Gauging the response to ACP
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Hey All,
I’m wondering what your personal experiences are with the response to ACP outside of the forum?
I personally see a lot of negative reactions from people on the BTC-e troll box. At the core, it appears that the Feathercoin About page quote that describes ACP as a “form of centralization” is the key factor. It’s an honest statement, although my feeling is that the majority of people using that as justification for spreading negative information about FTC are a little unfounded. My personal opinion is that all crypto-currency functions under a form of centralization, whether through the devs, or through the proportionally smaller group of active users who vote on changes and difficult decisions [like the hard fork Bitcoin dealt with in March]. It’s just part of the development process.
What would you guys think about maybe updating the “About” page and adding information - on a simple to understand level - that describes exactly how ACP works [the limitations that Bushstar has put in on his control of it are missing right now], compare and contrast it to the checkpointing system used by BTC/LTC/others [at least a general overview to show it’s not a completely new concept], and maybe give an overview of the pros and cons [to show an honest approach]. A lot of it is covered, but it’s rather oblique and worded in a way that may be hard for some to understand. We should also encourage people to join the forum to discuss any changes, or give suggestions on the About page. To let people know they have a democratic voice in the process.
I’ve personally seen new users asking for genuine advice on BTC-e and getting answers that were fundamentally misrepresentative and wrong. So it would be great to have a clear explanation on the main website of the coin.
Thoughts?
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Overall it was needed, and is helpful. Can’t please everyone, and there are those that will always dislike any coin but their own no matter what Feathercoin does.
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[quote name=“mnstrcck” post=“27172” timestamp=“1378232023”]
Hey All,I’m wondering what your personal experiences are with the response to ACP outside of the forum?
[/quote]Nothing good so far that I’ve seen.
[quote]
I personally see a lot of negative reactions from people on the BTC-e troll box. At the core, it appears that the Feathercoin About page quote that describes ACP as a “form of centralization” is the key factor. It’s an honest statement, although my feeling is that the majority of people using that as justification for spreading negative information about FTC are a little unfounded. My personal opinion is that all crypto-currency functions under a form of centralization, whether through the devs, or through the proportionally smaller group of active users who vote on changes and difficult decisions [like the hard fork Bitcoin dealt with in March]. It’s just part of the development process.
[/quote]Dead wrong. The code is open source, so it’s not dictated by the developer who invented it. Anyone and make and improvement and the community can choose to adopt it or not. That’s decentralized democracy with no centralization what so ever.
[quote]
What would you guys think about maybe updating the “About” page and adding information - on a simple to understand level - that describes exactly how ACP works [the limitations that Bushstar has put in on his control of it are missing right now], compare and contrast it to the checkpointing system used by BTC/LTC/others [at least a general overview to show it’s not a completely new concept], and maybe give an overview of the pros and cons [to show an honest approach]. A lot of it is covered, but it’s rather oblique and worded in a way that may be hard for some to understand. We should also encourage people to join the forum to discuss any changes, or give suggestions on the About page. To let people know they have a democratic voice in the process.
[/quote]I thought the page said it all: the developers now choose what the valid block chain is, NOT the miners, and only one developer has the keys to the kingdom. Not much else to say on the topic.
[quote]
I’ve personally seen new users asking for genuine advice on BTC-e and getting answers that were fundamentally misrepresentative and wrong. So it would be great to have a clear explanation on the main website of the coin.Thoughts?
[/quote]Sure, it goes like this: Feathercoin no longer uses a democratized distributed transaction log which is agreed upon by the majority, it uses a centralized one that is dictated by Peter Bushnell. Don’t like it? Use another coin.
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Kevlar,
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’ll touch on your points:
[quote]Dead wrong. The code is open source, so it’s not dictated by the developer who invented it. Anyone and make and improvement and the community can choose to adopt it or not. That’s decentralized democracy with no centralization what so ever.[/quote]
I think this interpretation of crypto-currency is idealistic. For example, as the user base of Bitcoin grows, more and more people who have A: No knowledge of the development process, or the language used get involved B: The distance between the active community and the end user grows. This results in a relatively small group of developers and the voting community. Not everyone using Bitcoin has a vested interest in the democratic process of its development. These end users become a majority and eventually natural centralization occurs. I believe fief currency operates on a similar concept, a small group is the central authority - and in Democratic states, the process occurs in a semi-public forum. As with fief currency, the opportunity for corruption grows with the size of the user-base and its disparity to an active understanding of the currency.
Another point to bring up is the recent publication of private emails between Colbee and Bushstar. This again shows that specific conversations are occurring between developers that are in some ways affecting coin development and are inherently centralized by this fact. Would you agree?
[quote]I thought the page said it all: the developers now choose what the valid block chain is, NOT the miners, and only one developer has the keys to the kingdom. Not much else to say on the topic.[/quote]
My understanding, and Bushstar can pipe in here if he’d like, is that the current ACP system has a 3 block depth that trails behind the miners. On top of that, the process is automated [it’s in the name], and he has no ability to actually invalidate any blockchain retroactively. To me that sounds like miners are still doing what they normally do [choosing the valid blockchain] and the ACP system basically “saves” the state directly to client, providing security by having more “savepoints” than the manual checkpoint that occurs with a client update. I might be wrong on this, so any clarification would be great.
I would also love to hear what you would suggest as either the progression of ACP development to further decentralize, or what you think would be the better course of action against 51% attacks.
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[quote name=“mnstrcck” post=“27195” timestamp=“1378242319”]
Kevlar,Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’ll touch on your points:
[quote]Dead wrong. The code is open source, so it’s not dictated by the developer who invented it. Anyone and make and improvement and the community can choose to adopt it or not. That’s decentralized democracy with no centralization what so ever.[/quote]
I think this interpretation of crypto-currency is idealistic. For example, as the user base of Bitcoin grows, more and more people who have A: No knowledge of the development process, or the language used get involved B: The distance between the active community and the end user grows. This results in a relatively small group of developers and the voting community. Not everyone using Bitcoin has a vested interest in the democratic process of its development. These end users become a majority and eventually natural centralization occurs. I believe fief currency operates on a similar concept, a small group is the central authority - and in Democratic states, the process occurs in a semi-public forum. As with fief currency, the opportunity for corruption grows with the size of the user-base and its disparity to an active understanding of the currency.
Another point to bring up is the recent publication of private emails between Colbee and Bushstar. This again shows that specific conversations are occurring between developers that are in some ways affecting coin development and are inherently centralized by this fact. Would you agree?
[/quote]It’s hard to disagree with that. You have a very valid point in that the decision making process is driven only by those who choose to participate in the decision making process, and that number is trivial in proportion to the number of users who use it. However the barrier to entry for participation is relatively low, so the problem isn’t one of centralization, but of participation.
[quote]I thought the page said it all: the developers now choose what the valid block chain is, NOT the miners, and only one developer has the keys to the kingdom. Not much else to say on the topic.[/quote]
My understanding, and Bushstar can pipe in here if he’d like, is that the current ACP system has a 3 block depth that trails behind the miners. On top of that, the process is automated [it’s in the name], and he has no ability to actually invalidate any blockchain retroactively. To me that sounds like miners are still doing what they normally do [choosing the valid blockchain] and the ACP system basically “saves” the state directly to client, providing security by having more “savepoints” than the manual checkpoint that occurs with a client update. I might be wrong on this, so any clarification would be great.
[/quote]As the holder of the keys to the kingdom, and the developer of the code, he can, in theory, do anything he wants, including invalidating blockchains retroactively. Never say never.
[quote]
I would also love to hear what you would suggest as either the progression of ACP development to further decentralize, or what you think would be the better course of action against 51% attacks.
[/quote]I’ve discussed this at great length in other topics: PoS/PoB is a great solution that has been tried and tested in other coins and has proven very effective. AuxPoW is another.
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[quote]As the holder of the keys to the kingdom, and the developer of the code, he can, in theory, do anything he wants, including invalidating blockchains retroactively. Never say never.[/quote]
I think he’d have some flak to deal with on here if something like that were to happen. Just like many aspects of the crypto-world there’s definitely a lot trust that goes into things at such early stages.
I’ll have a look through your history to check up on your suggestions. Thanks for the kind reply. Cheers.
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Erk,
I’d love to get some input in laymans terms from Bushstar. I also don’t post on bitcointalk, so it might be something another user with at least some history can do. Otherwise I shall be scorned.
I think BTC-e is a pretty good place to get an idea on FTC, or at least some of it, since it’s got such a high volume of trading going on. Traders are the second step up from miners in terms of currency support in my opinion. After trading we get market adoption [people using it to buy things]. We still have a ways to go for that to be commonplace.