Bitcoin Forum

So, I'm jealous.

Everyone seems to have an Altcoin these days, so I want one too.

But I don't know how to do one, and it seems like when somebody asks about it, they are told to "clone this or that" or given all kinds of random or obsolete advice, perhaps by folks who never done a coin themselves.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=225690.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1497539.0

Some say that Altcoins is a stupid idea https://themerkle.com/altcoins-dying-make-one-hour/
Or describe how to do it in X easy steps https://cointelegraph.com/news/10-tips-to-create-your-own-cryptocurrency
http://cryptorials.io/how-anyone-can-make-their-own-digital-currency/
There are some docs from Shakezulu floating around, from a few years back

Now, I know that there are people out there who'll do one for a fee, and I found a few:

Walletbuilders famously does something for 0.05 BTC

Cryptocoin Creator brags about doing 1300 coins of all kinds

Cryptonotestarter does some kinda Cryptonote http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/04/cryptonight-cryptonote-monero/

Build-c-Coin may even be free http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/04/free-cryptocoin-creator-build-coin/

CryptoLife does a bunch of stuff, starting at 0.3 BTC http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/13/cryptolife/

And there are scammers out there https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=829606.0

So, I'm going to go through all the steps of doing and launching an running a coin, from scratch and tell you all about it, in detail. And you'll help me along the way, I hope.

I know that I'll need a logo, and here's an early prototype:
http://practicecoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Stick128.png

Found a weird letter for it - LATIN P with hook https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C6%A4

Everyone has a colorful signature in their posts, with a link, so should figure out how to do one too.

Need a website, and have one now. http://practicecoin.com/

Will describe what I want out of an Altcoin in a future post.  And what my qualifications and limitations are.

Thanks,
  Tearo

 That's sweet, really. Good way to get kids into programming as you understand that you need real programming skills to make something of value.
 My first useful tip:
  I would recommend to use https://www.logoshi.com/ for logo creation  ;).
  
 It might be possible ti use the preview for educational purposes, I guess

nice logo  :D

https://s17.postimg.org/3sfp6zphb/tzv_QDG4.png (https://postimg.org/image/sygndtqrf/) (https://postimage.org/index.php?lang=russian)

But seriously, you have a very good idea.
I will be interested.

best logo ever. ever!
if you're serious i'll host a pool for you

Cool man, i dig your OP, TRUTH atleast haha :)
Some suggestions:

-Projects need funding, but come off scammy wanting PREfunding for most things (ICOs). find a way to self fund in an honest way!
-GPU algo if there's PoW! its the only chance at fair distro, unless you airdrop or use some funky system like byteball
-PoS! its "green" and encourages holding your own coins instead of leaving on exchanges, decentralization!

good luck, following!

To be honest, that logo is awesome.
Nice concept. I'll follow every update for this coin

Thanks, Bawaler, for the kind word and the offer. I am serious to figure this out and get through a launch and running a bunch of nodes, at the minimum.
  Tearo

Can tell I've done similar coin just for fun and learning new and it's still alive and fun to keep services up around it.
Once I tried to support one kind of "learn-new-coin" at bitcointalk forums but the developer was not interested to do anything else than release a working, for purpose badly cloned source.
Your ethics make me want to support you.

well done!

People love in it!

Keep on moving.

youre not explain youre project and youre coin dev
wait about youre project and detail coin

Logo damn funny.

elelegzet, thanks for the suggestion of the logo site. Useful for a quick start.

Grabbed three domains using https://www.namesilo.com
http://practicecoin.com/
http://pracoin.org/
http://pracoin.net/

Could not decide between them, and at $9 / year for each, privacy included, took them all. Domain registration with GoDaddy, with privacy, would be closer to $25, if you only register for a year. Namesilo does take BTC, with a $50 minimum, and the usual confirmation time delay. So I felt impatient and put the purchase on a card instead.

All three domains point to the same site, and for the moment I'm using web hosting from another gig. The picture displayed was generated by "logoshi".

Will look for a cheap hosting or VPS provider that accepts BTC next. There is a long list http://cryto.net/~joepie91/bitcoinvps.html
VPS providers I've looked at so far are not super cheap, and I don't know the performance requirements yet. Say, a 2GB RAM / 2|4 core level per month:
$40 https://libertyvps.net/offshore-vps
$20 https://www.vpsserver.com/plans/
$28 https://bithost.io/prices/

Thanks for all the encouragement,
  Tearo

I want to try out all the major steps for putting together and running a cryptocoin, including developer and bug bounties, a tiny ICO, strive for some kind of a plausible business model, pull together a community with some semblance of governance. Seems only right to get working both Windows and Linux versions of nodes, wallets, and GPU miners. Set up a mining pool and a block explorer, place the coin on exchanges and maybe even do some trading or market making. Should I even care about airdrops, faucets, dice, miner bounties?

I'm a software developer professionally, and so my first inclination was to fork a codebase and do some serious work. But for this project I want to stay away from the familiar and instead focus on things I've never done before. Learn from it, document the steps and experiences, maybe work out some tutorials. So, no original coding from me on this project, though I'll build from source and validate all the software pieces before releasing them.

As to the kind of coin I want, would rather not simply clone Bitcoin or Zcash, which I'm planning to do some work with for real. Also, skip coins that are established, but are kinda "one off" or "proprietary" in their approaches, like Monero or Dash or Pascal. Ethereum is totally interesting and is way too complicated for this effort.

Most of what I know about altcoins comes from listening to the Blockchain Dynamics podcast http://www.blockchaindynamics.net/
They have a forum on Cryptopia: https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/Forum/Thread/634
The hosts sneer at coins that are "another Scrypt coin or a Kryptonite clone" and chuckle at what comes out of "walletbuilder". And they praise some as "a good miner coin". Since I'm not sure what they actually mean by all that, I'll ask them.

I don't understand the whole PoS thing, unlike the Bitcoin or Ethereum PoW. And not sure I really want to learn the staking tricks at this point, even though the Ethereum crowd claims to wanna switch to PoS. What does that leave as possibilities?

Ever perplexed,
  Tearo

 I really think you should keep that original little coinhead mascot ). Maybe another representation
 https://i.imgur.com/5PopvLp.jpg

Bawaler, what type of a coin did you make, and would do same if you were doing it again, please?
And, the badly cloned one you describe, what type was that?
  Tearo

feel free to post from your main account!

CoinBreader, I do not have any other accounts on this forum. But if it appears to you that this is another user, could you tell me who you have in mind, please?
  Tearo

please if you want to follow this route and make your altcoin, do a decent alt with a fair launch a new algo or a algo that cna be mined with gpu and not asic or cpu bot net, also add nice features to make your coins better, like masternodes, or anonymous, you can also add an airdrop which is a nice trend nowadays, encourage more early adoption by newbie

In an earlier post I made a mistake. In listening to the BD podcast, I thought that the host talked about a "Kryptonite" coin type. In further reading, I'm learning that he must have actually said CryptoNight or CryptoNote.
  Tearo

Ayers, thanks for your advice. Will be sure to read-up on airdrops, as I never took part in one myself. Any drops going on now, that I could try and learn from, please?
  Tearo

A crude looking site is up http://practicecoin.com/

Still took almost a whole day in total, and I've done this a dozen times before:
Find and register domains and setup custom nameservers - 1h
Setup hosting of domains, emails, redirects, roll a WordPress distribution - 1h
Setup Site - 4h
  Wordpress plugins for security hardening and management
    Jetpack
    Akismet
    WP Super Cache
    Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights
    Yoast SEO
    Wordfence Security
    SEO Redirection
    BackWPup
  Config MesoColumn theme, menus, pages
  Quickie images gen, crop, and .ico via http://icoconvert.com/
  Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools setup
Setup Forum basics - 1h
  Made a mistake, had to re-do

Ready for some fun content, I suppose :)
  Tearo
 

Even if you did show it I beg to differ that any would understand, I have given advice and tried to help but it just goes over some peoples heads...

There is video tutorials out there, coins with the guide in the commits (1 by 1) how to make them and yet people still can't grasp it.

You say Linux & they go oooh but erm um isn't windows easier.... :D

You can do the majority of it on github itself or even windows but linux is way easier to create gui wallets to get things started, cross compiling is a different story for each coin and deps if you want a windows Qt wallet so it can't really be a one guide for all type thing :)

I say this is a very good thing ^^^ as then we won't have noob coders "cloners" flooding the scene.... :D  ;) 420 is about to rip havok ;D

P.S the reason why people say the things they say for creating an altcoin is due to the very reason I am explaining, TBH it is all there but broken up (For good reason) and people who can understand code can obviously work out what is required.

Good intentions, bad outcome

Dear BF, thank you for taking the time to respond. My intention is not to make 'cloning' tired old coins trivial, in order to support noob scammers. Nor am I trying to make money with this particular project, but will be actually spending some, to force myself to learn the coin launch details, and to prove that I've learned them by running the services and documenting the choices, costs, effort, gotchas.

I program Linux kernel, drivers, and networking for a living, in embedded environments, and have been coding to POSIX standards for decades. In the Bitcoin arena, I've built on Ubuntu, from the Github code and been running on and off various versions of nodes for Core, Classic, Unlimited, Zcash, ZClassic, Zero. Experimenting with implementation changes to the Zcash Equihash algorithm, reviewing on-chain identity solutions, IPFS, etc.

But I don't want to bury myself in the morass of hacked-over Bitcoin code, that's being stretched in every direction by developers who are at odds with each other, and never come out. So, I will try to go through the outlined steps for coin development and promotion, with minimal original software development effort. This time around...

As to detailed suggestions you would make, I will take the time to follow them up.
  Tearo

Wonderful folks at the Blockchain Dynamics podcast took good five minutes to review the Practice Coin announcement https://soundcloud.com/errorbytrial/blockchain-dynamics-57-422017

They have expressed a number of doubts and concerns about the project, like its incremental value or longevity. Will have to dig in and address them all, going forward.
 
Thanks!
  Tearo

lots of things have been changed over a time but this guide really helped me alot in beginning have fun

I love that you have shared this venture with the community. I too was/am interested in new coin developement so i will also be following this project. I have found that Nist5 is a very nice algo that is asic resistant. It Is friendly to both AMD and Nvidia cards so anyone with even a decent gpu can mine it. Some of the best launches include starting at a low diff with a larger payout as a way to reward early miners and encourage adoption. Perhaps half the rewards at block 1000 depending on your block time.

I will be following and supporting you through the whole venture!

i dont have any idea as well but  want to learn from this thread so i will follow the progress coming from those who really understand how
alts work and how will you succeed from this venture its about learning and understanding those concept and materialized from each learning
good luck OP.

Tekyboy, thanks. A lot of stuff there for sure. As I go through it, will report further.
  Tearo

Bambalam, thanks for mentioning NIST5 algo, which I have not heard about as yet. Looks like it started coming up in 2014, around the same time as X15, Groestl, Keccak? Don't know enough details to judge their relative merits.

Zcash integrated an algorithm called Equihash that is supposed to be RAM hard, which should level the field between CPUs and GPUs, and perhaps make ASICs pointless. Unfortunately, the Equihash parameters that Zcash picked turned out not hard enough, and CPUs are still swamped out. Even a Zcash clone named Zero, that upped the parameters a bit, is not turning out hard enough. I'm OK with GPUs having some advantage, perhaps 2-5X over a modern i7-7700, but not 20X.
  Tearo

I think you should try to clone ethereum, it's easy coin to clone and people who not familiar with tech love it very much.
I never cloned it myself, but it's looks like all you need is to generate new genesis_block.json.
There is some instructions for ethereum on genesis generation.
https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/07/27/final-steps/
Probably I'm wrong and some other important steps required for cloning ethereum, it would be fine if some dev shows up and help with it.
You can start little crowdfunding too, I will pay $100 in btc personally to first guy who will make a long youtube video with complete step-by-step guide for people not familiar with programming and crypto on cloning ethereum and running it as a new coin*.
*hardcoded checkpoints creation should be mentioned, since mysterious '51 Crew' usually bother to attack all new ethereum clones

Nist5 Is very CPU friendly, but you also have to remember- those of us with gpu's have spent alot of money to be where we are at. I mean- i started with one nvidia card, mined early coins that were "pumped" and "dumped" for awesome profits that allowed me to purchase more cards. Here is the hashrate i get from my I5-6600k

http://prntscr.com/es7ldo

For a cpu, thats an awesome hashrate! Why i love nist5 so much.

What is best is Algorithms that give older GPU cards the benefit over the newer ones, bang for buck for instance.

Look how Equihash turned out at the start for the 270/x, 280/x, 290/x folks ;D

A lot and I mean a lot of miners have abandoned their older GPU rigs in favour of other brands/newer cards.

Algorithms can be limited, look at HodlCoin for instance, that Algorithm "IS" Memory Hard to 1 GB only and great for CPU mining.

dfd1, I may not be your guy, to make the video, but as much as I've avoided Ethereum so far, it is THE Altcoin, and all the cool kids are all over it  ;)
More than happy to cover half of that 0.01 BTC bounty you are suggesting, for the Ethereum cloning guide.
Made a list of suggestions from the readers so far http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/04/reader-suggestions/
  Tearo

Dang, that's a 0.1 BTC bounty. Gotta get some rest...

Review of free coin minting services - Cryptocoin Creator and Build-a-Coin
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/04/free-cryptocoin-creator-build-coin/
Free does not get you much  ;D
  Tearo

Nice, looks like we have first bounties.

There was huge PoS drama some years ago, and at the end of the day no coin age or even fixed percentage turned out to be good ideas, too many ways to trick the network like staking for an hour once in a year appeared.
Altcoin developers today usually implement blackcoin pos 3.0 in their projects,  I think it's most mature and secure way to run PoS. Shadowcash switched to it, for example.
https://www.reddit.com/r/blackcoin/comments/3qoerc/pos_30_whitepaper/
https://www.reddit.com/r/blackcoin/comments/3cfvaa/static_pos_reward_is_coming/
So, if no other options, i think there is no need to reinvent the wheel and blackcoin pos can be used in Practice Coin.
With PoS network can run without constant risk of 51 attack, users incentivised to have full nodes, network became more decentralized (PoW coins tend to centralize around pools), no need to pay extra mlllions for electricity, coin holders in full control of updates.
Also, I think some small reward for block is better than huge inflation, staking with big reward actually kill PoS coins since people don't want to feel behind all the top whales who mint like 90% of new coins.

The site is more filled out now.
A note on CryptoNight, CryptoNote, and Monero - skip
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/04/cryptonight-cryptonote-monero/
  Tearo

I see two ways to proceed - order and study a Walletbuilders product or make a Litecoin on a different address, deploy and then mod.

Personally, I want to evaluate what Walletbuilders actually delivers and have the community inspect the code and fitness as well. One of the options they do offer is to have it switch to PoS after some block. 0.05 BTC a pop.

Litecoin's latest distribution is probably a great Altcoin starting point, and they've activated SegWit already. And all the supporting components, like miners and wallets and block explorers are already optimized and available on Github. Also, all the Scrypt altcoins started from various (perhaps rather dated) releases of Litecoin, and we can pick-up their mods, like a different PoW algorithm and more. And such well-defined changes we can bounty for. Would be fun and educational to change the algorithm on a running chain and do a hard fork.

Of course, I can see doing both...
  Tearo

Any update?🤓

Very cool. Would love to learn. What can we do so far to help ? Will you give people coins to learn by making transactions. It would be nice for beginners. Its a great idea.

Herbert, thanks.  Once we nail down what kinda coin type to work on, and with what parameters, I can talk about some "bounties" for participation on the forum, rewards for developers, etc. When the testnet is launched, there will be rewards for running nodes, miners, a mining pool. And for generating testnet transactions, particularly if done repeatedly from a script or a program, so we can try out transaction rates of once a second or faster.

So far, I have recent instructions on how to mod the code generated by Build-a-Coin service.
Also, instructions from two years ago on how to mod Litecoin, plus all those even older guides, about Bitcoin and Litecoin.

Still planning to order the Walletbuilders "product" for 0.05 BTC, to find out exactly what they provide. Thinking that for starters it will be Scrypt PoW, with the block rate of 6 min (10/hour, 240/day) and block reward of 100 PRA, for the ease of thinking about it. Push reward halfing way out, like 10 years, for the same reason. Tune parameters just a touch from the usual.

As to what one can dig into, I've been capturing a list of suggestions, beyond what's been documented so far
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/04/reader-suggestions/

  Tearo

Finally got an AWS instance running, and managed to connect to it with Putty (they don't make it easy).
Now figuring out what 'seed' and 'DNS seed' nodes are about.
  Tearo

This aint looking good. Too funky for my liking. Im not reading about it anymore, got much better things to do. But here is a piece of advice from me: look at cellulite coin and the progress it has made within past months. Its full of innovations and resembles all things that matter as its created by gospel singers for people that value cold robust tech and nothing besides that. Note that cellulite coin is currently targeting eth cap.

what is this ?
practice coin,, a coin that build from learning or because from other reason ?  ???

here is the funniest reason

just because of your jealous than you make a new coin ?

They are pretty much the same thing, they allow you to connect to the wallet and sync without making a .conf or using addnode=

You will also want to read up on what pnSeed is and does to be thorough

Lol , just because of that you make this coin,,
you must prepare all the thing to create a new cryptocurrency

So, I paid my hard-earned 0.05BTC and got a drop of the Walletbuilders product.
If you are curious, or want to help me with some due diligence on it, drop me a line, please.
Binaries provided do pass a virus scan :)
Building from source now, on Ubuntu.
  Tearo

A tiny step for a typical Altcoin, but a huge leap in my learning process. No technology innovation here, as promised, only flattening the learning curve :)

practicecoind and practicecoin-qt built pretty much out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 16.04. Meaning it took me about two hours to find all the relevant snippets of instructions and get it done and smoketested. Do note that I've already built all kinds of Bitcoin and Zcash derivatives on this box, plus Litecoin, just before starting. So all the dependencies were already in place and the typical build steps were very familiar.

Yet to brave the Windows build, or even to look at the instructions.

Scrypt cpuminer2.4.5 needed an updated version of CURL, but then built fine. That and getting all the configuration options right took another two hours. But, the chain is running and mining. Though, not convinced that default Walletbuilders seeding works. Let me do a tad more due diligence and can provide access for private screenings.

Yet to look into how one sets up a mining pool, or a block explorer, or a seeder or a full node or a CPU miner inside a VPS instance. At some point will look into Docker and Google Cloud, and a smaller VPS provider, but AWS first.
 
I'm tempted to wait till after the Windows port is accomplished and all the other obligatory goodies just mentioned are in place, but can be very easily convinced otherwise, to solicit feedback and get help and schooling right away.
  Tearo

Alright that sounds good. I have always wondered what those guys are offering. Is running a node profitable ? Early reward coins for me are the best. I say let the dumper dump I will collect and wait.

Herbet, right now running transaction validating and forwarding nodes does not pay directly, for any of the cryptocurrencies. Where is can help one's mining or transaction processing, it could be useful, but not as a standalone service to the network.

This is shortsighted, and I want to develop this ability, but do not know how one would do that automatically. ZClassic folks talk about such a feature. Any other places we can look for discussion, or better yet some code?
  Walter

For a time the miner created a situation that produced an error from the node, rejecting the block:
  coinbase timestamp is too early
Had to restart both programs, but yet to follow-up.
  Tearo

Don't like the operation of the difficulty adjusting mechanism. It appears to be changing every block, or thereabouts, but then swings from blocks accepted every 10-15 sec, and then taking a break for a couple of minutes. From the page on their site for this distribution, it seems that Walletbuilders compiled in 64 sec block target, though I remember asking for 6 min (10/hour) blocks.

In the beginning of the initial run there were two ERROR messages:
 generated block is stale
Upon restart of the processes, hours later there were a dozen "stale" messages
And, some hours into the run, eight "timestamp too early" ones, though it seemingly recovered.

So, the interaction between the miner and the node, perhaps in the difficulty settings or some other timing related thing is off periodically. Don't like it, and not sure at all that I want to debug this codebase. Will do a little more work on launching in the cloud and may bail and go to building and running and modding Litecoin code.

Was looking to launch a stable chain that we can use among ourselves to award bounties and rewards with, but Walletbuilders may not be it. At this point also leery about spending time on the Build-a-Coin generated code, even though do have instructions on how to mod it. Anyone cares, or wants to take part?
  Tearo

Related posts: http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/12/walletbuilders/
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/04/free-cryptocoin-creator-build-coin/
Switching to work on Litecoin codebase directly.
  Tearo

Soliciting input regarding PoW difficulty re-targeting generally, and in the context of Litecoin specifically.
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/12/difficulty-re-targeting/

dfd1, the link you cite is kinda dated. Have you seen more?

To bounty this work, we need to spec exactly what we expect, perhaps also including what's already covered here and there, plus this and that and diagrams other things and references and links :)

PPT and video released under the BY-SA Creative Commons Licence, where they get attribution. Bragging rights and a link from our soon-to-be-famous practicecoin.com site are also included.

How about we frame it in terms familiar to the ETH bunch - each pitch in 1 ETH, which just happens to be around $50. I have a dozen or so ETH somewhere, from before the DAO incident. Where could we advertise the bounty, for the right folks to see it? I bet them ETH freaks would want to use a smart contract escrow for this ;)
  Tearo

Review of CryptoLife service offering
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/13/cryptolife/

Cant see a relationship between jealousy and a desperate craving to make another headless shitcoin. In 2015, we had much more icos, more page views, more posting in the threads. See forum stats to have a better understanding of what has changed since then. The purpose of a coin is to make money, nobody creates them for the sake of creating. Making the one takes roughly 4 hours.

Reserved.

Status update:
Cloning the latest version of Litecoin - 0.13.2.1
All the guides are at least two years old and the codebase has been evolving.
The code is compiling now on Linux, but the Genesis block generation is still broken. Will keep you posted.
Any technical suggestions welcome, if they are based on the Bitcoin / Litecoin versions 0.12 or later.
  Tearo

Pretty sure that part has been vacant from The Official Bitcoin And Litecoin repos for some time, you can see on many altcoins what needs to be added and changed.

Planning on parameters:
6 min blocks - 240/day, with 100 coin reward. Halfing every 1000 days, three times total (50,25,12.5).
All 45,000,000 coins to be emitted in ~11 years (do check my math, please)
  [If folks feel strongly abut this, let's discuss HF in 10 years]
5 confirmations (there is no solid science behind 6) - 30 min
Bitcoin difficulty adjustment algo, every 1 hour (10 blocks) - can build-in a more sophisticated one later, but 1h should be quite responsive, without being way jerky.
BIP9 75/95% activation over 2 days (480 blocks).
Want Segwit, just for fun, and can active out-of-the-gate.
Looking for advice on accelerated BIP68,112,113 activation.
Checkpoints
2% pre-mine (900,000) to be used for promotions, bounties, private placement.
10% block reward fee - 5% goes to nodes operators, 5% for bounties, operations (details TBD and totally open for discussion)
VPS and seeder, mining pool and block explorer are TBD, and there are participants quite capable of contributing those.

As of today, still debugging re-hashing during the Genesis block generation, after parameters are updated. The code's been moved around mid-2015[0.11], but still no comments, and hard-coded constants are used exclusively.
Rather disillusioned by the state of the stock Bitcoin/Litecoin codebase. A commercial coder, a year out of a state college could not get away with this. If this is indicative of Core's engineering expertise, and the quality of improvements over past seven years, the technology is in trouble. But this is must be intentional, likely for "job security" reasons. Plus a 'hack' mindset, that coding style has to be obscure and terse. As if little code translates into a tight and fast executable.

Whatever, will get through it. Better yet, school me. Show me modifications to Litecoin 0.13.2.1 chainparams.cpp:115-118, that build and run. Say, simply change 50 to 100.

Also, it would be great if anyone can make the Litecoin Windows build work with the "Windows Sybsystem for Linux", that Bitcoin 0.14 now supports. It's quick and deterministic and is likely the way Bitcoin clones will be built going forward.
  Tear

Ive just gotten into coin mining and gonna build a PC and compare results with that and my current rig.  Ill post benchmarks, details etc for this thing.  Seems like a better use of my time than playing video games.  Will have NVidia card not sure what yet, have 1080 right now, and ill try using NiceHash since it seems easy enough for now.

Status update on Genesis Block generation.
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/19/genesis-block/

Folks, in researching all the established Coin generation services I discovered that the venerable coincreator.net domain was abandoned. So, I got it through an auction for $200, a year of registration included. Then threw a super primitive site on it, just a placeholder really. Parts of the original site are in the Internet Archive.
http://coincreator.net/

Not only all kinds of great SEO for the main project site, but now I'm getting a bunch of requests for coins, from all over. More than I can even field. So, at this junction, I'm looking to connect with experienced Altcoin devs, designers, and promoters for collaborative work. I will even go ahead and feed my portion of the profit back into the Practice Coin project, to pay for infrastructure and if there are any funds left, to distribute it as a dividend to participants.

To discuss further, register on http://practicecoin.com/index.php/forum/practice-coin-forum/
  Tearo

This seems to me a very laudable and much needed project, I'll see if I can
contribute within the confines of my own time budget

Mr. CGM, if I may call you that.
Welcome to our thread, and I totally look forward to learning more about the details of putting together a rig from scratch. Would you be able to give us the technical specs, perhaps even prices that you were able to score on the components?
  Tearo
P.S. Our own Forum now has a Mining thread, so kindly cross-post there, please.
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/mining/

YarkoL, thanks so much for your kind words. I felt likewise when I got started, but so far it has been a tad of slow going for me.
Though I'm making progress with the Litecoin clone, and there are 2-3 devs showing interest.

Feel free to join our dedicated Forum, and we'll take it from there. http://practicecoin.com/index.php/forum/practice-coin-forum/
I'm getting ready to discuss running a testnet version of the clone, and also to review the PRA coin parameters.
  Tearo

now this is a coin with valuable purpose.
I'm a web developer and specialise in wordpress, if you need any consulting or integration please i'm happy to help.

Richpress, thanks for giving us a look.
Could you take a look at our project sites and give some suggestions, please. http://practicecoin.com/index.php/blog/
Also, ping we personally and we'll take it from there.
  Tearo

I'm getting a bunch of requests for coins, more than I can field. Having found better-known services to be lacking, I'm now contacting some folks I know in the field. But experienced Altcoin devs, designers, and promoters can still participate. http://practicecoin.com/index.php/forum/practice-coin-forum/

Actually, right now I could use folks with good PM and org skills, to wade through many sets of requirements and requests for a quote.

I will feed my portion of the profit back into the Practice Coin project, to pay for infrastructure and if there are any funds left, to distribute it as a dividend.
  Tearo

Could folks with solid insights school us on PoS, beyond the basics, please? http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/coin-types/#post-156

Include limitations of the old schemes and what the state-of-the-art looks like these days. A mention of modern PoS coins with best features would be useful.

What parameters are best suited to the interests of general public vs. the coin owner and how to tell scams. Whether to PoS from the start or begin with PoW and switch at a certain block.

The outcome of this discussion will inform the decisions, when we are ready to craft a PoS coin of our own.
  Tearo

Some very general guidelines, assuming you're starting from Peercoin-based PoS;
don't make the block interval too short to avoid excessive forking. 2 minutes min
Also balance the yearly interest with the transaction fees, so there is no or very little inflation.

Minimum coin age to start staking? This open to debate, some coins dispense with it
entirely, peercoin has quite a long period. The rationale is to prevent a certain sort of attack, but long
maturation period encourages minters to keep their nodes offline and open them only for
staking, thus diminishing the network security. I would put couple of days here.

It's simplest to do the initial distribution with PoW, and not make the cutoff block too early.
I think at least a month, and the more the better.

Most PoS I've seen (and I've been away from the scene for a while now)
 are based on really old < Bitcoin 0.9 sources, if anyone has seen
a decent PoS that uses autotools for the builds, I'd like to know about it

 

It's not so huge payment to ask video creator so much.
I don't want to limit author with licenses and anything, all I want to see is a video on youtube with step by step guide for newbies on ethereum cloning.  Probably something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86jqAfySi64
All rights belong to video creator, he can do with video whatever he wants, no necessary links or any limitations.
I don't have ethereum, so probably I will stick to 0.05 btc ( no less than $50 no more than $100 in case of price change), paid  by me to the first guy who posted link to his video in this thread.

I was playing with the idea to do an upgraded version of the YouTube video serie your mention.
Does it need to be an ethereum clone?
Nothing against ethereum, I just didn't study there code yet.

Yep  :)
It's looks like there is still no guide for ethereum clone with checkpoints, so I think it will be useful one, and my bounty for a video about ethereum only. Someone probably can set additional bounty for some other coin, though.

YarkoL, thanks for pitching in. PoS topic is important to so many folks in the field that I can no longer ignore it, even though being a Crypto algo person, PoW is so much more familiar to me.
Will keep summarizing the info on the site and will ask for a review once there is a critical mass of content.
  Tearo

Was only thinking a bounty in ETH to make it sound sexier to the Ethereum boys. Don't care that much and will follow your lead.
  Tearo

Does anyone want to tackle a PIVX clone gig?
Honing in on requirements with the customer and getting ready to quote.
Revenue split with my portion going to this project.
Quick response appreciated, before I announce on the more visible thread.
  Tearo

Posted a general WANTED ad, but no replies so far  :-\
Kindly post on the thread to keep it in public's eye. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1889774.0
Any coin made off these gigs goes right into this project, and I'll tell you all about it.
  Tearo

Hi,
i love your site and your practicecoin.
Can you pls also explain how i can setup a node on a ubuntu server for windows players? This would be great.

Dear playersfun, we are still figuring things out.
Feel free to join the Forum, Introduce yourself and join the fun. http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/introductions/
  Tearo

Happy to report that I've been having a steady stream of applicants, with skill sets as diverse as a web designer, a graphics designer, a white paper writer, a promoter.
Pretty close to having a critical mass to produce an Altcoin commercially, with all the technical and promotional components in place.
And several genuine customers queued up.
  Tearo

First cut of the PRA coin is now running on 'regtest'.
For early access to the 'testnet' sign-up on the Practice Coin Forum.
Seven rewards for the established Bitcointalk members joining the Forum are still available:  http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/forum-rules/#post-95
There will also be rewards for participation in the 'testnet'.
  Tearo

Coin Parameters and Timeline http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/05/09/coin-parameters/

Five out of ten Practice Coin Rewards are still available http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/introductions/
  Tearo

Three more applicants for GIGs, with web, graphics design and marketing skills.

Supporting via email and Skype almost a dozen fledgling Altcoin proposals, to help them hone their ideas and work through marketing and launch plans. Anything from total noobs to rather knowledgeable individuals. Something like 50/30/20% split between Asia, US, and Eastern Europe. Some of the projects are purely commercial, but two can be considered as "public benefit" or "special interest".
  Tearo

I registered in the forum, I would be very happy to be able to follow this project closely and promote it on Twitter :)

BTC_wolf, welcome to our growing group of Altcoin enthusiasts. Behind the scenes, we are making progress in getting our first cryptocurrency minted. It has been a tad slower than expected, as we are all doing this in our spare time. But the goal of having a well understood and documented and tested Altcoin codebase, derived from the current Bitcoin baseline, is very relevant to many developers on this forum.
  Tearo

Discussing an alternative to Chronobank, an Altcoin that would be measured in the units of Hours, but with a very localized community focus
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/alt-alt-coin-concepts-other-units-of-account-hours-bushels-barrels-tonnes/

A power grab by Libertarians, Peacenicks sharpening weapons, Humanitarians ready for violence, Orgasmic farmers braiding sheep, Demagogues globalizing, Repo men glowing orange.
Should be fun.
  Tearo

Its been a while since u first posted on reddit and narkiv, what have u been doing all this time and why havent u contributed to the broad society instead of spamming about ur proctology  coin, that is indeed suspicious that u came up with it in the last seconds before the countdown on ur unpaid mortgage ended. I dont know if u have an agenda but u are looking to rake in money and therefore should be vetted by a trustworthy person that can vouch for u preferably ur advocate.

Question to the community in the thread:
Should I bother to respond to trolls, or simply ignore? I am leaning towards an Ignore.
  Tearo
P.S. Never did post on Reddit, but perhaps this is a good reminder that I should. Narkive is some kinda newsgroup archive, prolly not worth a second look. Opinions on cross-posting on Bitcoingarden.org?

Been working through the process of how to post progress that was made so far, into Github repos with progressive commits demonstrating relevant steps. For the time being using my own account, until I figure out the right way and clone into the "practicecoin" Github account.

The overall project plan is as follows:

1) Straight clone of Litecoin 0.13.2.1
 A commit showing the Genesis block generation with current dates.
  - Change ports, address prefix
  - Build Qt wallet and the server on Ubuntu
  - Verify regtest, tesnet, mainnet operation
  - Deploy on two nodes - AWS and local
  - Use .litecoin directory, but carefully, so as not to mix up the chains
  - Mining
    -- RPC commands
    -- "cpuminer"
 
  - Skip checkpointing, DNS or IP 'seeder', Mining pool, Block explorer

  - Verify Windows build: needs doing, but a tedious process ;(
    -- Traditional Ubuntu build inside a VM
      --- Litecoin 0.13.2.1 instructions are sparse
     -- Bitcoin 0.14 use of Windows 10-based Ubuntu, but the process fails with Litecoin 0.13.2.1 (been debugging)
     -- Native Windows cross-compile
       --- Not supported "officially", but numerous guides on the net
       --- Inside Visual Studio (has been done in the past, but is it worth the effort)

[Question] Version numbers compiled into the code
  - Bitcoin code special cases versions and block numbers, dealing with several old hard forks
  - Litecoin code has same
    -- Genesis block is traditionally version 1, and versions run up to 4 or 6, before being supplanted by BIP9 masks (true?)
    -- What block version(s) do various miners or mining pools generate? (internal, cpuminer, GPU)
  - Best method to force "activate" for CSV and SegWit right away (or after a certain early block)


2. Clone 1. to use 'practicecoin' and 'PRA' names throughout, including the names of binaries and Qt signage
  - Different ports, Genesis block
  - Validate 3 nets, Windows build


3. Improvements:
  - Difficulty adjustment
  - Block rates
  - Reward schedule
    -- Premine


4. Checkpoint
  - Blocks
  - Transactions
  - Work


5. Online tools:
  - Seeder
  - Mining pool
  - Block explorer


6. Scrypt GPU miner: test and benchmark
  - AMD
  - Nvidia
  - ASIC?


7. Wallets:
  - MAC
  - Paper
  - Android
  - iOS
  - Appearance and security


8. Algorithm support:
  - X11+
  - NIST5
  - Scrypt variants


9. Code reviews, security audits, stress testing


10. Document everything, with a FAQ, quick HOWTOs, illustrated tutorials, videos, curriculum


OUCH, sounds like a seriously major project for a bunch of people. Urgently soliciting suggestions, recipes, contributions, bounties. You can assume that I will RTFM and Google more obvious stuff myself.

NOTE: We are working with the latest Bitcoin/Litecoin codebase, not one of the 2 or 3-year-old ones, that vast majority of Altcoins have been based upon. Guides and suggestions for those have been reviewed already and found lacking, which led to the formation of this initiative in the first place.

Generic statements that "this is easy" or "has been done already" will results in "name that tune" responses.

Several serious members already went through a number of these tasks, in their own repos. I can attempt to review and merge the changes, but would really welcome merges, pull requests, anything. Also, Litecoin is moving towards 0.14 Bitcoin compatibility and Bitcoin is at 0.14.1. So the codebase will always be a moving target.

So far I have intentionally avoided creating a Slack channel or Telegram or whatever chat environment is in vogue on a given day. Plenty of dead channels around already, at least a dozen that I've signed up for. If three people commit to check and post on some channel once a day, I'll publish one.

Presently I steer more dedicated folks to sign-up and post on the practicecoin.com Forum http://practicecoin.com/index.php/forum/practice-coin-forum/
Already have been chatting directly with a couple of contributors via Skype.
  Tearo

Interesting concept, but I get page not found/ forbidden errors when i try to go to practicecoin.com and the links you have been posting

Nothing at practicecoin.com atm.

Can't find any snapshots at Wayback Machine.

Creating a new crapcoin has been more difficult than I anticipated.  "Just change a few parameters and viola!" it is not.  Then again I might not be very smart.  ;)

Can anyone get something like this idea of practicecoin.com up and going again for BTC?  If so, how much?

Thanks  :)

Yes, it seemed to be going somewhere and then just vanished.

I have been thinking of putting out of a course of a sort, with the intent of
not only showing what to change, but also why, and what is it for, and so on.
Sort of "garage mechanics" 101 for crypto.

The trouble is, you'd need to understand something about code and have
a little better than average computer skills (comfortable with linux) to get
benefit from that and I'm not sure if these requirements match the target
audience...

Sounds like a good idea.  I started at Satoshi's original client and followed the patches.  It was a little easier that way, but involves a lot of work.  The Bitcoin Core code as it stands now is definitely something to stay away from considering the proposed changes and whether UASF and other projects will continue.  Like Gavin Andresen has said, the code is quirky.  All that stuff would have to be removed and the code base cleaned up.

I think a part of the target audience would match the requirements very well, like experienced programmers who want a better than average understanding of implementation details.  That suits me just fine.  Others might be just buyers looking to create scams with pre-mined coins, but who cares.  They should go away because they don't have the requisite knowledge or patience to develop for themselves or give it a try forking a project like Litecoin or Bitcoin Core.

I'd put the asking price of 0.3 BTC (last time I checked) out there for a basic no frills fork like that provided by cryptolife so long as it had the necessary documentation, or diffs were provided with source comments against the fork used to create it.

Dear Folks, my apologies for disappearing and letting the http://practicecoin.com/ site go down.
Life intervened in a big way, and meanwhile, the hosting provider screwed up ;(

The site is back up, and I will do my best to catch-up and revive the effort.
  Tearo

The most immediate choice for an Altcoin PoW algorithm is Scrypt, which is in Litecoin.
And Litecoin codebase has been tracking Bitcoin releases rather well, with the Segwit code changes, at v0.14.2 level now.
Pretty sure I know how to clone that.

But, I'm interested in cloning a codebase with one of the other popular algo, like X11, X15, NIST5.
What were the original coins that introduced those algo, respectively, please?
What Bitcoin release are they at now, or are there their clones that are further along in upmerging?
  Tearo

And now for something completely different...

Wrote an article with details of the PBoC ICO decision and the fallout so far:
https://medium.com/@tearodactyl/revenge-of-empires-b2d695fe95b

Folks, I apologize for having put this project on hold, but I'm very actively involved in the development of a fun little coin named Zero, a clone of Zcash.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1796036.new#new

If you are looking to get into some design decisions and hands-on development, come on over.
  Tearo

Hi, very good job, the truth is that I am learning a lot, but I have a doubt, what repositories and programs would have to install in linux to be able to put into practice what I learned?

Greetings and sorry for my English

In my opinion this coins is completly pointless. I'm glad that you are not conducting ICO of it  ;)

To any wannabe altcoin developer, I would strongly suggest building first some well-understood production coins, right from Github
Of course, you start with Bitcion, cause you can
Then Litecoin, and for something a little different, Zcash.

Once you have enough Linux environment configured to build those, you will be able to build some newish stuff, like Bitcoin Cash or Gold, etc. Do tell us how it worked out.
  Tearo

what are the bonuses for first-days purchases?

Wrong thread, pal. Nothing for sale here.

Interesting discussion of different timeframes that can be used in trading cryptocurrencies.
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/benefits-of-higher-time-frame-trading/

Hi, are you still doing this?  If you are I would be happy to help with that stuff.  I got over that initial hurdle.  The biggest difficulty I had was what to search for on Google and then mining after finding a genesis block.  I had connection issues with my nodes.  I would recommend going from abc coin and using shakezula's guides.  You will need the scrypt guide as well as the Bitcoin cloning guide if you want to clone an earlier Bitcoin, because it goes into the details of commands for P2P things.  I banged my head on the wall for a while until I went back to the guide and remembered "-connect".  Sometimes it's the smaller things that are a trip up!

Anyway, have you got most of your Linux environment set up?  You will need two machines to connect.  I wouldn't recommend having one inside a virtual machine to begin with, like Linux in VirtualBox.  But you can do it over a couple of old laptops or desktops on the local net instead of using a VPS as a more permanent seed node.  The starting difficulty is a very high number to begin with, making it easy to generate new coins for an altcoin project and see it in action.

Good luck.

Thanks for pitching in!
  Tearo

Done

Phil, welcome to Practice Coin!
I am totally interested in the steps to clone Ethereum or to exercise many of its experimental features.
In the past, I have looked at a project to reframe Ethereum smart contracts in a PoA (Proof of Authority) environment https://github.com/oraclesorg

Perhaps you can start the effort and let others pitch-in.
  Tearo

FYI - interesting discussion of the specific aspects of High Frequency Trading in the context of Crypto
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/benefits-of-higher-time-frame-trading/

Another interesting discussion - Lot Size on Forex
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/benefits-of-higher-time-frame-trading/#post-294

All Dead All Dead
All the Dreams We Had
    Queen, News of the World, 1977

Hey, that's my favorite Queen album.  ;D Sleeping on the sidewalk!

is there any new information about this project guys,its been a months since last post it,hope to see more in here

potential :) ;)

I like this project he looks promising. I learn more about the project and his idea by studying white paper. But even with a superficial introduction to the project there are positive impressions.

Ethereum Smart Contract creation pre-compiled
https://github.com/satansdeer/ethereum-token-tutorial

A good and wealthy project, but can we see who is on the team? This is a big thing, you need a very good team.

This is a very good idea. I would be more concerned. Wish successful project

I think a respected member of the forum does not read ideas about which he writes, this project has not even started a bounty company.
Does anyone know when the bounty will start?