\[Kickstart\] Link - The File Sharing Blockchain Protocol
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Dammit, Kevlar took all my fun away and banned anything other than magnet links. I was about to submit a link to Link inside Link and really f@ck this world up!
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Scary thought. What if [url=http://correcthorsebatterystaple.net/]http://correcthorsebatterystaple.net/[/url] was actually just producing passwords from a dictionary of a couple of thousand phrases so they could steal the internet? :o
I’m sticking to using my cat’s name for everything. ;) -
[quote name=“SecretSquirrel” post=“48159” timestamp=“1388303248”]
Scary thought. What if [url=http://correcthorsebatterystaple.net/]http://correcthorsebatterystaple.net/[/url] was actually just producing passwords from a dictionary of a couple of thousand phrases so they could steal the internet? :)
I’m sticking to using my cat’s name for everything. ;)
[/quote]Did you just post this to get your number of posts up? :P
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[quote name=“FTClover” post=“48327” timestamp=“1388371000”]
Did you just post this to get your number of posts up? :P
[/quote]:o
^ Now that’s just posting to get post’s up :D
But in all seriousness, If there’s anything wrong with that?
SecretSquirrel isn’t spamming so I don’t see an issue.
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[quote name=“Calem” post=“48339” timestamp=“1388380061”]
[quote author=FTClover link=topic=5663.msg48327#msg48327 date=1388371000]
Did you just post this to get your number of posts up? :P
[/quote]:o
^ Now that’s just posting to get post’s up :D
But in all seriousness, If there’s anything wrong with that?
SecretSquirrel isn’t spamming so I don’t see an issue.
[/quote]Yeah I dont see anything wrong with it I just thought it was funny ;D
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[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“41596” timestamp=“1386503016”]
For those of you who have been following the discussion over [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,5558.0.html]here[/url], you know that I’ve started working on a new protocol that allows peer to peer file sharing via the blockchain. It’s already reached a point where the idea is ready to be tested out on the blockchain itself, and the next step is to start work on a client to automate the process.At this point I’d like to start soliciting donations in order to help rapidly advance the project.
Why should you donate?
This protocol has the potential to drastically increase the value of the blockchain. When the blockchain doubles as a ledger of account, and a distributed database of serchable p2p torrents (think a Pirate Bay that can’t be taken down), it’s possible that the valuation of Feathercoin will rise significantly. (It’s also entirely possible it will crash it to zero,. Anything is possible in this world.)
FTC already has value on exchanges, and publishing message via the Link protocol requires you to destroy coins, so this means there’s an inherit cost in doing so. If people are willing to pay that cost, they remove that currency from the supply of coins permanently. This means that using Link to publish torrents in the blockchain is both costly, and deflationary to the rest of FTC, all while increasing the number of full nodes that are running in order to retrieve what’s being published.
This may well and truly be a game changer for whatever coin adopts it. Imagine a coin that was traded on an exchange, and carried with it all the new torrents that were being released, all while draining the currency supply out of the available pool. Do you think that has value?
By donating to this project, you’re participating in a social experiment; An experiment designed to change how information is shared in a way that makes it tough to censor and impossible to corrupt.
Donaters will also receive recognition in the credits, as well as get early access to client betas and testing builds.
Now people have brought up the topic of blockchain bloat (bloatchain?), and while I’m sensitive to this, my calculations tell me 2 things:
#1. A standard transaction containing a torrent will be of typically small transaction size. Every consideration has been made for compression and space optimization in the protocol, allowing for very small amounts of information to be encoded very efficiently. Link transaction, on the whole, don’t have to be very large at all and most will be WELL under 1k. It looks like you can get away with adding about 50-60 bytes per transaction to do something really meaningful, and the rest is normal input-output-change address overhead.
#2. The act of posting a Link sequence destroys the coins, meaning that those coins can NEVER generate another transaction, where as normal spends are, in theory, capable of generating an infinite number of spends in the future. This means that you’re taking a tiny hit up front, and those coins will never add to the size of the blockchain again.
I’m not convinced that this qualifies as bloat. If the transaction overhead well outpaces the actual data size, AND the result is a (even more) deflationary currency which has an increasing number of coins which won’t be spent again and won’t be adding any more to the blockchain size, then this seems like something that would actually be desirable. If the user is willing to pay the fee and burn the coins, there’s really not a lot you can do about this, and the free market will determine the correct price. Trying to stop or discourage this behavior may actually be considered harmful or controlling. Since there’s nothing you can do to stop this behavior, I see no reason to not experiment with it and see what happens.
So, what will the coins be used for?
Well for one, I’m going to need to test it. In fact I expect to need to test it a lot, and for that, I’m going to need a lot of coins to burn.
I also might need a pizza. But mostly testing.
So… who wants to see what happens when you make a blockchain more valuable than it already is?
[/quote]Just sent today’s mine of 33 FTC your way in support of this most awesome project. Well done!
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[quote name=“FTClover” post=“48431” timestamp=“1388423008”]
Yeah I dont see anything wrong with it I just thought it was funny ;D
[/quote][img]http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png[/img]
I use to have a bad habit of bumping my own posts if no one was [i]replying[/i] on them, just so they wouldn’t scroll off into obscurity. A habit I think I’m out of now.
[i]edit[/i]
Man I’m full of typos this morning.
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[quote name=“Calem” post=“48587” timestamp=“1388457291”]
[quote author=FTClover link=topic=5663.msg48431#msg48431 date=1388423008]
Yeah I dont see anything wrong with it I just thought it was funny ;D
[/quote][img]http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png[/img]
I use to have a bad habit of bumping my own posts if no one was relying on them just so they wouldn’t scroll off into obscurity. A habit I think I’m out of now.
[/quote]That’s even funnier ;D
But yeah I have had to do that with the feathercoin week topic just to keep it in view, but that’s just because its a campaign…
For most of the topics that I make if its not interesting enough for people to reply then there’s really no point in bumping it, just gotta let it slide :)
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hi Kevlar, as i understand it, you will be making link available to all coins that want adopt it, but will it be exclusive to feathercoin at all in the early stages of release?
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Hi Kevlar,
Progress on this project is going faster than I can read up on it. Amazing…
One comment I would make is that, I see no problem with “buying the transaction”.
Even though normal continuing transactions leave “ledger information”. I always understood that would need to be compressed and that was happening currently (??).
When I was looking into what future problems there might be when the Blockchains start to be overblown with transactions. I could see that ledger detritus might need to be “archived” due to BlockBloat.
It is probable that a solution might be to always retain the final transaction of a chain, when considering Blockchain history compression, even if that is unspendable.
Therefore, it would also be a good idea to get involved in any upstream Bitcoind, history compression threads / discussions / Github …
To make sure informations is not lost.
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[quote name=“alexg113” post=“48653” timestamp=“1388497734”]
hi Kevlar, as i understand it, you will be making link available to all coins that want adopt it, but will it be exclusive to feathercoin at all in the early stages of release?
[/quote]Indeed! Exciting, isn’t it?
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[quote name=“wrapper0feather” post=“48660” timestamp=“1388499907”]
Hi Kevlar,Progress on this project is going faster than I can read up on it. Amazing…
One comment I would make is that, I see no problem with “buying the transaction”.
Even though normal continuing transactions leave “ledger information”. I always understood that would need to be compressed and that was happening currently (??).
When I was looking into what future problems there might be when the Blockchains start to be overblown with transactions. I could see that ledger detritus might need to be “archived” due to BlockBloat.
It is probable that a solution might be to always retain the final transaction of a chain, when considering Blockchain history compression, even if that is unspendable.
Therefore, it would also be a good idea to get involved in any upstream Bitcoind, history compression threads / discussions / Github …
To make sure informations is not lost.
[/quote]You bring up probablly the single most important discussion surrounding Link. It’s one I’ve given a lot of though to.
Yes, I agree, buying the transaction is acceptable. I think you’re going to -=love=- the next feature that’s coming down the pipeline… More on that soon.
It’s impossible to fully prune Link transactions: You cannot prove they are unspendable. It’s also entirely possible to make it computationally difficult to create Link transactions.
As far as getting involved in Bitcoin discussions, I think you might be surprised to learn I’m actually on the opposite side of the discussion: How do we prevent things like Link from bloating the blockchain at all?
Why, you may ask? Because Link is wasteful. It’s an incredibly expensive way to store and distribute data. It has a LOT of redundancy that’s potentially unnecessary, and there may be better ways to go about achieving the same thing. So, if you ask me do I think Blockchains are the best solution to this problem? I think you’ll agree that from an engineering perspective they aren’t.
So why do it? Because it DOES have a use. Imagine data that’s so vital, so critical, that storing it redundantly was the best solution. I can think of one system that takes this approach and is very successful at it: DNA.
Which brings me to my point: Link is but one DNA sequence in the organism that is crypto-currencies. It’s designed to bring about evolutionary pressures which will force the adaptation of the technology to respond to changing environmental factors and increase suitability in an increasingly hostile environment. If the users of Bitcoin want to stop Link usage, they should be able to, and the community will vote with it’s adoption of the changed protocol on weather or not that’s acceptable. Likewise, if they want to embrace it’s adoption, they can do that too. There’s already proposals for how to do this that would stop Link cold in it’s tracks from ever working on a blockchain that implemented it. This is, in fact, a VERY good thing: Blockchains SHOULD evolve to adapt to changing environments. And if Bitcoin bans Link through a protocol change, then Bitcoin won’t be used with Link, and other blockchains will take it’s place. This may be great for Bitcoin, or it may destroy it’s utility. I can’t see that far into the future I’m afraid.
Who should win this war of openeness vs specialization? The free market should decide. They should also decide the cost of publishing with Link. Blockchains will become feeds of data, and the cost of publishing on that feed should reflect it’s usage and it’s audience. If a particular feed (blockchain) becomes popular, the cost of publishing on it should increase (value of the coin increases). The market must decide on it’s own.
I’m Link’s #1 fan, but I’m a bigger fan of freedom of choice, and market based economies, and if the population decides to ban Link in Bitcoin, then I’ll get my data feed from another blockchain, and if they want to store data in the world’s largest network redundantly, then can do that too, and I think both solutions must be considered heavily.
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FLUX is 42x as wasteful, lal. But perhaps people are more likely to post torrents and bad poetry than to exchange. So it might be used 210x less. So 1/5th as wasteful overall. If I manage to generalize the process and shorten it, it may actually take fewer steps. It won’t be 42 anymore which might disappoint Tuck, but it will be less of a load.
The FLUX kickstart is officially open: [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,6552]http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,6552[/url]
Also Kevlar, let me know if the explanation of who did it helps: [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,6407.msg48116.html#msg48116]http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,6407.msg48116.html#msg48116[/url]
By the way, if they do ban Link and more chains decide to ban it, FLUX could potentially be used as a foundation below the blockchain in the future in which case, Link LIVES! Seriously though, with the amount of autism in the exchanges and the glassed over droolly eyes when it comes to virtual coins any real world features beyond gimmicks like prime numbers would be healthy to have in a currency.
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[quote name=“Tuck Fheman” post=“48151” timestamp=“1388294128”]
Dammit, Kevlar took all my fun away and banned anything other than magnet links. I was about to submit a link to Link inside Link and really f@ck this world up!
[/quote]Update : Wish I could have found this image back then …
