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== 27 May 2018 - Discord 2 ==
Thanks for the questions —
Lots to unpack
A lot of common questions can be answered and bunched together — but this is best explained by backing up a second with overall ideas and philosophy— then trying to be more specific & answering anything else I can
1) basic roots first
At its core every effort with this project has been to the cypherpunk roots expressed by the cypherpunk manifesto — I’ve been really lucky to learn from some of the best cypherpunks in the world - as someone who’s studied value and assets and securities my whole life I find the shared incentives in open source to be the most important development in human interactions in perhaps hundreds of years - it’s as significant as the creation of trusts or corporations
I’ve also been lucky enough to have been in economics for a long time — what Bitcoin did was combine an amazing open source project with FOSS values and the epitome of cypherpunk values — AND combined with ECONOMIC incentives and a new form of money (that actually works!) AND a new invention called the blockchain — it’s completely amazing
So an effort was made with this project to follow those values ; as simple as they are / working toward decentralization, leaderless, hardened technology : a very secure blockchain with lots of mining nodes and a wide and diverse community- working to be as open as possible and to have consensus based on solid rules on a strong network of informed and diversely motivated participants
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This is part of what’s amazing about the technology of blockchains : it’s power comes from the people and flows back to the people - the people who participate give a network its strength — and this network is VERY strong -/ I saw Tron and RavenDev the other day and they estimated— get this - that it would take 45,000 of the TOP END gpus to turn hostile on the existing network OR someone would have to buy 90,000 of the top end gpus to attack the coin
[The questions with comparisons to verge are laughable and not sensible - verge did not have a 51% attack but it also had a massive security flaw in that it used MULTIPLE algos - not one algo like Raven (Ravencoin algo X16R cycles through 16 algos bur is still ONE algo only mineable by the same type of computer configuration)
Bitcoin Gold was also attacked but this is doable by ASICS - raven is not (so far)
Does that mean raven doesn’t have risks? Hell no! This is GAME OF THRONES my friends - to have a blockchain have ANY use it MUST. Be secure - we have to guard against everything and be constantly vigilant to the slightest threat - no matter how unlikely. A security flaw completely ruins a project — is not an environment to rush things or spend time marketing or fundraising - it’s not about features first security later or this mentality of “just throw our project on Eth cause everyone else does”. No way. For security to work it’s got to be a strong network that’s really hard to co-opt or change. That means no powerful people as much as possible and it means not having central points of failure.
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Risks to raven include:
51% attack: ANY real pow coin has this risk - biggest risk to raven is that large Eth miners turned adversarial toward raven - fortunately most Eth miners appear motivated toward a fair network - however the fact that large GPU miners do exist is a risk
Centralized parties: since it’s still in alpha / pre alpha — the only way to develop is to have some sort of vision and discuss ideas then put them into implementation — sometimes one person can do that - the evolution of this project has been as a team because the network was launched first to build on — that’s unusual but has worked very well — we already have this huge strong network while we were working on the design and code
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So anyway — security is obviously of the utmost importance — it’s not just number one it’s number one and worth more than features #2 - 20
That means copying all we can from the most secure coin: Bitcoin
So - no premine, no ICO, fairly mined, no leader, we need to prioritize nodes (yes regular nodes!) and mining nodes
We of course copied the code of Bitcoin — this is because it’s the most secure — by far.
This is a mission critical coin and failure is not an option. As a community if we ever EVER sacrifice anything which adds security risks we lose — the entire project would be worthless. No feature, no person is worth risking security wherever possible
So that means keeping the code decentralized - encouraging other implementations, being extremely cautious with ALL hard forks (even the planned one!)
It also means being cautious to make sure the chain and tx count can be downloaded etc
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Another benefit is the ethos of Bitcoin which is all about security first — cypherpunks don’t give a __ if Lightning Network takes three years or ten years or never — we are not risking our f—ing Bitcoin for ANYTHING — not because some clown says nodes aren’t important — not to make it cheaper to buy a sandwich or anything else — SECURITY RISKS ARE NEVER AN OPTION — yes you need a chain that is useful - but it’s always security first
So what’s all this have to do with the questions? The philosophy and ethos are important
Think of this as a little sibling of Bitcoin - but being that this is Game of Thrones(!) and crazy tech that sibling has damn good chance of dying — this coin could easily be killed off or die just like 500 shitcoins and this could easily end up worth zero.
Sorry if that sounds scary or harsh - but that’s reality.
If you are in one of the hundreds of centralized money raising projects such as ICOs people might tell you what you want to hear but that doesn’t make it true - this space is indeed Game of Thrones - a person might stab you or sleep with you or pretend to be an employee to get your private keys, soldiers and cops may raid your friends homes just for using this tech in certain oppressive regimes — there is an army of highly skilled hackers like dire wolves outside your door - any one of them would gleefully empty all your crypto without a second thought — a few of them would kill your mom - straight up — if you’ve got more than 2 Bitcoin in networth — that’s a scary and sad fact - but a fact it is
So if someone is telling you their coin is going to survive they are probably the first one whose going to get slaughtered when the white walkers come — you know the guy listening to the High Sparrow may fly high for a while — but eventually you know his heads getting chopped also — at least you hope this -
(ICO promoters are the high sparrow, his followers the gullible buyers - chop heads is bad projects going under)
but after all this is game of thrones — sometimes the good guys die and the bad guys win — so anyone who tells you otherwise is stupid or lying.
So - yeah - Security is important
That informs the whole rest of the conversation
This is why there is not a structured messaging and a line between the open source project and any business activities
So hopefully that answers a lot of questions: anything related to decisions or processes with centralization or a security risk are avoided
— this also is a good time to answer
2). Questions about tZero
Lots of questions about this — a few important points
- The coin is about WAY more than a company and even way more than tokenized securities — it’s for ALL assets: game tokens, all kinds of things which could be invented etc
- within the one narrow use case of tokenized securities many of us who are most active in design architecture and development also coincidentally happen to be involved in the tokenized securities world
- so this informs a lot of options and also I happen to talk about this a lot and it’s associated with raven
- clearly raven is a natural fit for tZero and the projects are complimentary- it’s natural that the two fit together - hopefully tZero lists raven and if raven works for token securities then they’d be a fit for tZero
Definitely these decisions are made separately - this is why tZero launched on ERC20 and will almost certainly support multiple protocols
So - though there is overlap, and common supporters, there is no coordination between these projects on development (not that this would be a bad thing or conflict of interest even if there was — we all have an interest in making both projects work) since they they are complimentary they will hopefully work together
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3/3 so this all comes to the third major category of question: economics
This one is informed by the whole thin on cypherpunks and security I said above:
Security first
As part of that the design and dev team knows that the coin must have value to be secure and work
The community knows this and hopefully puts every effort toward security and action and decisions like securing the network
(If you want to help the network security: Turn on more nodes now!! Mine on every PC
you have and tell everyone you can to do the same)
So that’s economics: Why will the coin have value?
Motivational part: Because we are an army of Ravens and crows on the wall — we are the Nights Watch and together we have incentive to make this work - together like an army of pecking Birds we will chip away with our GPUs and stick together as a community and make his work! Ra ra yay!!
The truth: A zombie apocalypse might kill us even if we are as honest kind and worthy as Ned Stark
How much will it be worth? Hell if I know.
Let’s enjoy the game
/ end
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== 26 May 2018 - Discord 2 ==
