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Analyzing Token Sale Models

Note: I mention the names of various projects below only to compare and contrast their token sale mechanisms; this should NOT be taken as an endorsement or criticism of any specific project as a whole. It's entirely possible for any given project to be total trash as a whole and yet still have an awesome token sale model. The last few months have seen an increasing amount of innovation in token sale models. Two years ago, the space was simple: there were capped sales, which sold a fixed number of

Hard Forks, Soft Forks, Defaults and Coercion

One of the important arguments in the blockchain space is that of whether hard forks or soft forks are the preferred protocol upgrade mechanism. The basic difference between the two is that soft forks change the rules of a protocol by strictly reducing the set of transactions that is valid, so nodes following the old rules will still get on the new chain (provided that the majority of miners/validators implements the fork), whereas hard forks allow previously invalid transactions and blocks to become valid, so clients must upgrade their clients

A Note On Charity Through Marginal Price Discrimination

Vitalik Buterin via the Vitalik Buterin Blog Updated 2018-07-28. See end note. The following is an interesting idea that I had two years ago that I personally believe has promise and could be easily implemented in the context of a blockchain ecosystem, though if desired it could certainly also be implemented with more traditional technologies (blockchains would help get the scheme network effects by putting the core logic on a more neutral platform). Suppose that you are a restaurant selling sandwiches, and you ordinarily sell sandwiches for $7.50. Why did

[Mirror] Quadratic Arithmetic Programs: from Zero to Hero

Vitalik Buterin via the Vitalik Buterin Blog This is a mirror of the post at https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/quadratic-arithmetic-programs-from-zero-to-hero-f6d558cea649 There has been a lot of interest lately in the technology behind zk-SNARKs, and people are increasingly trying to demystify something that many have come to call "moon math" due to its perceived sheer indecipherable complexity. zk-SNARKs are indeed quite challenging to grasp, especially due to the sheer number of moving parts that need to come together for the whole thing to work, but if we break the technology down piece by piece then