Quote from: JoeyD on May 21, 2014, 10:52:48 am

Quote from: xeroc on May 21, 2014, 09:34:12 am

Nxtforum.org ? also r/NXT at reddit is quit active

Thanks for those links and I also finally found the reason for the cloak and dagger act with their source code on that forum. That is if Come-from-beyond is part of the core team, but judging from his posts he seems to fulfill a pivotal role.  According to him the reason he is (or they are) keeping a tight lid on some of the code, most importantly transparent forging which sounds an awful lot like the delegate system from what I'm reading there, is because he fears cloning/forking and first wants the network effect and node-framework in place before making it public.

Is NXT not getting any shit for that? Just look at what the Invictus team has to put up with and they aren't even locking their share in or keeping secrets like that. Hell they seem to be exceptionally public and outspoken even encouraging people to fork/compete so you'd expect NXT to receive a much bigger public lashing, very odd.

There also seems to be some rather heavy editing/censoring going on over on bitcointalk in favour of keeping the PoW status-quo according to some people on that nxt-forum. Has anyone noticed that happening in the discussions around bitshares-dpos as well?

nice summary.
Plus: compare nxt's IPO with that of 3i. shorter period .. not announced end of donation... just over 70 stake holders .. just a little more the 20 btc (afair)

I expect btsxt and btsx aswell as ptd2 too generate a much bigger buzz. I can remember alot of people not buying nxt because of the 70-people premine scam...


Btw: most dangerous thing currently ongoing with pts to pts2 is my concerns others might call the 15% marketing 'share' a premine (which it basically is)

Plus the biggest no no of them all and one I still think is very very bad, no source code at the time of pre-sale on top of the 70 person premine and flash sale.

About the PTS2 announcement and the need to distribute those 15% remaining coins.
Invictus are definitely not handling PR and community communication as well as they should, I was under the impression that at least 2 team-members were hired for that cause. This confusion needs to be cleared up asap. Also having some celebrity personas utter their apparently completely uninformed/uneducated or unsupported viewpoints,  resulting in some ridiculous claims and statements go (or actively trying to make them go) viral on all the public channels, while Invictus/bitshares leaves those claims out in the open, with answers hidden in posts on often unrelated topics is not helping much either.

Nxtforum.org ? also r/NXT at reddit is quit active

Thanks for those links and I also finally found the reason for the cloak and dagger act with their source code on that forum. That is if Come-from-beyond is part of the core team, but judging from his posts he seems to fulfill a pivotal role.  According to him the reason he is (or they are) keeping a tight lid on some of the code, most importantly transparent forging which sounds an awful lot like the delegate system from what I'm reading there, is because he fears cloning/forking and first wants the network effect and node-framework in place before making it public.

Is NXT not getting any shit for that? Just look at what the Invictus team has to put up with and they aren't even locking their share in or keeping secrets like that. Hell they seem to be exceptionally public and outspoken even encouraging people to fork/compete so you'd expect NXT to receive a much bigger public lashing, very odd.

There also seems to be some rather heavy editing/censoring going on over on bitcointalk in favour of keeping the PoW status-quo according to some people on that nxt-forum. Has anyone noticed that happening in the discussions around bitshares-dpos as well?

Quote from: Stan on May 21, 2014, 02:36:46 am

Decentralized competition is what we're after.  All we can do is put a product out there and hope people like it.  We encourage competitors to put their own products out there and compete with us!

We have just announced the intention to design an upgrade chain called PTS2 that has DPOS instead of mining and should solve all of the current problems PTS has from using legacy Bitcoin mining code.  Its design will honor PTS holders 1 for 1 and reserve the unallocated/unmined 15% for use increasing its value proposition (demand) for those who choose to hold it.  No different than any developer who announces, say, a 45/45/10 DAC with the 10% reserved to fund development, promotion, and support.  The standard approach we have always been advocating and the freedom we have left for every BitShares developer.

Now here's the thing: 

Every PTS share holder will now ALSO own a PTS2 share!

 
That's how our industry works.  That's how every change proposal happens.  Soft forks and let the industry choose!

Those who like PTS can sell their PTS2 and vice versa.

That's how every shareholder gets a vote - the free market!  What each person chooses to hold and chooses to sell.

So nothing has changed with PTS.  Miners can still mine it. Exchanges can still trade it. Your wallets will still work if they do.

But developers will have to choose which chain they will honor (or perhaps some clever mix).

If the majority of value stays with PTS, developers will be inclined to want to attract its holders.  If the majority prefers PTS2, most developers will honor that.  Over time, the least popular chain will probably die out.  Or not.

Nobody's rights have been violated.  A new competing protoDAC has been announced!  (Something we reserved the right to do from week 1).  Everyone is free to own and honor the one they like best - or both - or even clone their own better alternative.

And so are we.   

So, Stan, you're pretty determined to suck every last bit of value out of PTS, huh.

• Do you really need more funding for promotion, support, etc? Are 5,000 BTC + 340,000 PTS worth of donations not enough for you?
• Distributing the remaining PTS to AGS holders are the most obvious solution that would benefit your investors. Can't you see that at all?
• Don't you have any idea that this move would put you into a position that's against PTS and AGS holders?

I understand completely, that 3I has reserved the right to launch a competing protoDAC, along with other rights that you guys reserved as well, like yeah, "disavow anything you ever said on this forum". Well played.

But if you really want BitShares to succeed, you've got to work for the true benefit of the investors (PTS/AGS holders), instead of playing your little tricks to gradually suck everybody's money into your own pocket. I don't think you guys have the balls to piss the VCs off like this if you were to get money from VCs. And the whole idea of AGS is just scam, but we have no other choice but to donate all our ass off, otherwise our shares got diluted. But you managed to raised millions via AGS anyway. We tolerated it, so could you please just stop asking for money right now and firkin deliver?

Would you mind elaborating, because I don't quite get the logic behind your reasoning.

How do you see this as "sucking" all value and it being a bad thing? I also am a bit confused about the dilution of your shares if you just kept a hold of your PTS. Because from an ROI point of view PTS seems to be the big scam, because they get all the benefits of the AGS fundraiser and the projects that paid for, without needing themselves to invest in anything. I'd like it if someone could explain to me how PTS-holders are not getting anything other than a sickening better deal than people investing directly into AGS.

Could very well be I'm missing some very important points, but if you just number conclusions, without the reasoning that led you to them, that doesn't help in clearing things up.

Is this supposed to be the open-source code for nxt?

I've looked around a bit and I am worried that I was unable to find a single comment anywhere.  While I know there are people who believe in the maxim of good code speaks for itself and doesn't need comments, I'm not particularly convinced that code is able to convey it's intended purpose or reasoning behind it's design.

I'll dig around a bit more, but you are right that it is hard to find any real information on the source code. I did find a lot of Lego mindstorms code and discussions of people interested in the nxt-code having to receive a personal invitation before being able to get access to the git-repository. I also haven't been able to find the mailing lists or any other place where development discussion is taking place. So, until I'm able to find more, I have to agree with your assessment that NXT is not actually as open-source as I previously believed and my enthusiasm about it has cooled down considerably.

As one of the miners providing 1.2 - 2.5% of the current PTS-hashing power at way higher electricity cost than what I'm getting in return, I would not mind being able to cut down on my bills. I'm currently too tired to come up with any brilliant plans for the tokens that have not yet been distributed. In my current addled mind burning doesn't sound fair, but a mining like lottery distribution might not be feasible, so I'll add this to my always increasing todo list for when my brain is closer to it's usual rickety performance.

Yes, NXT still has not released any recent source code.  If you would like to look at the code of the AE then AFAIK you are shit out of luck.  (Yes you can decompile it, but one can decompile *ANY* code and that doesn't make it open source.)  Please correct me if wrong.  Atcually I'm not sure how the alternative wallets were made ?  Off published spec?  Anyone know ?

As much as the open source model hurts some, it has come to be expected in crypto-currency world.  Anyone should be able to see why...

NXT's DACs are not DACs by any stretch.  Remove the A and it would be a far closer fit.  I applaud them for that direction, but there is nothing autonomous that I see.

What are you for real, nxt still hasn't opensourced their code?

I admit I didn't look into it, but there was this big announcement and hubbub on the bitcointalk-thread how they had finally released all source-code with 3 major flaws and a bounty for the person who could find them. In the crypto-currency/equity-world for me open-source is fundamental even-though I'm just a white belt in code-fu and I would not be able to find any real flaws, I'd still advise anyone against trusting in security through obscurity. After Snowden that security model has been definitively proven as flawed and unusable. I figured I'd give nxt a little time and see how it would stand up to the scrutiny of the usual peer-review process, but if it is not open-source it should be avoided like the bubonic plague.

EDIT
Very odd though, because bluemeanie was raging on bitcointalk about how Ethereum wasn't opensource and hadn't released any of the real important code proving that their design and security could work.

You could make a website, but that doesn't change the issue with having to create a secure way of generating genesis blocks to handle that list, without any errors and needing to be part of the new toolkit being developed, which is not an afternoon of work. Also those signed transactions without something like a blockchain-timestamp-verification method will not be any more secure than the very first key and would in all practicality not solve anything. Alternatively if the Invictus team, starts to centrally screw around with the donating addresses that will open a Pandoras box of shitstorms that will make the current spring breeze of hissy-fits look insignificant in comparison.

Imo, your points about wanting to divest does not change much about the hostage-story being bs. Because all that time PTS was and is still there as a completely viable choice and I still think it strange why people chose AGS if they did not really want to and then start blaming others. AGS was never meant to be liquid and I never got the impression it was supposed to be and I always saw it as a kickstarter style fundraiser to help development of an industry and not a presale of a finished product. PTS was for the speculators and the angelshares were meant for funding the cause. Also even with the over-enthusiastic estimate, it was never anything more than that and as far as I understood it only for the first public test-chain, not the final bet your pension plus inheritance one. Even before the announced estimate there were warnings that a bug would require a new test chain to be developed, which lucky for the speculators was discovered before trading actually went live.

Thinking about it I don't understand why any PTS-holder would be whining at all, because they get the added bonus of AGS investments and things those funds are paying for, without PTS-holders needing to lift a finger. Do PTS-speculators actually think they are buying directly from the Invictus team instead of their money going to other speculators and miners?

Ok Fuznuts, I shall not use the A-word again on this forum. Is there a word I could have used to describe the contents of the post in that particular case, without it immediately being linked to the person making the post? Or should I make a disclaimer signature, with the declaration that my posts are only reactions on the words not reaction on the persona placing them?

The interconnectedness between the wallet and the blockchain cannot be ignored.   These things cannot be built in isolation.

I think this point should be elaborated upon and is one of the crucial misconceptions AdamBLevine seems to have been perpetuating as well.

You cannot change (hard-fork) something as complex as a distributed concensus system like the blockchain as if it's nothing, if only for the bolded parts. You also can't just switch from one blockchain technology to the other, just like that. Actually if you could, it would mean bitcoin and the invention of the blockchain is a joke and the rubbish most sceptics have been spewing on the mainstream is actually true, that you could just change things on a whim.

Also designing, coding, bugfixing/maintaining all those different systems at the same time is not nearly as easy, trivial or cheap as has been suggested in this thread, nor does it solve the problem of the PoW-model not being able to work for bitsharesX in the first place. Who in their right mind would waste everyones time, energy, money and his reputation on releasing a product which he is certain will fail just to prove that it will fail?

I think I'd better stop here, I'm having a hard time grasping why anyone even superficially familiar with software development in general, let alone projects like bitcoin would make claims like this. I suggest a thread be created where all these kinds of misunderstandings and myths or seeds of FUD are gathered and answered once and for all.

Maybe in a FAQ format, sort of like:
Why not (just) use (hashcash)PoW for a prediction-market blockchain?
A1 - Market manipulation: Because even with the simplest of attacks of just turning some miners on or off you can already influence the market by affecting the reaction-time of the participants on the prediction market. If you time it right with a good FUD campaign you can really make a killing.
A2 - Cost: Because developing and maintaining a "new" PoW-system tailor made to address all the issues, is at best just as hard, but more likely than not much harder as developing a more effective PoS system and a lot more costly in several ways.
A3 - Centralization: Has up till now not been solved with PoW-solutions, but is more disastrous in case of xchanges and prediction markets.

Might actually be a good community project to create such a FUD-buster list, although unfortunately core devs seem to be best suited to fill out the technical details, or would at least need to review it, which would cost more time and effort that they can't spare at the moment.