Why Feathercoin is, and will be even more, successful â€" my opinion

[Explicit]

First of all, Feathercoin is a very young crypto coin, but it gained much attention already, and it did this at super fast speed. Feathercoin managed to attract interest of many people. Network hash rate jumped to over 2 GH in just a few days. “Big players”with mining rigs capable of high speed hashing joined mining pools, as well as many slower miners. Crypto-coin exchanges were very fast to put FTC on the list of accepted currencies, Vircurex being the major one.

Feathercoin is often criticized that it is a clone copy of Litecoin, and that it didn’t introduce any innovation. Even when the fact that Feathercoin introduced very fast confirmations, fast confirmation of transactions is one of major advantages of Litecoin, I have to disagree that Feathercoin didn’t introduce any innovation.

Innovations introduced by Feathercoin may not be purely technical in nature, but it doesn’t mean that they are not important.

Feathercoin managed to attract very agile community members from the beginning, which resulted in a fast pace of catching up. Speed of development was build on a “reduced cost to participate”; much of the code could be recycled. Plus, I have to say, I love the idea of “cooking the stone soup” to make the initial step forward.

Feathercoin chose the right strategy when being very explicit about addressing existing Bitcoin miners, offering them ASIC-resistant home. (No other coin, Litecoin being an exception here, could make such a promise, since other existing coins use sha256 algorithm, and can be easily mined with ASICs.) In this way Feathercoin was targeting the right segment at the right time, and it did it in a very explicit way; which was quite successful, obviously.

Feathercoin effectively used the existing conditions to gain access to “shared infrastructure”, e.g. being listed on more than just a few crypto exchanges in very short time.

There may be other factors that contributed to Feathercoin being successful, but all in all: Feathercoin made many successful moves at the right time. It gained my trust.

Where to go from here? I think that Feathercoin should address the question of which further steps should be made to make Feathercoin “a comfortable home” for miners shifting from Bicoin. Yes, some of them may just leave their mining rigs on, and do nothing, but some might contribute to Feathercoin considerably, in various ways.

Therefore the question “what do newcomers want” should be addressed very seriously in order to Feathercoin even more successful. Perhaps newcoming miners need to be reassured that existing mining pools are stable, and that they are honest.

If no one else will, I may consider writing an application that will keep gathering available info from existing Feathercoin pools, and compare the distribution of time intervals needed to find a block (when pool’s hash rate is taken into consideration). Ideally all pools should exhibit same distribution.

Perhaps there should be a mining pool dedicated to miners with slow mining equipment. If a slow miner joins a fast mining pool s/he may be at disadvantage, because s/he may miss submitting shares when a block is found within seconds, which may result in a disproportionate payout.
Maybe a pool where max hash rate per client is limited.

Maybe newcomers would like to upgrade their hardware, therefore acceptance of FTCs by sites that sell PC components should be made a priority. There is already a topic on this forum where bitpay for Feathercoins is suggested: http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?topic=95.0

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[powdabam]

Explicit,

I don’t mean to be a FUD…but what happens when a copy cat of Litecoin comes out with 100 times the coins? The only “innovation” that feathercoin introduced was more coins…Someone literally copy pasted the code and then created a genesis block. And in 10 minutes something out of nothing.

I’m not saying it won’t have value, the pet rock sold for a buck and made a million bucks for the “creator”.

There have been several coins that have come out since FTC that have gotten the same amount of interest and hype. It’s all get rich quick hype.

[justabitoftime]

We have a full time developer. The updates to the clients don’t happen by themselves. We have an awesome community… the tech is the least of the value, it’s whoever is able to get mainstream adoption. We have me. :)

Linux has 100s of ‘copycats’. What makes them successful has to do more with the markets they are attempting to enter, the software they bundle and the community support. In that regard, I feel we’ll come out on top. Already working on the merchant plan, feel free to skim the projects section.

As always, we appreciate all types of feedback at the Feathercoin forum.

[aysyr]

Like justabitoftime said, bushstar is active in development and community. He stated himself that he’s fully willing to adapt Feathercoin with other features, but since most of those features are currently “expreimental”, such as PoS and what not, he’s not fixing what isn’t broken and allowing other coins to experiment with features before deciding if it would be beneficial to upgrade Feathercoin with it.

[justabitoftime]

[quote name=“aysyr” post=“628” timestamp=“1367586845”]
Like justabitoftime said, bushstar is active in development and community. He stated himself that he’s fully willing to adapt Feathercoin with other features, but since most of those features are currently “expreimental”, such as PoS and what not, he’s not fixing what isn’t broken and allowing other coins to experiment with features before deciding if it would be beneficial to upgrade Feathercoin with it.
[/quote]

We’re on the same page!

[omnom]

I think Feathercoin acme out at a perfect momment, and has a marketing advantage which comes from devs as well as new adopters.

I was sceptical in the beggining, but then became a huge supporter and promoter, since i realizedthe need for a second strong script coin.

I trully believe there will bemore successfull coins, but FTC is an example of good execution.

Although I feel that the coin number is still limited, is it possible, later down the road to add coins?

I know that divisibility is an answer, but people never like to fiddle with decimals.

[Explicit]

[quote name=“powdabam” post=“511” timestamp=“1367539145”]
Explicit,

I don’t mean to be a FUD…but what happens when a copy cat of Litecoin comes out with 100 times the coins? The only “innovation” that feathercoin introduced was more coins…Someone literally copy pasted the code and then created a genesis block. And in 10 minutes something out of nothing.
[/quote]
@ powdabam
I DO believe that your post is written in good intentions. It may even be that you are right and I am wrong, and that I just don’t see it this way because I am overly excited about Feathercoin at the moment. Only time will tell.
I have to admit that I get excited about new things easily. Especially when I think that something about them is done as it should be. You have to admit that since Feathercoin is quite a success at the moment, it can’t be denied that it must be doing at least something right.
What I wanted to point out is that innovations need not be technical. Feathercoin introduced a non-technical innovation to the crypto-coin field; yes, a social innovation. This IS what I like about Feathercoin. This is why I thin that it may continue being successful.

[quote author=powdabam link=topic=127.msg511#msg511 date=1367539145]
I’m not saying it won’t have value, the pet rock sold for a buck and made a million bucks for the “creator”.
[/quote]
I hope that you are wrong.

[quote author=powdabam link=topic=127.msg511#msg511 date=1367539145]
There have been several coins that have come out since FTC that have gotten the same amount of interest and hype. It’s all get rich quick hype. [/quote]
Yes, I’ve read very recently about ChinaCoin (or something like that). I am not aware of any other Litecoin clone. Could you point out any other crypto coin other than China-coin? If it (they?) manages to attract interest of community, it can become successful, otherwise not; even if it introduces a very advanced technical innovation. No crypto-coin can survive without support from the community, this is a fact. Means of attracting interest of the community are, however, various, and being excellent at technical innovations is just one of them.

[quote author=justabitoftime link=topic=127.msg517#msg517 date=1367542133]
We have an awesome community…
[/quote]
Yes, this is what brought Feathercoin to the point where it stands now.

[quote author=justabitoftime link=topic=127.msg517#msg517 date=1367542133]
the tech is the least of the value,
[/quote]
I this case, yes, in general, not necessarily. Success can be tech powered, intriguing-idea powered, promise powered, etc.

[quote author=justabitoftime link=topic=127.msg517#msg517 date=1367542133]
it’s whoever is able to get mainstream adoption.
[/quote]
I don’t think that Feathercoin should aspire to enter the mainstream. If it tries to do so at this point, it will fail.
It can be said without a shred of doubt that in the mainstream Bitcoin is no. 1, Litecoin is no. 2. There is room for no. 3 in the mainstream, but I don’t see and *existing* crypto-coin as able to occupy no.3 mainstream position atm. No. 4 position can be seen in mainstream (in general, for a given product cathegory) on very rare occasions.
Feathercoin can, however, hold a very strong position in a large enough segment, as I tried to point out before. Role of a nicher is not a bad role. From here a nicher can even grow into the mainstream. Think Apple.