Alright, it took me a couple days to write up these questions. Ben and iheart, I believe it would be best to do this interview in a forum thread and not in the chat, given the length of some of the questions posted in this thread, especially mine. It’s also easier for people to follow without the text scrolling off the chat window. I’d appreciate it if my questions were asked in the way they were written. If you believe you can make them sound better then please let me know. I tried to design them to get as much information out of Sunny as possible. iheart may be able to reword the final question better than I could. It’s based on what he wanted to find out from Sunny about marketing Peercoin. If I think of any more questions, I’ll make sure to post them, but for now this is it.
1. How do you think the new IRS rules treating cryptos as property will affect Peercoin?
2. At some point in the far future once Peercoin is no longer dependent on you as a developer, do you see yourself vanishing into the night like Satoshi Nakamoto did, or would you rather stick around and be a voice for Peercoin so it doesn’t lose its way?
3. What would have to happen in order for you to feel safe about revealing your true identity? Is there any scenario in which you would reveal yourself, or do you feel you’ll remain anonymous forever, regardless of how accepting the world becomes of cryptos?
4. Are you still against the idea of setting up a Peercoin Foundation? If so, can you explain your reasons for being against one and how they relate to the job the Bitcoin Foundation has been doing?
5. According to the white paper, Peercoin was created by you and Scott Nadal. In the previous interview, you mentioned that Scott hasn’t been as motivated as you are. Is this still the case? Are you still working on Peercoin alone or do you have help? Also, what possible reason could Scott have for not being motivated when Peercoin is doing so well?
6. You’ve mentioned before that one of your long-term goals is bringing on more developers so that the entire community is no longer dependent on one person. Are you waiting until a certain point in Peercoin’s development before you start bringing other people on to help you? If so, what is it exactly that you’re waiting for? Can you give us some kind of timeline or a version number you’re waiting for so we have some expectation of how long the community will have to wait before it can start becoming more involved in the development process?
7. Besides several features such as cold-locked minting that we know are coming later down the road, Peercoin’s future development is a black box mystery to everyone. You’ve also been very absent from the forum and unavailable for most of 2013 while you develop on your own. Once you reach the point where you can start taking on development help from others, will you become a more active and regular participant in the community and will you be opening up more about your development plans for the future?
8. Due to the 0.01 transaction fee, in the previous interview you said the following: “In the long term micropayments should be provided by centralized providers, or a less decentralized network optimized for high capacity transaction processing.” A lot of people in the community are excited by Open Transactions, which they believe is the perfect complement to Peercoin as it would provide a solution for instantaneous micropayments. Do you believe Open Transactions offers this solution and how do you see it affecting Peercoin in the future?
9. For those who don’t already know, Peershares is a project by Jordan Lee that will provide a way for businesses to raise funds and manage publicly held shares in a decentralized fashion. It uses the Peercoin network to automate the distribution of associated dividends in the form of Peercoins. Sunny, are you as excited about Peershares as the rest of us? What are your thoughts on it and how do you imagine it affecting Peercoin in the future?
10. When version v0.4 of the client went into testing, many people were disappointed to learn that certain UI enhancements weren’t included, for example a single click minting button. There were also still references of the old ppcoin name as well as use of the old logo. These visual and ease of use changes are important for creating mass adoption. Is it correct to assume that you’d rather have the community design the appearance and features of the wallet while you continue to develop the Peercoin protocol?
11. One of the most common criticisms about Peercoin is its checkpoint system. The argument is that the centralized checkpoints also make Peercoin entirely centralized. Please explain two things. 1. What exactly is the purpose behind the checkpoint system and how does it help Peercoin. 2. Why are the criticisms about checkpoints making Peercoin centralized false? Your response here will be used on the main website as well as in arguments, so please be as detailed as possible.
12. Warren, a developer on the Litecoin team has repeatedly expressed his opinion that your promise to fully remove checkpointing in the future is one that you won’t be able to deliver because it would reduce the stability of the network. Others have made comments that proof-of-stake is only held together by checkpointing and that it won’t work once checkpointing is removed because the system won’t know who does or doesn’t have stake. I have three questions here: 1. Can you put some of these concerns to rest? 2. You’ve previously said that the gradual decentralization of checkpointing is planned to begin in v0.5. Is this still the case or has it been pushed back? 3. Finally, how long before you expect checkpoints to be fully removed from Peercoin?
13. Another common criticism is something that even Gavin Andresen has commented on. The following two quotes are taken from a larger quote that Gavin posted on Reddit: 1. “I think Andrew Miller put it best: (The trouble with Proof-of-stake is that there is nothing at stake.)” 2. “The trouble with proof-of-stake is there is no natural incentive stopping a miner from assigning their stake to multiple, competing chains.” Are you aware of Gavin’s criticisms here? Is this a legitimate threat to Peercoin and have you already come up with a solution for it?
14. Marketing has been Peercoin’s greatest weakness, which worries me because many superior ideas or products get overlooked because they don’t have the marketing to back it up. I feel the problem is that people don’t fully understand the purpose behind the coin. With Bitcoin it’s simple. Bitcoin is a transactional currency, so we proceed by getting businesses to accept it as payment for products or services. This generates a network effect which spreads the coin around to more people.
With Peercoin, the backbone theory of the coin overcomplicates things and confuses people, making it impossible to explain to others. You don’t need merchants if you are a backbone currency because you aren’t supposed to be for daily use. But if you aren’t for daily use, then how do you generate a network effect and get people to care? As long as we argue PPC is not for everyday use (store of value), the coin will be hamstrung. No need to pursue merchants or create network effects spreading it around. This is why the store of value argument is self defeating.
What we need from you is to explain what Peercoin’s purpose truly is. Is it a transactional currency? Is it a savings currency? Can it be both at the same time? How do we explain to people what Peercoin is used for? How should we be marketing Peercoin to the masses? If we’re not getting businesses to accept Peercoin, how do we create a network effect? And finally, what do you see as the steps the community needs to take to generate mass adoption? What is our path going forward? These questions about Peercoin’s identity are the most important questions we need answers to, so please take as long to answer them as you need to, the more information the better.