define the price of a few real world goods in [ppc] and sell those online ? That is, rather than go at it like the ponzimarketing of a penny stock, approach it from the point of view of selling a few car boot sale items or church fete cake stall items at a price defined in [ppc] and let the $ price float because that is the one not attached to any tangible assets.