I've implemented the algorithm for brainwallets from https://www.bitaddress.org in Rust as a command line program, for learning how it works and to get more practice with Rust:

https://github.com/FrankBuss/brainwallet

I guess it could be simplified with the bitcoin crate, but I wanted to use just the basic algorithms which are common to many blockchains, like SECP256K1 and SHA256, to see how the Bitcoin addresses and keys are generated.

Should be easy to extend it to other blockchains, or could be used as a starting point for your own blockchain (which I plan to do someday).

I wouldn't say it sounds interesting, sounds fishy to me. Looks like the source code is mostly the same from the original webpage. For example compare this script from the new program:
https://github.com/boomdev/billify/blob/d472db85683b30f1b63dc84122234e43e0a055bd/js/ninja.paperwallet.js
with this from the original page:
https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org/blob/72aefc03e0d150c52780294927d95262b711f602/src/ninja.paperwallet.js
Nothing wrong with it, the licence allows to use the code, and the new repository cites everything correctly in the licence file, as required.

But the point of an address generator is to be sure that it is safe. The application in the deb file is an Electron app. It includes a large amount of binary executable for the Chromium extension. It would be (relatively) easy to modify Chromium, to modify one of the JavaScript programs to generate addresses which are unsafe and predictable.

With the original website, you can examine each JavaScript file that it is safe, and then just open it in an unmodified webbrowser of your choice on an internet disconnected computer to generate your wallet. This would be the safest way. There is no need for an Electron app. Even more so because it generates a paper wallet, so you can't verify it. For example if it would provide the a brain wallet functionality as well, then you could test a brain wallet address with the old site, and then compare it with the new site to check if it works, before using it for your secret brain wallet.

That said, the deb file might be innocent. But it is simply not needed and I wouldn't install or run it.

Interesting, you are right. But was not this thread, but here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5319378.msg56454923#msg56454923
I probably wouldn't worry about my privacy and just hire a big lawyer firm to convert it to fiat to keep my privacy. But I like the owners idea to donate it to new projects.

Nice that this website is still live. I mentioned it in an article about Bitcoin I wrote for the 2600 magazine (The Hacker Quarterly), which was published in the autumn 2013 issue, with the brain wallet "Frank test for 2600" for whoever of the readers got it first. Of course was claimed shortly after the magazine was printed (no ebooks of 2600 back in 2013).

BTW, the donations address currently contains 36.4 BTC, worth $1.7 million. Nobody should say open source is not profitable

I think fast transaction time and low fee is also important. I've tested Cardano today, and fee is $0.40 at the moment per transaction, and I measured 84 seconds until my ADA showed up in a wallet, sent from another wallet (not an exchange, both wallets locally installed). Also minimum transaction amount is one ADA. So obviously I couldn't use it to buy a bubble gum in a kiosk. Is there a better altcoin which doesn't have such limits and with lower fees?

A coin with less than 1 cent transfer fee, no minimum amount, and less than 1 second transfer time could really replace fiat money. Also the number of transactions is important. VISA handles 1700 transactions per second, so this would be the goal. Cardano has been tested with 250 transaction per second and they are planning 1 million transactions per second, but if the other parameters don't change, then it isn't viable. And I don't need to mention the transaction fees for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

I got a Golem node running. But I get lots of errors like this in the log file:

ya_metrics::pusher] Pushing metrics failed: Failed to connect to host: the handshake failed: error:1416F086:SSL routines:tls_process_server_certificate:certificate verify failed:ssl/statem/statem_clnt.c:1913:: unable to get local issuer certificate

How can I solve this? Also is there a forum or something where I can get help? The Slack link from the initial posting in this thread doesn't work.

Is it possible to run Golem as a provider on an Azure virtual machine, or another cloud like the Google cloud platform? When I followed the installation description, I got this error message for Azure: "Could not access KVM kernel module: No such file or directory".

I think I have a unique idea: Distributed and connected apps. Blockchains are big interconnected networks, and information is distributed to all nodes. But it is not used for useful communication, besides transferring the transactions of the blockchain. For example a multiplayer game could connect multiple users in realtime, or the network could be used for a chat application like Discord or Slack.

I would define an API on top of a blockchain, to send messages to one node, or a group of nodes in realtime. This would allow someone to write a server, which manages multiple nodes, and a client software which interacts with the API, for P2P or multiuser applications.

Additionally I would implement a way to start programs in a secure environment. For example someone writes a chat application. A user who wants to use the chat can then install the client part of the application on their computer, and on some other computer is the server installed. In general there would be a distributed computing concept: If someone wants to sell their CPU power, they can offer to run other programs on their computers, for a fee.

The blockchain Golem and iExec implements already such a distributed computing system. But it is heavy and needs a lot of resources. Both systems are using Docker containers as the environment where the applications are executed. So basically this needs to install and run a full virtual Linux system for each task. iExec even recommends to run the whole system inside a Oracle or Virtual Box virtual machine for security reasons (but interestingly, their manual includes steps to import the private keys of an Ethereum wallet inside the virtual machine for the billing process, nothing can go wrong with this). And I don't see an easy way for Golem or iExec to interconnect with other systems, as my system would allow it.

My system would implement a lightweight concept: Instead of emulating a full Linux system, it would be a limited custom virtual machine (VM), with high level custom services for accessing the blockchain communication and for local storage, maybe similar to the Java VM. A user can configure the amount of RAM, storage, and CPU usage they would give the VM. And everything built in one easy to use program with a web interface, which can be installed without problems on Windows, Linux and Mac (iExec and Golem recommend Linux and need WSL for Windows, because of Docker, and the setup is not easy).

Same as with Golem, I would allow to use long running services, or batch process tasks. A game server would be a long running service, but for example calculating a 3D rendering would be a batch process which ends after the calculation.

There could also be a fee to create an account for a multiuser game, or a monthly fee. Someone could implement a massive multiplayer online role-playing game with my system (if the network communication is fast enough for realtime playing), and trading of the items or characters could be integrated in the system. For efficiency and for the 3D graphics output, the game application would run as a native app in this case on the user's system. There would be libraries, or maybe a microservice to the node application, to communicate with the network.

There would be global high level services like a naming registry integrated in the system. This can be used for a messaging system. A user can register their name, and then someone can send them messages by name. But because it is integrated with the blockchain, there could be a fee involved to send a message. This would implement an eMail system where spam is unlikely, because it would be too expensive. Or a celebrity can set a high fee, and only fans who want to pay the fee can contact them.

Or a webserver could run at a named node. There could be a low fee to view the pages, which would give the author of the webpages a revenue for the content without ads.

I'm a programmer with 30 years experience, I plan to start the project myself. Of course, I can't implement all the features alone, this would need many years. Maybe it could be developed in the spirit of other open source projects, like Linux, where other people contribute features.

And right, probably a good idea to have a new unique feature and clear goal. Then I could start with this as well to test it, and later add the more complicated things like smart contracts. On the other hand, if I have good smart contracts, nearly every unique feature could be just implemented as a smart contract

What is a fair distribution? I've seen with other altcoins that they are considered "fairly distributed", if there is no pre-mine, when the project goes live. Not sure how this can work with a PoS coin. Maybe everybody who runs a node could get a fixed amount of coins, when chosen. It might be safe enough at the beginning, if only one node per IP address is allowed, because it would be kinda expensive to use a lot of IP addresses (of course, only IPv4 address would be allowed for the initial process for the fixed amount, because they are rare. IPv6 could be easily created a lot for cheap). Later the fixed amount is negligible when it was running for some time, because then the most reliable nodes would stake more coins based on their previously earned coins. Or the fixed amount could be disabled after some block count as well.

But I think an initial distribution based on social network accounts would be fair as well. How to include China? Most social networks are blocked there. So maybe I should include Renren and Sina Weibo as well, this would add more than half a billion potential users.

But Ethereum is planning to use PoS. And Waves already uses it, with $1.6 billion market cap at the moment, so can't be that flawed, otherwise it would be worth $0 now.

Good idea with the Facebook accounts. Maybe also use all the other big social networks, like Youtube and Twitter, so everybody could get some coins. Of course, would need to verify the account creation date.

You are right, there exist coins for all the features I listed. But I don't think there is no coin which combines them all. Isn't this sufficient for a successful coin? Any ideas for a unique new feature?

I plan to create a new altcoin. What features do you like for it? Some ideas I have:

- eco-friendly, so proof-of-stake for the consensus algorithm, like WAVES and Cardano already uses, and Ethereum plans to use
- quantum safe, like QRL
- high number of transactions per second, like one million per second as Cardano can do
- smart contracts, for creating your own tokens, assets, apps etc.
- low transaction fee

I also want to distribute it to as many people as possible, ideally to every person on Earth. How could I do this? Is there some altcoin who did this? How did they manage to prove the identity of a person, so that not one person creates a bot for it and gets lots of shares? This should be the coin for the 99%, and not just for the 1% rich investors

Another feature should be a voting mechanism. For example when a conventional signing algorithm is used instead of a quantum safe algorithm (for example because otherwise the high transaction rate wouldn't be possible), and the algorithm needs to be changed when quantum computers become available. Then there could be some proposals, and people can vote for one proposal, weighted by their coins. This will allow transparent democratic decisions for the development process, implementing what the majority wants.

The voting mechanism could be also used for example if there was a security problem or bug, and to decide if it needs a hard-fork to rollback the blockchain, like with the Ethereum DAO disaster. But instead of just a few people deciding it, it would be decentralized as well. Such bugs happen and if the majority thinks it is a good idea to undo it, then this would be the right thing to do. The voting mechanism could be just a smart contract.

Other features like NFTs etc., can be implemented with smart contracts as well.

Any news about quantum safe blockchains? I did a quick search, and found Quantum1Net, but looks like it is a scam or dead. Are there any successfully working quantum safe blockchains?

Is there a whitepaper for CLAM? I couldn't find one. I'm particularly interested in a detailed description of the protocol and block format, and how it differs from Bitcoin.

What attack vectors of PoS can be easily exploited? Ideas like "Weak Subjectivity", e.g. as described in the FAQ for CASPER, seem very theoretical.

And why are copycat coins useless? I mean it would be with the added feature of PoS. So everyone who owns Bitcoin, and who wants to be "green", would clearly want to use it

I was thinking about to do the same, a PoS fork of Bitcoin. But looks like nobody would be interested in it. Can't find any of the 3 coins mentioned, except BCI, and looks dead now 3 years later:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-interest/

Thanks, I know already the basics of Bitcoin and that no balances are stored so far on the blockchain. This is why I proposed a new kind of data blob to save in blocks (I think "transaction" is the wrong name for it), which does exactly that: it stores a public address and the amount for it on the blockchain. I know that all transactions before the blockchain pruning will be lost. Nevertheless the owner can still transfer his Bitcoins, because he has the private key to his public key. And the miners can accept such transactions, because they know the amount for this public address.

The reason for my proposal is to support a very high transaction rate, like the 50k per second of VISA, and a very short block time, like 1 second. This would make crypto money usable for fast small payments, like when you buy a coffee. The downside would be that the transaction history gets lost. But maybe this could be saved in a compressed way as well.

Think of it as a replacement for physical coins. This would allow the idea of deleting unused coins after a year as well. I know it is against the philosophy of Bitcoin, but while Bitcoin is some kind of gold, my coin would be just some euros and cents which you use regularly for small payments.

You are right, this makes it a bit more complicated, but I don't think this is a problem. The initial block of the truncated blockchain has to be downloaded from some other client. But then the client could wait again a few blocks to make sure that it is on the right blockchain, and not on some fork, or some created blockchain from the client from which it loaded the initial blockchain. Once it is running and new blocks are successfully added from multiple clients, it can be sure to be on the right blockchain (assuming it has some mean to determine that the blocks indeed came from multiple clients). It wouldn't make sense for other clients to send wrong initial blocks, unless they want to create a competing blockchain, and I don't see any way how this could be used maliciously.

Thanks, do you have references where this idea for reducing the blockchain was proposed? I've found this thread:

https://nxtforum.org/general/why-isn't-blockchain-trimming-this-easy/

and looks like doing something with the UTXO table is a bit what I wrote. But I couldn't find an example implementation, or e.g. a test with the bitcoin transaction data so far to see how much it can be reduced by using this concept.

Would be interesting to see the responses where you where bashed for the other idea as well, to learn from the arguments.