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1  Alternate cryptocurrencies / Altcoin Discussion / Dash Instamine is a non-issue. on: April 15, 2017, 11:46:39 PM
Partial Instamine is a non-issue.

1. Bill Gates pre-mined Microsoft stocks.
2. Mark Zuckerberg pre-mined Facebook stocks.
3. Vitalik pre-mined Ethereum.
4. Crypto-coins are both digital gold and a stock.

I believe that creators need to have financial incentives to make their projects a success.

EDIT: Here a guy that wrote an article that Bitcoin is not a digital gold, but more like a company stock. Good read !
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/65ks6p/critical_misunderstanding_bitcoindigital_gold/

EDIT2: Even better would be, for the investors, is if creator pre-mines his coins, but uses a 5-year TIME LOCK transaction, so he can't dump it on the market. This will provide a long-term motivation to improve his creation. Pump-and-Dump out; Innovation in !

-Technologov
2  Alternate cryptocurrencies / Altcoin Discussion / Why I invest in Dash? on: April 11, 2017, 11:56:31 PM

Why I invest in Dash?

Ethereum is great. It's a programmable block chain with lots of level 2 projects, Raiden, Augur, StorJ, etc... I hold some Ethereum, but Dash is my biggest position nowadays.

I feel that Dash is much simpler to use and more focused to be Money.

1. Instant transactions (InstantSend). About 2 seconds in Dash vs 17 sec in Ethereum is very important for retail brick-n-mortar shops. Compared to 10 min in Bitcoin on it's best-day.
2. Dash Masternode Voting - governance mechanism, similar to shareholder voting in traditional corporations.
3. Incentivized Masternodes. - even if our block chain will grow huge, it's incentivized to buy new hardware to keep up with demand.
4. Dash network can pay it's own expenses. Dash developers are getting paid in Dash right out of the block chain, and even sponsor an advertisement campaign from it's block chain rewards. Bitcoin and Ethereum never had anything like it. Put it simply, the economic model of Dash is superior. For example we will vote with our Masternodes for Charlie Shrem's Dash Mastercard, and he will get paid by the Dash network for his start-up business. https://www.dashcentral.org/p/DASHPAYCARD-DEBIT-CARD
5. Dash is a drop-in replacement for Bitcoin, while Ethereum has a learning curve. It means that it's easier to adopt for merchants, that already accepts Bitcoin. Dash wallets are simpler to use.
6. I think Ethereum could become the Linux of crypto-currencies. Scalable, programmable, powerful and open, but hard to use. Especially if you want some advanced features. Very few people can take advantage of the Linux system, as compared to Windows. Same here: very few people will have the technical skills to take advantage of Ethereum's programmability, while Dash stays much simpler for day-to-day use.
7. Monero transactions are huge, about 40x bigger than Dash or Bitcoin. It will not scale in my opinion.
8. Biggest reason by far: Bitcoin is dysfunctional. My transactions take between 3 hours up to 26 hours to confirm, when a year ago I used to confirm in 10 minutes . Bitcoin used to provide me a service, but now it provides me a dis-service. I have sold most of my Bitcoins for Dash.

-"Technologov"
3  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / Next-Gen on-chain scaling idea -- Masterblocks on: April 01, 2017, 10:00:06 PM
I think we may be able to reduce a block chain size dramatically, by re-generating automatically a new genesis block every year, (or every X blocks), and keeping the balance of the previous block chain, last block of it.
Theoretically it will solve the hard disk space issues, And will reduce network bandwidth requirements for setting a new Full node. It will not solve new block propagation delays.

Objective: My primary concern is that with on-chain scaling, our blockchain can grow into a multi-petabyte size, over a few decades, and both network capacity and hard disk space demands will out-grow our ability to support those.

Concept:
2016 [block 0]...[block n] --- the last block's balance could transfer into a new genesis block 2017.
2017 [block 0]

Balance (all utxo) of each address are copied into a new Masterblock as one transaction. Masterblocks are created in a deterministic fashion, so every node can see it and reproduce the correctness of a Masterblock.

Afterwards Mining should start build up on the new chain. Just the history of transactions will be lost.

There could be more types of nodes: Archival node, keeping all history of all the previous block chains, and the Full Node, keeping only the current block chain.

In this scenario, only block explorers and scientists will need to keep an Archival Node. It is not be needed for payments and verification at all.

This idea, if it works, will mean that Bitcoin will beat Visa x 10 transactions, with a goal to break 1 billion transactions per day, in a decentralized way.

NOTE1: Blockchain pruning, as is done in Bitcoin has very bad side effects: namely inability to start new nodes from them and doing full rescan. My approach doesn't have such downsides. https://news.bitcoin.com/pros-and-cons-on-bitcoin-block-pruning/

Clarification 01: New Term: Let's rename our so-called new Genesis Block into a Masterblock. (for clarity)

Clarification 02: New Masterblock must be generated in a deterministic way, to be reproducible by all miners and Full Nodes.

Clarification 03: tiny dust amounts  can be distributed to the last 1000 miners.
Let's define 'dust' as transaction outputs  below the median fees for the last 100 blocks.
(this removes a bunch of bloat from the blockchain)

Clarification 04: Old chain doesn't get removed immediately, but only after Y blocks (say after 1 month).
This means that new nodes connecting to the network during this period can download both new chain and old chain, can verify the new Masterblock by recalculating it from the last year's chain.

Clarification 05: Q: What do new nodes do when they come online after this one month has passed? How do they verify the correct chain from scratch?
A: Consensus must work as follow:

1. Same as nowadays (longest chain) AND
2. current timestamp (of year 2017) - proof of work must include timestamp.
(if it finds a very long chain, but with old timestamp like 2015 or 2016, it gets rejected; future timestamps also get rejected)


TODO: Research new attack vector: NTP protocol / wrong time. (For now my idea requires the administrator to manually setup clocks on critical production systems, such as payment processors. Maybe we can solve this problem later.) -- Perhaps we can solve it via an idea of cryptographic time -- a separate block-chain for time-keeping, with the same SHA256-proof-of-work and same difficulty as the main-chain, that doesn't reset on each Masterblock -- it's continuous. It should be merge-mined together with the primary block chain. Basically Segregated Time - 'SegTime'.

NOTE: New problem: My idea, as written now, will invalidate special tx-outputs, such as lock-time and multisig. But perhaps there is an elegant solution to this problem too... -- something like an extended block, that will be written into the Masterblock, and will list all previous special transactions in unspent tx outputs as valid.)

================
Okay, Let's do some maths:
4 GB block each 10 min = . This will allow us for 1 billion tx/day. In Bitcoin it would equal to 144 blocks/day x 4 GB/block = 576 GB/day.

It's 576 GB/day x 365 (year) = 210 TB-per-year.

Without my idea we will grow into a multi-petabyte territory in 5 years. Will be hard, even with good server-grade hardware.
With my idea, it would take only 18 Hard Disks (okay 20 HDDs, with RAID6) to keep an entire block chain (that's assuming big 12 TB HDDs; that both Seagate and Western Digital started producing this year).

Block propagation ? It takes only 8 seconds on a Google Fiber (1 Gbit/s Internet) -- so I believe it's very much possible and feasible to grow with on-chain transaction scalability.
================

What do you think of it?

-Technologov
05.Mar.2017
UPDATED on 02.04.2017

Link:
https://github.com/BitcoinUnlimited/BitcoinUnlimited/issues/340
4  Alternate cryptocurrencies / Altcoin Discussion / Bitcoin problems are pushing me to Dash ! Thanks Amanda Johnson on: February 25, 2017, 02:21:06 PM
Hi all !

ATTENTION !

Due to Bitcoin community stupidity, lack of progress, and on-going scalability problems of the Bitcoin Network, I have decided to sell a large chunk of my
Bitcoin holdings for a combination of cash, Dash and Ethereum. (--mostly Dash)

This came after few days ago several of my Bitcoin transactions took 3 hours to complete rather than 10 minutes normally (and one transaction
took as long as 26 (!!!) hours to complete due to an artificially limited block size in Bitcoin.

I see the problem as a very fundamental problem in the Bitcoin network, that might resolve itself, or it might not. In which case bitcoin Network will go the Way of The Nokia. There is a theoretical technical solution to this problem (just like Nokia could turn-around itself during 2011/2012 era, but didn't), but politics and dumbness of the Bitcoin community prevent solution from happening.

More info:
https://medium.com/@ViaBTC/why-we-must-increase-the-block-size-and-why-i-support-bitcoin-unlimited-90b114b3ef4a

Bitcoin’s Transaction Backlog Hits All-Time High
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoins-transaction-backlog-hits-all-time-high/

Former Bitcoin Developer Hearn Calls Bitcoin A Failure, Sells All Coins
http://allcoinsnews.com/2016/01/15/former-bitcoin-developer-hearn-calls-bitcoin-a-failure-sells-all-coins/
https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.pijdkhwd4

--
-"Technologov"

Additionally: I really like "Amanda Johnson" and her Dash school on YouTube. She convinced me to invest in Dash and give it a chance. (Without her I would go more into Litecoin, Ethereum and Fiat dollars)

Here is a Dash channel on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAzD2v9Yx4a4iS2_-unODkA

I was aware of Dash since 2014 (Darkcoin back then), but didn't pay too much attention, because it's only feature over Bitcoin at the time was coin-mixing, a feature I wasn't interested in, at the time.

When did other features appeared ?

paying to full nodes ?

voting by Master-nodes ?

paying to employees ?

instantSend ?

Additionally, I'm willing to invest in Dash-Electrum development. (Since I'm a Bitcoin Electrum user right now, and like SPV light wallets in general) How is that proceeding, and what it's status ? Would a donation help to develop it faster ?
For me, the Bitcoin slow transaction debacle is a catastrophe, but perhaps also a new beginning...

Plus I'm calling a large blocks solution for Bitcoin -- be it classic, XT, Unlimited or whatever else. Bigger blocks is a must !
5  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / Fundamental problem: Lightning Network leads to centralization and less security on: February 25, 2017, 09:44:56 AM
Fundamental problem: Lightning Network leads to centralization and less security

http://www.wallstreettechnologist.com/2016/10/03/lightning-network-will-it-save-bitcoin-or-break-it/
6  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / My transaction must get through (block size debate.. AGAIN) on: February 22, 2017, 09:13:28 AM
Hi All !

Yesterday some of my transactions took 3 hours to complete. One of them is stuck for an entire day ! (and still incomplete)
Analyzing why, it seems to be due to block size limit of 1 MB, that is getting full.

Here is the transaction that stuck for an entire day (24 hours).
https://blockchain.info/tx/fa7a3e35921fbdf6090f11c2fa58a93627ad65f37bd6d7fd50796e42316efebc

What do you think of it ?
If indeed block size limit is to blame then I call for an immediate upgrade our block size. (or else The Bitcoin Network may become worthless).

-Technologov
7  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / New TCP/IP stack - should be Blockchain aware ? on: November 24, 2015, 10:44:00 AM
Hi All !

I'm designing a new experimental TCP/IP stack, more powerful than IPv6.

My questions is: Are there any blockchain-related features, that should be considered to be added at the IP layer ?

In some cases adding app-specific features may improve performance.

-Technologov
8  Alternate cryptocurrencies / Altcoin Discussion / Crypti vs Ethereum - Architecture Q & A on: October 27, 2015, 11:32:36 AM
I decided to publish a small Crypti Architecture Q & A with Boris Povod (crypti dev) as compared to Ethereum's architecture.
Crypti is a Dapp platform, similar to Ethereum, but using sidechains + javascript node.js.
So what are the differences?

Q: Technologov 12:52
 
Math.random() prolly needs to be disabled for Dapps. A deterministic version needs to exits, based on blockchain hashes.
Same for opening TCP/IP sockets.
That is: Dapps should have reduced API.
Docs say: "If the above rules are not adhered to, the sidechain will most likely fork". This needs to be avoided at the API level.
https://github.com/crypti/crypti-dapps-docs#determinism

A: boris.povod 13:00
> based on blockchain hashes.
What you mean?

Q: Technologov 13:00
Ethereum has special random generator API, which uses previous block hash as random number. This way RNG is 100% deterministic.
Smart idea.

A: boris.povod 13:01
@Technologov: based on previous block hash is not random number
@Technologov: it's can be attacked by miners
@Technologov: there is another good idea of random numbers 😛 Same from Eth guys

Q: Technologov 13:01
But no better way exists anyway.
And all code needs to be deterministic (to prevent chain forks).

A: boris.povod 13:02
@Technologov: there is deterministic code if you look at toolkit, but when you as developer write some logic code for your sidechain, you can make there mistake
Q: Technologov 13:04
Another risky stuff: opening TCP/IP sockets. This is disabled in Ethereum (because it is non-deterministic).
The right way is to push 3rd party data (like prices of BTC/USD, or weather, or president elections) into blockchain by Oracles. Then it can be used by blockchain contracts.

A: boris.povod 13:07
@Technologov: for tcp/ip sockets we will use seccomp to block low level calls, just we didn't added it yet 🙂 Same for 3rd party data

Q: Technologov 13:09
How about endless loops ? Is there a mechanism to prevent them or limit them ? Or it will kill sidechain ?

A: boris.povod 13:11
There is javascript, no new language, because for sure you can write there endless loop. But it's pending on developer who work with toolkit

Q: Technologov 13:12
And what about Dapp updates ? Is it possible ?

A: boris.povod 13:14
Maybe later we will make special lang based on javascript.
We working on it now, there is still testnet, after current release we will releases few new versions to make DApp updates possible and we will make polish work

Technologov: Thanks !

P.S. BTW: Crypti uses sidechain for every Dapp, which potentially makes it more scalable than Ethereum. bonus video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9o5X4xHJnc
9  Economy / Speculation / So when is the next Spike ? on: August 13, 2015, 02:04:13 PM
2 years and no spikes !

How much coins on exchanges ?
10  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Open-Source project forking history (and Bitcoin XT) on: July 23, 2015, 07:55:34 AM
Forks are necessary. Just like a vote-of-no-confidence and new elections in democracy, or revolution in dictatorship, or Civil War if everything else fails and no consensus if reached.

Let's look at open-source forks history:

1. OpenOffice -> LibreOffice (95% users and devs migrated)
2. XFree86 -> Xorg (100% users and devs migrated, after license change)
3. Emacs editor to XEmacs (30% migrated), old fork still has advantage. But for editors, consensus is not required.
4. Glibc to Debians glibc (70% migrated), Debian +Ubuntu. The forks are compatible.
5. GCC compiler to EGCS to new GCC compiler (100% migrated, old maintainer was fired from FSF "Free Software Foundation" by Richard Stallman, the neck-bearded old man, that does endless loop in 8 steps. Old maintainer refused to accept new Intel Pentium optimization patches and didn't move his ass).
6. Linux Kernel has mini forks all the time, like Xen kernel, OpenVZ kernel, real-time, hardened security kernel and openSUSE AppArmor kernel. No major forks in horizon, which means it is well managed. (99.9% users use the standard Linux kernel, with small optimization/bugfixes by distro). Xen and AppArmor patches upstreamed into standard Linux kernel.
7. GDB, GNU debugger, had 400 forks in the 90's, which were all merged back into new GDB. (100% migration)

In short, forking is part of the open source community. What matters here is not just the code, but the community that stands behind it. I was also scared shitless when I heard, that XFree86 project ceased to exist. I feared no Red Hat Linux desktop anymore, but little I know, that Open-Source projects do not really die this way. Later I realized, that Red Hat (and others) would not allow X11 desktop to fail, as long as there is demand for it, even if among Linux developers. In the end all development continued under the Xorg umbrella, and XFree86 project died.

Open-Source projects can only die if there is no maintainer / no big demand among users.

In case of Bitcoin, old BTC, we will receive 1 new BTC and 1 new BTX (Bitcoin XT), and community will decide which is the best. Wallet backup is compatible. As long as there is community, it would have value. But temporary crash is possible due to panic selling. Long-term damage is unlikely. (assume a dude with an ancient physical Bitcoin or an old wallet backup falls asleep for 10 years, and wakes up in 2025 - his Bitcoin, or Bitcoin XT will probably be worth more. ) So, I don't believe in chicken little and the sky is falling mania-depressia. Open Source history teaches us a solution.
We can discuss those examples of ancient forks in detail. I studied it few years ago.

Best wishes,
-"Technologov", Open-Source community member. 23.07.2015.

Disclosure: I vote for large blocks. Let's try to reach consensus in Bitcoin core, and if not -- I vote for Bitcoin XT.

P.S. Read more about Open-Source forking history:
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#forking
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/forking.html
11  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / How does difficulty adjustment work ? on: July 14, 2015, 04:00:39 PM
Hi,

I know when difficulty adjusted higher, more zeroes need to be put in the block hash, like 0x0000...
But adding one more zero bit doubles the difficulty. 2x.
How does Bitcoin handle slight difficulty increase, like +10% ?

Thanks in advance
-Technologov
12  Economy / Collectibles / How much should physical Casascius Bitcoin cost today ? on: May 18, 2015, 07:37:51 AM
Hi all,

Someone is offering to sell physical Casascius Bitcoin (1 BTC, of 2013). Fully loaded.

What should be the fair price today of such item ? (considering they are no longer in production)

-Technologov
13  Alternate cryptocurrencies / Altcoin Discussion / MaidSafe -- how can it find my files, without a blockchain? on: January 16, 2015, 12:42:54 PM
Hi,

I'm looking at advanced Crypto 2.0 platforms.
And so far StorJ is building decentralized, incentive-based file storage system, based on StorJ blockchain, that I can understand.

But Maidsafe seems to offer similar functionality (coin + app platform + file storage), without a centralized ledger, without a blockchain !

Anyone understands how can it possibly work?
If a client connects to the network, how the network can find his files? Or his coins?
14  Bitcoin / Electrum / Electrum ERROR: u'message': u'', u'code': -25 on: January 14, 2015, 04:58:39 PM
v1.9.8
I get error {u'message': u'', u'code': -25}
Cannot send my Bitcoins anymore Sad

any ideas?
15  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / Proposal for self-pruning Blockchain on: January 04, 2015, 10:29:31 AM
Proposal for self-pruning Blockchain

NOTE: This idea can be applied to Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum or any other blockchain-based technology.

Today, the Bitcoin blockchain is growing exponentially by leaps and bounds, without any way to cut down it’s size and remove unnecessary parts of it.
In a few decades it could grow into a petabyte-size database due to exponentially accelerating adoption and skyrocketing number of transactions, hurting decentralization.

But do we need _really_ need to keep all the data since the blockchain was born ?
Possibly not. Possibly, we can remove outdated parts of the blockchain.

But how ? What is the mechanism ?

I think it could be similar to how VMware or VirtualBox merging multi snapshots made over time into a single snapshot, flattening it.
I.e. all blocks, that older than, say, 4 years, are merged every 4 years.

In terms of Bitcoin network, it means creating a new genesis block every 210,000 blocks, after the next 210,000 blocks were mined, i.e. at 420,000 blocks (8 years), 630,000 blocks (12 years), etc... And that new genesis block will have the final state of the previous 210,000 blocks.
This new genesis-block will be created backwards in time, i.e. between block 0 and 210,000.

The idea, is that every client can do so in a decentralized manner, because this new genesis block will be behind 210,000 new blocks mined since, there will be no way to reverse transactions.
The only unsolved part for now, is what to do with older hashes, and merkle tree of the blockchain ? But maybe community can help here.

New Genesis block will have a number (0, 210000, 420000, etc...) and also timestamp, in seconds, since UNIX-1970.

NOTE: My proposal allows to rewrite the genesis block, which is potentially dangerous, it will have security implications, so this needs to be evaluated at more depth.

UPDATES in BLUE:
1. I read Satoshi whitepaper, and in chapter 7 he describes how to remove "intermediate" steps with zero balance.
2. I assume, that Bitcoin max. block size limit will be lifted, in order to allow Bitcoin to grow beyond Visa (2000/tps).
3. Additional idea: every 210,000 blocks is to clean "dust accounts" (i.e. accounts with balances below a certain value, say, 1 dollar-cent), transferring it to miners. -- (not in genesis block, but regular block, as it will be forwardly-created)


-Alexey Eromenko “Technologov”, 4.Jan.2015

What do you think of it?
16  Other / Politics & Society / Russia invades Ukraine, call for Help ! (Donations -- started accepting Bitcoin) on: September 13, 2014, 07:53:56 AM
Due to recent aggression of Russian army against my brothers, in Ukraine, I call for HELP !!!
Such medieval age aggression is completely unacceptable in the globalized 21st century.

Okay, let's start from the beginning.
In 2014, due to mass-protests in Ukraine, Kiev, called "EuroMaidan",
old pre-russian President Yanukovich (retreated to Russia) was replaced by much more business-oriented and Europe-friendly President Petro Poroshenko.
Right after that Russia occupied Crimea, part of Ukraine.
Recently Russia entered full force into mainland-Ukraine.

Here is the problem:
Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union,
now wants to become Free and break ties with the big Russian brother.
Russia, which was the biggest (main) part of the Soviet Union doesn't let it go.

What Russia wants?
-Dictatorship
-No freedom of speech
-No opposition
-No Bitcoin (and other crypto-currencies -- they are all banned in Russia)
(as compared to Ukraine, which recently put it's first BTM, Bitcoin teller machine in Kiev.)
-Radicalism, closed-border and anti globalization.
More specifics:
-Anti-war Protesters in Russia were all beaten by the Russian police and KGB special forces,
and put into jail.
-Closure of several McDonalds restaurants in Moscow.
-Food import ban by Russia from EU/US. (hurts both parties, but EU economy is 10x stroner, so Russians will get hit more than Europeans)

What Ukraine wants?
-Break ties from it's past -- Soviet Union and (big brother) Russia
-Become modern, and free democracy with freedom of speech
-Become part of the European Union
-Globalization

Russia has invaded Ukraine, and the global community must act to stop this agression.
And on 27.Aug.2014 it becae very obvious.
Russian officials, President Putin. and their foreign officer have said, that there are no Russian trrops
in Ukraine, but they are lying !

Proof-of-aggression by Russia: (in Russian, but you can use Google Translate)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/international/2014/08/140827_ukraine_russian_soldiers_experts.shtml
-and-
http://lb.ua/news/2014/08/26/277196_plennie.html

Because all diplomatic acts and sanctions have failed to stop Russia, we need to act with force.
Ukrainian Army provides it's soldiers with weapons, clothes and basic food. That's it.
Communication radios, that were left since the soviet union age are usually broken, and there are few left.
The Ukrainian army was non-maintained for 23 years (between 1991, when Soviet Union was broken into smaller
countries and until this war in 2014).

We're gonna provide Ukrainian soldiers with stuff, that they lack
  through private volunteer organizations.
We'll provide them with personal body armor, better radio communications, night-vision,
  medicide, batteries and other stuff, that official Ukrainian army doesn't support.

Myself being Russian-Israeli-jew, so it is not easy for me to say this, but Putin (Russian President) has to be stopped.
I also have friends and family from Ukraine. Those were brother-nations, before this crazy war of 2014.
Putin, the Russian President, is guilty for this WAR ! He must be Stopped !
We, at our family, Eromenko, already entered sanctions against Russian Federation and call the same.

Remember: Every $1000 buys a personal armor -- gives additional chance to save Ukrainian life,
  and beat the Putin aggression !!

Action: Donate Bitcoin to enable Ukrainian soldiers to protect their freedom.

I also call for sanctions against Russian: Stop buying Russian products !

===
Donate Bitcoin:
http://wings-phoenix.org.ua/vse-rekvizity
16W4SazX7JH2UJW9kngcsirK8BRJHq648d
===
-Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"

P.S:
What will happen if Russia wins?
-Bring dictatorship in the country
-No more freedom of speech
-I believe, they may attack Latvia or Poland next (This Putin is a blood-crazy dictator)
(risking peace of the European Union)
-They will enslave all Ukrainians
-Destroy Bitcoin community there (or drive them into black-market)
17  Bitcoin / Project Development / [ANN] Offline Bitcoin Brain Wallet --- CoinBrain ! on: July 25, 2014, 09:25:41 PM
Hi,

I'm gonna create a way to make easily memorizable, yet fairly secure,
Bitcoin brain-wallet.

The main problem I'm trying to solve is that powerful computers can attack trillions
of combinations per second.
And the average human password is too short and therefore too weak to withstand such an attack.
So a normal 8-character random password can be cracked in just a few minutes.

After some work, I was able to build a next-generation offline Bitcoin brain wallet with 2 techniques:
key salting and key stretching.

To strengthen normally weak human passwords, I added few additional techniques:
1. Key stretching.
2. Key salting equivalent.

Let’s review each:
1. Key stretching happens after the password was entered, but before Bitcoin keypair was generated. Basically a computer runs 10,000 or more rounds of hashes, recursively, and using previous hash as an input for next generation. For atacker to match us, he will have to run exact same procedure on every try, slowing him down by the same factor for every single attempt to crack our passwords.
in v1.0 the program runs 16384 rounds. This is eqivalent to have a stronger password by 14-bits.
More rounds means more security, but then slow computers (such as ARM or Intel Atom) will not be able to compute hash fast enough, and user-experience will suffer.

2. The standard key salting technique uses a random number, that is stored in a shared database (as in /etc/passwd in UNIX machines), that is recommended to be as big as the key itself, namely 128-bit salt. The salt number is always public. It is used against rainbow attacks, where evil hackers pre-computes hash tables and steal bitcoins from there, once you deposit any.
But it is not possible to remember a random number, so I must resort to something else.
Something that has equal random distribution, everyone remembers, has no spelling errors.
Birth date !
We have 365 possible birth-dates per year. Productive populaion between 20-65 (45 year span) gives us a rough number:~= 16,425 possible birth dates, which adds 14-bits to our password strength via key salting method.

So combining both techniques, I was able to effectively achieve an extra 28-bit of password strength without requiring the human user to memorize this extra data, which should help convert even a medium quality password into a strong one, and a strong password into a great password !

***COIN-BRAIN***
https://sourceforge.net/projects/coinbrain/files/
WhitePaper + sources + Windows Setup !

-"Technologov", 25.Jul.2014.
18  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Technical Support / Bitcoin Core crash ! on: July 14, 2014, 05:55:06 PM

v0.9.2.1-g354c0f3-beta (64-bit) on Windows 7 x64 CRASH !
Crash during reindexing of my block-chain.

Screenshot:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BycgkMZbeQOzLVMyQmtyTzZxclE/edit?usp=sharing
19  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Bitcoin Phishing on: July 09, 2014, 05:48:20 PM
Hi,

Today I got this letter:

"Hi [my real name]

Some time ago I found your Bitcoin wallet contains 100 BTC.

Do not ask me how I got it because as a developer you'd know it.

After I seek to know, I am sure It belongs to you. and should I return it to you. had the intention to take the bit trying to crack the key ..

Although for some time I may be trying to break passwords to gain bitcoin in it. But I do not have ethics because you certainly will not stay silent and certainly able to keep track of where I am.

So how much better I return something I do not belong to the original owner ...

I hope that if you are kind enough to give me some BTC for use as commercial capital if you kindly about this ...

I am attaching a file with the "wallet.dat: you belong with this email

If you intend to donate to me for some BTC you have, please donate to me via the following address my wallet.

1AE8vxfhKN4URM45VJthB5STiDjFtE3L2u

Thank you"

So... what do you think about it ?

-Technologov
20  Bitcoin / Hardware / VMC -- are they actually delivering hardware ? on: June 05, 2014, 01:50:48 PM
Anyone received working ActM / Virtual Mining Corp hardware, such as Prospector or other ?
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