[XPM] [ANN] Primecoin Prerelease Announcement - Introducing Prime Proof-of-Work

[hyh]

Interesting... But it's still some proof-of-work.

Will Primecoin's blockchain have information about prime numbers?

[super3]

Is the architecture so different that it would be difficult to use existing pool and mining software(well slightly modified of course)?

[Sunny King]

Interesting... But it's still some proof-of-work.

Will Primecoin's blockchain have information about prime numbers?

Yes.

[Sunny King]

Is the architecture so different that it would be difficult to use existing pool and mining software(well slightly modified of course)?

Miners need to be written again. Existing SHA-256 and scrypt miners are useless for primecoin.

Pool code may be reused mostly. Pool operators should decide whether to standardize on a mining API, or they can release their own mining software (open source or proprietary). I could see pools competing on better miners to maintain technical advantage.

[jlspartz]

Kudos to you sunny. I have a lot of respect for your work. I have many questions on this coin. I was wondering if there is some location where you can find more details about primecoin?

Some of the questions that come to mind are:

1. Seeing that distributed networks already search out prime numbers how could the incentive compete with say the 100k USD reward for finding the next prime. Primes have been found to over 17 million digits long now. The last one took over 4 years to find. Is the payout going to be per prime or per number tried for prime with a conclusive answer?
2. How do you keep the blockchain to a decent length and verification times down?
3. If the numbers are already found, is there a second layer of verification of actual work? It other words, what stops a person from sniffing a completed block being transferred back and compiling their own packets to be sent back using the already known prime for the current block number that its currently on and stealing all coins?

[Sunny King]

Yes I know some of you are curious as to how the proof-of-work is designed. Obviously it's not trivial and took me months to get it into decent shape I am in the process of preparing the final design paper so hopefully in a few days you will have your answers. Stay tuned.

[coblee]

SunnyKing, I'm looking forward to your design. I'm very interested to know how you managed to come up with a PoW that also finds prime numbers... if that is indeed the design. Would be great if you managed to keep it decentralized.

[super3]

Kudos to you sunny. I have a lot of respect for your work. I have many questions on this coin. I was wondering if there is some location where you can find more details about primecoin?

Some of the questions that come to mind are:

1. Seeing that distributed networks already search out prime numbers how could the incentive compete with say the 100k USD reward for finding the next prime. Primes have been found to over 17 million digits long now. The last one took over 4 years to find. Is the payout going to be per prime or per number tried for prime with a conclusive answer?
2. How do you keep the blockchain to a decent length and verification times down?
3. If the numbers are already found, is there a second layer of verification of actual work? It other words, what stops a person from sniffing a completed block being transferred back and compiling their own packets to be sent back using the already known prime for the current block number that its currently on and stealing all coins?

I would be interesting to see someone do some speculation calculations about how fast you can find primes when the whitepaper is actually released. The Bitcoin network is bigger than all of the worlds super computer combined, then again its only able to do hashing. By implementing a PoW that actually has some inherent value with the computational power, you basically get a nice 2:1 deal. I wonder how much hashing power you would actually need to hit one of the EFF Prizes: https://www.eff.org/awards/coop

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Any centralized checkpoints? If yes, not interested.

[com911]

At last, something useful incoming, not just punp'n'dump!

[Luckybit]

I am happy to announce that the primecoin project is now close to beta quality and will be released to public soon. Please keep in mind this is experimental technology and we reserve the rights to rollback or restart the blockchain should severe bug/vulnerability require such actions. However we would try our best to avoid such scenarios and further develop it into reliable public infrastructure.

Introducing primecoin

• First non-hashcash proof-of-work in cryptocurrency, pure prime number based proof-of-work
• Cpu mining at launch, gpu mining to be developed by market participants
• Pure proof-of-work, no proof-of-stake (unlike ppcoin), not energy efficient, but with additional potential scientific value derived from proof-of-work energy consumption (energy multiuse)
• Scarcity enforced by Moore's Law similar to ppcoin, mint rate gradually drops as difficulty rises, without sudden halving shock
• Security model similar to bitcoin
• Continuous difficulty adjustment like ppcoin
• Reasonably high starting difficulty to limit instamining
• 1 minute target block spacing
• Zero premine, zero tax

ppcoin + primecoin

• Sharing the same goal of real innovations, moving cryptocurrency technology forward and demonstrating our technical capabilities
• Sharing the same value, open source, no premine, no tax, advancing cryptocurrency technology for humanity
• Cpu mining initially for primecoin to cater to a larger mining community, now covering all mining hardwares with both ppcoin (gpu+fpga+asic) and primecoin (cpu)
• New innovations in primecoin catering to a wider audience including the mathematical and other scientific computing community, and users who prefer pure proof-of-work cryptocurrencies.
• Sharing development resources and infrastructures
• Different innovative cryptocurrency designs provide cryptocurrency investors with diversified advanced technology portfolio
• Strategic positioning for the next 5 years in cryptocurrency market

ppcoin vs primecoin

• ppcoin is our first innovative cryptocurrency design to focus on energy efficiency. Almost a year after its release ppcoin's design remains the only proof-of-stake design on the market, with seven forks/clones (NVC, BTB, YAC, BTG, BOT, CGB, YAB). primecoin is our second innovative design to focus on alternative proof-of-work system producing additional scientific values. The two networks would work in synergy to achieve our long-term cryptocurrency strategy.
• Cryptocurrency market has now split into two sectors, energy intensive sector and energy efficient sector. In the longer term (5+ years) I believe the energy efficient sector would begin to challenge the energy intensive sector due to its cost advantage. In the shorter term though energy intensive market would likely remain dominant and we would like to have an innovative and competitive offering in this sector as well. The innovations in primecoin give us this opportunity, and would complement ppcoin to strengthen our strategic position in the market.
• The energy intensive sector currently has two major types of proof-of-work, both of the hashcash type, one is SHA-256, the other is scrypt. There have been some new variations of the hash functions recently, with modified scrypt and SHA-3 series hash functions as well, or even compositions of different hash functions. Though existing cryptocurrencies are all still based on hashcash proof-of-work. primecoin introduces the first non-hashcash proof-of-work in cryptocurrency, the first type of proof-of-work that not only secures the block chain, but also provides additional potential scientific value, paving the way for future proof-of-work types with more diverse scientific interests and uses.
• Both ppcoin and primecoin demonstrate our design prowess and capability in real innovations. We are fully dedicated to provide long term support and further development to both cryptocurrencies.
• For existing ppcoin users our dedication to the continued development of ppcoin and its market has not changed. ppcoin's advanced proof-of-stake technology has long-term advantage over pure proof-of-work designs, and is an innovative environmental-friendly solution to the escalating energy consumption on cryptocurrency. In my opinion the energy intensive sector will fragment into many different types of proof-of-work, a single type of proof-of-work is unlikely to maintain dominance. More fragmentation is likely even within a single type of proof-of-work. Meanwhile the energy efficient sector would rise to challege the energy intensive sector, and ppcoin is among the leading contenders in the energy efficient sector. So in terms of our long term strategy ppcoin is of more importance than primecoin.

Release Schedule

Primecoin release is tentatively scheduled for 2013 July 7th 18:00 UTC

1. How will you prevent people from insta-mining this coin with Amazon EC2?
2. Why would someone stop mining PPcoin to mine Primecoin if they only have a single CPU and it's guaranteed to be insta-mined by people with Amazon EC2 or people with hundreds of CPUs in the form of server racks?
3. Can you confirm that you are not Satoshi Nakamoto?

I think to launch this coin there needs to be a mining pool or hashing service that people can buy into (Other than Amazon EC2) otherwise wouldn't the difficulty skyrocket within a few days and people left with just an ordinary or even a multi core CPU be left in the dust?

I think the prime idea is so obvious that I wonder why no one thought of it sooner. I guess I will have to wait for the whitepaper.

[ig0tik3d]

http://www.mersenne.org/

[digicoin]

I want to see the whitepaper first. The announcement contains too little details on what the currency offers

[Guido]

watching with interest

so, 7th july
will try and remember

[Guido]

I take it, it's forked? same as others
also any indication how many coins will be minted?
80 million? 320 million? unlimited?(unlimited always bad imo)
will it be capped?
will it be opensource?

thanks

[nmersulypnem]

Looks interesting. Maybe something like the SETI project could use some "hashing" power from this coin.

Find Aliens, get all the money!  Or it could connect with BOINC - cure cancer drug - get money!

...but in all seriousness, I do wonder if some sort of protein folding calculations can be done instead of the primes calculations.  Protein folding is in serious need of computing, and can save lives.  I guess the problem is that the calculations are not unpredictable.

[nmersulypnem]

http://www.mersenne.org/

Wouldn't it be better to look for any prime?  Why restrict it to Mersenne primes?

[mokimarket]

So SunnyKing? I guess my idea wasn't so crazy after all? Will proof of work look similar to this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166218.msg1734858#msg1734858

[BestBidder25]

Please don't release any new coins.

[Sahtor]

I papernpenmined PoW == 3 where's my reward?

I'm very excited about this one. Good luck.