A small “rounded” review of mine for DarkCoin features / potential issues / criticism.
You can edit it, republish it, correct points you don't like, link to it for people asking about DarkCoin etc:
1. Hashing algorithms
Unlike SHA256 and Scrypt of Bitcoin or Litecoin, DarkCoin uses 11 different hashes (blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, echo) that provide multiple layers of safety and added resilience against commercial ASIC solutions that may be developed in the future.
Coins which are based on different hashing functions represent a diversification option for the portfolio of Bitcoin investors and, as such, they can be considered as an alternative store of value or “insurance” if something goes wrong with BTC itself.
2. Transaction times
Darkcoin offers relatively fast transaction times at 2.5 minute block time – which is 4 times faster than Bitcoin and on par with Litecoin. At 2.5 minutes there is a relative balance of speed, blockchain bloating over the long run and protection from forking / creation of orphan blocks.
3. Difficulty algorithm and retargetting
The difficulty algorithm ensures that the difficulty escalates disproportionately with the addittion of increased hashing power. Retargetting is done after every block with Kimoto's Gravity Well. These two features combined prevent big miners from jumping in/out to mine and dump for profitability purposes for small periods of time. This combination also seems to work against mining & dumping operations in general as the coin's profitability is reduced when a lot of miners rush in. For the time being however DarkCoin is still more profitable than most other coins.
As far as price is concerned, with mining/dumping out of the equation and by making the coin less profitable than other coins when hashing power is spiking, it becomes more viable for those really interested in DarkCoin to mine something else and buy DarkCoins – elevating its price as a consequence. Less dumping and more buying is always good for the long-term price prospect.
4. CPU and GPU Mining
Currently (Feb 23 2014) there are both CPU miners and GPU miners for DarkCoin. According to what has been posted on the forum, high-end overclocked desktop i7s can get around 800+ KH/s making use of AES/AVX instructions, while high-end tuned GPUs like AMD 290 can get around 2.4 MH/s. This is a ratio of approximately 1:3 for top CPU's vs top GPUs, which is significantly better than scrypt (ratios of 1:10 to 1:15) or SHA256, making DarkCoin quite CPU-friendly.
Both CPU and GPU miner clients could be improved at the future but the ratio does not seem like it can change much higher than 1:5 even if the GPU miner is improved further (seems to have more room for acceleration).
In terms of maturity, the CPU mining client works well while the GPU miner still needs some work due to various bugs (it is in development phase / experimental).
On top of that the GPU miner is reported to run cooler and with less power than Scrypt or SHA256. It's power draw and heat output is ranging from 50-75%. This creates a more summer-friendly coin due to less heat generation. It also means that energy costs involved will be lower.
5. Coin mintage
The maximum number of coins to be issued is 84 Million coins, which is 4 times the number of Bitcoins and on par with Litecoin. With 3.5 million coins generated, there are still 80.5 million to go. However, and this is very important to understand, with the minting formula being related to the difficulty alogirthm, coin generation of these 80+ million will be a slow process that will take decades with the mining curve being significantly more steep than either Bitcoin or Litecoin. In fact, given the daily reward variability, it could take more than Bitcoin to mine all the coins, making it more future-proof for providing mining incentives to secure the network's operation – as long as the price and hashrate involved makes it profitable.
At this point of time daily inflation of DRK is at approximately 0.3% compared to 0.1% of Litecoin and the 1.5% to 6% for its closest MarketCap “competitors” (MaxCoin 6.17 % / VertCoin 1.44%). Block halving every year will also reduce the rate of mining supply. All these aspects indicate that the scarcity of DarkCoin will be a major factor in determining future price.
6. Anonymity
On top of the other features, DarkCoin has currently (Feb 2012) completed a series of alpha trials for the DarkSend technology. This allows transactions to be processed in a less transparent way so that people who use cryptocurrencies can achieve a greater degree of privacy.
DarkCoin plans to embed DarkSend along with full anonymity in the blockchain at some future point – and be the first coin to do so.
7. Possible issues and criticism
7.1 Speculation on DarkSend implementation
Speculation has been focused on whether DarkSend can deliver what it promises. Anonymous transactions are more than sending an X amount through a Z party to conceal the direct transaction as other aspects have to be controlled as well in order to remove the visible traces.
7.2 The race for anonymity
Further speculation has surrounded DarkCoin and other coins in development on who is going to be the first to cross the Anonymity line – with a few promising projects all coming around the same time.
7.3 DarkSend becoming Open Source
It has been decided that DarkSend will become opensourced once it is implemented and this could give rise to DarkCoin clones, something that could potentially affect DarkCoin price. Luckily for DarkCoin, its other features are quite advanced as well and this leaves less room for improvement for would-be clone competitors. DarkCoin is also evolving dynamically as new situations arise.
Paradoxically, the open sourcing of DarkSend will protect DarkCoin itself from attack that originates from the authorities. Even if they decide to “hunt down” DarkCoin usage, the ability of others to create DarkCoin clones will make any witch-hunt totally meaningless.
7.4 Coin distribution
Given the law of diminishing returns that is embedded in the coin minting formula, early adopters, miners and investors were able to acquire more coins than what miners and investors can now acquire with the same mining effort (fractional coin mining operation versus tens of coins) or BTCs (prices 100x up). This has been criticised as unfair for late adopters.
7.5 Balancing network mining incentives with reduced inflation and antidumping characteristics
The network will require significant hashpower to maintain its function and this can only be achieved by providing adequate mining incentive. While multipool and “whale-miner” resistance has been achieved and reduced inflation means that the coin supply will experience a a stable or upward trend in terms of value, the incentive to mine has to be there in order to secure the network. Bitcoin with daily inflation rates of less than 0.1% has solved this problem through its higher price, by remaining profitable only to ASIC miners. Litecoin with daily inflation of ~0.1% has been losing miners to other more profitable coins (reaching a 1:2 ratio to Dogecoin at some point) but, due to its market position, still has significant hashpower to support it.
DarkCoin will either maintain mining interest due to its scarcity and steeper curve of diminishing production, or it will have to provide additional mining incentive. Maybe this can come in the form of anonymity costs where users of the network might pay “extra” to ensure that their money transfers are well-circulated before arriving to their destination, with a premium being paid for the best possible privacy.
7.6 Network security
At this early stage of development, DarkCoin experiences concentrated mining of >80% which comes mainly from two pools. This presents a problem for network security and efforts to decentralize the process are ongoing with the official pool declining further registrations and more P2Pool servers coming online.
7.7 Adoption from Cryptocurrency Exchanges
It is speculated that some major cryptocurrency exchanges may not accept DarkCoin for trading due to its less transparent nature. DarkCoin has so far managed more than well despite being traded on smaller exchanges. If larger exchanges accept it then it has the potential to grow more. If larger exchanges enforce some kind of ban on it, then this potential is far bigger as there is greater attraction for what is considered banned.
7.8 Marketing
The lack of marketing / promotion and the fact that DarkCoin has been “born in the shadows” has been a point of concern for some adopters. Issues surrounding the logo, wikis, reddit presence and brand awareness have been raised and some of these are being worked on – perhaps, it is argued, not as much as they should. The marketing and aesthetics seem to have a lower priority than the functional side and this seems to be a point of differentiation between DarkCoin and other recent coins or non-innovative clone coins where self-promotion is the only real aspect that a coin community has to work on.
Yet, DarkCoin has managed to attract interest and thus exceed in market capitalization other coins with practically no marketing or “pumping” schemes. Despite the lack of adequate logos, websites, wikis etc, the attributes of the coin have made it look like a rough diamond, waiting to be polished, cut and faceted so that its full brilliance can be seen.
The fact that DarkCoin has achieved its rise without self-promoting itself, without marketing, without coins giveaway, without self-promotional fund raisers and without viral memes*, all the while being traded in a few small trading exchanges, speak volumes of its potential.
* It is possible that the Dark Knight themes, quotes etc can, perhaps, become quite “catchy” in viral propagation for all things related to DarkCoin.
7.9 Market adoption for goods and services
There are practically no merchants accepting DarkCoins right now. Most alt-coins suffer from the same problem and that is not something which is easily solved since even Bitcoin has quite limited level of acceptance. DarkCoin or other anonymous solutions might be the only coins which come close to, or exceed Bitcoin's level of acceptance because they are offering something that Bitcoin cannot offer: Privacy.
7.10 Negative publicity
A less transparent model of transaction will definitely come under attack from the establishment “control freaks” who desire to monitor every single activity of the population. This attack, which may come in the form of negative media portrayals, might be very good for the indirect promotion of DarkCoin (there is no such thing as bad PR, people say) but it may be bad for the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem which may come under scrutiny and even enforced regulation. Yet, anonymous coins must exist so that a bypass of regulation can render obsolete any attempt to regulate and control cryptocurrencies. Regulation equals centralization and decentralized systems cannot be dependent on the decisions of central / government authorities.