reviving this old post to let everyone originally interested in sheercoin know that an independent but very similar project appeared: cruzbit.

github: https://github.com/cruzbit/cruzbit
announcement: https://medium.com/@asdvxgxasjab/cruzbit-a-simple-decentralized-peer-to-peer-ledger-2944495b6129?postPublishedType=repub
dev twitter: https://twitter.com/asdvxgxasjab

Thanks!
Any feedback on the Double-signed transactions concept?

Reserved

Introduction
Hi all. I'm the developer of http://www.proofofexistence.com/, and a collaborator in the chromawallet colored coin wallet project (http://chromawallet.com/). I'm quite new to altcoins but have some experience developing bitcoin-related apps.

I don't usually read or post in this subforum, but I had an idea for an alt-coin and I wanted to see what's the public reception for it. If it seems useful, I'll create it and release it. In fact, I already started working on it, but decided to make this post before continuing, to get some feedback.


Sheercoin, the minimalist cryptocurrency

The idea behind sheercoin is to create a cryptocurrency with as little overhead as possible. My plan is to start with bitcoin and remove everything that's not strictly necessary for a cryptocurrency to work. This means:

• No coinbase messages
• No multisig transactions
• No P2SH
• No OP_RETURN
• No scripting at all, in fact
• etc. Open to suggestions on what to "trim"

Double-signed transactions concept
I'd also want to throw an idea, which may or may not be suitable for sheercoin: what if the protocol required all transactions to be signed by both the sender and the receiver of coins?

For example, say Alice wants to send 1 coin to Bob. In bitcoin, Bob doesn't need to do anything for this to happen. Alice just needs to broadcast a signed transaction in which she proves she owns some unspent outputs, point them to Bob's address, and voilà: Bob now has the right to those bitcoins.

In sheercoin, we could make it so that both Alice AND Bob need to sign the transaction for it to be valid. This would require a little bit of extra effort for the users, as the transaction signed by Alice must be sent to Bob for signing before being broadcasted to the network. I think this would make it impossible to send sheercoins to non-existent private keys (like https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE or the addresses generated by http://www.proofofexistence.com/)

The goal is to create the most bare-bones cryptocurrency implementation possible, plus double-signing of transactions. This will hopefully be useful to many people that want to use a blockchain-based cryptocurrency which doesn't allow other uses like document time-stamping or data embedding. Is there any other known good practice we should follow for creating a new altcoin?

Timeline
Depending on feedback, the plan is to release sheercoin early next year.

Thoughts?
Happy 2014!
Manuel

I've finally taken the time to read through the discussion. Is there an "official" IRC channel or something? If not, want to join #bitstorage at freenode?

Some points I want to add to the discussion:

- When I began thinking about this concept, I imagined a dropbox-like system, in which you can upload any kind of files. Later I decided it could be better to limit the files to a certain size, or forget about the notion of files altogether (at least at the protocol level). That's why I had named the system "bucketchain", as a system which allows distributed storage of 1MB-sized "buckets" of data. (I like bitstorage better, but we can still use "bucket" to refer to the unit of storage).

- Regarding the impossibility of having proof of redundancy (because a node can store a bucket 1 time and expose it as many identities), I read an idea that could be applied here. The client can allow the user to upload a file with n-redundancy by encrypting the file n times with different private keys. For the network that'd be n different files, so they can't cheat. The problem with that is that it can be stored n times in the same server, which removes part of the redundancy benefits. In any case, I don't think the protocol should contemplate redundancy. An consequently...

- We should try to reduce the protocol to the bare minimum, and then build over that. I think that'd be one in which you can create write transactions for 1MB buckets, and read transactions which are redeemed by peers who can prove to have that bucket. Actual bucket transfer can be left for a side-channel maybe?

- Is it too early to create an open-source project and github repo for this? I think Sarchar should start the thing, but I can do it too. I suggest python as the language. It makes no sense IMO to create a C++ project today. We'll get lots more collaborators and readable code using a more modern language.


Sorry for the long post!
Manuel

I still have 3.05216879 trapped in CL. I'm interested

I have 3.05216879 still in. 0.05216879 are interests

Wow. I've been working for the past months on a very similar concept, which I named BucketChain. I started discussing the idea with friends and colleagues after developing http://www.proofofexistence.com/, as the next step in filesystem decentralization.

I may have some thoughts/ideas to contribute, and I'm interested in contributing code to the project, if you need help

Here's what I wrote as an intro to my paper:

Since the creation of Bitcoin [1] a number of technologies leveraged its technical capabilities to create distributed systems for other purposes. Conceptually, blockchain technology allows a network of peers to arrive to an agreement on timestamps for data without the need of a central authority. This has given rise to other applications like alternate cryptocurrencies [2][6], or a distributed messaging system [5].
There is currently a need for a system which allows distributed and reliable storage of documents in the cloud, in a fully decentralized way. Many similar solutions have been proposed, but each have its disadvantages, like being proprietary, needing each user to provide her own storage [3], or not giving incentives to peers to share their storage and bandwidth [7][4].
A blockchain technology based protocol is proposed, which allows the creation of a “true cloud” in which peers can store their files in other peers' computers. A cryptocurrency tied to the protocol operations makes it possible for people to share their hard drive storage and receive value, or instead pay to have their files stored. The average user will share their local storage space in exchange for storage in the network. No trust in third parties is required, which provides both the benefit of resistance to censorship and protection from prying eyes or companies handing your data to powerful parties via coercion. On the other hand, peers with available and unused storage space can offer their resources into the network to earn value over time in the form of a cryptocurrency. With bucketchain, the more storage space you share to the network, the more mining efficiency your node gets, thus providing the needed incentive for peers to contribute.


Sounds similar? Can we collaborate? BTW, I like your name better


[1] S. Nakamoto., “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf, 2008
[2] S. King & S. Nadal, “PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake”2012
[3] BitTorrent Labs, “Automatically sync files via secure, distributed technology.”, http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html, 2013.
[4] GNU, “GNU's Framework for Secure Peer-to-Peer Networking”, https://gnunet.org/, 2013.
[5] J. Warren, “Bitmessage: A Peer‐to‐Peer Message Authentication and Delivery System” , https://bitmessage.org/bitmessage.pdf, 2012
[6] C. Lee, https://litecoin.org/, 2011
[7] B. Cohen, “BitTorrent is a protocol for distributing files”, http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html, 2008

I found an address owned by TradeFortress which contains 286.602 BTC.

https://blockchain.info/address/14nBt8WVBmJ3ichp6m3eGs3BTzmLDyYYTz
Proof: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=111264.msg1208642#msg1208642

I asked him to pay his debts from that money or I'd publicize this information. He laughed at me.
Why is he holding bitcoin when he's got so many people waiting for him to pay?

maraoz:3.0521687:0

I only got 32% refunded. And I had > 10 BTC. I don't understand the logic.

Thanks a lot maxmint. Do you want to PM me a mastercoin address so I can tip you?

Transaction confirmed!
http://mastercoin-explorer.com/addresses/1RayXrd4SmrGoJbHvR6iEtmRwahTLM1RV

maxmint, when you come online, please release the escrow BTC. Thanks!

Mastercoins sent: https://blockchain.info/tx/84f58a3e5d7aafad4a391da626f95ed651879f6a0760128424b74ecf89dbe53b
I'm waiting for it to confirm on the bitcoin blockchain and to appear at mastercoin-explorer to be sure I didn't mess up.

EDIT: mastercoin adviser log:

I received yufu571's receiving address privately, but he should post it here so we can start the exchange.

Thank you Zathras...

My receiving bitcoin address for the trade with yufu571 is 1AYEq2N1JEY1w8oRitmVmQb72hj7ZzdkR9

I can sell the 100 MSC for yufu571, for that price (0.02 BTC/MSC).
Here's proof of ownership: http://mastercoin-explorer.com/addresses/1BFqkdUDwp7k1Qa43vmSWEfj6gaoUVswwZ

Can maxmint escrow?

SUPER COOL!

Hi Gavin, I was reading this old topic and I wanted to ask: why did you add the secret parameter to the request? Isn't the connection secure already if you use SSL? Thanks!

btw: go google app engine!
I've managed to get https://github.com/jgarzik/python-bitcoinrpc to work on GAE

Manuel