[PPC] [XPM] Peercoin/Primecoin Weekly Updates - page 10.

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #37

namecoin managed to wrestle back #3 from us this week, although we are still in a close match.
Another ppcoin fork called bitbar was released this week. One more fork is in the works by yet another team (due to release tomorrow). Although litecoin still has more forks than us, looks like we are closing in on it. Some people mistakenly credit scrypt proof-of-work to litecoin, in fact the scrypt implementation was done by ArtForz for Tenebrix, an altcoin long went out of fashion.
A new Tor trading portal called 'The FreeMarket' has announced ppcoin support and is aiming for June release.
I have published a new simpler proposal to eliminate the risk of stake minting associated with running hot wallet. (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ppc-proposal-ppcoin-online-stake-safety-194054)
Jeff Larkin has volunteered to be the maintainer for ppcoin mac osx builds. The first build is ready for testing. (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-ppc-mac-osx-builds-194692)
Mjbmonetarymetals, detail3, robotrebellion have been busy working on different graphics design on logos and banners.
Thanks to all the contributing members and let's keep up the good work!

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #36

Bter (bter.com), a new exchange in China has started support of PPC/BTC trading.
Direct Voltage (directvoltage.com) becomes the first retailer to accept PPC payment.
Holy Angels Church in Chicago USA (holyangels.com) becomes the first charitable organization to accept PPC donations.
AnonPaste (anonpaste.me) started accepting PPC donations as well this week.
Jeff (jefflarkin) is currently working on mac osx build support.
To encourage more retail acceptance of ppcoin, a bounty project is opened to promote ppcoin to online retailers.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #35

Several new pools projects are under development, supporting stratum, including TheSeven's and Vuxil's. TheSeven has implemented a ppcoin patch earlier, also used by the D7 pool, which saw several hundred Gh/s on its second week. Good job TheSeven!
Cetoc made an very interesting tool to help users find the best exchange path between two currencies (http://ctpathfinder.com).
Work should begin shortly on v0.4. There will be a delay from my previous estimate, as we now have a significant market cap any new release needs to go through more stringent review and testing methodology. v0.4 will include a refresh to bitcoin's v0.8.1 and other various improvements.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #34

PPCoin successfully held #3 ranking of market capitalization this week on dustcoin, after taking over namecoin the previous week.
xorxor has upgraded ppcoin to major cryptocurrency category in his altcoin list, thanks for the honor!
D7 pool is operational, supporting stratum
We were just reported by MIT Technology Review - http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513661/bitcoin-isnt-the-only-cryptocurrency-in-town/

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #33

What a week! PPCoin has achieved multiple milestones in the cryptocurrency market this week.
Market cap surpassed namecoin and now ranked behind litecoin at 50,000 BTC or over $8M as of today, or about 0.5% of bitcoin and over 10% of litecoin.
Proof-of-work difficulty continued to break all time high throughout the week and is now at 280,000 as of today.
Many new users are showing interest in ppcoin. There are close to 5000 downloads at sourceforge for the week, more than all the previous downloads combined.
Due to steep rise of the market Chris has now closed his bitparking exchange and pool. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Chris for all his hard work and professionalism since ppcoin's release. Bitparking was the first active exchange market for ppcoin which played a major role in jump-starting ppcoin market. Chris said it was more like a hobby level project, but actually he was being very modest. My experience is that bitparking exchanges were managed with high degree of professionalism and integrity. I am looking forward to Chris's next projects.
Btc-e opened business to ppcoin on Friday evening and the first 48 hours total trading volume is over 10,000 BTC, another all time high.
As ppcoin starts to gain foothold in the competitive cryptocurrency market, I recognize that my responsibility has also multiplied. I wish to thank all our supporters and investors, I will try to hold myself to the highest professional standard in the industry.
I have updated our wiki FAQ to better explain the inflation model of ppcoin for new users. Even though ppcoin is designed without a fixed money supply cap, the design is not a pro-inflation one. The design attempts to simulate gold in a more natural fashion, with the help from Moore's Law. I do not subscribe to Keynesian economics. In terms of importance of scarcity of free-market money I share the views of classical and Austrian School thinkers, nowaday referred to as 'gold bugs.'
Meanwhile, I would like to remind investors that there are high risk involved in cryptocurrency market. Even bitcoin once dropped from $30 in summer 2011 to $2 in winter 2011. So one should always seriously evaluate one's risk tolerance. Furthermore, there are additional risks involved in investing in a cryptocurrency with high degree of innovations like ppcoin, despite of our best efforts to contain those risks. So be careful out there and do research (e.g. know the previous close price at vircurex before entering trade at btc-e open).

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #32

Network has been running smoothly for the week, proof-of-work difficulty stabilized at over 40000.
I am happy that new users are showing interests in ppcoin project. The main design goal of ppcoin is to achieve energy efficient operation in the long term. I have taken some time to update the wiki instructions a bit to help out new users. I have also written a page called 'history of cryptocurrency' in ppcoin wiki, which I think is a useful summary of the main events and players in the field.
The javascript wallet generator tool (bitaddress) is now linked from home page. Please fully test it before use, and let me know if there is any issue or non-functioning feature.
A new mining pool vpool.us has opened with ppc support.
Biticker now supports ppcoin.
This week novacoin hit a protocol issue which required update. I have helped Balthazar to switch the protocol related to entropy bit generation, in order to keep the p2pool support for novacoin. ppcoin currently does not support p2pool and is not affected by the issue.
I have been trying to help other altcoins to fix their problems too. A couple months back I offered to help freicoin to fix their difficulty adjustment when they first hit the problem (although they declined). Recently I have communicated with terracoin developer about a major vulnerability and now it is fixed via a protocol update in terracoin. Why am I doing this? I believe as a community we are all part of a big team that we really should help each other and work toward a common goal, while competing fairly with each other. It's sad to see malicious attitudes among different altcoin fans who attack each other viciously. I hope my action would bring more positive vibes to the community.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #31

ppcoin network has successfully switched to v0.3 protocol on March 20th.
After another thrust of the values of bitcoin following the resolution of the large block fork incident, the altcoin market cooled down somewhat vs bitcoin. The week saw ppcoin market cap pulling ahead of several competing altcoins and consistently ranking behind namecoin.
The next release 0.4.0 will be a refresh to bitcoin's latest 0.8.1 release. Due to the mandatory nature of bitcoin's 0.8.1 release, ppcoin 0.4.0 is likely a mandatory upgrade as well. This release is tentatively scheduled for late April/early May timeframe.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #30

The week saw significant market activity in altcoins. Investors should use caution in a volatile market.
I am happy that more users are gaining interest in ppcoin and other altcoins, although this is presumably due to bitcoin's recent issues. I will continue to watch bitcoin's v0.8.1 release and follow up on the large block fork issue. To be fair, I think Bitcoin developers once again handled the situation reasonably well.
I have received invitation from Bitcoin Foundation to join a panel on altcoin during the California Conference in May. If anyone is going to the conference and interested in presenting ppcoin please let me know.
Another reminder that v0.3 protocol switch is scheduled for March 20th and please upgrade your client if you haven't yet done so. I will be watching the switch on Wednesday closely.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #29

Faucet is now operational on ppcoin.org
I have also created a bitaddress page compatible with ppcoin 0.3.0 address/private key format. It is currently open for public testing at http://ppcoin.org/bitaddress
Please remember to upgrade to v0.3.0 before protocol switch on March 20th.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #28

After I motioned for a market cap ranking list dust did an excellent job of including this information into his mining profitability comparison portal: http://dustcoin.com/
So far ppcoin has been in a close match with devcoin, in terms of market cap. I observe that people have put a lot of faith into scrypt mining, which I believe to be the main reason of high valuation of litecoin and novacoin. Of course all the altcoins are now dwarfed by ripple, which made a splash debut with an initial giveaway on bitcointalk altcoin subforum. Ripple team has done a lot of work on real features, while taking on a lot of risks. I will continue to closely watch the market development of all the competitions.
Network has been running smoothly so far during the transition period to 0.3 protocol. Please remember to upgrade your client to v0.3.0 before the protocol switch scheduled for March 20th.
Official faucet is now under development. Stay tuned on its progress.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #27

v0.3.0 has been released. Upgrade should be performed before protocol switch on March 20th. A block chain re-download is necessary for the upgrade. See the 0.3 release thread for detailed instruction: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-ppc-ppcoin-030-release-upgrade-required-144964
v0.3 protocol involves several changes, first the proof-of-stake hash modifier is switched to one computed from roughly 9 days worth of blocks. The blocks are grouped and 64 blocks are selected based on a 'selection hash'. Then each selected block contributes one bit to the modifier. The purpose of stake modifier is to prevent stake owner from manipulating future stake generation at the time the coin is confirmed into block chain.
Two other protocol changes are made: stake hash weight now starts from 0 at 30-day minimum age requirement; coinstake timestamp now must match block timestamp.
Overall I think the 0.3 protocol should fix the known vulnerability of stake generation and make proof-of-stake protection much stronger.
Qt UI is now available in official build and supported from v0.3.0 on. User who prefers UI would enjoy the release I think, and I did give you a good treat by making the splash artwork myself and hope you all like it
v0.4 designs should start in the next couple weeks, while I continue to monitor the network for the switch in March.
My current 0.4 plan is to begin supporting database usage in limited fashion. 0.4 should allow user to create something known as identity, with names associated with it. An RPC command 'sendtoidentity' would allow users to send ppcoins to names instead of addresses. This feature is present in namecoin. But I probably would redesign the database usage for ppcoin and it's going to be a bit different from how namecoin does things.
A good couple months for me I am relieved that 0.3 is finally done. And I also enjoy watching all the new projects going on like ripple and novacoin.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #26

v0.3 release is under final validation and release builds are being prepared.
Qt UI begins support in v0.3.
Release is expected to be published in the next few days. This is a mandatory upgrade release and deadline for upgrade is scheduled for March 20th.
This week the first ppcoin fork known as novacoin has been released. The network hash rate of novacoin rose quickly, it's difficulty peaked over 10. Despite the controversy surrounding its release and the subsequent DDoS attack on btc-e, market response seems quite enthusiastic. Please note I am not involved in novacoin in any way, but I am happy to see other developers valuing ppcoin design and forking from it.
Recently we have also seen another project known as ripple released, with its own currency called 'Ripple' or XRP. The design of XRP also attempts to eliminate energy consumption to secure a cryptocurrency, however the design choices are very different, with different properties regarding the level of decentralization. Even though I am yet to be convinced that the technicals are sound I will keep an eye on this interesting new development.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #25

Testing of 0.3 release continues on testnet. System has stabilized and no significant issues have been found this week.
Windows Qt build testing is successful this week, and works have been done so it is now confirmed that Qt begins support in 0.3 release.
Current plan is to have a final week of testing. Barring further issues, v0.3 will be released afterwards.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #24

The seed nodes have been successfully migrated this week. The new servers have been running smoothly the last couple days. Also thanks for Andy and xchrix for volunteering their nodes. Hopefully the seed nodes would now have better availability for block chain download.
Testnet has been successfully switched to the new v0.3 protocol. The new code looks to have stabilized and I will continue testing on test network this week. I will also test building qt client in our official build for possible inclusion in the 0.3 release.
The official build of ppcoin adopts bitcoin's verifiable build system (gitian-builder). This system allows developers to verify the integrity of the final release binaries. In theory users can verify the build too by following the same build procedures but currently the process is quite involved. This is part of the reasons why we haven't supported qt in release build yet. We believe that delivering trustable executable files is very important to our users.
The first ASIC miner has been delivered on the market. Another milestone in the young history of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Congratulations!

Have a fun week!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #23

0.3 protocol is code complete. Testing continues on the release and I have just started testing with testnet protocol switch.
The hosting provider for our seed nodes infrastructure is undergoing some migration pain and the recent support has been less than stellar. I would need to look for alternative providers next week (preferrably accepting bitcoin, recommendations are welcome). Meanwhile some downtime is expected over next few weeks, for new nodes and nodes redownloading the block chain. Existing running nodes shouldn't be affected.
If I manage to still have some extra time I might start looking into qt build for the release.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #22

Testing continued with 0.3 protocol and revealed some bugs with the new code. I expect testnet testing on protocol switch to be initiated some time this week, when the core code is considered reasonably stabilized.
The 0.3 protocol upgrade involves changing the way hash is computed to generate stake transactions (known as coinstake). The transition for users should have minimal impact as there is no effect on existing wallet balance, transactions and minting related protocols of the network. The new protocol replaces the current proof-of-stake difficulty in the role of stake modifier inside the proof-of-stake hashing computation (not to be confused with proof-of-work hashing, which remains unchanged). The stake modifier is a part of the hash inputs to scramble the computation so nodes cannot compute the future stake from a coin when the coin is first confirmed into block chain. The new protocol generates the stake modifier from roughly 10 days of future blocks from when the coin is first confirmed into block chain. This should reasonably resolve all currently known vulnerabilities regarding stake generation.
Due to the technical nature of implementing and switching a core part of the protocol, we feel it's prudent to thoroughly test it before 0.3 release, lest critical bugs hitting block chain. Meanwhile, I am also contemplating releasing an unpolished gui build with 0.3 release, to help current gui wallet users with the upgrade. The final 0.3 release date would likely be determined in the next two weeks depending on the progress of testnet testing.

Have a fun week!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #21

Release 0.3 is now 90% code complete. First round of unit testing has been completed. Over this week testing on testnet is being prepared.
Over the next two weeks we plan to migrate the seed nodes. Short periods of down time (no connection) is possible for new nodes and nodes attempting a redownload of block chain. Existing nodes shouldn't be affected.
Due to exchange rate drop proof-of-work difficulty dropped below 30000. We remind investors and traders be fully aware of the experimental nature of the project and the volatility in market, and manage risks accordingly. With ASIC release looming the bitcoin difficulty is expected to rise quickly in the following months. Further volatility of exchange rate is expected due to this.

Have fun!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #20

Release 0.3 is about 80% code complete and the new code is under some preliminary testing right now. Given the current progress and to ensure the quality of the protocol upgrade we might extend the testing period by 1-2 weeks before final release. So that means the release would be around end of January.
Our seed nodes infrastructure recently experienced frequent outages. So for new nodes or nodes trying to redownload block chain you might experience connection issues. Running nodes shouldn't have these problems as those can always connect to other operational peers. I am trying to check the seed node status everyday so generally if you cannot connect as a new node just wait some time and it should be able to.

Have a fun week!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #19

Total money supply surpassed 15 million coins this week.
Release 0.3.0 with protocol upgrade is being implemented and is currently on schedule (to be released in about 3 weeks).
This week saw the debut of freicoin on the bitcointalk forum (actual release was the week before on Dec. 21st). I don't see the benefit of the concept of demurrage except for being more honest than the inflation tax, but alas, with even fellows at the Federal Reserve becoming fans (http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2012/08/if-interest-rates-go-negative-or-be-careful-what-you-wish-for.html) we'd need to take notice. Welcome the new competition

Happy New Year to All!

Sunny King

legendary

Activity: 1205

Merit: 1010

Weekly Update #18

We have disclosed a stake generation vulnerability this week. A researcher made the disclosure announcement two days ago so I had to issue a disclosure statement on the same day. I would like to talk a bit about the controversial topic of responsible disclosure. Why is responsible disclosure important? Because the computer software industry has already tried everything and learned the hard lessons, so an etiquette of responsible disclosure has been adopted widely. Responsible disclosure does not mean cover-up. It means the researchers and developers work together and negotiate a disclosure schedule, allowing reasonable time for developers to implement fix and for users to patch their systems. The management of bitcoin merkle hash vulnerability has been a prime example of responsible disclosure. We try to hold ourselves to high technical and ethical standard since the beginning of ppcoin network, and we would appreciate independent researchers from the community do the same.
The impact of the vulnerability is described in https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ppc-disclosure-stake-generation-vulnerability-131940
The centrally broadcasted checkpoint is designed to help in this type of situations. So with the checkpoint protection the impact of the vulnerability is reasonably limited.
The vulnerability has been known to us for a while and I have spent quite some time to formulate an improved hash protocol. Proper review and implementation of the new protocol would take some time, and that's why I stress the importance of responsible disclosure as not all vulnerabilities can be fixed and patched in a day or two.
The schedule of implementing the new protocol is tentatively planned as following: week 1~2: implementation and review; week 3 - testing on testnet; week 4 - final testing, build and release; week 8 - client upgrade deadline and protocol switch. Yes the protocol change would be a hard fork and all clients are required to upgrade within 3-4 weeks after the release.

Merry Christmas to all!

Topic: [PPC] [XPM] Peercoin/Primecoin Weekly Updates - page 10. (Read 96083 times)