ODCoin
Next iteration of the OSE Coin with slightly easier to say name (pronounced: "odd coin") and built ontop of ethereum's ERC20 standard instead of using Duniter (while preserving the Relative Theory of Money concepts).
What was wrong with OSE Coin based on Duniter?
A lot of architectural questions remain up in the air and it's not clear when Duniter will reach a stable enough point where other communities can safely and confidently adopt it for themselves. Furthermore, OSE does not need all of the features of Duniter and in fact could benefit from a slightly different approach to the WoT because we're a purpose driven community and want to tie the dividends to real world participation (only active OSEDevs get dividends).
Why not fork a bitcoin derivative or ethereum?
Bitcoin and derivatives are based on Proof of Work and there are no serious plans to switch to a more energy efficient consensus algorithm; therefore it's not ```appropriate``` for OSE.
Ethereum is still undergoing massive changes and we'd want to continue to benefit from upstream improvements and advances; especially with the Proof-of-Stake (Casper) changes that are coming.
Instead of forking ethereum and having to build out our own network and to constantly play catch up with upstream changes, it makes more sense to just build directly ontop of ethereum and benefit from it's scale, reputation and acceptance.
What is an ERC20 token standard?
ERC20 is a standard way of writing a contract in Solidity (Ethereum's programming language) so that the contract functions as a custom currency with a global ledger, thereby allowing people to create their own currencies. You just have to implement a handful of expected methods such as to check your balance, to send money, to approve a deposit, etc, and then your currency will work with all existing ethereum wallets and tooling.
See: https://github.com/ethereum/eips/issues/20
This sounds really easy to implement, what's the catch?
Actually, it is, that's why there are thousands of ERC20 tokens out there. There is a catch though:
The biggest issue for users with ERC20 tokens is that you still have to pay transaction fees (gas) in ether (Ethereum's base currency). Crypto currencies are already rather complicated for most people to use but when you add a requirement that fees (gas) are paid in one currency while the value is in another currency, things get drastically less user friendly.
Recently there was a proposal to solve this problem with some working implementations, ERC865: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/865
Essentially, it's a way for users to pay the gas and the value of the transaction in the same ERC20 currency by going through a middleman who will on-the-fly convert the ERC20 gas payment into ether.
It works like this (assume this is automated by a wallet program):
- Create a transaction, say you want to pay another OSE Developer 10 OSEDev Coins.
- Ask the middleman how much it will cost to do the transaction, middle man will figure it out based on how much it will cost in ether, what the exchange rate is between ether and your custom currency and then maybe add a little extra fee for their service and then they respond with the final fee denominated in OSEDev Coins.
- You then update your transaction to include the fees, re-encrypt everything and send it to the middleman again, the middleman verifies that you added the correct fee and then they send your transaction off to the real ethereum network and cover the gas with their own ether.
- The Solidity contract inside of the ethereum network will then do the payment from you to the other developer but it will also deposit the fee to the middleman into the middlemans wallet.
- Eventually the middleman will try to sell the OSEDev Coins so that she can get more ether to pay for more transactions.
This would allow people to use solely OSEDev Coins to transact. Someone who's willing to learn a little more about ethereum and wants to skip the middleman could still do transactions themselves and cover the gas fees using ethereum's base currency.