How to start altcoin development?

[aidanb]

I'm new to crypto currencies (last several months), although not new to programming.

I've heard from some people that a good way to get into crypto development is to look for abandoned altcoins, go through the code to try and understand it, deploy and update it, learning along the way. However as I go through some of the older posts in Announcement (Altcoins) almost all of them appear to be clones of each other, and there aren't any really simple altcoins I can go through.

Does anyone have any good altcoins with a relatively easy setup that I can go through the source code and learn how it all works? If anyone has any better ideas on how to start development in this space then I'm all ears too.

Thanks!

[Oceat]

I think you should visit also the Project Development Board as well someone might help your problem there. Anyway alt-coins is just almost a clone of bitcoin but customized to add some new features. That's all i know though!

[aidanb]

I think you should visit also the Project Development Board as well someone might help your problem there. Anyway alt-coins is just almost a clone of bitcoin but customized to add some new features. That's all i know though!

You're right, a lot of the coins I looked at were clones of Bitcoin/Litecoin. But there's also altcoins that have developed their own code. I'm wondering if there are any more simple coins that would be a good place to start development practice.

[Red-Apple]

here is an idea don't think about developing your new altcoin just yet.
first try and spend some time educating yourself on subjects such as cryptography, and then cryptocurrencies and how they use it.

then if you are already good at programming as you claim, start picking an existing coin and contribute to its development. it can be a coin that you liked in step one of your educating yourself.

in this process you first become familiar with the whole thing, then you come up with ideas. you see what is lacking, what is needed and how you can improve it. then implement that idea.

[aidanb]

here is an idea don't think about developing your new altcoin just yet.
first try and spend some time educating yourself on subjects such as cryptography, and then cryptocurrencies and how they use it.

then if you are already good at programming as you claim, start picking an existing coin and contribute to its development. it can be a coin that you liked in step one of your educating yourself.

in this process you first become familiar with the whole thing, then you come up with ideas. you see what is lacking, what is needed and how you can improve it. then implement that idea.

I don't want to make my own currency, at least not yet. I'm just wanting to take the first step in learning how to. I've already learnt quite a bit about cryptography and its implementation. I did my undergrad in IT Sec, so that was a help.

There are several teams I'm following at the moment, so I'll try and contribute to some of them. Thanks for the tips!

[sad_miner]

I don't want to make my own currency, at least not yet. I'm just wanting to take the first step in learning how to. I've already learnt quite a bit about cryptography and its implementation. I did my undergrad in IT Sec, so that was a help.

There are several teams I'm following at the moment, so I'll try and contribute to some of them. Thanks for the tips!

How far have you managed to get?  Even the ScroogeCoin assignment for the cryptocurrency course (@coursera offered by Princeton) wasn't very straightforward.  Then again I had more difficulty with Java than anything else.  Haven't done anything serious with Java for 7 years now.

I'm even willing to put some BTC towards an alt-coin demo.  If it documents well, and explains differences (e.g. between this abc-coin and Litecoin from which it was forked) then all the better.

[aidanb]

I don't want to make my own currency, at least not yet. I'm just wanting to take the first step in learning how to. I've already learnt quite a bit about cryptography and its implementation. I did my undergrad in IT Sec, so that was a help.

There are several teams I'm following at the moment, so I'll try and contribute to some of them. Thanks for the tips!

How far have you managed to get?  Even the ScroogeCoin assignment for the cryptocurrency course (@coursera offered by Princeton) wasn't very straightforward.  Then again I had more difficulty with Java than anything else.  Haven't done anything serious with Java for 7 years now.

I'm even willing to put some BTC towards an alt-coin demo.  If it documents well, and explains differences (e.g. between this abc-coin and Litecoin from which it was forked) then all the better.

Yeah I couldn't do the ScroogeCoin assignment. Spent about 25 minutes trying to work out exactly what I needed to do but couldn't work it out. I'll likely go back to it in a few weeks and try again. That course is a pretty good introduction though. I've made some Youtube tutorials on other topics before, so I was planning on making some on developing cryptos once I get my head around it all and start developing.

Possibly the best 'intro' to blockchain programming article I found was http://blockxchain.org/2017/06/04/building-a-blockchain-with-python-1/ about building a basic blockchain with Python. Inspired by a similar article using Javascript https://medium.com/@lhartikk/a-blockchain-in-200-lines-of-code-963cc1cc0e54.

They're still only really simple examples, so I'm going to try fill out the Python one and make it more complex. If I get proficient enough I'll make some Youtube tutorials. A group I follow implemented their first testnet version entirely in Python, so I feel like that will be a good resource for me.

If you're wanting some more information on making Litecoin clones these tutorials might be of use to you https://www.youtube.com/user/whatthefluxable. But I'm more trying to build it from scratch to try and understand it as much as I can, not just make a clone of an existing coin.

I do feel like there isn't enough information out there to help developers get over the initial hurdle for starting blockchain development. Or at least it's not all easily accessible.

Feel free to message me if you get much further with this. I'd like to get in contact with some other new developers and maybe share what resources they're using.

[Iolanta]

There is a new cryptocurrency Foodcoin (FdC).

It is a payment tool for foodcoin ecosystem, which operates at the restaurants, cafes, all services of 1000Ecofarms platform (the platform works since 2014), farmer’s markets and etc. It is very useful payment tool for international food and agricultural business activity.

If you’re interested, you can read more about it here https://www.foodcoin.io/

[sad_miner]

If you're wanting some more information on making Litecoin clones these tutorials might be of use to you https://www.youtube.com/user/whatthefluxable. But I'm more trying to build it from scratch to try and understand it as much as I can, not just make a clone of an existing coin.

I do feel like there isn't enough information out there to help developers get over the initial hurdle for starting blockchain development. Or at least it's not all easily accessible.

Feel free to message me if you get much further with this. I'd like to get in contact with some other new developers and maybe share what resources they're using.

Yes, my motivation for creating a coin is to step through the details of how Bitcoin is implemented, and find the main differences between Bitcoin and other coins.  I don't see the point in creating a coin other than to learn about the implementation details of Bitcoin and the bigger alt-coins.

There isn't really enough information out there.  Even Hal Finney had quite a few questions for Satoshi on the implementation details.  So nobody should feel bad - if Hal Finney was puzzled at first, we're all in good company.   It's just that Satoshi did things in a different way; he/she/they tried to implement a system that solved some problems and even appeared to predict the future to a certain extent.  Once Satoshi was satisfied these main problems were solved in the software, Satoshi sent some emails then put the paper out there.

The software is quirky and full of bizarre details like mixing little and big endian integers, var ints when the version header might have sufficed, the use of a certain elliptic curve for performance reasons then an apparent "fuck it..."  There's a lot more, although that just ads to the fascination for some; for others they recognize that real software is full of trade-offs, hacks, legacy cruft and compromises.

I'm still working on building my way up from earlier reference implementations, as well as Googling for all the rest.  I have 0.2.0, the first version that supported Linux (Ubuntu to be more precise) and compiling and stepping through it.  I've also changed the genesis block a couple of times and tried mining.  I still have a fair way to go I think.  The breadth of knowledge and experience needed to understand Bitcoin is astonishing.  I'm sticking to technical details.  One could spend a life time studying computer science, cryptography, economics, law, government, the history of money, finance, etc., and still not achieve the astonishing level of insight that Satoshi and others possessed.

We should definitely collaborate to try and achieve a satisfactory understanding and invite others on board, whatever their experience or expertise.

[rext]

I think you should visit also the Project Development Board as well someone might help your problem there. Anyway alt-coins is just almost a clone of bitcoin but customized to add some new features. That's all i know though!

First of all, to develop, you need to have really good ideas to attract the investors, and you also need to hire developers for your project. They will work and eventually, organize the ICO to develop for your project.

[NataliaNi]

You can find some basic tips on altcoin development here: https://softmedialab.com/blog/how-to-develop-altcoin/

[kolonel_x]

I'm new to crypto currencies (last several months), although not new to programming.

I've heard from some people that a good way to get into crypto development is to look for abandoned altcoins, go through the code to try and understand it, deploy and update it, learning along the way. However as I go through some of the older posts in Announcement (Altcoins) almost all of them appear to be clones of each other, and there aren't any really simple altcoins I can go through.

Does anyone have any good altcoins with a relatively easy setup that I can go through the source code and learn how it all works? If anyone has any better ideas on how to start development in this space then I'm all ears too.

Thanks!

I think making a coin is very easy, the most difficult is how to think about the concepts and goals of the coin, after that how to marketing the project tersebut.itu the hard

[iamsediii]

If you develop a cryptocurrency, you need good programmers, web developers, analyst and experts. You become a CEO, you need great ideas to create whitepaper (the road of your development progress). If you want to start learning just research what is the guide to become a success CEO of cryptocurrency.