Topic: CRC: Crazy Rabbit Coin : AKA Bitcoin Testnet - The best Alt coin there is? (Read 6549 times)

The coin is named after one of the most respected names in the altcoin world, so I was immediately sold.  I would've used it even if it was a scrypt coin!

crash n burn

(To be honest I did not read all the thread so I don't know if someone already said what I am gonna say ok I 'll say it anyway  ^^) I saw some arguments that could convince me that it is a good idea but when I see the name of this coin I finally forget about them.

Don't you think the name is just too "weird"? Why would you name a coin like this ? It's kind of funny sure but can we really expect something serious out of a project with such a silly name ? I know it might be a detail for some but it can make a great difference.People who don't have much technical knowledge (so almost everybody, if your project is to make it popular)  won't care much about the super technology behind this this coin they will probably rather mine / invest a coin with a "normal name" or a super cool name and a good marketing even if it's nothing really innovative 

The massive problem with testnet is they wiped out all the coins and threaten to do so again any time they choose.

That totally killed all useability of them even for game currency as no player wants to load their character one day and find some developers osmewhere decided to delete all the goldpieces from the character's pocket.

So what we did, for each game-currency players wanted, was modify the -testnet part of the bitcoin code to a new port number and handshake magic-number and give it a new genesis block. (Oh and allocate all 21 million coins in the first block but that is just a detail and happened because these players played nations and wanted national currencies and it makes no sense to let your enemies mint your coins for you.)

Presto, a whole bunch of national and corporate blockchain-bsed currencies, each of which had its own version of the normal bitcoin client; to use the game currency instead of normal bitcoins, you simply used the -testnet switch to switch to whichever game-currency your particular hybrid copy of bitcojn had built into the -testnet side of its code.

In the long run it turned out they could not deploy enough mining power to secure their chains so they moved to Open Transactions for now until they can deploy massive ASIC farms and merged-mine to secure chains.

But the point is, you can make just the minimal changes to the testnet side of the code required to make a new, testnet-code based coin very easily, and have it right there in people's bitcoin client ready to use at the toggle of the -testnet switch.

Or for cosmetics, you could even change the text or the switch from -testnet to -rabidcoin or whatever.

-MarkM-

Nice explanation. I look forward to seeing what people come up with!

Thank you!  I hope to keep it up for a long while - it's fun to operate.

Very cool!

RBCex is my little exchange:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/btctrcbtebqcltcfccrc-rbcex-exchange-bytecoin-bbqcoin-feathercoin-172373
http://goo.gl/ON5Jb

What is RBCex?

I'll take testnet bitcoin exchange orders on RBCex.

1)Since the testnet is bitcoin (with a few tests thrown in   ), why not... just use bitcoin?

Well Testnet Bitcoin doesn't actually work the same as Bitcoin works. Bitcoin is a stripped down version of Satoshi's original idea. Things like the OP_EVAL codes were disabled from the start. They exist in the software, but they are commented out in the source with explanations that it's unsure of what might happen if enabled.  So really cool things that are possible with Testnet Bitcoin just are not possible with Bitcoin Bitcoin. They are very different in that regard.

Another thing is that Bitcoin is way too expensive to play with these days. I understand that I am inferring that we give value to testnet bitcoins, but I don't have any illusion that they would have a *significant* value. Not $150 each at any rate. I think some value is required to incentivise people to a) try to profit by building cool services and b) try to steal by taking advantage of the testnet bleeding edge features.

The stealing part is important because one of the prime reasons for disabling the OP_EVAL codes is that the dev's can't be sure someone can't craft some sort of really clever transactions that could potentially steal from people. Because they are disabled on Bitcoin, no one is trying to build anything either cool or nefarious. On testnet, the coins have no value, so no one is trying to build anything cool or nefarious as no one knows what the future of the OP codes will be. Maybe they will be introduced, or maybe bitcoin will only grow in value till the point that the danger of turning them on outweighs what might be the perceived usefulness of them. By giving testnet coins some bit of value, you will have a testnet economy that will be able to test the social code of bitcoin. Bitcoin after all exists far outside the realm of just the code. It's a social movement as well- as many recent events have shown. Without an economic aspect on testnet we can't play with the social elements.

!!! seen the light on that one!!!!

Which kind of brings us back to the beginning. What is the goal now?

It seems to me a lot of alt-coins are trying to improve on bitcoin or make it easier to use (by introducing quicker confirmations, etc...)

Since the testnet is bitcoin (with a few tests thrown in  ), why not... just use bitcoin?

Is your goal simply to create an economy that uses testnet coins? And for that wouldn't you need an exchange first and foremost?

Thats an interesting idea, but another attraction to the Bitcoin Testnet is that currently Bitcoin users don't need to download new software to get involved. One thing that worried me (erroneously it seems) was durring the problems with TRC new updates came out quite quickly- too quickly for anyone to really carefully look at the code (especially those people downloading executables). So what if someone created an alt-coin as a long con? Maybe it's paranoid, but how clever would it have been to attack your own coin repeatedly, issue quick fire fixes- so quick that people trusted you because of your quick response and two quick to check carefully the source?

It hasn't happened yet, but it's only a matter of time before someone figures this out. Imagine the next coin to get on the exchanges. Imagine the same sort of pressure situation that encourages people to drop their guard and run insecure code. That would be the long con of crypto all time.

With bitcoin testnet, you don't have to worry about this. It's there, in bitcoin. It's safe. If you trust bitcoin, you can trust testnet. If you trust bitcoin updates, you can trust testnet updates. Most of the Alt-coin crowd are relatively inexperience or no-experience coders. A perfect preying ground for a con artist. Bitcoin testnet removes this vector for attack. It's experimentation without the paranoia.

Reading your first post, I thought that is exactly what you wanted to do 

If the testnet has innovative properties then why not fork it into an "official" alt coin from the start instead of running with the testnet itself. I honestly don't see the actual testnet ever being adopted widely as an alt-coin, and if it were then I think that the coin would be forced to fork as soon as the Bitcoin developers made changes to the testnet which weren't in agreement with the users of the coin. Therefore probably better to save the trouble and start off with a proper fork that incorporates the innovative features? Just thoughts

I think it would have been more disappointing had I just tweaked a few settings and forked on github.

The point of alt-coins at one point had seemed to be to try new things that we couldn't do with bitcoin- now however it seems like they exist only because everyone wants to have started their own coin. I could be wrong but cest la vie.

Testnet is an idea place for experimentation. When there is a real problem, there is an active and responsive Dev team. It works like Bitcoin but has exotic features like scripting, multi-sig and works with new ideas like ColoredCoins.

It seems to me that Testnet is one of the most innovative bitcoin chain clones out there. 

so what's happened with this? Any update?

So the idea now is to not create a new altcoin (and premine it with your friends), but to just convince people to start buying testnet coins? After the chain was already reset once because people started to sell the coins?

I must say I am just a bit disappointed.

I figured Litecoin probably had one.

There is a dev on terracointalk.org who has been trying to promote Terracoin testnet, even at one point offering a bounty for an exchange.

I doubt any other altcoins have a testnet, but I'd love to find out.  I can testify that Bytecoin does not have a testnet.