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Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 14:21:04 -0400
Message-ID: <CAJHLa0MT-7mVOsdvMnXS19Y2EOthHb806RY_JWqivjS6vSL5pQ@mail.gmail.com>
From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@bitpay.com>
To: Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] is there a way to do bitcoin-staging?
Precedence: list

On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org> wrote:
> Its a live beta, meaning real value, real contracts.  But we dont want it to
> be an alt-coin with a floating value exactly, we want it to be bitcoin, but
> the bleeding edge bitcoin so we want to respect the 21 million coin limit,
> and allow coins to move between bitcoin and betacoin with some necessary
> security related restrictions.
>
> There is no mining reward on the betacoin network (can be merge mined for
> security), and the way you opt to move a bitcoin into the betacoin network
> is to mark it as transferred in some UTXO recognized way.  It cant be
> reanimated, its dead.  (eg spend to a specific recognized invalid address on
> the bitcoin network).  In this way its not really a destruction, but a move,
> moving the coin from bitcoin to betacoin network.
>
> This respects the 21 million coin cap, and avoids betacoin bugs flowing back
> and affecting bitcoin security or value-store properties.  Users may buy or
> swap betacoin for bitcoin to facilitate moving money back from betacoin to
> bitcoin.  However that is market priced so the bitcoin network is security
> insulated from beta.  A significant security bug in beta would cause a
> market freeze, until it is rectified.

Quite a neat idea...


> - it avoids mindshare dilution if alternatively an alt-coin with a hit
>    missing feature takes off;

FWIW, litecoin devs are open to having litecoin be a bit of a staging
area for new bitcoin features.  Obviously there is some self-interest
there -- "we have new cool stuff first!" -- nevertheless, it is a live
test that could demonstrate problems with new features before they
land in bitcoin-stable.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
Senior Software Engineer and open source evangelist
BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/