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Hello! This is Greg Meredith (full name Lucius = light, Gregory = vigilant, Meredith = watcher of the sea; all of which means Lighthouse).
i don't frequent this forum, but i know that a lot of misinformation has been spread here. i want to take some time to lay out the case for your involvement, get you informed and show how you can help.
First of all, the Chain architecture that we promoted during the sale was agreed by Dor, Ed Eykholt, myself, and many others of the team. When the first draft of the architecture was produced, Dor insisted that it be renamed the Synereo architecture. This is a matter of record, and Ed Eykholt will testify to this.
Second of all, the architecture was part of an overall organizational plan that always included creating a non-profit company. The point of this company was to protect the commons. The RChain, itself, can be the basis many social applications, from jobs applications to dating applications - not just social network applications.
Moreover, it constitutes an alternative VM to the EVM, that runs on the blockchain. So, it's effectively a global scale smart contracting system with very specific features that would improve upon the EVM and provide scaling as well as correctness. Both of these come from embracing concurrency. They are talked about in our article on the rholang contracting language and how it prevents bugs like the DAO bug from ever being deployed /https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sGlObhGhoEizBXC30Ww4h1KHKGkmcy4NiCKitIBqiUg/edit?usp=sharing!
So, this is technology that rightfully belongs in the commons and should be protected as the commons, and so Synereo made the determination, just like Ethereum did, that we should and would set up a non-profit to protect that for all, but especially to ensure a vibrant ecosystem of applications that would create additional value for the attention economy. Thus, starting RChain Coop was not Greg splitting off, but Greg following the plan, as even MalthusJohn of the Synereo team, has repeatedly stated in the Synereo slack channel quite recently.
The claim that on RChain the AMP is devalued is also inaccurate. The whole idea of the multi-coin approach of RChain where eventually other coins can be exchanged for phlogiston (which plays the same role as gas in the EVM), is that it begins to piggyback on the other coins distribution network, while concentrating social value of the AMP in the attention economy layer. (See the architecture document. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xmRvAjJEQ72-sR9luS34TG0BOpPn_6ztZjYBFCByKxo/edit#heading=h.lr5urui9mldf ). The salient point is that AMPs alone are useful in the attention economy. Thus, if a dapp developer makes a dapp that uses a different coin, to make it social, using the service level contracts of the attention economy, their dapp is also tethered to AMPs, and thus, the other coins their dapp uses becomes entangled with AMPs. This greatly increases the reach and ultimately the value of AMPs.
These are all very positive developments. Regarding the less positive developments, Dor has stated on this forum that our differences prior to the sale were not major. This is false. Here's a letter from Eric Blomquist stating the time frame around when our differences were becoming problematic.
"... I can so comprehensively empathize with both your position and with Dor's position. The ugliness of your relationship that Dina and I so consistently experienced and foolheartedly thought we might be able to assist with while we were still in New Zealand (in March/April of this year) was laid bare for all to see publicly yesterday. Mediation and meditation has failed, your suggestion made in the middle of University Ave in Palo Alto this summer to split the endeavor should be heeded. What are you waiting for?"
The only reason i went along with the sale was that Dor gave me verbal and written assurances that my requirements for governances changes that would prevent the mess we are currently in would be addressed in a timely manner. There are eyewitnesses that have already testified to this on video. He didn't follow through. We went into mediation, and he still didn't follow through. So, i went public.
Dor, pretending to act on behalf of all of Synereo, has proposed a funding level for RChain that constitutes failure to deliver on its promises to investors. It is not a workable budget as the video'd budget reviews expose. (See the RChain youtube channel.) i made a counter proposal that Dor censored from the announcements channel of the Synereo slack.
Make no mistake. i will work on and deliver RChain and the attention economy to the community, regardless of what happens between Dor and myself. i owe this to investors and to the community. The issue here is that Dor is not deploying the funds in a way that matches the promises made to investors. Dor is lying in public and Dor is censoring the debate. Ask yourself, is this the sort of ethics and culture you want in your decentralized social network? This is what happens right at the very beginning before the existing alpha code becomes beta and you start having sensitive information in the network. How will it be later?
This is why i am making all this public. First of all vigorous debate is good! Second of all, scrutiny and diligence on your investment is good! This is why i have made it a point to hold weekly meetings in video show the work we are doing, give team updates and answer questions from investors. Its why the code is open source, and everyone has been encourage to download and try out the alpha. My work has always been very public and scrutinized, and the core algorithms peer reviewed in high profile conferences. So, focusing attention and making people really take a look at their investment is great! But the most important point of all is one of ethics. Is this the social network of making a quick buck, of trading AMPs on inside knowledge of how things are going inside Synereo, or is this the social network that belongs to the people? Because, if this does belong to the people, then censorship and pivots from promises to investors have no place in it.
Moving forward, if Dor does not want to accept the amendment to the counter proposal i submitted, and at least devote half of the funds investors wanted to go to RChain to the effort, then i suggest we split the coin, following Vlad Zamfiri's quite excellent and well thought out proposal.
How can you help? Reach out to others in the community and help them get informed. Reach out to shareholders, andy@synereo, James and Gigi at NFX, Simon Dixon at BttF, and Dor. Let them know your preferences. State in a clear and loud voice what you want for your network.
If you have any questions, i am always available. Don't hesitate to reach out. i'm leithaus on by synereonet.slack.com and rchain.slack.com. i'm here to serve.
Peace,
--greg
i don't frequent this forum, but i know that a lot of misinformation has been spread here. i want to take some time to lay out the case for your involvement, get you informed and show how you can help.
First of all, the Chain architecture that we promoted during the sale was agreed by Dor, Ed Eykholt, myself, and many others of the team. When the first draft of the architecture was produced, Dor insisted that it be renamed the Synereo architecture. This is a matter of record, and Ed Eykholt will testify to this.
Second of all, the architecture was part of an overall organizational plan that always included creating a non-profit company. The point of this company was to protect the commons. The RChain, itself, can be the basis many social applications, from jobs applications to dating applications - not just social network applications.
Moreover, it constitutes an alternative VM to the EVM, that runs on the blockchain. So, it's effectively a global scale smart contracting system with very specific features that would improve upon the EVM and provide scaling as well as correctness. Both of these come from embracing concurrency. They are talked about in our article on the rholang contracting language and how it prevents bugs like the DAO bug from ever being deployed /https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sGlObhGhoEizBXC30Ww4h1KHKGkmcy4NiCKitIBqiUg/edit?usp=sharing!
So, this is technology that rightfully belongs in the commons and should be protected as the commons, and so Synereo made the determination, just like Ethereum did, that we should and would set up a non-profit to protect that for all, but especially to ensure a vibrant ecosystem of applications that would create additional value for the attention economy. Thus, starting RChain Coop was not Greg splitting off, but Greg following the plan, as even MalthusJohn of the Synereo team, has repeatedly stated in the Synereo slack channel quite recently.
The claim that on RChain the AMP is devalued is also inaccurate. The whole idea of the multi-coin approach of RChain where eventually other coins can be exchanged for phlogiston (which plays the same role as gas in the EVM), is that it begins to piggyback on the other coins distribution network, while concentrating social value of the AMP in the attention economy layer. (See the architecture document. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xmRvAjJEQ72-sR9luS34TG0BOpPn_6ztZjYBFCByKxo/edit#heading=h.lr5urui9mldf ). The salient point is that AMPs alone are useful in the attention economy. Thus, if a dapp developer makes a dapp that uses a different coin, to make it social, using the service level contracts of the attention economy, their dapp is also tethered to AMPs, and thus, the other coins their dapp uses becomes entangled with AMPs. This greatly increases the reach and ultimately the value of AMPs.
These are all very positive developments. Regarding the less positive developments, Dor has stated on this forum that our differences prior to the sale were not major. This is false. Here's a letter from Eric Blomquist stating the time frame around when our differences were becoming problematic.
"... I can so comprehensively empathize with both your position and with Dor's position. The ugliness of your relationship that Dina and I so consistently experienced and foolheartedly thought we might be able to assist with while we were still in New Zealand (in March/April of this year) was laid bare for all to see publicly yesterday. Mediation and meditation has failed, your suggestion made in the middle of University Ave in Palo Alto this summer to split the endeavor should be heeded. What are you waiting for?"
The only reason i went along with the sale was that Dor gave me verbal and written assurances that my requirements for governances changes that would prevent the mess we are currently in would be addressed in a timely manner. There are eyewitnesses that have already testified to this on video. He didn't follow through. We went into mediation, and he still didn't follow through. So, i went public.
Dor, pretending to act on behalf of all of Synereo, has proposed a funding level for RChain that constitutes failure to deliver on its promises to investors. It is not a workable budget as the video'd budget reviews expose. (See the RChain youtube channel.) i made a counter proposal that Dor censored from the announcements channel of the Synereo slack.
Make no mistake. i will work on and deliver RChain and the attention economy to the community, regardless of what happens between Dor and myself. i owe this to investors and to the community. The issue here is that Dor is not deploying the funds in a way that matches the promises made to investors. Dor is lying in public and Dor is censoring the debate. Ask yourself, is this the sort of ethics and culture you want in your decentralized social network? This is what happens right at the very beginning before the existing alpha code becomes beta and you start having sensitive information in the network. How will it be later?
This is why i am making all this public. First of all vigorous debate is good! Second of all, scrutiny and diligence on your investment is good! This is why i have made it a point to hold weekly meetings in video show the work we are doing, give team updates and answer questions from investors. Its why the code is open source, and everyone has been encourage to download and try out the alpha. My work has always been very public and scrutinized, and the core algorithms peer reviewed in high profile conferences. So, focusing attention and making people really take a look at their investment is great! But the most important point of all is one of ethics. Is this the social network of making a quick buck, of trading AMPs on inside knowledge of how things are going inside Synereo, or is this the social network that belongs to the people? Because, if this does belong to the people, then censorship and pivots from promises to investors have no place in it.
Moving forward, if Dor does not want to accept the amendment to the counter proposal i submitted, and at least devote half of the funds investors wanted to go to RChain to the effort, then i suggest we split the coin, following Vlad Zamfiri's quite excellent and well thought out proposal.
How can you help? Reach out to others in the community and help them get informed. Reach out to shareholders, andy@synereo, James and Gigi at NFX, Simon Dixon at BttF, and Dor. Let them know your preferences. State in a clear and loud voice what you want for your network.
If you have any questions, i am always available. Don't hesitate to reach out. i'm leithaus on by synereonet.slack.com and rchain.slack.com. i'm here to serve.
Peace,
--greg
Coinbase has held my funds in limbo for 7 days without any response from Coinbase support.
https://twitter.com/leithaus/status/729793969735897088
https://twitter.com/leithaus/status/729793969735897088
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
All Bark, No bite,
All fart, no S**t
All Talk, No action.
Alot of people invested alot of money in this. We were expecting more than a link to some skype conferences once a week and the ability to set up your node.....
WHo cares about that!?
We want to see a finished product. or atleast some progress towards one.
How much money is left?
where have these fund been spent.
If its being spent on a salary for you guys to talk on skype once a week. this is a flat out scam.
we don;t care about your collaoration with ethereum. what does this even mean.
We care about ethereums collaborations with SYnereo -
Come on Guys.
GET CODING, SHOW US SOMETHING!
All fart, no S**t
All Talk, No action.
Alot of people invested alot of money in this. We were expecting more than a link to some skype conferences once a week and the ability to set up your node.....
WHo cares about that!?
We want to see a finished product. or atleast some progress towards one.
How much money is left?
where have these fund been spent.
If its being spent on a salary for you guys to talk on skype once a week. this is a flat out scam.
we don;t care about your collaoration with ethereum. what does this even mean.
We care about ethereums collaborations with SYnereo -
Come on Guys.
GET CODING, SHOW US SOMETHING!
Where is the Synereo PoS blockchain code? SHow us something...
Thanks for wanting to keep us accountable! We really appreciate it. In general, we do technical updates at the top of each community hangout for people who are not watching the repos and checkins directly. i know there are a lot and it's hard to keep track of all the repos and branches to be watching. That's part of the reason i give a technical update each week so that we are completely transparent and people can see exactly how we are spending the money and what progress we are making.
The progress on the core stack (see https://github.com/synereo ; more specifically basic content delivery mechanism: https://github.com/synereo/special-k ; cdn + user model: https://github.com/synereo/agent-service-ati-ia ; http trampoline: https://github.com/synereo/gloseval ; ui : https://github.com/synereo/agentui ) was first done in a sandbox repo (https://github.com/leithaus/strategies) where i pulled out the major messaging layer and upgraded this from RabbitMQ 2.6 to 3.5.5. This took a lot of work. There were breaking API changes, and more importantly, there were breaking changes to the configuration. So, even though it might look like there were only a few lines of code that changed, most of the work was in figuring out exactly which lines of code to change and then testing! This was moved back into the synereo main repo and i then moved on to updating the local storage. This was done a month ago. The docker work got a little hung up (somebody else was doing it and now i'm taking it over).
Making the node available via AMZN AMI is actually more of a big deal than you might imagine as there are many dependencies to manage, and by making it an AMI the community is not burdened with all of that management. It also takes time to test. This goes doubly for the docker work as there are many more moving parts.
We had Justin Long take a stab at a redesign of the UI/UX. That code is here (https://github.com/synereo/nuui). The feedback was universally that that was not a good direction to go, so we backtracked to the existing UI with a gap analysis to other social media. If you have strong opinions about the UI, please consider using what we've got and giving us some detailed feedback about what you would like to see done differently.
The work with the LivelyGig team is here (https://github.com/LivelyGig/Product) and the choice to switch from Haxe to scala.js has been long anticipated. In 2012 we attempted to use an earlier version of Scala to JS, but that failed because that compiler was simply too broken to work with. So, we backtracked to Haxe and were able to make some progress (again, see https://github.com/synereo/agentui). Now that scala.js is both stable and has a good team behind it, and we have the work from the LivelyGig team to demonstrate that you can connect scala.js + react to our backend stack, we are porting the the haxe codebase to that framework while improving the UI. So, now really is the time to give us detailed feedback about the UI.
Finally, as for the PoS code, as i have mentioned in the Synereo Community Hangouts, the code began here (https://github.com/leithaus/strategies/tree/casper/src/main/scala/com/synereo) and is now here (https://github.com/synereo/agent-service-ati-ia/tree/casper/AgentServices-Store/src/main/scala/com/protegra_ati/agentservices/protocols/consensus). The documentation is here (https://github.com/leithaus/casper).
Part of the reason we hold the Synereo Community Hangouts is so that i have one place i need to communicate all these updates. It would be (and actually is) a full time job tracking down every channel and keeping every subcommunity up-to-date on what we are doing. So, while it might seem we are only talking, if one actually listens, they will see that we are making a *huge* amount of progress given our resources.
Your first 3 github links are broken
Thanks for pointing this out! This is apparently a bug in the BTT client. It includes the ';' in the URL. i edited the response above and put spaces between the URLs and the ';' and tested them. They work now. For your convenience, i have pasted them here:
Full project repo: https://github.com/synereo
Basic content delivery (CDN) mechanism: https://github.com/synereo/special-k
CDN + user model: https://github.com/synereo/agent-service-ati-ia
Http trampoline: https://github.com/synereo/gloseval
UI : https://github.com/synereo/agentui
Sandbox repo: https://github.com/leithaus/strategies
UI redesign attempt #1: https://github.com/synereo/nuui
LivelyGig: https://github.com/LivelyGig/Product
Casper initial code: https://github.com/leithaus/strategies/tree/casper/src/main/scala/com/synereo
Casper branch in CDN + user model: https://github.com/synereo/agent-service-ati-ia/tree/casper/AgentServices-Store/src/main/scala/com/protegra_ati/agentservices/protocols/consensus
Casper documentation: https://github.com/leithaus/casper
i realized that i should also point out that we issued our design goals regarding the UI redesign in this series of design docs that we published for community response:
Reactive Media Pt 1: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5I9qM5f_1cfdHVqT3Z1dTJNaVU
Reactive Media Pt 2: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5I9qM5f_1cfd1VuYWoyWlJBaE0
Reactive Media Pt 3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5I9qM5f_1cfUGw3LTVjQkpsVTQ
Reactive Media Pt 4: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5I9qM5f_1cfQWFrUFVHbEFNUWc
Reactive Media Pt 5: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5I9qM5f_1cfc1BWUnVia0hRSHM
We'd love feedback right now as we are going into a coding sprint on the UI beginning Monday.
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
All Bark, No bite,
All fart, no S**t
All Talk, No action.
Alot of people invested alot of money in this. We were expecting more than a link to some skype conferences once a week and the ability to set up your node.....
WHo cares about that!?
We want to see a finished product. or atleast some progress towards one.
How much money is left?
where have these fund been spent.
If its being spent on a salary for you guys to talk on skype once a week. this is a flat out scam.
we don;t care about your collaoration with ethereum. what does this even mean.
We care about ethereums collaborations with SYnereo -
Come on Guys.
GET CODING, SHOW US SOMETHING!
All fart, no S**t
All Talk, No action.
Alot of people invested alot of money in this. We were expecting more than a link to some skype conferences once a week and the ability to set up your node.....
WHo cares about that!?
We want to see a finished product. or atleast some progress towards one.
How much money is left?
where have these fund been spent.
If its being spent on a salary for you guys to talk on skype once a week. this is a flat out scam.
we don;t care about your collaoration with ethereum. what does this even mean.
We care about ethereums collaborations with SYnereo -
Come on Guys.
GET CODING, SHOW US SOMETHING!
Where is the Synereo PoS blockchain code? SHow us something...
Thanks for wanting to keep us accountable! We really appreciate it. In general, we do technical updates at the top of each community hangout for people who are not watching the repos and checkins directly. i know there are a lot and it's hard to keep track of all the repos and branches to be watching. That's part of the reason i give a technical update each week so that we are completely transparent and people can see exactly how we are spending the money and what progress we are making.
The progress on the core stack (see https://github.com/synereo ; more specifically basic content delivery mechanism: https://github.com/synereo/special-k ; cdn + user model: https://github.com/synereo/agent-service-ati-ia ; http trampoline: https://github.com/synereo/gloseval ; ui : https://github.com/synereo/agentui ) was first done in a sandbox repo (https://github.com/leithaus/strategies) where i pulled out the major messaging layer and upgraded this from RabbitMQ 2.6 to 3.5.5. This took a lot of work. There were breaking API changes, and more importantly, there were breaking changes to the configuration. So, even though it might look like there were only a few lines of code that changed, most of the work was in figuring out exactly which lines of code to change and then testing! This was moved back into the synereo main repo and i then moved on to updating the local storage. This was done a month ago. The docker work got a little hung up (somebody else was doing it and now i'm taking it over).
Making the node available via AMZN AMI is actually more of a big deal than you might imagine as there are many dependencies to manage, and by making it an AMI the community is not burdened with all of that management. It also takes time to test. This goes doubly for the docker work as there are many more moving parts.
We had Justin Long take a stab at a redesign of the UI/UX. That code is here (https://github.com/synereo/nuui). The feedback was universally that that was not a good direction to go, so we backtracked to the existing UI with a gap analysis to other social media. If you have strong opinions about the UI, please consider using what we've got and giving us some detailed feedback about what you would like to see done differently.
The work with the LivelyGig team is here (https://github.com/LivelyGig/Product) and the choice to switch from Haxe to scala.js has been long anticipated. In 2012 we attempted to use an earlier version of Scala to JS, but that failed because that compiler was simply too broken to work with. So, we backtracked to Haxe and were able to make some progress (again, see https://github.com/synereo/agentui). Now that scala.js is both stable and has a good team behind it, and we have the work from the LivelyGig team to demonstrate that you can connect scala.js + react to our backend stack, we are porting the the haxe codebase to that framework while improving the UI. So, now really is the time to give us detailed feedback about the UI.
Finally, as for the PoS code, as i have mentioned in the Synereo Community Hangouts, the code began here (https://github.com/leithaus/strategies/tree/casper/src/main/scala/com/synereo) and is now here (https://github.com/synereo/agent-service-ati-ia/tree/casper/AgentServices-Store/src/main/scala/com/protegra_ati/agentservices/protocols/consensus). The documentation is here (https://github.com/leithaus/casper).
Part of the reason we hold the Synereo Community Hangouts is so that i have one place i need to communicate all these updates. It would be (and actually is) a full time job tracking down every channel and keeping every subcommunity up-to-date on what we are doing. So, while it might seem we are only talking, if one actually listens, they will see that we are making a *huge* amount of progress given our resources.
I could never recommend selling Ethereum if you own it because it has such big potential but I'm definitely looking for the next big project that can deliver on expectations. Synereo looks like the next big thing as of right now but after researching them more they are big supporters of NATO (No Action Talk Only).
even worse, synereo is a israel company.Decentralization has no borders or companies
That's an interesting characterization. We have released several updates to the code and made the Synereo node available for anyone to use as an AMZN AMI. A Docker container for the Synereo stack will be available soon. Additionally, we have created and checked in an updated version of the UI and gotten feedback on that. Beyond that we've helped LivelyGig get their stack together, which is coming along nicely, and relies on the Synereo stack. This will, in turn, provide the basis for the next version of the Synereo UI as we move away from Haxe and begin to use scala.js + react on the front end much more aggressively. Additionally, we have been working intensively to help Ethereum get Casper (their proof-of-stack protocol) to a point where it runs and people can play with it. You can follow all our checkins on all of these efforts on github. Beyond that we have held weekly community hangouts to communicate the results of each week's work and have conducted dozens of due diligence engagements with angels and vc's. That's an amazing 6 months of "no action". ;-)
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
How does the Synereo demo work if there is no blockchain technology?
I'm also wondering how you sign up with your email and password on the demo? That doesn't seem decentralized unless that info gets converted into a private key locally.
Thanks for these questions! For the demo we rely on blockchain tech for AMPs, while we rely on SpecialK for content distribution. Blockchain certainly won't scale for content distribution. On the master branch in the repo all the blockchain calls have been backed out to be replaced by the appropriate blockchain tech. If the Casper work goes as planned we may end up with our own blockchain tech, or with a branch of Ethereum. That remains to be seen. Regarding your other question, authorization depends on a private key that is under your control. Let's think about the larger issue you raise, though. If you use an AMZN node that we're hosting, the system is decentralized only in name, regardless of where the key goes. We are free to shut down the node at any time. After all, we're paying the AMZN bill. For the decentralization to begin to be meaningful we'll have to have many people standing up nodes.
Regarding your other comment about building a better Synereo, i would love to see your better Synereo! i think many people on the planet would. Can you send a link to your repo for the code? What's the programming model for building distributed protocols? What's your tech stack based on? What's your transaction model? How do you handle content distribution versus currency? These are just a few of the many hard questions that have to be addressed and do get addressed in a due diligence interchange with serious investors. If you have good answers, we would love to hear them! This is a very big space, with room for everyone to engage and contribute. All ideas are welcome!
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
We've run into some difficulties WRT the Docker container which has thrown a wrench into the plans. The work with Ethereum (see latest hangout for details) has also diverted some of our attention.
I'll post about a timeline as soon as we're back on track.
I'll post about a timeline as soon as we're back on track.
From what I can tell, it looks like Ethereum is going to be outdated once Synereo is out. Scala looks impressive. Why are you working with Ethereum so closely. Ethereum isn't very impressive.
Thanks for your vote of confidence! Synereo was originally assuming there was a viable blockchain technology it could ultimately rely on for distribution and maintenance of AMPs. Proof-of-work is not going to be that technology. To understand that claim, here are a couple of numbers to keep in mind. The bitcoin blockchain is currently processing somewhat less than 2 TXNs / sec. For this transaction rate the network spends the electricity of the nation state of Ireland. By contrast Visa processes in excess of 4K TXNs / src, and by some reports an order of magnitude more in peak times. Scaling linearly (which the bitcoin blockchain will not achieve) to meet a transaction demand near Visa levels would require enough energy to melt the planet. It's just not a good solution. There are people working on addressing these shortcomings. However, i don't believe they are well positioned to role out proposed solutions given the community governance challenges. Ethereum is considering alternative blockchain technology (notably Casper) that has a better shot at scaling. Additionally, Ethereum is at a different point in their adoption curve (much earlier) which means that they don't have the same governance challenges. It's just basic arithmetic. There's too much work for any one group to do: reinvent the blockchain, reinvent social networking, ... . It's much better to cooperate and share the load. We can see the shape of the place we're going. We're much likely to get there if we help each other. (Greg Meredith, Synereo CSO)
All bitcoin has to do to overcome the transaction limitation is increase the blocksize. I have no doubt that a blocksize increase will occur which will make this argument a moot point. I agree though that from a decentralization standpoint PoS is better than PoW. Can you explain how the Casper implementation of PoS is different from NXT's implementation of PoS?
Thanks for your response and the link to NXT. i'm not intimately familiar with NXT and didn't find a detailed spec, yet. Part of our work with the Casper folks is to get up to speed on variants of PoS. i don't know if these are real differences but Casper maintains an order for validators in each round. Casper creates a betting market on blocks. The bets are highly unusual in that the bets are on what the other validators will predict is the winning block. Finality arises when the bets converge. Casper weights payouts by bond size and deducts for deviation from order, and failure to converge in a reasonable way.
i would be interested to see your data that blocksize will solve the scaling problems. Have you run some simulations? Do you have other supporting calculations? All the simulations reported at the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Montreal suggest a very different picture, with increased blockchain size having, in many instances deleterious effects on some scaling phenomena. Certainly, back of the envelope calculations do not support the position your espousing, but i'm always open to entertaining good discussion about this problem.
Thanks again for your engagement!
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
We've run into some difficulties WRT the Docker container which has thrown a wrench into the plans. The work with Ethereum (see latest hangout for details) has also diverted some of our attention.
I'll post about a timeline as soon as we're back on track.
I'll post about a timeline as soon as we're back on track.
From what I can tell, it looks like Ethereum is going to be outdated once Synereo is out. Scala looks impressive. Why are you working with Ethereum so closely. Ethereum isn't very impressive.
Thanks for your vote of confidence! Synereo was originally assuming there was a viable blockchain technology it could ultimately rely on for distribution and maintenance of AMPs. Proof-of-work is not going to be that technology. To understand that claim, here are a couple of numbers to keep in mind. The bitcoin blockchain is currently processing somewhat less than 2 TXNs / sec. For this transaction rate the network spends the electricity of the nation state of Ireland. By contrast Visa processes in excess of 4K TXNs / src, and by some reports an order of magnitude more in peak times. Scaling linearly (which the bitcoin blockchain will not achieve) to meet a transaction demand near Visa levels would require enough energy to melt the planet. It's just not a good solution. There are people working on addressing these shortcomings. However, i don't believe they are well positioned to role out proposed solutions given the community governance challenges. Ethereum is considering alternative blockchain technology (notably Casper) that has a better shot at scaling. Additionally, Ethereum is at a different point in their adoption curve (much earlier) which means that they don't have the same governance challenges. It's just basic arithmetic. There's too much work for any one group to do: reinvent the blockchain, reinvent social networking, ... . It's much better to cooperate and share the load. We can see the shape of the place we're going. We're much likely to get there if we help each other. (Greg Meredith, Synereo CSO)
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
Is there documentation on how to develop an app using synereo?
The short answer is no. However, we will work with you to help you build your app. We are already doing this with several other projects, such as LivelyGig. There's a large AMP bounty for helping us craft the documentation.
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
How do you control all the interactions between one person and the content ?
If you do it by the network, then it will be a privacy nightmare, all your interactions with the content could be monitored !
If not monitored, you can't enforce it's trustfulness and you are susceptible to Sybil attack, or fake behavior.
If you do it by the network, then it will be a privacy nightmare, all your interactions with the content could be monitored !
If not monitored, you can't enforce it's trustfulness and you are susceptible to Sybil attack, or fake behavior.
That's where the DendroNET comes in, allowing a local consensus to be created. There's no one truth source (a centralized entity), but the part of the network around you can "vouch" for claims made in it.
If there is no global consensus, how do you validate the distribution of AMPs ?
The fact that I read a post is made public or not ?
The only global consensus with have is for AMPs, which are a conserved quantity. That's what we use the blockchain and the Omnilayer for.
And no, it will not be made public. Generally, there are very few things that people on the network have to know about you if you interact with them. You have a lot of control over who gets to see what.
That doesn't explain how the network decide who get the Amp for reading content !?
Your node decides based on the view of the network available to it.
If it's my node, then I can corrupt it and make it so that it give me all the Amp that pass by.
Your node decides this only when it's the one investing AMPs in content.
So the node who is investing Amp in content knows who read it ?
No. You decide how much you want to invest (and can optionally select a few parameters and "strategies" if you want to use the advanced settings) and the rest is handled outside of your control.
I'm sorry but this is really shady...
Can you tell who is controlling this.
Please explain the different step from someone paying to have his content amplified to someone recieving the AMP for reading it.
- Where is the information rooted ?
- Where is the decision made ?
Hello! Thanks for your diligence and persistence! We really appreciate people wanting to get to a practical, repeatable and reliable understanding.
Let's identify some characters and terminology for the tech. The characters will correspond to the characters in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJcr0G6O6ME). We have Dylan the poet, creator of fine poetic content. We have Stan, curator of fine poetic content. We have UnitedFans, connoisseur of fine poetic content. These characters interact with each other through Synereo nodes. (Note that Synereo nodes are not necessarily in 1-1 correspondence with the characters using them.)
The Synereo nodes have two basic functions: one is to provide a content delivery network; the other is to provide access to the AMP ledger in the blockchain. How those functions work is cryptographically secured in two ways. First and foremost they are secured through the use of an *infinitely* large keyspace. Secondly, they are secured by encrypting message flow. It is important to understand that content is not (by default) pinned to a physical location. It is accessed through keys with a rich internal structure. Similarly, all system functions, including access to the blockchain, are accessed via message-based protocols that use keys as channels over which to communicate.
So, when Dylan is posting content to Stan, he is actually publishing content on a cryptographically secure, persisted channel. The persistence is not tied to a physical location, but a property of the network. The same is true when Stan posts the content to UnitedFans. When UnitedFans promotes the content with AMPs, they are accessing the blockchain through a cryptographically secure channel. This completes a series of txn's. One of them is to Stan, and another is to Dylan. These txn's are actually completions of transactions triggered by the transmission of content. The AMPs used to promote the content can be thought of as a kind of payment for the content that may be arbitrarily deferred. When UnitedFans promotes the AMPs they are paying some of the debt accrued by the dissemination of the content. The act of receiving the content is a single, point-to-point trustless transaction. UnitedFans receives content in exchange for a promise that if they ever promote the content, some of the promotion AMPs go to Stan. Behind the scenes, in a cryptographically secure manner, Stan('s node acting on behalf of Stan) has made a similar deal with Dylan('s node acting on behalf of Dylan). Likewise, the act of promoting the content is a single, point-to-point trustless transaction. Clearly, the two transactions are linked in a certain way to make the chain of currency flow back up the chain of value transmission.
Note that if the "debt" is never paid off, it effectively gets converted to Reo, in automatic fashion. Any content that is valuable enough to become widely distributed through the network will cause a corresponding positive adjustment in the Reo scores of the content originators and content curators.
The mechanism by which content is associated with keys in the keyspace is much much stronger -- in principle -- than current use of encryption. One way to think about this is, i'm thinking of a URL, you have a week to guess it. You can use whatever computational resources you or your friends have at your disposal. The likelihood that you will guess my URL is vanishingly small. So, while it is certainly possible that individual Synero nodes can be hacked or corrupted, this doesn't help an attacker much because that doesn't get them access to giant chunks of content which are swimming around a network of nodes. Moreover, none of the nodes has a map of the whole network. Likewise Synereo node binaries are just more content. They can be shared and distributed through a bootstrapped Synereo network. So, reputation scores, i.e. Reo scores, can be associated with specific providers of the binaries, and binaries can be promoted, just like any other content. If you trust your friends to point you to the right open source library for a given application, then maybe you can trust them to point you to a Synereo node that plays nicely with the whole network.
Let me know if this helps. If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to ask and we'll do our best to answer.
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
I've managed software products and projects for a long time. One of my early ones was the standardization of the Unified Modeling Language. Way back in 1996 the notion of generating working code from specification models seem far-fetched to me, except for CRUD methods and state machines. But we've made a tremendous amount of progress since then!
Now, very interesting working software component contracts can indeed be generated from formal specifications. A fascinating thing is that with Synereo, these are not just software contracts and protocols, they are also social contracts that will be enforced and influenced with the movement of AMPs.
The formalisms which leithaus (Greg) references are all solid. But they are not trivial to realize in a robust software architecture, which is why the dedication to 5 years of development invested in SpecialK/KVDB and its pattern language for the web is impressive (http://blog.synereo.com/2015/03/17/specialk-kvdb/). Its real.
For the last several months, I've been noodling on an idea that resulted in the whitepaper for LivelyGig -- The Decentralized and Distributed Employment Market /YdRrPQMrT6]http:/[Suspicious link removed]/YdRrPQMrT6. From a platform perspective, it has a lot of similar requirements as Synereo. When I look at the possible technology stacks on which to implement such a decentralized and distributed system, I so far only have a very short list of potentially viable choices -- Ethereum, MaidSAFE, Eris Industries, and SpecialK/KVDB. Which one is complete enough and most likely to work in decentralized deployment? So far, SpecialK/KVDB is looking most promising for LivelyGig, because it is complete and based on a researched and formalized software contract paradigm.
I'm also very impressed by the caliber of the Synereo team, having talked with several of them. Ive watching their Hangouts and carefully studied the Whitepaper. Im a fan.
As far as the AMP Crowsdale, yes it is risky and exciting from an investors perspective. Potential downside and potential upside. All of the crowdsales are difficult to assess financially and are missing the investor protections that would be available in a prospectus of a securities offering. After doing some homework, I have growing confidence in the team, their vision, and the technology. So, I will purchase some AMPs in the crowdsale.
/Ed
Now, very interesting working software component contracts can indeed be generated from formal specifications. A fascinating thing is that with Synereo, these are not just software contracts and protocols, they are also social contracts that will be enforced and influenced with the movement of AMPs.
The formalisms which leithaus (Greg) references are all solid. But they are not trivial to realize in a robust software architecture, which is why the dedication to 5 years of development invested in SpecialK/KVDB and its pattern language for the web is impressive (http://blog.synereo.com/2015/03/17/specialk-kvdb/). Its real.
For the last several months, I've been noodling on an idea that resulted in the whitepaper for LivelyGig -- The Decentralized and Distributed Employment Market /YdRrPQMrT6]http:/[Suspicious link removed]/YdRrPQMrT6. From a platform perspective, it has a lot of similar requirements as Synereo. When I look at the possible technology stacks on which to implement such a decentralized and distributed system, I so far only have a very short list of potentially viable choices -- Ethereum, MaidSAFE, Eris Industries, and SpecialK/KVDB. Which one is complete enough and most likely to work in decentralized deployment? So far, SpecialK/KVDB is looking most promising for LivelyGig, because it is complete and based on a researched and formalized software contract paradigm.
I'm also very impressed by the caliber of the Synereo team, having talked with several of them. Ive watching their Hangouts and carefully studied the Whitepaper. Im a fan.
As far as the AMP Crowsdale, yes it is risky and exciting from an investors perspective. Potential downside and potential upside. All of the crowdsales are difficult to assess financially and are missing the investor protections that would be available in a prospectus of a securities offering. After doing some homework, I have growing confidence in the team, their vision, and the technology. So, I will purchase some AMPs in the crowdsale.
/Ed
Hey Ed,
Thanks very much for the support! Also, i would urge people to take a look at Ed's LivelyGig paper (file:///Users/lgm/Documents/LivelyGig_Whitepaper.pdf). It caught my eye immediately as lucid, and to the point. As with Synereo, i think it can only improve with attention from the community.
Best wishes,
--greg
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
How did you come up with such a high valuation? Have you released a proof on concept? With most projects with such high initial marketcaps they are priced as a development project should be.. Room for 10x to 100x growth from ipo.. You think the risk reward competes by pricing it at 154amp per usd while releasing 1 billion coins? So after release you think the cap would be $0.154 billion? If not then why ask the ipo holders to foot the initial bill of development (thousands of btc)?
If you ask me there is innovation yes, hence my private pm to you which you seemed to have missed... But based on the specs id say as of right now it shouldnt be priced more 1540amps per usd.. 10x less then ehat you are asking and even that is stretching it. Maybe best to find angel investors outside of this community if you want 154 per since there is no mining on ipo.. Btw how does the network secure itself?
If you ask me there is innovation yes, hence my private pm to you which you seemed to have missed... But based on the specs id say as of right now it shouldnt be priced more 1540amps per usd.. 10x less then ehat you are asking and even that is stretching it. Maybe best to find angel investors outside of this community if you want 154 per since there is no mining on ipo.. Btw how does the network secure itself?
I'm sorry if I've missed your PM. I've been swamped! Let me take a look.
Check out the numbers in our whitepaper and let us know if you think there's room for X100-X1000 growth.
http://www.synereo.com/whitepapers/synereo.pdf#section.1.2
Keep in mind that this is a technology that's been in development for over 4 years, with millions of dollars invested.
We'll release a tech demo showcasing it soon.
Is it open source? Is there commits going back 4.5 yrs to verify your claim.
So if it takes 5 yrs as aggressive timeline to take over facebook $200 billion then the price of each amp would be around $153 amp per usd with 1.3 billion coins.. And price would have to rise 5% per year.. See what im saying about risk reward? You think the price of each amp will be above $153usd within 5 years??. Seems to me its a case of someone having an innovative project but far too greedy..
Hello! Thanks for asking about the code! Here are the links to the open source repos.
https://github.com/leithaus/SpecialK/tree/master
https://github.com/rlamb/Agent-Service-ATI-IA/tree/cryptoRedo
https://github.com/leithaus/GLoSEval/tree/cryptoRedo
https://github.com/leithaus/agentui
The commit history doesn't tell the whole story because we migrated repos a couple of times, but it tells a lot of it. i'm happy to go over it with you. It's been in commercial use for about two years. Does it need refactoring? You bet! Are the bugs? Yes, come help us quash them!
i really like your thinking in trying to apply FB costs to AMP costs. It doesn't work out in practice, but it's great place to begin. First of all, a lot of cost goes into figuring out what works and what doesn't. That's sunk cost for FB that we don't face. (Pun gratefully accepted. ;-) (On the other hand, we quietly ate a lot of that cost for a lot of dead-end designs when it came to making the decentralized architecture work.) Secondly, FB began with some pretty backwards architecture and commitment to code practices, designs and platform choices that were all terrifically expensive. Again, we have the luxury of hindsight. That's a huge efficiency for us. Thirdly, we have something to accelerate our development that FB didn't avail themselves of -- a mathematical blueprint for how this works. Checkout our white paper to learn more. Fourthly, we don't have to take over FB all at once. We just have to build out the network to the point where it's self-sustaining, then network effects begin to kick in, as they do for any open source project that is successful. That's just some of the issue with the cost side of your analysis.
On the value generation side, AMPs and the attention economy have the potential to address the squeeze on the creative classes from journalists to musicians. Check out what world-class musicians like the California Guitar Trio and Tony Levin think about this idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP3IRS0VaIY . Matt Black, of ColdCut and Ninja Tunes had a similar response. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwXqQ0QHKNk) And, he's putting his money where his mouth is. It also works as a much better platform for advertisers, cutting out the middle folk, and letting people be compensated for attending advertisement-based content, or opting out all together. Honestly, i don't know anyone who's done the economic analysis who doesn't think the value prop causes a significant rise in the value of AMPs. If, however, you see a different analysis, we are all ears. We are in this together and absolutely want to hear reasoned argumentation for every aspect of this offering.
In summary, we really appreciate your engagement! Skepticism is very welcome. We will do our very best to answer all of your questions to your satisfaction. So, keep them coming!
Love to all Beings,
--greg
CSO, Synereo
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
What an amazing innovation this project could be....but alas there are too many issues / red flags arising here:
1) you keep referring to having to okay things with your "trust", who is anonymous and whom you led us to assume gave you guys $1.1 million in initial funding out of the goodness of their hearts.
BULLSHIT and major RED FLAG.
This " trust " means you're not decentralized and there are shadowy figures behind the curtain who are truly running the show.
You can go ahead and post photos and names of your devs but without also doing the same with each member of this "trust" it doesn't mean a thing.
2) you mention there will be other funding rounds in the future...RED FLAG.
While I can see why you would choose to do this you are diluting all AMPs for current investors.
3) you mention that if you don't reach 18% of funding goals with this "round 1" beginning tomorrow you'll either close shop or the leftover % will go back to the overall total and you'll have to make do? What's the absolute minimum you need?
Also, since you've posted everything to github already, what's keeping we investors from giving you the shaft and instead waiting for another top-notch Dev team from developing their own Synereo without your shadowy "trust" and with mining available and no ICO bs
Overall I read the ANN for Synereo, got excited for this idea, but then realized that you guys are answering not to yourselves or THE COMMUNITY but rather to a shadowy "trust", who could very well be among the top advertising companies in the world or could be Facebook or could be the NSA.
You guys are really fucking smart, yes, but you're going about this in a very idiotic fashion, doomed for quick failure because you don't know this community.
JL
1) you keep referring to having to okay things with your "trust", who is anonymous and whom you led us to assume gave you guys $1.1 million in initial funding out of the goodness of their hearts.
BULLSHIT and major RED FLAG.
This " trust " means you're not decentralized and there are shadowy figures behind the curtain who are truly running the show.
You can go ahead and post photos and names of your devs but without also doing the same with each member of this "trust" it doesn't mean a thing.
2) you mention there will be other funding rounds in the future...RED FLAG.
While I can see why you would choose to do this you are diluting all AMPs for current investors.
3) you mention that if you don't reach 18% of funding goals with this "round 1" beginning tomorrow you'll either close shop or the leftover % will go back to the overall total and you'll have to make do? What's the absolute minimum you need?
Also, since you've posted everything to github already, what's keeping we investors from giving you the shaft and instead waiting for another top-notch Dev team from developing their own Synereo without your shadowy "trust" and with mining available and no ICO bs
Overall I read the ANN for Synereo, got excited for this idea, but then realized that you guys are answering not to yourselves or THE COMMUNITY but rather to a shadowy "trust", who could very well be among the top advertising companies in the world or could be Facebook or could be the NSA.
You guys are really fucking smart, yes, but you're going about this in a very idiotic fashion, doomed for quick failure because you don't know this community.
JL
Dear JL,
Thanks very much for this feedback! First of all i think i have to say that you are right. i don't know this community. Dor, our CEO, knows this community much better than i do. But, i am willing to engage and get to know you and would be happy to let you get to know me, if you want to.
i confess i don't really understand a lot of your comments and would welcome clarification. i don't know what trust you're referring to. Also, i don't know where you got the 1.1 M USD figure. The investment to date is 3.2 M USD. This breaks down to 2.2 M USD in cash and 1 M USD in in-kind contributions. There are no obligations on this investment. Period. There is no shadowy "trust". i don't know where you got that phrase. Right now we're raising 1.2 M USD to get to the next phase of the project. As you are probably aware, WhatsApp, which has a much simpler architectural challenge, cost much much more than this. We believe we can significantly lower the cost by building on significant work that has gone on before, and invite you to check out our white paper to see how we plan to go about this. If you see problems, let us know!
All the code written to date is open source and i've provided links to older versions in this forum already. Here they are again.
https://github.com/leithaus/SpecialK/tree/master
https://github.com/rlamb/Agent-Service-ATI-IA/tree/cryptoRedo
https://github.com/leithaus/GLoSEval/tree/cryptoRedo
https://github.com/leithaus/agentui
It's been in commercial use for two years. We sincerely believe that engagement by the community will accelerate the process of hardening the code. If you want to go through the code with me, i'd be delighted! i'll even help you stand up a node. Send me a note at greg@synereo.com.
Additional rounds do not equal dilution at all. There are all kinds of assumptions built into that claim. Maybe you can join us on this week's community hangout and we can address that in public so lots of people can hear it all at once? Otherwise, we can update the FAQ to include this kind of information!
As to who we're answering to, well, right now i'm answering to you. You want to know things about what we're doing and i'm at your service. There's no shadowy anyone looking over my shoulder. All of us at Synereo are committed to transparency. If there's any aspect of the project you want to know about, in detail, just ask.
In reality, the whole thing runs the opposite way from the way you've characterized it. Some people who really care about the current mess we're in have gotten together and put money and time and effort into addressing our current situation. We didn't whinge. We didn't give in to despair. We rolled up our sleeves and got to work, for the better part of the last 5 years. Now, there's a need to see if people can engage in even a small way. If people don't actually want to work on real solutions to our current problems, who are we to push them on people? If there's no will in the community to step up and take the bull by the horns, work together to begin to fix things, then there's no will, and that must be accepted.
If people do want to see change, then substantive engagement is what's required. AMPs are one way to participate. If you don't like that form of participation, there are lots of others. Can you code? Can you do community work? Do you make videos? Can you write blog posts? Maybe you don't like the shape of our solution? Awesome! Tell us how to fix it, or tell us a better shape! We are here to serve. Think about the current situation and what happens if we don't all work together.
Over the past decade, social media platforms have risen to become a major force on the Internet. As two-thirds of all Internet users are using these platforms, with 1 out of every 5 pageviews occurring on Facebook alone, and with many directly equating social media with Internet, the importance of these venues cannot be overstated.
The amount of money social networks generate is staggering. Leading the pack is Facebook, earning 3.85 billion dollars in the last quarter of 2014, followed by Twitter with $479m. When thinking about these numbers, its important to remember that the value created on these networks - what allows Facebook et al to generate these profits - comes directly and unequivocally from their users. In fact, users and their worth is the primary parameter these connetworks are measured by. Facebook recently acquired WhatsApp for $19b, paying 42$ per user. Similarly, the value of Facebook and Twitter users is often calculated through their market cap - currently at 141$ and and 81.5$, respectively.
Faced with these numbers, many people are asking themselves, Does it make sense that the value we create simply by sharing our lives online is retained by the people who happened to be the first to provide the infrastructure allowing us to do so? That these social platforms stated aim is to increase the revenue they can extricate from us? From our basic need to communicate and share ourselves with others?
Indeed, this is how current social networking service providers see their users: as unpaid laborers. As free content creators whose behaviors can be recorded and measured, the data generated auctioned off to other corporations. And for many, this may still be fine. These services are now seen as basic necessities in our digital age, and so perhaps the balance struck between user and service provider is a fair one. However, there are other issues tipping the scale against the incumbents: theres been a breach of trust. The information going into user feeds is being manipulated, and the information going out - including details of user activity outside of Facebook - is being handed over to governmental authorities; privacy settings be damned.
The entire foundation of our established online identity is based in these axioms, of us being surveilled, labeled and sold to the highest bidder. And with our social network profiles serving more and more as the default identities on the web, everywhere - most services do not bother creating their own identity and authentication components - perhaps its time to stop and think if this how we want our digital identity to exist and evolve.
The more we wait, the more irreversible this becomes.
Its clear that many users are aware of these issues and are looking for other ways to network online. A simple look at different offerings in the space, aiming to subvert some of the aforementioned premises, have been met with hope and with praise before ever delivering anything substantial. Diaspora, in many ways ushering the popular conception of a decentralized service, was quickly backed financially by hundreds of people. Ello, a recent attempt to create an environment where users arent monetized through ads, exploded in popularity within a few months of its launch, registering 1 million users and keeping 3 million more on its waiting list as it went on to scale its centralized technology.
So, we're just suggesting that instead of continuing to be unpaid laborers in building the global panopticon for the 1%, that we work together to build something we can use to support and take care of each other and the planet. If after a thorough review of what we've actually done, there's any part of what we've done you think smells rotten, just let us know and we will address it to the satisfaction of the community.
Peace be with you,
--greg
CSO, Synereo
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
Dear MickGhee, Thank you for your passionate engagement! We really value people who have a strong voice and want to see things done fairly and for the benefit of all.
For the last 5 years we've been writing code, working out architecture, and economic model, as well as identity and security models, along with UI and UX models. It took the concerted effort of some very smart and dedicated people. We are committed to being completely transparent. We will show you all of the work we have done to date. We will do our best to answer questions posed with goodwill to the questioner's satisfaction. This work has cost the people involved not just 5 years of engagement, but 3.2M USD, out of pocket. The raise for this crowdsale is capped at 1.2M USD. We're not even close to recouping what we've put in, let alone heading off to the Bahamas.
Instead, part of this effort is to see if the community has the will to engage, to begin to address the issues facing us. All of us. (See, we're passionate, too!) Here's the situation as we see it:
Over the past decade, social media platforms have risen to become a major force on the Internet. As two-thirds of all Internet users are using these platforms, with 1 out of every 5 pageviews occurring on Facebook alone, and with many directly equating social media with Internet, the importance of these venues cannot be understated.
The amount of money social networks generate is staggering. Leading the pack is Facebook, earning 3.85 billion dollars in the last quarter of 2014, followed by Twitter with $479m. When thinking about these numbers, its important to remember that the value created on these networks - what allows Facebook et al to generate these profits - comes directly and unequivocally from their users. In fact, users and their worth is the primary parameter these connetworks are measured by. Facebook recently acquired WhatsApp for $19b, paying 42$ per user. Similarly, the value of Facebook and Twitter users is often calculated through their market cap - currently at 141$ and and 81.5$, respectively.
Faced with these numbers, many people are asking themselves, Does it make sense that the value we create simply by sharing our lives online is retained by the people who happened to be the first to provide the infrastructure allowing us to do so? That these social platforms stated aim is to increase the revenue they can extricate from us? From our basic need to communicate and share ourselves with others?
Indeed, this is how current social networking service providers see their users: as unpaid laborers. As free content creators whose behaviors can be recorded and measured, the data generated auctioned off to other corporations. And for many, this may still be fine. These services are now seen as basic necessities in our digital age, and so perhaps the balance struck between user and service provider is a fair one. However, there are other issues tipping the scale against the incumbents: theres been a breach of trust. The information going into user feeds is being manipulated, and the information going out - including details of user activity outside of Facebook - is being handed over to governmental authorities; privacy settings be damned.
The entire foundation of our established online identity is based in these axioms, of us being surveilled, labeled and sold to the highest bidder. And with our social network profiles serving more and more as the default identities on the web, everywhere - most services do not bother creating their own identity and authentication components - perhaps its time to stop and think if this how we want our digital identity to exist and evolve.
The more we wait, the more irreversible this becomes.
But, it's worse. Why? Because this global panopticon is being built alongside and to support a growing economic imbalance. Here's an excellent description of just how bad the economic imbalance is in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM. These two trends taken together are a recipe for disaster. From the riots in Greece to Ferguson, the unrest is no accident. It's only going to get worse. Unless we do something. We. Us. There's no one else to do it for us.
Now, we've taken up the challenge to do something about it. Synereo is a first step towards a different way of engaging each other. Synereo is a first step towards reorganizing social media technologies and capital for the purpose of taking care of each other and the planet. If after giving our work a thorough review, you still feel we are conniving assholes out to steal peoples money, then we deserve your condemnation. But, first, come look at what we've done, and see for yourself. i will personally answer any and all questions you have about the code, the architecture, the security model, the identity model, our social contract model, the maths underlying it. i know the rest of the team is wiling to engage with the same level of diligence.
We really want people to give it a thorough review. If there's a hole in it, we want to know. If there's a better way to do something, we want to know. We are in this together. If we don't take up the challenge now, the next time we look up we will not see the same sky. Like i said, we're passionate! That's why we really appreciate your passion and are glad you're sharing it. We're going to have to be passionate about this to succeed.
Peace be with you,
--greg
CSO, Synereo.
For the last 5 years we've been writing code, working out architecture, and economic model, as well as identity and security models, along with UI and UX models. It took the concerted effort of some very smart and dedicated people. We are committed to being completely transparent. We will show you all of the work we have done to date. We will do our best to answer questions posed with goodwill to the questioner's satisfaction. This work has cost the people involved not just 5 years of engagement, but 3.2M USD, out of pocket. The raise for this crowdsale is capped at 1.2M USD. We're not even close to recouping what we've put in, let alone heading off to the Bahamas.
Instead, part of this effort is to see if the community has the will to engage, to begin to address the issues facing us. All of us. (See, we're passionate, too!) Here's the situation as we see it:
Over the past decade, social media platforms have risen to become a major force on the Internet. As two-thirds of all Internet users are using these platforms, with 1 out of every 5 pageviews occurring on Facebook alone, and with many directly equating social media with Internet, the importance of these venues cannot be understated.
The amount of money social networks generate is staggering. Leading the pack is Facebook, earning 3.85 billion dollars in the last quarter of 2014, followed by Twitter with $479m. When thinking about these numbers, its important to remember that the value created on these networks - what allows Facebook et al to generate these profits - comes directly and unequivocally from their users. In fact, users and their worth is the primary parameter these connetworks are measured by. Facebook recently acquired WhatsApp for $19b, paying 42$ per user. Similarly, the value of Facebook and Twitter users is often calculated through their market cap - currently at 141$ and and 81.5$, respectively.
Faced with these numbers, many people are asking themselves, Does it make sense that the value we create simply by sharing our lives online is retained by the people who happened to be the first to provide the infrastructure allowing us to do so? That these social platforms stated aim is to increase the revenue they can extricate from us? From our basic need to communicate and share ourselves with others?
Indeed, this is how current social networking service providers see their users: as unpaid laborers. As free content creators whose behaviors can be recorded and measured, the data generated auctioned off to other corporations. And for many, this may still be fine. These services are now seen as basic necessities in our digital age, and so perhaps the balance struck between user and service provider is a fair one. However, there are other issues tipping the scale against the incumbents: theres been a breach of trust. The information going into user feeds is being manipulated, and the information going out - including details of user activity outside of Facebook - is being handed over to governmental authorities; privacy settings be damned.
The entire foundation of our established online identity is based in these axioms, of us being surveilled, labeled and sold to the highest bidder. And with our social network profiles serving more and more as the default identities on the web, everywhere - most services do not bother creating their own identity and authentication components - perhaps its time to stop and think if this how we want our digital identity to exist and evolve.
The more we wait, the more irreversible this becomes.
But, it's worse. Why? Because this global panopticon is being built alongside and to support a growing economic imbalance. Here's an excellent description of just how bad the economic imbalance is in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM. These two trends taken together are a recipe for disaster. From the riots in Greece to Ferguson, the unrest is no accident. It's only going to get worse. Unless we do something. We. Us. There's no one else to do it for us.
Now, we've taken up the challenge to do something about it. Synereo is a first step towards a different way of engaging each other. Synereo is a first step towards reorganizing social media technologies and capital for the purpose of taking care of each other and the planet. If after giving our work a thorough review, you still feel we are conniving assholes out to steal peoples money, then we deserve your condemnation. But, first, come look at what we've done, and see for yourself. i will personally answer any and all questions you have about the code, the architecture, the security model, the identity model, our social contract model, the maths underlying it. i know the rest of the team is wiling to engage with the same level of diligence.
We really want people to give it a thorough review. If there's a hole in it, we want to know. If there's a better way to do something, we want to know. We are in this together. If we don't take up the challenge now, the next time we look up we will not see the same sky. Like i said, we're passionate! That's why we really appreciate your passion and are glad you're sharing it. We're going to have to be passionate about this to succeed.
Peace be with you,
--greg
CSO, Synereo.
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
The investment to date breaks down in terms of 2.2M in cash and 1M in in-kind contributions. The contributors wish to remain anonymous. They provided this because they believe that we are in a very dangerous situation: a global panopticon (the incumbent social networks funneling into Project PRISM) and a global wealth imbalance. They want to do something rather than just talk about it on Facebook. Amazingly, the success of a system that begins to redress the imbalance is what they are seeking. Therefore, they are not seeking to get anything out of Synereo, financially. To me this is very inspiring and causes me to work even harder.
What do you have to show for the 2.2m (USD?) - how was it spent? The 1.1m in kind contributions would cover 5 or 6 well paid senior devs for a year in most economies, so I presume it didn't pay for the prototypes and white paper revealed so far. How do you plan to spend the money raised in the crowdsale?
What we have to show for the investment to date is a tech stack that works and has been deployed in commercial applications for at least 2 years. If you'd like to look at the source you can find earlier versions on github
https://github.com/leithaus/SpecialK/tree/master
https://github.com/rlamb/Agent-Service-ATI-IA/tree/cryptoRedo
https://github.com/leithaus/GLoSEval/tree/cryptoRedo
https://github.com/leithaus/agentui
i will be happy to help anyone who wants to stand up a node do so. Let me know.
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
Hey! Thanks for that feedback! i really mean it, too. We're doing our best to accommodate a wide audience. If the technical language doesn't connect with you, i'm happy to personally walk you through what it means. Come join us on a hangout (they happen Wednesdays at 21:00 GMT). In preparation, i can give you a brief summary.
The technical presentation of the network model breaks down into two portions. First, there's a detailed presentation of the model using what might be called a naive approach, modeling the network as a graph where the nodes are Synereo code + users, and edges are communication channels between the nodes. The naive model associates a certain model behaviors at the nodes. We acknowledge that this model is naive -- at least because the graph is changing as result of the behaviors of the nodes. People introduce other people to each other (creating edges), new people join (creating nodes), some people leave (deleting nodes). We present it that way, however, because the mathematical formalism that's more appropriate to modeling this kind of situation is less familiar to a lot of developers and other people who might want to understand how to build this.
In the second portion we give a brief intro to the mathematical formalism that is better suited to model these kinds of things, namely the π-calculus. This is a well established formalism, developed by a Turing award winner, Robin Milner. i have already built a very successful product using this formalism as the core computational engine. That product was MSFT's BizTalk Process Orchestration. It made MSFT a lot of money. It won most innovative product of the year in 2004, and sparked a whole industry of business process modeling lookalikes. Likewise, as the US Patent Office will show, there's a long history of people using this formalism for distributed computing in commercial products. i know because i hold a lot of those patents.
After we introduce the formalism, we show that the naive model can be translated into a variant of the π-calculus called the applied π-calculus. This is important because that allows us to address the shortcomings of the naive account with respect to the graph evolving as people engage each other in it. It's also important because we have software that turns π-calculus expressions into running code. That's right, the expressions in the paper map directly into distributed, decentralized programs. There are examples in the paper. i can also give you links to such code in github. You can stand up the nodes and run them for yourself. This happens because there's an embedded domain specific language, called SpecialK, that's written as a Scala library. That library is an implementation of a distributed version of the applied π-calculus. If you want to know more about SpecialK, you can read our blog entry as a starting point.(http://blog.synereo.com/2015/03/17/specialk-kvdb/)
Another reason for using this formalism is because there's a greatly superior notion of contracts built on top of the idea of behavioral types. We've written a lot about that too. You can read our blog entries about that (http://blog.synereo.com/2015/03/06/social-contracts-pt-ii/) or you can read my ACM paper about contracts and types (http://openstorage.gunadarma.ac.id/pub/books/Communication-ACM/Oktober-2003/p41-meredith.pdf), or you can go back the source and read Luis Caires' excellent paper about behavior types (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.3.9964).
So, what we're saying is not quite gibberish. However, we do recognize that we could always improve our writing, and look forward to constructive criticism about how to improve it. We also recognize that we're writing to a diverse audience with a lot of different backgrounds. That's why there's chapter one, so that people without a background in formal languages or computer science can get the gist of what we're doing. Meanwhile people who do have the maths can read what we're doing and try out the ideas for themselves. Armed with the first part, anyone competent with Scala, or Clojure, or Haskell, or OCaml, or FSharp, or ... could implement a simulation. Armed with the second part, anyone competent with SpecialK/KVDB or JoCaml or a host of other libraries could implement the basics of Synereo on their own.
That's a brief summary of the "gibberish". The rest of the paper is pretty much bog standard. We lay out the business case in terms of the opportunity and the proposed solution. We talk a little bit about the user experience we envision. At the other end, after the technical presentation of the model, we compare the attention model to another model -- from biology -- that can be used to improve signal. We do this out of professional obligation. Just because we've come up with a model doesn't mean it's the only one or the best one. Identifying a potentially competitive model is just good common sense. Likewise we give people a view of our technical stack and its relationship to the existing technological ecosystem. For example, we discuss how we *don't* put everything in the blockchain. Instead, we connect a content delivery network built on top of SpecialK to the blockchain. This makes more architectural sense. It also scales better.
i really hope you'll come to the hangouts and we can talk about the parts you don't understand or would like clarification on. Who knows, maybe you can help us find better ways to express how Synereo works!
The technical presentation of the network model breaks down into two portions. First, there's a detailed presentation of the model using what might be called a naive approach, modeling the network as a graph where the nodes are Synereo code + users, and edges are communication channels between the nodes. The naive model associates a certain model behaviors at the nodes. We acknowledge that this model is naive -- at least because the graph is changing as result of the behaviors of the nodes. People introduce other people to each other (creating edges), new people join (creating nodes), some people leave (deleting nodes). We present it that way, however, because the mathematical formalism that's more appropriate to modeling this kind of situation is less familiar to a lot of developers and other people who might want to understand how to build this.
In the second portion we give a brief intro to the mathematical formalism that is better suited to model these kinds of things, namely the π-calculus. This is a well established formalism, developed by a Turing award winner, Robin Milner. i have already built a very successful product using this formalism as the core computational engine. That product was MSFT's BizTalk Process Orchestration. It made MSFT a lot of money. It won most innovative product of the year in 2004, and sparked a whole industry of business process modeling lookalikes. Likewise, as the US Patent Office will show, there's a long history of people using this formalism for distributed computing in commercial products. i know because i hold a lot of those patents.
After we introduce the formalism, we show that the naive model can be translated into a variant of the π-calculus called the applied π-calculus. This is important because that allows us to address the shortcomings of the naive account with respect to the graph evolving as people engage each other in it. It's also important because we have software that turns π-calculus expressions into running code. That's right, the expressions in the paper map directly into distributed, decentralized programs. There are examples in the paper. i can also give you links to such code in github. You can stand up the nodes and run them for yourself. This happens because there's an embedded domain specific language, called SpecialK, that's written as a Scala library. That library is an implementation of a distributed version of the applied π-calculus. If you want to know more about SpecialK, you can read our blog entry as a starting point.(http://blog.synereo.com/2015/03/17/specialk-kvdb/)
Another reason for using this formalism is because there's a greatly superior notion of contracts built on top of the idea of behavioral types. We've written a lot about that too. You can read our blog entries about that (http://blog.synereo.com/2015/03/06/social-contracts-pt-ii/) or you can read my ACM paper about contracts and types (http://openstorage.gunadarma.ac.id/pub/books/Communication-ACM/Oktober-2003/p41-meredith.pdf), or you can go back the source and read Luis Caires' excellent paper about behavior types (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.3.9964).
So, what we're saying is not quite gibberish. However, we do recognize that we could always improve our writing, and look forward to constructive criticism about how to improve it. We also recognize that we're writing to a diverse audience with a lot of different backgrounds. That's why there's chapter one, so that people without a background in formal languages or computer science can get the gist of what we're doing. Meanwhile people who do have the maths can read what we're doing and try out the ideas for themselves. Armed with the first part, anyone competent with Scala, or Clojure, or Haskell, or OCaml, or FSharp, or ... could implement a simulation. Armed with the second part, anyone competent with SpecialK/KVDB or JoCaml or a host of other libraries could implement the basics of Synereo on their own.
That's a brief summary of the "gibberish". The rest of the paper is pretty much bog standard. We lay out the business case in terms of the opportunity and the proposed solution. We talk a little bit about the user experience we envision. At the other end, after the technical presentation of the model, we compare the attention model to another model -- from biology -- that can be used to improve signal. We do this out of professional obligation. Just because we've come up with a model doesn't mean it's the only one or the best one. Identifying a potentially competitive model is just good common sense. Likewise we give people a view of our technical stack and its relationship to the existing technological ecosystem. For example, we discuss how we *don't* put everything in the blockchain. Instead, we connect a content delivery network built on top of SpecialK to the blockchain. This makes more architectural sense. It also scales better.
i really hope you'll come to the hangouts and we can talk about the parts you don't understand or would like clarification on. Who knows, maybe you can help us find better ways to express how Synereo works!
Re: [ANN] AMP - The Currency That Powers Your Attention On Synereo
The total investment to date breaks down in terms of 2.2M in cash and 1M in in-kind contributions. The contributors (of both cash and in-kind contributions) wish to remain anonymous. They provided this because they believe that we are in a very dangerous situation: a global panopticon (the incumbent social networks funneling into Project PRISM) and a global wealth imbalance. They want to do something rather than just talk about it on Facebook. Amazingly, the success of a system that begins to redress the imbalance is what they are seeking. Therefore, they are not seeking to get anything out of Synereo, financially. To me this is very inspiring and causes me to work even harder.