Nothing caps the last two weeks better than USA Today writing about two of our very own Board members, Brock Pierce and David Johnston, at the Inside Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas with Ron Gross, Mastercoin Foundation’s Executive Director. Now if I were a gambling man I would definitely place some bets using Mastercoin, of course.
It’s been a couple long, fruitful weeks with a lot of happening so this update is packed with information, and shows just how much progress and growth the community around Mastercoin has achieved since August.
Just when we thought things were going smooth we heard about another piece of news that will send shock waves through the Bitcoin community. BitFunder, rather than just closing its doors to US residents, is shutting down permanently. And, let us not forget, yet another wallet service and its users became the latest victim of virtual bank robbers.
The Mastercoin protocol, which uses the Bitcoin network, for specialized transactions such as stock transfers, will fill the void. This is great news for Bitcoin owners, because each time a Mastercoin transaction occurs Bitcoin Miners get paid. The Bitcoin network is providing value added services were previously financial benefits went to site owners rather than Bitcoin network operators.
For a quick recap on this subject check out this video:
So, what does all that mean for Mastercoin and all of the work we are doing on distributed BTC-MSC exchange and smart properties?
It means the stakes just got a lot higher. The good news is that the evolutionary cycles created by market forces are pulling for more decentralization.
In this week’s update we will focus primarily on the progress in the Distributed Exchange Code Contest, and developments in the Mastercoin Protocol and related proposals. The post may be a bit more technically oriented than others, but the goal is to ensure that anyone working on developing is aware of all of the changes that have taken place.
If you are looking for a review of the technical structure of Mastercoin and how it relates to and utilizes Bitcoin then Vitalik Buterin of Bitcoin Magazine kindly wrote this great article published earlier this week: Mastercoin: A Second-Generation Protocol on the Bitcoin Blockchain. If you have not got your hands on any MSC yet, please help test the MSC faucet; report any issues to the bitcointalk forum. All you need is a Bitcoin address (from bitcoin-QT or blockchain.info).
And lastly, if you are in the Tel-Aviv area (or perhaps want to escape from cold northern latitudes), Ron Gross, one of Mastercoin Foundation’s board members, is organizing the second Mastercoin meet up in Israel.
Proof of Stake is meant to provide a voting mechanism for stakeholders in Mastercoin and in particular currencies and smart properties developed utilizing the protocol. Please provide input.
Mastercoin websites will have a “voting” section for each currency and smart property.
Owning a currency or property allows you to vote on issues related to how that currency or property should be run.
The voting section will list issues which are available to vote on, as well as feature requests, in descending order of popularity, and the current vote tally for each
Mastercoin messages needed for voting are:
Create new issue (title and what the options are, such as YES/NO or A/B/C/D)
Vote on issue (address X votes NO on currency Y issue Z)
Weight of vote is proportional to the amount of currency or property owned by that address (proof of stake)
Create a new feature request (title and description)
Vote on feature (address X supports feature Z on currency Y) – also weighted by ownership
A single address may only support one feature, and may only vote in one direction, however . . .
A user may split their vote by using multiple addresses
When some or all property is transferred out of an address which has voted, the votes of the transferred property are invalidated (this allows the owner of the new address to vote again)
Votes are advisory votes only, and are enforced by social contract, rather than by the protocol itself
