Current Cryptocurrencies

Thoughts on Current Cryptos

I knew very little about openLedger projects or Steem until May 23, when mistyping DAO to DOA led me to Dan Larimer’s article about bitShares and mass voting. It opened my eyes to a slightly bigger world of competing blockchain technology. That’s when I realized there may be biases in the cryptocurrency space.

What I mean is that Ethereum users tend to see it and the DAO as the ultimate evolution in cryptocurrency. Many Bitcoin users swear by Bitcoin as the current ultimate system. Another group is the openLedger crowd. Although less visible, they seem to have a pretty thorough systems and deserve appropriate notice.

Steem looks impressive and the idea of an open ‘facebook’ is awesome. The white paper appears comprehensive and there is some community support.

Voting principles

Let me first independently summarize my thoughts on open social media platforms, ignoring Steem at the moment.

Social media weight should never be according to buying ability but by merit. Altho being 'rich' may help you popularize someone, it shouldn't represent popularity or legitimacy. Also perhaps, comments could be self-categorized and one’s weight/contribution be kept per category. (I'm assuming here that popularity or other merit could possibly empower one's ability to significantly "up-vote" posts or influence popularity on some systems.)

Dao voting must be by ownership or in other words by money, but with a social governing system (governments), it should be weighted by person. Social media weight perhaps should be by trustworthiness or contribution. If "the dao" creates a webpage to present ideas, it could have voting power based on the log of one's tokens, which then are used to up or down vote individual proposals or comments. Or it could allow the user to enter their own formula.

I haven’t figured out exactly why minimum votes to pass a proposal includes negative votes. Why not have 10% positive votes be the minimum, unless it is intended that negative votes come later at the end.

The Smart Contract Race

Ethereum touts computational completeness, but still may be a fragile creature. Despite this it may ultimately succeed and mainstream best or first.

Dao, if successful, may branch into a world of useful innovation.

OpenLedger seems to be a comprehensive alternative to ethereum and smart contracting.

Bitcoin combined with rootstock.io may be a powerful alternative to the above. I believe Bitcoin to be the best with currency, and what if we could just create a separate inter-linked or inter-related contract network that still uses the very thought-thru Bitcoin for money management?

Litecoin as a low volume coin is kind of out of my radar for now along with others. Plus I lost $9 worth when using a wallet to send from my address.

Mainstreaming

It may be important to mainstream something before open source gets outdone by well-run business. This will be an open/transparent system that complements traditional financial systems, even if those systems end up upgrading to blockchain comparable security. Can we convince users of financial systems to accept an open blockchain?

Perhaps a business will own the future blockchain space, but I believe an unowned open system may do more good. The basic network should be free while attached companies can be for profit.

So I see a world where institutions and patrons possibly do both transparent blockchain and centralized private banking, especially where private banking is limited.

Privacy

Open blockchain is transparent but gives up some privacy. Our banking system may not be so transparent-secure-or-trustless, while having the capacity to be private.

I see two main ideas: (1) traditional banking where amounts and information is kept private centrally, possibly answerable only to government (2) an open blockchain where all amounts are public and transparent.

Can dash really provide privacy while giving transparency?

In my opinion, complete privacy is difficult to achieve while having a transparent money supply. If this is true, can we convince users of financial systems to accept both blockchain (transparent amounts, less privacy) as well as the chains of centrality (hidden amounts, more privacy)?

Blockchain Hope

Perhaps all the current experiments whether successes or not, are moving the 'spirit' of blockchain forward. All energy or money put into any idea pushes the envelope.