Quote from: Impaler on January 05, 2013, 01:53:04 AM

Thank you for some constructive input jancsika, that's exactly what we have been hoping for.

You hit the nail on the head for why bootstrapping is so much harder now then it was in early Bitcoin days, mining is so industrial now the solo miner using a normal computer is immediately pushed out. Proof of work is just not a viable distribution medium in our opinion, we have said that the distribution of the new money should be as democratic as possible and the ideal would be to simultaneously give everyone on earth an equal quantity, that's just not logistically possible so were going to need to come up with the closest equivalent.

Mandating a time frame to complete the distribution would be a good idea, this is typical in many foundations (Bill and Malinda Gates for example) to prevent the funds from being 'sat on' forever. I'd say something like 5 to 10 years as a maximum period for the foundation to be distributing all the funds, if they aren't distributed by then then they could all be 'destroyed' aka sent to an inaccessible address, demurrage will gradually recycle them of course.

I think your right that we are to a degree over our heads, that making a foundation is harder then writing code. But we did it because we felt it was necessary for crypto-currency to grow to a wider community. But that's why people should be HELPING us form that foundation and setting it on a Legal footing that will show how such a thing can be done, or should we fail at least how not to do it. Many of the abuses that people are accusing us of planning to do would indeed be terrible, so tell us specifically how the bylaws of the foundation should be written to prevent abuse.

There's simply no way to do that, and regardless you really don't want people to have to invest long-term trust to the body tasked with distributing the coins when the whole point of the network and community that uses it is to do an end-run around trust. It doesn't matter how careful you are about devising bylaws and choosing people with seemingly bulletproof reputations to head up the foundation, because for as long as the foundation is in control of the bulk of those coins they will be a) a centralized point of authority and power and b) a centralized point of failure. Regarding a: you are up against a community that exists solely to invent technical ways to eat away at centralized power. Regarding b: reread the previous sentence.

The _only_ way to develop trust in the body tasked with distributing the coins is for the body to distribute the coins, ASAP, in a way that gives as widespread access as possible to the coins while at the same time eating away at its own authority to distribute coins. There are three parts of this process that must be addressed. In increasing order of difficulty:

1) The Foundation must prove that the coins are leaving its specific coffers, triggered by requests made through some publicly accessible front end.
2) The Foundation must give evidence that the coins end up in wallets which they don't control.
3) The Foundation must give evidence that coins get sent based on the criteria available to the public on the front end, and not by some mechanism on the back end to which the public does not have access.

1 is trivial. 2 is doable but requires work. 3 is extremely difficult and is what the "Generate Coins" button tried to solve.

Example: David Chaum looks at the website and says, "Neat, I'd like some coins." He digitally signs a request for coins and posts it on his homepage. The Foundation sends him some Freicoin. That satisfies 1 and 2 but not 3.

If you ask me, I think you're being extremely uncreative given the power that multi-sig transactions provide, and I suppose this is partly because there is no simple interface for it yet.

Example: Throw together some novel mechanism for distribution. Make a "tentative" release where only 1 party of a required n parties does all the sending of coins. Block out x amount of time afterward for requests for comments. If the process didn't work, start over.

For kicks, do it with the entire amount the Foundation controls. That will get you way more attention than any amount of marketing, and if it works you just created a wider potential userbase than any altcoin has ever had.

Companies doing captcha technology to fight Sybil attacks should be fairly sophisticated nowadays, so put one of them to the test. If they can get you one million unique recipients you'll give their company half the coins.

These are just off the top of my head, but the point is you have a _lot_ of options here to try something that's never been done before. IMO forming a slow-moving, centralized bureaucracy isn't the best route, but worse, I doubt your altcoin siblings will walk past that big, centralized pile of cheese much longer before someone decides to "fix the glitch".