Newly created address will be different from the other chain. However, since LinearCoin will copy BitCoin's database of addresses. The same wallet (public keys) you use for BitCoin will also work for your LinearCoin "free-premine".

EDIT: NO, your coins will not be able to be STOLEN under any circumstance. The necessary LinearCoin client would warn you about your pre-fork coins. The easy solution is to just send your coins to yourself. This will push them past the fork on the LinearCoin chain. At worst, someone could copy that transaction and re-submit it to the BitCoin network. That would have the effect of sending your coins to yourself there as well. The BitCoin move will not be automatic. Moving BitCoins effects your "Coin Age". Some may not want that.

I think it is only fair to call this bootstrapping method a "pre-mine". Some people get coins before the p2p network even launches. Those people are current BitCoin holders.

HOWEVER, there is NO ADDITIONAL pre-mine by wingding or I should I choose to help him. I would be doing this purely for the technical experience of creating an alt-coin. I don't want to speak for wingding. He has already made his philosophical reasons known elsewhere.

FULL DISCLOSURE, I am not a BitCoin holder.
I do not know if wingding is a BitCoin holder.

I have made my reluctance to purchase bitcoins known elsewhere as well. However, if you read my old posts you will see that I have a long history on this site. I am also a 100% supporter of BitCoin's use in making ANONYMOUS purchases over the internet possible. That is why I (might) undertake this project.

@wingding, Have you started trying to build the code? Are you a software developer?

I'm guessing the BitCoin developers would suggest the TestNet for that...

I agree that makes more sense long term operation. The first solution "seems" easier only as a first step towards your proposal.

Thanks for the thoughtful response Stephen. That makes perfect sense.

That makes sense. In fact, I just read that in the transaction validation logic last night. Duh!
But they do relay new block announcements. Even if they are off the current chain. Right?


So option (2) requires BitCoin developer buy-in even for a plausible test.
I'm not an advocate of that path. I just mentioned it because I presume that is what wingding was initially thinking.

1. Download source
2. Change the mining parameters
3. Checkpoint a particular forking block
4. Compile, run and "Away we go!"

Could do option (1) by:
1a Download source
1b Download block chain
2a Change the mining parameters
2b Change the port
2c Tweak the genesis to change its hash
2d Re-hash all the other blocks at trivial difficulty
3. Checkpoint a particular forking block
4. Compile, run and "Away we go!"

At least that would get to a stable TestNet configuration to mess with.

Now I'm not Pollyanna. I don't expect this concept to be popular despite the free coins.
Without significant mixed-mining support people are going to treat this chain like Indiana John's whip!

I just want to compile the client and dink with it for practice. I've got my own Alt-Coin ideas. I just need a simple shared goal as motivation to get started.

Have you already started work on this? Or is this your pre-project brainstorming?

WARNING: I am not an expert on this but I have a software engineering background and reasonable familiarity with the block chain and transaction graph data structures.

There are two ways to approach the problem.

1. Create a new LinearCoin P2P network entirely disconnected from the existing BitCoin P2P nodes.

    This would require copying the entire BitCoin block chain to your new nodes before they could start relaying
    transactions independent of the BitCoin P2P network. Theoretically, this keeps LinearCoin transactions from
    spending BitCoins. HOWEVER, new LinearCoin transactions accessing these pre-fork blocks would be bitwise
    copies of transactions that COULD spend on the BitCoin Chain. All it would take is for ANYONE to copy it and
    submit it to the BitCoin network. You have to presume some malicious node WOULD.

    Merged mining is theoretically possible in this case. Search for NameCoin they invented the concept.
    Merged mining does NOT imply that LinearCoin block creation would be synchronized with BitCoin nor
    that its difficulty be the same. It doesn't come for free though. You have to convince existing BitCoin
    miners to support your chain as well. If they saw LinearCoins as valuable, supporting merged mining
    would be as easy for them as supporting NameCoin.

2. Attempt to "peacefully" use the existing BitCoin P2P nodes for relaying transactions.

    In this case your fork might be able to coexist on nodes along side the bitcoin fork. I think nodes do this by
    default. However, long term support would require BUY-IN from the existing BitCoin developers because at
    some point they will lock-in a block CHECKPOINT outside your fork. At that point BitCoin nodes would likely
    stop relaying your transactions.

    Mixed mining is this case should be even easier. However, again, it requires BUY-IN from the BitCoin developers.

Really interesting ideas blogospheroid! The group is really getting larger!

Just for your reference:
Impaler is working on Freicoin. It is demurrage based. He is also kicking around ideas on locking coins.
Glad he mentioned it. I'd forgotten Etlase2 was fleshing those ideas out as well
I'm glad you mentioned incentives. That's one of my favorite topics! Nobody ever wants to discuss "manipulating" the users.

It's still a pretty big quirk but I guess you could fix the client to warn about and correct the issue. You pointed out the fix...


But I think it's easier than that. You just need to send all of your coins to yourself first. Doesn't matter which chain you do that on. That will split all your coins into their appropriate forks. From there you can spend them independently. The client could do this automatically for you the first time you use it. That would destroy all your coin age and maybe cost some fees.


Fortunately, even if that happened "lost" LinearCoins coins would still be spendable. The BitCoiner would just have to come looking for them. Theoretically they still have valid keys.

Actually, he has a pretty solid point. I missed it on first read.

Any spendable BitCoins that existed before the form are spendable LinearCoins on the new fork. Stephen is pointing out that spending the LinearCoins from address "ABC..." creates a transaction that is bitwise identical to the one needed to spend the BitCoins at address "ABC..."

Is that an intended feature or an issue?

It means that your ostensibly pre-distributed LinearCoins exist in a strange state. If I send my BTC to Fred, my LNC goes with it. If I send my LNC to Fred, my BTC goes with it. On the other hand, Fred receiving the coins post fork WILL get two independent coins to spend. That's twisted

Yes I would! 

Hi wingding! Thanks for introducing yourself in my thread. I read both of your threads and agree with your "why" logic. I have to admit this is one of the more interesting approaches so far. Specifically forking off the existing chain.

How far along are you? I might like to help out.

Technically, it doesn't seem particularly hard. Are you going to set it up to use merged mining? That seems logical since you are giving the people already mining bitcoin free coins.

I think the word "forked" in the topic is confusing people. It makes it seem like you are trying to create duplicate BitCoins. I'm pretty confident that is not your goal. It might be useful to adjust your description to one that parallels what other AltCoins have done.


You should also make it clear that LinearCoins are not BitCoins and will never operate as interchangeable (value equivalents) with merchants or existing exchanges. Might also make it clear that BTC to LnC trading will have its own market determined exchange rate.

Just a suggestion.

wingding would you post about you and your plan in this thread?
I'm trying to keep an index of all the on going efforts.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179918.0

I know I'm lame but I can't read Russian. Is their an english summary? Or can you tell us the basics?

Despite what it seems, I'm in complete agreement with you. However, I agree what I wrote was confusing.


If only you would read what I MEANT, instead of just reading what I WROTE. :-)

I can make the case for incentives and disincentives too. But that is really a separate discussion from mining.

Now that I've read yours and Etlase2's ideas again, I think you are both on to the same principle.

As I read him, his ideas is more like investing in a temporary mining company that may or may not end up being profitable for you in the near future. Before any mining can start, sufficient people must put at risk sufficient (A) stake. If enough people (B) don't buy in, the venture collapses before it can start, and the organizers loose what they've staked. Once the venture launches, an varying amount (C) of gold is mined each month investors get paid by they're share.

I read yours more like free-range berry picking. (X) number of berries grow in a field every month. But if nobody pays a picker to go gather them then they're eaten by birds. Investors contract with pickers by the month. But there are only (Y) number of pickers available and each can only pick (Z) berries/month. If you have contracted with a picker but no longer want the berries, you can sell the contract to someone else.

Awesome post Etlase2!

I learned more of your basic principles from this post than I did from reading all the other pages! Thanks!


So a the number of coins a Minting block creates is dependant on recent transaction activity? Do I understand that correctly? This is where the 5X the activity (or fee? I forget which) comes from?

I know you hate hearing this but, yet again, but I'm having trouble grasping the big pictures, because I keep getting lost in all your details.

I know you have a preoccupation with making sure P3 CPU miners can still generate coins along side new ASIC miners. But for the sake of an overview I really don't need to know.

I'm really most interest in knowing:
1. How does the system know that ZERO new coins need to be created at any given moment?
2. What needs to change in at next moment to tell the system to CREATE new coins?
3. What needs to change to tell the system to DESTROY unnecessary coins?
4. What metric tells the system HOW MANY coins to create/destroy?
5. What incentives and disincentives are used to encourage or discourage spending at appropriate moments?

Damn, I've been putting off reading his new proposal because the two of us always end up arguing!


I wrote about this in other placed, but I concluded that:
1. If you are creating new coins, because the coin price has gone above your stability target, then
2. The only effect you are trying to achieve, is to IMMEDIATELY reduce the coin trading price.
3. The only stimulus that can cause this effect, it to give the coin to some one who will IMMEDIATELY sell the new coin, FOR LESS than anyone else is currently offering.
4. Who are these people? The ones with coin addresses on the SELL side of current/recent transitions.

Giving them to hoarders will have zero immediate effect. Neither will giving them to current buyers. You can argue giving them out might have future effect. But that just makes over shooting the target (and oscillation) much more likely.


Damn there are so many important topics being mentioned. Perhaps the optimal GrailCoin is one that targets X% inflation. Boy that thread is going to cause flame wars! Want to start it? Are you listening Freicoin folks?

Hi Adrian-x. Welcome to the discussion.

I do appreciate your wanting to preserve bitcoin's "hard money" philosophy. And I agree a better initial distribution function is a key to increased "stability and greater and faster user adoption."

However, personally, I don't know how to predict the initial adoption curve of a new coin. I'm pretty convinced that the rate of actual user adoptions is, very likely, directly related to the proposed initial distribution function. For me that means solving simultaneous non-linear equations and I suck at that.

However, way smarter people than me have written volumes I'll never read unless given a starting reference. And that is the whole point of this thread. I'm actually reading your references in between typing. Thank you very much for the links.

A concept that intrigues me is, say for discussion, a Gaussian based initial distribution DOES IMPLY a Logistic Function based adoption curve. Let's also postulate that the "natural" public adoption logistic curve tends toward a 15 year period. BUT, in coding, we guessed the wrong timescale. Say we chose 30, or maybe 10 years instead.

Have you written or posted about how the "actual" adoption curve would be affected?