Re: Zero Knowledge Transactions

Do the development as crowdfunded stages with each product produced running autonomously. Enable coins to be burnt from one development stage to the next. Each stage runs as a decentralized, autonomous protocol. Whole new paradigm for altcoins. Perhaps I will be the first to test the model (pending decision involving this thread). Maybe Gmaxwell is reading and can apply this to the general concept of side-chains.

Adam Back already proposed burning coins as an upgrade mechanism, which he called a one-way peg. It was that idea, in fact, which directly led to side chains (i.e. bidirectional burning or two-way peg).

I personally believe that spin-offs are a better model for upgrades than burning but the argument could be made either way (and there may be technical reasons to prefer burning).

Wasn't Peter R who first proposed something like that years ago. I am nearly certain but I forgot the name he gave to the concept.

Peter R proposed spin-offs as a bootstrapping mechanism for new coins based on Bitcoin's distribution. I don't remember him proposing it as an upgrade mechanism (although a hypothetical Bitcoin "upgrade" does fit within his model). https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=563972.0

Unless he proposed something else in addition, which is also possible.

To my untrained eye, this idea of pinning a new coin's distribution to the BTC blockchain looks a lot like what happened with CLAM.

No, because CLAM used number of outputs, not number of coins (and CLAM used equal weighting across several coins with completely different values, further separating it from any economic reality). That's a rather peculiar quantity without much of a tie to any economically significant value. The stated objective was to distribute the coins in a wide and flat manner. The reality has been somewhat different.