OK, it has finally hit the point where we are seeing 1-3 new altcoins every week.
For any other software project Id argue this is a great thing but for crypto currencies its a terrible thing.
First let me start by showing some good examples of altcoins:
* litecoin - not the first to add scrypt but most successful.
* ppcoin - a genuine innovation on bitcoin protocol.
Now let me show what I consider to be bad altcoins:
* CNC
* RUC
* TRC
* BitBar
* FTC
Russiacoin and Chinacoin are transparent attempts to make money of patriots and nationalists with more money than common sense (most of them). For a coin to be official for a country it needs to be officially endorsed, not made by a script kiddy and supported by a rabbid circle jerk.
TRC & FTC - Mere tweaks of bitcoin and nothing more. The danger with this coins is that the developer/s often do not have the skills required to do more than tweak the settings and compile. Should they come under attack (as TRC recently did) the devs may find themselves sorely tested until their breaking point. Every issue/ DoS exploit discovered in the bitcoin protocol is likely to be patched before anouncement or within the hour of said announcement. The much smaller dev teams for these altcoins have to race to apply patches and test them against their tweaked (sometimes modified) bitcoin client resulting in a far greater window for an attacker to abuse.
Bitbar - the most transparent "Read Set Go Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine *FUCK OFF ITS NOT A PREMINE YOU HATER*" altcoin I have ever seen. Same applies to CNC.
Novacoin - to soon to tell, being a PoS system with scrypt does make it unique to the rest at this point, whether its enough to garner serious interest is another thing. The few services that do support have tumbleweeds rolling around. Novacoin did demonstrate the issue with doing a semi private release first.
Tips for creating a viable altcoin:
* Be a competent c++ programmer.
* Innovate - pick an issue bitcoin has and attempt to solve it like PoS.
* co-ordinate the release, dont announce it in your little sub forum and then a week later to the rest of the world (bad karma).
* Set the initial difficulty very high, lest you want the same fiasco that CNC created with blocks being mined every 10 seconds by the devs. It should take a good sized pool 15min-1h to find your first block. Let the difficulty adjust naturally, dont low ball it for you and your early adopter buddies.
* Pre Announce its release, let people know its coming so they can be ready for it.
* Project MUST BE open source.
For any other software project Id argue this is a great thing but for crypto currencies its a terrible thing.
First let me start by showing some good examples of altcoins:
* litecoin - not the first to add scrypt but most successful.
* ppcoin - a genuine innovation on bitcoin protocol.
Now let me show what I consider to be bad altcoins:
* CNC
* RUC
* TRC
* BitBar
* FTC
Russiacoin and Chinacoin are transparent attempts to make money of patriots and nationalists with more money than common sense (most of them). For a coin to be official for a country it needs to be officially endorsed, not made by a script kiddy and supported by a rabbid circle jerk.
TRC & FTC - Mere tweaks of bitcoin and nothing more. The danger with this coins is that the developer/s often do not have the skills required to do more than tweak the settings and compile. Should they come under attack (as TRC recently did) the devs may find themselves sorely tested until their breaking point. Every issue/ DoS exploit discovered in the bitcoin protocol is likely to be patched before anouncement or within the hour of said announcement. The much smaller dev teams for these altcoins have to race to apply patches and test them against their tweaked (sometimes modified) bitcoin client resulting in a far greater window for an attacker to abuse.
Bitbar - the most transparent "Read Set Go Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine *FUCK OFF ITS NOT A PREMINE YOU HATER*" altcoin I have ever seen. Same applies to CNC.
Novacoin - to soon to tell, being a PoS system with scrypt does make it unique to the rest at this point, whether its enough to garner serious interest is another thing. The few services that do support have tumbleweeds rolling around. Novacoin did demonstrate the issue with doing a semi private release first.
Tips for creating a viable altcoin:
* Be a competent c++ programmer.
* Innovate - pick an issue bitcoin has and attempt to solve it like PoS.
* co-ordinate the release, dont announce it in your little sub forum and then a week later to the rest of the world (bad karma).
* Set the initial difficulty very high, lest you want the same fiasco that CNC created with blocks being mined every 10 seconds by the devs. It should take a good sized pool 15min-1h to find your first block. Let the difficulty adjust naturally, dont low ball it for you and your early adopter buddies.
* Pre Announce its release, let people know its coming so they can be ready for it.
* Project MUST BE open source.
Great read, spot on, fully agree with entire write up.
