@johnnyflynn wrote:

My first thoughts; I like GEMS for the token name to REALMS…

I do too if that was the only consideration, but the problems are:

• Realms won’t be the only dApp. Does every dApp fit well withGEMS as the token name.
• We’re making the underlying blockchain (which has the token name for all dApps) seem like a toy, a game, and not technologically serious. Or in the case of MANA going tribal/primitive/superstition instead of science/technology/engineering.

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EDIT: Note I’m not proposing to change the proposed Realms name of the user-facing website for the main de facto dApps (e.g. decentralized Wikipedia, Reddit, Medium clones).

However, I explain below why I am not all that enamored with Realms as the underlying blockchain name (note my consensus technology is not a blockchain because there are not blocks per se, but still a hash chain).

I don’t know about Brits, but most Americans would associate Realms with fantasy games wherein they can have their own kingdoms. Many would not know (or not first think of) the alternative definition of “dominion over any activity or interest.” Most English speakers do not know that definition, do not think about ‘realms’ that abstract way. Most people aren’t abstract thinkers and go directly to the association which is most familiar, i.e. ‘realms’ being typically used w.r.t. to fantasy kingdoms in games. To brand the other definition will require exposing users to the new concept as they use our dApps. So it’s very distant from any association to blockchain technology targeting the crypto market thought leaders many of whom are engineers and computer scientists. I think users of Realms can (eventually) adjust to the concept (and thus branding) of “dominion over any activity or interest,” but there’s no strong correlation between that definition and some novel blockchain consensus or smart contract technological innovation. So Realms is weak as cool/fashionable/hip engineering, technological name.

What I mean is that when the Americans come to the Realms site and see it is not a fantasy game, but rather dominions of control in various things, they will be able to make the change in their thinking. But it will not be the case that beforehand they make an apt association between Realms and blockchain technology. We could name the blockchain Realms. Just like Waves did. But it is not the best.

Realms was my attempt to think of a name that the masses could relate to as giving them individuals dominions. Everyone can have their own kingdom in Realms. That’s an end user feature that results from all decentralized ledgers. But I do not see how that associates directly to something about a specific decentralized ledger technology. Cryptocurrency speculation and investment is the domain of people who are interested in the specific technologies of blockchains such as anonymity, masternodes, transactions-per-second scaling, etc.. Speculators/investors want to remember a USP (unique selling point) about your blockchain. They will think the Realms blockchain is exclusively for fantasy games. But for the blockchain itself, I am worried that speculators will get it stuck in their subconscious that it is for fantasy games, blah, blah. They will not take it so seriously.

Please distinguish between Silicon-valley-Millennials-tech-fashion naming (e.g. signifyd.com or tumblr.com) from crypto-geek-fashion. Let me give some examples of crypto-geek-cool names:

• Iota means something. It means small, given that IoT is for small devices.
• Factom means the blockchain stores unequivocal facts or indisputable consensus about data.
• Elastos means the blockchain is flexible.
• Ethereum means the blockchain is in the cloud of ether.
• Cosmos is the universe of blockchains.
• LBRY is a blockchain that stores all content.
• Augur is a blockchain for betting (decision) markets.
• BitTube is a blockchain for videos.
• Stratis means the blockchain has stratified protocol layers aka stratums.

But Inertial may not be the best either. For Inertial I am trying to capture the notion of a swarm of participants being the consensus layer. Swarm was a good name but already taken. But Hiveffect is not a good name.

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In short, these two token names and Realms will not appeal to engineers and technologists. Neither will these two token names appeal to serious dApp uses of the blockchain.

With regard to INERTIA, I immediately associated it with it’s meaning of doing nothing, stagnancy etc (actually didn’t know it had that alternative meaning)

Amazing. I never think of that definition, because I studied physics and I am interested in understanding the science and engineering of how things work in our universe. Thus I am naturally attuned to the physics definition of inertia. Also that definition you cite is actually incorrect. There’s nothing in our universe that is at rest. Motion is always relative. That the observed body which appears to be stationary w.r.t. to the observer only means the relative inertia between those relatively stationary bodies is zero— i.e. an inertial frame-of-reference is relative. Inertia is a form of directed mass of a collective body in motion, even if it appears to be stationary to some observers. So the following definition is incorrectly stated:

^{a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.}

Or:

^{Inertia, property of a body by virtue of which it opposes any agency that attempts to put it in motion or, if it is moving, to change the magnitude or direction of its velocity.}

Instead as corrected that definition should be:

^{Inertia, property of a body by virtue of which it opposes any agency that attempts to change its relative trajectory.}

My correction to the definition still fits perfectly with a use case you might cite:

^{“the bureaucratic inertia of government”}

Even for example a government system in gridlock is still in motion and has a trajectory. The Congressmen for example are still collecting their paychecks and the lobbyists still benefiting for corrupt legislation already enacted.

The reason that technologically-impaired peeps need an incorrect definition is because they fail to understand the relativity of motion as was explained by Einstein (link is to my old blog) and thus fail to understand that nothing is ever at rest (only an apparency of being stationary between relative observers, that are also both in motion w.r.t. to other objects in the universe).

Remember the blockchain name (as opposed to the Realms dApp name, if separate names are chosen) is not targeted to mainstream technologically-impaired peeps. It is targeted to the speculators, investors, and the geek sector of crypto. These guys know the correct definition of ‘inertia’. And I stated that the serious market may not be attracted to names which associate with a fantasy game.

Changing the name from Inertia to Inertial eliminates that incorrect definition from consideration. Also it makes inertial.net available for registration. I have edited accordingly the table contained within my prior post.

AURA I associated with hippie types (“I can see your aura”)

Agreed and that’s an apropos example illustrating the problem. I was already leaning away from both MANA and AURA for the token name.

You didn’t comment on the other proposed token names such as MASS (or E in this context) and quanta.

Please edit your prior comment if you want to add a reply, instead of replying to this comment. Then I can edit this comment if I want to reply to any edits you make.

Also make sure you re-read another very important post you upvoted which I have heavily augmented.

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EDIT: Note the currency symbols for the MANA and ∃ token names I added to my prior comment post. By turning the E backwards (or the alternative choice ᘓ which looks like a vortex or spiral), I think we further distance it from the energy efficiency and green energy environmentalism (mis-)association.

[…] and I like Inertial.net as a result. It’s not an attention grabber for me, but in its explained context it’s a good name for a serious project, and I like the phonetics which means it’ll be sure to grow on me…

I agree Inertial isn’t an attention grabber, and it sounds less appealing than Inertia which also isn’t an extreme attention grabber. Note I had added to my prior comment post, “[…] but maybe it will not impress many people.” You really should re-read my prior comment post as well as this one, as I have significantly augmented them.

After sleeping on it, I think ‘inertia’ associates too abstractly to the technological innovation of my ledger consensus algorithm. It would be better to be more direct and descriptive as to my innovation. Thus I have added the name ideas Affinity (or Effinity), Bypass, Crowdsensus, Hordered, Manifold, Sharded, Sidestep, Tensor, Uphodl and WoT to my prior comment post.

 

I like E for the token for Inertial.net. I didn’t comment on MASS or quanta initially because I didn’t have a strong instinctual response. I still don’t to be honest - without disliking either…

I also lost any initial excitement I may have had for MASS. I think ∃ works well as the token name for any project and dApps name(s) we choose, including with the WoT ledger project name if we so choose. It is a generally apt token name, especially after spelling it backwards which I think is neat because it looks more like a currency symbol, yet there’s no other way to pronounce it other than the same as ‘E’ (although mathematicians will pronounce it as “there exists” but they are an extremely minute minority). I hope readers are familiar with currency symbols (c.f. also), e.g. $ for dollars.

I’m interested to understand why you’d have two denominations of coin?

Because there’s two uses of the cryptocurrency: HODLing and microtransactions. For elaboration, c.f. the discussion of BitcoinHEX in §Rise of the ᵈᵉᶜᵉⁿᵗʳᵃˡᶦᶻᵉᵈ digital, intangible goods economy. Richard actually mentions the milli-BTC issue in the video I cited there.

Users don’t want to get a headache thinking about quantities expressed with fractional digits. So microtransactions valued in milli-cents (one-thousandth of a cent) or nano-dollars (one millionth of a dollar) need smaller units for expression. A Bitcoin is 100 million of the smallest unit satoshi.

There’s the notion of a milli-BTC, but the notation and usage isn’t standardized and ubiquitous.

Even if we have the milli- and nano- units for ours, we probably still should name the smallest dust unit quanta. The best definition of ‘quanta’ is:

^{Quantum is the Latin word for amount and, in modern understanding, means the smallest possible discrete unit of any physical property, such as energy or matter. ... He called the units quanta.}