What Is Reddcoin?

Proof of Stake Velocity often referred to as PoSV is offered as an alternative to Proof of Work normally called PoW and Proof of Stake abbreviated to PoS to ensure the security of the peer-to-peer network and confirm Reddcoin transactions, a cryptocurrency specifically created to enhance social interactions in the digital period.

The PoSV is designed to encourage both Stake i.e. ownership and Velocity i.e. activity which is directly related to the two main functions of Reddcoin as a real currency which are being a medium of exchange and having the quality to store monetary value. Reddcoin also functions as the unit of account in heterogeneous social context.

The technological parts of PoSV are neatly presented after a detailed review of designs that existed before it. The economic parts of Reddcoin are then thoroughly analyzed. The unique position which makes Reddcoin serve as a digital social currency in the competitive world of cryptocurrencies is finally discussed.

what is reddcoin

Bitcoin recently graduated to being the most discussed and in some cases controversial topics. Ever since Satoshi printed his bitcoin idea on a paper in 2008, Bitcoin has developed from a technological experiment which interests only a few computer enthusiasts to what is now arguably the most important innovation by most people.

Recently, various types of Bitcoin (altcoins) are created almost everyday which has led to the emergence of a whole new industry of altcoins such as trading exchanges, mining pools, gaming websites etc. Not so many topics today can be as polarizing as cryptocurrency. Some of its merits offered by technologists are considered a crime by economists.

People who believe in cryptocurrency always consider it a movement while disbelievers often regards it as a fad. While one group defends it dogmatically the other will be against it in kind which makes either camp think of the other as being intellectually lazy to see what they see and This major obstacle has hindered cryptocurrency from being accepted by the general public.

Most of the innovation in the world of cryptocurrency has been almost exclusively technical. Technologists have put forward improvement on various sections of Bitcoin, such as new hash functions replacing SHA256 and new mechanism instead of Proof-of-Work. Very few cryptocurrencies have been designed to address the economic and social aspects of being a real currency. Reddcoin, at the time of writing, seems to be only one. This paper is written with three goals in mind which are:

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1. providing a broad overview of the current issues surrounding cryptocurrency, both technological and economic, which was missed by the original designers.

2. to address these issues with proposals which require coordinated changes in both low-level network protocol and high-level economic and social ecosystem.

3. to encourage a more open and objective discussion of cryptocurrency by the general public and promote a more complete thinking for future innovation in cryptocurrency world.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the merits and demerits of Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) from both economic and technological points of view. PoSV is then proposed to address those demerits in the context specific for a digital social currency.

The technological design choices of PoSV are given in broad strokes. Section 3 addresses the commonest criticism by economists on cryptocurrency and shows how Reddcoin and PoSV in conjunction provide new answers opportunities for social research in general.

Section 4 places emphasis on the major differences between Reddcoin, a digital social currency which focuses on integration with human social interactions and aims to make concrete and add quantity to people’s intangible asset of social influence, and the common digital commercial currencies which aim to foster transactions of goods and services and offer protection from hyperinflation.

Technology

Cryptocurrency uses the cryptography principle to execute a decentralized, distributed and secure cash system. It provides solution to the double-spending problem in a distributed ledger by introducing a mechanism which secure the network against 51% attacks and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Proof of Work - Proof of Work (PoW) are pieces of data which are costly to produce so as to satisfy specific requirements but are trivial to verify. Bitcoin uses the Hashcash PoW. Mining which is the process of producing PoW, is very vital in creating, distributing and securing Bitcoin and many of its variants. The major criticism of PoW mining is in its massive energy wastage which results into a large amount of money which cannot be recovered. In addition to wastefulness stated above, there are a lot more reasons why mining remains a very controversial aspect of PoW cryptocurrencies.

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Mining Arms Race - Mining, due to many factors, is extremely competitive and it has undergone so many evolutions since the introduction of cryptocurrency in 2008 which depends on the amount of energy required, time it will take to recover mining cost etc. During the very early age of Bitcoin, CPU was used to carry out the mining operation but when mining became available on graphics cards (GPU), mining on CPU was seen to be loss-making.

Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) are designed to carry out PoW computation at several magnitude higher speed and lower energy cost started to emerge and soon rendered GPU mining obsolete. Miners who cannot afford continuous hardware upgrade due the constant changes taking place in mining could not recover initial investment. This constant changes have seen so many hash functions starting from SHA256 used in PoW of bitcoin to use the Scrypt hash function.

Scrypt was initially touted as “ASIC-resistant” due to its heavier memory usage. It is now known to be “ASIC-ignored”. ASIC is designed and manufactured to perform all the hash functions but its entry barrier is all financial and not technical. Unless there is sufficient market demand for mining Scrypt-based cryptocurrencies, it’s simply financially unprofitable for manufacturers to invest in the production of such ASICs. The demand of the market has seen ASICS thrived as the demand for script based functions are few.

Proof of Stake - Proof-of-Stake (PoS) first introduced in Peercoin is an alternative to PoW. The resource used by PoS is referred to as “coin age” which is currency amount times holding period. Like energy, the coin age is also expensive to amass in large quantity. One important feature of PoS is the significant reduction in energy consumption. There is also a better alignment of incentives between miners and stakeholders because miners are now the stakeholders. PoS however has several limitations which are initial distribution, hoarding, full nodes and mining on multiple forks.

Proof of Stake Velocity - The velocity of money is the frequency in which a unit of currency flows through the economy while being used by members of the society within a given period. Everything being equal, a higher velocity of money indicates a more flourishing economy, richer members and a healthier financial system. The formula to measure velocity of money in a given time frame is the follow: VT = nTM where VT is the velocity of money; nT is the aggregate notional of transactions and M is total amount of money in circulation. In other words, given a fixed amount of money in circulation, velocity of money must be increased in order to increase the size of the economy.

Economics

There has always been extensive debate about Bitcoin. Economists remain unconvinced of Bitcoin’s status as a real currency. Reddcoin and PoSV are created to address some of those issues and offer new angles to re-examine the questions.

Medium of Exchange - There is a consensus on Bitcoin’s function as a medium of exchange. In fact, almost all the merits of Bitcoin talked about today boil down to how it acts as a better medium of exchange, e.g. global reach, lower fees, much quicker transaction and easy to use. Mining bitcoin with a huge amount of energy makes economist considered bitcoin to be a drastic retrogression. In comparison, PoS and PoSV mining require little energy consumption and can be done by any average user on any computer and even mobile device.

what is reddcoin

Unit of Account - Reddcoin is designed to fill gap in becoming the first digital currency integrated with all major social networks and serving as the “unit of account” for social interactions in the digital age. Inside the distributed ledger of Reddcoin, transactions can be read not only in pure financial terms but also as proxies for human behaviours. Social scientists have since been looking for a way to track, study and organize human social behaviours in the large scales. Reddcoin offers a unique global platform for these areas of research and open up new possibilities for value-add services.

Store of Value - Economists are very skeptical of Bitcoin’s function to store value. They compare Bitcoin with the US dollars and gold and point out its lack of a fundamental floor of the value. What will a floor on value of Bitcoins really be? Terms such as PoSV, PoW or PoS in itself does not provide a fundamental floor for cryptocurrency value. Due to PoSV which is specifically designed for Reddcoin makes it enjoy a floor of its value due to its purpose of functioning as the global reserve currency of human social influence.

Deflation vs Inflation - It cannot be considered as money if it cannot be discussed in terms of inflation. Bitcoin and most of its variants were created with a deflation model where the total amount of the cryptocurrency is capped. Bitcoin has developed into a modern digital version of the gold standard world in which the supply of money is fixed rather than subject to increase via printing press.

Supporters of bitcoin believe deflation is a virtue in preserving the value of Bitcoin against inflationary fiat currencies thereby making it a better store of value. PoS and PoSV both uses an inflation model with fixed nominal interest rate. For instance, Peercoin adopts a nominal interest rate of 1% per annum compared to PoSV’s 5%. Central banks of developed countries like Bank of England, Federal reserves and European Central Bank have a long-term inflation target of around 2%.

PoSV chooses 5% because Reddcoin should encourage more spending i.e. social interactions, than other cryptocurrencies which do not share this goal and also given the global nature of social networks which constitute of users in both developed and emerging markets, 5% seems to create a balance. The monetary system of Reddcoin is not designed to make people who hold money rich, but to foster transactions and ensure the Reddcoin economy as a whole rich.

Digital Social Currency

Social vs Commercial - A commercial currency is the commonest currency form and its primary function is to enhance transactions in exchange of goods and services. Bitcoin and its various types now serves as the latest innovation of commercial currencies and is recently competing head-to-head with fiat currencies like USD and EUR, for shares of commercial transactions in the global economy. A social currency in its nature is completely different.

Getting Started With Reddcoin

Reddcoin is the social currency that makes digital currency easy for the general public. It achieves this by integrating a digital currency platform seamlessly with all major social networks to make the process of sending and receiving money rewarding for everyone.

Proof of Stake Velocity - An innovative algorithm that encourages both ownership (Stake) and activity (Velocity). PoSV solves issues in traditional PoW & PoS algorithms and eliminate wasteful consumption of electricity for mining.

Tip Platform - A decentralized tip platform that allows people to send and receive digital currency on social networks to anyone in the world and to support content creators through donations.

Redd-ID - A unique service provided at the blockchain level which allows a user to associate a username with rich information including public keys and social network identities.

ReddWallet - A state-of-the-art wallet that provides various social features to increase engagement among users which improves security of the decentralized network.

Reddcoin was conceived to be a full-fledged social network coin - or as we like to say, The Social Currency. The developers are currently building a hub that will manage the various social media tipping accounts that will be created on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. The plan is to make Reddcoin into a hybrid of e-currency/crypto, reward points, etc. Basically, Reddcoin will be internet points with actual monetary value. Already, tipping has been enabled on Twitter, Twitch, and Justin.TV, as well as here on Reddit.

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The idea is to have a system that makes it easy for people and businesses to auto-tip people, re-posts, etc. Then people can use their Reddcoins on websites to purchase items or use them in games like Freemium games in place of purchasing in-game credits. This would benefit businesses, developers, and users alike. If you buy credits in-game or for a specific site, you're stuck to using them in only that place. With Reddcoins, you could potentially use them any number of places, helping ease fears over purchasing game or site credits.

The plan for Reddcoin is to essentially be the internet's official "like" button. Can you imagine being tipped on Instagram for your picture upload, on Facebook for your location check-in, on YouTube for a silly video you uploaded, on Reddit for your witty comment, etc.? Now imagine being able to exchange those Reddcoins instantly for physical goods or gift cards. Or even transferring all your Reddcoins to a game you love playing. You would be getting paid for things that take zero effort or that you are probably already doing for free anyway.

How To Get A Reddcoin Wallet?

Step 1 - Wallet

Install the Reddcoin Core 2.0.1.2 wallet by selecting one below and follow the steps in the installer.

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After installing, the initial blockchain synchronization can optionally be sped up by following this bootstrap guide.

Step 2 - Coins

Reddcoin can be obtained from one of the many exchanges it is listed on.

The top three exchanges (in volume) are:

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A complete list of exchanges can be found on this wiki page.

Step 3 - Use

Reddcoins can be used in several ways: e.g. tipping and (micro)payments / purchases.

Reddcoin Resources

How To Buy Reddcoin?

Reddcoin is the social currency that enriches people’s social lives and makes digital currency easy for the general public. Reddcoin achieves this by integrating a digital currency platform seamlessly with all major social networks to make the process of sending and receiving money fun and rewarding for everyone.

By focusing on being a currency for social networking, Reddcoin will, most likely, become the currency for these systems, and thus the currency for the microtransactions they power.

what is reddcoin

Using the form above enter the amount of Reddcoin you want to buy or the amount of Australian dollars you want to spend and click on 'Buy Now' to complete the payment.

The payment is easily completed online in minutes by POLi Payments a business from Australia Post and after payment is complete the coins will be sent to your CoinSpot online wallet immediately.

If you don't have your own wallet you can sign up for a free account using the 'Register' button at the top of the page to create a free online Reddcoin wallet. You can withdraw your Reddcoin from the online wallet at any time.

How To Earn Reddcoin?

What Is Reddcoin Mining?

No mining pools available, the coin is now PoS only.

Latest Reddcoin News

Reddcoin project to-do list and details

Dear fellow Reddheads:

Hereby I provide details of the items on the to-do list of the Reddcoin project. I list the items, which you can think of as mini-milestones, in ascending order of expected delivery time. For each item, I provide a description, an estimated difficulty rating (for the purpose of a benchmark, I rate the difficulty of implementing PoSV as 10) and the people responsible if any.

As you will see, there is huge amount of work in the pipeline. All the developers are more productive if they are happier. Support and understanding from the community will make developers happier and more willing to commit their spare time. Do not harass any member of the dev team with accusation, insult or any other aggressive behaviour.

Social X

1. browser wallet, difficulty = 8, responsible person = @tralf, implements a hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet that supports BIP32/39/44, SPV block and transaction validation and communication protocol with Electrum server. The Chrome version will be finished first, followed by Firefox and then Safari.

2. Qt HD wallet, difficulty = 6, responsible person = @laudney, converts the existing Qt wallet into a HD wallet that supports BIP32/39/44. It removes the need for key pool and requires significant change to Qt GUI that can be quite time-consuming. As a bonus, the implementation will be based on Bitcoin 0.9.x branch.

3. Redd-ID, difficulty = 10, responsible person = @laudney, implements ID registration inside Reddcoin blockchain that supports association between social network identities and Reddcoin addresses to lay the foundation for universal micropayment across all social networks. This will be implemented in the full-node Qt wallet first.

4. PoSV 2.0, difficulty = 7, responsible person = @laudney, implements a much needed enhanced version of PoSV inside Reddcoin blockchain that rewards active stakers with interests of the total money supply. For example, if only 50% of the Reddcoin are staked, those Reddcoins will generate 2x interests, i.e. 10-12%. This will be implemented in the full-node Qt wallet first.

5. support for Redd-ID in the Electrum protocol, difficulty = 9, responsible people = @laudney and @tralf, allows Electrum clients (e.g. the browser wallet) to receive Redd-ID information from the server and save it in a local data store for lookup operations.

6. universal micropayment platform, difficulty = 10, responsible person = @tralf, implements a browser extension that allows micropayment to any user on any social network by bringing together all the functionalities of the rest of the Reddcoin infrastructure.

Bonus features

1. Android wallet, difficulty = 9, responsible person = @lionzeye, implements an Electrum HD wallet that supports BIP32/39/44 for Android devices. This is the topic of @lionzeye’s graduation thesis.

2. iOS wallet, difficulty=9, responsible people = @raid5 and others, implements an Electrum HD wallet that supports BIP32/39/44 for iOS devices. @raid5 has already written the GUI. We are looking for experienced iOS developers to take on the implementation of BIP32/39/44 and Electrum protocol.

3. support for Redd-ID registration on Electrum wallets (in addition to full-node Qt wallet) and allowing Electrum servers to earn registration fees, difficulty = 10, responsible person = @laudney.

Side Projects

1. reddcore, difficulty = 7, responsible people = @bigreddmachine and @laudney, a comprehensive Javascript library for Reddcoin

2. reddsight-api, difficulty = 5, responsible people = @bigreddmachine and @laudney, a hosted blockchain API for Reddcoin, can be used to monitor blockchain and broadcast newly created transactions.

3. reddsight, difficulty = 5, responsible people = @bigreddmachine and @laudney, a hosted blockchain explorer that usesreddcore and reddsight-api.

4. nodebb-plugin-reddcoin, difficulty = 5, responsible person = @Gnasher, a plugin for reddcointalk.org that adds tip buttons to users, posts and comment.

5. Python library for Reddcoin, difficulty = 6, looking for maintainer.

6. PHP library for Reddcoin, difficulty = 6, looking for maintainer.