[PRE-ANN] Scorex - Ultracompact Cryptocurrency Engine for Hackers

[kushti]

Motivation


There are two huge problems around cryptocurrencies development project Scorex aims to help to solve:

• Bitcoin source code contains more 100K lines of code(80K of C++ only), Nxt is about more than 45Kline of Java code. All parts of the design(network/transactions/consensus layers) are mixed in a hard way. So researchers & developers are definitely not in a good start position to make any experiments.In opposite, Scorex is less than 4K lines of Scala code. Transactions layer is as simple as just tokens transfers. Consensus algo could be switched easily (with two consensus algos out of the box,one could be replaced with an another with just one line of code edited!).
  
  
• Major coins forks are trying to make IPO immediately, often having just one or two pretty controversial features introduced. Scorex is intentionally not production-ready, so please participate in any non-commercial experiments built on top of it, but don’t buy tokens unless you are 100+% sure what are you doing.
  
  

Features

• Compact, functional, actors-powered code
• Two 100% Proof-of-Stake consensus algos out of the box, Nxt-like and Qora-like. One algo could be replaced with an another with just one line of code edited (in Constants.scala)
• Simplest transactions model
• Asynchronous network layer on top of TCP
• JSON API
• Command line client for the JSON API
• Curve25519 for signatures

Releases


There are two releases planned at the moment:

Lagonaki - initial release aiming to provide modular and simple product for hackers.

Kizhi - another branch in development with proof-of-stake consensus algo allows contribution to multiple branches following our papers, along with Nothing-at-Stake attack script etc.


Roadmap


Lagonaki release is mostly ready, there are about 30 todos in code to get done though. We’ll fix them within next few weeks. Some documentation will be written as well. At this point it will be an announcement(this message is the pre-announcement).

Then we’ll test Nxt forging algo improvements proposals with it(a proposal document will be published within next few weeks). And then we’ll work on Kizhi.


Authors


Scorex is made by Consensus Research microteam previously worked on Proof-of-Stake investigation:

Alexander Chepurnoy aka kushti - Nxt developer & smartcontract.com cofounder. Has few published papers in Computer Science field(finite state systems related), writing PHD at the moment.

andruiman - serial entrepreneur with theoretical physics background, big fan of Coq interactive theorem prover & functional programming.


Contributions


We’re highly welcome contributions in form of pull requests, testing, issues reporting, and forking for sure

Donations

Also we would be happy to get donations. You can buy our asset on Nxt Assets Exchange: https://trade.secureae.com/#5841059555983208287, Bitcoin wallet is 17YksFD7eRB4NhPfEtGrGnuvuwpkAeBd7f .


Repository URL is https://github.com/ConsensusResearch/Scorex-Lagonaki


P.S. Posted to my weblog as well: http://chepurnoy.org/blog/2015/05/scorex-ultracompact-cryptocurrency-engine-for-hackers/
P.P.S. Will be offline for next few days visiting Lagonaki  So replies will be posted on Monday. Sorry for that.

[patmast3r]

Interesting.
Is there really a big difference between POS in NXT and POS in Qora ? Has anyone made some actual comparison on how they behave given the same transaction history ?

[wizzardTim]

Interesting.
Is there really a big difference between POS in NXT and POS in Qora ? Has anyone made some actual comparison on how they behave given the same transaction history ?

Check https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1015379.msg11375914#msg11375914 for qora!

[kushti]

Interesting.
Is there really a big difference between POS in NXT and POS in Qora ? Has anyone made some actual comparison on how they behave given the same transaction history ?

The biggest difference is blockchain quality measure definitely: while Qora uses longest chain rule( blockScore function in https://github.com/ConsensusResearch/Scorex-Lagonaki/blob/master/src/main/scala/scorex/consensus/qora/QoraBlockGenerationData.scala ), Nxt introduces cumulative difficulty (the same function in https://github.com/ConsensusResearch/Scorex-Lagonaki/blob/master/src/main/scala/scorex/consensus/nxt/NxtBlockGenerationData.scala) . Retargeting values & rules are different, but in both cases there's some synthetic value to generate target, and in both cases kernel to generate a hit is a function of last block & account to prevent grinding attacks. 

[apenzl]

"Scorex is intentionally not production-ready". Love it.

Thanks for your great work this far. Looking forward to the no-more-PRE announcement, when you're ready! 

[spud21]

Will the Nxt forging algo improvements proposals you are going to test include transparent forging? Does transparent forging mean instant transactions?

[kushti]

Will the Nxt forging algo improvements proposals you are going to test include transparent forging? Does transparent forging mean instant transactions?

The question is what you call "Transparent Forging". Even after pretty active participation in a long & hot discussion https://nxtforum.org/general/nxt-forging-algorithm-simulating-approach/ I don't clearly understand it    Proposed changes will be probably not crucial though so not about TF regardless a meaning of the concept.

[kushti]

Wallet code has been re-implemented. Fixed a lot of bugs during last few days. Qora-like algo now working fine with multiple peers within the same machine. Nxt-like algo is working only with single peer atm due to problems with serialization/deserialization. Will be fixed with next few days, along with code completion around Nxt-like stuff.

[kushti]

Nxt-like algo now works fine with multiple peers. A lot of other bugs fixed, new tests introduced. So we're slowly going to release 

[Daedelus]

So we're slowly going to release  

Whoop whoop 

[kushti]

Fixed bugs with block signing, messages classes made more concise. There are some todos to fix & API calls to document before initial 1.0 release(other todos will remain until 1.1). Hope to make release announcement during the next week.

While we in ConsensusResearch will play with Proof-of-Stake improvements, I'm inviting researchers or just Scala devs to fork 1.x code for different experiments, e.g.

1. Implementation of Bill White's proposal of lightweight cryptographic ledgers
2. Blockchain & DHT implementation within the same package. TomP2P Java framework could be used for DHT: http://tomp2p.net/.

There are some more cool ideas around to implement

[kushti]

There're some issues to solve, but I've chosen to defer them for 1.1 / 1.2

So the initial release will be within next few days 

[tromp]

There are some more cool ideas around to implement

Like optionally replacing PoS with PoW?!

Even if you don't subscribe to that faith, it is bound to get a lot more people experimenting with your code, and help improve other aspects...

[kushti]

There are some more cool ideas around to implement

Like optionally replacing PoS with PoW?!

Even if you don't subscribe to that faith, it is bound to get a lot more people experimenting with your code, and help improve other aspects...

I think PoW is pretty easily possible 

[Daedelus]

You've been busy!

[kushti]

Version is set to 1.0.0, release will be on Monday. Some small things to fix, also thinking about appropriate license(CC0 ?).

The 1.0 release is quite raw(and that's made intentionally for greater flexibility), so 1.1 branch will be started immediately, as well as new PoS algo implementation.

[bcmine]

Version is set to 1.0.0, release will be on Monday. Some small things to fix, also thinking about appropriate license(CC0 ?).

The 1.0 release is quite raw(and that's made intentionally for greater flexibility), so 1.1 branch will be started immediately, as well as new PoS algo implementation.

so actually scorex will be inside the the token waves box.

interesting, lets see how they are going to do that and i am curios about they approach to be ripple like. 

[prettybuds]

Version is set to 1.0.0, release will be on Monday. Some small things to fix, also thinking about appropriate license(CC0 ?).

The 1.0 release is quite raw(and that's made intentionally for greater flexibility), so 1.1 branch will be started immediately, as well as new PoS algo implementation.

so actually scorex will be inside the the token waves box.

interesting, lets see how they are going to do that and i am curios about they approach to be ripple like.  

Sir, could you please repeat that in english!