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I'm the primary person behind this, and will answer questions here. Since it's a donation campaign I wasn't sure if it was kosher to self-post it to HN, but ra

by maaku 14y ago

I'm the primary person behind this, and will answer questions here. Since it's a donation campaign I wasn't sure if it was kosher to self-post it to HN, but raising funds isn't why I did it. I know there are a lot of people here with finance experience, and I'd be interested in engaging with you if you have something to say.

eupharis 14y ago
The first question that comes to mind: why not just use bitcoin? Have you explored adding the features you want to see to the (open-source) bitcoin project?
- kiba 14y ago
  If you try to propose deviation from the essence of bitcoin monetary policy, you probably won't get your change into the network.
- maaku 14y ago
  That's exactly what I have done (for the prototype) and will do (for the actual client). However adding demurrage is a protocol-level change and would represent a hard-fork. It's better for everyone involved to simply start a fresh block chain. EDIT: But yes, the client would be an open source fork of bitcoin.
  - eupharis 14y ago
    Interesting. I guess I was mostly just focused on the bittorrent integration and block-chain pruning elements, both of which sound great for bitcoin. Just did a very quick skimming trying to understand demurrage currency. Sounds very, very different from normal currency. From a practical standpoint, would a two-step process make more sense: 1) Widespread adoption of peer-to-peer commodity currency (bitcoin). 2) The implementation of a second peer-to-peer currency on a different basis (demurrage). Both of these seem like very difficult undertakings. And doing both at the same time seems like it would compound the difficulty. Apart from Woergi, has there ever been a real-life implementation of a demurrage currency? Excepting of course the natural cost of storing gold (vaults, guards, etc.). Which is easy for people to accept on a wide scale because its necessity is self-evident.
w-ll 14y ago
So this is a fork of bitcoin? How many changes have you made? Have you started mining with it? Whats to prevent you from mining the difficulty up while we fund your indiegogo?
- maaku 14y ago
  > So this is a fork of bitcoin? Yes. > How many changes have you made? In terms of the protocol, chiefly I have instituted mandated transaction fees based age of outputs (and updated the block verification code, wallet and knapsack selection algorithm, etc. to account for this). There's still a fair amount of code that needs to be written for the Qt user interface and RPC calls to reflect the constantly-changing balance, as a number of sections of the Bitcoin coin base frustratingly assume that account balances stay the same over time. > Have you started mining with it? Only on a testnet to prove it out. > Whats to prevent you from mining the difficulty up while we fund your indiegogo? I'll have a coordinated release so that everyone can get in on the easy difficulty, and will use the same technique of encoding a news headline in the genesis block to prove I didn't mine it early in secret. It'll be released with just two blocks pre-mined: the genesis block (hand-crafted), and one follow-on block as a verification step.

by maaku 14y ago

eupharis 14y ago

The first question that comes to mind: why not just use bitcoin? Have you explored adding the features you want to see to the (open-source) bitcoin project?

kiba 14y ago
If you try to propose deviation from the essence of bitcoin monetary policy, you probably won't get your change into the network.
maaku 14y ago
That's exactly what I have done (for the prototype) and will do (for the actual client). However adding demurrage is a protocol-level change and would represent a hard-fork. It's better for everyone involved to simply start a fresh block chain. EDIT: But yes, the client would be an open source fork of bitcoin.
- eupharis 14y ago
  Interesting. I guess I was mostly just focused on the bittorrent integration and block-chain pruning elements, both of which sound great for bitcoin. Just did a very quick skimming trying to understand demurrage currency. Sounds very, very different from normal currency. From a practical standpoint, would a two-step process make more sense: 1) Widespread adoption of peer-to-peer commodity currency (bitcoin). 2) The implementation of a second peer-to-peer currency on a different basis (demurrage). Both of these seem like very difficult undertakings. And doing both at the same time seems like it would compound the difficulty. Apart from Woergi, has there ever been a real-life implementation of a demurrage currency? Excepting of course the natural cost of storing gold (vaults, guards, etc.). Which is easy for people to accept on a wide scale because its necessity is self-evident.

w-ll 14y ago

So this is a fork of bitcoin? How many changes have you made? Have you started mining with it? Whats to prevent you from mining the difficulty up while we fund your indiegogo?

maaku 14y ago
> So this is a fork of bitcoin? Yes. > How many changes have you made? In terms of the protocol, chiefly I have instituted mandated transaction fees based age of outputs (and updated the block verification code, wallet and knapsack selection algorithm, etc. to account for this). There's still a fair amount of code that needs to be written for the Qt user interface and RPC calls to reflect the constantly-changing balance, as a number of sections of the Bitcoin coin base frustratingly assume that account balances stay the same over time. > Have you started mining with it? Only on a testnet to prove it out. > Whats to prevent you from mining the difficulty up while we fund your indiegogo? I'll have a coordinated release so that everyone can get in on the easy difficulty, and will use the same technique of encoding a news headline in the genesis block to prove I didn't mine it early in secret. It'll be released with just two blocks pre-mined: the genesis block (hand-crafted), and one follow-on block as a verification step.