[ANN] Firo (FIRO) - Implementing ZKP privacy without trusted setup

[SatyrA]

We are aware of about 20-30% hashrate on some unaccounted pools. We knew this because when we were trying to notify our pools to hard fork, we couldn't find these guys.

Btw, we are aware of some of the concerns of miners that our hashrate is being dominated by botnets. Ocminer from Suprnova mentioned that previously there were some schools etc who complained to him and he identified them from many small hashrates. He does have a point.

I spoke to miningpoolhub on this and he mentioned that this could be CPU miners as well and he brought up that on other coins, there are single entities with much bigger hashing power as well.

So, both sides have valid points.

Regardless of this, MTP is now an absolute priority and coding is well underway. We will post updates as soon as they are available and a more accurate timeframe can be estimated but tentatively should be by the end of Q2 2018 and hence we won't be doing a another transition algorithm since it's not that far off.

We previously had some concerns of pool software as none of our coders are experienced pool coders but we believe that even if we have to launch with solo mining to start with and then organizing a bounty for an open sourced nomp or yiimp pool for MTP, this would be acceptable. A period of solo mining isn't bad and is true decentralization.

As I don't understand too much from the tech perspective, will MTP solve the botnet mining issue once and for all or are there also problems that might come up some time in the future?

As I understood MTP requires large amount of RAM ~10 Gb. Miner activity will affect behavior of average computer much more and thus will reveal itself. As expected botnet performance will be reduced.

So every mining rig would need 12 GB or so of RAM to be able to continue mining ZCoin? That's a hefty additional expense, particularly with DDR4 systems.

That means it does not only successfully prevent botnets from mining, but also negatively impacts all the average miners who have good intentions?

It may be. But miners have intention to do job for network unlike botnet computers which are just victims and tool in hands of botnet master.

[RowenaBeesley]

ZCoin Community Announcement: Vote for XZC to be listed on CryptalDash.com Exchange.

ZCoin has been featured in the New Coin Listing Competition, this is your chance to grow the market cap and liquidity pool of ZCoin.

Support your coin by voting now, voting ends in 8 days. (ZCoin is currently in last place with 0 votes)
https://www.cryptaldash.com/new-coin-listing

[ju5tchi11in]

We are aware of about 20-30% hashrate on some unaccounted pools. We knew this because when we were trying to notify our pools to hard fork, we couldn't find these guys.

Btw, we are aware of some of the concerns of miners that our hashrate is being dominated by botnets. Ocminer from Suprnova mentioned that previously there were some schools etc who complained to him and he identified them from many small hashrates. He does have a point.

I spoke to miningpoolhub on this and he mentioned that this could be CPU miners as well and he brought up that on other coins, there are single entities with much bigger hashing power as well.

So, both sides have valid points.

Regardless of this, MTP is now an absolute priority and coding is well underway. We will post updates as soon as they are available and a more accurate timeframe can be estimated but tentatively should be by the end of Q2 2018 and hence we won't be doing a another transition algorithm since it's not that far off.

We previously had some concerns of pool software as none of our coders are experienced pool coders but we believe that even if we have to launch with solo mining to start with and then organizing a bounty for an open sourced nomp or yiimp pool for MTP, this would be acceptable. A period of solo mining isn't bad and is true decentralization.

As I don't understand too much from the tech perspective, will MTP solve the botnet mining issue once and for all or are there also problems that might come up some time in the future?

As I understood MTP requires large amount of RAM ~10 Gb. Miner activity will affect behavior of average computer much more and thus will reveal itself. As expected botnet performance will be reduced.

So every mining rig would need 12 GB or so of RAM to be able to continue mining ZCoin? That's a hefty additional expense, particularly with DDR4 systems.

That means it does not only successfully prevent botnets from mining, but also negatively impacts all the average miners who have good intentions?

It may be. But miners have intention to do job for network unlike botnet computers which are just victims and tool in hands of botnet master.

Not so much.

"Reuben Yap 7 months ago

It depends on the parameters. The design goal is actually to allow MTP to go up to 10 gb of RAM while remaining lightweight to verify though the reference implementation is 2 gb."

Zcoin MTP video, only 2minutes 49 seconds to understand it.

https://youtu.be/DAJirQaBIzY

[RbiggerG]

We are aware of about 20-30% hashrate on some unaccounted pools. We knew this because when we were trying to notify our pools to hard fork, we couldn't find these guys.

Btw, we are aware of some of the concerns of miners that our hashrate is being dominated by botnets. Ocminer from Suprnova mentioned that previously there were some schools etc who complained to him and he identified them from many small hashrates. He does have a point.

I spoke to miningpoolhub on this and he mentioned that this could be CPU miners as well and he brought up that on other coins, there are single entities with much bigger hashing power as well.

So, both sides have valid points.

Regardless of this, MTP is now an absolute priority and coding is well underway. We will post updates as soon as they are available and a more accurate timeframe can be estimated but tentatively should be by the end of Q2 2018 and hence we won't be doing a another transition algorithm since it's not that far off.

We previously had some concerns of pool software as none of our coders are experienced pool coders but we believe that even if we have to launch with solo mining to start with and then organizing a bounty for an open sourced nomp or yiimp pool for MTP, this would be acceptable. A period of solo mining isn't bad and is true decentralization.

As I don't understand too much from the tech perspective, will MTP solve the botnet mining issue once and for all or are there also problems that might come up some time in the future?

As I understood MTP requires large amount of RAM ~10 Gb. Miner activity will affect behavior of average computer much more and thus will reveal itself. As expected botnet performance will be reduced.

So every mining rig would need 12 GB or so of RAM to be able to continue mining ZCoin? That's a hefty additional expense, particularly with DDR4 systems.

That means it does not only successfully prevent botnets from mining, but also negatively impacts all the average miners who have good intentions?

It may be. But miners have intention to do job for network unlike botnet computers which are just victims and tool in hands of botnet master.

Not so much.

"Reuben Yap 7 months ago

It depends on the parameters. The design goal is actually to allow MTP to go up to 10 gb of RAM while remaining lightweight to verify though the reference implementation is 2 gb."

Zcoin MTP video, only 2minutes 49 seconds to understand it.

https://youtu.be/DAJirQaBIzY

That seems to be an interesting solution, but I keep thinking of this always as a cat and mouse game. Like no solution is forever when it coms to technology. I can be totally mistaken because I am not a programmer, but maybe one day those who produce Asics find a way to counter this again? Could that happen?

[bamsterdam]

Hello,

 I just downloaded the latest wallet version because of the hard fork. But after I unzipped the new wallet and tried to open it it got stuck on the loading screen. So I see the zcoin logo but it doenst open the wallet anymore does anyone have a idea why its stuck?

[jackbox]

Hello,

 I just downloaded the latest wallet version because of the hard fork. But after I unzipped the new wallet and tried to open it it got stuck on the loading screen. So I see the zcoin logo but it doenst open the wallet anymore does anyone have a idea why its stuck?

I did not know there was a new wallet. I guess that explained why my wallet was 7 weeks behind with no block source. I downloaded and installed the new wallet and it is working fine. It did not get stuck on the loading screen and it is currently reindexing the blocks on my computer. Maybe try closing down all instances of the program to make sure the DB is free and try running it again.

[Xman79]

Someone know about https://exba.se/
The new exchange for Zcoin?

[bamsterdam]

Hello,

 I just downloaded the latest wallet version because of the hard fork. But after I unzipped the new wallet and tried to open it it got stuck on the loading screen. So I see the zcoin logo but it doenst open the wallet anymore does anyone have a idea why its stuck?

I did not know there was a new wallet. I guess that explained why my wallet was 7 weeks behind with no block source. I downloaded and installed the new wallet and it is working fine. It did not get stuck on the loading screen and it is currently reindexing the blocks on my computer. Maybe try closing down all instances of the program to make sure the DB is free and try running it again.

I deleted everything and downloaded the wallet again 0.13.5.7 but same problem. After deleting all files in roaming except wallet.dat it opened. So it worked out but its kinda strange that the wallet wont open after a fresh download. Maybe a bug ?

[RhinoTrader]

Hello,

 I just downloaded the latest wallet version because of the hard fork. But after I unzipped the new wallet and tried to open it it got stuck on the loading screen. So I see the zcoin logo but it doenst open the wallet anymore does anyone have a idea why its stuck?

I did not know there was a new wallet. I guess that explained why my wallet was 7 weeks behind with no block source. I downloaded and installed the new wallet and it is working fine. It did not get stuck on the loading screen and it is currently reindexing the blocks on my computer. Maybe try closing down all instances of the program to make sure the DB is free and try running it again.

I deleted everything and downloaded the wallet again 0.13.5.7 but same problem. After deleting all files in roaming except wallet.dat it opened. So it worked out but its kinda strange that the wallet wont open after a fresh download. Maybe a bug ?

I have seen some problems with the wallet in the past
It sucks that there are not better options just to sweep the coins to a temporary place or to spend them

I hope ledger support comes in 2018

[ju5tchi11in]

We are aware of about 20-30% hashrate on some unaccounted pools. We knew this because when we were trying to notify our pools to hard fork, we couldn't find these guys.

Btw, we are aware of some of the concerns of miners that our hashrate is being dominated by botnets. Ocminer from Suprnova mentioned that previously there were some schools etc who complained to him and he identified them from many small hashrates. He does have a point.

I spoke to miningpoolhub on this and he mentioned that this could be CPU miners as well and he brought up that on other coins, there are single entities with much bigger hashing power as well.

So, both sides have valid points.

Regardless of this, MTP is now an absolute priority and coding is well underway. We will post updates as soon as they are available and a more accurate timeframe can be estimated but tentatively should be by the end of Q2 2018 and hence we won't be doing a another transition algorithm since it's not that far off.

We previously had some concerns of pool software as none of our coders are experienced pool coders but we believe that even if we have to launch with solo mining to start with and then organizing a bounty for an open sourced nomp or yiimp pool for MTP, this would be acceptable. A period of solo mining isn't bad and is true decentralization.

As I don't understand too much from the tech perspective, will MTP solve the botnet mining issue once and for all or are there also problems that might come up some time in the future?

As I understood MTP requires large amount of RAM ~10 Gb. Miner activity will affect behavior of average computer much more and thus will reveal itself. As expected botnet performance will be reduced.

So every mining rig would need 12 GB or so of RAM to be able to continue mining ZCoin? That's a hefty additional expense, particularly with DDR4 systems.

That means it does not only successfully prevent botnets from mining, but also negatively impacts all the average miners who have good intentions?

It may be. But miners have intention to do job for network unlike botnet computers which are just victims and tool in hands of botnet master.

Not so much.

"Reuben Yap 7 months ago

It depends on the parameters. The design goal is actually to allow MTP to go up to 10 gb of RAM while remaining lightweight to verify though the reference implementation is 2 gb."

Zcoin MTP video, only 2minutes 49 seconds to understand it.

https://youtu.be/DAJirQaBIzY

That seems to be an interesting solution, but I keep thinking of this always as a cat and mouse game. Like no solution is forever when it coms to technology. I can be totally mistaken because I am not a programmer, but maybe one day those who produce Asics find a way to counter this again? Could that happen?

They call them ASIC resistance algorithms. So they resist but are not ASIC proof.  Because of the memory usage, it increases the cost to produce a machine hopefully making it less profitable for them to make it for this coin/algorithm.  It should do a good job of identifying bots and help reduce those since the memory usage will hopefully alert the user that their computer is infected.

Other than that the mining difficulty is about to crack 29k, ouch.

[ju5tchi11in]

Reuben posted a new update on Zcoin 3 hours ago on youtube 19min 47 sec video.

https://youtu.be/3DlsJXoXxiI


A couple highlights:

-Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake.
-Reaffirming Zcoin maintaining itself as a currency.
-Timeline of other coins progress ICO, or PoW phase, into PoS phases etc. and now Zcoin compares to it or will compare to those other timelines.
-MTP to ensure large distribution of Zcoins
-(Spoke on this before) MTP rollout solo-mining probably, probably bounty for pool mining programming as the Zcoin team does not have expertise in this area.
-Ensuring decentralization.

[cyberspacemonkey]

They call them ASIC resistance algorithms. So they resist but are not ASIC proof.  Because of the memory usage, it increases the cost to produce a machine hopefully making it less profitable for them to make it for this coin/algorithm.  It should do a good job of identifying bots and help reduce those since the memory usage will hopefully alert the user that their computer is infected.

Other than that the mining difficulty is about to crack 29k, ouch.

Not only that but the price is diving too just like pretty much almost every altcoin right now, it's really not worth mining if you're just selling it right away.

[ju5tchi11in]

They call them ASIC resistance algorithms. So they resist but are not ASIC proof.  Because of the memory usage, it increases the cost to produce a machine hopefully making it less profitable for them to make it for this coin/algorithm.  It should do a good job of identifying bots and help reduce those since the memory usage will hopefully alert the user that their computer is infected.

Other than that the mining difficulty is about to crack 29k, ouch.

Not only that but the price is diving too just like pretty much almost every altcoin right now, it's really not worth mining if you're just selling it right away.

Keep mining to secure the network and support the project. Hodl the coins you earn. Create Znode.

[rdepth]

Check out ZCoin masternode stats at https://coinmasternodes.info/

[SwissBoo]

Anyone in Zcoin need help troubleshooting or setup with their masternode?
Pm me for help and Check out: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3213738

[jackbox]

Earn 0.10 to 0.25 BTC per day joining the newest Masternode coin

Click Here!

(never invest more then that you are willing to loose)

scam

[Tonisim]

Difference of ZCoin & ZCash, PoW vs. PoS, MTP and Sigma! Fun interview with Reuben of ZCoin discussing various topics including the differences between ZCoin and ZCash, his view on Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake, update on MTP and Sigma for ZCoin!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUr1MdQZIWs

[GreenPanda]

I'm reindexing the blocks for the 4th time on win7 for the new wallet version. But when reindexing is done, it shows as if the wallet is fully sync but in fact I'm lagging over 150 blocks on the chain and my recent transfers are not appearing on my address. Also during the night, it moved from blocks 80406 to 80408 (advanced 2 blocks in 8 hours!) but we're currently at block 80550... But still the wallet says fully sync and up to date?!

[ju5tchi11in]

I'm reindexing the blocks for the 4th time on win7 for the new wallet version. But when reindexing is done, it shows as if the wallet is fully sync but in fact I'm lagging over 150 blocks on the chain and my recent transfers are not appearing on my address. Also during the night, it moved from blocks 80406 to 80408 (advanced 2 blocks in 8 hours!) but we're currently at block 80550... But still the wallet says fully sync and up to date?!

Do you have v0.13.5.7?

Also, this if you have not already: https://zcoinkb.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/znode-stuck-on-block-80421/

Try updating to windows10.

[GreenPanda]

I'm reindexing the blocks for the 4th time on win7 for the new wallet version. But when reindexing is done, it shows as if the wallet is fully sync but in fact I'm lagging over 150 blocks on the chain and my recent transfers are not appearing on my address. Also during the night, it moved from blocks 80406 to 80408 (advanced 2 blocks in 8 hours!) but we're currently at block 80550... But still the wallet says fully sync and up to date?!

Do you have v0.13.5.7?

Also, this if you have not already: https://zcoinkb.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/znode-stuck-on-block-80421/

Try updating to windows10.

Thanks, I'm pretty sure that's the exact same problem addressed at the link you provided! That should do it! *Edit: It did it!