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  • Rob Andrews
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The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« on: February 28, 2019, 11:52:58 AM »
DECIDING THE FUTURE OF PODC - PROOF OF DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING

Feb 28th, 2019


My what a ride its been in 2018.  (If we only knew everything that we know now, before the beginning of 2018, we would all be a little further ahead in life) - but for me - drawing closer to Jesus is the greatest achievement, and should never be traded for anything.

Going into 2018, I thought I was already experienced, but 2018 redefined that 'assumption' in many ways.  We had lots of things happen in our forums.  We had the huge HODL rise and crash.  I think while we were at our peak of 329 monthly orphans, we also took a lot of credit for this rise as if we - as a community - succeeded at something.  Another words, we should have been monitoring for our own pride and improving - but we let ourselves fall with the HODL fall.  Be very wary of taking credit for achievements -- I believe we were primarily influenced from external forces.  The cryptocurrency market was clearly influenced by Bitcoin and Dashes rise (and fall).

I personally had strong opinions of long held beliefs in certain areas only to be tested, and I've changed my opinion about certain things.  We had our sessions with our focus group (our internal advisors) and our external advisors (an SEC attorney, Manna, outwest advisors, DAHF, etc) and learned that we should be a utility, with a known revenue stream.  That going with DAHF would have pulled us in an anti-God direction.  And that we should add infrastructure to invite a Christian base to use the gospel features.

I'm only saying all of this because I want people to realize that many factors influence the decision of a good algorithm for BiblePay.  It's not that we are being hot and cold, it's that this is a complicated environment, and I personally want to make a long lasting decision that satisfies all of the facets to the highest degree.




We are trying to decide if we should retire PODC or keep it as an algorithm within Biblepay-core. 
The impetus for removing it is that a lot of us feel that our user-base has stagnated because PODC is too hard to understand and set up.
Thefore, it prevents us from sending the wallet to a brand new user - and allowing them to figure out on their own how to set up mining, receive rewards and tell their friends about BBP (free advertising and growth).

The problem with keeping both algorithms is it requires constant maintenace from the developers to focus on more than one.  The other problem is splitting rewards by 96% and 4% does not give POG the chance to grow.  So, the question is, should we completely retire PODC, and give the budget over to POG, so that POG can potentially grow our userbase automatically?

It could also be potentially floated to split the algorithms 50-50, allowing them to compete.  However, the issue with this is then our IT department still must support PODC and all of its related dependencies and infrastructure.  And, does a 50% PODC environment help biblepay more than a 100% POG environment?

That is what we will be discussing here.


Let me name off some of the facets in a mining algorithm:
IT Development Hours
IT Maintenance Hours
Coolness factor
Risk of a constantly supply of work units
User attrition/augmentation levels, Practicality, User Acceptance, Ease of Use, Community Growth/Price appreciation/Total orphan benefit
Algorithm Extensibility/Fragility
Hard emission reconciliation/Oracles, Whale Approval
Total infrastructure size and maintenance (3rd party credit sites, credit network, debug tool sites, pools)
Greed-Arms Race-Rat Race Levels
Jesus' (Christian Growth) levels/Christian Attraction/Christian Future
Blockchain Security


To start to compare the PODC algorithm to POG, let me first attempt to name some of the pros and cons of PODC:
NOTE!  The following views are *my opinion* as founder; if you disagree please have a civil conversation below, and vote appropriately.


Pros with PODC:

IT/Development: The Creation of PODC is already coded
Coolness:  The Rosetta cancer mining program is 'cool' and gives us a good image as in doing positive work for humanity, the highly technical users are drawn to 'try' podc as a challenge
Extensibility: The algorithm is modular (in that it works outside of biblepay and uses a sanctuary consensus),  and extensible (in that business logic changes can be made at the sanc level without requiring a mandatory)
Price Support: PODC has the 20bbp-per-rac rule meaning it "may or may not" cause price appreciation (I vote neutral on this as we can't tell at this point if this is good or bad for our price, since we appear to be stagnating).

Cons with PODC:

User Acceptance: The algorithm requires a dictionary of terminology to understand, so it appears to be complicated to learn by newbies, it appears to be complicated to be activated and maintained (without knowing the inner workings under the hood to understand how to keep it purring)
Dev Maintenance:  Development hours for Enhancing podc are still not complete, the algorithm certainly needs improved in the area of ease of use, the maintenance hours involved in maintaining PODC from an IT standpoint are relatively high
Fragility:  Fragility is high,  the risk of the contract breaking or changing is high, and the  BOINC/Rosetta/WCG interface risk is high
Work-unit-risk: The risk of work-units running out is medium to high
User attrition levels:  User levels appear to be low and stagnating (based on our sideways to shrinking podc diff level and user count), podc appears to attract richer users with many horizontal computers (in contrast to average users with a low pc count)-and this appears to stagnate growth as the rich users take a high percentage of rewards away from the small users.  The small user base appears to have stagnated our price into a range of 7 satoshi (due to the average miner being reluctant to sell below the electricity cost of PODC).  (I feel BBP has a much bigger potential in many other ways). 
Infrastructure Size and maintenance: The total infrastructure size is High (due to needing 3rd party tools for debugging and for credit reporting), and third party sites like pools and web support sites need maintained.
Greed-Rat-Race-Arms Race Level:  The Greed/Rat-Race level appears to be very high (as each user wants to achieve higher RAC than others) and this appears to create an environment in BBP where higher results are more important than talking about the gospel (Ive posted many snippets to links about Jesus in the middle of our forum, and actually was screamed at by people saying I was spamming, but yet I dont recall anyone starting a real conversation - other than a couple people who just disagreed about the Jews a year ago).
  The people we are attracting to the community for cancer research seem to be more scientific and less Theological (this is entirely an assumption and I dont mean to offend anyone - I actually want the atheists to come, but they dont appear to be coming to learn about Jesus from PODC), and I realize this is a hard requirement, so I simplify this down to : how can we attract a LOT of new users that turn to Christians that stick around.
Blockchain Security:  We have less hashpower being directed at POBH and more to PODC (because financially PODC pays 96% of the reward) so this results in less total network security with more machine power being used for RAC. 
Oracle/Whale Approval:   Whales may be reluctant to jump in as a BiblePay investor if emissions are not fully reconcilable in a hard way on-chain (when the whale takes into account the entire subject for coinbase-reconciliation).


Pros with POG:


IT/Creation: POG is coded,  99% of the POG maintenance (est) is already completed
IT/Maintenance:  POG is low maintenance
Work-Unit-Risk: POG does not have a work-unit limit
User attrition/growth:  POG has the capacity to attract *more users per consumed electricity KWH than PODC* because it is 80% greener than PODC and in addition it rewards users for holding distinct coins (meaning that a reconciled POG user daily reward points to One head, not many machines) therefore I conclude POG equals more HEADCOUNT than PODC, This theoretically means BiblePay expands its participation level, this results in community growth/help with tasks/price appreciation/more orphans, POG is very easy to setup - it is almost turnkey.
Fragility:  The algorithm is not fragile
Reconciliation/Trust/WhaleApproval: The payment emissions are hard and reconcilable, there is no oracle / trust issue, there is no tampering issue, POG would theoretically be whale approved.
Infrastructure: POG reduces total infrastructure down to an in-wallet novel pool and removes the need for 3rd party credit sites, pools, and debug tools.
Greed-arms-race-rat-race:  The rat-race and greed level appears to be very low (as people will be Giving to the foundation to receive a reward and hashing on single machines per head) and only out of personal generosity running multiple hashing machines.   
Christian Growth:  The total headcount appears to be aligned with increasing the attraction of Christian community members
Blockchain Security:  Security is increased due to having an increasing reward (1 mil per day towards pog) means a 10* userbase size increase, meaning a 10* POW security increase.  POG scales well to thousands of users.


Cons with POG:


Coolness factor: POG is much more "simple" than PODC (IE we aren't solving humanity's most complex problems) so we lose the "cool" factor of cancer-mining.
Extensibility:  POG can't allow us (currently) to change its rules without a mandatory (extensibility). 



« Last Edit: March 03, 2019, 08:23:40 PM by Rob Andrews »


  • afeno
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2019, 01:36:28 PM »
It is a difficult decision but I think that for the long term, POG has more chances to succeed.
However, I think that POBH (reward to the person who solved the block) should be higher. I would set it back to 4% and fully replace PODC by POG (37.5%)

Why? We need to give the opportunity to newcomers to mine some blocks (with some reasonable rewards) and earn some BBP for doing POG later. Otherwise, we are forcing the newcomers to buy BBP in order to start doing POG and this is reducing drastically our opportunities to grow.

A POBH less than 1% (current setup) will demotivate newcomers to start mining BiblePay.

This is only my opinion.


  • sunk818
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2019, 01:58:51 PM »
Overall, I agree PoG is greener than PoDC and support switching to PoG completely. I'd prefer a spork where the payout reduces over time, but I think you said it was too much development hours. So, complete removal of PoDC and move to PoG is my answer.

Some concerns with PoG:

1) If PoG is going to be marketed as "green technology", minersleep=325 as a default is problematic. I think minersleep=950 is better. I actually had a VPS host ban me because of CPU abuse. I thought I could run biblepayd to support the network, but it was solo mining (without my permission frankly) and using up too much CPU. That feels like ill-behaving software to me. mining doesn't need to be on everyone's computer... just the ones that want to intentionally mine and they can do it on a pool. I actually did win a block solo mining using minersleep=950 , so it is possible! ;)

2) BOINC cpid (data outside of blockchain - oracle) was used as unique identifier and had some limits placed on who could mine a block. That restriction is removed. When PoBH reward goes back to previous levels, what's your proposal to prevent botnets? Is there a mechanism using blockchain data only to have similar safeguards? I worry because botnet may not want to upgrade versions or could allow double spend attacks with back to back block rewards.

3) Is auto tithing for android BiblePay still going to happen?

4) Will funding for PoG marketing be available? Having an external consultant to create a marketing plan? Volunteers, bounty, and/or paid workers to execute the plan?
4a) Are there plans to simplify PoG faucet on pool.biblepay.org ? I've had two reports that SMS verification did not work for them (carrier not on list, phone number not accepted)
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  • Rob Andrews
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #3 on: February 28, 2019, 02:46:39 PM »
Overall, I agree PoG is greener than PoDC and support switching to PoG completely. I'd prefer a spork where the payout reduces over time, but I think you said it was too much development hours. So, complete removal of PoDC and move to PoG is my answer.

Some concerns with PoG:

1) If PoG is going to be marketed as "green technology", minersleep=325 as a default is problematic. I think minersleep=950 is better. I actually had a VPS host ban me because of CPU abuse. I thought I could run biblepayd to support the network, but it was solo mining (without my permission frankly) and using up too much CPU. That feels like ill-behaving software to me. mining doesn't need to be on everyone's computer... just the ones that want to intentionally mine and they can do it on a pool. I actually did win a block solo mining using minersleep=950 , so it is possible! ;)

2) BOINC cpid (data outside of blockchain - oracle) was used as unique identifier and had some limits placed on who could mine a block. That restriction is removed. When PoBH reward goes back to previous levels, what's your proposal to prevent botnets? Is there a mechanism using blockchain data only to have similar safeguards? I worry because botnet may not want to upgrade versions or could allow double spend attacks with back to back block rewards.

3) Is auto tithing for android BiblePay still going to happen?

4) Will funding for PoG marketing be available? Having an external consultant to create a marketing plan? Volunteers, bounty, and/or paid workers to execute the plan?
4a) Are there plans to simplify PoG faucet on pool.biblepay.org ? I've had two reports that SMS verification did not work for them (carrier not on list, phone number not accepted)
1) I feel this is really up to the user - they can make it as green as they need by increasing the minersleep.  We dont want to artificially lower it because then you could self compile and cheat.

2)  Although I have a plan that I will release by June regarding the Christian economy idea, and this idea does have a new keypair per user for new features (like upvoting rapture videos, etc), I dont think it will be necessary to force the key to be used to solo mine.  Ive been thinking about this a lot, and I think with POG only paying the reaper 20% of the block, we should probably invite as much hashpower to biblepay as possible and not restrict it.  So impho, I dont think we will have a botnet with pog.  I think we would have a botnet with pure POBH, if we didnt have pog, and then I would suggest doing the Christian miner keypair or some scheme to limit that effect, in that case.             SECONDLY:  Remember POG was specifically designed with anti-botnet features in mind (POG attracts headcount, not machine count) - this is anti-botnet by definition.

3) YES!  MIP can shed some light on this, he is looking at this and he believes it is feasible with our current setup.  We are still working with Apple to see what is blocking an Apple release of Biblepay Mobile.

4) Our existing P2P/PR budget is available.
4a) We could make a 2nd faucet that does not require SMS but pays less, not sure yet.  Maybe have each person enter a github ticket with the actual phone number issue, and maybe we can work through some of those problems.

« Last Edit: February 28, 2019, 02:58:31 PM by Rob Andrews »


  • Rob Andrews
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2019, 09:27:55 AM »
It is a difficult decision but I think that for the long term, POG has more chances to succeed.
However, I think that POBH (reward to the person who solved the block) should be higher. I would set it back to 4% and fully replace PODC by POG (37.5%)

Why? We need to give the opportunity to newcomers to mine some blocks (with some reasonable rewards) and earn some BBP for doing POG later. Otherwise, we are forcing the newcomers to buy BBP in order to start doing POG and this is reducing drastically our opportunities to grow.

A POBH less than 1% (current setup) will demotivate newcomers to start mining BiblePay.

This is only my opinion.
Thanks, I agree the reaper reward is pretty low right now, and increasing this would give us more POBH pow security.

If we vote to retire PODC, what would happen is that 1 million per day dedicated to PODC would go to the pog and the reaper, and we would see a 10* increase in reaper/pog pool payment allocations.

So with 100% pog, the reaper would get about 1100 bbp per block, the sowers would get 10* the amount they get now in the pog pool.

(IE our block would be a simple 20% (reaper)-80% (pog pool) split at that point) on the pow side.  The 4% number would no longer apply.





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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #5 on: March 01, 2019, 02:11:55 PM »
PoBH reward used be around 450 BBP. Is the proposal to increase this to 1k BBP? You technically don't need to participate in PoG to mine a block.
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  • Rob Andrews
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #6 on: March 01, 2019, 06:00:20 PM »
PoBH reward used be around 450 BBP. Is the proposal to increase this to 1k BBP? You technically don't need to participate in PoG to mine a block.

POG pays the reaper 20% and 80% remains in the pool.
So - I'd like to enter the Sanctuary proposal to authorize the retirement of PODC.

On the reward level, if we retire PODC, all the POW rewards go to POG - this is essentially moving about 1 mil a day into POG.

You are probably thinking about when we had POBH + PODC - that was 450 for POBH.

This would be pure POG with a reaper reward without PODC dragging the POBH reward down.







  • sunk818
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2019, 11:14:34 AM »
If pog only passes we need a clause in there on how to handle podc balances. many people can't do exec podcupdate with pog. It could a simple message to please move your funds out of Rosetta to a non tithe address. Or change the code to allow bankroll and tithing of podc funds later on.

If you want smooth transition to pog after pog passes, podc users need to be taken care of.
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  • Rob Andrews
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2019, 11:29:11 AM »
If pog only passes we need a clause in there on how to handle podc balances. many people can't do exec podcupdate with pog. It could a simple message to please move your funds out of Rosetta to a non tithe address. Or change the code to allow bankroll and tithing of podc funds later on.

If you want smooth transition to pog after pog passes, podc users need to be taken care of.

I think I've explained this a few times now;  pog does not skip PODC address funds, as we don't have PODC denominated fund types.

You can make an exec bankroll out of funds in PODC labeled addresses.

I've yet to see any github issue on 'exec bankroll' not working properly.



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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2019, 12:19:39 PM »


exec bankroll bug .... didnt know bankrolling....... i had 600 000 bbp in da wallet....... wallet is unlock,clean ....


  • Rob Andrews
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2019, 03:36:31 PM »


exec bankroll bug .... didnt know bankrolling....... i had 600 000 bbp in da wallet....... wallet is unlock,clean ....

Could you do the same screen shot with a 'sendtoaddress your_bbp_address 1
In between, before the exec bankroll command, to prove that the wallet is really unlocked?



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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #11 on: March 03, 2019, 08:06:03 AM »
For such a vocal topic I find it unusual no one is voting on the sanctuary vote.

And that we only have a couple people commenting.



  • talisman
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #12 on: March 03, 2019, 03:05:05 PM »
For such a vocal topic I find it unusual no one is voting on the sanctuary vote.

And that we only have a couple people commenting.

I believe this is partly (if not mostly) because people think it's going to happen no matter what they say. I do not consider BBP a community-driven project anymore. It is effectively a one-man-show. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but many investors (including me) feel safer in an environment of collective mind, in which democracy thrives and teams with contingency plans exist.

Such a discussion would make much more sense if we had POG running successfully for a while, with proven increase in user count, and positive effect on prices.

Other investors have voiced concerns about where we are standing, as in here: https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=368.msg5417#msg5417

It would have been nice to see an answer from the lead developer there. Yet, you seem to be consumed with the desire to bring POG live at full scale. I still do not get the whole idea behind it. I tested it with different strategies, and I see I can make 5:1 gains on average; which means I will keep getting similar returns to PoDC if I keep my stake in the system. What I do not understand is, how this system will bring in the thousands of new users you keep mentioning. (Even if they come, me and the like will drive difficulty up to upsetting levels for them?)

I do not want to keep it long; resistance is futile. Just let us know which block height you intend to make the switch at.




  • Rob Andrews
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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #13 on: March 03, 2019, 03:31:22 PM »
I believe this is partly (if not mostly) because people think it's going to happen no matter what they say. I do not consider BBP a community-driven project anymore. It is effectively a one-man-show. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but many investors (including me) feel safer in an environment of collective mind, in which democracy thrives and teams with contingency plans exist.

Such a discussion would make much more sense if we had POG running successfully for a while, with proven increase in user count, and positive effect on prices.

Other investors have voiced concerns about where we are standing, as in here: https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=368.msg5417#msg5417

It would have been nice to see an answer from the lead developer there. Yet, you seem to be consumed with the desire to bring POG live at full scale. I still do not get the whole idea behind it. I tested it with different strategies, and I see I can make 5:1 gains on average; which means I will keep getting similar returns to PoDC if I keep my stake in the system. What I do not understand is, how this system will bring in the thousands of new users you keep mentioning. (Even if they come, me and the like will drive difficulty up to upsetting levels for them?)

I do not want to keep it long; resistance is futile. Just let us know which block height you intend to make the switch at.

Although there have been some periods over the last year that I ended up working alone, we don't want to mislead everyone into thinking I'm the only one here.  It's not very nice to discount BBP and ignore MIP, Bhavani, TheSnat and all of our helpers (web developers and volunteers).  And its also not nice to put me down for having the perseverance to stay here (when others would have walked away, like Slovakia did with our explorer for example).

Next, I started in the most democratic fashion with no premine and bought my stake in biblepay in the most fair way, above the market.
We are, and I demand that this is understood by everyone, fully democratic, because this is a sanctuary vote, not a vote by me.

I don't have all the threads marked for monitoring, but Ill be glad to monitor that thread and make a comment.

Resistance is not futile if you want to lobby the other ~80% (IE the supermajority who owns the sanc voting rights, you can ask them to vote the other way) - that is if you really believe PODC is our future.



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Re: The Future of PODC - Proof of Distributed Computing
« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2019, 03:31:40 AM »


exec bankroll bug .... didnt know bankrolling....... i had 600 000 bbp in da wallet....... wallet is unlock,clean ....
most of them have coin age 0.0 so without confirmations, you dont have confirmed 55k for bankroll