My letter to Dr. Eugene Izhikievich, editor-in-chief of Scholarpedia
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After some consideration, I decided that it is not a transgression for me to treat my letter to Dr. Eugene Izhikievich as an open letter, and post it on this forum:
_Dear Dr. Izhikievic,
let me first thank you on my own behalf for the great contribution that your curated encyclopedia is. I know it for quite some time, for example, the Petri net article written by the big boss himself helped me with my work on a Petri net DSL I have recently written in Ruby.
Today, however, I am writing you on behalf of the community of Feathercoin, a decentralized securized currency similar to Bitcoin.
As you might know, decentralized currencies are based on the idea of publishing the transactions of the individual wallets to prevent double spending, and securizing the published financial history using proof-of-work functions, where the nodes (“miners”) compete for the reward, ensuring hard-to-replicate amount of computational work being expended on blockchain creation.
I do not know if you are familiar with the recent history of decentralized currencies, but after the emergence of Bitcoin (launched by pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto), and Litecoin (launched by a Chinese hacker Charles Lee), Feathercoin was launched as no. 3 in the world of decentralized currencies by Peter Bushnell, IT officer at Brasenose College, Oxford.
Today, the world of decentralized currencies very much resembles that of Internet wikis, with one fat leader (Bitcoin), and a large number of “loser coins”, which are generally little more than enrichment schemes for their creators. It is becoming increasingly hard for the users to discern Feathercoin among them.
In relation to Bitcoin, Feathercoin faces the same predicament as scholars do in Wikipedia: rejection. We are facing hostile actions (hate mail from Bitcoin “purists”, defaced forums, attacks on the blockchain…) Also, some time ago, Wikipedia has deleted Feathercoin article (backup at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WSF/Feathercoin), while continuing to feature near pyramid schemes such as Dogecoin (eg. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogecoin)][1] and other type of self-enrichment schemes, such as (eg. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auroracoin).][2]
Wikipedia now started accepting Bitcoin donations. With respect to the hardships we have experienced, I suggested to form a partnership of mutual exclusive support between Feathercoin and Scholarpedia brands. I have started collecting an initial donation to Scholarpedia with the intention to contact you when we reach the target of 10,000 Feathercoins, but other members of our community think I should contact you right away.
I was asked to mention to you the relevant thread in our discussion forum:
[https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?/topic/7630-send-ftc-to-scholarpedia/#entry65949][3](Note that the linked forum thread features a fake “spaceship” style fundraiser, that we have used some time ago for a real spaceship that will crash-land miniature sattelites on the Moon. Just ignore the “spaceship” mentions.)
The total scheduled coinage of Feathercoin is 332 million coins, 16x times more than bitcoins. We are still pretty much in the initial stages of minting (52 million coins have been rewarded). I really don’t like to talk about price, but for a currency, price is everything. We have experienced wild swings and we are at a low point at the moment. We are thinking what to do to gradually decrease the amplitude of the price swings in the future. Contacting the creators of economic value (such as you) at this moment is one the ways in which we are trying to save Feathercoin from being degraded into a slot machine.
The last thing I wanted to mention is the idea of somehow connecting your curator points into a reward in Feathercoins. It seems to me that Feathercoin has just the appropriate total coinage for the task. If you like the idea of connecting your curation points to a decent decentralized currency somehow, we could do more thinking in this direction.
All in all, I feel that Feathercoin and Scholarpedia would ba a good match. If we can band together, we might create positive headlines for both of our communities. Please let us know if the arrangement of mutual exclusive support is OK with you. I am fully informed on most of the Feathercoin aspects and can provide you more information if you wish. I will relay your response to our community._
(signature omitted)
When Dr. Izhikievich replies (if he does), I will let you know. I decided to take on the role of a contact person to speed things up. I can relinquish it at any time to Bush or other trusted member.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogecoin)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auroracoin).
[3]: https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?/topic/7630-send-ftc-to-scholarpedia/#entry65949 -
Great letter thanks for the hard work!
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Great work! gets a thumbs up from us
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The last thing I wanted to mention is the idea of somehow connecting your curator points into a reward in Feathercoins. It seems to me that Feathercoin has just the appropriate total coinage for the task. If you like the idea of connecting your curation points to a decent decentralized currency somehow, we could do more thinking in this direction.
I really like that idea. Worth pursuing, +1
