The Cypherfunks are a Band with a Twist News 2 minutes

South Africa is home to some really cool crypto projects. This one caught our attention.

The Cypherfunks are an online music experiment that aims to fuse an internet band and a crypto-currency: creating some funky mutant offspring.

The Cypherfunks were founded by Stellenbosch’s Simon de la Rouviere. We know Simon from around the traps. He contributes greatly to the space.

We dropped him a line. Here’s what he had to say:

1. Cypherfunks is both a decentralised band and a decentralised crypto-currency. What is a decentralised band?

The other term for it is “Internet band”. It is a band anyone can be a part of: affiliation is free and there are no barriers to entry. It’s a more fluid band. Anyone can come along to remix a song, work with others, release music, and so forth.

It answers the question of what a band could look like in the digital age: something that hasn’t changed that much. It is experimenting with different ways in which musicians can come together to make music.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/cVulWS8PxRA&rel=0]

2. What is the goal of the experiment?

The goal of “The Cypherfunks” is to create music through a new type of collective. With an extra dose of chaos (loose and free affiliation to a band), we can hopefully create new, awesome music.

3. In what ways do you see the decentralised currency interacting with the decentralised band?

A decentralized or Internet band can actually exist without a cryptocurrency. The reason why a cryptocurrency was added, was because it provides a backing (or a foundation) to the network that will proliferate under the idea. A cryptocurrency’s strength is the network effect it enacts.

It also means that musicians can more freely get involved, because owning FUNK is basically like very liquid stock in the band. So if we make a hit song, we can all be successful!

4. This is a Scrypt coin, the same as Litecoin. When can people start mining it?

The genesis block was mined on the 21st of February. New users to cryptocurrencies can start here: http://blog.thecypherfunks.com/mine. More seasoned crypto-currency enthusiasts can find the pools at the BitcoinTalk thread. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=469407.0

5. There is a constant supply of them over time. (Unlike Bitcoin and Litecoin, which are strictly limited in supply). Why was this decision made?

I wanted FUNK to act both as a stock & currency. Which means, over time transaction fees might not be enough to keep the miners interested (as the amount of transactions might not be enough).

I think a lot of coins will catch dips if they haven’t achieved escape velocity at that point. I have thought about doing it as proof-of-work/proof-of-stake coin which has also constant supply coin.

But I want the coin to be understandable and useable by anyone, not just cryptocurrency enthusiasts: so explaining people that they can “get money” by just doing “nothing” seemed like a bigger hurdle than just saying: “The Cypherfunks is community. There are miners sustaining the blockchain and being rewarded for it.

You can send and receive FUNK without worrying about it”. It remains to be seen whether this will work out. It’s worth noting that it will only have a 2,5% increase in the first year (after the 4 initial years), and then slowly decreasing each year. So it is not huge, but enough to keep miners interested in the future.

6. How do you personally see this project developing over the next 12 – 18 months? It’s a long-term project. Creating good music takes time. So for now, that basic infrastructure is in place (miners, pools & exchanges), it’s all about making music and growing the community. We’ve got people involved from across the world (from Indonesia, South Africa to the US).

The concept is “internet band” first and “cryptocurrency” second. It’s a big hurdle to educate musicians about this concept and what can it can mean, but we have already some guides up for people to understand it. Baby steps.

I Implore people to join the sub-reddit (http://reddit.com/r/thecypherfunks), follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/thecypherfunks), follow the SoundCloud account (http://soundcloud.com/thecypherfunks) & join the SoundCloud group (https://soundcloud.com/groups/the-cypherfunks).

In 2 weeks, there is already 4 songs that have been released. Here is one of the funky tunes from the Cypherfunks: