The end of the foundation

[Adilado 18]

14 minutes ago, Rik8119 said:

@jtimon yes i know that atm we follow what was planned all along. But the idea was, that if we have a stable coin supply and miners are already payed for their service why to pay them extra frc that is only used to inflate the price and discourage investors (in the end they pay for whatever freicoin is used for). So cutting the mining reward and only having the coins in circulation that are already out there was the idea some of us developed and which requires a hf.

That also means that most of us wanted the foundation funds to be destroyed, or maybe better

Option 5: to distribute it proportionally to all freicoin addresses out there (doesnt require a hard fork then).

Isnt that option 3?

Could mean a big selloff if that happened but im ok with distributing evenly too

[Rik8119 242]

LOL, absolutely. I am very good at reading.. Yeah it will lead to some selloff but that's ok because when the price stabilizes the freicoin in your pocket should be worth the same.. And although it is a little work, no change to the code is needed...

[jtimon 36]

It is to be expected that with a higher reward we just get an increase in hashrate and difficulty, and thus an increase in security (which currently isn't great due to the tiny reward), but not necessarily to miners' profits.
This may have a temporary effect on the price, but I don't think it will be greater than with option 3. Option 3 also doubles the utxo size (well, more or less, discounting reused addresses).

Again, option 4 (reducing block subsidy and thus the total 100 M supply) is not a hardfork, but a softfork.
 

[Bicknellski 276]

On 7/28/2017 at 4:47 PM, jtimon said:

> So what is your vision for the coin moving forward Developers?

My priority regarding Freicoin is starting to do rebases much faster and continuously, getting all the new improvements, bugfixes and features.
As for new consensus changes features, apart from those included in more modern versions of bitcoin (cltv[bip65], csv[bip68/bip112], segwit[bip141]), it would be nice to get features from https://elementsproject.org/ which now also rebases periodically. Specially I would like to have confidential transactions https://elementsproject.org/elements/confidential-transactions/ and confidential assets: https://elementsproject.org/elements/asset-issuance/ This is similar to freimarkets' basic asset issuance but with much better privacy. But that requires a hardfork, so it strongly depends on support from the community. There's also some incentive problems with the utxo, but I think we can solve them.
In general, that's my basic plan for Freicoin development: rebase and get new features from elements and bitcoin.

I'm also working on a block explorer for bitcoin, elements and liquid that I would like to adapt to freicoin as well.
But of course other people can work on other things.

In any case, this is rather orthogonal to the foundation's funds. So please, let's try to stay on topic.
New developments, new webs and potential consensus changes are all fine to discuss, but I don't think they are directly related to the question at hand, which is admitting we have failed as a community (and as devs) with the foundation and non-mining distribution, put an end to it and move on to other things.
 

It might be tangential to this discussion, however it is not tangential to this community in that if you promise to deliver changes on what we are voting on then fail to follow up on developing the coin further why should we invest time? You and Mark have not really been setting development goals and updating the coin over the past two years. I think it is also important to note that giving up on the idea of foundation (Mark and Jorge's idea) is just one more signal that you want to divest yourself of responsibility to this tiny community. That might not be the intention but it sure is what some people think. Let me be really frank here. It would be best that you come up with a plan with goals and then tell the community what this road map is and begin doing it.

I agree with what you are proposing and I agree with your assessment about what FRC should be and I think option 1 is the right move as is option 4 as well, so please make that happen asap or at least cap debate here and move on already it is bogged down at this point. POS vs. POW is not a relevant debate and way way way off topic really. As for anything else well I want to see a clear outline with at least something that can be measured. I think the community here has done what it can given that we have seen promises for updates and changes to the coin before and nothing substantive has happened. Passing some of the blame to the community is fair but to be honest without developers pushing changes and improving the coin what do you expect a community to do? We basically have no users because the coin is not promoted by those who developed it. If you don't have the time or want to let it die then tell us now or make a real effort to plan a revival of the coin.

Sorry but the real issue here is that we lack a community of sufficient size to really to do much of anything to progress the coin it would entirely rest on the developers shoulders to provide the stimulus to engage a much larger community.  Without any direction and lack of updates this coin has failed to attract a larger community. You two need to have a greater vision or plan ala Vitalik Buterin. He was willing to step up and put in time and draw more developers to his way of thinking because of his vision. Freicoin has a greater potential to be disruptive compared to Ethereum given core economics of Freicoin. Do you guys want to push that or just keep debating here in this obscure corner of the cryptocoin world with people who are not necessarily your peers? To me that is a waste of time given the debates on these issues were already conducted 3 or 4 years ago.

Rather than debating 3 or 4 people on things, what you really need is a real cabal of developers to move FRC forward not us laymen see Vitaly Buterin again as the gold standard for drawing people in with an idea out of nothing with zero base. Where have those people gone you had originally supporting development? They left for a number of reasons but I suspect there was little or no interest remaining as there was no active development. No challenges. No vision. No plan. Don't make the same mistake.

This is not a community large enough to be a relevant sounding board for you two  to develop the coin into something that is targeting a user base of millions of people. You need to bring in a larger team of people with ideas for growth that will draw a real user base. Until you need to involve more people in decision making from a wider community of coin users it be better to make a plan, invest time into carrying that plan out and when the millions of users do come on board you can work like Ethereum or Bitcoin Core etc. and talk to the community about options. I value that you are trying to fix mistakes and work with this community but your time is limited and should be focused on developing the coin not debating the very core concept of the coin or the foundation. It is great you want to engage with us but really. Set your vision and make it happen then we can debate the validity of your choices or offer up suggestions to make the coin easier to use.

[Arcurus 331]

23 hours ago, jtimon said:

> doesn't sound that great to me. its basically Bitcoin with demurrage for eternity to miners what @jtimon suggested.

Yes, that was basically freicoin's design from the beginning. The foundation was a later mistake.

here is the root of the basic misunderstanding between the Freicoin Core Developers and the Freicoin community.

@jtimon and maaku wants basically Bitcoin with demurrage plus Freimarkets

many of the community wanted Bitcoin with demurrage plus republicoin i call it freirepublic, because it was at least initially not meant to be a coin.

With freirepublic we could support many projects to make Silvio Gesells vision of a Freieconomy true step by step.

Demurrage was only one part of it and never to stand alone (see wiki).

 

So the question is, do we want Freicoin to be Bitcoin with demurrage plus Freimarkets.

Or do we want Freicoin to use as tool to implement a Freieconomy as Silvio Gesell suggested?

 

 

For me freimarkets can go together with Freirepublic / Freieconomy, they are just two different parts of the greater vision.

Therefore i would suggest that maaku and @jitmon concentrate on fremarkets and updated clients, while other parts of the community concentrate on implementing freirepublic.

 

@all please take part in answering this discussion so that we get a clear picture!

 

[Arcurus 331]

23 hours ago, jtimon said:

I did look into pos, and I think it's flawed. But you are free to keep looking into it.

i wish you and maaku would take part in a more detailed discussion about pos. I dont think that it's flawed, to be clear im talking about a POS POW combination not pure POS.

to be more clear, im not talking about a peer coin like POS. im talking about a dash like layer two POS POW combination.

yes i also think the peer coin POS implementation is flawed, but up to now i dont see a big flaw that cannot be solved in the layer two dash like POS.

please take part in the discussion here:

what is the alternative? proof of work as it is now means that each year 5% from that > 80% is just burned for electricity, the rest goes mostly to  one who have a monopoly on mining equipment...

on top of that up to now we have no good way to implement republicoin / freirepublic / any alternative coin distribution with pure pow 

 

>Isn't that what the foundation is currently supposed to do?

yes the foundation was supposed to distribute the coins as agreed. Sadly it didnt. That does not meant that the idea was bad it just meant that the execution of the idea was bad.

also with my proposal the amount of risk would be limited to 100.000 Freicoin and not 80 Million Freicoins. Having 80 Million hanging in limbo is like having a deathtricker in you hand.

Also my proposal can be implemented as a softfork which can be easy replaced later.

> the community also didn't developed any other distribution program.

i see here also a clear difference of perception. in software development normally you design what you want to have, then you review the design, then you implement it, because changes in the implementation are very costly compared to changes in the design.

Therefore just saying yes you can implement something, maybe we will use it maybe not, is not very encouraging especially most are not developers that can implement it at all and are dependent on the core devs, or at least on the one who is holding the key to the foundation funds. 

 

 

[Arcurus 331]

back to your original question, my preference is in this order:

option 2X) add as block reward and add a softfork as discribed above - it would be in away like the current foundation except, that the risk is limited to 100K Freicoins and it can be removed / replaced easily with another soft fork. also i suggest to have a separation between developers and key holders as maaku wanted it to have in the beginning.

option 3) do promised 100% matching then give equally to investors after a known time period

option 4) do promised 100% matching then do destroy the coins and reduce the supply, but reduce to a rounded supply like 21 Million

option 1) do promised 100% matching then destroy the coins

option 2) do promised 100% matching then give out as mining reward --> i don't like at all  

 

[jtimon 36]

My intention is not to "abandon the coin and let it die" but that doesn't mean maaku, me or any other voluntary should be bullied for using (or not) their time as a voluntary however they want. 
Please, @Arcurus stop telling other volunteers how they should spend their time. You are free to spend your own time however you want. When things don't happen as fast as you wanted them to happen (or just don't happen at all), don't blame other volunteers for not having done them: blame yourself for not having done more to make them happen.

@Bicknellski volunteers that are developers don't have special obligations or privileges. Here there's no ICO in which users paid developers like in eth: eth and freicoin communities simply cannot be compared in this sense. Please stop talking as if @Mark Friedenbach me or anyone else owed you something just because you are a user. I'm a user too. Just because I learned how to program that doesn't make me your slave or anyone else's.

Please, save your "developers should do X or focus on Y", "the community should focus on X", etc. In my experience that doesn't help build a healthy community of volunteers, it does pretty much the opposite. You will focus on whatever interests you the most and everyone else will do the same.

We can discuss potential future roadmaps in other threads, but this is about putting an end to the foundation.
So back to the topic at hand...

Yes, as said in the opening post, I think the promised 100% matching should be done before putting an end to the foundation.

Regarding the softfork to limit the quantity that the foundation can issue:

1) There's no need to do that at the consensus level if the foundation is still centralized.

2) It doesn't put an end to the centralized foundation.

I'm surprised that people don't like 2 and I'm not sure I understand the reasons, but it seems I'm kind of alone having that as a favorite.
I guess my preferred order is: 2 > 4 > 1 > 3.

[Rik8119 242]

@Arcurus POS is surely useful to keep the coins from the exchange what is artificial demand that is created. But Demurrage is to encourage the stakeholder to lend their money for zero interest, POS is doing the opposite.

I know that you want the currency to be some sort of governmental structure (perform lending and distribution -which is a honorable idea) but i don't see that it is doable. And with so many different ideas in the pipe i think it is better to build a bank that is doing the social lending and some charity that supports social organizations (both then are not part of the currency) just to keep the currency simple.

It was also hard for me to internalize that Freicoin is just Bitcoin with demurrage but thats what it is, I offered the community to further develop the coin but there was no consens, only more fresh ideas. So if one wants some redistribution mechanism (Yes, "The community" did develop some other distribution mechanism -UBI) one may want to think about switching to solidar and not being harsh with the devs ;-).

 

Btw @jtimon i still dont see why reducing the mining reward is a soft fork since coins from the high mining fee chain wont be valid on the low mining fee chain.

[Skaro 129]

@jtimon, could you maybe say what you thought would be a good set of parameters for Option 2? I assume this would set the time frame and payment regime for the Foundation funds?

Anyway, option 3 looks bad. One thing there is to learn about the Foundation is that bad optics should be avoided. While the Foundation funds have remained mostly untouched, people had viewed it as a possible scam.  So then we distribute the Foundation funds and the richest people get richer--pure POS. After we multiply all address balances by 5, what then? Where are you going to spend it? Its like you and your friends declaring leaves money then dividing all the leaves in your backyard amoungst each other. At least miners need to pay an electricity bill--that's legitimate economic circulation. (LOL I digress.) Also, we don't want to replace it with another type of Foundation either.

Increasing users and  use for the coin is the end game. With increased use the hash rate fixes itself, money circulates, the value will be more constant etc, and there will be more volunteers and community members! So we want to keep the optics good.

Presently, debating here, we are actually agreeing on important things: 1) the Foundation must end, and 2) that the community is welcome to code and develop things that interests them.  All options 1,2 and 4 are fine. 

 

[Skaro 129]

regarding distributing mining coins in a different way, could CPU mining be a solution? Obviously not for the hash rate, but for identifying a participant. Then mining rewards can be distributed on a weighting factor between hash rate and no of participants (as identified by the network of wallets configured for mining). I suppose this has nothing to do with developers but rather P2pool. 

[Fabrizio 162]

I would've liked to see the Foundation continue. At the current moment in time though, I understand the wish to end it since there is no tested-to-work tech for the fair distribution (self-sovereign/decentralized ID, WOT, voting systems).. as well as the inability of our small community to launch the many centralized experiments we've discussed/planned/outlined to attract wider user base  

Option 3 I dislike, since there are a bunch of coins in lost privkeys (and possibly in questionable entities possession; case Cryptsy) -> Drags out the "full supply" of coins available for circulation.

I'd prefer option 4, but option 2 could be as acceptable  Option 1... I wouldnt like to see inflation added, but it wouldnt drive me away from Freicoin neither.

Edit: Short off-topic comment @ Arc and Bick: I totally see both of yer points and comments and theres validity to them.. especially with that theres not been that much communication with the devs during the past years with the couple of channels we tried (Forum/IRC/Mumble/Blab etc.), but there wasnt too much attendance from the community neither  To make this short; the Bitcoin development team has done some mindblowing codewizardry during these years that will benefit Freicoin too once the client gets updated  Theres also the things from Blockstream projects that Jorge mentioned above that are really neat and should help with the experiments we've discussed before. So dont be too harsh with Jtimon and Maaku, I think we've (the world) benefited more with them working on those projects ^^ (pfft.. not that short.. I'll try to trickytrick with smaller font :D)

[Bicknellski 276]

A plan moving forward please. Seems we have agreed to some things. And again somethings like POS vs POW have already been discussed before Arc and I would defer to what Mark and Jorge have said on this issue we don't need POS. As for freimarkets colored coins etc... what are the developers willing to do? I think 1 and 4 seem agreeable to most. Let's see that done and maybe we can see a more concrete plan moving forward. If everything now is going to be run through the forum and discussed great. But what is the agenda? What do we need etc. The foundation question seems mostly solved. Someone write it up and lets vote and then move forward.

 

Note: Fab. Well I have said my piece and it needed to be voiced. As for attendance and the community? Really? A lot of those past options and plans were debated within a larger community and assumed that would be acted on. If we want to keep discussing things already discussed and posted then in reality it is a waste of time and it is a delaying tactic at best. I am not asking for anything other than following up on what the devs want to do with their established plans and they were discussed at length in the past I don't see how things have change demonstrably since 2014 or 2015. I am not asking for the devs to make this their job and put in 40 hours a week and cut everyone out of the process. I just want them to engage with us in a reasonable way so we can expect some sort of progress. Have a look at the old forum you will see what I mean on that. It would be worthwhile for those two to put their vision on paper and get us the community to sell that with our input. But you can't keep limping along with no one leading this thing. Someone needs to step up and moving things forward.

 

 

[Skaro 129]

Well Fab and Bick weighed in. A total of 10 people voted. That's pretty good.

 

It's a little difficult to count and rank as some people voted for one option, some ranked their choices, and some gave equal rank to two or more options, then some changed their minds ... . I also know Fedde's second choice is option 4, which I included. So not counting 3rd or 4 th rank, and giving equal weight to 1st and second choice, I count:

option 1 - 7

option 2- 4

option 3 - 1

option 4 - 7

It appears that option 4 is most people's second choice and the philosophical 'middle ground' as it creates no inflation and privileges miners less. I think it may be the technically best option, and has good appearance. It also makes Freicon coin generation truely complete, which is sociologically unique and consistent with the original concept. Option 4 is also JTimon, Fedde, and Arc's second choice. I grant the tie to devs and active programmers.

I recommend option 4 be regarded as the community's choice.

 

[Rik8119 242]

1 hour ago, Skaro said:

I recommend option 4 be regarded as the community's choice.

 

Agreed.

[Skaro 129]

While we are not following rules of order, 3 more 'agrees' would make it final. So please indicate a 'yay' or a 'nay'.

 

Yay = 'yes' and nay = 'no'. Any other synonyms are acceptable

[Adilado 18]

I agree on alternative 4 as the community choice.

I vote YAY for alternative 4.

[Skaro 129]

Yes, smiley crêpes are considered a synonym for 'yay'.

[whisper1970 0]

Hi,  Yay for me.  option 4

[Rik8119 242]

@jtimon Ah, sorry for me i now see why its a softfork. The blocks are still accepted if the miners are payed less, so no need to upgrade..

[Fabrizio 162]

'ay, fair points Bick. I'd like to see/hear more detailed visions of the future from both as well. Here on the forums or on the Freicoin website that is.. both have voiced some of their ideologies on some other mediums while discussing other topics, so they are out there for anyone who has been following their work  

I hope this isnt seen as stalling, but I'd like to see some discussion/opinions on the option 2 still though. Especially from jtimon, since it was his preferred choice. So @jtimon did you have some kind of schedule or scheme thought for this based on some ideals?

Thoughts for others: 100mil cap could be easier to psychologically accept for some people than the number that would be set after the fork. "Why is the supply this random number" -> research -> "Ohh, they changed it afterwards based on small number of votes" -> decrease in confidence.

A well planned schedule could also allow us to attract miners and users. If the rest of the coins would be made available for mining on certain date (for example 1.1.2018) and would be mined by end of 2018/2019/whatever, there could be time to get some of the Alliance mining and/or basic income projects up&running. This would in some aspects be kind of replacing Foundation with Alliance.. though the Alliance is holding some funds received from the foundation matching, so would also be a way to distribute them as well and ~correct the Foundations.. "mistakes" too.

[Adilado 18]

11 minutes ago, Fabrizio said:

'ay, fair points Bick. I'd like to see/hear more detailed visions of the future from both as well. Here on the forums or on the Freicoin website that is.. both have voiced some of their ideologies on some other mediums while discussing other topics, so they are out there for anyone who has been following their work  

I hope this isnt seen as stalling, but I'd like to see some discussion/opinions on the option 2 still though. Especially from jtimon, since it was his preferred choice. So @jtimon did you have some kind of schedule or scheme thought for this based on some ideals?

Thoughts for others: 100mil cap could be easier to psychologically accept for some people than the number that would be set after the fork. "Why is the supply this random number" -> research -> "Ohh, they changed it afterwards based on small number of votes" -> decrease in confidence.

A well planned schedule could also allow us to attract miners and users. If the rest of the coins would be made available for mining on certain date (for example 1.1.2018) and would be mined by end of 2018/2019/whatever, there could be time to get some of the Alliance mining and/or basic income projects up&running. This would in some aspects be kind of replacing Foundation with Alliance.. though the Alliance is holding some funds received from the foundation matching, so would also be a way to distribute them as well and ~correct the Foundations.. "mistakes" too.

Na. Odd or even number 28 mil is many times better 100 mil. Dont set the price down to one satoshi

[fedde 311]

Well,  Option 1 or 4 is my opinions. Number 2 comes also strong, but afraid how it will look in general when miners dump their coins when they mine.

[Skaro 129]

@Fabrizio, regarding the parameters for option 2, I too did ask if @jtimon could maybe share some thoughts on that. And thanks for presenting your ideas too--although I wanted to wrap this up. He has so far clarified: 1)funds to go through miners, not POS; 2) one of the reasons we want to end the Foundation is because no alternative method for distribution was developed by us, so we shouldn't pretend that we will developed one now, 3) the goal is to end the Foundation, not to create another one. So option one represents the maximum time to distribute the funds, option 4 thier complete destruction. I think your suggest kinda falls under (2), we haven't got the basic income up and running yet. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, But it may not materialize.

We could reasonably target having a round figure still of say 30 million. I think people reading Freicoin history will think, "they saw a problem and fixed it while still keeping that character of the coin the same."

anyway keep discussing, but let's aim to get this wrapped up soon.

[Skaro 129]

Since, we are not using rules of order, discussion is still happened while voting on a resolution to move forward. That's fine. But one more 'yay', or synonym of, will make it a majority.