[ANN] [PPC] PPCoin Released! - First Long-Term Energy-Efficient Crypto-Currency

[FuzzyBear]

Ok ... Looking to someone who has managed to get the last stage of mining activated with these PPCoins

I have the wallet running and call ppcoind.exe getinfo and get a result like this:

 getinfo
{
    "version" : "v0.1.0ppc-beta",
    "protocolversion" : 60001,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
    "balance" : 0.00000000,
    "newmint" : 0.00000000,
    "stake" : 0.00000000,
    "blocks" : 1095,
    "connections" : 8,
    "proxy" : "",
    "ip" : "x.x.x.x",
    "difficulty" : 1638.87876741,
    "testnet" : false,
    "keypoololdest" : 1345419828,
    "keypoolsize" : 103,
    "paytxfee" : 0.01000000,
    "errors" : ""
}


The line...
  "newmint" : 0.00000000,
I understood to be the value of the next block.... I see others such as caston have a value other than 0 in there.  Yet Greedi has the same as myself.... Have you any update on your mining attempts Greedi??

The line...
    "connections" : 8,
Suggests that I am connected to the ppcoin network and my wallet updating... how come the newmint is still 0??

Finally people have been talking of mining with cgiminer..... i have a copy of this... but what URL does one connect to??

Many thanks and really want to get there with this so any help is greatly appreciated

[TheSeven]

newmint is basically how much of your mined coins hasn't matured yet, so it will be 0 before you have mined some.

Your miner software connects to http://127.0.0.1:9902/ with username = whatever you set rpcusername to, password = whatever you set rpcpassword to.

Please note that setting rpcallowip=* is an extremely bad idea, if you only mine locally and don't know what this is about, set rpcallowip=127.0.0.1

[luffy]

now that it is early, how i may use my cpu with cgminer to solo mine ppcoins?
anyone kind enough to post the command line?
thanks

[Syke]

The centrally Luke-Jr, how come this centrally broadcasted checkpoints mechanism passed your scam smell-test so easily?

Their paper admits this is a problem, and implies it is temporary.

Perfect! We can all rest knowing that someday somehow maybe there will be a solution.

[Luke-Jr]

now that it is early, how i may use my cpu with cgminer to solo mine ppcoins?
anyone kind enough to post the command line?
thanks

CGMiner doesn't support CPU mining. BFGMiner does, but only if you compile it yourself.

[iddo]

The centrally broadcasted checkpoints mechanism sounds like an extremely bad idea, do you concede that the entity that controls this mechanism can easily mount double-spending attacks? The whole point of proof-of-stake is that the stakeholders would establish the checkpoints in a distributed fashion, which can be done.

Luke-Jr, how come this centrally broadcasted checkpoints mechanism passed your scam smell-test so easily?

Their paper admits this is a problem, and implies it is temporary.

Well, the paper admits that they don't know how to solve this problem with their protocol. I also don't see how to do decentralized checkpoints with their protocol, but we do know how to do it with Meni's protocol.

Either way, that's not the fundamental problem of this proof-of-stake protocol. The fundamental problem is that stakeholders can mount double-spending attacks effortlessly.

[TheSeven]

The fundamental problem is that stakeholders can mount double-spending attacks effortlessly.

I'm not convinced of that. True, they didn't release much information on this, but to me it looks like you only have the chance to use your stake to mine a block once in a blue moon. The more stake you have, the more often this will be possible, but it will still require quite a bit of luck to pull this off successfully.

Sunny, can you clarify which of the following points are correct?

• Proof of stake blocks are automatically mined by ppcoind, without an attached getwork miner.
• Proof of stake blocks are always based on a single transaction output, not multiple ones accumulated.
• Proof of stake blocks require to meet a certain difficulty target with essentially sha256(sha256(txnoutput + timestamp)).
• The timestamp used in the above calculation is checked to be within some bounds around the current network time.
• The proof of stake difficulty target is independent of the proof of work difficulty.
• The proof of stake difficulty target is calculated based on bitcoin days of the provided stake to basically pay a 1% annual interest for the time that ppcoind is running.

If all of the above are true, I think it's fairly resistant to double spends, even without checkpointing. I think central checkpointing is mostly intended to prevent proof of work based attacks in this early phase (with just about 30-50GH/s total network hashrate right now).

[coblee]

I'm interested to find out more about this coin. Looking at the code, it seems like Sunny has indeed been working on this since November of last year. So it's unfortunate that he decided to do kind of a rush launch of the coin. The information about how a coin works should really be announced and analyzed by the community before the blockchain is started. Now miners have to decide whether they want to jump in without knowing what they are really supporting or wait until more information is released. Couple this with the fact that the block generation starts at 9999 and decreases as difficulty increases, this coin might turn out to have a larger effective premine than SolidCoin.

[Sunny King]

The fundamental problem is that stakeholders can mount double-spending attacks effortlessly.

I'm not convinced of that. True, they didn't release much information on this, but to me it looks like you only have the chance to use your stake to mine a block once in a blue moon. The more stake you have, the more often this will be possible, but it will still require quite a bit of luck to pull this off successfully.

Sunny, can you clarify which of the following points are correct?

• Proof of stake blocks are automatically mined by ppcoind, without an attached getwork miner.
• Proof of stake blocks are always based on a single transaction output, not multiple ones accumulated.
• Proof of stake blocks require to meet a certain difficulty target with essentially sha256(sha256(txnoutput + timestamp)).
• The timestamp used in the above calculation is checked to be within some bounds around the current network time.
• The proof of stake difficulty target is independent of the proof of work difficulty.
• The proof of stake difficulty target is calculated based on bitcoin days of the provided stake to basically pay a 1% annual interest for the time that ppcoind is running.

If all of the above are true, I think it's fairly resistant to double spends, even without checkpointing. I think central checkpointing is mostly intended to prevent proof of work based attacks in this early phase (with just about 30-50GH/s total network hashrate right now).

That's reasonably close to our expectations, we do expect some level of double-spending protection if checkpoint is not there. How strong that protection is we shall see. The current checkpoint policy leaves up to 4 hours window for folks to try mounting double-spending attacks, although this test is probably a couple months away. If you cannot tolerate any slightest double-spending risks please do wait for the checkpoint.

[TheSeven]

The fundamental problem is that stakeholders can mount double-spending attacks effortlessly.

I'm not convinced of that. True, they didn't release much information on this, but to me it looks like you only have the chance to use your stake to mine a block once in a blue moon. The more stake you have, the more often this will be possible, but it will still require quite a bit of luck to pull this off successfully.

Sunny, can you clarify which of the following points are correct?

• Proof of stake blocks are automatically mined by ppcoind, without an attached getwork miner.
• Proof of stake blocks are always based on a single transaction output, not multiple ones accumulated.
• Proof of stake blocks require to meet a certain difficulty target with essentially sha256(sha256(txnoutput + timestamp)).
• The timestamp used in the above calculation is checked to be within some bounds around the current network time.
• The proof of stake difficulty target is independent of the proof of work difficulty.
• The proof of stake difficulty target is calculated based on bitcoin days of the provided stake to basically pay a 1% annual interest for the time that ppcoind is running.

If all of the above are true, I think it's fairly resistant to double spends, even without checkpointing. I think central checkpointing is mostly intended to prevent proof of work based attacks in this early phase (with just about 30-50GH/s total network hashrate right now).

That's reasonably close to our expectations, we do expect some level of double-spending protection if checkpoint is not there. How strong that protection is we shall see. The current checkpoint policy leaves up to 4 hours window for folks to try mounting double-spending attacks, although this test is probably a couple months away. If you cannot tolerate any slightest double-spending risks please do wait for the checkpoint.

Wait, does this post imply that you are trying to hold back information about how this is actually implemented, and instead want to serve the people backing your project with that kind of vague "don't worry" response?
Not very trustworthy at all... Why not answer my questions with six simple yes/no responses? I'm a bit worried now...

[Bitcoin Oz]

I'm interested to find out more about this coin. Looking at the code, it seems like Sunny has indeed been working on this since November of last year. So it's unfortunate that he decided to do kind of a rush launch of the coin. The information about how a coin works should really be announced and analyzed by the community before the blockchain is started. Now miners have to decide whether they want to jump in without knowing what they are really supporting or wait until more information is released. Couple this with the fact that the block generation starts at 9999 and decreases as difficulty increases, this coin might turn out to have a larger effective premine than SolidCoin.

Got to love the fact it starts at "over 9000"

[Luke-Jr]

I'm interested to find out more about this coin. Looking at the code, it seems like Sunny has indeed been working on this since November of last year. So it's unfortunate that he decided to do kind of a rush launch of the coin. The information about how a coin works should really be announced and analyzed by the community before the blockchain is started. Now miners have to decide whether they want to jump in without knowing what they are really supporting or wait until more information is released. Couple this with the fact that the block generation starts at 9999 and decreases as difficulty increases, this coin might turn out to have a larger effective premine than SolidCoin.

Got to love the fact it starts at "over 9000"

Is that almost 7 bitcoins?!

[TheSeven]

I'm interested to find out more about this coin. Looking at the code, it seems like Sunny has indeed been working on this since November of last year. So it's unfortunate that he decided to do kind of a rush launch of the coin. The information about how a coin works should really be announced and analyzed by the community before the blockchain is started. Now miners have to decide whether they want to jump in without knowing what they are really supporting or wait until more information is released. Couple this with the fact that the block generation starts at 9999 and decreases as difficulty increases, this coin might turn out to have a larger effective premine than SolidCoin.

Got to love the fact it starts at "over 9000"

That is obviously wrong. The block reward started at 2500, the difficulty at 256. A block reward of 9999 corresponds to difficulty 1.

[coblee]

I'm interested to find out more about this coin. Looking at the code, it seems like Sunny has indeed been working on this since November of last year. So it's unfortunate that he decided to do kind of a rush launch of the coin. The information about how a coin works should really be announced and analyzed by the community before the blockchain is started. Now miners have to decide whether they want to jump in without knowing what they are really supporting or wait until more information is released. Couple this with the fact that the block generation starts at 9999 and decreases as difficulty increases, this coin might turn out to have a larger effective premine than SolidCoin.

Got to love the fact it starts at "over 9000"

That is obviously wrong. The block reward started at 2500, the difficulty at 256. A block reward of 9999 corresponds to difficulty 1.

You're right. Block 1 started with difficulty of 256. Block 0 was at difficulty 1 and generated 9999 coins, but not sure if those are spendable.

[TheSeven]

Some random notes from a quick look at the source code: (I might have missed something though)

• I can't find any code path that actually mines proof of stake blocks. The code seems to be implemented, but nothing seems to be calling it yet. Proof of stake blocks definitely aren't mined through getwork, but rather through (currently inactive, or maybe I'm just blind) CPU mining.
• The difficulty for work and stake blocks seems to be (mostly?) the same, but it's divided by the number of accumulated coin days for stake blocks.
• The block reward for a work block is sqrt(sqrt(9999^4 / difficulty)), rounded down to the next cent boundary.
• The block reward for a stake block is the number of coin years put into it divided by 100.
• The number of "bruteforce attempts" for stake blocks is limited to once per second (up to 2 hours into the past), per transaction used as stake input, per block found on the network.
• Proof of stake blocks can include stake from multiple transactions, as long as it's on the same address (IIUC).
• Minimum age for coins used in a stake block is 30 days.

Sunny might want to confirm if the above is correct...

[luffy]

something is wrong? i get 0 when i give "ppcoind gethashespersec"
but i use guiminer with phoenix and i see normal
hashrates in it from my 5970!
6 hours and no block yet!

[dust]

I've mined a bunch of these.  My "stake" is still 0.0.  How do i get stake?  Can I use stake to get mining rewards or transaction fees?

[TheSeven]

something is wrong? i get 0 when i give "ppcoind gethashespersec"
but i use guiminer with phoenix and i see normal
hashrates in it from my 5970!
6 hours and no block yet!

Assuming your hashrate is about 700 MH/s, you should find a block every 3.8 hours on average at the current difficulty. So 6 hours is well within range.
ppcoind can't tell what your hashrate of external miners is, the gethashespersec RPC call refers to its integrated CPU miner IIUC.

[TheSeven]

I've mined a bunch of these.  My "stake" is still 0.0.  How do i get stake?  Can I use stake to get mining rewards or transaction fees?

I only have a very vague idea of what this field is really about. A quick glance at the code suggests that it shows the amount you've mined with proof of stake blocks that haven't matured yet. This is obviously still zero for everyone because proof of stake blocks require coins that have aged for at least 30 days.

[dust]

I've mined a bunch of these.  My "stake" is still 0.0.  How do i get stake?  Can I use stake to get mining rewards or transaction fees?

I only have a very vague idea of what this field is really about. A quick glance at the code suggests that it shows the amount you've mined with proof of stake blocks that haven't matured yet. This is obviously still zero for everyone because proof of stake blocks require coins that have aged for at least 30 days.

I was unaware of that 30 day number.  It looks like it is advantageous to hoard coins without moving them between addresses.