The Fenton Files

This page aims to capture some of the thoughts from Bruce Fenton about RavenCoin, it's purpose and future. It's not comprehensive, just some of the interesting comments spotted on the community chats.

2 Mar 2018 - Discord

(lots of chat on discord - some of what we've caught here misses the context, and a bit of chat was skipped, but hopefully caught the most interesting, if you want the detail go to discord and find the chat)

I'd love to take a sec and address some incorrect info and misconceptions

1- Soros afaik does not own this coin and isn't involved in any way, I doubt he's heard of it

2- this is not an Overstock corporate project, they are generous in supporting lots of open source projects and allowing employees to work on them on company or personal time - I'm on the board of Medici, this is how Patrick heard of Ravencoin (I told him at dinner in Boston) we are thrilled that they like the project and allow key devs to work on it -

3- this is not a tZero project, is not being built for tZero, it's not the backend of tZero, there are no discussions about this integrating or trading on tZero and as far as I know the tZero folks are not even aware of it -- it's an entirely separate project

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Now as far as the whole community discord issues: -- a lot of people are so used to scammy centralized ICOs that they might be new to open source and not know how it works. In open source everyone does what they want for their own interest be that intellectual curiosity, money or whatever. There are no rulers or CEOs and no one in the project works for other people.

When someone says "the devs should do__" or "the discord mod should do X" they are essentially saying "Hey, do work I want for free"

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So for example, Kai is a community member who made this channel and can do whatever he wants. If he wants to convert it to a channel to discuss the Xmen comics that's his business. No one has the right to tell other people how to run things they create. They are welcome to create their own channel and do what they want.

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Yes overstock owns Medici and I am on the Medici board. They contribute to open source projects and generously allow key employees to work on this project and others

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yes roadmap is coming

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This is the people's coin. It's more widely and fairly distributed than any project I know of. That's hard for people to get used to. Especially when they are accustomed to dealing with ICO marketers who are trying to continually sell a product because they make money from it. All Raven in the market was initially acquired the same way: by fair mining. So there isn't some centralized profit center driving artificial promotions.

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one of the original ideas I had was to focus on RSK - Tron figured out better ways to accomplish what we needed but RSK remains an awesome project with tons of benefits for Ravencoin-- also it doesn't require core dev work because it can be built on top of the chain -- so hopefully someone will develop that asap - we are focused on core protocol for now

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Would also be cool to see people mess with LN on the Ravencoin chain

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like with Bitcoin the Github has authorized people : me, Tron, Jesse, Cade can accept pull requests. Also like Bitcoin people can make their own implementations OR can do forks Any miner can run what they choose

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That's how Bitcoin and all other projects work. I don't know of any other model For foss

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For the folks upset about the discord I'd definitely recommend reading The Cypherpunk Manifesto.

One of the most important overarching themes is that cypherpunks write code. That's it - we aren't marketers or employees of people who speculate. We are making a project that we think will be useful. That's it. No promises it will work. No guarantees of anything. In the Cypherpunk world you either write or run the code you like or you don't. It's that simple. If we as a community together build something awesome then it might have value in the world. We make no scammy ICO style promises about value etc. It's a completely different model from most new projects and takes a lot of understanding to get used to. Even today with Bitcoin over 9 years old many people don't understand the way development works in open source. This literally is YOUR project. As Gavin Andresen said about Bitcoin "If you want to build something and are waiting for permission you have it, go build"

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I'm not a coder either -- I found a technicality: the Manifesto says you have to write code -- it doesn't say you have to be good at it or even skilled. :) So if you wrote a line of HTML or programmed a Wordpress blog you are indeed a (basic) coder-- so that's easy. He harder part is understanding and embracing the Cypherpunk ideals.

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We are all coders which means we can all be Cypherpunks.

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We cool now?

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We plan annual meeting in October-/ meetups before then - there might be a cool farm we can use for a summer meetup in NH Definitely will be NH

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We will also do meetups in Utah

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We plan to have the ability to issue tokens be native to the protocol. Not a smart contract

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Bitcoin has the ability to let users issue tokens by using Omnilayer or Counterparty- Ravencoin is building on this model and will have similar as well as more advanced features built in to the base code

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It's a different way to approach the same problem

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Ethereum ERC20 has been amazing - but this is a different type of model based on a different type of chain.

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Tons of new use cases. Games, securities tokens etc

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anonymous / privacy features are a great idea but not first phase part of immediate roadmap

Ideally if there are ways that can be bolted on to the existing Bitcoin protocol which can improve privacy that would be an awesome thing for contributors to work on Because if it works on Bitcoin it will work on Raven

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There will be 2 levels with this because there is Ravencoin and there is the tokens Ideally both will be totally private with opt in non-privacy features for those tokens who want to add aml or whatever

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I'm very interested in seeing if tokens can be put into their own LN channels - we think it will be possible

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we had an in person meeting a few weeks ago. As roadmap is rolled out we will have more dev focused channels

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Changing the way value is represented in the world is a worthy goal

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It's got nostalgia -- that wasn't done for fun (though it is!) but because it worked for Bitcoin. Too many projects get away from this. EVERYONE knows that founders shares and foundation tokens and premines and "friends and family" rounds are crap. No one denies that true fair, free and open source projects are better... yet we see 1500 ICOs because people are greedy or lazy. This model is a good one that increases chances of success. If this had been done as an ICO we'd all have tens or hundreds of millions on paper - but nothing close to this community and dev can be bought.

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for legal items this is just open source code. Tons of encryption messaging systems are open source -- And a hash is different

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This community gets stronger every day. We have cycles of newbies, idiots, scammers then true believers, geniuses, OGs and cypherpunks. The later replace the former. We get stronger each day. It's an amazing community. Did you see how fast the chat changed once the new channel was created? No force in business or the global economy can match the power of a good open source project. Can you imagine if Kai and everyone else where employees of some centralized thing? It would never, ever be as robust and quick to adapt and change. Raven the Trickster from myths and legends is a shapeshifter and creator who uses Ravens environment and surroundings to adapt and make new things. That spirt is a great embodiment of open source.

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@Brucelats that was me -- I said that I like Bitcoin to be Bitcoin -- I'm early adopter and board member of Bitcoin Foundation As a crypto user I want a strong chain to issue assets on -- Bitcoin is definitely a strong chain but it's devs are (and should be!) focused on being digital gold or digital cash or whatever. As a Bitcoin hodler and user I don't want Bitcoin devs to be messing about with optimizing for tokens -- that's hard enough. So this is why a use case specific blockchain is a good idea maybe : it combines the strength and ridiculously awesome code base of Bitcoin with a dev community which is focused on optimizing the code for a different use. The hope is that by providing this platform it builds into something with significant advantages over other chains.

2 Mar 2018 - Telegram

I think the surprising aspect was how fast interest gained -- but one shouldn't mistake this as not having a plan or roadmap. This has been planned and thought about for years. Some of the key ways this is showing already are reflected in the strength of the network and number of nodes, users, community. As for funding, development is well funded, many people and companies have invested significantly into dev. The community has funded many significant parts of dev and is growing and stronger every day. The coin is less than 60 days old. The attention to this coin brings lots of good community strength and new devs, volunteers etc. one drawback is that publicity also brings people who don't care about the tech or want some sort of fast results or something. Development will take time

28 Feb 2018 - Telegram

Some additional ways to help Project Ravencoin and the Ravencoin network.

- Download the executables from GitHub for your OS (located in the binaries section) and run Raven-qt.exe

- by running the Raven-at.exe wallet on every PC you own you automatically help strengthen the network

- join a pool and actively mine - this is especially effective if you have a powerful system with a gpu (so far Nvida)

- if you know a developer ask them to consider contributing to GitHub https://github.com/RavenProject/Ravencoin there will be more and more need for dev help as we go

- talk about code, utility, building stuff and plans more than other external factors

- if you know others interested in open source projects, maybe they will download the wallet, mine or contribute

- share or post links to ravencoin.org and the twitter ravencoin

- review bounties and work to complete some

- support the community bounties

- build independent apps on top of this chain (nearly everything that can or has been developed for Bitcoin from wallets to second layer projects to paper wallet generators can be implemented on the Ravencoin chain relatively easily) immediate advantages of this chain: low cost, fast 1 minute blocks, asic resistant, widely distributed

- keep active in the community, share ideas, communicate and follow the project's evolution

- read the Cypherpunk Manifesto

- learn about tokenization of securities and protocols which move things value using blockchains

- share what you learn with others: make posts, blogs, videos and tutorials

This project belongs to you. There is no owner, there is no premine, no ICO, no special founders tokens sale or presale, there is no controller. It's yours...the early members of the community and others who join. We make from it what we put in.

The Inuit, Tlinglit, Tahitian, Chukchi, Sioux and the Haida among others call Raven the magical keeper of secrets, the trickster, friend of the First Men and Creator of the World. An idea or force able to shift, change and create something from nothing. In open source the power of the crowd can do amazing things. Look at what we have accomplished in less than 60 short days: a fairly issued, widely distributed coin with a very solid network and code bass.

This is your coin, whatever you put into it is what it becomes. This will be fun.