Re: [ANN][DRK] DarkCoin | First Anonymous Coin (DarkSend) | No Premine

DRK has two big issues that I see:

(1) Because the power draw is only 60% of scrypt, large GPU farms that mine altcoins and dump them for BTC/fiat have an incentive to target DRK. More profit even at price parity due to lower electricity costs. This will keep market supply high perpetually and hence keep the price low.

(2) The legions of unremarkable clone-coins will implement DarkSend once it's open-sourced. See how zero-talent "devs" are copy-pasting Vertcoin's anti-ASIC adaptive N algorithm.

For both (1) and (2) the solution is greater adoption. In the case of (1) it reduces these quasi-commercial dumpers to a smaller proportion of the market. In the case of (2), it allows DRK to achieve escape velocity and get to a point where a competing clone coin can't catch up due to lacking the network effect.

So I see "marketing" as crucial, even in the short-term. In any case, DarkSend should probably be kept closed-source before hitting at least Bter and BTC38 (not that I'm in any position to advise devs). Call it an extended mandatory beta or something. Tongue

I agree, well said.

Personally, I don't think DarkSend should ever be open sourced. All it will result in are a ton of junk coins implementing it, and basically a ton of coins piggybacking on the dev's code here. Yes, if adoption was greater, then perhaps it'd make sense to open source. But to me, adoption means something like being able to be used for actual purchases somewhere.

So if DarkCoin turned into Bitcoin, sure, consider open source. But that sort of adoption would take years. Instead, if it was me, perhaps a verified 3rd party could look at the code for safety types of reasons every so often, rather than just release all of the code for free.

If the code is released, I expect the coin to drop in price ... a lot.

At this point I absolutely agree. We have no brand awareness and as my favorite saying goes... " never forsake the real for the ideal!" DarkCoins world needs to be tightly branded and every kink work out. It would be suicidal to release anything until this coin is burned into peoples mind as the "NAME" in crypto security.

No Cryptoanarchist worth their salt would put their privacy and security in trust of any software that was closed-source. You just don't get the idea why opensource software is so much more secure than anything closed-source.

I think we should first get DarkSend working properly, release a stable binary version, then we'll find a few researchers/software developers to do an audit of the code. This way we can build a community and establish ourselves so we'll have the network to support the coin after DarkSend is open-sourced.

You "cryptoanarchists" are over doing it with wantinbg everything to be open soucre, I agree that Darkcoin should be Closed Source until it has a huge user base like Bitcoin does, then you can open source, if the devs open source Darkxoin before that, this coin will become.overlooked and useless as others mimic Darksend.

Bitcoin only succeeded and had such strong grass-roots support from the very start. As it was always 100% opensource from day one. If Darkcoin thinks it can only succeed by going closed-source. Then I for one will lose all confidence in the coin and will look for an alternative privacy aware coin to support. They want to try and stay ahead of the game by leading innovation. Not by trying to hide the source from newbies. The software will be cracked on day one anyway by hackers and if they want to clone it they will still anyway. Does the Darkcoin dev team really have the funds and time for a very a lengthy and expensive patent trial. So nothing will be gained by using the closed source model but a lot of trust will be lost.

This coin doesn't have the community yet, one large enough. Yes, Bitcoin started grassroots, you forget though, it wasn't built in an environment that already has bitcoin in it. It was the only one at the time so it had the time to develop first. Now, in the crypto-currency world, everything moves really fast because everyone is aware of it and working to make money off of it.
Darkcoin will become open source - but too early and it will be pounced upon - is what the community is saying - and I think they are right to be cautious. I'm not saying it's the right decision or the wrong - I'm saying your above comparison is irrelevant because its out of context.

If it DRK becomes closed-source it will lose its badge of merit amongst the hacker community and is dead in the water if you ask me. No one who know's anything worthy about cryptology or online privacy would put their trust in anything closed-source. If this is the way the coin is heading I'm dumping now and putting my GPU's on Anoncoin. You can't expect eco-system support from freelance dev's to a closed-source project. Any eco-system development beyond the core dev team would die a quick death. As I said going closed-source won't stop hackers cracking the source and cloning it. Unless the DRK dev-team want to take any clones to court for patent abuses. Also that wouldn't stop the Chinese or a truly anonymous dev-team from cloning it. While any opensource clones will gain support from the hacker and opensource communities that DRK would lose.