Slimcoin | First Proof of Burn currency | Decentralized Web

[kalisto]

nice to see this coin revived, great concept.
have to check my archives if i still have the old wallet somewhere 

[psycodad]

I know you guys are not currently looking for new graphics, but I really liked what psycomum came up with when she saw the Slimcoin splash on my screen and I thought I'd post it anyway for your entertainment and as tribute to the fabulous Slimcoin:

Cheers - psycodad

[aIA]

Wou!!! I like both!! So cool!

[d5000]

Thanks psycodad, good work! I like both of them, too. However, I think the right one is better suited for small-sized logos like the one on the website because it does not contain the inscription on the border. And I like also the contrast of the golden "S" with the dark background.

It could be a good idea to have two different logos:

- a small logo, featuring only the stylized "S";
- a large logo for the splash screen, featuring the full "Slimcoin" name, like the ones posted by bobitza202.

They should, however, share a common style. For example, if we take the right one of psycodad as the small logo and the second or third from bobitza202 as the large one, I would suggest changing the colors to the golden-black scheme.

What do the other community members think?

[kalisto]

Nice logo's but the black one reminds me of blackcoin..mixed feelings cause that coin is still recovering from the 2014 pump  

Anyway found my old slimcoin wallet.. it seems to load and i have some balance but it loads slow and the client crashed a few times when loading.

Should i just export the privkey and let the client generate a new wallet so i can import? What exactly does the addr.dat do

[mon4lis4]

I believe we should begin making the necessary steps to gain $SLM listing on Cryptopia. Cryptopia is rapidly establishing itself as the premier exchange for small caps.

Additionally, would there be any interest in a slack or telegram group?

[gjhiggins]

I believe we should begin making the necessary steps to gain $SLM listing on Cryptopia.

They've recently delisted Sprouts, complaining that the wallet kept crashing for them. They would likely have an identical experience with the Slimcoin wallet.

Cheers

Graham

[gjhiggins]

Transcluded from its own thread:

I've had a number of people approach me about their coins getting attacked by having the blockchain replaced with a longer chain, the longer chain released by the attacker is without certain transactions. The coin may be attacked but the target is normally an exchange, coins are sent to the exchange, sold for Bitcoin and then withdrawn, at that points the longer chain is released, the coins disappear from the exchange and the attacker gets their coins back. Small coins with low hash power are easy targets for attackers. This has caused a few coin pairs to be frozen and people to be in a panic.

PoW coins are the typical target for this type of attack, PoS coins are harder to target due to PoS block generation but not impossible if PoS generation is still very low. There have been many proposals for solutions to protect coins from a blockchain replacement attacks but for small coins the one solution that works and is available now is to use live checkpointing. Checkpoints are defined in Bitcoin source code by defining a block hash and height, clients will only connect to a chain that has the corresponding blocks, it is to make sure that clients connect to the correct main chain. Altcoins inherit this checkpoint system.

Realtime checkpointing was devised by SunnyKing developer of PeerCoin to protect the chain before PoS was sufficient. It protects the history of the chain by use of a node that will broadcast checkpoints at a certain height set in the conf file. If your coin is being attacked, your coin pair is locked on the exchange and you face potential delisting you may want to consider implementing realtime checkpointing. For reference there is a commit for checkpointing below (Deepcoin linked below was commissioned and not a project that I ran personally), instructions on how to use it is in the checkpointsync.cpp file. If you decide to use this system add a Peercoin copyright notice on the About dialog and COPYING file.

https://github.com/Deepcoinbiz/Deepcoin/commit/43413fac89da1db064668e7e4dd5bd6c6036dfb4

I've recently disabled this code in Slimcoin because as implemented, it relies upon a centralised solution.

If this code were re-enabled in Slimcoin, it would result in someone potentially having exclusive control over both the centralised checkpointing node and the centralised checkpointing privkey and, by extension, the network. I consider this to be a more potent and serious existential threat to the network than that posed by a naturally-occurring condition which might conceivably be addressed without compromising the basic principles of operation.

Peter acknowledges other solutions but the problem is rooted in a systemic weakness inherited from Bitcoin - the very notion of checkpoints is a feature of an improperly decentralised network. Here's a thought experiment for you: Slimcoin already has checkpoints, they're added by hand to the source file src/checkpoints.cpp:

current “slimcoin” v0.4: https://github.com/slimcoin-project/Slimcoin/blob/slimcoin/src/checkpoints.cpp#L27

in-test “master” v0.5 https://github.com/slimcoin-project/Slimcoin/blob/master/src/checkpoints.cpp#L27

// What makes a good checkpoint block?
// + Is surrounded by blocks with reasonable timestamps
//   (no blocks before with a timestamp after, none after with
//    timestamp before)
// + Contains no strange transactions

Which invites the question: “So, in a peer-to-peer networked cryptocurrency exactly whose responsibility is it to: calculate fresh checkpoints, edit the code, ensure the change is propagated to all copies of the source, compile a new release, make platform-specific binaries available as a boon to those incapable of generating the binaries themselves and ensure that notification of the updated list of checkpoints is published in all the proper channels?” And is that to be monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly?

And a supplementary question: “Who do you think is doing that right now?”

Leading to the penultimate: “And just how long do you think that will last?”

And ultimately: “orly?”

(Answers to the not-entirely-tangential question “What defines a ‘strange’ transaction?” on a postcard, please.)

Or, we can simply thrash out the absolute minimum that needs to be done and establish a human-based solution that shares out the work/reward on an equitable basis.

No prizes for guessing which direction I consider to be of greater long-term benefit to the network.

Sub-topic IVa: Who's doing outreach for Slimcoin? Who considers it their responsibility to contact the exchanges currently hosting Slimcoin nodes, to gain their input and to present it for community information/consideration?

Cheers

Graham

[gjhiggins]

From the “WAKEY, WAKEY!!” Dept ...

It's a shame we can’t take advantage of this pre-existing work (6 and 8, especially):

1. https://w3c-dvcg.github.io/lds-rsa2016/
2. https://json-ld.github.io/normalization/spec/
3. https://w3c-dvcg.github.io/ld-signatures/
4. https://web-payments.org/specs/source/vocabs/security.html
5. https://web-payments.org/specs/source/pop2016/
6. https://w3c.github.io/web-ledger/
7. https://w3c.github.io/activitystreams/vocabulary/
8. https://w3c.github.io/activitypub/
9. https://www.w3.org/TR/Content-in-RDF10/

If we could only store URIs in tx on the blockchain, all we’d need to do is just hook it up.

Oh, wait.


Cheers

Graham

[d5000]

@gjhiggins:
Regarding the checkpoint/51%-attack topic: I think it's good that we got rid of the live checkpoints. I was (long time ago) an active member of the Peercoin community until I quit because development stalled and many problems (among them, just the checkpointing "feature") were not solved. They still haven't removed the sync checkpoints - their current development version at least makes them optional to be enforced.

There was some research in the Nxt community and they have adopted a "reorg prohibition" for 720 blocks (also called "rolling checkpoints"), although this does not prevent short-range attacks to exchanges as these normally require less than 50 confirmations for deposits. (see here for some research on PoS currencies and the "Nothing at stake" problem tat can lead to reorg attacks with low "staking").

The easiest solution seems to me that exchanges that deal with small coins could prohibit withdrawals in other cryptocurrencies for a certain time period (e.g. half a day) when the origin of the money comes from a small and weak altcoin, or - even simpler - require more confirmations (100+) for deposits. The longer this timeframe the more difficult the short range attack becomes. In combination with a "reorg prohibition" like in Nxt that could lead to satisfying security.

I don't know if such an "reorg prohibition"/"rolling checkpoint" is easy to implement in Slimcoin, but even if it does not prevent short range attacks it seems to me to be a relatively good solution to protect from long range attacks as it does not rely on a single node.

For the "hard coded checkpoints problem": As far as I know, Bitcoin releases a "hard coded" checkpoint every time a software release is ready, and "the developers" of that release are in charge. However, they release a new version every couple of months, so that may not be entirely comparable to Slimcoin's current situation. We could designate a person for a timeframe (e.g. every 6 months) to do that (e.g. someone being responsible for the 2 or 3 next checkpoints). I for myself could imagine to take this task, although I would have to learn how exactly to do that but it may not be impossible to take responsibility for that task, because as far as I know there are not really C++ coding skills necessary (correct me please). (More difficult for me would be to compile an actual binary for all platforms with the checkpoints included.)

[muf18]

Doesn't PoB, makes it more difficult to attack that way? I thought it protects (at least partially), and is better with having tri-hybrid solution, because of better protection.
I would vote to have more confirmation on the exchange as @d5000 proposed, until we have a proper solution, for this. We could also at least for now re-enable this 'workaround' with real checkpoiting, because of this secured network for now. Human-based is also an interesting concept, I have seen this concept, while ago on forum, but it died out, even tho it's really intersting, and should be rather bullet-proof, if done right.
I can contact with exchanges, but I don't know if someone was here, to do it, before? There must be someone, I don't want to take someon'e job .

[d5000]

Doesn't PoB, makes it more difficult to attack that way? I thought it protects (at least partially), and is better with having tri-hybrid solution, because of better protection.

That is also how I interpreted the whitepaper - that the "clock" of Slimcoin is PoW-based (instead of Peercoin's PoS-based algorithm), but PoB and PoS blocks make it more difficult to attack the chain with pure 51% of the hash rate (e.g. doing the "chain replacement" attack Graham mentioned). I admit however that I never looked at the code because I have only extremely limited skills understanding C++ (I can read some basic structures, but the only programming language I really understand is Python.).

I can contact with exchanges, but I don't know if someone was here, to do it, before? There must be someone, I don't want to take someon'e job .

As far as I know, there is nobody who has formally any "job" assigned in the Slimcoin community. However there must be someone that has contacted exchanges and block explorers in the past, for example, someone has paid recently bchain.info's fee to continue to run the SLM block explorer (Thanks to the unknown donator!).

[muf18]

Yeah. I know 'job' I mean voluntary/contributonary to the community. Still I would want to know, if it's vulnerable, and if we should contact exchange?

[d5000]

Yeah. I know 'job' I mean voluntary/contributonary to the community. Still I would want to know, if it's vulnerable, and if we should contact exchange?

All small altcoins are somewhat vulnerable, and Slimcoin is probably less vulnerable than other altcoins of similar size. There is a long history of small altcoins attacked by this kind of attacks (I can remember Feathercoin in 2013 or 2014, which then introduced centralized checkpoints - as a PoW coin! - marketing it as "Advanced Checkpoints"  ), but recently there seems to be a wave that tries to exploit these "small altcoin vulnerabilities" commercially on a larger scale - surely a consequence of the altcoin bubble that has rosen the price of even the smallest clonecoin.

I'm currently trying to confirm my understanding of the Trust rule (the equivalent of the "Longest Chain" rule in Bitcoin) reading the code (the relevant lines are, AFAIK, 2481 to 2563 in main.cpp) and it seems that indeed, an attacker would have to coordinate PoW, PoB and PoS blocks to do the attack Graham mentioned (which is one of the forms of "51% attack") because the trust of a chain fork gets lower if there are only PoW/PoB or PoS blocks.

What a typical attacker does is replacing the chain with a "minted" or a "mined" chain where he either has 51% of the hashpower or a large part of the stake (of the coins that are staking), but it should be much more difficult to coordinate two or three methods.

[johnwhitestar]

Today is the third day I'm testing PoB.
I burned around 5000 SLM and have minted something like 25 SLM so far.
In the same time 20 SLM are decayed.
Seems like I won't be able to recover my investment ever if it goes on in this way.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong or 5000 SLM are just not enough to get profits with the current difficulty? If so, how much would be needed?

[muf18]

If you have decayed 20SLM, and have 25SLM minted - you are in surplus of 5SLM, 25/20 = 125% of investment, 25% ROI.
Maybe in next days it will be better, I think that you need at least 200-250 days to become in surplus, running wallet 24/7, but it can be run on any netbook, which take 5-10W.
I thought that would be a good thing to make android wallet and introduce there burning coins, which would be even better for power consumption.
So the power consumption overall is very low. But it's like an investment - your return of capital on investment normally would be after 1 year or so, it's similar here.

[johnwhitestar]

If you have decayed 20SLM, and have 25SLM minted - you are in surplus of 5SLM, 25/20 = 120% of investment, 20% ROI.
Maybe in next days it will be better, I think that you need at least 200-250 days to become in surplus, running wallet 24/7, but it can be run on any netbook, which take 5-10W.
I thought that would be a good thing to make android wallet and introduce there burning coins, which would be even better for power consumption.
So the power consumption overall is very low. But it's like an investment - your return of capital on investment normally would be after 1 year or so, it's similar here.

If I consider my bank account the return of capital in 1 year would be a huge thing, but what I'm worry about with SLM is that with 5000 burned 3 days ago and with the rule that I'll not be able to mint with them after one year, if it goes on in this way I'll have 25/3*365= 3041.66666666 SLMs on my wallet without the possibility to mint more and in this way I'll have a loss of 1958.3333333 SLMs (around 39% loss). Or I'm missing something?

[muf18]

Here you have calculator of burned coins, I don't know if it's still updated, but it should be a scrypt which is self-updated.
http://www.slimcoin.club in #burning SLM
I have typed your 5000 SLM, and this it throws:

Amount to Burn
5000
13.467918 SLMS GENERATED PER DAY, 7.135 SLMS DECAYED, 371 DAYS TO BREAKEVEN, 2943.627939 BURNT COINS LEFT AT BREAKEVEN.
So after 371 days you will breakeven, about 700 days is burning process. So in the ideal enviroment, it should be in the end ~9430-9435 coins  - when all coins decay. This is what throw calculator, when I make simple calculations.

[johnwhitestar]

Here you have calculator of burned coins, I don't know if it's still updated, but it should be a scrypt which is self-updated.
http://www.slimcoin.club in #burning SLM
I have typed your 5000 SLM, and this it throws:

Amount to Burn
5000
13.467918 SLMS GENERATED PER DAY, 7.135 SLMS DECAYED, 371 DAYS TO BREAKEVEN, 2943.627939 BURNT COINS LEFT AT BREAKEVEN.
So after 371 days you will breakeven, about 700 days is burning process. So in the ideal enviroment, it should be in the end ~9430-9435 coins  - when all coins decay. This is what throw calculator, when I make simple calculations.

I can't access the #burning SLM section of the site, seems like it's not enabled or enabled for those who use the Brain wallet.

Still on the OP of this thread there is written

Decayed Burnt Coins - Every block, this amount rises. This is to prevent early adopters from having too much advantage regarding the rest of the users. But don't worry: every burnt coin will participate in the PoB process for about a year.

So if I breakeven in 371 days, but my burned coins will be available only for 365 days I'll never breakeven, or?

[muf18]

Generate random key from typing several letters and numbers and then you have all sections.
If you will be minting/burning for only 365 days you won't breakeven - think about it as a long term investment, with 99% success of return (1% if you cant have your low power machine turn on) + additional amount after time. Like treasure bonds that mature or better example - like premium bonds in the UK. I don't like bonds, because it's govermental debt, which they can make whatever they want, I dont have better examples, but here it's all coded to have return.
Actually it's about 1.88-1.9 the burned amount so you would score after 700 days more than 9000 coins total. Of course mileage may vary, but I think not so much.
Of course it's a lot of time to invest, not so much energy (with rasberry pi it would be like 5-10$ for electricity a year), and this way it's rewarding long-term users of coin - not like in PoS, that only large stakers have advantage - here everyone can burn with equal chances. In the end I think PoB is a very underrated concept, and should be more used.