Poll: Peercoin or Bitcoin as the most desired way to distribute dividends?

[cryptog]

In which coin(s) do you want to have your NuShares dividends distributed?

• Only Peercoin
• Only Bitcoin
• Both

Show results

[cryptog]

I am aware of the fact that such a poll could be controversial since the design document of NuBits says that the dividends should be distributed in peercoins but nothing prevents shareholders from changing that.

I would like to run such a poll because I see less and less value in using peercoin, personally for the following reasons:

1. I believe we need to attract more Bitcoiners. One of the reasons why BCE has been able to have a strong exposure in bitcointalk (and from there to get substantial funding) is the fact that it would distribute dividends in bitcoins. Doing the same within Nu would have the same effect, I believe.

2. Bitcoin is getting more and more centralized but the hash rate is still rising and we have seen more and more capital going into its sphere. So Bitcoin has a commodity is getting stronger. So the original statement that said that Bitcoin was not secure enough (because too centralized) in order to be used as a dividend distribution vehicle on the long run is not so important any more.

3. It is way easier to cash out bitcoins rather than peercoins for the simple reason that most exchanges do not deal with peercoins and probably will never do.

4. I believe one of the reason why Peercoin was chosen was to attract Peercoiners into Nu while at the same time it was intended to say thank you to Peercoin and the Peercoin community. It was very important for the bootstrap.

5. Peercoin was a main innovation that yielded Nu but it is not actively developed and most crypto enthusiasts have only a small interest in Peercoin.

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EDIT: corrected typos

[Nagalim]

Can you add a second poll with BKS distributions?

[masterOfDisaster]

I agree with all, but 2).
The hash rate is not what makes Bitcoin secure. It’s the distribution of the hash rate and that is getting more and more centralized (just have a look at mining data centres!).
I’m pretty sure that Bitcoin will fail due to that centralization and the financial incentives provided by attacking the network under certain circumstances - only I don’t know when that will happen.
Any coinbase reward halving can be such a point of time - the next being in less than one year from now.

If you are interested in such a scenario and the reasoning, have a look here:

It's Happening!!!! • r/Bitcoin

Still I think distributing dividends in BTC for all the other reasons.
Especially 3) makes it easy to get rid of BTC

[Sentinelrv]

but it is not actively developed

I disagree with this. While it may not have lots and lots of developers clamoring to make things for it right now, Sunny King has been working on the v0.5 and v0.6 upgrades for a while now and the former is currently under review and making its way toward release soon. Sunny may be slow in releasing updates, but he hasn’t abandoned Peercoin and continues his long-term goal to align it with Bitcoin’s development.

Also, I have no faith in the future of proof-of-work and Bitcoin at all. It may be important right now, but it won’t last. Peercoin will only become more important as a crypto commodity as Bitcoin suffers its slow death due to the unsustainability of proof-of-work. It’s not important right now because people still have hope that Bitcoin will succeed. When it finally starts to fail, I believe there will be a mass exodus into proof-of-stake and Peercoin. Sunny needs to remove checkpoints before that happens though. v0.6 will hopefully work toward that goal.

[masterOfDisaster]

but it is not actively developed

I disagree with this.

It depends on the scale.

Peercoin is developed veeeery slow compared to Nu or other things.
But there’s no need to hurry for Peercoin, because

• it’s designed to last.
• it’s no business.
• its development is not being paid for (except for Peer4Commit projects).

Still the slowness of Peercoin is shying away a lot of people who don’t take their time to understand in-depth why Peercoin is unique and might once become Bitcoin’s successor.

But first the world needs to realize that

• Bitcoin is no currency
• Bitcoin’s long-term sustainability is in doubt (pleasant understatement)
• Bitcoin’s centralization is dangerous
• there’s no way to align the interests of those who operate the Bitcoin network (miners) with the interests of the users

As strange as that sounds: until that happens, paying BTC dividends can attract people to Nu and Peercoin and save them from baring the loss when Bitcoin fails and they did not sufficiently diversify their holdings.
Offer BTC dividends to open their eyes!

[Sentinelrv]

I do agree that offering Bitcoin as a choice would be strategically good for Nu, using the same reasoning why it was done for B&C. I don’t see it as something that would last forever though, but merely as a way to get more people interested in Nu right now. Eventually Peercoin would hopefully grow to become the more important dividend option as Bitcoin runs into trouble. We can’t predict whether that will happen though, so it makes sense to offer the most popular dividend choice currently available, which is Bitcoin. Therefore, I would support a motion adding Bitcoin as a dividend choice. I’m not sure how that would be done technically though.

[masterOfDisaster]

I’m not sure how that would be done technically though.

Given a motion to do that would pass, it could be done just like it was done with the distribution of BlockShares as dividends to NSR holders using an adjusted client.
As BTC dividend distribution will be developed by BCE, Nu can profit from that development by leaning on the BTC dividend specific code.

I think the dividend distribution can have a big benefit in terms of marketing.
And I think the marketing effect is superior to the “distributing value” effect, because those who feel like receiving “the wrong” type of coin, can (and should) exchange PPC for BTC, BTC for PPC or whatever (PPC and BTC for NSR?) they prefer at an exchange.

[Hyena]

I support dividends in pure PPC. However, I would like to see an RPC that would enable me to set the dividend address to a custom Peercoin address for security considerations. In other words, I don’t like the idea of holding the private keys to my NSR in the Peercoin’s wallet. Perhaps alternatively the PPC dividend receiving private key should be a cryptographic hash taken from the NSR’s private key. In that way, if my PPC wallet gets compromised, there is no danger to my nushares.

Has anyone considered the idea of distributing dividends only to the NSR that are actively minting blocks? Pros and cons? It would encourage people to mint and thus secure the network. But then again, block reward already does that.

Offtopic:
Does anyone know anything about the following transaction?
https://bkchain.org/ppc/tx/3edccaab5cf7407ffde1865a3f3d7b8839b7bdb2f150329a5644fb6e62773d78

My dividend receiving address has apparently received some dust PPC on the 4th of September. I am not minting with my dividend receiving PPC address, so what’s the case?

[Sentinelrv]

I just wanted to say that I accidentally chose PPC in the poll, when I meant to vote for both, so take that into account for the results.

Also a question. How would a NuBits dividend custodian know how much Bitcoin and PPC to buy and which addresses to send it to? Right now it’s easy because PPC goes to all addresses, but if it’s split up then the custodian will need to know how much of each to purchase for dividend distribution.

[CoinGame]

I just wanted to say that I accidentally chose PPC in the poll, when I meant to vote for both, so take that into account for the results.

You can change your vote.

[Sentinelrv]

You can change your vote.

Thanks.

[masterOfDisaster]

I don’t like the idea of holding the private keys to my NSR in the Peercoin’s wallet.

I might have understood that wrong, but my understanding is: you don’t!
You hold the private keys to your PPC in your Nu wallet (walletS.dat) instead.

Perhaps alternatively the PPC dividend receiving private key should be a cryptographic hash taken from the NSR’s private key.

It must already be similar, but related to the NSR public key and not the private key.
The PPC dividend public key seems to be derived in some way from the NSR public key. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to send PPC dividends to the PPC addresses associated with the NSR addresses.
You don’t have to announce PPC addresses; the Nu network can derive them from the NSR addresses. That wouldn’t be possible if it had to do with the NSR private key.

In that way, if my PPC wallet gets compromised, there is no danger to my nushares.

It’s the other way round: if your Nu wallet gets compromised, there’s danger for your PPC - unless you have transferred them to a different PPC address after you have received them in your PPC wallet.

[cryptog]

As BTC dividend distribution will be developed by BCE, Nu can profit from that development by leaning on the BTC dividend specific code.

Confirmed here.

[jooize]

You all seem to have addressed most points I would also make. I have little faith in Bitcoin’s long-term future because of its sustainability issues and/with centralising mining (=security). Radically changing Bitcoin at this point appears unfeasible, and so Peercoin is a prime and only candidate I see among the Bitcoin-based cryptocoins that tries only to do the backbone role. I don’t have much insight in Ethereum, Monero, Nxt, etc., though.

Talking about backbone has always seemed vague to me. To completely break free from the current financial systems I think there has to be some sort of asset with free value, and Peercoin seems to be one with healthy distribution and life expectancy. The way Peercoin might sustain itself should be valuable as a central ledger for settlements.

NuBits is a currency, and we’re having this conversation because we can’t pipe revenue into Nu itself.

If distributing dividends in Bitcoin can earn Nu publicity, I’m not opposed to it. We don’t have to distribute in Bitcoin forever. As much as I’d like Nu to generate upward pressure in Peercoin, a greater Nu would have even more power to do that later. Plus—as you suggest—we could do both partially.

[crypto_coiner]

After having looked into the arguments stated above, I vote for both options.

[JordanLee]

I would like to offer some relevant information about the technical feasibility of the choices in poll.

Nu can be switched to supporting Bitcoin dividends and B&C could be switched to Peercoin, if shareholders vote for either of those outcomes. The development effort required to do so is quite small. Existing shareholders would have the hassle of having to export their dividend keys again. This is quite feasible and reasonable. There is a good understanding among shareholders of the relative strengths and weaknesses of using Peercoin vs Bitcoin. If shareholders wanted to switch, I don’t have any technical objections.

There are two possible interpretations of the notion of supporting both kinds of dividends. One would allow each shareholder to choose Peercoin or Bitcoin, so that a single dividend distribution would distribute Peercoin to some shareholders and Bitcoin to other shareholders. Implementation of such a feature would be complicated and expensive. We could define either Peercoin or Bitcoin as the default. If a shareholder wanted the non-default coin, they would need to place a special transaction in the blockchain saying so. The person distributing the dividend would need to perform a distribution for each coin and make sure the value distributed is proportional (so the Bitcoin and Peercoin dividends have the same value on a per share basis). I strongly advise against selection of this solution due to its complexity and expense.

An alternative interpretation of the “both” option is to allow each dividend to either be all Peercoin or all Bitcoin. Custodian A could deliver a Peercoin dividend and then custodian B could deliver a Bitcoin dividend. This is much simpler to implement, although it isn’t as simple as a permanent switch. Shareholders would need to export keys for both and it complicates the user experience. I wouldn’t favour such a solution.

[cryptog]

26 voters so far.

[cryptog]

Shareholders would need to export keys for both and it complicates the user experience.

I can imagine it would complicate the user experience but after all it would just consist in adding “export Bitcoin keys” under the Shares tab in QT, below “export Peercoin keys”.
Am I mistaken?

By the way after 3 days of polling, it seems that the percentage of shareholders that would like to rely only on peercoins is lower than the percentage of shareholders that would like to use bitcoins as well.
Therefore, I think it will be useful to make a motion draft that asks for the implementation of a function enabling bitcoin-based dividends distribution, which I would do, if the trend persists.

[cryptog]

32 participants now.