[PPC] [XPM] Peercoin/Primecoin Weekly Updates

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #46

• Primecoin is released! I am happy to announce the second innovative cryptocurrency design has now joined ppcoin as our advanced technology portfolio in the highly competitive cryptocurrency market. Primecoin design and development took a better part of 4 months since March, I am relieved that it is now released to public. I hope this work would further advance cryptocurrency field and inspire other scientific computing proof-of-work types to emerge.
• In addition to the design effort, I have also put a lot of work into organizing the design paper as well. Hope you all enjoyed it.
• The currency symbol of primecoin is chosen as the greek letter psi. This letter is chosen as a tribute to Riemann, as its shape symbolizes the Riemann zeta function (there is a graphical rendering used in primecoin windows setup screen). The horizontal bar is not only a standard currency symbol convention, but also symbolizes one of the highest jewels of math - Riemann hypothesis.
• Primecoin network now will complement ppcoin network to strengthen our overall competitive position in the market.
• In the next week I will watch primecoin network closely to ensure it is operating as designed.
• Meanwhile this week the ppcoin logo design project lead by Sentinelrv is proceeding to the final design round. Thanks to all who have participated in the design and voting!

Cheers  

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #47

• Primecoin made a big splash in the first week of its debut, with enthusiastic mining participation we managed to break multiple world records including 1CC0a, 2CC09, 2CC0b, TWN0a, and still besting our own records many times. Not only that, the race toward improving miner performance has already begun. Primecoin is designed to sustain a long-term prosperous mining industry, so I look forward to the constant improvement of algorithms and hardware advances by market participants.
• Many people ask about the scientific value of finding these prime chains. I have already delved into this topic in my design paper. The prime chains are believed to have infinite existence for every length, and a distribution law similar to those of prime number theorem. So it is connected to the deeper mysteries of prime distribution, a lineage from the first breakthrough at Riemann's time. Yet for the most simple case - the twin prime conjecture - no one can yet prove their infinite existence (some breakthrough with this earlier this year), let alone the distribution law. Primecoin network would provide further experimental data and spur the research and development of advanced algorithms in searching these chains that may provide possible clues to this phenomenon, in my opinion one of the top wonders of arithmetic.
• Primecoin has been reported by Bitcoin Magazine with 2 excellent technical articles and now supported on 4 exchanges. Our market cap ranking is now right outside top ten looking for a match with DGC and FRC.
• At the weekend peak there were about 1000x mining power in primecoin network compared to the first day of the release, due to a combination of improved miner and heavy growth of mining participation. The network has started cooling down a bit as of now. Difficulty broke through 8 yesterday, currently still marching toward 9 (right now 8.85) but somewhat stabilized.
• On the ppcoin side, the logo project lead by Sentinelrv has been completed and a nice new logo is selected by the community. Congratulations to the team!

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #48

• Primecoin continues to surprise and this week we saw difficulty broke through 9! On block #74722 primecoin network finds its first prime chain of length 12, another new world record of course. Meanwhile by its second week primecoin has sweeped all length 10 and 11 Cunningham chain and bi-twin chain world records.
• Primecoin also surprised in capital market by reaching 1 million dollar market cap, now supported by 5 exchanges, helping several relatively new exchanges to reach record high trading volumes. On the highest day of the week it reached over 2000 BTC combined volume on the exchanges.
• Highest market cap rank of the week is #5, right behind ppcoin. Currently primecoin ranks at #6 and having a close match with NVC.
• At least two gpu miner projects are under development, one for opencl by mtrlt (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=258540.0) and one for cuda by primedigger (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=258982.0). mikaelh continues to improve on his optimizations of built-in miners. Meanwhile ypool became the first mining pool of primecoin with its own cpu miner. I am very happy to see the level of mining development for primecoin. Primecoin is designed to sustain a vibrant and competitive mining market.
• Media continues to show interest and praise in primecoin. For example, it is reported by The Register that DigitalOcean was hitting capacity problems after 18000 new registrations for mining primecoin. So now we understand why the block rate was going crazy last weekend. Some media credit primecoin as 'solving the energy waste problem'. To be fair I think ppcoin should be credited as such. ppcoin is designed to be energy efficient, while primecoin is designed to be energy multi-use. They are a two-prong approach to the energy consumption problem of cryptocurrency.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #49

• Primecoin has made a lot of progress in 3 weeks. I am so happy with the level of development support accross the cryptocurrency community. So here I would like to thank all for your hardworking in something we believe is a worthwhile cause!
• Primecoin network has claimed the 10-prime, 11-prime and 12-prime world records in simultaneous primes, on top of the Cunningham chain records and bi-twin chain records we hold. The simultaneous prime records count prime tuplets and arithmetic progressions in addition to prime chains. On this record GIMPS currently holds the 1-prime (single prime) record, while primecoin now holds three!
• On the development front, v0.1.2 release should be ready soon with additional miner improvements and other features. Users of mikaelh's version should continue to watch his builds as I think his build would remain the best performance builds for a while. mikaelh is an excellent developer and has earned the trust of the community. Meanwhile both gpu projects are still under development by mtrlt and primedigger.
• Starting next week I would resume ppcoin v0.4 development. I would make some announcement later on regarding the plan.
• Crypto-Trade now supports XPM/USD and XPM/PPC trading pairs. To have exchange support of direct XPM/PPC trading is part of our strategic goals. Thanks neotrix and team for the support!
• Due to the recent volatility in xpm trading I am obligated to once again remind investors of the high risk associated with cryptocurrency investment. Please invest only what you can afford to lose, thanks!

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #50

• Primecoin v0.1.2 is released. Users can now use the new listprimerecords to check the most up-to-date records inside the network. A new performance metric chainsperday is introduced to help performance tuning.
• mikaelh joins primecoin core dev team. Mikael's work with his high performance releases has been top notch and will share responsibilities with me in future development and maintenance of primecoin. (announcement: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=266329.0)
• mtrlt has made further progress on his opencl miner. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=258540.0)
• ypool is gaining momentum with peak block rate of the week reaching 25% of the network.
• Primecoin difficulty dropped to 9.2 earlier in the week and has been climbing up steadily.
• DailyBit.net is accepting primecoin payment. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=267068.0)
• PPCoin v0.4 development resumes this week. Tentative target release date in early September.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #51

• Primecoin difficulty rises this week and reaches 9.7, following performance improvements in the new release version hp9 of mikaelh.
• Primecoin records as of this week stand at: 12-primes: 99-digit bi-twin (#111414), 11-primes: 140 digit Cunningham chain of first kind (#95569), 10-primes: 138-digit bi-twin (#85429). There have been now three 12-primes seen in the block chain. At this rate we probably would see the first 13-primes this year.
• mtrlt's opencl miner appears to be close to private beta.
• Crypto Street (a new exchange) is considering adding XPM support.
• Vitalik from Bitcoin Magazine interviewed me on ppcointalk.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #52

• ppcoin difficulty passed 1 million this week.
• Today is ppcoin's birthday. Happy birthday PPC .
• Coin Payments launched this week with both PPC and XPM support: https://www.coinpayments.net/
• Visa4Crypto now provides prepaid debit card service: http://www.visa4crypto.com/
• XPM v0.2 protocol improvement is proposed here: http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?topic=453.0

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #53

• Mikael released v0.1.2-hp10 with miner improvement.
• mtrlt made further progress on his opencl miner, now capable of running both sieve and Fermat test on gpu.
• New world record of 12-primes: 100 digit bi-twin at block #133522 on August 25.
• A beautifully written technical article today on ppcoin's proof-of-stake technology by Vitalik of Bitcoin Magazine (http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6528/what-proof-of-stake-is-and-why-it-matters/).
• crypto-trade is gaining volume on XPM and PPC trading. crypto-trade currently supports three XPM trading pairs and two PPC trading pairs, with direct XPM/USD and XPM/PPC trading. mcxNow remains the most liquid XPM/BTC market, while btc-e has the most liquid PPC/BTC market.
• FiniteByDesign introduces a beautiful physical silver primecoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=278470.0), the first physical primecoin.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #54

• mtrlt's xpm gpu miner released for private beta.
• Mikael's high performance client is now linked directly on primecoin home page.
• Primecoin difficulty reaches 9.85, rising steadily throughout the week despite heavy exchange rate drop against BTC.
• PPC v0.4 is still under development. I will give some updates on its progress next week.
• Coin Payments temporarily suspended PPC and XPM support, before a popular request for them to resume support. Coin Payments is the first payment processor supporting multiple cryptocurrencies, even though currently shop selection is still limited, I believe it is important to help such payment processor to grow. So I would encourage both PPC and XPM supporters spend some coins to test purchasing goods and services through Coin Payments. If you have plan of opening stores supporting PPC and XPM, feel free to discuss your plan with Coin Payments, and enable PPC and XPM payments with your coin selection on Coin Payments.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #55

• Dan Roseman published a good introduction to primecoin on Let's Talk Bitcoin (http://letstalkbitcoin.com/primecoin-primer/)
• Crypto-trade begins PPC/USD trading.
• Primecoin difficulty remains steady at around 9.86. PPCoin difficulty is now around 1.5M.
• Mikael's XPM charts page at http://muuttuja.org/primecoin-dev/charts/
• PPC v0.4 requires some more time. I expect code to be completed in 1~2 weeks, then followed by a couple more weeks of testing before release.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #56

• Mikael released hp11 with further xpm miner improvements.
• mtrlt opencl miner released to public testing.
• 13-primes found at block 159217, press release at https://github.com/primecoin/primecoin/wiki/Primecoin-Reaches-13-primes-Milestone
• Sean's outpost, a spirited charity for helping the less fortunate now accepts PPC and XPM donations. Thanks to Jason for the excellent work and good luck to Project Satoshi Forest! http://seansoutpost.com/

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #57

• Due to technical issues and planned shutdown of momentovps, our seed nodes have been impacted. Migration of seed node from momentovps has been completed.
• mcxNow begins PPC trading.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #58

• New primecoin mining pools have been opened recently. Beeeeer.org have been gaining popularity. And this week a new Chinese pool called RPool opened business. Together with yPool there are over 12k workers mining in the pools.
• PPC difficulty is now over 3 million and inflation rate continues to drop due to rapid deployment of ASIC miners.
• I am very happy to see more and more users joining the communities of PPC and XPM, contributing ideas to help further development of the networks and services to cryptocurrency market in general.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #59

• Cryptsy opens XPM Markets section. XPM can now be traded directly with LTC and a few newly released altcoins.
• PPC briefly touched $10M market cap, consolidating the lead over NMC as the 3rd in market cap behind BTC and LTC. Trading volume has been impressive last few days. PPC proof-of-work difficulty breaks 6 million and block reward drops under 200. The current annual inflation rate of PPC is approaching that of BTC.
• PPC v0.4 has been making progress but it still needs some more work. Hopefully the merge with bitcoin v0.8 would be code complete this week and testing can be started. On the other hand, I am evaluating the cold-locked transaction feature proposed several months ago, it may get implemented into v0.4 if things go smooth. This feature allows PPC users to run hot wallet minting stake without the risk of losing the coins due to compromised system. This feature is particularly important for operators with public wallet such as exchanges.

Trade with caution and have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #60

• xpm reached top 5 in marketcap ranking on coinmarketcap.com.
• btc-e added xpm trading support.
• During the litecoin reddit event on Sunday, both coblee and wtogami claim that xpm is centralized and that I could shut it down if I am forced to. I am quite disappointed at the intellectual dishonesty of these supposedly respectable figures in altcoins. It's quite questionable whether this is only due to their ignorance of the way checkpoints work in xpm, as that has been public knowledge for quite some time. In xpm users must explicitly issue command to enforce checkpoint, I cannot single-handedly shutdown xpm network nor force a reorganization of the block chain. The decentralization level of xpm is basically the same as bitcoin or litecoin.
  
  Moreover, ppc would also gradually transition to this operation mode of checkpoint. Even before that happens, I cannot arbitrarily shutdown ppc network either. The checkpoint system in ppc and xpm also builds in consistency check to protect network if checkpoint key is compromised. Overall the defense mechanism is much more effective against sustained 51% attack and is a great asset to help small altcoin networks.
  
  I sincerely hope altcoin developers could compete honestly and fairly, keeping in mind the philosophy behind cryptocurrency movement, how else could we achieve the goal together without moral backbone?

Trade cautiously and have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #61

• Recent new records in primecoin network: 10-primes: 146 digit 1CC type at block 182690; 12-primes: 103 digit TWN type at block 212935.
• Primecoin trading added to Coinmkt.com. Coinmkt now trades both PPC and XPM against USD.
• RPool.net, the 3rd primecoin mining pool rises quickly in the last two weeks and now accounts for about 20% of primecoin blocks. RPool pays coins in generation transaction (coinbase) letting coins mature in miner's own wallet, similar to Eligius pool of bitcoin.
• Effort is underway on ppcointalk.org for contributors to focus on different areas in marketing and development for PPC/XPM, everyone is welcome to participate.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #62

• Vault of Satoshi (previously Toronto Bitcoin Exchange) now supports PPC trading.
• I have completed a round of interview with John Manglaviti based on community member questions.
• Thijs van den Berg will present PPC and XPM technology in Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam early next month.
• PPC website has been updated. Thanks Super3 and web team!
• Both beeeeer.org and rpool.net pools were under DDoS attack. At the moment rpool appears to be restored, beeeeer.org would reopen later by xolokram.
• Lots of activities on our forum. Feel free to participate! Fill out survey (http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=715).

Have fun

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #63

• New 12-primes record by primecoin: block #239833, 110 digit length 12 Cunningham chain of 1st kind.
• Community newsletter #1 published: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321355
• rpool.net back online at 15% xpm mining. ypool.net accounts for about 50% of xpm mining.
• The Amsterdam bitcoin conference this coming week is cancelled due to lack of attendance. Although there are many more conferences coming up around the world. So stay tuned for our future participation.

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #64

• John and I have completed a round of interview with coindesk on PPC. An article has been published on coindesk regarding PPC.
• Primecoin difficulty is approaching 10. In July at primecoin's release, the network started at difficulty 7. We have come a long way in a short four months, I have never expected such fast pace of miner improvements and adoption. Difficulty 10 is more than four orders of magnitude more computing intensive than difficulty 7 in primecoin. Current primecoin network difficulty is around 9.975.
• Supercomputing has started working on a gpu (cuda) implementation of primecoin miner. He has reported promising results so far which could make gpu mining competitive for xpm, though currently this project is still under private development.
• I have relocated PPC testnet seed node. PPC testnet resumes operation.
• Don't forget to check out all the different community activities on peercointalk.org!

Have fun!

[Sunny King]

Weekly Update #65

• Community newsletter #2 here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=326659.0
• Community newsletter #3 here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=333962.0
• Primecoin has gracefully recovered from a block rate impact event this week due to problems at ypool.net. Block rate about halved after ypool.net went offline, but the difficulty continuously adjusted to the event. Primecoin network has now recovered close to 1 minute block spacing target.
• Primecoin has its first fork named datacoin this week. Of course there are countless PPC forks already I have lost track of them long time ago.
• Bitcoin continues the relentless climb in the exchange markets all over the world, broke $5B USD market cap and marching towards $10B USD market cap. Looking back the entire cryptocurrency community has made huge achievements together. Let's keep working together toward a better future!

Have fun!