Thank you so much for this feedback, it's exactly the kind of discussion which benefits a project.
With Bitmark I see it sitting in the middle of that spectrum building off the foundation that Bitcoin provides while also observing and analysing the evolution of cryptocurrency technology. This way Bitmark can implement innovation with much lower risk while still being far beyond Bitcoin since Bitcoin is more or less constrained by its own size.
Almost exactly as I see it. I would clarify:
1. Bitmark will implement proven and
useful innovations from alts, if and only if they increase the usability of bitmark as a currency, so no token things like chat.
2. Any Bitmark innovations will be in making it more accessible and simpler to integrate with, i.e. focussed on adoption, technically the user interface and API.
The biggest concerns I have for Bitmark in it's current state are these:
1. Unless there is easy access to scrypt ASICs for everyone to rent I worry that one or two individuals who are in possession of those devices before the mass propagation of ASICs to the general public could dominate the hashing. They could use that hashing power for malicious purposes but I think it's more likely that they would just monopolize the mining and probably hoard the coins while waiting for the project to progress.
2. This one I'm not really qualified to speak on but I've seen some people imply that the Bitcoin codebase is somewhat antiquated and actually implementing a lot of upgrades is extremely challenging and in some cases not possible without major revisions or complete rewrites. I'm not sure about how true this is but I would appreciate your thoughts on that matter.
1. It is possible, more likely to be 5-10 individuals though, and for hoarding not malicious purposes, as there is nothing to be malicious about with a zero value coin. This itself, the zero value, should hopefully mitigate the risk of excessive hoarding. We must factor in the cost of mining and length of time to a return. In this economy who is willing to mine for weeks in order to hold a coin for a few years? Not many, and not at such a speed that they would dominate the network.
This is speculation with some reasoning, we do not know what will happen but can try to influence things or mitigate risks.
Perhaps the proposal I made about reverse-ipo/ipm can have some impact, ensuring that hashing power is distributed evenly over the first weeks and months..
Some observations: hoarding and dumping is natural, the dumping distributes coins to new adopters, so does have some value. People will always speculate, either by mining or buying, there is not much we can do. There are lots of ASICs to rent, short term it is insignificant, long term has a more noticeable associated cost. People have always been rewarded by adopting early in to successful projects.
2. As a programmer I cannot see anything lacking, it works, it's modern, it's updated daily, and most importantly it is future and backwards compatible with possibly the highest quality assurance in the world. The developers focus on streamlining it and making it more useful, rather than bloating it up with "innovation". I've been a senior level programmer since the 90s and rate it higher than any other project I've encountered. There is some truth the code could have been developed differently, more modular, perhaps in the way an enterprise project would be, but there are major benefits to having simple reduced code, much easier to debug, easier to read, and critically far less bugs. I am happy using it for sure, and comfortable modifying it as I have been.
Thanks again and these are not definitive answers, they are personal, fallible, opinions. It will take a community effort to iron out the faults.
