Quote from: GreXX on October 25, 2014, 03:09:17 PM

Quote from: MalReynolds on October 24, 2014, 05:33:06 PM

So, forgers are not going to find a happy place in a fully mature Crypti ecosystem where users dominate. Most of those future end users haven't even heard of Crypti yet and in years to come will not care at all about the heroic history of how you finally managed to successfully implement PoT...or not. So if the whole point of perfecting PoT up front is to draw in forgers initially as pioneer node runners for the embryonic Crypti network only to cast them aside later when the mature network has nodes only run by vendors, then isn't a viable Plan B no-PoT path one that gets those vendors to set the initial nodes up in the first place? As I've said, a node that lets them process Bitcoin now as a hook and Crypti later as another feature?

So there are two possible ways to build this out and make it work. In one, we have the merchants running point-of-sale terminals acting as nodes to extend the network through pre-defined hardware that we either donate or subsidize for the merchant. This allows us to control what hardware is running the network, get merchants on board by demoing the hardware and setting it up for them, and makes the network scalable in an easy and straightforward way.

The problem with this, is that no one will buy point-of-sale terminals. There is not a single merchant that currently uses Crypti, the number of nodes will be so low anyone with enough funds at their disposal could buy a few nodes and fork the network. By doing this you will be placing a major bet on merchants to come through and run their nodes, but I guarantee you if you go down this road there will be no coming back. At this stage there is frankly no merchant who will choose to run a Crypti node, when they don't even accept Crypti in the first place.

Secondly this essentially is locking down the network to merchants only as since they would be the only nodes on the network, they would be the ones controlling the network. In a way it is kind of centralizing the network to merchants only (even though nodes are split up amongst merchants). Imagine if Bitcoin nodes could only be run by exchanges, how different Bitcoin would be. One of the fundamentals of Bitcoin is that anyone can download Bitcoin core and immediately become a full part of the network. With the hardware based merchant model you are using, the wallet we would be accessing would only be the front-end of the network. The whole model seems a lot like a server-client model, essentially merchants with nodes would be the "back-end" of the network and our wallets would be the front-end. In my opinion, that seems like taking a step (if not a few) backwards from Bitcoin.

Thirdly, hardware itself is not fully reliable. Depending on what you are putting together to a form a point-of-sale terminal, you could run into a whole load of hardware issues, software issues, defective hardware etc. You would need dedicated customer support for the merchants who can't set up their nodes (and trust me there will be those merchants), for returns, and for general help. The amount of funds and manpower needed to setup such an operation would be very high. You would be looking somewhere around $50 000 just to start up (without extra costs), that's already 1/7th of your IPO funds gone. Again going back to my second point, you've now established Crypti as a business and not a decentralized crypto-currency.

You've centralized Crypti by :

1. Providing only 1 way for merchants to run nodes (Through pre-defined hardware bought from the Crypti Team).
2. Only allowing merchants to run nodes.

Crypti would no longer be an open platform, but rather a locked down platform. Now going back to my first point, take a look at Bitcoin core (downloadable software based wallet) and Trezor (a purchasable hardware-based wallet). Bitcoin core has had probably 5-6 Million downloads, whereas Trezor has had probably 2000 purchases. I realize that it may not be the best comparison, but the fundamentals still remain the same.

With Bitcoin core (a node on the Bitcoin network), I can download and set it up within 5 minutes (granted the blockchain will take about a day to download), whereas with Trezor I would likely have to wait 2-3 weeks for shipping, then if it is DOA, or is defective, that's another 2-3 weeks to ship it back, plus another months delay to receive a new one. When you make Crypti nodes as point-of-sale terminals you are going down the "Trezor" road I described above, and when there are problems, and there will be, you will be losing potential nodes faster than Auroracoins' mega price dropped. Becuase who is going to wait a possible 2 months just to run a Crypti node?

Instead of going the hardware route with point-of-sale terminals limited to merchants only, rather just leave the nodes as they currently are, downloadable and software-based which anyone can setup and use. Going the hardware route will be the death of Crypti.