[ANN][YAC] YACoin ongoing development

[rbdrbd]

So on the topic of YaCoin development, I wanted to put forth some ideas on how to increase the coin’s adoption.

I think we can all agree that currently, this is a coin developed by technical folks, for technical folks. You could say the same thing is true for most all altcoins, and you’d be right. Their technical complexity (both conceptually and from a day-to-day operational standpoint of the current toolset and utilities) is a big factor keeping them from starting to enter wider adoption. Bitcoin itself is just now starting to get over this with sites like Coinbase and Bitpay.

However, with YaCoin, we have a coin where money can be made with no special hardware required beyond a general purpose CPU. Admittedly, the money is not much at all today, but when I think of the number of folks that may be open to running this on their work computers, for instance to make some coins to play around with, it’s extremely compelling because that both increases knowledge and interest in the coin (and digital currencies in general), along with strengthening the network by leaps and bounds (which lends back into the former in a virtuous and synergistic cycle).

However, I believe that the technical hurdles with the toolset are still insurmountable for most folks, and are ones that YaCoin inherited from Bitcoin, etc. Things like:

•   Downloading the client as a zip file, with a bunch of DLLs and no installer. Huh?
•   The wallet.dat file is stored in a separate location from the program itself (makes sense, since it’s tied to the user, but it can be a pain to find if you don’t know that).
•   Want to mine for coins? You have to resort to either creating and editing some (seemingly) random .conf file you have to create in some (seemingly) random directory, or downloading and figuring out command-line switches for an external mining program like minerd or cgminer
•   So I finally do that, and then get some coins… what now?


For us, none of these are show stoppers, but for 99% of computer users…you’d lose them at the first one. I am definitely not proposing making this thing appealing to 99% of computer users, since most of them at this point wouldn't understand the concept of a digital currency anyhow. I’d rather be interesting in focusing on enhancing the client design to open this up to the top 10% of computer users, who have the skills and possible inclination, but don’t necessarily want to read a book on these coins to figure them out. As a bonus, you’d greatly simplify things for the existing yacoin community (if I can blaze through an installer to set up yacoin on a random box, awesome). Focusing on Windows at least at first, for obvious reasons, it would be something like the following:

•   Start by creating an installer for the yacoin client. And/or, have a “portable” version that you can throw on a USB stick, that throws the wallet, blockchain, etc right there in a subdirectory under the .exe
•   Enhance the yacoin client to come packaged with minerd. Add a tab to the GUI to start and stop mining (and allow the user to auto-start the client and therefore mining at machine startup). Starting mining would find a suitable p2pool, and launch minerd, pointing at that. Coins would then naturally end up in the user’s wallet.
•   Possibly include a ticker in the client showing announcements (such as “Complexity increase in 2 days. Your hashrate will be cut in half.” and the current yacoin price, for instance)
•   Tutorials around this client, along with explaining about selling/trading the coins on an exchange.
•   Future ideas of web-wallets for yacoin, such as a coinbase clone….

At this point, you have a coin with more user-friendliness that any altcoin, which I believe matches its technical profile as a CPU-mineable coin. And the fact that you introduce new folks into the digital currency space by means of yacoin would be an amazing feat.

Comments, suggestions? I am a developer and could assist with some of these tasks, as well as contributing some YAC as the start of a bounty pool (my time is limited however as I run a rapidly growing business).

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[seleme]

Yep, all good points for any crypto, not only YAC.

It's very tech thing for average PC user.

[hanzac]

I think current client is too complex, it will be better to separate the GUI client from the server part. I'm inclining to make a GUI client or Web client talk to the server via RPC-JSON api. This can bring more people to write more advanced GUI client.

[cycloid]

So on the topic of YaCoin development, I wanted to put forth some ideas on how to increase the coin’s adoption.

I think we can all agree that currently, this is a coin developed by technical folks, for technical folks. You could say the same thing is true for most all altcoins, and you’d be right. Their technical complexity (both conceptually and from a day-to-day operational standpoint of the current toolset and utilities) is a big factor keeping them from starting to enter wider adoption. Bitcoin itself is just now starting to get over this with sites like Coinbase and Bitpay.

However, with YaCoin, we have a coin where money can be made with no special hardware required beyond a general purpose CPU. Admittedly, the money is not much at all today, but when I think of the number of folks that may be open to running this on their work computers, for instance to make some coins to play around with, it’s extremely compelling because that both increases knowledge and interest in the coin (and digital currencies in general), along with strengthening the network by leaps and bounds (which lends back into the former in a virtuous and synergistic cycle).

However, I believe that the technical hurdles with the toolset are still insurmountable for most folks, and are ones that YaCoin inherited from Bitcoin, etc. Things like:

•   Downloading the client as a zip file, with a bunch of DLLs and no installer. Huh?
•   The wallet.dat file is stored in a separate location from the program itself (makes sense, since it’s tied to the user, but it can be a pain to find if you don’t know that).
•   Want to mine for coins? You have to resort to either creating and editing some (seemingly) random .conf file you have to create in some (seemingly) random directory, or downloading and figuring out command-line switches for an external mining program like minerd or cgminer
•   So I finally do that, and then get some coins… what now?


For us, none of these are show stoppers, but for 99% of computer users…you’d lose them at the first one. I am definitely not proposing making this thing appealing to 99% of computer users, since most of them at this point wouldn't understand the concept of a digital currency anyhow. I’d rather be interesting in focusing on enhancing the client design to open this up to the top 10% of computer users, who have the skills and possible inclination, but don’t necessarily want to read a book on these coins to figure them out. As a bonus, you’d greatly simplify things for the existing yacoin community (if I can blaze through an installer to set up yacoin on a random box, awesome). Focusing on Windows at least at first, for obvious reasons, it would be something like the following:

•   Start by creating an installer for the yacoin client. And/or, have a “portable” version that you can throw on a USB stick, that throws the wallet, blockchain, etc right there in a subdirectory under the .exe
•   Enhance the yacoin client to come packaged with minerd. Add a tab to the GUI to start and stop mining (and allow the user to auto-start the client and therefore mining at machine startup). Starting mining would find a suitable p2pool, and launch minerd, pointing at that. Coins would then naturally end up in the user’s wallet.
•   Possibly include a ticker in the client showing announcements (such as “Complexity increase in 2 days. Your hashrate will be cut in half.” and the current yacoin price, for instance)
•   Tutorials around this client, along with explaining about selling/trading the coins on an exchange.
•   Future ideas of web-wallets for yacoin, such as a coinbase clone….

At this point, you have a coin with more user-friendliness that any altcoin, which I believe matches its technical profile as a CPU-mineable coin. And the fact that you introduce new folks into the digital currency space by means of yacoin would be an amazing feat.

Comments, suggestions? I am a developer and could assist with some of these tasks, as well as contributing some YAC as the start of a bounty pool (my time is limited however as I run a rapidly growing business).

Spot on +1

[Ranplan]

Some ideas more to develop the coin could an webapp (like bitminter java) or even a web based app, people get connected luch the app and get coin. Do not ask me to realize those idea please I'was already fighting to understand how to set "Minerd" 

[rbdrbd]

I think current client is too complex, it will be better to separate the GUI client from the server part. I'm inclining to make a GUI client or Web client talk to the server via RPC-JSON api. This can bring more people to write more advanced GUI client.

Yes, excellent idea. Having the server either be an executable that's fired off as a Windows service, or just started as a normal program. Or, you could take it out to a library-type interface, where it's initialized as part of another program...and bindings for other languages such as Python, Perl, PHP, etc could be wrapped around that with SWIG, for instance.

Having to write a bunch of GUI code in C/C++ is just a major headache. Taking this thing out to a light JSON RPC-driven interoperability layer where the GUI could be web based, or based on another (more high level language) such as Python, .NET, etc. would be a huge boon.

And yes, the entire -qt interface is a bit clunky period.

As a first step, just having an installer that installed shortcuts to launch:
1. the QT interface
2. a bat file that queried yacoind for the primary wallet address on startup, and then launched minerd with the top 3 p2pools, specifying that address to receive payment for both
3. a link to a howto document on mining, selling YaCoin on the exchanges, etc
(4. allowed that bat file to be autolaunched at startup (e.g. added to the Startup group under windows)

Would be a big step.

[bitdwarf]

We should link somewhere any scripts to check transactions and send files (to sell automatically digital stuff) and tips on how to use them with YaCoin.

[tamehuang]

good job. i have download it instead of the official one

[WindMaster]

As a first step, just having an installer that installed shortcuts to launch:
1. the QT interface
2. a bat file that queried yacoind for the primary wallet address on startup, and then launched minerd with the top 3 p2pools, specifying that address to receive payment for both
3. a link to a howto document on mining, selling YaCoin on the exchanges, etc
(4. allowed that bat file to be autolaunched at startup (e.g. added to the Startup group under windows)

A few days ago I started scripting up a Windows installer using NSIS (an open source Windows installer builder created by Nullsoft, sorta like a "lite" variation of the InstallShield tools).  It's just for installing the QT client itself though and not most of the other items in the above list, which would itself be a pretty big step over the current state of things.

Before we can build a Windows installer, there's a few decisions to be made about how to deal with the Windows build issues.  Hanzac has published info in this thread for what to tweak to build the Windows version of the QT client w/o SSE enabled, as SSE breaks compilation of the scrypt-jane library.  Someone PM'd me a tip last week that changes were pushed to the scrypt-jane GitHub repository that fix Windows compilation issues, but I have not yet had a chance to pull them and verify whether that makes the issue go away.  Possible build strategy to keep the number of large'ish EXE's down in the installer could be to include a 32-bit EXE w/o SSE, and a 64-bit EXE w/ SSE enabled (assuming the new version of the scrypt-jane library unbroke that on Windows), with the installer making the choice of which EXE to install based on CPU type and Windows version (or allowing the user to force one version or other through some "Advanced" settings section in the installer).

On #2, anyone have further thoughts on whether a third-party miner (cpuminer) should indeed be included in the main YACoin installer, or if that would be better divided into a 2nd, different installer?  Same for selecting which p2pools to sort of "endorse" as part of the installer, when we know that p2pools are going to be a fast-moving target and any that are selected might randomly disappear or misbehave in the future, causing basically broken shortcuts unless someone is constantly checking for new versions of the client installer.

If anyone wants to do development work that will feed back to my unofficial version of the YACoin client, create a GitHub account (if you don't already have one), go to the URL for my version of the client, and use the Fork button to make a copy of my repository into your own GitHub account.  At that point you can do any development work or testing in your own repository.  Once you've implemented feature(s) or bug fixes you feel are ready for inclusion in the YACoin client, you can submit a pull request back to my repository and I'll look over the changes for sanity and safety before merging them into my version of the client (or I'll get in touch with you if I have questions).

[cryptrol]

Before we can build a Windows installer, there's a few decisions to be made about how to deal with the Windows build issues.  Hanzac has published info in this thread for what to tweak to build the Windows version of the QT client w/o SSE enabled, as SSE breaks compilation of the scrypt-jane library.  Someone PM'd me a tip last week that changes were pushed to the scrypt-jane GitHub repository that fix Windows compilation issues, but I have not yet had a chance to pull them and verify whether that makes the issue go away. 

I have tested the latest scrypt-jane library and had no problems with SSE, although I don't recall having issues with SSE before ...
Maybe I can try to fork you and include the latest scrypt-jane library to test. The windows building instructions could also be improved, they come from NVC source and are pretty useless right now (I mean the ones under the /doc folder).

[forsetifox]

Has anyone made a yacoind.exe for windows yet?

[rbdrbd]

Has anyone made a yacoind.exe for windows yet?

Stupid question, related to this, have updated binaries off of WindMaster's build been released, or if I want to get an updated binary for Windows, I would have to compile it myself?

[forsetifox]

I compiled a version of win64 from windmaster's git branch, if you have 64-bit windows installed, you can try it.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hnindev/files/yacoin-qt-0.4.0.0-g32a928e-winx64.zip

This is the newest one I know of.

[digger]

for those interesting with yac, please come here to mine http://yac.ltcoin.net

[theprofileth]

I would just like to ask about Proof of Stake minting and the issue with locked wallets.
So I have been told that if you locked your wallet you cant receive proof of stale minting just as you can't receive proof of share minting while it is locked.
If this is true can someone tell me how to unlock my wallet and can someone work on fixing this issue please  

[seleme]

send your coins to some exchange, reinstall everything, send coins back home. Guess that should work.

[hanzac]

I would just like to ask about Proof of Stake minting and the issue with locked wallets.
So I have been told that if you locked your wallet you cant receive proof of stale minting just as you can't receive proof of share minting while it is locked.
If this is true can someone tell me how to unlock my wallet and can someone work on fixing this issue please  

POS needs 30 days coins idle in your unlock wallet if I recall correctly. It's the same as NVC & PPC.

[rbdrbd]

I would just like to ask about Proof of Stake minting and the issue with locked wallets.
So I have been told that if you locked your wallet you cant receive proof of stale minting just as you can't receive proof of share minting while it is locked.
If this is true can someone tell me how to unlock my wallet and can someone work on fixing this issue please  

POS needs 30 days coins idle in your unlock wallet if I recall correctly. It's the same as NVC & PPC.

Also see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187714.0

Add this to the list of tasks to simplify in yacoin. Looks like it needs yacoind.exe under windows.

[rbdrbd]

On #2, anyone have further thoughts on whether a third-party miner (cpuminer) should indeed be included in the main YACoin installer, or if that would be better divided into a 2nd, different installer?  Same for selecting which p2pools to sort of "endorse" as part of the installer, when we know that p2pools are going to be a fast-moving target and any that are selected might randomly disappear or misbehave in the future, causing basically broken shortcuts unless someone is constantly checking for new versions of the client installer.

On the first point, I'd rather it all be in a single installer. I think we should definitely aim to keep the whole process as simple as possible (i.e. one installer to run over two).

As far as p2pools, I proposed that because with pushpools, there is the whole setup routine (register, set up worker, etc) that we avoid with p2pool. However, as you said, they can be a fast moving target. We have a few options here:

a. Hardcode it with the 3 or 4 most popular p2pools (via multiple -o options...so even if one or two go down, we're still good)
b. the script that launches the miner makes a web service call to a central service (on google appengine for example) that will feed back a "current" list of p2pool hostnames. From this, the command line arguments are constructed. Making such a web service would be trivial. The script could be created that a default, hardcoded list would be used if this webservice was down.
c. Achieve a similar effect to b above by using round-robin DNS (CNAME entries)...I don't know enough about p2pool to know if this will work...

[azwccc]

Is there any upgrade in QT?