Quote from: altcoinUK on April 19, 2016, 04:12:23 PM

I understand you are looking for working with the best.

Absolutely. The worst thing is to spend half my working time explaining everything to another developer. It was then better to have not found a co-developer, i.e. the Mythical Man Month. The further up one is on the spectrum of programming capabilities, then more difficult it is to find someone to work with that won't consume more of your time then they can contribute to offset the communication load.

Quote from: altcoinUK on April 19, 2016, 04:12:23 PM

On the note of smooth, I understand he is brilliant, I read a few days ago his comment about the C compiler. He clearly knows what he is talking about.

Agreed that was illustrative.

Quote from: altcoinUK on April 19, 2016, 04:12:23 PM

He is most likely in the top 5 developers of this crypto jamboree.

If we are requiring algebraic geometry and number theoretic math, I would say there are several others who are far more expert than smooth or I (since neither of us know much about that sort of math).

If we are referring to server side coding, then agreed and more expert than me.

Smooth and I are both polygot with programming languages and I am not sure which of us knows more languages and knows them more intimately. I'd probably assume the nod goes to him as I assume he has been coding more than me since the turn of the century. Most of my very intense coding came before Dec. 1, 1999 when I lost the vision in my right eye.

If we are testing on logic, it is roughly equal although smooth is more eloquent.

If chess, clearly I suck and smooth was apparently holding up well in the chess games I observed. You can even include rpietila in the group who can solve game puzzles faster than I can.

If we are referring to theoretical concepts and invention, I think this is where I probably have an edge on smooth.

And if we are referring to GUI and B2C marketing, I think I am more interested and talented than smooth is likely more interested and talented than me in server side and B2B.

Edit: smooth is more balanced/grounded/steady than me. I am more of a high/low personality, which typically correlates with a high degree of creativity and artistic talent. I know how to be professional, but I don't focus on making sure every small thing I write is well thought out. I will perhaps do that for something very important. I am always more interested in the rush to the next idea and creative moment. Smooth is more focused on making every statement correct, concise, convincing on all facets and diplomatic. I am more like the stereotype of a Russian hacker who can come out of the blue with something that makes people kind of wonder where did he pull that out of his hat from, yet I am not solely pulling algorithmic insights out of my hat. My mind is all over the place on ideas and concepts in cross disciplines such as economics and sociology. Note smooth has also done this at times too, for example when he explained that nothing-at-stake gaming is akin to proof-of-work, because of the computational cost of playing that game. That was very insightful. I think it is his choice and priorities to not expend too much effort down too many theoretical dead ends, and to be more of a curator than an originator. Actually that is very wise, because most of the profit is made on distilling (sieving) the best minnows that become whales.

Quote from: altcoinUK on April 19, 2016, 04:12:23 PM

He deserves every cents he earns, and not to talk about his money, but generally speaking, could you explain what is the business model of Monero? I understand it was a (sort of) fair distribution so I have no issue with the project, the aims of the project privacy - regardless whether it is feasible or not - make sense and I am asking in the sense of what is their business model to generate revenue? Smooth rate is - as I heard - $20-30K per month which is more than the top contactor developer salary in the UK (£600-700/day). How the monero project can come up with such development budget? Angel investment, VC funding, selling the coin?

I also don't understand how smooth is justifying his involvement with CC. I don't think he is being paid. I have only two theories:

1. It is a labor of love for him to be able to interface with a community, since I presume he otherwise worked a lot in FinTech. Perhaps he sees it dovetailing with FinTech down the line and is positioning himself to be an expert. If his true opportunity cost is $20 - 30K per month, then perhaps he is looking for the $millions homerun opportunity. Or just not really worried about money and doing it for other goals/interests.

2. (Wild ass theory only!) He is actually a mole of the national security agencies and is keeping tabs on everything for them. (I don't really think this, but I have a difficult time understanding why smooth is working in CC and the fact he is anonymous).

I think the business model of Monero from smooth's viewpoint is to build a superior design than Bitcoin and over the long-term have a payoff as the best alternative to Bitcoin. So it isn't just for the anonymity, but also for the ASIC-resistant hash function, the tail reward, the automatic resizing of the block size, etc..

As I move more and more to working on varied aspects of my software project, it could become more and more likely something very interesting attracts top developers. But I have to actually accomplish something in code.

I am not limiting my sights on just working with people from CC. I am interested in working with any great developers from outside of CC as well. I originally thought that perhaps CfB was one of those potentially talented developers, which was one of the reasons I was not so interested in criticizing Iota (also because there are some technologically interesting bits in Iota, even if the overall design fails to really work without centralization, IMO). But iotatoken and CfB attacking me every time I posted something against ICOs, ended up sort of destroying the velvet glove approach.