Quote from: smooth on May 23, 2014, 05:20:53 AM

I actually agree with this nearly if not 100% (as well as what you wrote later), but this:

1. Contradicts somewhat your comments about how important it is to reduce rewards when the hash rate is low. If the value is only a few bitcoins, then it is fine for the reward in newcoins to be high. In fact I would argue that the simplest launch is often the best, because for the reasons you outline above, the very beginning doesn't matter all that much.

Sure, but when we're talking about change happening over a single month? Basically I see the idea that fixing the initial burst improves equality between the early miners, the economic effects take place on a larger time scale.

Basically I think you want the distribution itself to be locally fair while larger economic forces make things globally fair. Trade can't equalize an advantage that happens on the timescale of days or weeks very much. No programmed mining distribution system can achieve fairness over the span of years. Hopefully the two combine well enough to remove enough unfairness that we can look the other way long enough to enjoy the non-zero-sum benefit of a useful system.

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2. Argues against being the creator as anything with enormous inherent value or importance, since as you say, it is often what comes later that creates the "real" value (more than a few bitcoins). Thus I would argue we should dispense with the sanctimonious comments about the "original" developers being the most legitimate and "deserving" fork and if they screw up the release and the disappear and do zero work to try to build anything after the release.

I'm not trying to be sanctimonious... but rather I have a _lot_ of respect for the really clever cryptosystem used in Bytecoin. It's one of the most interesting cryptographic techniques _actually deployed_ that I've since basically bitcoin itself (there are a lot of other neat ideas, few have made it to actual use). If this were tech that worked in Bitcoin it would have won pretty much the entirety of the coinjoin bounty hands down by my opinion. So I don't mean to dismiss the work that has been done in the forks, but it is really not on the same level as the actual invention here in my opinion (esp since bytecoin is not a fork of Bitcoin). Maybe in a couple years my opinion will be different. My view is also colored by my own position as a developer who took up the maintenance of Bitcoin after its author left, e.g. I'm inclined to discount the value of contributions similar to my own.

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1) the lack of a lockup or vesting, something that could actually be fixed fairly easily, which entirely agrees with your point that the value isn't necessarily in the inventing, it is in the building of something actually useful (and in the case of a digital currency that is far more than code). With no lockup it is too easy to pump-and-dump, and too hard for anyone outside the inner circle to discern true intentions.

Funny, I think lockup is exactly the opposite of what you want. Part of what makes me generally think the situation is complex is that coins that change hands spread the appreciation around.

I'm not sure that lockup/vesting can ever really be made to really work. You can always sell your interest even if the system won't let you actually transfer it. I can sell you the private key(s), under the protection of traditional contract law and the courts that to convince you that I didn't keep a copy. Failing that, I can also put we can some Bitcoin in an escrow to secure the deal. etc... all undetectable to the outside world.

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2) The shady and often outright fraudulent actions that often surround them and try to hide them. This is not at all limited to this one, but this one is included.

In the case of bytecoin it just seems weird. Some day we'll discover that the code was really being written by a single brilliant grad student under contract and one day he suffered a freak brain aneurism and died. Left with no one to continue the development and without the technical chops to even evaluate new developers and concerns about the ramifications of releasing a cryptographically anonymous cryptocurrency the people funding him open sourced the works so far and hoped for the best. Tongue

I mean really, am I missing something subtle here? it's pretty hard to pull anything over on anyone. I'm not sure what we're supposed to be tricked into thinking here. It doesn't strike me as fraudulent as much as it does just weird and poorly done. Likewise, the software is very raw, some elements of the design seem pretty poorly considered, maybe not absolutely bad but relative to the quality of the rest. Maybe I'm a little spoiled by Bitcoin.