log☇︎
806100+ entries in 0.584s
KRS1: primecoin is very interesting to me
Duffer1: but i see evolution there as well
Duffer1: i wouldn't call that crackpot at all
asciilifeform: which 'winners' are optimized for, determines whether you get a turd (known alts) or something interesting ('classic' btc)
asciilifeform: crackpot hypothesis: every new cryptocoin can be seem as an attempt to 'replay' the history of money
Duffer1: ascii knows far more about this than i do, i'm just going off what i've observed from the primecoin example
KRS1: reading this conversation vs gmaxwell's conversation in -pricetalk is hurting my brain a little.
asciilifeform: 'pow' based on proving that you wasted the time of living people, vs. mere machines.
asciilifeform: then, of course, is the other end of this spectrum:
asciilifeform: scammers scam, and people who think themselves more clever than the scammer try to ride along
Duffer1: indeed, but with the potential to rapidly become something else
asciilifeform: alts as the presently exist seem like a modernized version of 'penny stocks'
Duffer1: it's different with alts though, since they're all tied to how many bitcoins can i get for my shitcoin
asciilifeform: as far as i can tell (by no means an expert view), the thing that mainly drives adoption of classic btc is precisely reliability-as-store-of-value.
asciilifeform: from the 'store of value' point of view, they expect that they can get a similar quantity of g or c or whatnot for the coin later.
Duffer1: the perception is obviously that utility will drive adoption and popularity and value
asciilifeform: unless they in particular wished it folded
Duffer1: meh their pow doesn't actually do anything
asciilifeform: but even with a coin that provably represents useful work: why should someone give you gold or cocaine because you helped fold a protein?
asciilifeform: if this were really so, 'curecoin' and the like would be great hits.
asciilifeform: (coin with 'useless' workfunction, difficulty rampup, all the things we know and love)
asciilifeform: the person who carries it out will expect to be paid in something that is actually a stable store of value
asciilifeform: at the risk of repeating myself: 'moronhashcrackcoin' or 'foldprotein1B41coin' only has value to whoever commissioned that calculation.
asciilifeform: and were it to exist, i'd have no part of it (otherwise occupied.)
asciilifeform: Duffer1: in case this wasn't obvious, this is not a product that threatens to actually exist.
asciilifeform: result at the end of the day should be to make it a hard fact that anyone who carries out the kind of calculation you want done, ends up with X btc for his trouble
asciilifeform: (one is to promote a certain calculation; the other - store of value.)
asciilifeform: because they serve entirely different purposes
asciilifeform: the subtle thing here is that 'useful' workfuncts must coexist with 'useless' ones - ideally, in the same blockchain.
asciilifeform: 'hard' isn't enough for the purpose of coin, you also need ease of verification.
BingoBoingo: Well X-Ray crystallography is indeed a hard physical problem with varying and more expensive levels of difficulty. X-raying a mineral crystal isn't so bad. A given protein in fluid is a bit harder. Getting a good picture of a receptor protein as it sits in the cell membrane is an incredibly hard problem.
asciilifeform: the problem with workfunctions that do something useful is that, unless the supply of such jobs naturally tapers off (all interesting proteins found in nature eventually 'folded')
asciilifeform: that'd be an example of the 'promises'
asciilifeform: (vs. an idiotchain that merely promises with kind words to fund things)
asciilifeform: an altchain that *actually folds* would have no problem with wealth injection from the 'meatspace' universe
asciilifeform: but it's one way to solve the energy-minimal 'where should the atoms go' question, yes.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: you're probably thinking of ab initio protein folding
asciilifeform: (actually coughing up a workfunction that does useful work is left as an exercise for the alert reader.)
asciilifeform: you, the worker, know that it is an honest trade, because you bring 100 moronhashcoins and get 1 btc, every step of the way, for arbitrarily small chunks.
asciilifeform: the whole exercise takes place on the block chain.
asciilifeform: say, i want mr. moron's md5 hash 'cracked.' i offer to trade 10btc for 1000 moronhashcrackcoins.
asciilifeform: prog. workfunctions would give you a single coin with multiple workfunctions ('coloured' by origin, if you like), and so the actual market value of a particular 'work' could be determined.
asciilifeform: instead, buy ipv4 space, etc. the way spammers do.
asciilifeform: that is, if you are a large miner, it is increasingly a bad idea to look like what you are
Duffer1: so they have to attract miners somehow
Duffer1: devs are only worried about their own coin though
asciilifeform: hard to attract miners if you make total war on them when they start to succeed.
Duffer1: how to evolve beyond cpu/mem intense functions?
asciilifeform: and drives a wedge between user groups with conflicting interests (existing stakeholders want a difficult-to-mine coin, those who invested in miners want the miners to keep working)
Duffer1: they'll still have to attract miners, and attempt to mitigate the effects of launch attacks/stability
asciilifeform: every forced move of this kind is a 'schism event'
asciilifeform: but this is a mistaken idea
asciilifeform: given that it costs nothing to spawn a new alt, with a new workfunction, while asics are costly
asciilifeform: at first glance, it would seem like the altchain devs could always outrun the asic folks
asciilifeform: anything short of programmable workfunction will lead to a cat'n'mouse game rather expensive and unproductively unpleasant for all involved.
Duffer1: i hope that happens quickly, it'd be nice to see what devs come up with to counter 'scrypt asics'
asciilifeform: the first joker who bothers to bake an scrypt asic will devour the altchains like smallpox devoured aboriginals
Duffer1: they'd bend your blockchain over and do terrible terrible things to it
asciilifeform: the 'memory hard' people are what is known in the armchair general community as a 'target-rich environment.'
kakobrekla: on these small coins
kakobrekla: i think it could prove hard to lauch a sha coin nowdays, since a lot of people can fuck with the blockchain
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Turing coin? That ultimate FPGA coin you've mentioned before.
asciilifeform: but not this
asciilifeform: how did this fellow miss the obvious usefulness of programmable workfunctions?
fract4l: As a result, we have a protocol with unique potential; rather than being a closed-ended, single-purpose protocol intended for a specific array of applications in data storage, gambling or finance, Ethereum is open-ended by design, and we believe that it is extremely well-suited to serving as a foundational layer for a very large number of both financial and non-financial protocols in the years to come.
Duffer1: just a tactic to attract miners left out of the sha race
asciilifeform: or it were somehow impossible to obtain cheaply
asciilifeform: (if it's the former, this is deadly boring)
asciilifeform: did i miss something? where does it live? on a particular machine? or on every node running the block chain?
asciilifeform: 'A contract is essentially an automated agent that lives on the Ethereum network, has an Ethereum address and balance, and can send and receive transactions.'
asciilifeform: leaving aside the question whether this was a smart thing to do, that's what it looks like at first glance.
kakobrekla: i dont know but the article says the autor is very smart
asciilifeform: did someone simply uncomment the scripting module in classic bitcoin?
Duffer1: looks like a dud to me
fract4l: Ethereum just changed the game. everyone is fucked now.
kakobrekla: LEARN TO ENGLAND
kakobrekla: i havent opened the link
BingoBoingo: fract4l: Like the web design
kakobrekla: shut up and take my money
fract4l: f33r th3 l33tn3ss
fract4l: Bitcoin might go too..
fract4l: Ethereum just changed the game.... Mastercoin , bitshares, colored coins,,, all dead now
nubbins`: that used to be a bannable offence in many efnet chans
nubbins`: ah, been a while since that's happened
nubbins`: otherwise, yeah, i'd just do that :P
nubbins`: well nobody wants to pay 2btc for 1btc over the internet
pankkake: if only you could transfer money over the internet
nubbins`: always mildly nervous sending casascius coins in the mail
Duffer1: wow i didn't even know that rush YYZ acapella existed, that's just awesome
nubbins`: just two white women humiliating themselves for no reason
nubbins`: haha, are these the "i was robbed by two men" people?
Duffer1: still watching whitesnake trying to get service is sell out of my head
wao-ender: lol that czech lads with corncob pipe
KRS1: oh wow theres that japanese aerobic language skills video i remember that lol
Duffer1: lol that chinese chick at 1:2-
dub: inspirating motherfuckers to sell
dub: ima bout to IPO this bitch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9il52dlnnc&feature=youtu.be
ozbot: Bitcoin Anonymity Upgrade Zerocoin To Become An Independent Cryptocurrency - Forbes
mircea_popescu: fake mining ventures being probably the largest cvasi-legit fraud out there
mircea_popescu: by the time they actually find gold or w/e btc will have gone up so far it still wouldn't have been worth it