Cheers mate.

Spreadcoin Project Weekly Update #1

7th August 2015

Improving Communications

Following some fair feedback from the community, the Spreadcoin team acknowledge that community engagement hasn’t been strong enough recently.  To improve communications we aim to publish a weekly update every Friday.  These updates may be long or short depending on what there is to say.  After a discussion in the development channel on Slack, the team agreed that the updates should meet the following standards:

•   The updates will use the least amount of developer time possible.
•   The updates will be non-promotional in nature.
•   The updates will be factual and open.  If there is no progress or a problem, we will say so.

Project Objectives – A Brief History of Spreadcoin

As many of you know, Spreadcoin was originally intended as a fork and rival of Darkcoin.  When the original Lead Dev walked away from the project, Spreadcoin was just about to begin the second round of masternode testing.  A dedicated core of Spreadcoin supporters started to look at the code in more detail and began to realise that Spreadcoin had much greater potential than simply trying to mimic the functionality that Darkcoin/Dashpay already provided.

After several months of furious Slack activity a new fundamental approach was agreed.  Spreadcoin, using a two tier network with Service Nodes, can be used to provide a huge variety of decentralised applications and services whilst rewarding the owners of Service Nodes for doing so. 

It was agreed that the first service to be provided by Spreadcoin Service Nodes would be PoBN or Proof of Bitcoin Node.  PoBN is simply a mechanism to help the Bitcoin network combat the declining number of full Bitcoin Nodes by financially incentivising Service Node owners to also run full Bitcoin Nodes.  What better way to start your project than to offer some support to your mothership?  The next service has not been agreed but the many options range from file sharing applications to decentralised altcoin exchange.

What Have the Dev Team Been Doing Since Relaunch?

Over the last few months Georgem and Chaositec have had a mammoth challenge to tackle.  Whilst Spreadcoin was originally a Darkcoin fork, large amounts of code had been rewritten by the original lead developer. This included a total re-write of the masternode code.  It is vital that the new dev team gain an understanding of what is in the code and why it is there.

The crypto community has seen several Darkcoin/Dash copy and paste clones come and go over the last few months but the Spreadcoin project will not sacrifice quality for pace.  Nothing will be released until the project team are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the code is stable and appropriate.

Every day has thrown up surprises in how the code works.  A fact that astounded me personally is that Spreadcoind conducts five million operations in the first 10 seconds of execution.  Understanding your product is necessary before release, even into testnet.

The focus over the past few months and for the near term future will continue to be reviewing, understanding and improving the fundamentals that are already there.  Spreadcoin is doing something that nobody else has done before and the intention is to do it properly.

Dev Team Activity This Week

The dev team have been working on a tool to assist with the analysis of the operation and efficiency of Spreadcoin.  This tool has the ability to capture the literally millions of things that happen when Spreadcoin is running but also gives the ability to filter spurious information and to help identify algorithmic solutions to problems.  This tool is taking a lot of dev time at the moment but is expected to pay dividends in the near future as it will allow the dev team to simulate scenarios and code changes which we believe will speed up the testnet process and main net launch of Service Nodes and PoBN.

The new tool helped Georgem spot this bug on August 5th https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1045373.msg12063817#msg12063817.

Progress on Testnet & Updated Roadmap.

As of today, it looks like the first implementation of Service Nodes in testnet will be empty Service Nodes that are limited in their number by coinsupply/2880.

Whilst some members of the dev team have been testing and investigating the interaction between Spreadcoin Nodes and Bitcoin Full Nodes on the same VPS instance, the community must understand that the path to our first functioning service will be taken in small steps.  However it is important to stress that each step will help trigger the next step at an increasing pace.

When Service Nodes are ready for testnet we will depend on the community for help with testing.  We are excited for when that process can begin.

A new roadmap will be included with next week’s update to give an indication of our current view of the steps and timescales involved.

Other Activities of Interest

Coins101 and others have put a lot of work into a thorough whitepaper and press release that gives full details on our plans for PoBN.  This whitepaper has been reviewed by the dev team and the SPR community and has now been sent to a wide range of peers including current and past members of the Bitcoin foundation for comment.  We expect to release the whitepaper (version 1.0) within the next two weeks.

Chaositec has announced the Beta of his new mining pool which will soon have Spreadcoin payouts.  Chaositec is currently somewhere in the North Sea so expect to hear news from him when he’s back in the world of the internet.

Coins101 has proposed a competition to use vanitygen to find a Spreadcoin address beginning with SatoshiNakamoto.  The proposal is open to community debate.  Please express your view if you have one!

Questions from the Community

Future editions of the weekly update will have a summary of questions asked by the community in the previous week.  I will also collate the questions for the purpose of creating a FAQ in due course.

And finally…

Apologies for the verbosity of this update!  We feel that it was important to make the first one comprehensive.  Questions and criticisms are welcome, either on BCT or by PM to Stonehedge.  Expect a shorter update with more from the dev team, none of the history and an updated roadmap next week.

-Stonehedge

+1  Localbitcoins have obligations to fulfil with regard to money laundering laws and regulations and are perfectly entitled to insist on ID being provided before releasing funds.

Provide ID and get your money back seems to be the simplest solution to this issue.

Your best course of action was originally polite correspondence and compliance but now you have blown that chance with this thread. 

Aren't you supposed to be on holiday? 

I'm with AnotherNode.  I think we'd be foolish not to persue the vanitgen idea.  However as Coins101 says, we'd be even stupider to prioritise it over the work that the devs are currently doing.  In my view we either consider finding another pair of hands to help or implement this idea at a later date.

@coins 101...yes, could well be although I suspect the issue is more likely to be that the hardcoded testnet nodes have been powered down.  If I get a chance this weekend I might create a testnet node on vps.

This makes me want to change my mind about selling my U3s.  I do like making things work

I do agree with you but the intention of these updates are that they are very short if there isn't much to say and longer if there is lots to say.  I would personally post a short summary every week because people don't tend to read more than one or two pages back on BCT.

Ultimately I'll go with whatever the dev team feel is more appropriate whether that is biweekly or every week.

Great idea.  I'll have a think about the best way to capture these questions.  Cheers!

I have just put a proposal to the devs that they update me every Thursday on Slack with a view to me collating and providing a full community update on BCT every Friday.

I want this update to include a clear snapshot of the roadmap and the project's progress against it and a summary of what the dev team have been working on, problems encountered...bugs found...new ideas...development progress.  I like project updates to be PR free and consist of simple factual statements.  Obviously these updates will contain good news and bad news about the project as it progresses.

Does anybody have any suggestions on anything else that should be included?

If anybody wants to buy three units in UK/EU then I have some for sale

On my Raspberry Pi they all work fine individually or in pairs.  Even with a very good powered hub I can't get three to work reliably.

On my PC three seem to work fine together but I haven't tested that for very long.

I find that bfgminer is better than cgminer with the U3s (at least in minera) but your mileage may vary. I can't get them to work in minepeon at all.

Just running stock settings now and I have a beeping U3 after an hour of mining.

Does anybody know if the beeping is caused by a power or USB disruption? 

One or two of those would indeed fit the bill but they are like hens teeth at the moment.  Everywhere is out of stock.

I won't divert this thread with talk about other units but thanks for the suggestion, much appreciated.

The thing I like about the S3 is that that they are cheap and numerous.  It was also a rock solid machine when I was using it for more serious mining in the past 

I still think we need to do better at communicating what our core devs are working on although it shouldn't drag them away from their work.  We all have day jobs and real life going on too.  I'm going to give some thought on how I can post some more short updates on BCT without using too much of their time.

Georgem is painstakingly working towards servicenode testnet in a logical and methodical way.  He has a laudable dedication to quality control and we shouldn't forget that he has inherited somebody else's code.  I wouldn't release something I didn't fully trust or understand and I wouldn't want to be invested in a project with a lead dev that did.  

As a community we believe that we are doing something that nobody has done before and it can't be approached like a cut and paste coin project.  Yes, people have thrown masternode-like coins together in a few days but have any of you actually looked at the code?  Where are those coins now?  Things have to be done properly and this takes time.

I am going to propose that I have a ten minute chat with Chaositec and Georgem once a week and post a weekly update about what the devs are doing, what they're doing next and what they have failed to do ( )

I don't mind saying in public that both Chaos and George are excellent at what they do just not very good about boasting about it in public.  That's where I think I can help  

Payment made: 95428270d7c3d77d0f84fb7c7e71f6ad803188849db35d02b99f7332af75d082

Details in PM.

Many thanks indeed.

Thanks for that info.  I was hoping it would be as simple as lowing the frequency.

This hasn't put me off though.  I'm confident to make the electronic changes necessary as I have a background in electronics.  I'll give it some thought.

Thanks again.

Hi.

I have a few basic S3 questions if I may.

I have decided that I want a very small mining rig hashing at ~200Ghs with lowest possible power consumption for a bit of bitcoin solo mining lottery fun or occasional use on a multipool to pay out a handful of altcoins.  I stupidly tried some U3s and after a week of soul draining inconsistency I have given up and will be giving them as paperweights.

I used to have an S3+ that I ran maxed out but sold it some time ago.  Luckily, I still have a suitable PSU.

My questions are: 

• Would it be viable to purchase another S3 and adjust the operating frequency so that it would hash at ~200Ghs?
• If so, what is power consumption and fan noise like at this hashrate?  Would it be better than the claimed U3 rate of 0.8 Watt/GH?

I'm not really keen to go down the pencil mod route as I quite honestly can't be bothered...this is only supposed to be a bit of money wasting fun

Cheers in advance.

Lol. Lesson well learned!

I decided to slightly under clock my U3s last night to see if I could win some stability but this morning I awoke to one of them beeping and flashing at me. The other two were running fine.

I've just ordered some good quality USB cables and if they don't work I'm going to scrap the U3s (after a week of ownership) and see if I can find another hobbyist miner to buy.

Very poor show Bitmain.

Whilst on the subject of self promotion, I had a call from somebody who I used to facilitate off exchange sales of Darkcoin for. I'm not prepared to sell any of my SPR and this person doesn't use exchanges (I know).

In the unlikely event that somebody wants to sell 100k SPR at spot price please PM me. They'll pay in € or £ but won't do BTC.

I agree we need to get better with comms. Even if we are posting the info we aren't doing it in a clear and consistent way.

Coins101's PowerPoint updates are fine but people expect regular self promotion on BCT.

Whilst we'll never be a coin that tries to build on promises rather than results, the Spreadcoin team need to find a happy balance. More people are watching this thread than we realise. Maybe we need to spend a bit less time on Slack and play to the crowd a bit.

Georgem is busy preparing the next round of testnet.  In the meantime, there is no harm in talking through ideas.