Wednesday 12 June 2013

Bytecoin Introduction

Bytecoin was introduced in the well known Bitcointalk at April 02, 2013, 02:28:41 AM.   I don't really like the name as it is too similar to Bitcoin.

Bytecoin, the real alternative for Bitcoin!

We are pleased to present you Bytecoin a brand new cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin.

A full website, forum, pool and exchange (BTE/BTC/LR) are coming, keep posted!

Download links:
- Windows: http://www.bytecoin.in/client/bytecoin-0.8.1-win32.7z
- Linux x64: http://www.bytecoin.in/client/bytecoind-0.8.1-linux64.zip
- Source: https://github.com/bryan-mills/bytecoin

How to mine:
As right now no pool exist for bytecoins you need to solomine, the same software/hardware/instructions apply. We will upload full detailed instructions shortly.

- Bryan Mills
Port used is 9778 but anyway it is just about as dead as any other Alt Coin which can't survive for 3 months.

The Case of IceCoin

Icecoin was founded by Aquaman a member of Bitcointalk (June 11, 2013, 07:40:36 PM).    Apparently it died quite early with 24 hours of the launch.   We see him closing the thread and deleting the contents of his announcement.   The founder had 200k coins premined.   But it had a 51% attack that left the chain forked and the coins lost.   For Alt Coins, this is not unusual but things took a twist when Nolo decided to relaunch IceCoin apparently without the permission of the Founder, Aquaman.   The new relaunch information as below.   Hope IceCoin has better luck this time.  One thing for sure, wonder how does Aquaman and Nolo going to settle the ownership issue.


No, I am not the creator/developer of this coin.

This coin was originally launched by "AquaMan" in this thread:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232087.0

He premined 250,000, but when the coin was launched, someone with much more hashing power than he, forked the chain, and apparently those coins were lost.  He got mad, and locked the thread.

I am "re-releasing" this coin, with the blockchain still entact.  But as of this point, no one has claimed that they received the 250,000 coins.


Here is a link to the Windows binaries:  https://mega.co.nz/#!pNw3jAwI!TjFZkWtltmEwiQqt1PBknif_AQUnGVR5Th4utv_PNDw (you'll have to copy and paste that link, can't just click it)


Disclaimer: I did not compile these binaries, and can make no warranty as to their safety.  I haven't seen anyone have any problems with them yet.
If someone else was able to grab the source code, and wants to post it, then by all means do it.   Here's the source according to Kyune:  http://www.mediafire.com/download/ww6g6m6a6auwt3c/Icecoin.tar.gz

From what I can tell:
Block target time: 1 minute
Block subsidy: 10 Icecoins
Difficulty retarget time: 250 blocks (Not sure about this)

The current block count as of this posting: 488  (4,880 coins are in the wild)

RPC port = 8839
port = 8849


Friday 7 June 2013

Wallet Stealing Coin Modcoin Ucoin Blucoin Richcoin Newcoin

More development on Modcoin, it has been renamed

ucoin
blucoin
richcoin
newcoin
modcoin

All which are trying to steal wallets from those who installed.

Mod Coin 7 Jun 2013

Another new coin came out on 7 Jun 2013 appearing in Bitcointalk at June 07, 2013, 10:47:17 PM.  Information as given in the thread:


Specifications:

- 60 seconds block target
- 10000 coins per block.
- Difficulty retargets every hour, with accelerated retargets at the beginning.
- 6 confirms per transaction.
- Total about 10 million
- connection port is 9321, RPC-port 9322
- Scrypt

Download link (edited away)
(There seems to be a problem with this release as several members of the Bitcointalk community was posting that it contained a wallet stealer)

Sample conf:

listen=1
daemon=1
server=1
rpcuser=**Yourusername**
rpcpassword=**Yourpassword**
rpcallowip=10.1.1.*
rpcport=9322
rpcconnect=127.0.0.1
addnode=112.161.77.213

Thursday 6 June 2013

Stablecoin Start 7 Jun 2013 1700 GMT

This announcement taken from Bitcointalk looks interesting.  This is going to be a very fast coin, wonder if it will have any problem?

Rethinking cryptocurrency from the bottom up.

Extensive testing using network simulation software has shown that 40 seconds is the optimal block time. This allows ample time for blocks to propagate across the entire network. It gives us fast confirmations, while minimizing orphans and forking issues that we saw affect faster coins like WorldCoin. Long term, it will also help keep blockchain bloat down. Our testing has shown that a block time lower than 40 second makes a coin unsuitable for long term stability and growth.

Scrypt was chosen as an encryption algorithm. Other candidates were Blue Midnight Wish, SHA3, and Skein. After much analysis we came to the conclusion that such algorithms make for a nice selling point, but fall short of Scrypt in terms of securing a blockchain. Our aim is to create the best coin possible, not lure you in with gimmicks.

We've changed the magic number for StableCoin. What is the magic number? It's an often overlooked, but very important, variable within the code of bitcoin. This value affects how the entire blockchain is formatted, and is a key factor in determining how peers are matched up over the network. Failure to change this value opens the door to many vectors of attack. Ever load up an coin client and have it start to download the Litecoin blockchain? That is because the developers of that coin neglected to change the magic number to a unique value.

Block reward is 25 coins per block, with a block target time of 40 seconds. Difficulty will be recalculated every 90 blocks, which is much lower than other coin releases. We choose this value for several reasons:

1) It allows the network to find it's natural difficulty much faster, ensuring a fair and accurate spread of coins.
2) It prevents blockchain stalling from ever happening. No one likes having to issue a hardfork.

We want StableCoin to be a steadily mined currency, not one that is pumped and dumped. These values will assist us in reaching that goal. A total of 250 million coins will be minted, with block reward halving every ~3.7 years.

We believe the strongest asset a coin can have is active, talented developers. We will be on the forum daily answering questions and resolving issues, as well as helping to grow StableCoin by working behind the scenes to develop and deploy services that will ensure success.


STABLECOIN SHOP

The StableCoin Shop is currently in development and will provide you an outlet through which to spend your coins. Gift cards, Steam games, and other digitally deliverable items will be offered for sale initially. Long term plans include Amazon.com integration, allowing you to order any item off of there. We plan on launching the shop sometime after release, after the market plays out and determines what each StableCoin is worth.


COIN MIXING SERVICE

Bitcoin is a relatively anonymous protocol, but there are still several ways to track the flow of coins and make associations. Thus, we plan on launching a free coin mixing service for StableCoin to make it the most anonymous coin out there. For example, a user can send in 1000 coins, and receive back 1000 completely different coins. This will be done in daily batches and in such a way that ensures complete anonymity. An amount (0.5% of total coins) has been created by us to act as the  basis for this service. A small amount of these coins may be used for giveaways and bounties, as the community sees fit.

FAIR LAUNCH

In addition to a 12 hour preannouncement, StableCoin will use the fairest scaling reward system of any coin so far to ensure the fairest launch possible. This is to ensure that early miners do not have an advantage over those late to the game. Our goal is to not have a disproportionate amount of coins created within the first 24 hours. Mined blocks will mature after 20 blocks.

Block 0-90        0 coins
Block 90-180     1 coins
Block 180-270   2 coins
Block 270-360   3 coins
Block 360-450   6 coins
Block 450-540   8 coins
Block 540-630   12 coins
Block 630-720   15 coins
Block 720-810   18 coins
Block 810-900   22 coins
Block 900+       25 coins

Liquidcoin version 4

The latest now on the Alt Coin scene is the restart of Liquidcoin now at version 4.  It claims to be a CPU friendly coin as opposed to Bitcoin which is more GPU/ASIC friendly.   The characteristics are as follows:

Fixed difficulty (0.05)
Block reward reduces 4% every 1000 blocks, it does not increase ever.
Minimum block reward is 1LQC
Because of it's fixed difficulty, transactions will never be slow
No pre mined coins



You can download the client Here.

Adding the configuration of the liquidcoin.conf here so that it may be easier for readers if they want to mine the coin.   This is the solo mining configuration,  if you are in pool, just change the information of the first three lines to that of your pool.

rpcuser=USERNAME
rpcpassword=PASSWORD XXX
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
rpcport=9332
daemon=1
server=1
gen=0
addnode=24.141.5.252
addnode=69.65.43.99
addnode=69.65.20.11


AMC Coin Started

AMC started finally.   Now about 14000+ blocks are mined.   Hopefully it won't be like any other Alt Coin where pump and dump is the order of the day.   It depends on how the Coin Maker implement his coin.  LTC is successfully because it is one of the earliest and also the Maker did a lot of advertising work on it.   I am hoping to see more such coins.

Sunday 2 June 2013

AMC 3 Jun 2013

I don't know about others but I lost my interest in it already.   I guess it takes far too long from what the author had promised.


Saturday 1 June 2013

AMC Coin - Another 24 Hours Gone

It still seems to have some way to go, I wonder if the developer can just finish off the 898 blocks and let the coin start ASAP,  a lot of us are waiting for a very long time.


Friday 31 May 2013

AMC Coin - The Long Wait

The 24 hours turned up to be 3 days and counting.   I wonder when will we be able to start mining this coin.   There seems to be a tremendous number of Alt Coins coming out recently.   I guess it is due to the survival and good performance of Alt coins like LTC.


Geist Geld

Trying to document some of the older Alt Coins


Geist Geld is an experimental currency intended to test out the limits of block generation rate empirically, as well as (assuming it does not die due to overly rapid block generation rate) the behavior of a cryptocurrency with (almost) stable generation rate and no upper limit or alteration to supply.

Geist Geld intentionally seeks to trade some decentralization to gain more transaction speed, thus, pools are kindly invited to participate so that centralization would increase somewhat

This is quite a fun coin as I remembered it.   It is extremely fast.  Pity that it does not catch on.

Wednesday 29 May 2013

AMC Coin

AMC Coin also known as the American Coin is designated as the most patriotic coin.   It was first seen on the 29 May 2013 on the Bitcointalk.   I went to their web site and found that it claims to be based on Litecoin meaning it is more CPU friendly and is the most patriotic coin.  But how so?  Just because of the name?   Also it has a block reward of 100 coins and will be limited to 168 million coins making it twice as much as Litecoin.  It is optimized for CPU mining as expected using scrypt as a proof of work.   Interesting to see how it will compete against Litecoin.






The America Coin web site is at here.   At the moment it looks like it is supporting only the Windows Daemon and Wallet.   Looks like you can be one of the pioneers if you configure your rigs now:


Thursday 10 January 2013

Devcoin - An Ethical Coin

Devcoin is an Ethical Coin, what does it means by ethical?  It meant that 90% of the generation goes to open source developers and 10% to the miners.   It is in some ways encourage the development of the Open source.   There was a first forum post started by Theunthinkingbit on August 05, 2011, 08:22:11 AM where he proposed his creation of Devcoin.   Intially I do not believe that it will last and will die with the same fate as the rest of the Alternate Coins.  But it did and last quite well.  There is a donation list for Open source developers and  to be added to the donation list, the open source developer can message Theunthinkingbit or post in an active devcoin thread.   I like this Coin a lot because other coins typically sees the open source developers as free labor.  At least Devcoin wanted to correct this imbalance thoughts.