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Show HN: SoV0: a fixed-supply zero-fee cryptocurrency

Hey, we (a team with past experience at the Facebook Libra project and MIT) are unveiling SoV0 into public test today. Our motivation for SoV0 is to achieve the platonic ideal of a pure coordinated store-of-value asset. As in, take the value prop underlying gold, and push it to its logical conclusion: - Value is fundamentally a coordination game, and gold is valuable because it's a natural coordination point, owing to: [1] limited supply growth (i.e. scarce) [2] persistent (i.e. doesn't decay much), and [3] compellingly due to... being shiny. - Similarly, SoV0 aims to be an even more natural coordination point by satisfying all of these properties to the maximum extent possible: [1] fixed supply [2] zero fees (basically fees = decay), and [3] compelling elegance of being the simplest possible thing that can satisfy fixed supply & zero fees. In terms of design, SoV0 is about as basic as a blockchain can be: just a text document detailing who owns how much of the asset, plus some basic support for sending & receiving assets. The main challenge here (and SoV0's core novelty) is how to enforce proper operation of such a system without monetary incentives. This requires that SoV0 be intentionally limited in functionality (e.g. slow, no smart contract support, too coarse to be a currency). As a result, there's no need for fees to regulate the system, and consensus can be directly maintained by users rather than explicitly paid for (as in rewards in proof of work / stake). More details in the whitepaper: https://github.com/sov0/sov0 https://github.com/sov0/sov0. More broadly: Our interest in the blockchain space is strongly motivated by an aesthetic preference for building 'ideal' institutions that can eventually exist in a fixed form forever, and thus feel more like fundamental aspects of the world than typical human constructs (so, more like Bitcoin, less like the Ethereum or other modern general-purpose L1 blockchains). SoV0 is our first attempt at applying this approach to the simplest possible case: a pure store coordinated value store. I'll do my best to answer any questions here. Thanks!

al2o3cr 4y ago
The "chaining one hash of a JSON file into the next one" makes me wonder if this system could be implemented on top of a DVCS, which is _also_ maintaining a tree of changes to files connected by hashes. Some other things that jump out on a first read: * seems like any entity that controls 500m + 1 units of value can make themselves block producer (by voting out anyone else) and can't ever be removed (because they control a majority). Until the project achieves significant uptake, the creator of the protocol is that entity; instant rug-pull potential. * signatures would prevent a producer's compromised Twitter account from maliciously updating the ledger, but seems like an attacker could freeze up the network for at least one cycle * the current producer's signing keys are a bug-bounty piñata
- sov0_custodian 4y ago
  Thanks, great points. - Hadn't thought about DVCS, but yes this mechanism of chaining hashes is there. - On majority ownership: correct, this is an issue with excess centralization, which is an issue for blockchains in general. The remedy in this case is the standard one: the community would have to coordinate on forking out the misbehaving party. - On rug pull: we're not going to sell the tokens to a general audience (for legal reasons among other things). But you're correct that there needs to be a community around the asset (and thus as sufficient level of decentralization) before it can serve its purpose of being a coordinated value store. - On compromising twitter: you're correct that the inclusion of the signature makes it so that a compromised twitter doesn't compromise updates, could lead to freeze. The mitigation here would be coordination on backup broadcast accounts. - On signing key issues: would love to hear more of your thoughts on this, thank you!
crustycub 4y ago
Does the general crypto community even care about aesthetics? How are you maintaining security of consensus in a proof-of-stake model without fees / economic rewards for stakers / validators?
- sov0_custodian 4y ago
  Excellent questions! 1. Do people care about aesthetics: - Our view is that for crypto-products, simplicity is actually quite functional as a form of commitment. If you want to build something that commits to doing exactly what it says, it's important to have it be as obvious as possible, since this makes it possible for user to just look at the product and understand that it does exactly what it says without having to trust the people running it. - If you look at Bitcoin: a lot of the attractiveness comes from the fact that it's an elegant self-contained payment platform that can commit to doing exactly what it does forever, and seems like it obviously works. Of course, it still has a lot of complexity that comes from being a payments platform, which is why we're trying to build something even simpler that's purely a store of value. 2. Security of consensus: this is a core novelty of SoV0's design: consensus is maintained directly by users, who are incentivized to do this since they must include the current state hash in order to transact. - For existing blockchains, consensus on the state (i.e. how many assets everyone has) roughly works like this: (A) some group of relatively centralized operators (e.g. validators/miners) run some protocol to update the state, and (B) some users who run full nodes who monitor them to make sure they didn't misbehave, typically out of pure. - SoV0 instead just makes (B) the main attraction. Users are required to know the current state hash if they want to sent a transaction, which motivates general monitoring of the state update process to ensure that nothing weird is going on. - SoV0 can only do this since it's slow enough that people can actually know the state (state updates once a week). Existing blockchains all operate too quickly to require the state hash as in input in the transaction itself.
jqpabc123 4y ago
Stupid question --- How to obtain it and how to redeem any "value" as currency? At what cost? "Value" is non-existant without a simple, effective means of utilization. Leaving this to others will most likely result in fees similar to any other crypto --- and limit the stated "value" proposition.
- sov0_custodian 4y ago
  Thanks, appreciate the questions! - On obtaining it: so the product is in testnet currently, so acquiring these test assets is just a matter of requesting it: see https://sov0.org/ https://sov0.org/. Conveniently, we're also running a sweepstakes with a $100k USD prize where the entry procedure is just to ask for some testnet assets. - Once we launch into production, our intent is to distribute the assets freely over the first few years to users who help sustain the network, in a process roughly analogous to block rewards in PoS/PoW. We won't be selling the assets to a general audience, and our goal in general is to sell as little as possible to fund operating costs. - On value being related to utilization: right, so our view is to make the analogy with gold. Essentially, if/once there's coordination around SoV0, there will be markets for transacting the asset. Building something that can be directly utilized for purchases would require building a currency, which we're not sure is possible to do in an elegant self-perpetuating way (and which we're not attempting to do here). So yes, "fees" in our context refers to fees internal to the system, and transactions with the outside world are beyond SoV0's ability to control.
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    So yes, "fees" in our context refers to fees internal to the system, and transactions with the outside world are beyond SoV0's ability to control. So basically, you're attempting to build an isolated economic/value system. How this relates to the outside world will be left to the usual suspects. Sounds like a prescription to become just another crypto --- albeit one with less functionality than most. If it catches on, Binance will probably just convert it into one of their coins in the interest of "efficiency".
    - 4y ago

al2o3cr 4y ago

The "chaining one hash of a JSON file into the next one" makes me wonder if this system could be implemented on top of a DVCS, which is _also_ maintaining a tree of changes to files connected by hashes. Some other things that jump out on a first read: * seems like any entity that controls 500m + 1 units of value can make themselves block producer (by voting out anyone else) and can't ever be removed (because they control a majority). Until the project achieves significant uptake, the creator of the protocol is that entity; instant rug-pull potential. * signatures would prevent a producer's compromised Twitter account from maliciously updating the ledger, but seems like an attacker could freeze up the network for at least one cycle * the current producer's signing keys are a bug-bounty piñata

sov0_custodian 4y ago
Thanks, great points. - Hadn't thought about DVCS, but yes this mechanism of chaining hashes is there. - On majority ownership: correct, this is an issue with excess centralization, which is an issue for blockchains in general. The remedy in this case is the standard one: the community would have to coordinate on forking out the misbehaving party. - On rug pull: we're not going to sell the tokens to a general audience (for legal reasons among other things). But you're correct that there needs to be a community around the asset (and thus as sufficient level of decentralization) before it can serve its purpose of being a coordinated value store. - On compromising twitter: you're correct that the inclusion of the signature makes it so that a compromised twitter doesn't compromise updates, could lead to freeze. The mitigation here would be coordination on backup broadcast accounts. - On signing key issues: would love to hear more of your thoughts on this, thank you!

crustycub 4y ago

Does the general crypto community even care about aesthetics? How are you maintaining security of consensus in a proof-of-stake model without fees / economic rewards for stakers / validators?

sov0_custodian 4y ago
Excellent questions! 1. Do people care about aesthetics: - Our view is that for crypto-products, simplicity is actually quite functional as a form of commitment. If you want to build something that commits to doing exactly what it says, it's important to have it be as obvious as possible, since this makes it possible for user to just look at the product and understand that it does exactly what it says without having to trust the people running it. - If you look at Bitcoin: a lot of the attractiveness comes from the fact that it's an elegant self-contained payment platform that can commit to doing exactly what it does forever, and seems like it obviously works. Of course, it still has a lot of complexity that comes from being a payments platform, which is why we're trying to build something even simpler that's purely a store of value. 2. Security of consensus: this is a core novelty of SoV0's design: consensus is maintained directly by users, who are incentivized to do this since they must include the current state hash in order to transact. - For existing blockchains, consensus on the state (i.e. how many assets everyone has) roughly works like this: (A) some group of relatively centralized operators (e.g. validators/miners) run some protocol to update the state, and (B) some users who run full nodes who monitor them to make sure they didn't misbehave, typically out of pure. - SoV0 instead just makes (B) the main attraction. Users are required to know the current state hash if they want to sent a transaction, which motivates general monitoring of the state update process to ensure that nothing weird is going on. - SoV0 can only do this since it's slow enough that people can actually know the state (state updates once a week). Existing blockchains all operate too quickly to require the state hash as in input in the transaction itself.

jqpabc123 4y ago

Stupid question --- How to obtain it and how to redeem any "value" as currency? At what cost? "Value" is non-existant without a simple, effective means of utilization. Leaving this to others will most likely result in fees similar to any other crypto --- and limit the stated "value" proposition.

sov0_custodian 4y ago
Thanks, appreciate the questions! - On obtaining it: so the product is in testnet currently, so acquiring these test assets is just a matter of requesting it: see https://sov0.org/ https://sov0.org/. Conveniently, we're also running a sweepstakes with a $100k USD prize where the entry procedure is just to ask for some testnet assets. - Once we launch into production, our intent is to distribute the assets freely over the first few years to users who help sustain the network, in a process roughly analogous to block rewards in PoS/PoW. We won't be selling the assets to a general audience, and our goal in general is to sell as little as possible to fund operating costs. - On value being related to utilization: right, so our view is to make the analogy with gold. Essentially, if/once there's coordination around SoV0, there will be markets for transacting the asset. Building something that can be directly utilized for purchases would require building a currency, which we're not sure is possible to do in an elegant self-perpetuating way (and which we're not attempting to do here). So yes, "fees" in our context refers to fees internal to the system, and transactions with the outside world are beyond SoV0's ability to control.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  So yes, "fees" in our context refers to fees internal to the system, and transactions with the outside world are beyond SoV0's ability to control. So basically, you're attempting to build an isolated economic/value system. How this relates to the outside world will be left to the usual suspects. Sounds like a prescription to become just another crypto --- albeit one with less functionality than most. If it catches on, Binance will probably just convert it into one of their coins in the interest of "efficiency".
  - 4y ago