We are not 'developing' MTP, but we are doing dev work for integration of MTP into the coin. This is not a trivial task.

The MTP creators Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich are credited and mentioned very prominently in the blog link and even their paper is linked.

Github work will be pushed soon to show development work. If you know any other projects which have already integrated MTP, please feel free to link them so we can speed up development.

To those of you wondering what MTP is and why is it so important to Zcoin, please take a read below:

https://zcoin.io/what-is-mtp-merkle-tree-proof-and-why-it-is-important-to-zcoin/

As for those who are talking about working binaries for miners:

Zcoin updated windows and mac miners: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8zzSbCtXAidVDVjOW9NVTRiMkU
This was posted by bolehvpn but is by a trusted third party. Let me know if it works.

Hi all. Poramin has agreed to work on an open source pool software so anyone can run a XZC pool. He hopes to start work in a week's time when his personal emergency has resolved. Please send him and his family prayers and positive thoughts!

We have noted our user's concerns and are focusing on these things and think it's worth spending 1-2 weeks of time on this to get all the basics running for everybody while MTP is being developed on the mining side.

Make sure that you use the new port for Suprnova on port 5596

screen -S zcoin ./cpuminer -a lyra2rev2 -o stratum+tcp://xzc.suprnova.cc:5596 -u username.worker -p password

Once MTP is implemented this will really hurt botnet miners too

And thanks Majoh for the Windows binary! (we haven't verified this though!)

Vers is a confirmed investor of Zcoin while also being an investor of Zcash. You can check out the articles on Bitcoin.com which discloses this and he has been posting under his MemoryDealers account on Reddit.

Roger Ver's style isn't one of shilling and he remains supportive of both projects. You can see this in his tweet style as well.

New miner for compatibility with the fixed blockheight is available at:

https://github.com/ocminer/cpuminer-xzc

If anyone can build binaries for Windows that would be appreciated!

We're looking for help with Chinese translations! Do pm me if you think you can help!

You are right. Botnets tend to be controlled by a single entity which destroys centralization.

However, the implementation of MTP is not solely for banning botnets and there are other reasons such as it being 'progress-free' and also fast to verify.

Progress free means the mining process must be stochastic so that the probability to find a solution grows steadily with time and is non-zero for small time periods which can be argued to discourage centralization. For example with Equihash, it takes several seconds to get a proof that certifies the memory allocation which makes the algorithm not 'progress free' as the probability of finding a solution during the allocation time is zero.

Also although finding the solution should be memory hard (to be ASIC resistant), verifying the solution should be fast and require little memory to prevent DOS attacks on verifiers. Lyra the algo we are using now is pretty slow on verification.

When development started on Zcoin, 13.x code was not available and it is not a trivial integration. Despite the Zerocoin whitepaper released and the libs released, our devs are the first to implement it which I think speaks volume as to the difficulty of the project.
If it was indeed a copy paste matter, then someone should grab that bounty ;P

Bounty list updated!

We want to make this coin a success and are upping our bounties!

Best way to talk to us is via slack! Join us here to get an invite: http://162.243.153.71:3000/

MARKETING AND COMMUNITY

Acceptance into any of the top darknet markets listed here https://www.deepdotweb.com/dark-net-market-comparison-chart/ : 15000 XZC
Cross network marketing (at least 2 quality posts a day) 1500-2000 XZC / month 

DEVELOPMENT

Dev to help update Bitcoin core code to 0.13 2000 XZC
Develop open source pool software that supports MTP 3000 XZC
GPU miner with MTP algorithm 2000 XZC
CPU miner with MTP algorithm 1500 XZC
GUI development to improve minting process Please contact devs or PM me.

Update on Dev 14 Nov 2016:

Our core dev Poramin has made strides towards implementation of the MTP protocol. In the paper on page 4 (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03588v1.pdf), he has separated the result in memory into block (step 1) and will integrate the Merkel tree and select the nonce (Step 2-3) within this week.There are altogether 10 steps in the implementation of MTP (six in algo 1 (prover's algorithm) and 4 in algo 2 (verifier's algorithm)).

We are still looking for devs to help out with other aspects of the project and bounties are available so if you feel that you can help out do reach out!

We are aware of the issues for e.g. with long startup times of the wallet and after discussion we believe that the MTP algorithm has to be implemented first before optimization happens on the wallet to ensure it remains secure. For security reasons, currently the wallet recalculates all public coin ids to make sure it is consistent across all nodes. With MTP and merkle tree implemented into it optimizations can happen as well as pruning so the decision has been made to focus on MTP first.

Take a listen to a debate between Gary Le from Zcoin and Riccardo (Fluffypony) from Monero. Both amazing projects!

Thanks to Cryptoholics for making this happen.

The interview can be seen on any of these links:

https://soundcloud.com/cryptoholics/ep02-interview-with-riccardo-spagni-of-monero-and-gary-le-of-zcoin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tO98jALPg4

http://www.cryptoholics.com/cryptoholics-ep02/

Also special thanks out there to the guys who keep on believing There will always be FUD out there but I believe the important questions have been answered and we do have a working implementation that the average Bitcoiner can use. The fact that we now have two Zcoin clones shows that there's real value in the tech behind the project.

FYI Poramin is Thai (not Indonesian) and has been the guy doing the dev all along. The colleague mentioned is Ankit whom Poramin maintains good relations with and had helped Poramin with writing documentation and giving presentations so there's no 'work stolen'.

For what it is, if you see the amount of functionality that this coin already offers even compared to other established anonymity coin projects, beyond the mining algo, the rest of the changes aren't critical to make it a coin that can be used right now. It's more of an adoption issue.

This doesn't mean we're resting on our laurels of course and active development continues.

Of course we are working on Poloniex being added but we won't make any promises although we remain hopeful. What would help is filling in their coin request form as well

https://poloniex.com/coinRequest

A strong community support would go a long way towards getting Zcoin added to Polo though we're working on building awareness of what Zcoin is and stands for as there's a lot of misunderstanding of what Zcoin is. There are still people that think Zcoin is a Zcash fork which has been addressed many times (including in the OP).

We are the first working cryptocurrency using zero knowledge proofs that have WORKING private transactions that is ready to be used today unlike Zcash that was supposedly being worked on for years and had extensive testing and yet still manages to not have its most important feature working. Even when Zcash does get its private transactions working, Zcoin retains many advantages over Zcash

• Parameter generation does not require trust of developers.
• Private transactions with less computational requirements
• A much more well understood cryptographic implementation
• Much more easily integrated to existing Bitcoin merchants

And we have a working QT GUI.

So if you base it off the fundamentals of the coin and look past the hype, Zcoin has achieved a lot and will continue to break new ground when MTP is implemented despite the smaller team and budget.

We are committed to working on the project for the long term and active development continues every single day. If anyone is interested in joining us and helping out with the dev and marketing (with proper experience), bounties are available which would accelerate growth a lot more in the long term. There's a lot of work to be done and we welcome help to make a vision of a truly anonymous coin a reality.

The first step is being done with the new much nicer website launch and the content is being updated. Instructional videos will follow soon along with a list of merchants who have agreed to accept Zcoin.

To us, it's not so much the development of the coin now (which still continues as fast as is possible with our devs) but more on the marketing and building awareness and making it accessible to the public.

Other existing solutions utilize either coin mixing or ring signatures. Coin mixing in many current implementations involve a lot of trust on the mixer and rely on finding other people to mix with which can take time. Ring signatures are a lot better in that it finds similar transactions of similar denominations to mix with but it means that there's still an element of traceability since the real transaction path is still somewhere in there and other outside data and topological analysis may narrow this down further.

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/How-does-Zcoin-compare-to-other-anonymity-methods%3F

Zcoin users Zerocoin technology which means when you mint a zcoin (anonymize it) and then spend it (creating a new coin with no transaction history), there is no 'transaction path' to follow. To understand this further, read below:

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/A-layman's-explanation-on-how-Zerocoin-works

One of the benefits of Zcoin in still using Bitcoin's core code and the anonymity layer does not affect this too much meaning it can integrate into the existing Bitcoin ecosystem much more easily compared to other privacy coins (besides Dash) which require much more modification to allow it to happen. This can be evidenced by coinpayments.net only taking less than a day to enable support for the coin and work is being done to integrate Zcoin with the copay wallet.


Not yet and not intended to be a GPU mineable coin in the short term.

Appearing daily

The minimum RAM requirement for the MTP protocol is 2 gb but it can be adjusted higher. Botnets usually involve controlling other people's computers so if the mining algorithm consumes 2 gb of RAM there usually is a noticeable performance hit that will make the user suspect something is wrong.

This also makes cheap VPS boxes out of the question since for e.g. Vultr's/Digitalocean 5 USD dollar you only get 768 mb of RAM you need to go up to 20 USD to get just 2 gb of RAM.

Our new website is launched! Check it out at
www.zcoin.finance

We're still working on reworking the content.

Also we're looking for merchants to accept Zcoin!

We have gotten ourselves listed with coinpayments.net to make payment integration a breeze.
https://www.coinpayments.net/supported-coins

It will be CPU mining friendly but hopefully not botnet friendly with much larger RAM requirements

Temporary fix for Lyra2 algo is in latest release.

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/releases

Zcoin and Zcash aren't the same thing.

Zcoin's emission scheme follows Bitcoin's. Zcash has the slow start in place.

Note that Zcoin implements the Zerocoin technology while Zcash implements Zerocash technology so they're based on different cryptographic implementations and have its own pros and cons.

https://zcoin.io/zcoin-and-zcash/