What is premining?

[bushstar]

I think this word has been thrown around so much that it has lost some of its definition. I do have a solution to this.

Premining typically meant, mining that happens before a coin is publicly launched. As soon as it is made available to the public there ccould be no more premining.

Now people apply premining to the days or weeks after a coin is released. This seems problematic to me, when do we decide that the premine is over.

I have a solution to clear up the any ambiguity with two new terms.

Private premine - when a coin is mined before it is made publicly available.

Public premine - when a coin is launched with no advanced notice and low difficulty (Based on SunnyKings response below)


My old definition.
Public premine- when a coin is mined after public release but before a pool is available.

[Sunny King]

Premine has nothing to do with the availability of mining pools.

It refers to the advantage of developers and their close circles over the public. Moreover new coin developers should also choose a reasonable starting difficulty and reasonable advance notice of release so people don't have to camp on the forum 24x7 in order to participate in a new coin launch. If you start difficulty too low people would consider it deliberate and 'effectively' a premine.

[drawingthesun]

Premine has nothing to do with the availability of mining pools.

It refers to the advantage of developers and their close circles over the public. Moreover new coin developers should also choose a reasonable starting difficulty and reasonable advance notice of release so people don't have to camp on the forum 24x7 in order to participate in a new coin launch. If you start difficulty too low people would consider it deliberate and 'effectively' a premine.

Yeah Sunny is right, any new coin with difficulty 1 is premine, people jump on board and in the first few hours many people rake in 10,000 coins easily, then after about a day the difficulty is harder and those first lucky people effectively premined the coin. It allows the developer to say they didn't premine but at such low difficulty it really is gamed.

Sunny, you started your coin at 256 is that right?

[manface]

Premine has nothing to do with the availability of mining pools.

It refers to the advantage of developers and their close circles over the public. Moreover new coin developers should also choose a reasonable starting difficulty and reasonable advance notice of release so people don't have to camp on the forum 24x7 in order to participate in a new coin launch. If you start difficulty too low people would consider it deliberate and 'effectively' a premine.

It's subjective though as the only question is a matter of time. Is a day too little time? A week? Is a year? Is 5 years? There is never a perfect response to that and to there will be someone out there that will say it's a premine simply because they themselves weren't given enough time.

The coins which are mined privately and then released I call a premine. Anything else is subjective when it comes to premine.

[bushstar]

Premine has nothing to do with the availability of mining pools.

It refers to the advantage of developers and their close circles over the public. Moreover new coin developers should also choose a reasonable starting difficulty and reasonable advance notice of release so people don't have to camp on the forum 24x7 in order to participate in a new coin launch. If you start difficulty too low people would consider it deliberate and 'effectively' a premine.

So perhaps we can declare the public premine over when the difficulty gets high enough. This is difficult to quantify what constitutes a high enough difficulty.

It bugs me when people complain about PPC premine as there was no private premine, this is one of the reasons I started this thread. Starting with a low difficulty has probably benefited PPC. Those who got to PPC first with decent hash power were the exact sort of people who can build services for a coin. It was those that first got to the coin who helped it get to where it is today along with its excellent developer of course.

[manface]

So perhaps we can declare the public premine over when the difficulty gets high enough. This is difficult to quantify what constitutes a high enough difficulty.

It bugs me when people complain about PPC premine as there was no private premine, this is one of the reasons I started this thread. Starting with a low difficulty has probably benefited PPC. Those who got to PPC first with decent hash power were the exact sort of people who can build services for a coin. It was those that first got to the coin who helped it get to where it is today along with its excellent developer of course.

Exactly. The people who get the early cheap coins feel like they need to actually DO SOMETHING to get the coin valued. If they only had 2 of them they wouldn't do anything.

[Shad3dOne]

I think this word has been thrown around so much that it has lost some of its definition. I do have a solution to this.

Premining typically meant, mining that happens before a coin is publicly launched. As soon as it is made available to the public there ccould be no more premining.

Now people apply premining to the days or weeks after a coin is released. This seems problematic to me, when do we decide that the premine is over.

I have a solution to clear up the any ambiguity with two new terms.

Private premine - when a coin is mined before it is made publicly available.

Public premine- when a coin is mined after public release but before a pool is available.

so..by this -Public premine- definition...BTC is this biggest premine of all?

ban all premines!! lol...OP needs a better defintion.

[wmikrut]

Pre-mine definition is fairly simple to me.
If the coin is mined to a block number 'before' ever being made public, it's a pre-mine.

Now, not all pre-mines are scams... especially if it's stated it will be 'pre-mined', and/or those 'mined' coins will be used as bounties for development of the currency.

Do your homework... and use common sense.

[bushstar]

I've changed the definition for public-premine to the one below which is based on SunnyKing's feedback.

Public premine - when a coin is launched with no advanced notice and low difficulty

This still means that the majority of coins are public premined

[wmikrut]

I've changed the definition for public-premine to the one below which is based on SunnyKing's feedback.

Public premine - when a coin is launched with no advanced notice and low difficulty

This still means that the majority of coins are public premined

That's why I mentioned in another thread it would be nice to have a sticky labeled "Releasing a new coin?  Guidelines to follow"

Now most people will say -- well, if you're releasing a new coin you should know the common complaints.
Perhaps... perhaps people have their own views of what they deem important/un-important.

A majority voted list of guidelines would help a great deal to those who 'really' want to make a long term /stable coin... and would like some rules to follow so they do not get attacked as 'scamcoin' bla bla.

[Spoetnik]

Simple..

Taking a pile of coins for some purpose ahead of time.

The classic definition goes like this..

I start a new coin then before i share the coin so the public can start mining
i go and mine a pile of them on my own privately.
(For example i go and mine the first 20 blocks of a coin on my own then post the coin publicly)

I also think this is pretty much what ICO's are.
They basically mine (ahead of time) ALL the coins !
Then they take their cut or do what ever the hell they want with them.
Which is a massive vulnerability and opportunity we should not be permitting dev's to do.

The term is regarded as negative because of it's perception as being a negative & unfair thing.

By the way INTENT means nothing.. that is irrelevant.

[decryptionary]

Premine has some pretty serious negative feelings associated with it.

I've defined it in Decryptionary at:
https://decryptionary.com/dictionary/premine/

[barrywblack]

I've changed the definition for public-premine to the one below which is based on SunnyKing's feedback.

Public premine - when a coin is launched with no advanced notice and low difficulty

This still means that the majority of coins are public premined

That's why I mentioned in another thread it would be nice to have a sticky labeled "Releasing a new coin?  Guidelines to follow"

Now most people will say -- well, if you're releasing a new coin you should know the common complaints.
Perhaps... perhaps people have their own views of what they deem important/un-important.

A majority voted list of guidelines would help a great deal to those who 'really' want to make a long term /stable coin... and would like some rules to follow so they do not get attacked as 'scamcoin' bla bla.

Thank you! Not all who premine are in it to "pump and dump" even though some have.

I agree "nice to have a sticky labeled "Releasing a new coin?  Guidelines to follow"", since there are those that have good reason for a small premine, as outlined.

[btcluisdiki]

As per definition, Premining is a system where the developer allocate a certain amount of currency credit to an address before the source code is published to the public. This is served to cover up the expenses of some fees like listing in exchanges or developing of core features say of block explorers. It is good for the developers as it gives them the power to use it for publicity and use it for promotion purposes.

[dkbit98]

Do we have any list of coins that where premined and how many %

I know that CMC used to have this, but they removed it...

Best links I could find are this:

https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@ppcman/63-of-the-top-100-coins-on-coinmarketcap-are-premined-be-very-very-careful

https://themerkle.com/6-of-the-largest-cryptocurrency-premines-in-history/

https://coinmarketsum.com/premined/all/