eMunie [ /‘i ˈmʌni/ ] was the name given to Dan Hughes’ distributed ledger project prior to the launch of Ethereum (~2013).
DEVELOPMENT | |
Founded | 2013-03 |
Founder(s) | |
Successor | |
LEDGER | |
Sybil Protection | Delegated Proof of Stake |
State Model | Unsharded |
Native Asset | $EMU |
SOCIAL | |
Twitter |
History
Hughes’ initial research centered around the concept of a stable-coin. Additional input came from the prevailing discussions on Bitcointalk about the definition of a currency vs commodity money (such as gold) between advocates of Ludwig von Mises, Keynes and Hayek. Early Radix community members, including Shawn 'Peachy' Keehn were drawn to Hughes’ idea of a stable coin with a flexible supply model that could grow autonomously whilst maintaining parity; i.e. an autonomous AI-centric Federal Reserve, which could sense real-time demand signals and adjust the supply accordingly. This goal is still on the roadmap and 2.1bn $XRD have been reserved for that purpose.
"Most of those early years were with a sizable group of us having fun with the different versions of the beta client and network that Dan would rollout daily where we could use a ‘spambot’ to simulate txns going around the world to other members to stress-test the peak throughput. Greg, one of the original founders, was notorious during these events as his slow-ass Internet often proved to be the hammer that brought down the system. (Sorry to throw you under the bus Greg! I love you bro’). Each of these tests gave Dan the insight he needed to understand the full S.W.O.T. of various network designs and harden the code further. The original eMunie client was super fun and awesome to use. Dan’s a Java-uber-whiz and was able to put the front-end together quickly and easily. That allowed him to develop some novel ideas and prototype solutions that became the genesis for some things that other projects now take the credit for developing. This never bothered Dan as he was enamored by the crypto space at the time (we all were) as it had more of a collaborative feel and ethos vs. the distinctly ruthless-naked-capitalist vibe that now seems to have prostituted Satoshi’s original idea. Some of his original concepts that are now used regularly are things like ENS (emunie naming system) which you now find with several projects. His ‘marketplace’ concept (i.e. decentralized Amazon) was also novel at that time. I remember another project (open bazaar I believe) sprung up a few months later to try it out as a separate concept. I also remember when we were originally toying with the DAG data-model. The lead founder from IOTA (come-from-beyond) was constantly over on our forum, but he was highly interested in our findings and my personal opinion is that he used that concept for the whole IOTA development framework. I’m sure there will be disagreements on that topic, but it’s how I remember it. Dan’s reasons for not pursuing the DAG-model are now easily visible for why IOTA is experiencing the challenges with the model currently. There are also a few other ‘borrowed’ concepts as well and I’ll post them as I remember them. The overarching goal for the client back then (and will be part of the driving force for any future client) is, and always will be, on ease-of-use. (i.e. Grandma proof). If it isn’t easy to use then adoption will suffer." - Shawn 'Peachy' Keehn, November, 2020, Telegram.
Features
The eMunie client integrated the following features:
- Wallets (with easily-remembered ENS names) – with attachments enabled.
- Multi-sig wallets (simple to use)
- Escrow wallets with timed payment releases
- Telegram-like fully encrypted chat rooms
- Private email messaging with integrated Address book.
- Marketplace (Decentralized Amazon)
- AppStore (Decentralized Google Play / iStore)
- Browser (for private surfing)
- Asset creation system
- Ratings system (i.e. Yelp-like user ratings)