+

try using addnode, as found in the OP. ive had the same problem, with few active nodes participating, sometimes its difficult for the block synchronization to get going. although, ive found the same issue with ETH a few times, reallllllly slow in synching up..


edit: and to all, sorry its taken me so long to get the OP reworked. im trying to streamline it, and with my... hyper-vocabularic style of writing... its not easy. ive taken inspiration from other OP announcements, adding in roadmaps for each sector of the project.. im hoping to be done with it tonite, as i have a thousand other things that need doing to reorganize SOIL, launch new website, etc etc etc....

panic. misinformation. sheep following sheep? im curious too as to the sudden abandonment by the community. anyhow, im just about done completely redoing the OP, with infographics and everything. i'll be rereleasing the website once ive gotten that done as well and will also be putting up stuff on a blog, the articles and user manuals ive written...

projects have taken a back seat for a few days while im getting the SOILcoin Project reorganized. we could still use a blockchain expert to help with development and protocol updates. trust me, being a development team of one is not easy. i have a ton of ideas for projects, and no time to get to it all. but from rewriting the OP its given me new ideas as well...

i hope you all stick around and buy SOIL for cheap while you can!!

well, im rewriting the OP in hopes of having a few people want to get more intimately involved with SOIL. its a time consuming project, that never seems to stop growing in scale. the advantage of SOILcoin is that the applications on the network can be developed independently by anyone, but in the end id love to collaborate with folks who have ideas and see if we cant make them a reality.  its been more than a bit hectic, restructuring the project, making sure the core development team will have full control over all aspects. i do not intend to leave the project, nor will i stop working on the projects i already have underway. and then theres the eleventyseven projects on the back burners. if anyone can write a dApp giving me a 72 hour day....

Peter has written me to tell me that he will be leaving the SOILcoin project due to time constraints at his new work and home. Its been an absolute pleasure working with Peter in getting SOIL launched and running, and I wish him the best of luck in his future endeavours.

I will remain working on SOIL, as diligently and obsessively as before, and if anyone within the community would like to help out further with the core development side of things here, send me a PM or reach out to me on our slack channel... I have a lot of belief in this project, and that what we are building is something that will, down the road, prove to be a useful tool for our preferred communities in renewable energy, agriculture and scientific computing.

Im reworking the OP and website, as well as setting up the new "hard nodes" today, as well as continuing to work on the couple projects i have on the go presently. Hope the weather for everyone is better than this soggy mess we have here in atlantic canada...

after launch we settled into a price discovery of below 1000 sat for awhile. we havent really had price reduction, simply stagnancy. im not worried about current valuation, its only been a month and a bit where we've hovered in the 2-3000 sat range. SOIL isnt dying, but i am working hard on finsihing up a few projects in the hope of breathing refreshed energy into the valuation. while im not concerned over our price, id still love to see it higher (naturally) to incentivize the mining more.

ive been working thru the weekend on two of my projects ... the SafeMarket port to SOIL and our precious metals backed assets ... the SafeMarket should be finished sooner than the yet to be appellated precious metals market. ive secured a few vendors of platinum and palladium, and have been looking into the feasibility of using not only the metals with ISO currency codes (the two mentioned above along with gold and silver) but to include other semi-precious metals as well (particularily rhodium and irridium) we have acquired some platinum and palladium as well, 1 ounce of the former and and 2 ounces of the latter, to ensure working assets are available when we launch, and id like to be able to offer the "asset backed tokens" similar to the digix project at 1 XPT (platinum) equal to 1 gram, divisible as a token to 0.001 grams (ex: with PT at almost a thousand dollars an ounce, each XPT token would be worth about $36 USD, divisible to $0.035 USD at its smallest) ive been watching the DGD (digixDAO) project closely, and have been thinking about the release of a similar valued "corporate token" for the precious metals market with similar usage to assist with overall SOILcoin development funding, but i havent worked out the logistics for that yet.

dont worry about the value. we will remain consistently working on developments and projects, and that will lead to further price appreciation.

agreed. but the larger CONSISTENT hashrates dedicated to the system, the faster reductions in difficulty can occur when hit by a massive mining farm like we have seen. theres no realistic way to prevent this sort of "attack" at present. at best, we can push mining power towards the system regularly to ensure a quicker system response to high difficulties. there is no perfect system. we presently have 37 MH/s network speeds, which is really one or two miners helping secure the system. as long as the system is continually moving forward, im content, but im frustrated by the inconvenience that these high difficulty levels presents for simple and speedy transfers. it also makes deploying new contracts to the network very slow, but i muddle along best as i can.

blocktimes and prevention of massive mining attacks is one of the things im consistently researching, to find a way to improve our average blocks towards the mean targeted block time. mid-block adjustments would be a major security flaw, though, even if there were a way to implement it. 

we've noticed this happen a few times already, a mining farm will target SOIL for a day or so, mine the bulk of distribution and move on when the difficulty has gotten too high. the downward direction of difficulty is slower than the upward changes, and so it takes some time for these to reduce to a lesser hashrate being used against the system as miners move on to lower difficulty. the changes within the Homestead release to the difficulty algorithm were supposed to make the longer blocktimes we are experiencing "mathematically impossible", but this is clearly not the case. we do look forward to when a workable proof of stake system of block rewards can be implemented on SOIL, and have been following the developments towards that with dedication. the network is SLOW but is still running.

cryptocurrency mining has become big business. personally, my contribution to running the consensus engine is hampered by the archaic computer i use, but im waiting for a riser cord to come in from the mail so that i can attach the more advanced GPU my brother sent to me (R9 290X) to a computer and be able to mine effectively. but, mining hashpower goes where difficulty is low and profitablility is high. everything is viewed regarding short term profit, and thats perfectly OK. but SOILcoin is a long-term project, and whether we have to find outside funding in order to build an appropriate mining rig that will act as a catalyst against the mining farms that visit us every so often is another thing to look at. (if anyone wants to contribute by sending me older video cards to build into a rig, let me know, id be forever appreciative)

im not even sure HOW to answer that question.

first off, something like expanse might serve single-purpose organizations and the like, but that doesnt serve the vision we have for SOIL in the least.

SOILcoin is built as a smart contract delivery platform with a specifically targeted set of under-served industries that are on the breakout point of future technological usage, integrating the Internet of Things into common practice, expanding automation of systems.... IF SOILcoin was merely a representative sort of currency, existence as a token would be ok, but our sole purpose is to build and deliver a full suite of dApps targeted towards renewable energy and environmentalism, towards automated agriculture and farm management, towards distributed scientific computational needs, towards open and accessible expert knowledge databases for agricultural practices.... we are building a brand, where SOIL may become synonymous with environmental responsibility, with climate prediction, with modern precision agricultural methods.

we NEED a specific and autonomous programmatic blockchain to build this, and this is also why we didnt simply build SOILcoin as a decentralized organization on Ethereum, as well. we are building a framework of applications towards the goal of providing targeted services. we view SOIL as the fuel behind these projects (much as ether is the gas running the applications on ETH) and as the framework upon which to build a special-purpose network. SOILcoin is the base layer upon which everything else will reside.

having some control over how the underlying framework is built is very important when building out a project like this, and we have so many directions that we are working on presently, confining ourselves as a DAO on another blockchain makes zero sense. SOILcoin will be built to serve many aspects of industry, and will do so in an interoperable way. to provide this, we have to be able to ensure that the platforms we offer have a soid base that they built out from, with control over the distribution curve to prevent absolute deflation in valuation, and to ensure that the guiding principles of the SOILcoin team are kept at the forefront of every project.

things such as SOIL-ex, our asset exchange, while not a fully operational altcoin market, have no equivalent service on EXP, nor is it in their roadmap. SOIL-ex already provides dApp developers who will use an appCoin to fuel their platform a currently available service upon which to list their asset in a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange process.  this is a major first step. the large-scale projects im presently working on - a decentralized marketplace ... distributed scientific computing on climateprediction.net ... a precious metals backed commodity ... a pedigree registration dApp ... an agricultural provenance application ... a carbon-offset program - these are the foundations that further dApps will leverage. each project that we choose to port towards SOILnet residency and functionality takes into consideration the possible needs of the industries that we have chosen to serve.

i have nothing against Expanse, per se, although im still very unclear about their plans, nor am i convinced of their transparency. i dont agree, for example, whatsoever with how they marketed their use of the azure and bizspark platforms as being a "partnership" between expanse and microsoft, which it clearly isnt, in the strictest sense of the word. but, the word "partnership" DOES sound great to investors.

the DAO that was supposed to be in practice from their genesis, i still cant find the source to this contract on their github repo. in fact, it seems as though, from examining the github repositories of the developers (rather than the project) and press releases, that the Expanse DAO has YET to be implented. there is no clear accessibility to the "software enforced bylaws" or what those bylaws actually ARE. nor have i seen how the "community-run" system has come into play in decision making. the contracts for their governing DAO arent easily found, or promoted, which i feel is a cornerstone to organizational transparency.

i cannot say with surety that these issues have not been addressed in their forum, i havent read every page, but from what i see with EXP, while their intentions seem good, theres little substance beyond talking up what they plan on doing, with very little practical application or user accessibility offered yet. they are measuring their success (and even brag up that they are the only successful parallel currency to ETH) by volume traded and the number of exchanges theyre traded upon, whereas i measure the success of SOIL by the quality, innovation and PRACTICALITY of the dApps we release, how much closer we get to providing the full-functionality towards the SOILnet we have envisioned from the get go.

ive looked at their roadmap, and while their borderless.tech plans sound great, i dislike the centralized user databases on mongoose that they will be using, which reduces pseudo-anonymity by employing registered user reputation accounts. it appears, through their sparse documentation, that verified reputation accounts will be necessary for users in order to access much of the "borderless" functionality. although i think that reputation systems will be important, in those instances where "Know Your Customer" is necessary, part of the raison d'etre of cryptocurrency is maintaining that chosen level of anonymity as the user wants.

much of the further forecasted functionality for 2016 are built from currently available open source single smart contracts. much of what they are working on presently, such a ported Mist wallet, we have ALREADY done with SOILcoin, months ago. they do a great job with blogging and updates, they are wonderful marketers, but in truth, they promise to offer nothing more than SOILcoin can already deliver. 

i dont like comparing apples to oranges, and while EXP and SOIL are vigorously different platforms, albeit operating with the exact same underlying protocols, our roads forward are very divergent; in the end i think that SOILcoin, operating as an sovereign blockchain offers greater advantages than ever becoming a simple asset on an incompatible blockchain that doesnt possess the strong philanthropic and responsible vision of SOIL. i wont measure our success against EXP, or any other currency. i think the merits of what we HAVE produced so far should stand on their own, as should the applications we release as part of the SOILcoin network.

i dont think that "creative truth-telling" when it comes to community-targeted press releases is a good practice. yes, it may have a positive (and temporary) affect on overall valuation, but in the end, i truly believe that honesty regarding what we have built, what it can and CANNOT do, and where we are moving forwards toward will gather more positive investment than doing things such as claiming to have a "partnership" with microsoft (name-dropping) and not truthfully explaining what that means will do with future trust from shareholders.

publicity and marketing will only go so far, real results must be delivered. the only way to ensure a clear message going forward is by being able to control the platform the message is broadcast on/about, and should SOIL be an EXP-based asset, we would be hamstrung by a lack of functionality and beholden to the public perception of their development team by proxy. i believe the bloom on the EXP rose will fade. i believe that focused application delivery and comprehensive, easy-to-understand end-user documentation for each contract will bring more usability (and more users) to SOIL. their future directions will serve other industries than we will, but in the end, it would make more sense to have EXP as a SOIL-resident asset than the other way around.

i dont worry about our valuation as it sits right now. nor do i worry about how our valuation matches up with those of other ETH-parallel currencies. MANY cryptocurrency investors dont practice due-diligence regarding the altcoins they speculate in, and will simply follow the volume being traded rather than the developments being done. SOILcoin will always remain autonomous, and our very very small development core will consistently work towards bringing forward dApps that will have practical use for the future of SOILcoin. SOIL's value will increase, of that i have no worry. but id rather it be on the back of what we have already built and the competency of our development team to produce further practical applications built towards our end-user industries than having it increase thanks to flashy graphics and vaguely worded promises.

we've worked towards inclusion on other exchanges, and had a bad experience with yobit. if theres another exchange you want to see SOIL on, most other centralized privately-run exchanges want to see a strong available community demanding such and such coin be listed. thats why so many of them have voting for inclusion. i know we're listed on a few voting lists, and ill get a list of links for that up today if i can. but, if theres a specific exchange YOU like, and use more often.. then let THEM know about SOIL and how bad you want to be able to use their service to trade for it.

im still futzing about with our BTCrelay contract, ensuring the proper confirmatins are done via the BTC blockchain, and getting the "master relayer" accounts running properly to provide a seamless BTC liteclient enabling the use of SOILex as a SOIL-BTC trading environment. id love to say im making bang-up progress, but im having to educate myself on the BTC protocol much more depely than i had before, and in the end, will enable us to EASILY build the exchange of SOIL with other sha256 currencies, and to build the contracts for other altcoin protocols beyond that. the relay is THERE, and LIVE, and being tested.

as a side note: i was recently made aware how important a viable presence on our slack channel is, from the community standpoint. while i havent been on there much at all, really, im going to start leaving myself logged in there and checking in from now on. if you want to get ahold of me quicker than thru the forums or a private message here, ill be on there. ill answer whatever questins i can as quickly as possible from the slack. send me yur email for the slack invite and ill get those sent out to you as soon as possible.

i *DO* get buried in my work sometimes, and may not be ON constantly, but i know that tab thingy starts blinking so ill notice your question sooner than later. unless theres a hockey game going on. the toronto marlies are in a playoff run for the calder cup and i am a very dedicated hockey fan. and, even though i do consume a small villages allotment of coffee every day, i do sleep once in a awhile. i would like to remain more available to you all, so from this day forward, if my computer is on, you'll find me logged into the slack.

..just another project come up looking into tokenization on the blockchain, this one with geocaching.

now, ive been a geocacher for over a decade. ive only got 1600 or so caches found, but ive done coast to coast geocaching runs, across canada... from the atlantic to the pacific and back again. best roadtrip ever. so i loved this idea immediately. i love how creatively an asset can be built and secured on the EVM that reflects this activity, and it has a really interesting "distribution algorithm". so, in that light, had to plug the project as released on reddit:

CAPSOL
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4iii3z/capsol_flash_crowdsale_coming_very_soon/

*TL/DR version*: Subcurrencies, whether as stores of value or as appcoins used to access the dApp's features, are becoming a large part of the cryptocurrency ecosphere, and pushing this technology through the SOILnet will be one of the biggest advantages towards seeing SOILcoin begin to function within the industries we have set out to serve.

With our release of SOIL-ex, we have created the first step towards what will hopefuly be a thriving subcurrency market on top of the SOILcoin blockchain. These tokens can be listed and traded using the SOILex platform, and truly, the only limitation is one's imagination. Subcurrencies, or tokens, are currencies that reside as smart contracts on the programmatic blockchain, and can act as value stores in many different ways, much as the Ethereum Frontier guide began to explore upon our mother currency's launch: "coins, loyalty points, gold certificates, IOUs, in game items". This is by no means the limit to how token contracts can be utilized on the EVM.

Useage as "shares" in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations is a very simple scenario that has already begun to show much promise, as outlined below regarding the DGD token. They can represent a Proof of Ownership in an asset of any sort, which is transferable. Subcurrencies can have have a fixed initial distribution, or be scripted to allow mining or Proof of Stake mechanisms to control distribution. Accounting contracts can control the minting and burning of assets to create two-way pegs towards other existing altcoins, or to provide an auditable real-asset backed token, such as the DGX token described below. Subcurrencies can be used as a crowdfunding mechanism, such as with the FarmShare project, or with the SOILcoin "Carbon Footprint Offset Program" using SEEDLINGS.

Subcurrencies are, through smart contract design, able to emulate and represent the functions and capabilities of many other special-purpose blockchains and altcoins, with the advantage of having this new subcurrency, now paired up against the base currency SOIL, immediately protocol-compatible with other SOILnet resident subcurrencies, enabling contracts to be written connecting value or function between multiple subcurrencies. Currency balances reside alongside the parent-network wallet address, and are quickly interactive within the SOILcoin ecosystem thru the Dust wallet. Currency security is provided by the consesus mining of SOILcoin, and EVM-resident tokens using the subcurrency standard have an automatic compatibility with all contracts on the blockchain, allowing the tokens to interoperate on a transparent global machine. 

Subcurrencies residing on top of the SOILnet can also act essentially the same way as traditional altcoins do, and may eventually serve to replace a large number of special-purpose altcoins whose functions can be run through smart contracts. Where Ethereum is a "big player" on today's cryptocurrency ecosystem, SOILcoin has remained under the radar. We created SOILcoin to work for the planet, really. To harness the potential of the global virtual machine, and turn it towards making the world a more viable place, through smart contracts dedicated to our four pillars: renewable energy, precision agriculture and knowledge bases, scientific computational needs, and environmental awareness, education and implementation. I would like to see other special-purpose currencies redeploy onto the SOILcoin blockchain, much like the Destiny (DES) altcoin has made their scrypt-based asset a resident currency on the Expanse blockchain, while maintaining its presence as a tradable asset on exchanges.

The use of subcurrencies that are native to a dApp, generally used crowdfunding these projects, has been termed "Appcoins". These are seen in the examples above regarding DGD, DGX and REP. Many others are cropping up, and while there's some in the cryptocurrency world that see the rise of Appcoins as being the mechanism to unseat BTC, articles on nakomotoinstitute.org tend to spread as much FUD as possible regarding their use. (I personally take their comments with a bucketful of salt as its fairly obvious that the authors have a stake in BTC and will do whatever is necessary to push competition out of the way.)

An article written by the developers at ConsenSys called "A token powered future" [https://medium.com/@ConsenSys/tokens-on-ethereum-e9e61dac9b4e#.fvai15wyp] gives some great examples of how subcurrencies are important to our future, and i highly recommend reading it. Before I start on about the potentials for token-reliant dApps on SOILcoin, Id like to give a bit of a rundown on some of the projects that exist already, how theyve siezed upon the use of subcurrencies.
 
Augur has been one of the most anticipated dApps that will be running on the Ethereum network. It is a "decentralized prediction market" where users bet, using ETH, on the outcome of events. Odds are generated based upon whether one is voting with the consensus or not, and payouts are generated based upon the results, which are verified using "crowdsourced reporting" by "oracles" who are holders of "Reputation tokens". REP is the Ethereum-resident subcurrency for Augur. While end-users wager on the result of a event, REP holders are responsible to act as the reporters on the outcome of these events, receiving a pro-rated portion of the system’s trading fees as reward. The more REP a user has, the more value or trust is assigned to that person’s input, and the larger financial incentive is provided to them. People who report truthfully on event outcomes earn REP tokens and are also awarded a portion of the winnings. People who report against the consensus (untruthfully) lose REP tokens and earn nothing. REP holders that do not remain active as oracles will see their REP balances penalized and redistributed to active oracles.

All 11,000,000 REP tokens were made available in a crowdsale, and while Augur remains in beta testing, a token of the token, for arguments sake, is available in trade at Gatecoin. When Augur goes live, these will redeemable for the REP tokens that take part in the outcome reporting process. They have a present value of $7.17 each, giving this token a market cap in the neighbourhood of $80 million USD. Present volume daily in trades is averaging 15BTC/24 hours (about $7000 USD). There has been a lot of speculation to the value of REP, but the market seems to be that most holders of REP are holding on to their balances.

DGX is a "gold-backed" subcurrency for the Digix.io project. Each token is pegged to the value of 1 gram of gold, and is divisible to 0.001grams. This is done so using a Proof of Asset Process. Physical gold represented by the tokens is stored in custodial vaults, and represented on the blockchain by a Proof of Asset card, which contains information about that particular gold asset including serial number, chain of custody digital signaures from the vendor, custodian and auditors, purchase receipts, audit documentation, etc. This information is kept on IPFS (InterPlanetary File Storage) and accessed thru contract calls.

The DGX token itself is minted via a smart contract, which accepts the PoA card for DGX tokens. The contracts check the gold asset Registry, to verify the ownership of the PoA card, sending new tokens to an accounting contract with this information regarding the underlying asset certificate. This contract credits the owner into the gold token ledger and issues the DGX tokens to the owner. These DGX tokens can again be "recast" into a Proof of Asset digital certificate, which in turn can be redeemed for the physical gold itself. 

Digix has also recently issued the DigixDAO (DGD) token. $5.5 million USD was raised in a crowdsale for 2 million DGD in 14 hours. DGD has been made available for trade on Gatecoin, Open Ledger and Yunbi. The current value for DGD sits at $13.33, and maintains a market cap of $26.5 million USD (or 58,000 BTC).

Each DGD gives its holder a "share" in the DigixDAO project, as well as a quarterly "dividend", which is prorated from the transaction fees generated by the gold-backed DGX tokens. (Each DGD token will receive 1/2,000,000 of tx-fees). These 2 million tokens represent the current lifetime supply of DGD, but the project also has coded into its contracts, an automatic "crowdsale project proposal" which is submitted to current DGD holders, for a new round of crowdsale funded DGD issuance every 2 years which may increase the lifetime supply. This is put in place to ensure the sustainability of DigixDAO if more funds are needed. These additional mintings will only occur with majority consensus since it involves token dilution. Current shareholders would be eligible to purchase newly issued tokens prior to public releasing.

Storjcoin X (SJCX) is the appcoin for the Storj.io project. Storj aims to create a cloud storage platform with no censorship or monitoring. Files are encrypted client-side on users’ computers before they are uploaded. Each file is then split up into chunks which are encrypted and then distributed for storage across the Storj network. Users remain anonymous, and participants renting out their hard-drive space do not know what files they are hosting, nor will they be able to access them. Storj users earn SJCX by renting out their unused hard-drive space, and those who utilize the service pay out rental fees, which are used to pay the drive-holders.

500 million SJCX were minted, of which nearly 50 million are presently available. Traded at Poloniex and Bittrex, presently at $0.0556 USD with daily volumes averaging 12 BTC/day, SJCX has a market cap of $2,755,000 USD. Costs for rental space on the network are $0.015 USD/GB per month, and bandwidth usage costs $0.05 USD per GB.

Destiny (DES) is an interesting case. DES started out as a scrypt-based currency with a short PoW period. The developers stated that their goal was to create a "zerocash", a system that would further anonymize transactions by encrypting the origin, destination and amount in a transaction from public knowledge. The developers achieved the switchover to EXP via a swap mechanism, where 1 "scrypt" DES was valued at 10 "EXP-resident" DES, with original assets sent to a burn address after the swap.

The DES team followed the subcurrency standard, and released 1.6 million DES via the swap. A total of 2.1 million DES was minted when the EXP contract was deployed. DES now works similarily to a savings account, paying out interest based on the deposit size. Contract wallet accounts with >50,000 DES will recieve what amounts to a 20% per annum interest rate, while shareholders with less than 50,000 DES will receive 12%. Both the "burn" and "interest" functions are built into the DES token contract, although I havent been able to figure out the schedule for interest payments to be deposited into contract wallets.

I think that the DES project's idea was innovative and bears looking into. Following the forum discussions regarding this asset on teh bitcointalk forum, it seems as though it now has a fairly angry community and prices have fallen precipitously, with the developer having seemingly disappeared. The currency which held a valuation of $0.56 USD before the swap onto the EXP blockchain in late March 2016, and a total market-cap of nearly $75,000 USD. It presently holds a value of $0.0122 USD, with a market cap just south of $20,000 USD.

Use cases for tokens on the EVM are numerous, and go beyond the ideas presented above with the Augur, Digix and Destiny projects. Would these projects work on SOIL? A prediction market similar to Augurcould be utilized related to climate change or as an agricultural prediction market. In 2008 a project called Farmetrics allowed users to submit predictions for local planted acreage, yield and harvested acreage; participants earning Reward Ponits that could be redeemed on an online catalog. Participants were also allowed to donate their Reward Points to charitable foundations. It doesnt seem as though this project lasted very long, nor am I able to find out the metrics of participation, but the project seemed very popular at the time.

Similarly, BOINC-related distributed computational science altcoins such as CureCoin or GridCoin could be built onto the SOILnet with little problems. These currencies use participant computer power to "fold" protien simulations for medical research or donate use of ones CPU and GPU power to make advancements in Earth sciences, Mathemetics, Physics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. FoldingCoin, which can be merge-mined with CureCoin, also falls into this category. I have begun looking into setting up a Distributed Scientific Computing token tied to climateprediction.net which also runs the BOINC platform. (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing).

Projects such as Zerocash, which is working to offer total payment confidentiality, by automatically hiding the sender, recipient, and value of all transactions on the blockchain. Zcash is planning a release for September 2016, using "zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge” (zk-SNARK) privacy , a new memory-oriented PoW algorithm called Equihash, and an API. While end-use cases for fully anonymous transactions might not seem to fit the SOILcoin mission statement and desire for absolute transparency, this technology may become one of the most important and disruptive applications of blockchain mechanics. Beyond this, there is also the possibility for something similar to TorCoin, which would monetize anonymous web browsing.

Like them or hate them, appcoins, subcurrencies and tokens are going to be a huge part of cryptocurrency going forward. They enrich the dApps that issue them, and provide a new source of crowdfunding that goes beyond venture capital or angel investors. SOILcoin has always been a currency that stands on its own two feet, and while we are working hard at implementing differing applications towards providing service to our core industrial targets, we have not delved into any crowdfunding or initial property offerings. All development has been done using our own time as the commodity. Many cryptocurrencies work to enrich the developers, and I think thats where SOILcoin's strength comes in, in that we aren't in this for sole monetary gain (we take no wage from this, and this remains true even while i live well below the poverty line). We built SOIL as a humanitarian currency, something philanthropic, so I hope that this article might incentivize some of you to build those dApps, issue you Appcoins and Subcurrencies and make a profit while making this world a better place.

hello folks. sorry for the long absence. ive been trying to check in as i could, but its been an absolute fustercluck the last few weeks. my father passed very suddenly, something no one was expecting. this was the guy who never got sick, seemed invulnerable, but succumbed to a sudden heart attack. he was the strong farmer, ate responsibly (although there was always a lot of eggs in our diet) me, ive had a much unhealthier lifestyle and more health problems in my years, so its been a bit of an eye opener. ive finally gotten home after dealing with funerals, helping my mom and trying to deal with the drama that is a family crisis. right now, i plan on just burying myself in working on SOIL, and will be updating as much as possible. i had started working on precious metals markets before i was called away so suddenly, and hope to capitalize on that this week, following up on discussions with custodial vaults, and vendors. id had nearly finished setting up the SEEDLINGS program with treecanada, and had been working on an article on the "tokenized future" of the EVM, corresponding to our release of SOIL-ex. i havent even had the chance to look into the btc-relay block confirmations issue, and have a hundred other notes on post-its to look into.. i expect to be very busy in the coming days, and hope to make up for lost time in a hurry.

my apologies for being absent this past week and change. we had a sudden death in the family here, and its been a lot of work dealing with the aftermath. things are mostly dealt with now, and ill be getting back to work again.

the markets have been "off" for almost every ETH parallel currency over the last month and a bit. ETH hit its highwater mark on march 13, at $16.06 USD. its down over 50% in 6 weeks to $7.39 USD. EXP, likewise, hit a peak march 25 at $0.95 USD and is also down over 65% to its current $0.28 USD. SHF went from a little over 5 cents USD on March 14 to 1 cent USD presently. our peak occurred alongside EXP on march 25, and since then have lost 65%+ in value. so its not just with SOIL that this precipitous drop, both in valuation and volume, has occurred.

we HAVE flown under the radar a great deal. im not one for big announcements or spinning news and occurrences to falsely attempt to increase our value. take the microsoft azure question as an example. some of the other blockchains that have joined the "blockchain as a service" and "bizspark" programs of microsoft have claimed that this gives them $120,000 towards development costs, which is misleading, even as these press releases seem to be canned articles presented by microsoft. truth of the matter there is that the developers have access to Microsoft software suites and server usage over a one year period that will provide UP TO 120 thousand dollars in CREDITS split between 5 seperate entities involved in the cryptocurrency project. well, perhaps not a malicious untruth, i dont find it to be entirely honest either.... YES, azure would present incredible visibility for SOIL. BUT. the level of pseudonymity that we espouse would disappear for users of SOILcoin on the Azure service.  

all we can do is continue to work on further developments. with the release of SOIL-ex last week, we have the ability to create a subcurrency marketplace (more on that later today) and have built a simple bridge to bring purchase of SOIL with BTC directly via p2p thru the blockchain a reality. we are still testing the btc-swap aspect of the exchange, and while things work most of the time, there does seem to be an issue with acknowledgement of confirmations from the BTC blockchain some of the times. id rather have utter stability, so while you can use the btc-swap, id advise doing it with small amounts to begin with.

we are constantly working on further developments, keeping in contact with other currency developers, etc. presently, im working on getting the bitcoin relay to work flawlessly, and then introduce other currencies into the mix. im also talking with the folks from the BOINC distributed computation projects, firstly regarding how to set this up on the EVM, ensuring a fair credit payment system (as a smart contract run token) and working most closely with the folks from climateprediction.net which seems to fit SOILcoin's reason d'etre the closest. (for those of you who arent familiar with BOINC, it is  essentially using CPU power to provide power against data model sets solutions, which are rewarded with various "credits". similar projects exist as wholly independent currencies such as CureCoin, FoldingCoin and GridCoin)

i should have an announcement ready by tomorrow regarding our "carbon offset program" which ive alluded to in the posts regarding SOIL-ex. more of an environmentally responsible strategy than anything else. i do continue to look to other exchanges other than bittrex (and now SOIL-ex) to trade ones currency with. im VERY cautious with choosing now, after reading the multitudinous horror stories of failed private online exchanges.

im also working with ensuring that we have a strong and stable IPFS gateway, although id much rather have an on-chain and decentralized data storage solution (a la storj.io) than IPFS. i want to push towards as much decentralized services as possible. it wont be feasible for SOIL to be completely off-grid as it were, the use of oracles and "outside information" will become absolutely essential in the coming year, but as with anonymity for the end user, i want to keep the SOILnet as decentralized as possible to minimize risk.

irregardless of the value of SOIL on the exchanges, i will continue working hard on bringing new developments on-chain, because while we may only have a worth of $0.0125 USD presently, my whole focus is not on the here and now value but on building up towards where we will be in a years time, in two.. or five.. years time, in what services we can offer towards agriculture, renewable energy, environmentalism, computational science..... i keep up to date with technology for the EVM as it is released, as different open source dApps are exposed to world. i have a hundred applications id love to deploy TODAY, but have to content myself with working on two or three at a time. i think we WILL have a big future. and im patient enough to get there on the basis of my work and effort. hopefully, the community will be as patient as well. we have a very slight core dev team, and thus work on developments is quite compartmentalized. my inexperience with programming shows thru some times as it takes me a lot longer to review code and understand WHAT EXACTLY it does, but im getting better.

with my back pain finally easing up (thanks to a $10 TENS machine bought off of ebay... my life is now ruled by micro-electric shock therapy to my lower back) i should be able to get more work done again. these past few weeks, with my daughter down from out west and my back having blown out, have been tough to get ANYTHING done. im still managing close to 6 hours a day on SOIL, as i can. id like to be back up to 12 hours a day again, it felt like i was getting a lot accomplished. what i NEED.... a 72-hour day. too bad we cant code that into a smart contract.

im also trying to figure out how to install the graphics card my brother sent me so that i can start actually contributing to the mining of SOIL. its top of the line, so he says, but unfortunately my desktop computer ISNT. it doesnt have the risers on the mother board in order to install it directly.... (on board crappy graphics card) so i have to Frankenstein something into an older computer. while im getting better at understanding the software, the hardware gives me conniptions. if anyone has old graphics cards gathering dust somewhere, let me know. id like to build a mining rig, even with older cards. (my electricity bill is included in my rent)

i hope everyone out there is well and healthy. have a wonderful rest of the week. ill try to have my subcurrency article polished off, thats what this afternoon is dedicated to, so hopefully thatll be up by this evening.

ive updated the SOIL-ex website with a bit of a user manual.
http://soilex.altervista.org/User-Manual/user-manual.html

we've been working thru bits and pieces of bugs in the btc-relay to ensure that its a properly functioning gateway. we've been updating our github repo for the relay constantly, and theres still work to be done to ensure that SOILcoin is hosting a current, updating light client BTC blockchain to ensure that the process of transferring BTC in transactions on the SOILcoin network go smoothly EVERY time.

when this is functioning absolutely perfectly, we can safely say we have created our second exchange, with a single trading pair, here on the blockchain. when we can implement other currency gateways, which should be fairly easy with other sha256 (bitcoin) cryptocurrencies, adjusting for the constants.

the speed of the confirmation of transactions will be dependant of the sidechain currency, which is a complex solution to build thru, and will likely involve automated burn addresses and pegged 1-for-1 tokens, which is immensely DO-ABLE, but would still have the limitation of neding transactions mined thru multiple blockchains

im working on an article relating to subcurrencies and how they can be implemented on the EVM, theres some very interesting projects out there that can redefine the cryptocurrency landscape...

work continues... my wishlist for projects grows longer than my arms...

After much delay, we are proud to publicly launch SOIL-ex.  

you will need to launch your gsoil instance with the parameters:


the webserver providing the user interface can be connected to at:
soilex.soilcoin.xyz

the FAQ and white paper are available at:
http://soilex.altervista.org/index.html

i am working on the user manual presently, which will be updated on the altervista site as soon as it is done.

the master exchange contract is located at: 0xe32a3b99ca304e3b59879473700eb8df9f27e920

this platform does contain a live version of btc-swap, which leverages the btcrelay suite of contracts to allow for direct purchase of SOIL using BitCoin without having to go thru a conventional online cryptocurrency exchange. **we are still busy testing the bitcoin relay** we should have the btc-swap aspect of the exchange running smoothly within the week, and the user manual will have all the information needed to use it, as well as to set yourself up as a "BTC block header relayer" and to set your relay fees using btcrelay-fetchd. this also will be documented as quickly as i can get it ready. that being said, use the btc-swap at your own risk. there are still a few kinks to iron out.

the btc-swap contract is resident on the SOILnet at: 0x528e8d40b0ddd61c2ed4932ea00ce78036137c56, and references the btcrelay suite, which maintains its "trusted BtcRelay" at 0x31f6e855e0c9bae4e6d3d766d8771d31e9f8ff5d

bear in mind that this "Phase1" release of SOIL-ex is simply a SOILcoin-resident subcurrency market at present. i will write an article in the next couplefew days regarding subcurrencies, showcasing ideas regarding what they can be used for or represent, and how we can build a flourishing subcurrency marketplace

im already hard at work on "Phase2" which will hopefully feature further crosschain payment gateways (im working on LTC, DGC, QUARK, PPC and MEC at the moment) and a precious metal backed asset. im currently in communication with palladium and platinum bullion retailers, and custodial vault services to get this set up. note: the payment gateways are not a method of bringing the actual altcoin asset itself ONTO the SOILnet, it is simply, in the method of btc-swap, a way to verify transactions on the outside blockchain and then take action upon that proof, as in:  "send $X SOIL to userA's SOILcoin address if $Y BTC has been sent to userB's BTC address"

it is not the most elegant solution for crosschain gateways, and requires a bit of fussing about to fulfill transactions, but it works.

SOIL-ex, itself, is not the most polished and suave platform, either. we will be working on improving its functionalities and user interfaces over the coming months, so the project will remain ongoing. there have been countless hours spent already, working on this platform, going over every line of code from its parent project, EtherEx, and testing the platform out frontways, sidewards and upside down.

with this release, there are two subcurrencies released alongside the system: DEVs and SEEDLINGSs.

DEVs will be sold on par with SOIL, 1-for-1, at launch. the proceeds from the sale of DEVs will go towards server fees and further developments to SOIL-ex itself. the platform is not a profit-producing entity, the only fees attached to transactions with the platform will be the gas fees, which go to the miners. SOIL-ex is hosted on our official server, alongside our faucet, mining pool, network intelligence platform and website. naturally, there is a real cost to using these servers to host such things, which is why we are releasing DEVs. sort of a "pay what you feel is appropriate" program, if you feel this platform is useful to you, and want to help fund its ongoing development, then by all means, buy some DEVs. the parent project to SOIL-ex, EtherEx, will be releasing their ETX tokens as a crowdsale, and while this is a worthwhile way of raising the funds necessary, i have an aversion to crowdsales and ICOs, so we've simply released the DEV tokens for voluntary community action if they feel like contributing.

if anyone feels like contributing directly in appreciation for the work done, i accept SOILcoin payments to my developers wallet at:

0xe46731382FbC47621A6C480d4b6118026bBBCb3A

SEEDLINGS (ticker stamp:SEED) are part of a side project i have been working on, which will have a more comprehensive posting about today or tomorrow (im sorta goofed up on pain meds right now due to throwing my back out playing "aeroplane" with my grandson, so itll probably more likely tomorrow than today) SEEDLINGS will be involved in a "carbon footprint offset" program that will be used to equalize the greenhouse emissions we create as a community to mine the blockchain consensus engine.

you can list your own tokens on the exchange, but please be aware that once listed, they cant be UNLISTED until such a point a full platform redeployment becomes necessary. ive found that using the etx.se contract to build these tokens is the most efficient in ensuring that the tokens are easily listed on the exchange. you can find that contract here:

https://github.com/soilcurrency/soilex/blob/master/contracts/etx.se

its written in serpent, so you will need to compile it using a serpent compiler, or send me a message and ill send you the compiled code, and then deployed using our DUST dApp/wallet. after that its a simple matter of registering it on the exchange. there are some parameters that need to be filled out to do so, and ill be covering those in the user manual.

i hope that SOIL-ex will become something extremely useful to the community in the months to come, and i will be working very hard at bridging the divide between the SOILcon blockchain and other currencies in order for them to be traded directly on the exchange, and improving in any way i can the user experience in utilizing the exchange.... at present, though, build your tokens, make your brand, persuade us to its intrinsic value, and list them!! ill be available to assist you find folks with any problems, although this evening, considering the amount of morphine in my system and the fact i cant quite feel my nose, i might make a little less sense than i normally do!

and finally, this project couldnt exist without the hard work done by the parent project EtherEx, which is working on their exchange on the Ethereum blockchain. you can visit their site at etherex.org i truly appreciate the work theyve done and the fact that theyve released their project in an open source fashion, in the true spirit of decentralization.

thats something that we discussed with altsheets, the creator of our ABEE block explorer, and will likely be implemented in future upgrades to his platform, but isnt something we have yet implemented. theres a few things that we hope will be available in future updates to ABEE, including contract explorers, etc. as with everything else in the SOILcoin network, its a constantly evolving process.

nature of the beast with cryptocurrency exchanges. half the time theres no rhyme or reason, one person might sell off a nice chunk and everyone follows. theres really very little logic to how most people invest in crypto. you see so many currencies that are, essentially, dead in the water, absentee development teams, etc., and they THRIVE. theres nothing we can do to control the valuation, so we just continue to plug away on our projects. for me, the valuation is secondary to what we are building, although i LOVE seeing it higher and having the miners make some money and the early investors make some money. but as someone said, nows the time to buy cheap. or cheaper than what it was at. theres not a lot of SOIL available on the market... less than 9% of the total mintage.  doubling the current valuation would cost less than 2BTC, which leaves everything open for what a pump group looks for.

i think we've been riding the ETH wave lately, and even that is falling back to earth. when we release new developments, the price rises again, generally. i know im a good week behind releasing SOIL-ex. ive just been taking a small break away from crypto with my daughter down from out west...  SOIL-ex is MOSTLY ready, its deployed, and the website is written and published, right now im just fighting with some issues on teh front end. i had hoped to have it out yesterday, but had a seizure and spent most of the nighti n a post-ictal coma-nap. tomorrow i try a different tack with the front end and see if i cant fix the issue. i desperately want to get it out, as i have a secondary project ready to coincide with it and really want to get that running. plus... i have a thousand other projects i want to dig into so...

i wish you could. (laughs)

im just taking a little bit of family time right now, but ill answer all your emails etc soon as i get back. thanks!