Submit your Questions for Sunny King's Upcoming Interviews (Post v0.4 Release)

Preferable, in my opinion, would be a pair of sticky threads. The first thread might be titled something like “Peercoin Questions for Sunny” and the second thread might be “Sunny’s Peercoin Answers”.

The first sticky thread would contain questions posed but not answered. Once a question is answered by Sunny, then a thread moderator would move the question with its answer to the second sticky thread the “Sunny’s Peercoin Answers” thread.

If, Sunny answers a question with “Idiot!” haha, then such a question would go into the place of shame at the bottom of the second thread. If he answers with “too vague”, “Not Applicable”, or “TL;DR” then these question/answer pairs would be placed next to the bottom of the second thread. The questions with Sunny’s longest most complete answers could be placed at the top of the Sunny’s Answers thread: where they would remain as a resource for everyone regarding Sunny’s thinking about Peercoin.

Would a scheme like this be desirable?

Better submit to Sunny after the 0.4 release. Not sure if he will sit down to answer the questions before the release compaign is over.

Guys, I tasked Ben and iheartcryptocoin with handling the interview and taking questions. If you have any questions or feedback about the process, please get in touch with them. Maybe they’ll answer you in this thread too.

Possible question, if not already asked: in an earlier interview, SK says he is keeping an eye on the political situation. Could he elaborate on what he sees on the horizon as political threats (and opportunities)?

Question: Sunny, What do you think is the biggest threat to Peercoin as a crypto-coin ?

JetJet13

Question: Is this attack feasible, to manipulate the mining difficulty? It was left as an open question on the thread. See Cryptoblog - notícias sobre bitcoin e criptomoedas!

I recall not so long ago Vladimir Butvin (not correct spelling) of Ethereum interviewing (chatting) Sunny on Peercoin - a possible question for Sunny is therefore: “Will you be interviewing Vladimir Butvin on Ethereum?”

Status Update (28-Mar-2014):

We haven’t forgotten about these questions, and, assuming nothing blows up between now and then, I’ll be working with IHC to collate and de-dupe them into a set of categories. Once that is done, we’ll post individual polls for each category to ask the community to vote on the individual questions that they would like to see answers for, first.

While the expectation will be to get answers from Sunny regarding the community’s highest rated/request questions, first, ALL questions will be forward, so it may be possible that we’ll see responses to questions outside those “top” ones.

The format for the Q&A sessions will be published as soon as we’ve proposed and reached an agreement with Sunny. Please let me know if you have any questions at all on the process.

REMINDER: You’ve still got time to submit any new questions that you’ve come up with, and I’ll give a 24 hour warning for submissions that will make their way into the community vote.

I’m currently writing my interview questions for Sunny. I’m going to have a lot of questions to add, so this is going to take some time. There’s lots of important stuff I feel people haven’t been asking.

There have been some questions about Ethereum but I haven’t seen any on Open Transactions yet. So I would like to see something like:

“What are your thoughts on Open Transactions, and how do you envision any possible future relationship/implementations with Peercoin?”

I really like this type of question.

Instead of asking Sunny for things, let him ask us as a group.

For me, the checkpoints issue is one of the most important, followed by the cold-locked transaction feature. So my questions would be:

  1. Do you think the mandatory checkpoint system is still necessary? (Note: Nxt seems to have managed to maintain a PoS altcoin network without checkpoints. Can Peercoin do the same?)

  2. Are there still plans to make the checkpoint system voluntary in PPC 0.5?

  3. How often do you sign blocks with your checkpoint private key? Is it on a regular basis or only at moments of “network weaknesses”?

  4. Is the “Cold-locked-transaction” feature (or another way to “PoS mine” with a hot wallet using the “coin-age” of another address which can be in cold storage) still in plans for 0.5? I think such a feature is very important.

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.

Also Ben and iheart, are you guys going to include your own questions once you start sorting through these?

Question 8 -

If so, I’m sure there are plenty of people in the community that would be willing to pay you to develop Peercoin as your full-time job

That’s quite a commitment with no facts behind it. We’re having a hard time raising $1600 for a video. Yet we’re sure that there are plenty of people in the community to pay Sunny King full time? Really?

This is strange and out of left field and I don’t think this question should be in the list until it’s proven that we have people committed to paying Sunny as a developer on a full-time basis for years to come. What about job security for coming years? Seniority he’s earned by length of time at his current position? Does he quit and lose all that?

This question is out of line I think.

[quote=“ppcman, post:47, topic:1761”]Question 8 -

If so, I’m sure there are plenty of people in the community that would be willing to pay you to develop Peercoin as your full-time job

That’s quite a commitment with no facts behind it. We’re having a hard time raising $1600 for a video. Yet we’re sure that there are plenty of people in the community to pay Sunny King full time? Really?

This is strange and out of left field and I don’t think this question should be in the list until it’s proven that we have people committed to paying Sunny as a developer on a full-time basis for years to come. What about job security for coming years? Seniority he’s earned by length of time at his current position? Does he quit and lose all that?

This question is out of line I think.[/quote]

I was thinking about the $100,000 that was donated to Peer4Commit when I wrote that and figured getting Sunny to develop full-time would be a no brainer. I started having second thoughts about including it though. I wouldn’t want to put Sunny in a bad position if things didn’t work out. I think you’re right, so I’ll remove that question.

The rest of your questions look pretty good! Lots of stuff for Sunny to ponder and answer.

Thanks Sentinelrv!

Another question I would like to ask:

Which other coin does Sunny think is Peercoin’s main competitor?

Another two questions:

  1. As I understand it, check-pointing is necessary to protect Peercoin. What provision is in place to ensure that the “keys” that enable check-pointing are stored with a neutral third party (e.g. a solicitor) for release to trusted peercoin supporters/developers, in the event of you (Sunny) having an accident, or suffering serious illness, etc.

  2. I understand that the phasing out of check-pointing is the eventual aim. If check-pointing is removed, what will replace it to protect Peercoin?

[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:48, topic:1761”][quote=“ppcman, post:47, topic:1761”]Question 8 -

If so, I’m sure there are plenty of people in the community that would be willing to pay you to develop Peercoin as your full-time job

That’s quite a commitment with no facts behind it. We’re having a hard time raising $1600 for a video. Yet we’re sure that there are plenty of people in the community to pay Sunny King full time? Really?

This is strange and out of left field and I don’t think this question should be in the list until it’s proven that we have people committed to paying Sunny as a developer on a full-time basis for years to come. What about job security for coming years? Seniority he’s earned by length of time at his current position? Does he quit and lose all that?

This question is out of line I think.[/quote]

I was thinking about the $100,000 that was donated to Peer4Commit when I wrote that and figured getting Sunny to develop full-time would be a no brainer. I started having second thoughts about including it though. I wouldn’t want to put Sunny in a bad position if things didn’t work out. I think you’re right, so I’ll remove that question.[/quote]

I don´t think this question is so bad. Please remember the following answer from community interview #1:

JustaBitofTime: 3.5. Could tell us a bit about the full development team and is this a full time job for you (xpm/ppc)?

[…]

Sunny King: Yeah almost full time right now. It’s part of my goal that I could achieve self-sufficiency in the cryptocurrency market, so I can continue to commit most of my time to development work.

So most likely he is a freelancer and only does work beside cryptocurrency markets when he needs the money. So there is (most likely) nor risk for him involved when the community is paying him since he doesn’t have to give up his job.

He also stated, that he wants to live from the cryptocurrency market. Ofcourse he never said, that he wants to get payed but I think the question is valid. In my oppinion this whould be a win-win-situation for big stakeholder, sunny and us. But ofcourse we whould have to be perfectly sure to really have the money to pay him, before asking him