Idea for an alt-coin

[nathan_24]

Hi!

I am working on an idea for an alt-coin that could ideally be used forever without its blockchain size constatly growing...

I think I had an idea for this alt-coin and I would love to know if it could work or not, and why.

This alt-coin is designed in a way that you only need to know the last X (lets say 2,016) blocks in order to know all you need to check your balance, send bitcoins, and do everything, and those blocks are not necessarily bigger than the blocks of bitcoin. That way we can keep pruning old blocks and keep only the last 2,016 blocks.

There is a problem to that: in order to be able to verify those 2,016 blocks you can get from the network, you need to keep at least the headers of all previous blocks to the first one, or if not, when given two valid chains by the network, you wouldn't know which one belongs to the valid blockchain.

My idea of solving that issue is the following:

Bitcoin calculates the blocks difficulty every 2,016 blocks. It increases the difficulty if the previous 2,015 blocks have been created very fast, and decreases it if they have been created too slow, in order to mantain a difficulty that causes the blocks to be created every 10 minutes.

My alt-coin would instead, every 2,016 blocks, calculate the new difficulty based on how far or how close the miner's clock is to the timestamp this block should have -> If the block 0 had a date of 1 Jan 0:00, then the block 1 was expected to have a date of 1 Jan 0:10, block 2 at 1 Jan 0:20, and so on. This way, we should be able to calculate the height of the blockchain right now by only checking our local time.

In this alt-coin, the blockchain would be pruned every 2,016 blocks, exactly at the block where a new difficulty is calculated. When you first connect to the network, you connect to some peers, and request them the last part of the blockchain, and they will reply you with the 2,016 blocks (and some more that where created recently and haven't yet reached 2,016). If any of them responds you with a chain that is too far in the past, or too far in the future, you drop it as invalid. If you are given more than one 2,016-chains of the same height, both apparently valid, you don't need to keep all the blockchain headers in order to check which one is valid and which one has been forged parallel to the valid blockchain, you just choose the one that has the highest bits value.

I guess this should work, as long as more than the 50% of the network CPU is owned by good people.

What do you think?

[tokeweed]

I say go for it.

[Gwapo]

I like the idea of short blockchain, are you a coder yourself to make it happen?
you should go ahead and start working on it ,atleast its much better then most crap coins

[GriffinHeart]

Well, the start of the coin is the real thing, you have to make sure that 51% is owned by good people ASAP.
The later stages of the coin will be easier.

[Ayers]

i remember there was an alt, that solved the problem of the blockchain growing, by adding a checkpoint, with mini blockchain
it was cryptocoin or something

[CoinHoarder]

i remember there was an alt, that solved the problem of the blockchain growing, by adding a checkpoint, with mini blockchain
it was cryptocoin or something

The cryptocurrency you speak of is Cryptonite. They are the first coin with block chain trimming abilities via the Mini Blockchain implementation.

[HeroCat]

New altcoin must have Web online mining through Webpage, then it will be popular + also instant exchange options 

[tromp]

If you are given more than one 2,016-chains of the same height, both apparently valid, you don't need to keep all the blockchain headers in order to check which one is valid and which one has been forged parallel to the valid blockchain, you just choose the one that has the highest bits value.

What do you think?

The one with the most work could easily be fake.
If the honest 90% takes 2 weeks to generate 2016 blocks, then a dishonest 10% can generate 2016 blocks ending 18 weeks into the future.

[c0ffer]

New altcoin must have Web online mining through Webpage...

Who else (if anyone) does this already? Or are you describing cloud mining with a web front-end?

[hetecon]

Sounds like decent ideas, but now making the ideas is the trouble.

[croato]

Sounds like great idea, you should research that cryptonite project not to make same errors like them and go for it. i would be very interested in that project cause i think exponential growing of blockchain is one of biggest problems in crypto.

[LowlandGorilla.]

Are you going to do this all by yourself or are you hiring a developer?

[hetecon]

Are you going to do this all by yourself or are you hiring a developer?

Yes everything requires money or code experience.

[LowlandGorilla.]

Altcoins are simply a waste of time in my opinion if you are aiming to become bigger than Bitcoin, keep dreaming.

Well if you are trying to make a quick buck then your idea is good, lol.

[anonymousx]

I am not trying to disappoint you, but that wont be much stable, it needs a math miracle to achieve if it ever be possible.

Bitcoin doesn't need the whole blockchain, this is already implemented in wallets such as Multibit and mycelium, these two wallets sync only a small portion that only check balances of your addresses, but you always need full nodes to support the network, in case that's the part you want to get rid off, the full node, think of security what if someone generates older blocks and sync them to people, revive old coins etc, blockchain is a chain, a chain have a start and an end, that end might expend but you can never go back and change what happened earlier, in your case it wont be a blockchain system, call it something else.
anyway I hope you come up with a physical solution it's easier said than done, you might invent the next big thing or at least learn something while trying so best of luck to you!

[Snail2]

Sounds like great idea, you should research that cryptonite project not to make same errors like them and go for it. i would be very interested in that project cause i think exponential growing of blockchain is one of biggest problems in crypto.

Exactly, such huge and ever growing blockchains going to lead to a more and more centralized approach as downloading blockchains getting more and more annoying for many users. Mining is already nearly centralized, if storing the blockchain (running full nodes) will be centralized too then we'll lose one of the main advantages of cryptos.

[Rias]

This way, we should be able to calculate the height of the blockchain right now by only checking our local time.

So basically you are leaving potential holes in network security up to the factors outside the blockchain. And intuitively, I think it may cause some trouble if the clock is not correct.

[YarkoL]

And intuitively, I think it may cause some trouble if the clock is not correct.

Or, heaven forbid, tampered with malicious intent.

[hetecon]

is the idea made now