Topic: [PRE-ANN] Meros: An instant and feeless cryptocurrency for the future. (Read 4202 times)

Our latest State of the Project went up a few days ago! https://youtu.be/-WiMhovESZg

We also released a brand new site to more clearly communicate what we're working on, which we would appreciate feedback on. https://meroscrypto.io

With the new year, we've released a new episode of our monthly podcast! https://youtu.be/y33RUYRZVnA

We're very excited as we're approaching the launch of our network, after years of development and multiple testnets. We aim to be an extremely proven network, even before we launch, and are doing everything we can to ensure that.

It's been a while since we've provided updates here!

We've actually done four new monthly podcasts! One of these was our 24th episode, and the latest one serves as a summary of what our project is, what it's done, and where it's going.

https://youtu.be/_OzBg6Yy7AM
https://youtu.be/JLl_rUqPHzk
https://youtu.be/hQio22cZUNo
https://youtu.be/-K_FHbG3YbE

We also hosted a testnet, gathering several participants who were immensely helpful. The net proved to be stable, with a couple of node errors which have since been resolved. We are dedicated to thoroughly testing Meros before we deploy it, and plan on having a new testnet soon. While all of our existing testnets have required users to compile their own node, a basic check that users are willing to spend a few minutes working through problems, future networks will have binaries provided. The next testnet's status of requiring compilation/binaries provided is still being determined though.

To reply to the comments below, we very much disagree that "it's BTC or nothing lately". Other cryptocurrencies can exist along with Bitcoin to provide different functionality. Ethereum, among others, offers computing like never seen before. Monero offers privacy. The recent upwards trends of cryptocurrency markets, which don't just apply to Bitcoin, haven't changed our minds, at all.

Mining will be CPU only via RandomX. We are dedicated to decentralization and CPU mining is the fairest system in front of us. IO bound mining was never developed enough, and storage based mining isn't something people are generally willing to participate in with their spare time due to the size and lasting nature of the files. That said, it should be noted we have a unique mining system in order to offer instant and feeless transactions. It's called Merit Caching, and it's the reason Meros is special.

Miners mine a non-transferable token called Merit, and this is used to vote on transactions. It's voting that confirms transactions, and voting is what earns Meros. This enables the security and decentralization of Proof of Work to be applied as quickly as PoS/DPoS thanks to being able to utilize it with just a signature.

If you'd like to learn more, we're happy to answer questions. While I'll personally do my best to be more responsive here, I do encourage joining our Discord via https://discord.com/invite/nZmdWGA. Thank you!

Hello all,

The topic of mining came up and I am curious as to what kinds of mining will be available.  Will it be CPU, GPU, or ASIC for the mining of the coin??  Thanks in Advance!!

Cheers,
Waya

I think you have missed the boat....
Ship has sailed.

Seems it's BTC or nothing lately

Meros has no premine, ICO, IEO, token sale, or pre-determined distribution. It will be mined with RandomX, where miners participate in our own Merit Caching Consensus Mechanism, which we wrote a paper on, published near the start of our project. This will be possible as soon as Meros launches, and we plan for the mainnet to be ready by the end of the year.

Can it be mined? when?

We recently announced that we performed our first atomic swap. This was done via a new swap protocol, developed by h4sh3d, for Monero. That said, we had only performed a swap with Meros. Today, we are happy to announce our atomic swap tool successfully supports Monero and Nano!

This is the first implementation of the new protocol, opening previously closed doors for quality cryptocurrencies. As our work is fully open sourced on GitHub, using the MIT license, we are excited to see how this proliferates throughout the wider space.

We wrote a series of blog posts for this news, and linked the initial one here. The full series is as follows:
https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/atomic-swaps-building-the-basis-of-cross-chain-interop-for-meros-monero-and-nano-5813b77e6a91
https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/atomic-swaps-enabling-nano-via-asmr-98ecde842110
https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/implementing-monero-atomic-swaps-in-asmr-715e4bdb752

If you want to check out our codebase, we'd love further contributions. It's viewable at https://github.com/MerosCrypto/asmr.

We are very excited to announce the first atomic swaps between Meros and Bitcoin! This forms the basis of secure, decentralized trading, as well as cross-chain interop. You can read more about it in our blog post, here.

It's also important to note the protocol we've implemented is directly applicable to Nano and Monero! Our implementation is designed to easily allow integration with other cryptocurrencies. They should be supported within just a few days.

The reason this is a pre-announcement is because we have yet to launch our mainnet. Because of that, the major accomplishments aren't in merchants/shops using our coin, yet rather the tech stack we've built up overtime. Beyond our consensus algorithm enabling secure transaction verification in just a couple seconds, we've built a CPU-mined blockchain heavily resistant to 51% attacks via a checks and balances system based on PoS voting. We've built an adjustable yet firm spam filter, implemented tests in the node's native language, as well as tests in Python via a re-implementation of the protocol. We utilize both Ed25519 and BLS, taking the best aspects from both, and have a brand new decentralized funding system to enable long-term support and development.

After more than a year here in the forum, what major accomplishments do you have for this project?
As you are aiming to be a payment method and as you mentioned that bitcoin is not meant for payment because of its shortcomings.
But how is your coin in terms of popularity of usage. With over 1 year of existence, how many merchants or shops have you convinced to use your coin?

We recently hosted our most recent testnet, which was very successful! We've also released another episode of our monthly podcast which talks about it, which you can watch here.

We recently launched a new episode of our monthly podcast! https://youtu.be/gqg0aeRILTU

And yes, we completely concede Meros has taken a while to be developed. It's a fact we've always been transparent about, along with the reasons for why and our dedication to releasing something quality, instead of rushing something poor. That said, we do have progress to show. While we don't have a mainnet, we do have full protocol documentation, the large majority of the node implemented with a wide range of features, a secondary implementation of the protocol in Python to test the first, and several testnets.

We also cover Meros's timeline every month in our podcasts, such as the one just linked. In case someone doesn't watch it, it should be noted development has picked back up and is moving quickly now. We're finishing a major feature before we do our next testnet, which should launch within the next week or so.

Seems this is slowing down down down.....

Meros been in development for a long time and nothing to show yet.

Its not looking good man

Development slowed down over the last month or so, yet we're happy to release the latest episode of our monthly podcast! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFQ8cCY3d4E

With this update, we return to fully active development as we prepare for Developer Testnet 5.0!

Our latest monthly podcast has been released! We've had a slow month, due to personal reasons of our Lead Developer, but this episode provides a comprehensive update as development picks back up! https://youtu.be/gJDZHZwPmKo

Our latest update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-update-28-de689f2f9c68

Out latest monthly podcast is live! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIhviPRqwgg

Our latest update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-update-27-5e195c69ad19

We have also planned our next round table! It'll be February 29th, at 2pm Central, again on our Discord. At our last one, we discussed a variety of topics. Given all the recent progress made on Meros, we're very excited for this one.

Our latest monthly podcast is live! https://youtu.be/X5L1X5MXh7k

Developer Testnet #3 has been scheduled! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/developer-testnet-3-f7ecf0b437c8

Developer Testnet 2 has been scheduled! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/developer-testnet-2-91fdd2b2ae65

We've just published our latest update! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-update-26-98f1afaf04d9

A brand new episode of our monthly podcast is online! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmU_60x2B-8

Our latest update has just been published! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-update-25-44d1887281fa

Our newest State of the Project is available to watch on YouTube!

https://youtu.be/unsEoOko4dI

Our latest update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-update-24-72b86159d4f7

Meros will launch with a GUI wallet; the question becomes how quality of a GUI wallet can we make by launch. I, the lead developer, am not a GUI developer in any sense. I've always been a backend developer. We had one user designing various interactions which were really promising, yet he disappeared. We also had two separate developers volunteer to work on the GUI, yet both became busy with their own work. As I've recently taken contract jobs, I do have limited funds available, and I plan on properly hiring a developer to work on the GUI using them.

Thanks for reaching out here and liking the project! I do keep an eye on here when I have a chance. Sorry for taking so long to reply.

What is the latest in regards to GUI design and so on, i was in your Discord and saw the last update in regards to the GUI was in August, is the project still go on as expected?

I am posting here on BTF so to have more users aware of your project as well as it seems to be very promising!

Our latest State of the Project is live! This marks one whole year of amazing podcasts we've done for our community!

https://youtu.be/C2lwoqaZLYY

We'd like to take this opportunity to announce an upcoming event. This Saturday, November 16th, at 2pm Central, we will be having Meros's first round table! We invite everyone to join via our Discord. We'll discuss our future and anyone can ask any questions they have.

Meros's latest update has been published! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-update-23-afbbebe4e28a

It was actually written and shared on Wednesday, yet due to an error with Medium, it was only published today.

We've just released a new episode of our monthly podcast! https://youtu.be/O2poJYeyiXc

Our new update is live! It covers more info than usual and comes highly recommended from our team! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-update-22-4ac01d9674c5

A new episode of our monthly podcast is live! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQZgjWCdNH0

Our new Triweekly Update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-triweekly-update-21-5f7d41f77f08

The minimum CPU requirements do not change to the point of mention. The amount of RAM required increases, which is meant to disrupt certain GPUs, along with eventual FPGAs/ASICs.

RandomX does show an AMD bias, yet Meros does not focus either way.

In this case, what are the minimum requirements for CPU (intel) would be needed?
In discord I read that meros is initially focused for AMD CPU. Is that so?

Our new monthly podcast is live! https://youtu.be/oGhJsdsq4i0

Our new Triweekly Update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-triweekly-update-20-54d6d77295b2

Unfortunately, we didn't see Mero when we rebranded to Meros due to its size. When we did learn of it, it was effectively dead, with discussions of a community takeover. We've since observed that its community takeover has been fragmented, with one user creating an ERC20 and other users remaining with the BTC codebase. That said, Meros and Mero have no affiliation and are two distinct projects. We don't feel a need to comment on the various coins created by Mero's team and community as it's not our project.

There are some projects that might make new comers feel a bit confused: MERO (original ones), MERO (the one took over by community), MERO currency, and MEROS. It is so soon to say anything about MEROS, but I still confused with those projects' names.

Our new monthly podcast is live! https://youtu.be/PqRjhEZEgPU

Our new Triweekly Update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-triweekly-update-19-19dcc21f4062

The project started with just Luke "Kayaba" Parker, our Lead Developer. Kayaba is a backend developer with years of experience who's worked on multiple cryptocurrency projects in the past, including exchanges and payment processors.

Despite starting alone, Kayaba quickly picked up multiple talented advisers including Carl "Cryptosi" Anthony, a PIVX team member and extremely talented entrepreneur, and Giacomo "giaki3003" Milligan, a highly qualified developer who's done extensive work for various BTC forks. Meros has also had several volunteers who have worked on our blockchain, our DAG code, and who are currently working on the GUI design and development. If you'd like to observe/participate in these discussions, please join our Discord, as we have a channel dedicated towards it.

Meros also has a Community Manager/Social Media Manager, Simon "Suu" Roh.

Meros isn't a large corporate project. Meros didn't start with 20 people in suits and a few millionaires agreeing to work together. Meros started with a single developer who wanted cryptocurrency to be better and has organically grown since. If you want to participate or help, you'll be welcomed.

hi guys, nice project where I can see the source of your team or you prefer to be anonymous, thank you

Thanks for the support!


The network is secured via a computational fee which is compared against an adjustable spam filter. Miners are provided with incentive via the block reward.


Meros is built entirely from scratch in Nim. We've taken heavy inspiration from Nano, but we've worked on problems with its security and economic model. Thanks for the support!

it is build from scratch ? because i think its similar with nano in some way, but i read your article, and i think your idea is good, i see you keep giving update about your project, its a good sign your a legit developer, i will keep my eye on this project, im so interesting about this project

If it is a completely feels cryptocurrency, how will the network be secured and who does it for zero fees?

Meros Seems like a powerful and well thought off project, I read your blog about the details of the idea behind Meros, I am quite impressed and will be in from the start!!

Our Discord has plenty of discussions, but the RandomX configuration was made by the developer.

RandomX used to recommend changing instruction frequencies ( https://github.com/tevador/RandomX/commit/e4b227010428571b0c4e3209d714bbcfeb943a61) yet no longer does, so that'll be reverted.

The 4GB data set was to force ASIC manufacturers to double their Monero ASICs RAM to also support Meros.

As the audits complete, we plan on making changes accordingly. We do plan on increasing AES usage as well though via program length/program count.

Do you have any technical discussions on either of these that I could read over?

Thanks for your support! Meros will be launching with RandomX, a CPU algorithm. A GPU prototype exists, yet it's much slower even with much more expensive hardware and not currently viable. If it becomes viable, we'll look into supplementing RandomX with a second algorithm.


It's recommend to change opcode frequency, yet the notable change is we use 4GB instead is 2GB.

Is the RandomX identical to Monero's? Or will there be any project specific tweaks?

Compared to Nano, our closest competitor, we offer several improvements.

- Fair distribution of voting power and currency.
- Increased security (vote stapling) and less attack vectors (no ledger bloat attacks or bootstrap poisoning).
- Enough data storage to successfully enable second layers, such as smart contract platforms.
- Lock Boxes; transactions with scripts which enable timelocks, escrows, atomic swaps, complex multisigs, and even an on-chain faucet.

If you have any questions about specifics, please, feel free to ask!

What does Meros bring to the table which other coins don't have? Instant and feeless won't be enough I think.

Our new Triweekly Update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-triweekly-update-18-b427754ea3ce

Our new monthly podcast is live! https://youtu.be/Baygq4jkw4E

We don't have binaries available yet as our only testnets have been for developers. Compiling and setting up the node is a way to prove yourself as a developer. Once we setup a public testnet, which we will do before mainnet, we'll release binaries.

Any news on the easier to install version?

Everyone on our team has heard of Nano. In fact, Meros is heavily inspired by it. That said, Meros has increased security, a reduced risk of stalling, and adds needed functionality, such as timelocks, atomic swaps, and second layer support.

The supply is infinite as to always provide a block reward to reward miners.

Meros used to be named Ember. We changed our name due to conflicts with "EmberCoin", a project where the team had left and community had already regrouped under a new name. They have already performed a coin swap, yet we never launched any network (other than testnets) under the name Ember, and will not be performing a swap.

We have plans to release a both a mobile wallet with invoice support, to enable business to accept and track Meros payments with just a smartphone, and a payment gateway similar to BitPay which enables receiving USD in the end. We plan on enabling the second via Meros Works, a legally registered business which doesn't own any trademarks, copyrights, or patents over Meros.

Why is the total supply not applicable? Is it infinite supply? I have heard of ember before. So ember holders will swap to meros? Having a feature of instant and feeless will only be useful if this coin will be used by many merchants or shops that a user can use for his payment. Are you going to tie up with merchants for this platform?

Have you ever tried Nano?

Instant, secure, feeles, green, with great team and comunity.
Its already in the top40 CMC list.

1) Download Natrium for your phone
2) Get some free Nano at nanofaucet .org
3) Be amazed

The Block Reward is calculated using a negative sigmoid which is designed to remove how arbitrary halving is.

The total supply isn't applicable so miners always have a reward, something many other coins do.

The premine can't be stated as a percent of the total supply due to the lack of a total supply. It's roughly 350k Meros, with 100k released at launch, and 50k released every 6 months after until all 350k has been released.

The project  might be good but  i do not think it can go far or win peoples interest with the below specifiications
Block Reward: 50 to 0.0000001000 MR
Total Supply: Not applicable.
Premine: The equivalent of 2 weeks of the block reward at launch. Then, 1 more week every 6 months, for a total of 7 weeks.

Our new Triweekly Update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-triweekly-update-17-7f3fd74c1a3

A new episode of our Monthly Podcast just went up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUpQ1JLGrxw

Our new Triweekly Update is live! https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/meros-triweekly-update-16-15ff043381e8

prague: Testnet coins will not have any mainnet value, however previous testnet participants are planned to receive MR for their contributions. This will likely extend to our future testnets, but depends on how many people join, and how much they help out.

CaVO32: We agree wholeheartedly, and are already planning ways to gain adoption. Beyond the normal items, like a mobile wallet which supports invoice tracking (which are easier to use than desktop-based payment processing software), we are planning new ways to convince larger businesses to accept Meros. That said, we will need the users to back us up, which is why we're here, making this post. while we finish writing our software and posting updates on our work.

i understand that bitcoin is not meant for payment system because of its pretty expensive transaction fees and many other things. however, several altcoins already addressed those disadvantages of bitcoin but where are they now? the bottleneck that you will encounter here is your coin adoption. even if you have stunning features beating bitcoin, yet your popularity is nowhere half of bitcoin, then i would say, you need to work hard how to gain users for this project. explore your options on how you can introduce this to crypto users and create large following.

Is final testnet stage rewardable in any kind? i.e. migration, swap etc...

The block reward provides incentive to miners, just like BTC until 2140, and Ethereum.

How is it possible to maintain a network if it's completely feeless? Where is the incentive for the maintenance of the network?

Great original work. Developer is fully commited and has all the skills to make it happen. Looking forward for next updates!

Meros is an entirely new, instant, and feeless cryptocurrency, designed to live up to the term and be a currency. Our goal is to enable payments between anyone, anywhere. We don’t believe in shouting buzzwords or centralization. We believe in providing the best tech possible, for the best currency possible, focusing only on elements that improve the currency itself. We set out on this journey with no ICO, no corporate backing, and no venture capital, yet have actively developed Meros for almost an year, building a functional and secure network.

For a quick summary, all Meros transactions are stored on a DAG, allowing non-latent transactions, yet a blockchain also secures the network, providing heightened security via Proof of Work. The two work together according to the brand new Merit Caching Consensus Mechanism, designed and written for Meros. Meros also offers data transmission, yet makes sure that transactions will always be prioritized over data.

Our purpose in this announcement is to grow the Meros community and establish our presence on the cryptocurrency playing field.

• Name: Meros
• Symbol: MR
• Block Time: 10 Minutes
• Block Reward: 50 to 1 MR, calculated via a negative sigmoid which is a function of the difficulty
• Total Supply: Not applicable
• Mining Algorithm: RandomX
• Signature Scheme: Ed25519 (Transactions) and BLS (Verifications)
• Address Format: Bech32

• Premine: 352800 MR, time-locked over 2.5 years

How far along is Meros?
Meros has been in development for over 11 months now. We have completed two Developer Testnets, which were open to anyone who compiles the node.

How is Meros instant if it uses a blockchain?
This is due to the Merit Caching Consensus Mechanism. The Merit Caching Whitepaper is linked above, yet to summarize it:

• All transactions are published to the DAG.
• Merit Holders submit Verifications, which are valid as soon as they are received.
• A transaction is confirmed when it gets 50.1% of the weight.
• The blockchain archives these Verifications.

How is this PoW if there’s "Merit Holders" and weight?
The blockchain is mined via RandomX. Mining the blockchain earns weight in the form of Merit, which is used to verify transactions on the DAG. Verifications are then archived on the blockchain, and new Meros is distributed based on those Verifications.

Why does Meros have data transmission but not a smart contract engine?
Data transmission enables a smart contract engine, yet we believe that is a separate project than a currency, best left to a second layer. We will offer a BTC style scripting engine in order to enable second layers though.

How does Meros handle spam?
Typically, transaction fees stop spam. Since Meros doesn’t have those, we have an adjustable spam filter where users must ‘spend’ CPU cycles to prove their transaction isn’t spam. Data transmission has a separate spam filter, which is how we make sure transactions will always be prioritized over data.

Why is the total supply not applicable?
In order to continue to reward miners, when there’s no transaction fees, there will always be a block reward.

Why are you using two different signature schemes?
Ed25519 is simply a better algorithm than the ‘traditional’ SECP256k1 algorithm. That said, BLS allows signature aggregation. This means we can have one signature for hundreds, or even thousands, of Verifications, and verify them all at once.

Why are you doing a premine and not an ICO?
A time-locked premine means we only make money if we deliver a working product and the coin succeeds. An ICO means we make money for having a great marketing team. It’s fairer to the community to do a premine.

When will Meros be launched?
We planned on launching our mainnet at the end of Q2, 2019. Before launch, we need to match our updated protocol specification, create a quality GUI, do a few more testnets, and have our codebase thoroughly reviewed, pending a full audit. We could launch at the end of Q2, with just a CLI and without proper testing, yet the team considers it their moral responsibility to make sure a new monetary platform is secure, and our community has decided they'd prefer a delay over having only a GUI at launch. For these reasons, our current statement on when Meros will launch is "2019".

What is Ember?
Ember was the original name of the Meros cryptocurrency. We rebranded due to conflicts with dead projects.