Dev definitely needs to be more vocal on this forum, there isn't a whole lot to instill confidence in people right now (no posts since the 17th).  Even just a 'Working on xxxx today' or a little bump would be nice.

Just thought I'd chime in, might be time for an official announcement about the smalltimeminer pool (maybe update the main page with a note), as I've seen them a few times now with over 51% of the network hash rate (like right now).  They've closed registrations, but it's up to the miners to move elsewhere, so do it.

We definitely need an active dev for this if we want it to succeed.  With scrypt asics on the horizon, people are  going to be looking for new algo's to mine with, whether it be CPU or GPU (also, there's a quark algo GPU miner that's supposed to become open source soon, wonder if it's applicable to this coin as well - edit:  nvm, just actually looked at the hash functions, totally different).

I truly do hope that you're right about this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there's plenty of people out there either too blindly greedy, or too stupid to not try this.

Actually, I believe we want to encourage community based grants for these funds, it would encourage adoption of the coin by allowing communities of miners to compete with each other for a chunk of the grant.  If you also include a maximum amount of the total grant a single proposal can capture (say 20%), then once a grant hits 20%, people no longer have any need to put more of their limited votes to it, and if they do, they're effectively wasted.

While there's always the possibility that these "interest fund" grants would grow to capture more than one individual grant once the first hits 20%, it's incredibly unlikely that this would ever cause you or MCF to actually lose your grant.  If you also allow more than 5 grants (maybe not unlimited, but a lot, in this sense I agree with the 100 grants idea), then you may not get a full 20% of the grant coins, but however much you do receive would fully be a reflection of the mining community's perception of how well you're doing as a developer.  Additionally, even if these interest funds captured 80% of the grants in total, that would simply be an indication of the community mindset in general, and if the mindset is truly that greedy overall, it's very likely that those interest funds will eventually capture your single grant in the planned fork.  The bottom line is that as long as you let people vote on where free money goes, there will be a certain percentage that will always vote for it to go to themselves.

As for the potential of having a voted on regulator to approve grant proposals, I believe it would be detrimental in that the regulator would inevitably make a decision that upset some people, and these people would rally/rage/abandon the coin.  If this were to happen to a large enough extent, or if a malicious group managed to gain control of this regulatory position it could effectively kill the coin by giving them too much control.  If, instead, you allow your users to directly control approval of grant proposals before they're even voted to be funded, the only blame for a bad decision is on the community itself, and people tend to get less angry when they're the one making the decisions, even if they're stupid decisions that backfire.

I think the grants are a great idea, but simply allowing anyone to make a grant address and have it voted on may not be the best way to accomplish a meaningful dent in the crypto world (people will always be greedy, and do anything they can to game the system).

My idea would be to implement a system where grants are proposed (and explained, maybe make a minimum # of words on explanation) through a "grant" tab on the QT miner, and need a certain number of votes (separate from sending satoshis) from mining addresses with >40MEG (or whatever number would work) to become a valid grant proposal, at which point they can be sent satoshis to receive grant status.  It still fits the theme of decentralization since there is no central authority deciding what is a valid grant, it would just require tuning of the # of votes and amount of required MEG per valid voting address to make a grant.

If you also allowed down-voting of a grant, it would ultimately give the masses capability to add or subsequently remove a grant if it was decided it should not be receiving grant coins anymore, as I'm sure would be the case if an individual managed to game that system and vote themselves a personal grant like is currently happening.

This system could allow as many grants as were necessary, and grants could receive a weighted # of the total grant money depending on how many votes they have received (this could be limited by only giving each valid voting address a set # of votes which can be used or retracted at any time, or unlimited to allow groups of miners to jockey for small grants).  The overall idea is simply to give the grant system some checks and balances, to ensure that people are supporting a grant, not just one person.

If I knew anything beyond basic C++, I'd attempt this myself, however I lack the knowledge or programming experience to even have a chance of success.  If anyone can point out any major flaws or necessary refinements in this idea, feel free to.  If we can agree on a system that would be fair and have some semblance of balance, I'd be happy to donate whatever I can to anyone willing to undertake the actual assembly of the code.

Beyond that, I'm still having trouble going more than a day or two without the miner hanging on a block...right now I firmly believe that's the primary hindrance to this coin's success.  People don't want to have to constantly monitor their miners just to make sure they're still mining, and if they have to, they'll move on to a coin that doesn't require this.

Just wondering if there's any update/success on tracking down the instability issues (getting hung on a block seems to be the most common, I have seen it once with the new client as well)

Stop cluttering up an otherwise productive thread with useless misinformation.  I do appreciate the fact that there was an actual suggestion for a new UI for voting, but given that it was sandwiched between heaps of slander and unsubstantiated claims, please just go away.

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."

Care to elaborate?  Without anything to back it up you can't expect anyone to take you seriously.

Coming at this from the point of view of a relative newcomer to the cryptocurrency world, while I really like this coin, it has a few things going against it right now that I'd bet are the reason it isn't seeing the adoption rate of other new coins  (just giving my opinion, hopefully it'll help).

1)  only one small-ish exchange currently carrying it.  any update on efforts to get MEG on cryptsy/mcxnow/etc.?  If we as a group help to increase awareness and demand by asking for inclusion on exchanges, it should help speed up the process.

2)  comparatively unreliable client + no pool.  I can only hope Freetrade is hunting down the instabilities, and for the pool I think we need to start a grant (I would have already if I knew how) simply to stockpile coins as a reward for someone to make a pool.  Eventually the reward should be large enough for someone to actually do it.

3)  almost no publicity, which in the face of XPM, QRK, and newly released SRC (granted just a better organized QRK), is making difficulty plummet right now.  I think a lot could be done on this front just from periodic development updates (I wouldn't even understand most of it, but guaranteed it makes your average user feel better knowing that the dev is actively working on things, not to mention the updates would be a nice bump in the forums)

4)  lack of information on voting system.  There are some decent guidelines, but for me the explanations still leave a lot to be desired (hell I don't even know if sending Satoshis is referring to sending BTC or MEG to the target address, but I'm a newbie at this stuff).  For this kind of feature to be truly highlighted and showcased, you'd need to figure out a way to incorporate it into the miner GUI for ease of use, at least the voting part (probably not the easiest thing to implement, but it'd do wonders for public adoption and encouraging voting).  There definitely needs to be a central forum where grants/proposals are listed, so people understand their options.

Again, just my opinion, and if there's any way I can help I'd be glad to.  Beer time.

I think the bigger question, is that when the bitcoin's value is at what would right now be $1000 usd, will the usd still be worth anything?