Re: [ANN][XCP] Counterparty Protocol, Client and Coin (built on Bitcoin)

Possible April Fools' joke...

Definitely not an April Fools' joke. Sorry.

The project is five months old. If you assumed Counterparty would be on CNN and a household name by this point, you set your expectations too high.

Here is something that just came out a couple days ago that includes an unbiased discussion on where Counterparty is as a project, the discussions that we've been having in this thread with regards to OP_RETURN, and what the impact of those discussions is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrpuiaLbhEQ&feature=share&t=19m52s

The utility of Counterparty has outpaced the usability of the protocol. The usability is now catching up with the utility due to the upcoming release of Counterwallet.

I personally like Counterparty on Bitcoin and I hope that over the coming months a solution is reached that will allow us to stay on Bitcoin. I would argue that moving Counterparty off of Bitcoin would be premature and that we should continue working with the devs to reach a solution that works for everyone, and that may very well be possible as technologies and opinions continue to evolve.

So your solution is for everyone to use a webwallet?
And for those who don't want to use a webwallet they should just deal with it?

You like "counterparty on bitcoin" but why is that? What possible benefit does it have other than security?
You are forcing a trade of security for insecurity by running counterparty on bitcoin (security) but requiring everyone to use a webwallet (insecurity). You want to work with the bitcoin devs but what is the point in working with them on a solution and doing all this extra work to play nice with bitcoin if we are just going to be leaving them in the future?

We are all bitcoin supporters or were at one time. But blind loyalty is not helping. You can't just say "I want to stay on the bitcoin network because... BITCOIN 4 LIFE!!".
If you argue that moving CP off of bitcoin is the right move, but right now "would be premature"; Then you agree that it is the right thing to do in the future. If we should move it off bitcoin in the future, why aren't we moving it off now if it is strangling the spread of adoption?

If people could actually download and use the software we would have had such wider adoption and usage.
And "just wait for the webwallet" is not a proper remedy, but more of a band-aid.

On day 1 of a new coin release you are not supposed to have to:

setup bitcoin daemon
download a 13gb blockchain
reindex it
export keys
import keys
rescan
reimport those keys again when it doesn't work properly
rescan again
etc etc

(For those who aren't aware, this is a two-day process unless you torrent the blockchain, in which case maybe a 6 hour process if you are lucky)

The idea that we will be forever paying a tax to our bitcoin overlords in the future for the backbreaking labor of carrying our financial transactions is sickening.
For what, security? Really is that the only way we can secure our network? I think not.
Why do I have to buy BTC to use my XCP?
Does no one else see that as a major design flaw?

I'd like to see a future where Bitcoin is a neutral medium on which other protocols pay to get secured by the world's largest hashing network. All projects are made less secure by splitting off into their own blockchains; it might be worth the compromise of having to carry unwanted data if it means getting significantly more security for the desirable data.

We shouldn't be supporting the worlds largest energy wasting scheme in the future.
And this doesn't address the difference between PoW and PoS security.
We don't need that hashing power with a PoS blockchain.

The world's largest energy wasting scheme is going to continue, with or without us. Counterparty can certainly adapt if that ever looks like it's going to change.

PoS is still an emerging field. IMO there are, shall we say, "issues" with all existing PoS implementations. It hasn't been rigorously tested to nearly the same extent as PoW. Most "PoS" coins out there are hybrid PoW/PoS anyway. I do think that PoW will eventually be superseded by PoS, just for efficiency's sake, but when the time comes, Counterparty can just hop to the leading PoS coin instead of having to create one.

You are welcome to fork Counterparty if you feel so strongly about its direction. Or move to one of the alternatives such as NXT, BitShares, or Ripple, all of which have their own take on the blockchain and protocol implementations. I for one am somewhat invested in all of them, but I want to see them all succeed, and I really do like Counterparty from both a philosophical and technical standpoint.

I'm sure that the devs are flexible and will remain so, but the core idea for Counterparty was to build upon Bitcoin and leverage its security, its blockchain, its nodes, its miners. They are not going to abandon that lightly. It may come to that point some day, and they might already have some contingency plans in place, but it is still very early days and there's no reason to jump ship so quickly. Rome was not built in a day. IMO Counterparty is already winning the race, and the release of the Web Wallet will be a huge step up in average-end-user functionality.