2015 - Reddheads newsletter 12: Reddcoin reorganises View this email in your browser Reddcoin reorganises

Greetings Reddheads. After a pause of several months, it gives me great pleasure to be sending you the latest issue of the Reddheads newsletter, bringing you news from the Reddcoin community. As most of you are likely aware the Reddcoin project has been undergoing profound change. The instigator for this change was the announcement made by Laudney at the end of June to the Reddcoin dev team that Reddcoin Ltd is being closed down, and the subsequent announcement by Jonathan (aka @reddcoin) that Laudney was stepping down as lead developer. Over the days and weeks that followed, this news set off a chain reaction of further announcements by team members regarding their future roles in the project, and a flurry of discussion regarding the future of the project itself by Reddcoin community members. A notable upshot of this discussion has been the generous pledging of funds by certain community members, with a view to supporting further development. This newsletter brings you more details of Laudney's resignation and the subsequent discussions and actions taken by the Reddcoin dev team and community. But it is always important to keep the project in perspective within the wider context of the cryptocurrency space, and to do this I also take a brief look at some current news, particularly relating to Bitcoin and Ethereum. To round off this opening editorial, I am happy to announce that the Reddheads newsletter is now back on schedule for regular publication. Expect to receive Reddcoin news in your email at the beginning of every month. Reddibrek Editor Reddcoin Ltd closes; Laudney resigns At the end of June this year, Laudney messaged the Reddcoin team to give an update: as directors of Reddcoin Ltd, Jonathan and Laudney had decided to wind up the company. The timing for this process would take around three months. The other major update from Laudney: he would not be writing any more code for Reddcoin, effectively stepping down from his position as lead dev. Laudney gave more details of the decision taken by himself and Jonathan, including their wish to transition Reddcoin into an entirely open-source project. The announcement lead to internal discussion among team members @bigreddmachine, @gnasher, @tralf, @reddcoin, @laudney and myself regarding particular elements of the project. Jonathan added further moral support to the idea to open-source the project by making clear his belief that the team should proceed to work in a more decentralised fashion, with less focus on hierarchy and any particular leader. The most important thing to take home about these discussions is the subsequent action taken by Jonathan to start to make good on the promise to decentralise the project. The founder of Reddcoin has since distributed administrative access to the Reddcointalk forum and Reddit page to two other team members, and elevated others to moderator level on the forum. Also as importantly, the news that Laudney would no longer lead development brought on a wave of existentialist questioning by the rest of the team. It was time for each member to state their intentions for the future. Decision Time With hindsight, Laudney's news was not so surprising. It was the culmination of a period of apparent stagnation in the project, with development slowing and less communication between the devs and the community. So when Laudney made his announcement to the team it was naturally the right moment for everyone to take a step back and evaluate their participation: would they stay or go? Without putting too fine a point on it (the restructuring process is still underway) the current status of the team is as follows: @reddcoin: Jonathan hopes the project will continue and is keen to work with the team of developers who carry on. Jonathan has begun the process of bringing new people into administrative roles governing the Reddcoin infrastructure, starting with the forum and Reddit page. @gnasher: John is at the forefront of the movement to re-invigorate the project. He has carried out and continues to conduct extensive research into ways to build a new tipping platform, and has chosen to make this task his primary responsibility. John is also an administrator of Reddcointalk.org. @bigreddmachine: Mike has expressed his desire to stay on in his role as caretaker of wiki.reddcoin.com, the kind of work that complements his academic background. He is interested in finding ways to develop the Reddcoin ecosystem, although he does not wish to be an official representative of the team. @tralf: Andrew has stated his wish to continue his work on the browser wallet code, although all development on this sub-project has been paused for several months and there is no timetable yet in place for restarting. @lionzeye: Leonard may have been relatively quiet for the past few months but he has stated his intentions clearly on the forum and in a recent response to an email: “Still working on a soon-to-release Android wallet and in-app payment system.” @raid5: Adam has provided a recent update confirming that following the completion of some initial UI building for the iOS wallet, he has no involvement in any work. According to Adam the next step is to find a dev who could work on the internals (blockchain-related work, transactions, etc. in Objective-C), at which point he would consider helping with the integration/UI. @reddibrek: With the publication of this newsletter I am "back to work" for the project, managing Reddheads.com and working as administrator on Reddit and Reddcointalk.org. There has also been a recent new addition to the team: at the time of Jonathan's announcement on Reddcointalk of Laudney's resignation, community member Henry (@henry) proposed to begin contributing to development. Since that time Henry's input into discussions and planning has been of great quality and significance; the C++ developer has decided first to work on a new release of the QT wallet, to bring it in line with specific recent updates to the Bitcoin / Litecoin codebase. Everyone involved is really pleased to have Henry on board. The transition of the team into a more open and decentralised model is not a process that will happen overnight; indeed there are discussions to be had and decisions to be made regarding exactly how much "official" structure will remain in the team. While it is clear that the team and community would like the project to be more decentralised, pure decentralisation remains an abstract concept (in general, not just for Reddcoin); in practice the organisation of work and of a complex IT or community project will always benefit from healthy teamwork, which itself implies the pooling together and at some level the coordination of individual efforts and specific responsibilities. Fundraising

Amid the diverse reactions to Laudney's departure and the news of the closure of Reddcoin Ltd a group of pro-active and generous community members formed to promote a fundraising effort, with a view to raising reddcoin to support development work. The spontaneous donations pledged over the period of a few weeks have totalled nearly 100 million RDD to date. In discussions between the developers and the community, a consensus was reached on the idea to store the funds pledged in a multi-signature wallet address (idea instigated by @henry), which can only be accessed when 3 of the 5 signatories attached to the address sign each transaction. Taking this as an opportunity to be another step towards decentralisation and the increased participation of the community, it was proposed that at least 3 of the 5 signatories be community members, with the other 2 being developers. The results of the poll to select the community member signatories have been counted. The community members selected are: @FaithinReddcoin @GrayPhoenix @Dan



The next step will be for the community to decide whether to select 1 or 2 of the developers to act as the other 2 required signatories to the fundraising address, or whether to enrol further community members for the responsibility. Watch Reddcointalk for updates. Crypto current affairs

Projects in the cryptocurrency scene rely on each other to a great extent. There is a huge amount of code shared between projects, which are all based on the same core blockchain principles. There are shared proof-of-work mining algorithms, variations on proof-of-stake minting algorithms, myriad releases of the QT wallet in all shapes and sizes... the list goes on.



But it is not only technical aspects that link cryptocurrency projects – over the past couple of years dozens of VC-funded cryptocurrency businesses have sprung up, many of which share core business models: payment processors, micropayment platforms, etc.



The strongly interdependent nature of cryptocurrency projects and associated businesses results in shared reactions in the markets and shared sentiment. Therefore it is always important to consider the wider picture to keep things in context.



21 Inc.



One of the biggest Bitcoin news stories to come out over the past few days has been the launch of the first product from the mysterious, heavily-funded ($120 million) 21 Inc., a company which has up until now been keeping its gameplan secret.



The product is a computer with an integrated Bitcoin mining chip – a Raspberry Pi-powered tool with native hardware and software support for Bitcoin – and it is already stirring up controversy with its detractors claiming flaws including the cost of the machine, the risk of the mining chip becoming quickly obsolete, and the overly specialised nature (a dev tool) of the product. But interestingly while the debate continues over the viability of the "21 Bitcoin Computer", it has become the top-selling new release in the computer server category on Amazon



21 Inc. aims to build a Bitcoin business model at the heart of the "Internet of Things" and the company's ideas have implications across the cryptocurrency spectrum. Read an article written by a sceptic by following the relevant link at the bottom of this newsletter.



BitPay



One of the first Bitcoin payment processor companies, Bitpay has been laying off staff as it struggles to make ends meet. Coupled with this news it has recently come to light that the CEO of the company was tricked into sending $1.8 million of Bitcoin to a hacker who simply wrote to him from the email address of the company CFO.



A recent article appearing on the MIT Technology Review website – on which diverse Bitcoin pieces have been published in the past – draws on this news as evidence that Bitcoin is not a good payment method. It is an interesting read and highlights some of the difficulties faced by a company that is attempting to graft Bitcoin onto a traditional payment processor business model.



Ethereum



While the recent blog post by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin clearly aims to give a detailed and balanced explanation of obstacles – including financial difficulties – facing the project, the reaction on certain forums has been less nuanced. Whatever the point of view taken on the matter certain facts are unarguable, one of these being (as noted by Buterin himself) that the Ethereum project suffered a $9 million shortfall due to a failure to carry through with a planned sale of Bitcoin (most of the project's funding was realised in BTC) , followed by a drop in the price of the flagship cryptocurrency – a nother example of the interdependency of crypto projects.



Still nascent...



News such as this highlights the fact that the Bitcoin / cryptocurrency scene is still nascent. On one hand there appears to be huge potential and notable interest from investors; on the other hand it is unclear which directions will be fruitful.



And what about the holy grail – the "killer app". Will this be related to the Internet of Things? Will adoption of Bitcoin as a currency continue to grow? Does the killer app even exist?



One thing is clear: whatever there is to conceive of, to build and to gain – it is all still there for the taking. Projects in the cryptocurrency scene rely on each other to a great extent. There is a huge amount of code shared between projects, which are all based on the same core blockchain principles. There are shared proof-of-work mining algorithms, variations on proof-of-stake minting algorithms, myriad releases of the QT wallet in all shapes and sizes... the list goes on.But it is not only technical aspects that link cryptocurrency projects – over the past couple of years dozens of VC-funded cryptocurrency businesses have sprung up, many of which share core business models: payment processors, micropayment platforms, etc.The strongly interdependent nature of cryptocurrency projects and associated businesses results in shared reactions in the markets and shared sentiment. Therefore it is always important to consider the wider picture to keep things in context.One of the biggest Bitcoin news stories to come out over the past few days has been the launch of the first product from the mysterious, heavily-funded ($120 million) 21 Inc., a company which has up until now been keeping its gameplan secret.The product is a computer with an integrated Bitcoin mining chipa Raspberry Pi-powered tool with native hardware and software support for Bitcoin21 Inc. aims to build a Bitcoin business model at the heart of the "Internet of Things" and the company's ideas have implications across the cryptocurrency spectrum. Read an article written by a sceptic by following the relevant link at the bottom of this newsletter.One of the first Bitcoin payment processor companies, Bitpay has been laying off staff as it struggles to make ends meet. Coupled with this news it has recently come to light that the CEO of the company was tricked into sending $1.8 million of Bitcoin to a hacker who simply wrote to him from the email address of the company CFO.A recent article appearing on the MIT Technology Review websitedraws on this news as evidence that Bitcoin is not a good payment method. It is an interesting read and highlights some of the difficulties faced by a company that is attempting to graft Bitcoin onto a traditional payment processor business model.While the recent blog post by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin clearly aims to give a detailed and balanced explanation of obstaclesincluding financial difficultiesfacing the project, the reaction on certain forums has been less nuanced. Whatever the point of view taken on the matter certain facts are unarguable, one of these being (as noted by Buterin himself) that the Ethereum project suffered a $9 million shortfall due to a failure to carry through with a planned sale of Bitcoin, followed by a drop in the price of the flagship cryptocurrencynother example of the interdependency of crypto projects.News such as this highlights the fact that the Bitcoin / cryptocurrency scene is still nascent. On one hand there appears to be huge potential and notable interest from investors; on the other hand it is unclear which directions will be fruitful.And what about the holy grailthe "killer app". Will this be related to the Internet of Things? Will adoption of Bitcoin as a currency continue to grow? Does the killer app even exist?One thing is clear: whatever there is to conceive of, to build and to gainit is all still there for the taking.

This Bitcoin chip is supposed to be the future of micropayments. I'm skeptical.



Timothy B. Lee

The troubles of "Bitcoin's Paypal" show why the cryptocurrency is not a good payment mechanism



Tom Simonite





The Evolution of Ethereum



Vitalik Buterin