What exactly are colored coins? I've tried understanding, but I don't quite get it yet . . . Do any examples exist?
1 Answer
Colored coins are a method to track the origin of bitcoins, so that a certain set of coins can be set aside and conserved, allowing a party to acknowledge them in various ways. Such coins can be used to represent arbitrary digital tokens, such as stocks, bonds, smart property and so on.
The colored coins protocol is decentralized just like Bitcoin, but the current effort to develop an implementation is done under the BitcoinX project (tentative name), which also aims to provide some related services.
As this is still under development, you will not find any existing examples.
You can read more about it in Overview of colored coins (work in progress).
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Meni - do you have a list of whitepapers you've written? I thoroughly enjoy reading them. Mar 12, 2014 at 19:50
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@makerofthings7: Thanks! The list is quite short actually, in addition to colored coins there's AoBPMRS (bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf) and double-spending bitcoil.co.il/Doublespend.pdf. There are a few papers I collaborated on but are not really mine. I also have a blog, fieryspinningsword.com. And of course my vanity thread lists some of my more meaningful forum posts (bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=121314). Mar 12, 2014 at 23:18
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I'm curious if you have any modifications to a proof of stake...e.g. if you embrace any new ideas of others not in your whitepaper. That will be my next area of study. Mar 13, 2014 at 0:12
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@makerofthings7 - Not "new", I designed one of the original PoS implementations back in early 2012, much better IMO than the half-assed designs you see in various coins these days - en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake#Meni.27s_implementation. I'm also collaborating with Iddo Bentov on the Proof of Activity variant. Mar 13, 2014 at 9:21