What really sets Feathercoin apart from all other Crypto Currencies?

[Kevlar]

[quote name=“jti8899” post=“57154” timestamp=“1391570842”]
[quote author=Kevlar link=topic=7426.msg57151#msg57151 date=1391570103]
Some great answers here. I’d like to offer my own:

The question is equlivent to saying, “Why is Los Angeles so much better than New York? They’re both pieces of land.”

In truth, the technical details are minimal: It’s got a faster coin generation rate, a faster retarget time, and it’s not decentralized like other coins: All clients connect to a single node run by the original creator of the coin to figure out what the current consensus is instead of following the rules of longest chain wins, kind of like Liberty Reserve, or Paypal, except the entire ledger is made public.

The difference lies in what people do with it, not how it works.
[/quote]kevlar,

thanks for a great answer, I am forever giving you rep. If feathercoin are centralized by a main server could they be shut down by that server being taken out?

What does faster re target rate mean?

Liberty Reserve was shut down and the founder is hanging out in Spain under threat of US indictment. Hope this isn’t what’s in store? PayPal is just another credit Card scam in my book and takes lots of money from me every year.

How does a public ledger protect Feathercoin? Thanks again for the input!

~//~

Ref: [url=http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/liberty-reserve-source-code/]http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/liberty-reserve-source-code/[/url]
[/quote]

The difficulty retargeting has to do with how often the difficulty is adjusted in order to keep the block generation rate at 2.5 minutes. It’s every 150 something blocks for FTC, but every 2000 something blocks for LTC and BTC. This means that FTC will respond to increases and decreases in the hash rate much quicker, allowing the coin generation rate to remain constant for longer.

Shutting down ACP would just return it to it’s regularly decentralized program, just like BTC and LTC. The Liberty Reserve guy was accused of money laundering, and most of their business revolved around exchanging fiat for LR. This is a little different because Bushstar isn’t actually acting as the broker for the exchange of money, just as the record of account for where the coins are going.

The public ledger provides transparency. Unlike Paypal or LR, you can see ALL the transactions that occur on the Feathercoin network. You can also create transactions on the network without talking to the ACP server, it’s just that eventually someone will mine a block with your transaction in it, and that will be checkpointed by the ACP server, which prevents reorganizations of the blockchain by potentially malicious pool operators/miners with lots of hash power. There’s much discussion surrounding how to eliminate ACP going on right now for that very reason: We want to prevent malicious reorgs while still keeping the coin decentralized. We’re getting very close too. Wrapper has done a great job of moving the project forward, and starting next week I’m going to be involved in it too.

[jti8899]

[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“57163” timestamp=“1391574185”]
[quote author=jti8899 link=topic=7426.msg57154#msg57154 date=1391570842]
[quote author=Kevlar link=topic=7426.msg57151#msg57151 date=1391570103]
Some great answers here. I’d like to offer my own:

The question is equlivent to saying, “Why is Los Angeles so much better than New York? They’re both pieces of land.”

In truth, the technical details are minimal: It’s got a faster coin generation rate, a faster retarget time, and it’s not decentralized like other coins: All clients connect to a single node run by the original creator of the coin to figure out what the current consensus is instead of following the rules of longest chain wins, kind of like Liberty Reserve, or Paypal, except the entire ledger is made public.

The difference lies in what people do with it, not how it works.
[/quote]kevlar,

thanks for a great answer, I am forever giving you rep. If feathercoin are centralized by a main server could they be shut down by that server being taken out?

What does faster re target rate mean?

Liberty Reserve was shut down and the founder is hanging out in Spain under threat of US indictment. Hope this isn’t what’s in store? PayPal is just another credit Card scam in my book and takes lots of money from me every year.

How does a public ledger protect Feathercoin? Thanks again for the input!

~//~

Ref: [url=http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/liberty-reserve-source-code/]http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/liberty-reserve-source-code/[/url]
[/quote]

The difficulty retargeting has to do with how often the difficulty is adjusted in order to keep the block generation rate at 2.5 minutes. It’s every 150 something blocks for FTC, but every 2000 something blocks for LTC and BTC. This means that FTC will respond to increases and decreases in the hash rate much quicker, allowing the coin generation rate to remain constant for longer.

Shutting down ACP would just return it to it’s regularly decentralized program, just like BTC and LTC. The Liberty Reserve guy was accused of money laundering, and most of their business revolved around exchanging fiat for LR. This is a little different because Bushstar isn’t actually acting as the broker for the exchange of money, just as the record of account for where the coins are going.

The public ledger provides transparency. Unlike Paypal or LR, you can see ALL the transactions that occur on the Feathercoin network. You can also create transactions on the network without talking to the ACP server, it’s just that eventually someone will mine a block with your transaction in it, and that will be checkpointed by the ACP server, which prevents reorganizations of the blockchain by potentially malicious pool operators/miners with lots of hash power. There’s much discussion surrounding how to eliminate ACP going on right now for that very reason: We want to prevent malicious reorgs while still keeping the coin decentralized. We’re getting very close too. Wrapper has done a great job of moving the project forward, and starting next week I’m going to be involved in it too.
[/quote]

kevlar,

this is exactly the kind of discussion I was intending to create. I know that almost everyone drives cars, many people really don’t care to know how they work, but for those of us who do we take them apart and put them together and learn all about stoichiometric mixtures, and tweak and tune till we hear noises that don’t even exist when we drive. I am one of those people, though not quite as dev savy as yourself, these things are very meaningful to me.

I would totally be willing to put together a bit of writing on the topic of “Feathercoin, what it is and isn’t and how it differs from other alt currencies” based on the content of discussions such as these.

I know you offer a ton of help and assistance to the community as a whole, so not asking you for anything except honest straight forwards answers to inquiries such as the ones in your last quoted post.

Maybe other devs and even Bushstar can chime in and after I get a few drafts together those people could review and correct them or me and together we could create material easily passed out to interested parties?

Mostly I am a hands on learner so this would be a side benefit of that learning process. I do not yet understand this whole realm of crypto things beyond surface level at best, so I am learning as I go. To be honest it was open sharing community that drew me to feathercoin, but it will be value that keeps me here and that is a much broader topic.

thanks again for your input

~//~

[travwill]

Hmmm, it is a coin with a lot of support. Technically the coin/code itself isn’t superior or that great (subjective) honestly - their are coins with faster confirms that make them more feasible for actual daily use which is important, others with more value/adoption where speed isn’t necessary, and others with better types of cryptographic hash functions to protect mining, etc.

Love FTC, the “community”, but haven’t observed any acceptance of negatives ever in these forums usually.

[mirrax]

Community and aplications.

[jti8899]

[quote name=“mirrax” post=“57179” timestamp=“1391582259”]
Community and aplications.
[/quote]

Could/would you elaborate on “applications” please?

thanks
~//~

[mirrax]

[quote name=“jti8899” post=“57185” timestamp=“1391587364”]
[quote author=mirrax link=topic=7426.msg57179#msg57179 date=1391582259]
Community and aplications.
[/quote]

Could/would you elaborate on “applications” please?

thanks
~//~
[/quote]

There is lot of applications created by forum members:
FTC Market (with lot of cool FTC projects inside i.e. FTC Vine, Laser Etched wallets, T-Shirts, Stickers,…)
CryptoKnox - online wallet
FTC Games
FTC paper wallet generator
Local Feathercoin map
Lot of great FTC graphics and tutorials
Button generator
LINK

Those are only few examples, I am sure there is much more.
Also what I din’t saw is other coin with such rich weekly newsletters.

But you are right, if you ask what makes FTC algorithm special, than right answer is absolutely nothing.
It is Litecoin fork with changed parameters and ACP added.

[MrWyrm]

I’m going to quote Aristotle here…

[quote=“Aristotle”]â€Å"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”[/quote]

You can’t remove community and form a correct answer because it’s part of the combined beast.

Humans were just another hominid, but they now are found thriving in every corner of the world, masters over their environment. Were they that much different from other competing hominids? Not at all. What sets them apart are the same strengths that sets us apart when we trust in the community, the ability to cooperate in a tribe, communicate and formulate solutions and adapt to any given change in environment. It might not seem like much now to ‘spec sheet’ buyers, but when faced with adversity, we have a greater weapon to push innovations and needed technical changes. We have the ability to adapt.

[estrabd]

[quote name=“jti8899” post=“57159” timestamp=“1391573188”]
Not Mark Cuban, but thanks for killing this threads usefulness. I specifically asked not to give the “great community” answer.
[/quote]

Your question has been answered, but I’m afraid it’s probably not as spectacular as you had hoped. If there is a feature you’d like to see in Feathercoin, I’d be interested in hearing it. I enjoy the threads discussing ideas and new features, though much of it is over my head. Perhaps a you had a killer service in mind? The base technology is there, what is needed are services.

There probably exists on a handful of features that would make FTC on par with the more interesting coins, but not many. The biggest on my list is probably anonymity. I’ve also thought it’d be interesting if there was a coin that spontaneously split, allowing growth in other more interesting ways.

[estrabd]

[quote name=“mirrax” post=“57196” timestamp=“1391592842”]

There is lot of applications created by forum members:
FTC Market (with lot of cool FTC projects inside i.e. FTC Vine, Laser Etched wallets, T-Shirts, Stickers,…)
CryptoKnox - online wallet

[/quote]

Thanks for pointing out CryptoKnox -I’ve been looking for an online FTC wallet.

Regarding the market, this is probably the most compelling thing about FTC. Hopefully this market will grow to the point where it is large and dynamic, not unlike the eBay market place. Retailers are adding BTC to what they accept all of the time; most major retailers have stores on eBay (Overstock included) - I don’t see why at some point they wouldn’t want to open a store on the the FTC market. Probably more energy should be directed to the market itself - improving it and promoting it. Maybe CryptoKnox can get to the point where it’s the payment processor of choice for the market.

[jti8899]

[quote name=“mirrax” post=“57196” timestamp=“1391592842”]
[quote author=jti8899 link=topic=7426.msg57185#msg57185 date=1391587364]
[quote author=mirrax link=topic=7426.msg57179#msg57179 date=1391582259]
Community and aplications.
[/quote]

Could/would you elaborate on “applications” please?

thanks
~//~
[/quote]

There is lot of applications created by forum members:
FTC Market (with lot of cool FTC projects inside i.e. FTC Vine, Laser Etched wallets, T-Shirts, Stickers,…)
CryptoKnox - online wallet
FTC Games
FTC paper wallet generator
Local Feathercoin map
Lot of great FTC graphics and tutorials
Button generator
LINK

Those are only few examples, I am sure there is much more.
Also what I din’t saw is other coin with such rich weekly newsletters.

But you are right, if you ask what makes FTC algorithm special, than right answer is absolutely nothing.
It is Litecoin fork with changed parameters and ACP added.
[/quote]

Thanks so much for the input. I would have to say that ACP server needs to be a selling point, after all, though maybe not a perfect solution, and maybe time will create a better one, it does protect feathercoin from 51% attack if I understand it correctly? That is why it was created, feathercoin got attacked, litecoin people wouldn’t help out, and creativity stepped up and wala, we have ACP!

Market place is another good selling feature, but could be overrun easily by someone like ebay just accepting FTC, or BTC for that matter. I still appreciate that feature a ton.

CryptoKnox - online wallet, FTC paper wallet generator are things I need to look closer at could be selling points. Thanks for those suggestions, but I don’t know much about either yet.

Maps, games, graphics, t-shirts and hats and the like would be bullets under Community. Not saying not valid, but none the less bullet points.

So even if the correct answer (at the present) is “It is Litecoin fork with changed parameters and ACP added.” I would rather say:

“Feathercoin is a crypto-currency that utilizes a scrypt based algorithum , similar to litecoin, only with an ACP server added to protect against 51% attacks, built on a foundation of a positive collective effort of like minded individuals, who are constantly striving to improve on every aspect of this innovative new way of exchanging value for value without the need for trusted third parties.”

The whole point of this thread was to get those with detailed knowledge to share, and to inspire all of us to innovate to improve on what has been built. How can we use ideas like ‘open transactions’ to increase adoption of FTC? How can we improve upon the ACP server idea to protect against attacks? How can we improve upon the basic blockchain to integrate new features. . . . and so on.

I am not attacking the idea of a great community, and don’t feel that particular feature needs defending. In fact if it did need defending, it is a doomed deal anyway. Who will stay to support a pack of scammers and bullshitters. FTClover is a great point in case.

It’s just that I read some of the stuff kevlar and others like him write about ideas they are working on and so much just makes me feel as if I am swimming in a ocean of foreign language.

It is this feeling of “I just don’t get it!” that prevents massive adoption. BTC is gaining a lot of ground, because of people starting to say “I don’t get it, BUT I could get really rich so I am in!” This speculation attitude will get some adoption, but it also creates massive volatility. Plus that group of humans are impatient and want the “easy money” which just simply doesn’t exist. They will shortly fall back to “I just don’t get it” and lose interest if their hoped for gains are not realized.

There is a much more important issue being represented here with the rise of the blockchain. Trust doesn’t need to be bought from greedy self centered men and their systems of control any more, it can be embedded into the code. When no one controls that we are all much freer (and retain a great deal more of our personal production).

The advent of crypto currency blockchain has irrevocably changed the world, and my life. The elite have every incentive in the world to attempt to slow and or stop this from becoming widely adopted. The rest of us have the opposite incentive, to propel widespread adoption. To create the understanding of what it is, what it represents, how it works, what it offers and how to easily implement those features into your current reality NOW!

I am the type of person that can sell anything to anyone, with one big IF! If I understand and believe that what I am selling you is in your best interest for you to buy! Needless to say I don’t sell to many things. Help me understand FTC down to the nuts and bolts and I will create compelling promotional material! It’s what I do. Maybe we can start a podcast or integrate into an already existing podcast with applicable audience, let’s talk feathercoin, and explore where we are going, talk about why we decided to use a different blockchain, walk people through the process of learning? hell I don’t know, help me out here. . .

~//~