Satoshi Nakamototo Martti Malmi <sirius-m@users.sourceforge.net> · · original
Thanks for starting that topic on ASC, your understanding of bitcoin is
spot on. Some of their responses were rather Neanderthal, although I
guess they're so used to being anti-fiat-money that anything short of
gold isn't good enough. They concede that something is flammable, but
argue that it'll never burn because there'll never be a spark. Once
it's backed with cash, that might change, but I'd probably better
refrain from mentioning that in public anymore until we're closer to
ready to start. I think we'll get flooded with newbies and we need to
get ready first.
What we need most right now is website writing. My writing is not that
great, I'm a much better coder. Maybe you could create the website on
sourceforge, which is currently blank. If you can write a FAQ, I can
give you a compilation of my replies to questions in e-mail and forums
for facts and details and ideas.
Codewise, there's not much that's easy right now. One thing that's
needed is an interface for server side scripting languages such as Java,
Python, PHP, ASP, etc. Bitcoin would be running on the web server, and
server side script could call it to do transactions. It's Windows, so I
guess OLE/COM is the interface.
One easy thing that really helps is to run a node that can accept
incoming connections (forward port 8333 on your firewall) to make sure
that new users who try it out have someone to connect to. If they run
it and get no connections, they'll probably just give up.
Satoshi
Martti Malmi wrote:
Message body follows:
Hello,
I'm Trickstern from the anti-state.com forum, and I would
like to help with Bitcoin, if there's something I can do.
I have a good touch on Java and C languages from school
courses (I'm studying CS), but not so very much development
experience yet. I think I could learn the C++ tricks quite
easily on that basis. I could also do testing or
documentation.
Best regards,
Martti Malmi
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mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
All right, I can do the website and the FAQ. I'll start writing the
FAQ now with the questions that I can think of.
I have a feature suggestion for the program: a UI tool for creating
password protected private keys and saving them into a custom
location. Backups of the key will be needed to be safe from losing the
control of your coins, and for using the coins on more than one
computers. Password protection would be needed to make using your
money more difficult for someone who happens to find your key file.
Maybe a bug/feature tracker could be set up at the Sourceforge project page?
I'm running a bitcoin node always when my PC is powered on, which
means about 24/7. Bitcoin is a great project, and it's really cool to
participate!
-Martti Malmi
Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
Thanks for starting that topic on ASC, your understanding of bitcoin is
spot on. Some of their responses were rather Neanderthal, although I
guess they're so used to being anti-fiat-money that anything short of
gold isn't good enough. They concede that something is flammable, but
argue that it'll never burn because there'll never be a spark. Once
it's backed with cash, that might change, but I'd probably better
refrain from mentioning that in public anymore until we're closer to
ready to start. I think we'll get flooded with newbies and we need to
get ready first.
What we need most right now is website writing. My writing is not that
great, I'm a much better coder. Maybe you could create the website on
sourceforge, which is currently blank. If you can write a FAQ, I can
give you a compilation of my replies to questions in e-mail and forums
for facts and details and ideas.
Codewise, there's not much that's easy right now. One thing that's
needed is an interface for server side scripting languages such as
Java, Python, PHP, ASP, etc. Bitcoin would be running on the web
server, and server side script could call it to do transactions. It's
Windows, so I guess OLE/COM is the interface.
One easy thing that really helps is to run a node that can accept
incoming connections (forward port 8333 on your firewall) to make sure
that new users who try it out have someone to connect to. If they run
it and get no connections, they'll probably just give up.
Satoshi
Martti Malmi wrote:
> Message body follows:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm Trickstern from the anti-state.com forum, and I would like to
> help with Bitcoin, if there's something I can do.
>
> I have a good touch on Java and C languages from school courses
> (I'm studying CS), but not so very much development experience yet.
> I think I could learn the C++ tricks quite easily on that basis. I
> could also do testing or documentation.
>
> Best regards,
> Martti Malmi
>
> --
> This message has been sent to you, a registered SourceForge.net user,
> by another site user, through the SourceForge.net site. This message
> has been delivered to your SourceForge.net mail alias. You may reply
> to this message using the "Reply" feature of your email client, or
> using the messaging facility of SourceForge.net at:
> https://sourceforge.net/sendmessage.php?touser=2495503
>
All right, I can do the website and the FAQ. I'll start writing the FAQ
now with the questions that I can think of.
That would be great! I added you (dmp1ce) as a dev to the sourceforge
project and gave you access to edit the web space and everything.
I have a feature suggestion for the program: a UI tool for creating
password protected private keys and saving them into a custom location.
Backups of the key will be needed to be safe from losing the control of
your coins, and for using the coins on more than one computers. Password
protection would be needed to make using your money more difficult for
someone who happens to find your key file.
Definitely. This will be an absolutely essential feature once things
get going, making it so you can lock your wealth up with strong
encryption and back it up more securely than any physical safe. So far
I've been putting it off in favour of other features because it's not
crucial yet until bitcoins start to have value.
I plan to work on the escrow feature next, which is needed to make
actual trades for physical stuff safer and before backing the currency
with fiat money can begin.
I'm running a bitcoin node always when my PC is powered on, which means
about 24/7. Bitcoin is a great project, and it's really cool to
participate!
Thanks! Right now there are a lot of people on the network who can't
receive incoming connections, so every node that can really helps.
Having more helps keep down the "(not accepted)" issue for now until I
reduce the chances of that happening in v0.1.6.
I guess one answer for the FAQ should be how to set up your firewall to
forward port 8333 so you can receive incoming connections. The question
could be something like "what if I have 0 connections" and that could be
the answer that it might be because the nodes you can connect with is
limited if you don't set that up.
Here's a compilation of questions I've answered in forums and e-mail
that should help you see what questions are frequently asked and some
answers I've used. It's not intended to use all or most of the material
here, just pick and choose. This is just a dump of everything I've
answered.
Some issues that we don't have easy answers for are best not to bring
up. Casual users seems content to assume that the system works as
stated (which it does), and getting into the design details just opens a
can of worms that can't be answered without a deep understanding of the
system. The advanced questions I've received have mostly been unique
per person and best answered individually.
**** QUESTION AND ANSWER DUMP ****
Any questions used for the FAQ should probably be rephrased.
questions:
The bottom of the UI shows:
Generating 4 connections 4024 blocks 164 transactions
I understand "generating"; I assume I am connected to 4 other nodes; and
I know I have recorded 164 transactions (including failed generation
attempts). I'm not clear what the "blocks" figure describes. It's much
smaller than the total of all the blocks shown against all my
transactions.
It's the total number of blocks in the block chain, meaning the
network's block chain, which everyone has a copy of. Every Bitcoin node
displays the same number and it goes up about every 10 minutes whenever
someone generates a block. When you haven't had it running for a while,
once you're connected it spins up rapidly as it downloads what was
generated while you were gone to catch up. I'm not sure exactly how to
describe it (that would fit on the status bar in 1 word, maybe 2 words
max), any ideas?
The blocks number in the status column next to your transactions is the
number of blocks that have come after that transaction. Your
transaction is essentially "in" that many blocks.
Satoshi
My best guess - it
is the length of the global chain, and the rapid advance at the start
is as the software downloads and verifies the preceding blocks in the
chain as being valid.
Right. I'm trying to think of more clear wording for that, maybe "%d
network blocks" or "%d block chain".
I'm having an unusual run of (block not-accepted) failures, and
thought I'd let you know in
case this was of any significance.
What rate of not-accepted did you see? I didn't see anything unusual on
my end. If you had more than, say, 4 in a row, that would be abnormal
and probably a loss of network communication. If it's scattered and
less than 25%, just random bad luck. It's normal and harmless to
randomly get some per cent of not-accepted, and of course randomness can
sometimes bunch up and look like a pattern.
The idea of an option to View/Hide unaccepted blocks is a good one, as
well as View/Hide all generated blocks so you can more easily see
incoming transactions. Seeing the unaccepted blocks is just annoying
and frustrating. Everyone faces the same rate of unaccepted, it's just
a part of the process. It would probably be best to default to hide
unaccepted blocks, so as not to show giving and taking away something
that never was, and not show new generated blocks at all until they have
at least one confirmation. It would only mean finding out you have a
generated block 15 minutes later than normal, and then you still have
119 blocks to go before it matures anyway. This is on the to-do list
for v0.1.6.
Satoshi
[note: I have some improvements in 0.1.6 to reduce this problem somewhat,
and it'll also improve when the network is larger]
For some reason your transfer to me shows up as "From: unknown" even
though I added you to my address book.
I have a "Generated (not accepted)" line in my transaction list, it
seems like an attempt to generate a coin went wrong somehow. Not sure
what happened here - presumably my node successfully solved a block
but then I went offline before it was sent to the network?
Transactions sent to a bitcoin address will always say "from: unknown".
The transaction only tells who it's to. Sending by bitcoin address
has a number of problems, but it's so nice having the fallback option to
be able to send to anyone whether they're online or not. There are a
number of ideas to try to improve things later. For now, if things work
out like the real world where the vast majority of transactions are with
merchants, they'll pretty much always make sure to set up to receive by
IP. The P2P file sharing networks seem fairly successful at getting a
large percentage of their users to set up their firewalls to forward a port.
I badly wanted to find some way to include a comment with indirect
transfers, but there just wasn't a way to do it. Bitcoin uses EC-DSA, which
was essential for making the block chain compact enough to be practical with
today's technology because its signatures are an order of magnitude smaller
than RSA. But EC-DSA can't encrypt messages like RSA, it can only be used
to verify signatures.
The "Generated (not accepted)" normally happens if two nodes find a
block at close to the same time, one of them will not be accepted. It's
normal and unavoidable. I plan in v0.1.6 to hide those, since they're
just confusing and annoying and there's no reason for users to have to
see them. While the network is still small like it is now, if you can't
receive incoming connections you're at more of a disadvantage because
you can't receive block announcements as directly.
...So far it has two "Generated" messages, however the
"Credit" field for those is 0.00 and the balance hasn't changed. Is
this due to the age/maturity requirement for a coin to be valid?
Right, the credit field stays 0.00 until it matures, then it'll be
50.00. BTW, you can doubleclick on a line for details.
...understand correctly, there is only one (or maybe a few) global
chain[s] into which all transactions are hashed. If there is only one
chain recording "the story of the economy" so to speak, how does this
scale? In an imaginary planet-wide deployment there would be millions
of even billions of transactions per hour being hashed into the chain...
...I found the section on incentives hard to follow. In particular, I'm
not clear on what triggers the transition from minting new coins as a
reason to run a node, to charging transaction fees (isn't the point of
BitCoin largely to zero transaction costs anyway?). Presumably there's
some human in charge of the system...
...How did you decide on the inflation schedule for v1? Where did 21
million coins come from? What denominations are these coins? You
mention a way to combine and split value but I'm not clear on how this
works. For instance are bitcoins always denominated by an integer or
can you have fractional bitcoins?...
...it's rare that I encounter truly
revolutionary ideas. The last time I was this excited about a new
monetary scheme was when I discovered Ripple. If you have any thoughts
on Ripple, I'd also love to hear them.
There is only one global chain.
The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million
Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much
larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It
never really hits a scale ceiling. If you're interested, I can go over
the ways it would cope with extreme size.
By Moore's Law, we can expect hardware speed to be 10 times faster in 5
years and 100 times faster in 10. Even if Bitcoin grows at crazy
adoption rates, I think computer speeds will stay ahead of the number of
transactions.
I don't anticipate that fees will be needed anytime soon, but if it
becomes too burdensome to run a node, it is possible to run a node that
only processes transactions that include a transaction fee. The owner
of the node would decide the minimum fee they'll accept. Right now,
such a node would get nothing, because nobody includes a fee, but if
enough nodes did that, then users would get faster acceptance if they
include a fee, or slower if they don't. The fee the market would settle
on should be minimal. If a node requires a higher fee, that node would
be passing up all transactions with lower fees. It could do more volume
and probably make more money by processing as many paying transactions
as it can. The transition is not controlled by some human in charge of
the system though, just individuals reacting on their own to market forces.
A key aspect of Bitcoin is that the security of the network grows as the
size of the network and the amount of value that needs to be protected
grows. The down side is that it's vulnerable at the beginning when it's
small, although the value that could be stolen should always be smaller
than the amount of effort required to steal it. If someone has other
motives to prove a point, they'll just be proving a point I already concede.
My choice for the number of coins and distribution schedule was an
educated guess. It was a difficult choice, because once the network is
going it's locked in and we're stuck with it. I wanted to pick
something that would make prices similar to existing currencies, but
without knowing the future, that's very hard. I ended up picking
something in the middle. If Bitcoin remains a small niche, it'll be
worth less per unit than existing currencies. If you imagine it being
used for some fraction of world commerce, then there's only going to be
21 million coins for the whole world, so it would be worth much more per
unit. Values are 64-bit integers with 8 decimal places, so 1 coin is
represented internally as 100000000. There's plenty of granularity if
typical prices become small. For example, if 0.001 is worth 1 Euro,
then it might be easier to change where the decimal point is displayed,
so if you had 1 Bitcoin it's now displayed as 1000, and 0.001 is
displayed as 1.
Ripple is interesting in that it's the only other system that does
something with trust besides concentrate it into a central server.
Satoshi
If we assume that 0.1% is a good risk rate, then z=5 thus
any transaction must wait a bit less than an hour before being
solidified in the chain. As micropayments for things like web content
or virtual goods are by definition something that requires low
overhead, waiting an hour seems like quite a significant hurdle.
For the actual risk, multiply the 0.1% by the probability that the buyer
is an attacker with a huge network of computers.
For micropayments, you can safely accept the payment immediately. The
size of the payment is too small for the effort to steal it.
Micropayments are almost always for intellectual property, where there's
no physical loss to the merchant. Anyone trying to steal a micropayment
would probably not be a paying customer anyway, and if they want to
steal intellectual property they can use the file sharing networks.
Currently, businesses accept a certain chargeoff rate. I believe the
risk with 1 or even 0 confirming blocks will be much less than the rate
of chargebacks on verified credit card transactions.
The usual scam against a merchant that doesn't wait for confirming
blocks would be to send a payment to a merchant, then quickly try to
propagate a double-spend to the network before the merchant's copy. What
the merchant can do is broadcast his transaction and then monitor the
network for any double-spend copies. The thief would not be able to
broadcast during the monitoring period or else the merchant's node would
receive a copy. The merchant would only have to monitor for a minute or
two until most of the network nodes have his version and it's too late
for the thief's version to catch up and reach many nodes. With just a
minute or two delay, the chance of getting away without paying could be
made much too low to scam. A thief usually needs a high probability of
getting an item for free to make it worthwhile. Using a lot of CPU
power to do the brute force attack discussed in the paper in addition to
the above scam would not increase the thief's chances very much.
Anything that grants access to something, like something that takes a
while to download, access to a website, web hosting, a subscription or
service, can be cancelled a few minutes later if the transaction is
rejected.
How is the required difficulty of each block communicated through the
network and agreed upon?
It's not communicated. The formula is hardcoded in the program and
every node does the same calculation to know what difficulty is required
for the next block. If someone diverged from the formula, their block
would not be accepted by the majority.
Is the code free/open source or just open source?
It's free open source. It's the MIT license, which just requires some
disclaimer text be kept with the source code, other than that you can do
just about anything you want with it. The source is included in the
main download.
Satoshi
Is there a way to be told of new versions? Does the app auto update
itself? Some kind of mailing list would be excellent.
Since they can be created for free (or at the cost
of computer power people have anyway for other reasons),
monetizing them means simply giving away money.
You're still thinking as if the difficulty level will be so easy that
people will be able to generate all the bitcoins they want.
Imagine you have to run your computer 24/7 for a month to generate 1
cent. After a year, you could generate 12 cents. That's not going to
make it so people can just generate all the bitcoin they want for spending.
The value of bitcoins would be relative to the electricity consumed to
produce them. All modern CPUs save power when they're idle. If you run
a computational task 24/7, not letting it idle, it uses significantly
more power, and you'll notice it generates more heat. The extra wattage
consumed goes straight to your power bill, and the value of the bitcoins
you produce would be something less than that.
Why would they, when they make money by generating
new ones
No, they can't make money that way. It would cost them more in
electricity than they'd be selling the bitcoins for.
Historically, people have taken up scarce commodities as money, if
necessary taking up whatever is at hand, such as shells or stones. Each
has a kernel of usefulness that helped bootstrap the process, but the
monetary value ends up being much more than the functional value alone.
Most of the value comes from the value that others place in it. Gold,
for instance, is pretty, non-corrosive and easily malleable, but most of
its value is clearly not from that. Brass is shiny and similar in
colour. The vast majority of gold sits unused in vaults, owned by
governments that could care less about its prettiness.
Until now, no scarce commodity that can be traded over a communications
channel without a trusted third party has been available. If there is a
desire to take up a form of money that can be traded over the Internet
without a TTP, then now that is possible.
Satoshi
As more capable
computer hardware comes out, the natural supply per user
doubles at every cycle of Moore's law.
Actually, that is handled. There's a moving average that compensates
for the total effort being expended so that the total production is a
constant. As computers get more powerful, the difficulty increases to
compensate.
I do not recall any economic history of a commodity subject
to natural inflation ever being used as money
There's gold for one. The supply of gold increases by about 2%-3% per
year. Any fiat currency typically averages more inflation than that.
Won't there be massive inflation as computers get faster and are able
to solve the proof-of-work problem faster?
The difficulty is controlled by a moving average that compensates for
the total effort being expended to keep the total production constant.
As computers get more powerful, the difficulty increases to compensate.
If someone double spends, then the transaction record
can be unblinded revealing the identity of the cheater?
Identities are not used, and there's no reliance on recourse. It's all
prevention.
...You're saying
there's no effort to identify and exclude nodes that don't
cooperate? I suspect this will lead to trouble and possible DOS
attacks.
There is no reliance on identifying anyone. As you've said, it's
futile and can be trivially defeated with sock puppets.
The credential that establishes someone as real is the ability to
supply CPU power.
But in the absence of identity, there's no downside to them
if spends become invalid, if they've already received the
goods they double-spent for (access to website, download,
whatever). The merchants are left holding the bag with
"invalid" coins, unless they wait that magical "few blocks"
(and how can they know how many?) before treating the spender
as having paid.
The consumers won't do this if they spend their coin and it takes
an hour to clear before they can do what they spent their coin on.
The merchants won't do it if there's no way to charge back a
customer when they find the that their coin is invalid because
the customer has doublespent.
This is a version 2 problem that I believe can be solved fairly
satisfactorily for most applications.
The race is to spread your transaction on the network first. Think 6
degrees of freedom -- it spreads exponentially. It would only take
something like 2 minutes for a transaction to spread widely enough
that a competitor starting late would have little chance of grabbing
very many nodes before the first one is overtaking the whole network.
During those 2 minutes, the merchant's nodes can be watching for a
double-spent transaction. The double-spender would not be able to
blast his alternate transaction out to the world without the merchant
getting it, so he has to wait before starting.
If the real transaction reaches 90% and the double-spent tx reaches
10%, the double-spender only gets a 10% chance of not paying, and 90%
chance his money gets spent. For almost any type of goods, that's
not going to be worth it for the scammer.
Information based goods like access to website or downloads are
non-fencible. Nobody is going to be able to make a living off
stealing access to websites or downloads. They can go to the file
sharing networks to steal that. Most instant-access products aren't
going to have a huge incentive to steal.
If a merchant actually has a problem with theft, they can make the
customer wait 2 minutes, or wait for something in e-mail, which many
already do. If they really want to optimize, and it's a large
download, they could cancel the download in the middle if the
transaction comes back double-spent. If it's website access,
typically it wouldn't be a big deal to let the customer have access
for 5 minutes and then cut off access if it's rejected. Many such
sites have a free trial anyway.
Satoshi
[in response to a question about scale]
100,000 block generating nodes is a good ballpark large-scale size
to think about. Propagating a transaction across the whole network
twice would consume a total of US$ 0.02 of bandwidth at today's
prices. In practice, many would be burning off excess allocated
bandwidth or unlimited plans with one of the cheaper backbones.
There could be millions of SPV clients. They only matter in how
many transactions they generate. If they pay 1 or 2 cents
transaction fees, they pay for themselves. I've coded it so you
can pay any optional amount of transaction fees you want. When the
incentive subsidy eventually tapers off, it may be necessary to put
a market-determined transaction fee on your transactions to make
sure nodes process them promptly.
To think about what a really huge transaction load would look like,
I look at the existing credit card network. I found some more
estimates about how many transactions are online purchases. It's
about 15 million tx per day for the entire e-commerce load of the
Internet worldwide. At 1KB per transaction, that would be 15GB of
bandwidth for each block generating node per day, or about two DVD
movies worth. Seems do-able even with today's technology.
Important to remember, even if Bitcoin caught on at dot-com rates
of growth, it would still take years to become any substantial
fraction of all transactions. I believe hardware has already
recently become strong enough to handle large scale, but if there's
any doubt about that, bandwidth speeds, prices, disk space and
computing power will be much greater by the time it's needed.
Satoshi
One other question I had... What prevents the single node with the most
CPU power from generating and retaining the majority of the BitCoins?
If every node is working independently of all others, if one is
significantly more powerful than the others, isn't it probable that this
node will reach the proper conclusion before other nodes? An
underpowered node may get lucky once in a while, but if they are at a
significant horsepower advantage I would expect the majority of BitCoins
to be generated by the most powerful node.
It's not like a race where if one car is twice as fast, it'll always
win. It's an SHA-256 that takes less than a microsecond, and each guess
has an independent chance of success. Each computer's chance of finding
a hash collision is linearly proportional to it's CPU power. A computer
that's half as fast would get half as many coins.
[question about what to backup]
The files are in "%appdata%\Bitcoin", that's the directory to
backup.
%appdata% is per-user access privilege. Most new programs like
Firefox store their settings files there, despite the headwind of
Microsoft changing the directory name with every Windows release
and being full of spaces and so long it runs off the screen.
[question about what to backup]
The directory is "%appdata%\Bitcoin"
It has spaces in it so you need the quotes
cd "%appdata%\bitcoin"
On XP it would typically be:
C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Bitcoin
Backup that whole directory. All data files are in that
directory. There are no temporary files.
[question about what to backup]
The crucial file to backup is wallet.dat. If bitcoin is running
then you have to backup the whole %appdata%\bitcoin directory
including the database subdirectory, but even if it's not running
it certainly feels safer to always backup the whole directory.
The database unfortunately names its files "log.0000000001". To
the rest of the world, "log" means delete-at-will, but to database
people it means delete-and-lose-everything-in-your-other-files. I
tried to put them out of harm's way by putting them in the
database subdirectory. Later I'll write code to flush the logs
after every wallet change so wallet.dat will be standalone safe
almost all the time.
> You know, I think there were a lot more people interested in the 90's,
> but after more than a decade of failed Trusted Third Party based
systems
> (Digicash, etc), they see it as a lost cause. I hope they can make the
> distinction that this is the first time I know of that we're trying a
> non-trust-based system.
Yea, that was the primary feature that caught my eye. The real trick
will be to get people to actually value the Bitcoins so that they become
currency.
Hal sort of alluded to the possibility that it could be seen as a
long-odds investment. I would be surprised if 10 years from now
we're not using electronic currency in some way, now that we know
a way to do it that won't inevitably get dumbed down when the
trusted third party gets cold feet.
Once it gets bootstrapped, there are so many applications if you
could effortlessly pay a few cents to a website as easily as dropping
coins in a vending machine.
[this next bit turned out to be very controversial. there is extreme
prejudice against spam solutions, especially proof-of-work.]
It can already be used for pay-to-send e-mail. The send dialog is
resizeable and you can enter as long of a message as you like.
It's sent directly when it connects. The recipient doubleclicks
on the transaction to see the full message. If someone famous is
getting more e-mail than they can read, but would still like to
have a way for fans to contact them, they could set up Bitcoin and
give out the IP address on their website. "Send X bitcoins to my
priority hotline at this IP and I'll read the message personally."
Subscription sites that need some extra proof-of-work for their
free trial so it doesn't cannibalize subscriptions could charge
bitcoins for the trial.
[again, I don't know why I'm including this, as it's best to stay
away from claims about spam. people automatically react violently
against any suggestion of a spam solution.]
Spammer botnets could burn through pay-per-send email filters
trivially (as usual, the costs would fall on people other than the
botnet herders & spammers).
Then you could earn a nice profit by setting up pay-per-send
e-mail addresses and collecting all the spam money. You could
sell it back to spammers who don't have big enough botnets to
generate their own, helping bootstrap the currency's value. As
more people catch on, they'll set up more and more phony addresses
to harvest it. By the time the book "How I got rich exploiting
spammers and you can too" is coming out, there'll be too many fake
addresses and the spammers will have to give up.
> * Spammer botnets could burn through pay-per-send email filters
> trivially
If POW tokens do become useful, and especially if they become money,
machines will no longer sit idle. Users will expect their computers to
be earning them money (assuming the reward is greater than the cost to
operate). A computer whose earnings are being stolen by a botnet will
be more noticeable to its owner than is the case today, hence we might
expect that in that world, users will work harder to maintain their
computers and clean them of botnet infestations.
One more factor that would mitigate spam if POW tokens have value:
there would be a profit motive for people to set up massive
quantities of fake e-mail accounts to harvest POW tokens from
spam. They'd essentially be reverse-spamming the spammers with
automated mailboxes that collect their POW and don't read the
message. The ratio of fake mailboxes to real people could become
too high for spam to be cost effective.
The process has the potential to establish the POW token's value
in the first place, since spammers that don't have a botnet could
buy tokens from harvesters. While the buying back would
temporarily let more spam through, it would only hasten the
self-defeating cycle leading to too many harvesters exploiting the
spammers.
Interestingly, one of the e-gold systems already has a form of
spam called "dusting". Spammers send a tiny amount of gold dust
in order to put a spam message in the transaction's comment field.
If the system let users configure the minimum payment they're
willing to receive, or at least the minimum that can have a
message with it, users could set how much they're willing to get
paid to receive spam.
The last thing we need is to deploy a system designed to burn all
available cycles, consuming electricity and generating carbon dioxide,
all over the Internet, in order to produce small amounts of bitbux to
get emails or spams through.
Can't we just convert actual money in a bank account into bitbux --
cheaply and without a carbon tax? Please?
Ironic if we end up having to choose between economic liberty and
conservation.
Unfortunately, proof of work is the only solution I've found to
make p2p e-cash work without a trusted third party. Even if I
wasn't using it secondarily as a way to allocate the initial
distribution of currency, PoW is fundamental to coordinating the
network and preventing double-spending.
If it did grow to consume significant energy, I think it would
still be less wasteful than the labour and resource intensive
conventional banking activity it would replace. The cost would be
an order of magnitude less than the billions in banking fees that
pay for all those brick and mortar buildings, skyscrapers and junk
mail credit card offers.
Satoshi
BTW I don't remember if we talked about this, but the other day some
people were mentioning secure timestamping. You want to be able to
prove that a certain document existed at a certain time in the past.
Seems to me that bitcoin's stack of blocks would be perfect for this.
Indeed, Bitcoin is a distributed secure timestamp server for
transactions. A few lines of code could create a transaction with
an extra hash in it of anything that needs to be timestamped.
I should add a command to timestamp a file that way.
From a thread on p2presearch which starts with my rant about trust
being the root weakness of all conventional financial systems.
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-February/thread.html
I've developed a new open source P2P e-cash system called Bitcoin. It's
completely decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties,
because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust. Give it a
try, or take a look at the screenshots and design paper:
Download Bitcoin v0.1 at http://www.bitcoin.org
The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's
required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to
debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of
breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and
transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit
bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with
our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.
Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.
A generation ago, multi-user time-sharing computer systems had a similar
problem. Before strong encryption, users had to rely on password
protection to secure their files, placing trust in the system
administrator to keep their information private. Privacy could always
be overridden by the admin based on his judgment call weighing the
principle of privacy against other concerns, or at the behest of his
superiors. Then strong encryption became available to the masses, and
trust was no longer required. Data could be secured in a way that was
physically impossible for others to access, no matter for what reason,
no matter how good the excuse, no matter what.
It's time we had the same thing for money. With e-currency based on
cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman,
money can be secure and transactions effortless.
One of the fundamental building blocks for such a system is digital
signatures. A digital coin contains the public key of its owner. To
transfer it, the owner signs the coin together with the public key of
the next owner. Anyone can check the signatures to verify the chain of
ownership. It works well to secure ownership, but leaves one big
problem unsolved: double-spending. Any owner could try to re-spend an
already spent coin by signing it again to another owner. The usual
solution is for a trusted company with a central database to check for
double-spending, but that just gets back to the trust model. In its
central position, the company can override the users, and the fees
needed to support the company make micropayments impractical.
Bitcoin's solution is to use a peer-to-peer network to check for
double-spending. In a nutshell, the network works like a distributed
timestamp server, stamping the first transaction to spend a coin. It
takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but
hard to stifle. For details on how it works, see the design paper at
http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
The result is a distributed system with no single point of failure.
Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with
each other, with the help of the P2P network to check for double-spending.
Satoshi Nakamoto
http://www.bitcoin.org
Martien van Steenbergen Martien at AardRock.COM
Thu Feb 12 08:40:53 CET 2009
Very interesting. Is this akin to David Chaum's anonymous digital
money? His concept makes sure money is anonymous unless it is
compromised, i.e. the same money spent more than once. As soon as it's
compromised, the ‘counterfeiter’ is immediately publicly exposed.
Also, in bitcoin, is there a limited supply of money (that must be
managed)? Or is money created exaclty at the moment of transaction?
Succes en plezier,
Martien.
Martien van Steenbergen wrote:
Very interesting. Is this akin to David Chaum's anonymous digital money?
His concept makes sure money is anonymous unless it is compromised, i.e.
the same money spent more than once. As soon as it's compromised, the
‘counterfeiter’ is immediately publicly exposed.
It's similar in that it uses digital signatures for coins, but different
in the approach to privacy and preventing double-spending. The
recipient of a Bitcoin payment is able to check whether it is the first
spend or not, and second-spends are not accepted. There isn't an
off-line mode where double-spenders are caught and shamed after the
fact, because that would require participants to have identities.
To protect privacy, key pairs are used only once, with a new one for
every transaction. The owner of a coin is just whoever has its private key.
Of course, the biggest difference is the lack of a central server. That
was the Achilles heel of Chaumian systems; when the central company shut
down, so did the currency.
Also, in bitcoin, is there a limited supply of money (that must be
managed)? Or is money created exaclty at the moment of transaction?
There is a limited supply of money. Circulation will be 21,000,000
coins. Transactions only transfer ownership.
Thank you for your questions,
Satoshi
Indeed, it is much like Pekunio in the concept of spraying redundant
copies of every transaction to a number of peers on the network, but the
implementation is not a reputation network like Wizard Rabbit Treasurer.
In fact, Bitcoin does not use reputation at all. It sees the network
as just a big crowd and doesn't much care who it talks to or who tells
it something, as long as at least one of them relays the information
being broadcast around the network. It doesn't care because there's no
way to lie to it. Either you tell it crypto proof of something, or it
ignores you.
Are you familiar with Ripple?
As trust systems go, Ripple is unique in spreading trust around rather
than concentrating it.
[I've been asked at least 4 other times "have you heard of Ripple?"]
Michel Bauwens wrote:
how operational is your project? how soon do you think people will be
able to use it in real life?
It's fully operational and the network is growing. If you try the
software, e-mail me your Bitcoin address and I'll send you a few coins.
We just need to spread the word and keep getting more people interested.
Here's a link to the original introduction of the paper on the
Cryptography mailing list. (Inflation issues were superseded by changes
I made later to support transaction fees and the limited circulation
plan. This link is a moving target, this archive page is just a certain
number of days back and the discussion will keep scrolling off to the
next page.)
http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/mail3.html
A little follow up when the software was released.
http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/mail2.html
My description of how Bitcoin solves the Byzantine Generals' problem:
http://www.bitcoin.org/byzantine.html
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
That would be great! I added you (dmp1ce) as a dev to the sourceforge
project and gave you access to edit the web space and everything.
Oh, that's not me but another guy who wanted to help. I've seen him on
the Freedomain Radio forum. My name is Martti Malmi and my Sourceforge
account is sirius-m. No problem!
Thanks for your answered questions, I'll add them to the faq. Here's
what I've done so far:
**** Bitcoin FAQ ****
General Questions
1 What is bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network based anonymous digital
currency. Peer-to-peer (P2P) means that there is no central
authority to issue new money or to keep track of the
transactions. Instead, those tasks are managed collectively by
the nodes of the network. Anonymity means that the real world
identity of the parties of a transaction can be kept hidden from
the public or even from the parties themselves.
2 How does bitcoin work?
Bitcoin utilizes public/private key cryptography. When a coin is
transfered from user A to user B, A adds B's public key to the
coin and signs it with his own private key. Now B owns the coin
and can transfer it further. To prevent A from transfering the
already used coin to another user C, a public list of all the
previous transactions is collectively maintained by the network
of bitcoin nodes, and before each transaction the coin's
unusedness will be checked.
For details, see chapter Advanced Questions.
3 What is bitcoin's value backed by?
Bitcoin is valued for the things it can be exchanged to, just
like all the traditional paper currencies are.
When the first user publicly announces that he will make a pizza
for anyone who gives him a hundred bitcoins, then he can use
bitcoins as payment to some extent - as much as people want pizza
and trust his announcement. A pizza-eating hairdresser who trusts
him as a friend might then announce that she starts accepting
bitcoins as payment for fancy haircuts, and the value of the
bitcoin would be higher - now you could buy pizzas and haircuts
with them. When bitcoins have become accepted widely enough, he
could retire from his pizza business and still be able to use his
bitcoin-savings.
4 How are new bitcoins created?
New coins are generated by a network node each time it finds the
solution to a certain calculational problem. In the first 4 years
of the bitcoin network, amount X of coins will be created. The
amount is halved each 4 years, so it will be X/2 after 4 years,
X/4 after 8 years and so on. Thus the total number of coins will
approach 2X.
5 Is bitcoin safe?
Yes, as long as you make backups of your coin keys, protect them
with strong passwords and keep keyloggers away from your
computer. If you lose your key or if some unknown attacker
manages to unlock it, there's no way to get your coins back. If
you have a large amount of coins, it is recommended to distribute
them under several keys. You propably wouldn't either keep all
your dollars or euros as paper in a single wallet and leave it
unguarded.
6 Why should I use bitcoin?
• Transfer money easily through the internet, without having to
trust third parties.
• Third parties can't prevent or control your transactions.
• Be safe from the unfair monetary policies of the monopolistic
central banks and the other risks of centralized power over a
money supply. The limited inflation of the bitcoin system's
money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout
the network, not monopolized to a banking elite.
• Bitcoin's value is likely to increase as the growth of the
bitcoin economy exceeds the inflation rate - consider bitcoin
an investment and start running a node today!
7 Where can I get bitcoins?
Find a bitcoin owner and sell her something - MMORPG equipement,
IT support, lawn mowing, dollars or whatever you can trade with
her. You can also generate new bitcoins for yourself by running a
bitcoin network node.
Oh crap, I got your sourceforge usernames mixed up, sorry about that. I
clicked on the wrong e-mail when I was looking for your username. You
now have access.
Your FAQ looks good so far!
You can create whatever you want on bitcoin.sourceforge.net. Something
to get new users up to speed on what Bitcoin is and how to use it and
why, and clean and professional looking would help make it look well
established. The site at bitcoin.org was designed in a more
professorial style when I was presenting the design paper on the
Cryptography list, but we're moving on from that phase.
You should probably change the part about "distribute them under several
keys". When the paper says that it means for the software to do it, and
it does. For privacy reasons, the software already uses a different key
for every transaction, so every piece of money in your wallet is already
on a different key. The exception is when using a bitcoin address,
everything sent to the same bitcoin address is on the same key, which is
a privacy risk if you're trying to be anonymous. The EC-DSA key size is
very strong (sized for the future), we don't practically have to worry
about a key getting broken, but if we did there's the advantage that
someone expending the massive computing resources would only break one
single transaction's worth of money, not someone's whole account. The
details about how to backup your wallet files is in the Q&A dump and
also it's explained in readme.txt and definitely belongs in the FAQ.
Oh I see, you're trying to address byronm's concern on freedomainradio.
I see what you mean about the password feature being useful to address
that argument. Banks let anyone who has your name and account number
drain your account, and you're not going to get it back from Nigeria.
If someone installs a keylogger on your computer, they could just as
easily get your bank password and transfer money out of your account.
Once we password encrypt the wallet, we'll be able to make a clearer
case that we're much more secure than banks. We use strong encryption,
while banks still let anyone who has your account info draw money from
your account.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
> That would be great! I added you (dmp1ce) as a dev to the sourceforge
> project and gave you access to edit the web space and everything.
Oh, that's not me but another guy who wanted to help. I've seen him on
the Freedomain Radio forum. My name is Martti Malmi and my Sourceforge
account is sirius-m. No problem!
Thanks for your answered questions, I'll add them to the faq. Here's
what I've done so far:
**** Bitcoin FAQ ****
General Questions
1 What is bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network based anonymous digital
currency. Peer-to-peer (P2P) means that there is no central
authority to issue new money or to keep track of the
transactions. Instead, those tasks are managed collectively by
the nodes of the network. Anonymity means that the real world
identity of the parties of a transaction can be kept hidden from
the public or even from the parties themselves.
2 How does bitcoin work?
Bitcoin utilizes public/private key cryptography. When a coin is
transfered from user A to user B, A adds B's public key to the
coin and signs it with his own private key. Now B owns the coin
and can transfer it further. To prevent A from transfering the
already used coin to another user C, a public list of all the
previous transactions is collectively maintained by the network
of bitcoin nodes, and before each transaction the coin's
unusedness will be checked.
For details, see chapter Advanced Questions.
3 What is bitcoin's value backed by?
Bitcoin is valued for the things it can be exchanged to, just
like all the traditional paper currencies are.
When the first user publicly announces that he will make a pizza
for anyone who gives him a hundred bitcoins, then he can use
bitcoins as payment to some extent - as much as people want pizza
and trust his announcement. A pizza-eating hairdresser who trusts
him as a friend might then announce that she starts accepting
bitcoins as payment for fancy haircuts, and the value of the
bitcoin would be higher - now you could buy pizzas and haircuts
with them. When bitcoins have become accepted widely enough, he
could retire from his pizza business and still be able to use his
bitcoin-savings.
4 How are new bitcoins created?
New coins are generated by a network node each time it finds the
solution to a certain calculational problem. In the first 4 years
of the bitcoin network, amount X of coins will be created. The
amount is halved each 4 years, so it will be X/2 after 4 years,
X/4 after 8 years and so on. Thus the total number of coins will
approach 2X.
5 Is bitcoin safe?
Yes, as long as you make backups of your coin keys, protect them
with strong passwords and keep keyloggers away from your
computer. If you lose your key or if some unknown attacker
manages to unlock it, there's no way to get your coins back. If
you have a large amount of coins, it is recommended to distribute
them under several keys. You propably wouldn't either keep all
your dollars or euros as paper in a single wallet and leave it
unguarded.
6 Why should I use bitcoin?
• Transfer money easily through the internet, without having to
trust third parties.
• Third parties can't prevent or control your transactions.
• Be safe from the unfair monetary policies of the monopolistic
central banks and the other risks of centralized power over a
money supply. The limited inflation of the bitcoin system's
money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout
the network, not monopolized to a banking elite.
• Bitcoin's value is likely to increase as the growth of the
bitcoin economy exceeds the inflation rate - consider bitcoin
an investment and start running a node today!
7 Where can I get bitcoins?
Find a bitcoin owner and sell her something - MMORPG equipement,
IT support, lawn mowing, dollars or whatever you can trade with
her. You can also generate new bitcoins for yourself by running a
bitcoin network node.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
You can create whatever you want on bitcoin.sourceforge.net. Something
to get new users up to speed on what Bitcoin is and how to use it and
why, and clean and professional looking would help make it look well
established. The site at bitcoin.org was designed in a more
professorial style when I was presenting the design paper on the
Cryptography list, but we're moving on from that phase.
Ok. Could you set the project MySQL database passwords so that I can
set up a CMS on the site? I was thinking about WordPress, as it seems
simple and well maintained. I need a password for the read/write
account and one database (or the database admin pass to create it
myself). This can be done somewhere in the project admin pages, I think.
You should probably change the part about "distribute them under
several keys". When the paper says that it means for the software to
do it, and it does. For privacy reasons, the software already uses a
different key for every transaction, so every piece of money in your
wallet is already on a different key. The exception is when using a
bitcoin address, everything sent to the same bitcoin address is on the
same key, which is a privacy risk if you're trying to be anonymous.
The EC-DSA key size is very strong (sized for the future), we don't
practically have to worry about a key getting broken, but if we did
there's the advantage that someone expending the massive computing
resources would only break one single transaction's worth of money, not
someone's whole account. The details about how to backup your wallet
files is in the Q&A dump and also it's explained in readme.txt and
definitely belongs in the FAQ.
Ok, that's good to know.
Oh I see, you're trying to address byronm's concern on freedomainradio.
I see what you mean about the password feature being useful to address
that argument. Banks let anyone who has your name and account number
drain your account, and you're not going to get it back from Nigeria.
If someone installs a keylogger on your computer, they could just as
easily get your bank password and transfer money out of your account.
Once we password encrypt the wallet, we'll be able to make a clearer
case that we're much more secure than banks. We use strong encryption,
while banks still let anyone who has your account info draw money from
your account.
Well, I guess that's true after all.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Quoting mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
> Oh I see, you're trying to address byronm's concern on freedomainradio.
> I see what you mean about the password feature being useful to address
> that argument. Banks let anyone who has your name and account number
> drain your account, and you're not going to get it back from Nigeria.
> If someone installs a keylogger on your computer, they could just as
> easily get your bank password and transfer money out of your account.
> Once we password encrypt the wallet, we'll be able to make a clearer
> case that we're much more secure than banks. We use strong encryption,
> while banks still let anyone who has your account info draw money from
> your account.
Well, I guess that's true after all.
...the difference being, though, that not everyone can easily transfer
their regular bank money into an uncontrollable location. In bitcoin
anyone can do it.
> You can create whatever you want on bitcoin.sourceforge.net. Something
> to get new users up to speed on what Bitcoin is and how to use it and
> why, and clean and professional looking would help make it look well
> established. The site at bitcoin.org was designed in a more
> professorial style when I was presenting the design paper on the
> Cryptography list, but we're moving on from that phase.
Ok. Could you set the project MySQL database passwords so that I can set
up a CMS on the site? I was thinking about WordPress, as it seems simple
and well maintained. I need a password for the read/write account and
one database (or the database admin pass to create it myself). This can
be done somewhere in the project admin pages, I think.
They have Wordpress built in, you might not need to set up any database
stuff manually. I enabled the Wordpress feature and added you as an
admin, account sirius-m, e-mail sirius-m@users.sourceforge.net. I'm not
sure how it works out the password for access, maybe it's just based on
being logged in to sourceforge.
https://apps.sourceforge.net/wordpress/bitcoin/wp-admin/
They also have support for MediaWiki if you want it.
In case you still need it, here's the accounts and passwords for mysql.
# Access this project's databases over the Internet
https://apps.sourceforge.net/admin/Bitcoin
# Documentation: Guide to MySQL Database Services
http://p.sf.net/sourceforge/mysql
# Hostname: mysql-b (exactly as shown, with no domain suffix)
# Database name prefix: b244765_ -- i.e. "CREATE DATABASE b244765_myapp"
as your ADMIN user.
# RO user: b244765ro (SELECT)
# RW user: b244765rw (SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE)
# ADMIN user: b244765admin (has RW account privileges, and CREATE, DROP,
ALTER, INDEX, LOCK TABLES)
# web-access URL: https://mysql-b.sourceforge.net/
passwords:
b244765ro EaG3nHLL
b244765rw sNKgyt4W
b244765admin Mz589ZKf
...the difference being, though, that not everyone can easily
transfer their regular bank money into an uncontrollable location. In
bitcoin anyone can do it.
That's true.
We shouldn't try to use security against identity theft as a selling
point, since it leads into these counter arguments. The current banking
model is already tested and the actual loss percentage is known. Even
if ours is probably better, it's an unknown, so people can imagine
anything. The uncertainty about what the average loss percentage will
be is greater than the likely loss percentage itself.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
They have Wordpress built in, you might not need to set up any database
stuff manually.
They also have support for MediaWiki if you want it.
The built-in Wordpress comes with ads, and new plugins and themes need
to be installed by the Sourceforge staff, so I installed Wordpress at
http://bitcoin.sourceforge.net/. The admin page is at .../wp-admin/,
with admin/Wubreches3eS as login. If there's something to add or
change, feel free to.
The current layout is just a quickly applied free theme, but I'll see
if I can do something more visual myself.
The MediaWiki might be quite useful for maintaining the FAQ, which
could be retrieved from there to the main site somehow. The wiki says
I need to be an editor or admin to create a new page, which is funny,
because
https://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/bitcoin/index.php?title=Special:ListGroupRights says that users can create
pages.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Lainaus mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
The current layout is just a quickly applied free theme, but I'll see
if I can do something more visual myself.
And of course I'll continue improving the contents also.
It's already an improvement, and like you say, there must be better
themes to choose from.
It would be good to make the download link go directly to the download area:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=244765
I haven't found any way to gain admin control over the mediawiki
feature. It thinks I'm a different S_nakamoto from the one that has
admin access:
User list
* S nakamoto <- it thinks I'm this one
* S nakamoto (admin, editor)
* Sirius-m
I tried deleting and re-enabling the feature, no help. Oh well.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
> They have Wordpress built in, you might not need to set up any database
> stuff manually.
>
> They also have support for MediaWiki if you want it.
The built-in Wordpress comes with ads, and new plugins and themes need
to be installed by the Sourceforge staff, so I installed Wordpress at
http://bitcoin.sourceforge.net/. The admin page is at .../wp-admin/,
with admin/Wubreches3eS as login. If there's something to add or change,
feel free to.
The current layout is just a quickly applied free theme, but I'll see if
I can do something more visual myself.
The MediaWiki might be quite useful for maintaining the FAQ, which could
be retrieved from there to the main site somehow. The wiki says I need
to be an editor or admin to create a new page, which is funny, because
https://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/bitcoin/index.php?title=Special:ListGroupRights
says that users can create pages.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
I haven't found any way to gain admin control over the mediawiki
feature. It thinks I'm a different S_nakamoto from the one that has
admin access:
User list
* S nakamoto <- it thinks I'm this one
* S nakamoto (admin, editor)
* Sirius-m
I tried deleting and re-enabling the feature, no help. Oh well.
I think this has something to do with the underscore character in your
username; MediaWiki handles them as spaces. I could ask SF Support
about this.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Quoting mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
> I haven't found any way to gain admin control over the mediawiki
> feature. It thinks I'm a different S_nakamoto from the one that has
> admin access:
> User list
> * S nakamoto <- it thinks I'm this one
> * S nakamoto (admin, editor)
> * Sirius-m
>
> I tried deleting and re-enabling the feature, no help. Oh well.
I think this has something to do with the underscore character in your
username; MediaWiki handles them as spaces. I could ask SF Support
about this.
Or could you control the MediaWiki with your account nakamoto2?
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Quoting mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
Quoting mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
> Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
>
>> I haven't found any way to gain admin control over the mediawiki
>> feature. It thinks I'm a different S_nakamoto from the one that has
>> admin access:
>> User list
>> * S nakamoto <- it thinks I'm this one
>> * S nakamoto (admin, editor)
>> * Sirius-m
>>
>> I tried deleting and re-enabling the feature, no help. Oh well.
>
> I think this has something to do with the underscore character in your
> username; MediaWiki handles them as spaces. I could ask SF Support
> about this.
Or could you control the MediaWiki with your account nakamoto2?
You're right, that was it. I went in and granted us access using the
alternate account.
I like your idea of at least moving the FAQ into the wiki. I've seen
other projects that use the wiki for the FAQ or even the whole site. If
you can figure out how to make it so regular users can edit things, then
anyone who wants to can help.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
Quoting mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
> Quoting mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
>
>> Quoting Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>:
>>
>>> I haven't found any way to gain admin control over the mediawiki
>>> feature. It thinks I'm a different S_nakamoto from the one that has
>>> admin access:
>>> User list
>>> * S nakamoto <- it thinks I'm this one
>>> * S nakamoto (admin, editor)
>>> * Sirius-m
>>>
>>> I tried deleting and re-enabling the feature, no help. Oh well.
>>
>> I think this has something to do with the underscore character in your
>> username; MediaWiki handles them as spaces. I could ask SF Support
>> about this.
>
> Or could you control the MediaWiki with your account nakamoto2?
Oh, sorry for spamming with emails, but the problem is indeed with the
underscore character:
http://apps.sourceforge.net/trac/sourceforge/ticket/300
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
I like your idea of at least moving the FAQ into the wiki. I've seen
other projects that use the wiki for the FAQ or even the whole site.
If you can figure out how to make it so regular users can edit things,
then anyone who wants to can help.
The user group privileges seemingly can't be changed without changing
the wiki source files, which can only be done by the SF admins as a
hosted app is concerned. The hosted apps are also otherwise quite
inflexible: you can only login with a SF account, you can't change
themes by yourself and of course there's the ad-bar above the pages.
I think that replacing the current Wordpress installation at
bitcoin.sourceforge.net with TikiWiki could be a great solution.
TikiWiki supports CMS features, forums, wikis, bug trackers, and many
other features also if needed. Perhaps the best looking example of a
TikiWiki installation is at http://support.mozilla.com/.
I'll take backup of the current site and see if TikiWiki can be
installed at SF. If it doesn't work, I'll see how wiki/forum features
can be integrated with Wordpress or think of something else.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
I couldn't get TikiWiki to work, so I installed Bitweaver, which is a
lightweight TikiWiki derivative. Its functionality looks good for the
purpose and it's easy to customize.
The admin account password is Wubreches3eS again. New users can
register to the site and write to the wiki and the forums. Next I'm
going to look into how custom menus and custom layouts are made.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
The site layout is looking nicer. More impressive looking.
There are a lot of things you can say on the sourceforge site that I
can't say on my own site. Even so, I'm uncomfortable with explicitly
saying "consider it an investment". That's a dangerous thing to say and
you should delete that bullet point. It's OK if they come to that
conclusion on their own, but we can't pitch it as that.
A few details: the FAQ says "see section 2.3", but the sections aren't
numbered. Also, could you delete the last sentence on the FAQ "They are
planned to be hidden in v0.1.6, since they're just confusing and
annoying and there's no reason for users to have to see them." -- that's
not really something I meant to say publicly.
The links to sites to help set up 8333 port forwarding is great.
favicon is a nice touch.
Someone came up with the word "cryptocurrency"... maybe it's a word we
should use when describing Bitcoin, do you like it?
Sourceforge is so slow right now I can't even get the login page to
load. Maybe due to the site reorg they just did. I'll keep trying and
try to get you that logo stats thing.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
There are a lot of things you can say on the sourceforge site that I
can't say on my own site. Even so, I'm uncomfortable with explicitly
saying "consider it an investment". That's a dangerous thing to say
and you should delete that bullet point. It's OK if they come to that
conclusion on their own, but we can't pitch it as that.
A few details: the FAQ says "see section 2.3", but the sections aren't
numbered. Also, could you delete the last sentence on the FAQ "They
are planned to be hidden in v0.1.6, since they're just confusing and
annoying and there's no reason for users to have to see them." --
that's not really something I meant to say publicly.
I made the changes. You could also register to the site or use the
admin account to make necessary changes yourself, since the pages are
located in the wiki.
Someone came up with the word "cryptocurrency"... maybe it's a word we
should use when describing Bitcoin, do you like it?
It sounds good. "The P2P Cryptocurrency" could be considered as the
slogan, even if it's a bit more difficult to say than "The Digital P2P
Cash". It still describes the system better and sounds more
interesting, I think.
I could notify the mailing list about the new site and invite them to
write on the forums and to the wiki.
I made the changes. You could also register to the site or use the admin
account to make necessary changes yourself, since the pages are located
in the wiki.
Thanks, I've been really busy lately.
I registered username "satoshi". Since there's no SSL login, I want to
mainly use that account with sub-admin powers and use the admin account
as little as possible. I created a "Moderators" group to give my
satoshi account as much editing control as possible without the ability
to overthrow everything.
There's something weird with the download bar on the right covering
things up, like on the new account registration it covers up the entry
fields unless you make the browser really wide, and the homepage it
covers up the screenshots. (with Firefox)
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
There's something weird with the download bar on the right covering
things up, like on the new account registration it covers up the entry
fields unless you make the browser really wide, and the homepage it
covers up the screenshots. (with Firefox)
Problem fixed. I switched to a fixed width layout, which is also
easier to read as the lines are shorter.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Hi,
I made a post on the Bitcoin developer's forum at SF about a month ago
and sent you, David and Hal a notification about it to your
users.sourceforge.net emails. A few days ago I wondered why no one had
replied, and tried if the SF mail aliases even work - and they didn't,
at least in the case of my account. So could you please forward this
message to the others?
Best regards,
sirius-m
I know this sounds really retarded, but I still haven't been able to get
the sourceforge login page to load, so I haven't been able to read it
either. https://sourceforge.net/account/login.php
Hal isn't currently actively involved. He helped me a lot defending the
design on the Cryptography list, and with initial testing when it was
first released. He carried this torch years ago with his Reusable Proof
Of Work (RPOW).
I'm not going to be much help right now either, pretty busy with work,
and need a break from it after 18 months development.
It would help if there was something for people to use it for. We need
an application to bootstrap it. Any ideas?
There are donors I can tap if we come up with something that needs
funding, but they want to be anonymous, which makes it hard to actually
do anything with it.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
Hi,
I made a post on the Bitcoin developer's forum at SF about a month ago
and sent you, David and Hal a notification about it to your
users.sourceforge.net emails. A few days ago I wondered why no one had
replied, and tried if the SF mail aliases even work - and they didn't,
at least in the case of my account. So could you please forward this
message to the others?
Best regards,
sirius-m
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
I know this sounds really retarded, but I still haven't been able to
get the sourceforge login page to load, so I haven't been able to read
it either. https://sourceforge.net/account/login.php
That's strange, I haven't had any problems with that. Clearly the
banking establishment got scared and banned your account (and founded
www.bitcoin.com in attempt to fetch the trademark), eh. You could ask
if the SF staff at sfnet_ops@corp.sourceforge.com can help you.
I'm not going to be much help right now either, pretty busy with work,
and need a break from it after 18 months development.
Oh, that sounds tough. Take your time.
It would help if there was something for people to use it for. We need
an application to bootstrap it. Any ideas?
I've been thinking about a currency exchange service that sells and
buys bitcoins for euros and other currencies. Direct exchangeability
to an existing currency would give bitcoin the best possible initial
liquidity and thus the best adoptability for new users. Everyone
accepts payment in coins that are easily exchangeable for common
money, but not everyone accepts payment in coins that are only
guaranteed to buy a specific kind of a product.
The instructional formula for stable pricing in euros would be something like:
(The amount of euros that you're ready to trade for bc + the
euro-value of goods that other people are selling for bc) /
(Total number of bc in circulation - own bc assets).
So if there's a total of 1M bitcoins of which you own 100K, you have
1000 eur and no one else trades with bitcoin yet, you can safely offer the
exchange rate of 1 eur / 900 bc, without having to devaluate
even if everyone sold their coins to you. This could be guaranteed as
the minimal exchange rate, but the rate could be also higher when
demand is high.
Initially, when others aren't yet offering anything for bitcoins, you
can increase your bitcoin assets cheaply - for the minimum price that
people bother to do the transaction for. If you had all the existing
coins for yourself, you could set the price to whatever you want,
because you wouldn't face the risk of having to buy even a single coin
with that price (not counting the new money created by others). So
it's best to get as much coins as possible before backing bitcoin with
all your available euros.
Profit can be gained, as usually in trading, by having a margin
between the buying and selling prices. Making Bitcoin as usable as
possible will make the business run better, as people do not only want
to sell all their coins to you, but also want to buy them and use them
as a medium of exchange.
At its simplest this exchange service could be a website where
traders, who can be individual persons, can post their rates, and
random users can leave trade requests. Some kind of an average rate
estimate could be shown on the site. Small-scale trading by
individuals would be outside legal hassle in most countries, and
putting all the eggs in the same basket would be avoided.
Another idea, which could be additional to the previous one, would be
an automated exchange service. The service would automatically
calculate the exchange rate and perform the transactions. This would
be nicer to the user: completion of the transaction request would be
certain and instantaneous. Making this service might actually be quite
easy if there was a command line interface to Bitcoin: just take any
web application framework and use PayPal back-end integration to
automatically send euros when Bitcoins are received, and vice versa.
This kind of business would also work great on larger scale if you set
up a company and take care of all the bureaucracy needed to practice
currency exchange. (I actually have a registered company that I've
used for billing of some IT work, I could use that as a base.)
This exchange business thing is something that I'd be interested in
doing, and I also have the sufficient technical skills to do it.
Although, before this can be done, there should be a non-alpha version
of Bitcoin (and the command line interface / API).
There are donors I can tap if we come up with something that needs
funding, but they want to be anonymous, which makes it hard to actually
do anything with it.
If this gets started, donors / high-risk investors would be very
welcome to bring capital for the currency's backup.
So, what do you think about the idea? Note that this is not something
that I'm asking you to do (unless you want to) if you're busy with
other things. I can do it myself, if I get positive reviews about the
plan.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
I've had quite a few errors coming up when trying to build the
third-party libraries and adding them to the Bitcoin build. Do you
happen to have a ready-to-build package that you could upload to the
CVS or somewhere else? I use mingw + msys, but I guess I could try
Visual C++ also, if it's easier that way.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
I got it compile with MinGW + MSYS when I used wxPack instead of just
wxWidgets. Maybe wxAdditions was required. The bitcoin.exe filesize
was 52MB though, I should see how that can be fixed.
Next I'm going to implement the "minimize to tray" feature and the
option to autostart Bitcoin with Windows, so the number of nodes
online would stay higher. After that I could see if I can do a Linux
port or the command line interface needed for web app frameworks.
Drop by at #bitcoin-dev on FreeNode some time if you use IRC.
And again, thanks for the great work you've done with Bitcoin.
Quote mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
I've had quite a few errors coming up when trying to build the
third-party libraries and adding them to the Bitcoin build. Do you
happen to have a ready-to-build package that you could upload to the
CVS or somewhere else? I use mingw + msys, but I guess I could try
Visual C++ also, if it's easier that way.
That's a good point that since you know how many coins exist and how
fast new ones are created, you could set a support price based on the
amount of legacy currency you have and be sure you'll have enough to
meet all demands. I had imagined an auction, but it would be far
simpler and more confidence inspiring to back it at a specific exchange
rate.
Offering currency to back bitcoins would attract freebie seekers, with
the benefit of attracting a lot of publicity. At first it would mostly
be seen as a way to get free money for your computer's idle time. Maybe
pitched like help support the future of e-commerce and get a little
money for your computer's spare cycles. As people cash in and actually
get paid, word would spread exponentially.
It might help to keep the minimum transaction size above an amount which
a typical user would be able to accumulate with one computer, so that
users have to trade with each other for someone to collect enough to
cash in. Aggregators would set up shop to buy bitcoins in smaller
increments, which would add confidence in users ability to sell bitcoins
if there are more available buyers than just you.
People would obviously be sceptical at first that the backing will hold
up against an onslaught of people trying to get the free money, but as
the competition raises the proof-of-work difficulty, it should become
clear that bitcoins stay scarce. People will see that they can't just
get all the bitcoins they want. It would establish a minimum value
under bitcoins enabling them to be used for other purposes if,
hopefully, other purposes are waiting for something to use.
> It would help if there was something for people to use it for. We need
> an application to bootstrap it. Any ideas?
I've been thinking about a currency exchange service that sells and
buys bitcoins for euros and other currencies. Direct exchangeability
to an existing currency would give bitcoin the best possible initial
liquidity and thus the best adoptability for new users. Everyone
accepts payment in coins that are easily exchangeable for common
money, but not everyone accepts payment in coins that are only
guaranteed to buy a specific kind of a product.
That would be more powerful if there was also some narrow product market
to use it for. Some virtual currencies like Tencent's Q coin have made
headway with virtual goods. It would be sweet if there was some way to
horn in on a market like that as the official virtual currency gets
clamped down on with limitations. Not saying it can't work without
something, but a ready specific transaction need that it fills would
increase the certainty of success.
At its simplest this exchange service could be a website where
traders, who can be individual persons, can post their rates, and
random users can leave trade requests. Some kind of an average rate
estimate could be shown on the site. Small-scale trading by
individuals would be outside legal hassle in most countries, and
putting all the eggs in the same basket would be avoided.
Basically like an eBay site with user reviews to try to establish which
sellers can be trusted. The escrow feature will help but not solve
everything. It would be far more work to set up such a site than just
to set up a single exchange site of your own, and there won't be enough
users to make it go until later. I'm thinking it wouldn't make sense to
make an eBay type site until later.
Another idea, which could be additional to the previous one, would be
an automated exchange service. The service would automatically
calculate the exchange rate and perform the transactions. This would
be nicer to the user: completion of the transaction request would be
certain and instantaneous. Making this service might actually be quite
easy if there was a command line interface to Bitcoin: just take any
web application framework and use PayPal back-end integration to
automatically send euros when Bitcoins are received, and vice versa.
This kind of business would also work great on larger scale if you set
up a company and take care of all the bureaucracy needed to practice
currency exchange. (I actually have a registered company that I've
used for billing of some IT work, I could use that as a base.)
Even if you had automation, you'd probably want to review orders
manually before processing them anyway. It wouldn't be hard to process
orders by hand, especially at first. You could always set a minimum
order size to keep orders more infrequent.
This exchange business thing is something that I'd be interested in
doing, and I also have the sufficient technical skills to do it.
Although, before this can be done, there should be a non-alpha version
of Bitcoin (and the command line interface / API).
If this gets started, donors / high-risk investors would be very
welcome to bring capital for the currency's backup.
So, what do you think about the idea? Note that this is not something
that I'm asking you to do (unless you want to) if you're busy with
other things. I can do it myself, if I get positive reviews about the
plan.
That's great, I could probably get a donor to send currency to you which
you convert to euros and pay out through methods that are convenient for
users. I don't want to do an exchange business myself, but it can be
done independently of me. Like you say, there is more software
development to be done first, and also I'd like to keep trying for a
while to think of a bootstrap application to use bitcoins for. I've had
some ideas that could only be done before an exchange exists.
BTW, I tried to buy bitcoin.com before I started but there was no
chance, it's owned by a professional domain speculator. It's normal for
open source projects to have .org so it's not so bad.
Glad that worked, it's a pain that the dependencies are so big and hard
to build. Some of them give little attention to the Windows build.
Next time I update to the latest versions, maybe I'll lay everything out
in one directory tree and bundle the whole thing up into a giant archive.
I'm not sure they had wxPack before. I'm glad they got that so everyone
doesn't have to build wxWidgets themselves. OpenSSL is the harder one
to build.
I reduced the EXE size by running strip.exe on it to take out the debug
symbols. That's with mingw. That's the better compiler, I only used VC
for debugging.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
I got it compile with MinGW + MSYS when I used wxPack instead of just
wxWidgets. Maybe wxAdditions was required. The bitcoin.exe filesize was
52MB though, I should see how that can be fixed.
Next I'm going to implement the "minimize to tray" feature and the
option to autostart Bitcoin with Windows, so the number of nodes online
would stay higher. After that I could see if I can do a Linux port or
the command line interface needed for web app frameworks.
Drop by at #bitcoin-dev on FreeNode some time if you use IRC.
And again, thanks for the great work you've done with Bitcoin.
Quote mmalmi@cc.hut.fi:
> I've had quite a few errors coming up when trying to build the
> third-party libraries and adding them to the Bitcoin build. Do you
> happen to have a ready-to-build package that you could upload to the
> CVS or somewhere else? I use mingw + msys, but I guess I could try
> Visual C++ also, if it's easier that way.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
It might help to keep the minimum transaction size above an amount
which a typical user would be able to accumulate with one computer, so
that users have to trade with each other for someone to collect enough
to cash in. Aggregators would set up shop to buy bitcoins in smaller
increments, which would add confidence in users ability to sell
bitcoins if there are more available buyers than just you.
That might be a good idea.
That would be more powerful if there was also some narrow product
market to use it for. Some virtual currencies like Tencent's Q coin
have made headway with virtual goods. It would be sweet if there was
some way to horn in on a market like that as the official virtual
currency gets clamped down on with limitations. Not saying it can't
work without something, but a ready specific transaction need that it
fills would increase the certainty of success.
Bitcoin could be promoted to the users of virtual communities like
World of Warcraft and Second Life, which both have millions of users.
It would be great if not only peer-to-peer item traders, but also
providers of some existing virtual services that already have a lot of
customers, were to adopt the currency early on.
A programming question: What do you think about using the Boost's
program_options to write settings like the transaction fee into a file
bitcoin.config? Or is it better to save them in the database as it is
now? Having a config file would make it easier to change the settings
when running the program on a remote server with a console access only.
Next I'm going to implement the "minimize to tray" feature and the
option to autostart Bitcoin with Windows, so the number of nodes online
would stay higher.
Now that I think about it, you've put your finger on the most important
missing feature right now that would make an order of magnitude
difference in the number of nodes. Without auto-run, we'll almost never
retain nodes after an initial tryout interest. Auto-running as a
minimized tray icon by default was the key to success for the early file
sharing networks. It wouldn't have been appropriate for v0.1.0 when
stability wasn't a given yet, but now it's good and stable. This is a
must-have feature for the next release so any users that come back to
try the new version we hopefully retain this time.
I think the most user friendly way of doing auto-run is putting an icon
in the Startup folder. I see OpenOffice.org and a number of other
things on my computer do it that way. The other way, creating a runas
registry entry, is not easily visible or editable by users, I've never
liked that much. I guess what we want is an auto-run option that's on
by default, if the option is changed then it creates or deletes the
startup icon.
While it's tempting to do a Linux port, once we do it we have that extra
work with every release from then on. I'd rather put it off a while
longer. Auto-run might give us 300% more nodes while Linux might give
us 3% more. Linux would help server farms, but actually we'd like to
favour individual users. Someone reported that it works fine in WinE.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
Just for information: I committed my working copy to the svn/branches.
There's the minimize to tray feature and some other changes. It's
nicer to run in the background now, but it's still incomplete and I'm
working on it. The bugs are listed in bugs.txt.
Did you get your Sourceforge account work yet?
That's great, that's a good step forward.
Yes, I worked out the sourceforge login problem, it was some tricky
thing on the login page that exposed a quirky bug in a browser add-in.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:
Just for information: I committed my working copy to the svn/branches.
There's the minimize to tray feature and some other changes. It's nicer
to run in the background now, but it's still incomplete and I'm working
on it. The bugs are listed in bugs.txt.
Did you get your Sourceforge account work yet?
mmalmi@cc.hut.fito Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> · · original
I made a Windows installer for the latest version of Bitcoin, which
includes the autostart and minimize to tray features. The installer
makes a start menu shortcut and a startup registry entry. I first
implemented the autostart with a shortcut to the startup folder, but I
found out that it doesn't always work by default and ended up doing it
with a registry entry. The registry entry is removed by the
uninstaller and can be also disabled from the options menu, so I don't
think it's such a big menace to the user after all.
I made the installer with NSIS, and the nsi script can be found in the SVN.
Could you add the installer to the SF download page? Here's the file:
http://bitcoin.sourceforge.net/uploads/Bitcoin_setup.exe
There are some new users registered to the bitcoin.sf.net site. One of
them just announced that he's trading Bitcoins for dollars. Here's his
site: http://newlibertystandard.wetpaint.com/. Making an exchange
service first seemed a bit premature for the time being, but on the
other hand it's good that people show interest towards the project,
and this might attract even more interested people (and hopefully more
developers). I just sent the guy an email.
