New release of MultiCoin client a branch of the BitCoin client

[sacarlson]

What is the MultiCoin client:  http://exchange.beertokens.info/docs/images/multcoin150x50.png
Last update to this article 8/6/11 5:36pm bkk time
The MultiCoin client is a  slightly modified and very experimental Bitcoin client that allows transactions with an unlimited number of crypto currencies block chains and also the creation of new crypto chains.   Each different crypto currency can have a different set of rules and a different root block that is controlled by settings in the MultiCoin config file.  Multicoin has also be opening up new methods of linked chains and advanced methods of transaction including escrow and multi sign transactions.   The code is open source and can be found at: https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin for the extended feature daemon version and https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin-qt for the qt lib based gui version .   The MultiCoin client will also be able to transact the new BeerTokens chain when the beertokens config file is released in the near future.  For more details about BeerTokens see http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9493.msg136917#msg136917.  The github released MultiCoin now also provides P2P escrow features that have been tested as working on testnet and weedsnet.  We are not sure if the escrow features in this version will ever work on Bitcoin Mainnet.  
   The future plans for Multicoin is to incorporate some of the other useful features  we now see in other branches of bitcoin and some not yet developed to add security for micro nets (very small group cyrpto currency chains) and  some of the other pull requests seen below:

already done
From day 1 MultiCoin has added the ability to transact on an unlimited number of block chains and also documented methods of creating new chains with new models and rules.  MultiCoin uses the proof by example method to show progress and as a method of documentation as seen in example bitcoin.conf.* files.

Add scriptPubKey enforced sendescrow and redeemescrow API calls
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/319

Created another branch of MultiCoin to be used as the gui client called MultiCoin-qt that is a branch of bitcoin-qt using the qt gui libs. this is now completed with preliminary tests complete and published at:
https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin-qt  in this gui version you can make cosmetic changes to the gui
from the config file including changing windows title and graphic icon. this version has most of the features of Multicoin except escrow at this time.

added support for namecoin for both MultiCoin and MultiCoin-qt with small changes and created an example bitcoin.conf.namecoin with namecoin chain specs.  preliminary tested with MultiCoin and MulitCoin-qt

Merged mining block number
as now seen in https://github.com/vinced/namecoin  with more info found: https://github.com/vinced/namecoin/blob/mergedmine/doc/README_merged-mining.md
This might eliminate the need for licensed Mining below.
This is now released on a new branch of MultiCoin-exp https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin-exp
as this is very very Experimental at this time I will keep it separate from our slightly more stable branches.  This branch is not really completed and has been put on the highest priority of testing and verification.  for details about the status and documentation of this branch see: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=24209.msg394289#msg394289  Update 7/26/11 we have preliminary tests working and I'm now running this branch 24/7 for my site on all 4 of my networks.

Present Primary next objectives
Alternate Chain Licensed Mining addition
See details of this below at: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=24209.msg347203#msg347203 in an attached article that will be updated as new idea's surface as to how to go about such an endeavour.


Todo list of wanted added pull requests.
if anyone can merge any of these into eather or both of my MultiCoin or MultiCoin-qt github release I will evaluate and incoporate them into my github to share with the world

Wallet and key import and export
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/220

Import Export Transactions (offline method of transaction)
https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=28278.msg372731#msg372731
https://github.com/piotrnar/bitcoin/tree/importexporttx
only planed to be incorporated into MultiCoin at this time.  will hold off on merge to MultiCoin-qt until more evaluation testing.

Backport to wx2.8 and dynamically link most libs.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/266
now canceled with the adoption to bitcoin-qt as the baseline for the gui of choice

Added -purgetx command line option.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/256

Sign and verify message with bitcoin address and public key
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/183

adding linked chaining method option to link into bitcoin chain or other for security model option. (07:54:55 AM) gmaxwell: The notion is that bitcoin miners could add a single hash to their coinbase, which represents the root of a merkle tree for committments to alternative chains (namecoin, etc). So that people who are interested in namecoin will mine bitcoin.  "United we stand"
this work is now in progress in the MultiCoin-exp branch but not completed or fully tested yet.


One of the goals of MultiCoin is to experiment with new features and try and document new alternative chain methods as seen discussed in the article https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_Chains .   For example Another alternative chain idea is to make it possible to add an optional rule in the config to only licensed miners to create blocks in an alternate crypto chains.
    When new Ideas appear and are made possible we will do what we can to incorporate them for people to start to try and test them for feasibility and to find and discuss security flaws.   The goal is that a group doesn't have to recompile a program to try and test or use a new crypto currency.  A group just agrees to use a defined config file that they setup and distribute to there members.  
    If you would like to chat about ideas or questions you might have about Multicoin you can come visit the Freenode IRC site at #multicoin.

What is WEEDS currency:
Weeds is another test crypto-currency, created for testing and as a proof of concept to using the new multi crypto-currency client now called MultiCoin.  Weeds also uses some of the new rules changes possible with MultiCoin that include controlled inflation.  In the case of Weeds all the coins were minted within the first 10 blocks in the chain for a total of 10,000,000 Weeds.  Weeds also has a set minimum of .01 transaction fee for every transaction.  This is all that is received by the minners that mine for Weeds.  For test distribution of Weeds you can trade them for tnBTC (testnet bitcoins) at the http://exchange.beertokens.info site.  An example of one of my weeds address is 2h232zEu77ERwWmR8Lw9k3NLSPnbjiFnSsJ . note the 2 at the front the header code for addresses is dec 243 , to see the complete specs of the weeds config I keep an updated copy posted as an example here: http://exchange.beertokens.info/docs/multicoin/bitcoin.conf.weeds .  All mined blocks and all transactions before and after the updated have remained intact from the magic number config change.

To configure Multicoin to operate on the WEEDS net, I do it like this.  Create a data dir example mkdir /home/sacarlson/.bitcoin/weeds;  cd /home/sacarlson/.bitcoin/weeds ; copy or symbolic link the bitcoin.conf.weeds into this directory.  wget http://exchange.beertokens.info/docs/multicoin/bitcoin.conf.weeds ; mv ./bitcoin.conf.weeds ./bitcoin.conf ; start your multicoin or multicoin-qt ; bitcoind -datadir=/home/sacarlson/.bitcoin/weeds/ ; this method should be similar on all other configs.

Update: as of 6/13/11 we have changed the 4 byte magic number in weeds to fix some problems and help support other things like bitcoin-abe that we now have a working version for weeds presently found in my patched branch of bitcoin-abe found here: https://github.com/sacarlson/bitcoin-abe .  to upgrade to the new magic number simply update your bitcoin.conf.weeds file from MultiCoin or MultiCoin-qt github software distribution or the updated link found here: http://exchange.beertokens.info/docs/multicoin/bitcoin.conf.weeds . So if you now fail to connect to the Weedsnet and see PROCESSMESSAGE MESSAGESTART NOT FOUND on the console you will know you have not upgraded your bitcoin.conf.weeds that must be renamed to bitcoin.conf in your -datadir for your weeds wallet data dir.

also added support to browse weedsnet with John Tobey's bitcoin-abe as a block explorer is now active at: http://abe.john-edwin-tobey.org/ I have tested it and it's working fine even after the 4 byte magic number change.  Thanks Tobey!

Added support for new sendescrow redeemescrow features in a browser interface
I have released a modified version of zamgo's bitcoin-webskin to provide some support and examples of using the new sendescrow and redeemescrow features in MultiCoin with a browser interface.  It can be found at: https://github.com/sacarlson/bitcoin-webskin .
Todays tests with me and groffer on his bitcoin branch https://github.com/groffer/bitcoin for multisign transactions were a success on commit d260515 to see detailed IRC session of tests see http://paste.ubuntu.com/637841/  I also merged this with my bitcoin branch MultiCoin for further testing and updated my branch of bitcoin-webskin to include the new features.

Creation of New crypto block chains
At present I have only documented the method to clone the original Bitcoin model of a block chain.  But I plan on creating much more advanced methods in the near future that will make all of them obsolete for small networks.  But for those still wanting to create dinosaurs the link to create new chains has always been here: https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin/blob/master/create_new_genisis_block.txt

[markm]

That licensed miners option will definitely get the attention of the Martians, Brits, Canucks and so on behind Martian BotCoins, United Kingdom Britcoins, Canadian Digital Notes and so on. Sounds very interesting, thanks for all the great work, keep at it! Could be some Botcoins, Britcoins, BitNickels etc in it for you somewhere along the line even...

-MarkM-

[mouse]

Great work.

is there an explanation anywhere on how the escrow functionality works, on a conceptual level?

Cheers

[John Tobey]

Very interesting, thank you!

Do you plan to support, or would you consider patches to...

...share work with the BTC chain as described in Alternative Chains?

...one daemon multiple chains?

...chain discovery via IRC or other means?

...plug-in interface for block acceptance rule modules?

I would like Abe to support as many new chains as possible.  I'd prefer not to run a new daemon for each one, though different processes with one bitcoind executable is a step in the right direction.

[zamgo]

Very nice!

I got MultiCoin compiled and running on weedsnet.  To force a quick connection, I added to bitcoin.conf.weeds:
 

Code:

dns=1
addnode=exchange.beertokens.info

and that got me 1 connection.   

My weedsnet Tipjar: mvK3SAvSjSoeYB6M7zzrmSN9pcQmnYUCCB

[sacarlson]

Thanks zamgo, I'll add that line of dns=1 to my distrubution of bitcoin.conf.weeds, I'm not sure why the IRC bootstrap isn't working.  But as long as something works.  I sent your weeds tip jar 5 weeds for you to play with.  If you want or need more just ask or you can always get them from the http://exchange.beertokens.info site in trade for tnBTC at a good exchange rate.

John:
...share work with the BTC chain as described in Alternative Chains?
yes this would be cool if you know someone that can write a patch for it that works I'll push it in.  my skills as a C++ proggramer , if you didn't notice are quite weak.

...one daemon multiple chains?
at present I just run 3 daemons at the same time on different ports including testnet, weeds, mainnet, we just need to try to make sure if we want to make a new chain to try to set the ports it supports to another set not already used by another chain you might want to use at the same time.

...chain discovery via IRC or other means?
 I'm not sure what chain discovery is.  would that be where we run more than one chain on a single IRC bootstrap channel?  I just use a different name bootstrap IRC for each chain.

...plug-in interface for block acceptance rule modules?
That sounds like a good idea.  start writing some and we will follow.

Mouse:
I'm working with groffer now about testing and creating more documentation and examples for using the escrow features.  I have already added a few examples into the docs as a reference to start at: https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin/blob/master/doc/README_escrow.txt  there will soon be new releases of escrow with multiple address output and multiple input pools and I will provide examples of how to use those new features as well when they become available.

[John Tobey]

Your C++ looks all right to me.

I'm imagining a world where there are 10,000+ chains of which I'm interested in 100+.  Or maybe I'd like to run an exchange or a service similar to Block Explorer that by default supports any new chain on the net.  I imagine one p2p network, one port number shared by many or all chains.  Peers would exchange lists of chains that interest them so they can avoid useless relaying.  The protocol would support a "new chain" message type.  Of course, chains would need a unique identifier, perhaps a hash of some implementation of its block acceptance rules.

I'd also like a way to start hashing a chain that does not yet have a genesis block, only rules to validate the genesis block.  The rules might require, for example, the coinbase script to contain the hash of a particular (perhaps future) Bitcoin block as timestamp.  This would give people a fair chance at the genesis reward (if any) and permit a high difficulty for the block, especially in conjunction with shared proof of work.

[sacarlson]

Created another branch of MultiCoin called MultiCoin-qt that is a branch of bitcoin-qt using the qt gui libs
this is now completed with preliminary tests complete and published at:
https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin-qt  in this gui version you can make cosmetic changes to the gui
from the config file including changing windows title and graphic icon. this version has most of the features of Multicoin except escrow at this time.

[sacarlson]

Alternate Chain Licensed Mining addition ideas

I would like to get into more detail of how I would like to implement an alternate block chain method using licensed miners.   And start to answer some of the questions that might be asked.

What is licensed Mining?
Licensed mining as I envision it would be an alternate chain method with some small modifications to the present bitcoin chain rule method.  The Lic. Miner method would only allow certain miners that hold certain private keys to be able to mine as an option in some of the newly created alternate block chains of new currencies or other type data chains.  And allow networks to change the rules later if and or when they get big enough to no longer need lic. Mining.

Why would we ever need Licensed Mining?
First of all you should ask why not just make a small network clone of how bitcoin does it?  Well with a small network I have seen with my own eyes for example in testnet that my transactions I did yesterday magically disappeared.  This is what can happen in a very small underpowered network like testnet and others.  Not that I really cared in this case as I was only testing something.  But in the real world if you wanted to start a small network and start using it for something of real value you would run into problems.
    I feel small side block chains could be very useful for many different things including trust share trade transactions,  gaming score keeping and many others like something similar to namecoin for open secure methods of data keeping and transaction.  It is also useful to open up new methods of transactions sooner like P2P escrow and to provide a platform for developers to work from in a smaller scale and still be provided security even in a very small underpowered network.  And yet keep any government or other entity from having the ability to disable it by shutting down a site or stealing a computer server system.

What are the advantages?
The biggest advantage that I see is that you don't need a large powerful power hungry network to develop and test new smaller network secure methods of trade and transaction.   To accomplish some of the future goals of crypto chain transaction of speed of transaction combined with improved security between transactors with added contract embedding into the chain transactions without having to wait for these edge ideas to be accepted into the main stream bitcoin network.  To open up testing of these new methods and to prove there usefulness or possibilities for failure.  Also as I presently see it this method of distributed secured data storage would not require as much power to secure.  In this model at the very small end you only need 2 or 3 redundant miners that only require to run at about 1 hash/minit. Wow I't a GREEN idea?  In this model we don't need to burn tera flops of power to be relatively secure. for example if some government agency tried to shut a server miner down or someone steals one of the servers they wouldn't  be stopping anything and getting nothing since it would be a requirement of a miner system to use a luks encrypted partitioned system similar to something like this https://sites.google.com/site/remotekeyencrypt/home to make it difficult to even obtain one of the miner keys if stolen.  and the other miners would continue to operate as if a single miner in bitcoin network was shut down, no problem.  Even by chance the government or thief after obtaining one of the encrypted miners found a way to crack the luks encypted partition and obtained one of the miner keys out of it, that miner key could be removed from the list of accepted miners and again we would be back to normal.

What are the disadvantages?
Well in this case your talking to the wrong person oh the disadvantage is we don't have it yet.
ok I was asked how would you provide for distribution with such a method of currency?  you can't have only some miners get all the money they mine.  How could you store value in such a thing?  well I'm not sure about this part as each group would be doing different things in different ways but for example http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9493.0 was one of many possible alternative methods of distrubution. I'm sure there will be others that come up with better ones. (06:58:36 AM) gmaxwell: sacarlson: What is the disadvantage? Come on. The disadvantage is that it's distributed but not decentralized.  If you're worried about secondary chains getting easily reversed, why not bind them to bitcoin via the alternative chains stuff?  (07:00:11 AM) gmaxwell: Well, it's not for no reason. I mean— there are problems with small bitcoins.. basically the bitcoin security model only works if there is only one hashchain, or just a few nearly equally sized ones.  (07:00:26 AM) gmaxwell: But binding to the bitcoin chain solves that neatly. I've also been told that this idea isn't even close to what bitcoin is and is totally unrelated and that this could be done with other methods other than bitcoin or bitcoin like methods.

How does it work?
I gave you the basics above in what is Lic mining.  The how it works part is a bit more complex but I'll try to keep this in as simple a form as possible here.  First we can setup a miner with very low difficulty (07:25:58 AM) lfm: hradly, put a sleep in the mining loop and reduce the difficulty to 0.00000001.  When a miner creates a block in about the same manner as in bitcoin he adds something extra into the data of the block that includes a published nonce (an almost never to repeat incrementing number) or  just the hash of the block data  would be good enough and he signs that nonce/hash with his private key and also publishes this signed nonce and his public key number into the data.  Much the same way that we do proof of identity in bitcoin-otc with signed random number we can prove that this is one of the accepted miners for blocks.  So now on the client side when we do a scan for proof of work we add a stage that also looks at the nonce/hash  data and it's signed data and published public key,  and verify that to see if it has been signed by one of the miners by checking it against the list of public keys for each accepted miner that the client keeps in his config.   The list of accepted miners public keys could be one or many and they could be turned on or off at any time by changing the contents of the list in the configs of the clients software.  These configs could be distributed in many different methods to be decided by in the group that plan to use it.   Probably by publishing the configs at some https site would be one possible method or in the distribution method of the clients software would be another.  But it will also require that with a syncing rule that all  clients change the list of accepted miners at the same block count time so at some interval of a block counts would require update change over on the client side would have to be performed and be setup to change before the transition of the update mark block count.  This however could be overruled in the event of a rouge minner that needed to be shut down.  In that event a forced upgrade of the config at some random time might be required but hopefully never or very rarely.

Anything Else?
At this point this is only a rough draft of an idea.  I await others to provide input and corrections to this and I will continue to keep editing this post as newer better ideas come to me by others.  I hope to see even totally different methods to accomplish the same thing in a different way.  If it's too different I won't add it to this post but create another.  I am hoping to see example software patches to MultiCoin or MultiCoin-qt  or any of the other branches from Bitcoin or Bitcoin-qt for ways of doing something like this.   I will publish links to anything I find like github code that appear to be moving in a similar direction.  I don't have any money to offer you in exchange but only an added ora of love from the universal conciseness.   Thank you for your interest.

[becoin]

Anything Else?

Can we end up where every human being (or commercial entity) will have their own currency block chain part of the main block chain? The value of every individual currency will have flexible exchange rate to the basket of currencies (the bitcoin).

[sacarlson]

Update: as of 6/13/11 we have changed the 4 byte magic number in weeds to fix some problems and help support other things like bitcoin-abe that we now have a working version for weeds presently found in my patched branch of John Tobey's bitcoin-abe found here: https://github.com/sacarlson/bitcoin-abe  .  to upgrade to the new magic number simply update your bitcoin.conf.weeds file from MultiCoin or MultiCoin-qt github software distribution or the updated link found here: http://exchange.beertokens.info/docs/multicoin/bitcoin.conf.weeds.  I have also found that I have to start MultiCoin from a clean empty wallet -datadir or you will still have problems supporting bitcoin-abe.  If you don't use a local running bitcoin-abe then you don't need to mess with any changes of the -datadir wallets to make corrections, just replace the bitcoin.conf.weeds file you now have and restart multicoin. So if you now fail to connect to the Weedsnet and see PROCESSMESSAGE MESSAGESTART NOT FOUND on the console you will know you have not upgraded your bitcoin.conf.weeds or you are running a version of MultiCoin older than 6/7/11.   example the way I set mine up is: cp bitcoin.conf.weeds /home/sacarlson/.bitcoin/weeds/bitcoin.conf ; bitcoind -datadir=/home/sacarlson/.bitcoin/weeds/ ;  the bitcoin.conf.weeds you us should be the new updated version that you could have got with wget http://exchange.beertokens.info/docs/multicoin/bitcoin.conf.weeds  or from the github sources . The one at my exchange site is the most experimental version that is modified first, When I see that works I also transfer the changes to github.  Oh another thing I forgot to say was that the feature for changing the 4 byte magic number is also a somewhat new feature and you will also need to upgrade to a version of multicoin no older than release date of 6/7/11 of commitish 62c428988ec76bc97fe934c76ad8d77b7060229b or later from: https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin.  As far as I can tell multicoin-qt has always had the changable 4 byte magic number feature from day 1 as it was released after 6/7/11 with the merged features from Multicoin.

[cunicula]

Hi, if you are considering alternate cryptocurrencies, you might be interested in my ideas here:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19130.0

[Coineer]

This is really great, exactly what crypto-currency needs.

Definitely keeping an eye on this

[John Tobey]

Update: as of 6/13/11 we have changed the 4 byte magic number in weeds to fix some problems and help support other things like bitcoin-abe that we now have a working version for weeds presently found in my patched branch of bitcoin-abe found here: https://github.com/sacarlson/bitcoin-abe  .

Bravo.  I've applied the magic number upstream.  In fact, I'd already given Abe Weeds support in a more scalable way but hadn't documented it until a minute ago.

Code:

# datadir can supply information about new currencies.
# Note that "address_version" is a byte string: the byte (or, perhaps
# someday, several bytes) preceding the public key hash before base-58
# conversion.  Example:
#
#datadir += [{
#        "dirname": "/home/weeds/testnet",
#        "chain":   "Weeds",
#        "code3":   "WDS",
#        "address_version": "o" }]

If you'd like to establish a canonical Weeds/MultiCoin datadir, I'll include code similar to util.determine_db_dir and load the data by default:

Code:

# This function comes from bitcointools, bct-LICENSE.txt.
def determine_db_dir():
    import os
    import os.path
    import platform
    if platform.system() == "Darwin":
        return os.path.expanduser("~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/")
    elif platform.system() == "Windows":
        return os.path.join(os.environ['APPDATA'], "Bitcoin")
    return os.path.expanduser("~/.bitcoin")

[morpheus]

I'm interested in using MultiCoin for a Stablecoin example currency (I'm calling 1971coin which will be pegged to the 1971 dollar). However, I'm having trouble figuring out where to start. Is there a getting started guide somewhere explaining how to start your own block chain using MultiCoin?

I would be willing to help develop the guide if you could help me out and I can post it on a wiki somewhere.

[sacarlson]

I'm interested in using MultiCoin for a Stablecoin example currency (I'm calling 1971coin which will be pegged to the 1971 dollar). However, I'm having trouble figuring out where to start. Is there a getting started guide somewhere explaining how to start your own block chain using MultiCoin?

I would be willing to help develop the guide if you could help me out and I can post it on a wiki somewhere.

See the top article in the create new chain section for more details on that subject.  If you need more help join us at #multicoin in freenode for direct assistance.

NameCoin Support added to MultiCoin and Multicoin-qt
Added support for the namecoin net for both MultiCoin and MultiCoin-qt with small changes and created an example bitcoin.conf.namecoin with namecoin chain specs.  preliminary tested with MultiCoin and MulitCoin-qt have been a success.  To use Multicoin-qt with namecoin I do it like this. 
Create a directory /home/yourhome/.bitcoin/namecoin.  Copy the file bitcoin.conf.namecoin from the MultiCoin-qt/doc/bitcoin.conf.namecoin  into your new created ~/.bitcoin/namecoin/ directory. Rename it to bitcoin.conf in the namecoin dir.   Then run your bitcoin-qt as it's named when it's compiled in the MultiCoin-qt like this:  cd /path_to_multicoin-qt_build/;
  ./bitcoin-qt -datadir=/home/yourhomedir/.bitcoin/namecoin ;

To build see https://github.com/sacarlson/MultiCoin-qt/blob/multicoin-qt/README.rst.  In Ubuntu 10.04  just installed and ran the qtcreator and select the *.pro file in the MultiCoin-qt dirctory and hit the build botton.

[morpheus]

See the top article in the create new chain section for more details on that subject.  If you need more help join us at #multicoin in freenode for direct assistance.

Thanks sacarlson.

I saw the create new genisis block text before, but it didn't quite give me everything I need. Between that text and your description of the namecoin port, I think I can at least get started.

[dacoinminster]

I hope and pray that the official bitcoin client will someday support multiple block chains, all backed by the hashing of the normal bitcoin network and the value of bitcoins held in escrow by the network. This would allow seemless transitions of your *coins between block chains without any need for an exchange. See my thoughts on it here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=31032.0

[cunicula]

I hope and pray that the official bitcoin client will someday support multiple block chains, all backed by the hashing of the normal bitcoin network and the value of bitcoins held in escrow by the network. This would allow seemless transitions of your *coins between block chains without any need for an exchange. See my thoughts on it here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=31032.0

+1 for backing with escrowed.coins. This is the key to a swcre and sustainable system. Backing with hashing power is not sustainable.

[caston]

So who is looking to start a new block chain?

I've been thinking about starting one for Australia and New Zealand but my understanding is that if you try to make something country specific it might break some laws because you are making another currency for that country. Bitcoin doesn't have this problem because its a currency for the whole world e.g. laws making it illegal to make another US currency don't apply because its a world currency.

The other suggestion I have is an alternate namecoin perhaps something like numbercoin where you can use them to register any names under any numeric tld for instance .1 or .2
or perhaps tldcoin where you can register tlds