Hi,

does someone have hints/suggestions on how to create a new coin based on the latest Bitcoin codebase but using Neoscrypt instead of SHA as cryptographic algorithm?
Would it be overly difficult?
Is the cryptographic part neatly separated from the rest of the code in Bitcoin or does it have ramification all over the code?
Where can I find the Neoscrypt code separated from a coin?

Thanks

Hi, I'm in the process of evaluating various codebases for developing a new coin and I stumbled upon CryptoNote.
Before being spread and advocated by the CryptoNote foundation, the codebase was used for creating Bytecoin, a secretely 80% premined coin, which many have seen as an attempt to create a pump and dump coin.
The code contains a library, called epee, which has been written by a notorious russian botnet creator.
Given that premises, many questions arise, which have not fully or credibly answered by anyone (including the Monero team which reviewed the code and decided it was ok to build a coin upon it):

- why should anyone want his code to be used for creating other coins? What is the hidden agenda of CryptoNote foundation?
   (the motivations given in CryptoNote foundation's page are not credible, and I personally suspect they implanted some sort of hidden vulnerability and will exploit it as soon as Monero or other CryptoNote-based coins reach a sufficiently high price, or they could transform a coin's network into an extremely dangerous botnet)

- I have read CryptoNote's White Paper and its review made by a Monero-paid mathematician and I have to say the latter did not convince me at all.
  The review has been performed on the White Paper and not on the code. What warranty do we have that the code really implements what's on the White Paper and does not contain some trojan horse/botnet code?
  I tried to read the code (I'm a professional analyst/programmer/system administrator) and I found it really difficult to follow it. Finding a backdoor in code written by others is not trivial.
  One should basically trust CryptoNote's team...
  
- Every time Monero team answers to people asking about CryptoNote, they simply end their sentences with "every CryptoNote-based coin, except Monero".
  I don't see strong evidence for excluding Monero from the group of CryptoNote-based coins.
  Their code is not significantly different from that of CryptoCoin and my suspect is that they do not "own" the code, just like me and other people who attempted to read it.

I do not want to bash or advocate anyone. I just want to know if CryptoNote codebase can be safely used to create a new coin.