[ANN] official NovaCoin thread - the original PoS+scrypt coin.

[Balthazar]

I have added Novacoin to P2Pool.org.

Check it out!

Happy mining!

+1

But i should warn you that current NVC p2pool implementation requires a public key, not an address.

Well that could become an issue!

The user has to use their public key correct?

I need to make a little tutorial for users of P2Pool.org who want to mine Novacoin.

Some basics available here

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=229641.msg2415882#msg2415882

Btw, there are few protocol changes will be activated since 20 Sep 2013. It will allow us to make P2Pool usage significantly easier.

[Jude Austin]

I have added Novacoin to P2Pool.org.

Check it out!

Happy mining!

+1

But i should warn you that current NVC p2pool implementation requires a public key, not an address.

Well that could become an issue!

The user has to use their public key correct?

I need to make a little tutorial for users of P2Pool.org who want to mine Novacoin.

Some basics available here

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=229641.msg2415882#msg2415882

Btw, there are few protocol changes will be activated since 20 Sep 2013. It will allow us to make P2Pool usage significantly easier.

Ah nice!

Out of curiosity, why the public key?

And isn't BitBar the same way?

Just wondering why the public key has to be used instead of an address.

[Balthazar]

Out of curiosity, why the public key?

It's because of current protocol limitations. Public key disclosure required due to blocks signing procedure.

And isn't BitBar the same way?

BitBar is NVC clone, so you are correct.

[Jude Austin]

Out of curiosity, why the public key?

It's because of current protocol limitations. Public key disclosure required due to blocks signing procedure.

And isn't BitBar the same way?

BitBar is NVC clone, so you are correct.

Ah gotcha.

And yeah, I kind of assumed that when you do a getinfo it still says NVC in the build, lol.

[Balthazar]

A little patch was applied to StratumServer, to improve 0.4.4 compatibility.

https://github.com/CryptoManiac/stratum-mining

[Balthazar]

TestNet explorer added due to user request.

http://novacoin.ru/chain/NovaCoin_TEST

Please note that NovaCoin testnet has much faster life cycle than production network:

• nBits limit is 0x1f00ffff (in MainNet nBits limit is 0x1e0fffff)
• StakeMinAge is 2 hours
• ModifierInterval is 20 minutes
• CoinbaseMaturity is 20 blocks
• Target blocks spacing is 5 minutes

[Balthazar]

nTimeWeight calculation

Originally it was planned to start nTimeWeight from zero at the 30-day min age. This should increase active coins participating the hash and provide additional security when proof-of-stake difficulty is low.

Anyway, this feature is disabled for now and needs some discussion.

https://github.com/CryptoManiac/novacoin/commit/b9289ef1acf9c6c6146c573955443f555abb9351

It's planned to enable this since 1 Jan 2014 if there will be no negative effects discovered.

[kha0S]

khore pool was today updated to latest daemon version. Stratum server was also patched and is now producing version 6 blocks!

[Balthazar]

khore pool was today updated to latest daemon version. Stratum server was also patched and is now producing version 6 blocks!

Great Now we see upgrade notification message on all clients older than 0.4.4 

[Balthazar]

DNS seeding support enabled now. You can build a fresh snapshot from repository, binary builds will be available later.

[Balthazar]

If you wish to help our project development, you are able to run and support your own seeding node, which will be included into seeds list. It's quite simple:

https://github.com/CryptoManiac/novacoin-seeder

Tell me if you have any questions.

[Balthazar]

Minor client update is available for testing.

v0.4.4.1

• DNS seeding is enabled now;
• Timestamp field added into checkpoints table;
• Skip header signature checking while connecting a block (it's safe because ProcessBlock still performs signatures checking);
• Skip PoW header ECDSA signatures validation since block #9689 until the last checkpoint.

This should make synchronization process slightly faster.

Win32 nosetup: http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/novacoin-nosetup-win32-0.4.4.1.zip/download
Ubuntu LTS x86_64: http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/novacoin-0.4.4.1-ubuntu-lts-x86_64.tar.bz2/download
Sources tree: https://github.com/CryptoManiac/novacoin

[Balthazar]

HashCoin forked CryptoManiac/novacoin to HashCoin/novacoin
6 days ago

WeirdCoin forked CryptoManiac/novacoin to WeirdCoin/novacoin
11 days ago

 bountycoin forked CryptoManiac/novacoin to bountycoin/novacoin
16 days ago

 franko-org forked CryptoManiac/novacoin to franko-org/novacoin
a month ago

 

[Balthazar]

Minor client update is available.

v0.4.4.2

• P2P: Don't return IP addresses older than specified lifespan (7 days by default);
• RPC: New addredeemscript and decodescript RPC calls;
• RPC: The validateaddress now provides redeem script for P2SH addresses;
• RPC: Users are now permitted to increase the keypool size at runtime, using an optional keypoolrefill's parameter;
• RPC: Network stake weight calculation precision improvement;
• RPC: Passive weight isn't calculated anymore;
• Minor fix: don't display sync-checkpoint related warnings if sync checkpoints feature is disabled;
• Minor fix: disable block signature verification during the initial block index checking, by default;
• LOCKS_SWITCH_TIME conditions removed;
• Checkpoints table is updated, some old checkpoints removed.

Win32 nosetup: http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/novacoin-nosetup-win32-0.4.4.2.zip/download
Win32 setup (don't forget to uninstall previous version before): http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/novacoin-setup-win32-0.4.4.2.exe/download
Ubuntu LTS x86_64: http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/novacoin-0.4.4.2-ubuntu-x86_64.tar.bz2/download
Sources tree: https://github.com/CryptoManiac/novacoin

[Balthazar]

Is there anybody interested in

• Enterprise level DDoS protection (HTTP, UDP and SYN flood filtration);
• VPS (XEN and OpenVZ based);
• Dedicated servers

?

Our hosting provider preparing some interesting offers, more info will be available soon.

[Balthazar]

Minor client update is available.

v0.4.4.3

• New -stakepooledkeys* option. This feature is disabled by default;
• Minor optimizations, call scrypt_blockhash once time instead of multiple times in some functions;
• Support for scrypt+sha512** key derivation method. This feature is experimental, and disabled by default;
• Small code cleanup.

Win32 nosetup: http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/novacoin-nosetup-win32-0.4.4.3.zip/download
Win32 setup (don't forget to uninstall previous version before): http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/novacoin-setup-win32-0.4.4.3.exe/download
Ubuntu LTS x86_64: http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/novacoin-0.4.4.3-ubuntu-lts-x86_64.tar.bz2/download
MacOS X Qt client: http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/NovaCoin-Qt-0.4.4.3.dmg/download
Sources tree: https://github.com/CryptoManiac/novacoin

--------------------------

* -stakepooledkeys option allows you to get the last constake output public key from the keypool. Sample blocks in the testnet:

http://novacoin.su/block/23548db4f5f3889e5c0d5d0df2c98d4a2141d695b70ddf0881697dc85e09f2cd
http://novacoin.su/block/8b3812397daf75e661d95019922eeb84e1bdd8dbc83d845da305e5eef59db805
http://novacoin.su/block/56d62c1653db44c9575f8e2a9304ff7c9ef37813cc3783a2c4273e6e5f510e7d
http://novacoin.su/block/e434ee429efd430b49cebb65e227bde87a2668d6f18c138c33beb846b8e582e6
http://novacoin.su/block/951fec05ffa96675c01f9bb15462c4099505c88fafc19e22606d19119dbac011
http://novacoin.su/block/7f99e47609f319d4d86b891a81837139b7f3ed2db2e48e1c48979e51527b1726


** You can use -derivationmethod option to choose which method will be used for wallet encryption keys generation.

Possible values:

• sha512 - default value, compatible with bitcoin;
• scrypt+sha512 - selects scrypt derivation function.

Please note that this option only allows you to select default method for the new encrypted keys. If you are already using encrypted wallet then suitable derivation method will be selected automatically.

[Balthazar]

Currently we are working on LevelDB support, source tree will be updated soon. Testing snapshot is quite unstable, but syncronizes well enough.

LevelDB minimizes memory usage and makes syncronization faster, but there is also some Proof-of-Stake related side effects. E.g. validation of PoS block requires additional LevelDB transactions. As the result, performance benefits are lower than it would be for pure PoW based system.

// UPDATE: merged into the main tree. Testers are welcome.
// UPDATE2: memory leak found, thanks for the report

[Balthazar]

Successfully passed 200 days chain age at block #38397.  

http://novacoin.ru/chain/NovaCoin?hi=38397&count=20

Congratulations to all participants

[Balthazar]

Experimental Win32 build with LevelDB storage:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/novacoin/files/experimental/novacoin-0.4.3-mingw32-4.2.1-sjlj-cross.zip/download

Reports are welcome.

If you wish to make your own build then you need "USE_LEVELDB=1" option.

[kha0S]

Hi everyone.

KHORE pool is now running on a brand new server. We more than doubled the resources available to pool, so expect extra performance!
Due to the downtime caused by the switch to new server, I'm offering 48 hours with 0% fee.

Thank you all!