Summary of Ravencoin — @brucefenton
Here’s a summary of Ravencoin — @brucefenton
1/ First: The paper isn’t asking anyone for a penny- it’s actual technical paper not a marketing document for a centralized scam coin/ICO. Ravencoin is a free & open source community project
2/ The paper is open for peer review, its not working to sell you something, its purpose is to discuss ideas and determine if this science can work, comments are welcome —
3/ There is no leader, CEO or corporate controller, the project is decentralized, real free & open source with anyone able to contribute, dev funding is voluntary and/ or covered by community, personal & corporate donations — mining is fair, transparent POW (proof of work)
4/ The purpose of the Ravencoin protocol is to use a significantly modified code fork of the Bitcoin code adding OP RETURN changes and the ability to issue assets, add messaging and pay dividends -Ravencoin is already operational,
5/ all Ravencoin in existence are issued the same way: through a fair and transparent mining process — there are over 20,000 miners (or 80k? not sure how to read node count depending on pool) securing the network with 1.5 GH/s in hash power — wow!
6/ In only three months the community of fans got together and built a highly secure and decentralized network with a strong blockchain, wide diversity of mining and nodes and lots of activity — all driven by community members with zero paid marketing
7/ Over 800,000 transactions have been done on the network so far, network and mining growth and the community has grown rapidly with active Telegram and Discord channels
8/ total supply is fixed at 21 bn coins– block rewards are currently at 5000 with a halving schedule the same as Bitcoin’s in terms of adjusted blocks, 773 million coins (approx. 3.6% of total supply) have been mined since the coin’s public and fair launch on Jan 3 18
9/ there was no premine, developer set aside, founder or advisor coins, solo mine, insta mine, tricky gpu algo holdback, sale, pre-sale or any public or private fundraising of any kind: notice was given…
…code was released & people chose to run it — thats it
10/ within one day the network had 70 miners, within a week it was 4500, since then the hash rate has grown and adjusted and grown again
- a chart is at rvnstats.info
11/ these code changes to allow asset creation (as well as a new ASIC resistant algo called x16r, 1 min block times etc) wouldn’t be practical to add to Bitcoin and the purpose of Bitcoin is not to serve as rails for tokens — — hence the reason for a separate project
12/ BTW the x16r algorithm was invented for this particular project (already at least one other project has used it in a fork) — — x16r rotates through 16 algorithms at random — intention is to make this difficult to make an ASIC for
13/ even if someone creates and ASIC, main devs have a stated policy to code an algo change to break the asic — that’s very raveny
14/ (by the way, ravens are amazing animals — part of legends from Shakespeare to Edgar Allen Poe, Norse legend and they are worshiped and subjects of stories in numerous cultures — the birds are highly intelligent, punish cheaters and remember allies)
15/ Heres some more on ravens
We Knew Ravens Are Smart. But Not This Smart
The birds are surprisingly skilled at planning how to get food in the future, and will even trade for it.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/ravens-problem-solving-smart-birds/
Now back to creation of assets on a blockchain
16/ Will tokens and assets on a chain be a thing? Who knows? I can argue securities tokens all day …doesn’t mean I’m right — but I’m pretty sure SOMEONE SOMEDAY will SOMEHOW make ONE token or crypto kitty that has value — this doesnt matter to the code
17/ The Raven protocol will allow creation of fungible assets which can represent whatever the user wants them to represent (coins, tokens, in game gold, securities tokens, flyer miles, good projects, bad ideas, whatever)
18/ Users will ALSO have the ability to issue unique assets such as in game items, tokens representing a serial number, physical bar of gold, art etc.
19/ I personally think there are TONS of good uses for tokens such as securities tokens — but that’s a separate conversation — the protocol doesn’t care if securities tokens become a thing, the protocol doesn’t even know what a security is (& shouldn’t)
20/ Yes there are also tons of issues with using a blockchain to represent physical assets — will they make it impossible? I don’t think so — from a scientific / technical paper standpoint does it matter? Nah …
21/ All that matters from a computer science & technical standpoint is whether the protocol can do what it is trying to do (issue tokens, allow messaging, dividends, unique names etc) — the evidence indicates that what the protocol is trying to do is possible
22/ We know that step one can be done: the creation of a secure, decentralized network running this code — that’s been done already by the Ravencoin community
23/ The rest of the changes and code upgrade are being worked on and tested — the chief developer is working on a paper for the “Kaaawww Protcol”, which is the built in messaging system for token holders
24/ Messaging is cool and unusual (unique in this way afaik) — — the protocol will allow a token creator to message token holders(!!!) — this is automatically opt in because only voluntary holders get the message and it can ONLY come from that token’s admin
25/ So someone can create ActivistCoin and divide it in to 100 parts, send one privately & securely to another activist (who can also divide it) and they can all receive uncensorable messages from that token’s admin
26/ (to be clear this is for tokens created ON the Ravencoin network, not Ravencoin itself) RVN can also be sent to token holders as a dividend or reward — the ability to send RVN to other token holders is another interesting, perhaps unique feature of the protocol
27/ Messaging also works for securities tokens: right now ERC20 token holders have no way to message token holders — if they are securities this is a problem — you need to be able to message shareholders, tokens on RVN will be able to
28/ Messaging can be fun for games and other uses as well — holders of the Platinum_Sword_of_Badassery can get a special message for a hero quest that only they can get –
29/ Game players can also bring their virtual suit of armor to a game upgrade or to an entirely different game — expect small independent game developers to use common currency, items & cross-platform tokens — games will use more open source sharing
30/ Since the suit of armor or other game good is represented by a token the user can print it on to a paper wallet or sell it to a friend or carry it in a mobile wallet
31/ Cant a database do all this? Yes!! But ONLY if its self-contained and separate — as soon as you want to go cross platform or with parties who don’t trust each other (like global banks and brokerages) you benefit from a decentralized system
32/ A database ABSOLUTELY can NOT duplicate what the combination of Ravencoin and atomic swaps/ LN can do — not now and not after the code uprgrade
33/ Anyway — project aims to be cypherpunk and free and open source not just due to ideology but because it is good business and makes sense — in a true global economy centralization fails because the centralized powers often disagree
34/ As soon as transactions are censored — no matter how noble the intent — the network suffers. Saudi Arabia, Israel, Tibet and China are not going agree with OFAC and the EU on who gets banned — they will have to handle this off chain
35/ Any chain which competes with a more open and decentralized one will fail if all else is equal — AML/ KYC etc will be handled by each jurisdiction- its the only way real crypto can work
36/ Oh yeah — the lead developer of Ravencoin is named TRON BLACK — seriously, that’s his real name — (he was born before the movie, dad was an engineer, named him after Electron, which is also cool)
37/ Tron (the person not the scam coin) was the one who came up with the ways to add Omilayer / Counterparty style features into the protocol, co-author of whitepaper & is author of the upcoming Kaaawww Protocol messaging that was mentioned
38/ Project has a lot of supporters already — most well known is Overstock CEO, Patrick Byrne — Medici ventures has allowed employees to work on open source projects like this on company time and has donated significantly to development
Ravencoin — About To Take Flight? — Jim Roof
https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/3186521-jim-roof/5127973-ravencoin-take-flight
39/ Since there is no central authority over the project, people can build what they want — anything that can be built on bitcoin or Litecoin should work relatively easy on this platform
40/ there are lots of mining pools and other projects working with this protocol — its 90 days old with a very strong community
41/ You wont see paid marketing etc for RVN unless community driven — to participate in the project:
Whitepaper: ravencoin.org/Ravencoin.pdf
Website Ravencoin.org
Twitter @Ravencoin
https://discordapp.com/invite/jn6uhur
