Show HN: Lost Ethereum

[buttershakes]

Hi guys,

I've written the first proof-of-mistake crypto token on top of Ethereum. You can see it at http://www.lostethereum.com/

It's basically a proof-of-burn substitute for users who mistakenly sent to the wrong address. It requires a web3 enabled browser, i.e chome with MetaMask, Parity, Mist, etc. This let's the web interface seamlessly interact with the Ethereum network.

Let me know what you guys think.

[gus_massa]

From the pdf:

> This balance is reduced by the edit distance between the string representation of the two addresses. A one character difference yields 100%, 2 characters is 50% and 3 characters is 33% of total amount.

I'd be more happy with an exponential reduction, something like 100%/50%/25%.

An error with 4 characters gets 0%? (I hope that an error with 19 characters gets 0%.)

> The contract has a 1% inflation rate over found Ether to compensate the author.

I think that "inflation" is the wrong term here. Probably "commission" or "discount", but English is not my first language. Inflation is when you get the discount every year / month / day.

[buttershakes → gus_massa]

The reduction is capped at 33%. It doesn't redeem any amount past 3 mistakes. The reason being is that I didn't feel comfortable reducing the keyspace by more than that, although given the size of the keyspace I could have probably made it more lenient. Most of the errors people make I think are up to about 3 characters, based on a completely casual and informal survey.

It's inflationary in the sense that the total LOST tokens is the total amount of Ether + 1%.