I would really like to see the Qora smart contract platform (AT) working. Does someone know what applications have been developed (besides of the atomic cross-chain trading feature with Burst) ? I know the platform is "dormant" now, but I would like to see what was done in the past, to be able to evaluate its potential as a possible Ethereum competitor.

For example: Is it possible to use it as an ICO platform with arbitrary advanced functions (not only via regular "assets" like we know them from Nxt and Nem)?

It seems that Groestlcoin will be the only "Segwitcoin" for a long time ;-)

In Vertcoin and Litecoin adoption by miners stalled, in Bitcoin the battle continues.

Hi, I'm interested in Qora as an platform for Smart Contracts or Dapps (via Automated Transactions / AT).

Does somebody know which Dapps or Smart Contracts have been already developed with Qora?

Until now I know only the Atomic Cross Chain mechanism which supports Burst. Could there a similar mechanism be developed with Ethereum? I think if Bitcoin doesn't want to add this functionality, then trading to ETH could get Qora again "to the radar".

I know also that Burst is running an AT decentralized gambling/lottery platform (or "has been running" it). Is this platform also running on Qora?

I would try Ardor. It's not finished but already tested and offers the first decentralized sharding solution for cryptocurrency scalability that is not based on centralized sidechains.

ELI5: With Ardor, full nodes only need to download about 1/100 of the blockchain data that are required with Bitcoin-based cryptocurrencies, given the same transaction capacity. The tradeoff is extremely small (clients don't validate all old transactions, only important ones, but new TX are validated properly).

I would like the "clean fork" to happen - that means, BU launching as an altcoin, based on a Bitcoin balance snapshot.

No. This Bytecoin (BCN) is the precursor of Monero (first CryptoNote coin) and was already launched in 2012. One can say they "deserve" a pump

There is another Bytecoin (BTE) around there that is a 1:1 clone of Bitcoin. It has a negligible market cap.

My guess is that it's related to the "hardfork voting" feature slowly taking form. That's in sharp contrast to the way Bitcoin is doing controversial updates.

Governance is an unsolved problem in cryptocurrencies. Decred at leasts does offer a new model that can be experimented with. It is unknown if it will work better than "benevolent dictators" or "chaotic voting" like in BTC, but it's worth a try.

Instamined and intransparent Dash has nothing to do with Ethereum.

I don't own a single Ether but am observing it. It's an interesting experiment and it's possible we'll see prices >100 in a year from now if there are usable "dapps". But for now I think the OP is right that the top of the bubble may be near (although 50$ have been passed). I'll buy in the next bear market.

Short term, if Bitcoin forks and drops hard, ETH could temporarily be the leader.

But long term, I think the question is whether one of the alts will really get used.

For ETH, it's not really clear if the "dapp" projects in the pipeline really will get traction. They are hyped, but it's to be seen if they will be used. The most promising for me is Makerdao, although development is slow.

Other alts that bring something new that coud lead to a higher usage are Ardor (interesting "sharding" model with "childchains") and Decred (governance, "hard fork voting").

Will $10 be the top? It's a pretty round number, but I think it can go even higher. Maybe it's related to its governance model which contrasts sharply with Bitcoin's (chaos, forking, polarization) but also with Ethereum's (centralized).

The best bet is a blockchain with assets pegged to the major altcoins.

For example, that's possible in a (mostly) decentralized way with BitShares and in a more centralized way (IOUs) with NXT, Ripple and Ethereum.

But these are not the "real" coins, only tokens that track the value of a particular coin. In NXT and Ethereum you must trust the issuer that he really delivers you the "real" coins if you want to exchange them. In Bitshares it's nearly trustless but the values fluctuate a bit and, if I'm right, there is only BTC as such an asset.

LN, in my opinion, is only a micro-transaction/micropayment solution. It is the same thing like a prepaid card - only that the prepaid card issuer cannot run away with your money. At least not that easy.

So I consider LN an improvement to centralized wallet-to-wallet transactions (e.g. coinbase wallet to other coinbase wallet).

The good thing is that we have plenty of altcoins that can test different scenarios between the extremes "LN for nearly all transactions" and "only on-chain transactions".

Apart from that, Segwit would also facilitate Atomic Cross Chain transfers - no more shady exchanges (Cryptsy!) needed. That would immensely benefit all altcoins out there.

PS: Litecoin adoption seems to have stalled a bit but is pretty good (17-19%) as it's only the second activation period and there is plenty of time still.

Thanks! I will try to follow the development of Groestlcoin and could participate in testing of these features (not development, I'm not a coder). I've already installed the GRS client.

I mean that there could be a situation like in Bitcoin today - in the case Ardor gets popular -, that many transactions are waiting in the mempool to be confirmed. I don't know if there is a block size limit / transaction number limit for child chain blocks, but I think I remember that in NXT there was such a limitation (for regular blocks).

In this case, a pegged childchain like the "IgnisPeg" I describe in the other post could relieve the block size problem. Also if the Ignis childchain gets very big (I know it's prunable, but the community should aim for a large number of full archival nodes) it would make sense, even if there was no bottleneck with transactions.

I've dived a bit in the NXT documents and there seems to be a mechanism for such "pegged coins": a combination of the "Claimable" and the "Reservable" properties of a MS currency. My question is, then: Would this be also possible in Ardor with child-chain currencies (the peg could be with ARDR or with IGNIS or another childchain)?

(I know it's a long-term problem, but as Ardor is specially built with scalability in mind, it would be a very nice feature).

Hi! I'm interested in the Segwit feature and "enhanced Bitcoin/cryptocurrency features" like off-chain payment methods and sidechains.

Are there plans to test Lightning Network implementations, Sidechains or/and Atomic Swaps with Groestlcoin once they are usable? Thanks!

I've got a question:

Is it possible to realize "pegged childchains" with Ardor?

An example: Ignis is probably the strongest childchain in the beginning phase. Now I could want to create a "IgnisPeg" childchain pegged to the Ignis value. For this to happen, I would have to lock the amount of Ignis I want to use as the "backing" of the peg, for example, 1000 Ignis. On the IgnisPeg childchain I then could issue 1000 IgnisPeg with a value of 1 IgnisPeg = 1 Ignis. The total amount of IgnisPeg coins could at some moment be burned and then the original Ignis I used to back the childchain would be unlocked.

That mechanism (very similar to what Blockstream is developing) could help to further enhance scalability once the Ignis childchain blocks are full.

I'm observing Byteball and have read the whitepaper. I'm not sure if the DAG has any advantage over a traditional blockchain besides faster transaction propagation, so that could be a plus.

But on the other hand, the coin is actually very centralized (it can be regarded as a "proof of concept" at most) and not totally trustless, even when the witnesses are to be freely elected it will be more a kind of "web of trust" like Ripple. I regard it as more centralized - and thus more vulnerable to social engineering attacks - than DPOS coins like Bitshares.

Take a look at Ardor (ardorplatform.org). It is still alpha (testnet only) but is perhaps the only one that can fulfill your requirements - with the exception of point 3 (it has variable transaction fees) and 8 (~1 minute confirmation time), and it has an a little bit weaker privacy mechanism than Monero, but with Coin Shuffling you should be OK. It is proof of stake and secure (it doesn't need checkpoints like Peercoin-based currencies).

Its predecessor, NXT, has almost the same features, but will soon be outdated when Ardor releases.

A comment to your requirements 3 and 8: Fix "percentage" transaction fees will lead to spam if the currency grows and to scalability problems. Very low confirmation times lead to worse security. For example, a coin with a 30 second block time won't have even the same security with 20 confirmations than one single 10 minute confirmation in coins like Bitcoin, because the risk of orphan blocks is much higher.

As far as I know, Sia is based on POW - you're right.

At http://siapulse.com/ you can see some interesting stats. You are also right about the extremely cheap price - a TB for a month is about $1.30. I think that is due to under-utilization of the network, so hoster are still competing hard with the price.

I'll shortly try Sia out so I can answer more questions about it.