A grain is a unit of measurement of mass that is nominally based upon the mass of a single seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definition of units of mass. However, there is no evidence of any country ever having used actual seeds or cereal grains. Rather, expressions such as "thirty-two grains of wheat, taken from the middle of the ear" appear to have been ritualistic formulas, essentially the premodern equivalent of legal boilerplate.

- from Wikipedia




Grain (GRA)


Grain is a PoW/PoS coin that is designed to be the unit of cyber-coin. It has a total of 50 billion unit to be released, through a fair p2p mining process. It is fast, secure and have sufficient coins for circulation so it can be used in real daily shopping.

Grain is from the family of PPCoin/Novacoin with latest available algorithms that fixed various problems in the PoW/PoS coins. As compared to the PoW only coins, the proof of stake coins are more resilient to 51% attack. Also it is a long term energy-efficient crypto-currency since not all coins are obtained by mining.

Each grain block provides random 1024 - 2048 grains initially. It also provides rare superblocks. The coin uses hash-based algorithm to determine superblocks based on the number of 9s in the previous block hash. It works as follows:

- the hash contains six 9s or less: regular block
- the hash contains seven or eight 9s: 8 times the regular block (about 5% chances)
- the hash contains nine or more 9s: 64 times the regular block (about 1% chances)

Premined 1% as reserved bounty and reward for developers, giveaway, pool, blockexplorer, etc. Grain also provides 5% annual interest on the grained held. The interest will be paid about every 2 weeks.





Specifications

   - scrypt
        - 30 seconds block target
   - 1024-2048 grains per block for normal blocks
   - 8 times or 64 times the regular payout per block for super blocks depends on the number of 9s in the previous hash
   - Difficulty retargets every block
   - mining payout will be halved every 90 days (259200 blocks)
   - minimum payout per block 1 coin
   - Total grains will be 50 billions
   - 6 confirmations for transaction
   - 50 confirmations for minted blocks

   - Ports: 11054 (connection) and 11055 (RPC)


The official website: (under construction).

A separate giveaway thread will be created.





Downloads

Windows Client Downloads

Mega.co.nz:
https://mega.co.nz/#!g08klILY!cUhIeDHqF0pG1Mwr9yDqxBrT5x5dOyHdDm0uH50OOsE

Skydrive:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=248417D5E47DC8A8!108&authkey=!ADWKOAnboMX_clM&ithint=file%2c.zip


Source Code Download
https://github.com/grain-crypto/grain





Bounties

The following bounties will be distributed
- First mining pool: 200K GRA
- Second mining pool: 150K GRA

- First block explorer: 200K GRA
- Second block explorer: 150K GRA

- First gaming site accepting GRA: 200K GRA
- Second gaming site accepting GRA: 150K GRA


Blockchain Explorer:
- to be added -

News and Updates:
- to be updated -





Mining Configurations

Using the following nodes to join the network:

addnode=208.167.239.211
addnode=66.187.67.192


Sample Config File (grain.conf):



How to Solo Mine

1. Start up grain-qt, wait for it to load, then exit.
2. Put grain.conf (see sample file above) in your c:/users/**yourcomputername**/AppData/Roaming/Grain
3. restart grain-qt, and you should connect and sync.
4. For solo mining, launch cgminer or the mining program you use and begin mining.
      cgminer ex: cgminer.exe --scrypt -o localhost:11055 -u **yourusername** -p **password** (without **)