[ANN][PRA] Practice Coin - Learn by Doing

[tearodactyl]

Status update:
Cloning the latest version of Litecoin - 0.13.2.1
All the guides are at least two years old and the codebase has been evolving.
The code is compiling now on Linux, but the Genesis block generation is still broken. Will keep you posted.

Pretty sure that part has been vacant from The Official Bitcoin And Litecoin repos for some time, you can see on many altcoins what needs to be added and changed.

Planning on parameters:
6 min blocks - 240/day, with 100 coin reward. Halfing every 1000 days, three times total (50,25,12.5).
All 45,000,000 coins to be emitted in ~11 years (do check my math, please)
  [If folks feel strongly abut this, let's discuss HF in 10 years]
5 confirmations (there is no solid science behind 6) - 30 min
Bitcoin difficulty adjustment algo, every 1 hour (10 blocks) - can build-in a more sophisticated one later, but 1h should be quite responsive, without being way jerky.
BIP9 75/95% activation over 2 days (480 blocks).
Want Segwit, just for fun, and can active out-of-the-gate.
Looking for advice on accelerated BIP68,112,113 activation.
Checkpoints
2% pre-mine (900,000) to be used for promotions, bounties, private placement.
10% block reward fee - 5% goes to nodes operators, 5% for bounties, operations (details TBD and totally open for discussion)
VPS and seeder, mining pool and block explorer are TBD, and there are participants quite capable of contributing those.

As of today, still debugging re-hashing during the Genesis block generation, after parameters are updated. The code's been moved around mid-2015[0.11], but still no comments, and hard-coded constants are used exclusively.
Rather disillusioned by the state of the stock Bitcoin/Litecoin codebase. A commercial coder, a year out of a state college could not get away with this. If this is indicative of Core's engineering expertise, and the quality of improvements over past seven years, the technology is in trouble. But this is must be intentional, likely for "job security" reasons. Plus a 'hack' mindset, that coding style has to be obscure and terse. As if little code translates into a tight and fast executable.

Whatever, will get through it. Better yet, school me. Show me modifications to Litecoin 0.13.2.1 chainparams.cpp:115-118, that build and run. Say, simply change 50 to 100.

Also, it would be great if anyone can make the Litecoin Windows build work with the "Windows Sybsystem for Linux", that Bitcoin 0.14 now supports. It's quick and deterministic and is likely the way Bitcoin clones will be built going forward.
  Tear

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[cpugpumining]

Ive just gotten into coin mining and gonna build a PC and compare results with that and my current rig.  Ill post benchmarks, details etc for this thing.  Seems like a better use of my time than playing video games.  Will have NVidia card not sure what yet, have 1080 right now, and ill try using NiceHash since it seems easy enough for now.

[tearodactyl]

As of today, still debugging re-hashing during the Genesis block generation, after parameters are updated. The code's been moved around mid-2015[0.11], but still no comments, and hard-coded constants are used exclusively.
Rather disillusioned by the state of the stock Bitcoin/Litecoin codebase. A commercial coder, a year out of a state college could not get away with this. If this is indicative of Core's engineering expertise, and the quality of improvements over past seven years, the technology is in trouble. But this is must be intentional, likely for "job security" reasons. Plus a 'hack' mindset, that coding style has to be obscure and terse. As if little code translates into a tight and fast executable.

Status update on Genesis Block generation.
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/19/genesis-block/

[tearodactyl]

Folks, in researching all the established Coin generation services I discovered that the venerable coincreator.net domain was abandoned. So, I got it through an auction for $200, a year of registration included. Then threw a super primitive site on it, just a placeholder really. Parts of the original site are in the Internet Archive.
http://coincreator.net/

Not only all kinds of great SEO for the main project site, but now I'm getting a bunch of requests for coins, from all over. More than I can even field. So, at this junction, I'm looking to connect with experienced Altcoin devs, designers, and promoters for collaborative work. I will even go ahead and feed my portion of the profit back into the Practice Coin project, to pay for infrastructure and if there are any funds left, to distribute it as a dividend to participants.

To discuss further, register on http://practicecoin.com/index.php/forum/practice-coin-forum/
  Tearo

[YarkoL]

This seems to me a very laudable and much needed project, I'll see if I can
contribute within the confines of my own time budget

[tearodactyl]

Ive just gotten into coin mining and gonna build a PC and compare results with that and my current rig.  I'll post benchmarks, details etc for this thing.  Seems like a better use of my time than playing video games.  Will have NVidia card not sure what yet, have 1080 right now, and ill try using NiceHash since it seems easy enough for now.

Mr. CGM, if I may call you that.
Welcome to our thread, and I totally look forward to learning more about the details of putting together a rig from scratch. Would you be able to give us the technical specs, perhaps even prices that you were able to score on the components?
  Tearo
P.S. Our own Forum now has a Mining thread, so kindly cross-post there, please.
http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/mining/

[tearodactyl]

This seems to me a very laudable and much-needed project, I'll see if I can contribute within the confines of my own time budget

YarkoL, thanks so much for your kind words. I felt likewise when I got started, but so far it has been a tad of slow going for me.
Though I'm making progress with the Litecoin clone, and there are 2-3 devs showing interest.

Feel free to join our dedicated Forum, and we'll take it from there. http://practicecoin.com/index.php/forum/practice-coin-forum/
I'm getting ready to discuss running a testnet version of the clone, and also to review the PRA coin parameters.
  Tearo

[richpress]

now this is a coin with valuable purpose.
I'm a web developer and specialise in wordpress, if you need any consulting or integration please i'm happy to help.

[tearodactyl]

now this is a coin with valuable purpose.
I'm a web developer and specialise in wordpress, if you need any consulting or integration please i'm happy to help.

Richpress, thanks for giving us a look.
Could you take a look at our project sites and give some suggestions, please. http://practicecoin.com/index.php/blog/
Also, ping we personally and we'll take it from there.
  Tearo

[tearodactyl]

I'm getting a bunch of requests for coins, more than I can field. Having found better-known services to be lacking, I'm now contacting some folks I know in the field. But experienced Altcoin devs, designers, and promoters can still participate. http://practicecoin.com/index.php/forum/practice-coin-forum/

Actually, right now I could use folks with good PM and org skills, to wade through many sets of requirements and requests for a quote.

I will feed my portion of the profit back into the Practice Coin project, to pay for infrastructure and if there are any funds left, to distribute it as a dividend.
  Tearo

[tearodactyl]

Could folks with solid insights school us on PoS, beyond the basics, please? http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/coin-types/#post-156

Include limitations of the old schemes and what the state-of-the-art looks like these days. A mention of modern PoS coins with best features would be useful.

What parameters are best suited to the interests of general public vs. the coin owner and how to tell scams. Whether to PoS from the start or begin with PoW and switch at a certain block.

The outcome of this discussion will inform the decisions, when we are ready to craft a PoS coin of our own.
  Tearo

[YarkoL]

Could folks with solid insights school us on PoS, beyond the basics, please? http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/coin-types/#post-156

Include limitations of the old schemes and what the state-of-the-art looks like these days. A mention of modern PoS coins with best features would be useful.

What parameters are best suited to the interests of general public vs. the coin owner and how to tell scams. Whether to PoS from the start or begin with PoW and switch at a certain block.

The outcome of this discussion will inform the decisions, when we are ready to craft a PoS coin of our own.
  Tearo

Some very general guidelines, assuming you're starting from Peercoin-based PoS;
don't make the block interval too short to avoid excessive forking. 2 minutes min
Also balance the yearly interest with the transaction fees, so there is no or very little inflation.

Minimum coin age to start staking? This open to debate, some coins dispense with it
entirely, peercoin has quite a long period. The rationale is to prevent a certain sort of attack, but long
maturation period encourages minters to keep their nodes offline and open them only for
staking, thus diminishing the network security. I would put couple of days here.

It's simplest to do the initial distribution with PoW, and not make the cutoff block too early.
I think at least a month, and the more the better.

Most PoS I've seen (and I've been away from the scene for a while now)
 are based on really old < Bitcoin 0.9 sources, if anyone has seen
a decent PoS that uses autotools for the builds, I'd like to know about it

 

[dfd1]

I think you should try to clone ethereum, it's easy coin to clone and people who not familiar with tech love it very much.
I never cloned it myself, but it's looks like all you need is to generate new genesis_block.json.
There is some instructions for ethereum on genesis generation.
https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/07/27/final-steps/
Probably I'm wrong and some other important steps required for cloning ethereum, it would be fine if some dev shows up and help with it.
You can start little crowdfunding too, I will pay $100 in btc personally to first guy who will make a long youtube video with complete step-by-step guide for people not familiar with programming and crypto on cloning ethereum and running it as a new coin*.
*hardcoded checkpoints creation should be mentioned, since mysterious '51 Crew' usually bother to attack all new ethereum clones

dfd1, I may not be your guy, to make the video, but as much as I've avoided Ethereum so far, it is THE Altcoin, and all the cool kids are all over it  
More than happy to cover half of that 0.01 BTC bounty you are suggesting, for the Ethereum cloning guide.
Made a list of suggestions from the readers so far http://practicecoin.com/index.php/2017/04/04/reader-suggestions/
  Tearo

dfd1, the link you cite is kinda dated. Have you seen more?

To bounty this work, we need to spec exactly what we expect, perhaps also including what's already covered here and there, plus this and that and diagrams other things and references and links

PPT and video released under the BY-SA Creative Commons Licence, where they get attribution. Bragging rights and a link from our soon-to-be-famous practicecoin.com site are also included.

How about we frame it in terms familiar to the ETH bunch - each pitch in 1 ETH, which just happens to be around $50. I have a dozen or so ETH somewhere, from before the DAO incident. Where could we advertise the bounty, for the right folks to see it? I bet them ETH freaks would want to use a smart contract escrow for this
  Tearo

It's not so huge payment to ask video creator so much.
I don't want to limit author with licenses and anything, all I want to see is a video on youtube with step by step guide for newbies on ethereum cloning.  Probably something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86jqAfySi64
All rights belong to video creator, he can do with video whatever he wants, no necessary links or any limitations.
I don't have ethereum, so probably I will stick to 0.05 btc ( no less than $50 no more than $100 in case of price change), paid  by me to the first guy who posted link to his video in this thread.

[Naruby]

I was playing with the idea to do an upgraded version of the YouTube video serie your mention.
Does it need to be an ethereum clone?
Nothing against ethereum, I just didn't study there code yet.

[dfd1]

I was playing with the idea to do an upgraded version of the YouTube video serie your mention.
Does it need to be an ethereum clone?
Nothing against ethereum, I just didn't study there code yet.

Yep 
It's looks like there is still no guide for ethereum clone with checkpoints, so I think it will be useful one, and my bounty for a video about ethereum only. Someone probably can set additional bounty for some other coin, though.

[tearodactyl]

Could folks with solid insights school us on PoS, beyond the basics, please? http://practicecoin.com/index.php/topic/coin-types/#post-156
What parameters are best suited to the interests of general public vs. the coin owner and how to tell scams. Whether to PoS from the start or begin with PoW and switch at a certain block.

Some very general guidelines, assuming you're starting from Peercoin-based PoS;
don't make the block interval too short to avoid excessive forking. 2 minutes min
Also balance the yearly interest with the transaction fees, so there is no or very little inflation.

YarkoL, thanks for pitching in. PoS topic is important to so many folks in the field that I can no longer ignore it, even though being a Crypto algo person, PoW is so much more familiar to me.
Will keep summarizing the info on the site and will ask for a review once there is a critical mass of content.
  Tearo

[tearodactyl]

I don't have ethereum, so probably I will stick to 0.05 btc ( no less than $50 no more than $100 in case of price change), paid by me to the first guy who posted link to his video in this thread.

Was only thinking a bounty in ETH to make it sound sexier to the Ethereum boys. Don't care that much and will follow your lead.
  Tearo

[tearodactyl]

Does anyone want to tackle a PIVX clone gig?
Honing in on requirements with the customer and getting ready to quote.
Revenue split with my portion going to this project.
Quick response appreciated, before I announce on the more visible thread.
  Tearo

[tearodactyl]

Does anyone want to tackle a PIVX clone gig?
Honing in on requirements with the customer and getting ready to quote.
Revenue split with my portion going to this project.
Quick response appreciated, before I announce on the more visible thread.

Posted a general WANTED ad, but no replies so far 
Kindly post on the thread to keep it in public's eye. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1889774.0
Any coin made off these gigs goes right into this project, and I'll tell you all about it.
  Tearo

[playersfun]

Hi,
i love your site and your practicecoin.
Can you pls also explain how i can setup a node on a ubuntu server for windows players? This would be great.