HoboNickels - HBN - High Fast Stake - Version 2.0! More Secure, Less Intensive

[ProkhorZ]

Hey friends, happy anniversary! 

HOBONICKELS IS 10 YEARS OLD TODAY

Our favorite coin was announced and launched on July 24, 2013.

Thanks to thundertoe, Tranz, ahmed_bodi and everyone who helped to make this happen. Who'd expect a joke coin to last this long, with no development at all in the past 5 years? It goes to show how resilient a coin can be, as long as a few people keep believing in it.

Almost forgot to post this because I was distracted by Orbcoin and other dystopian shit. Of course that was a good reason to mention it on Twitter. HBN is the real world-wide currency for the people, there's enough coins for everyone, because we keep making more.

I'm happy that we have a fully functional block explorer again thanks to dnp. Note that it includes a rich list on the Metrics tab and a node list on the Network tab. I'm seeing one node in Ukraine and one in Russia, so we're doing what we can for world peace.

Anyway, it wouldn't be Hobonickels if we had perfectly organized celebrations. My favorite moment was when Fluffypony of all people took this too seriously and called the devs amateurs for not putting the code on Github immediately. 

General question: What was your favorite moment in Hobonickels history?

[ProkhorZ]

I will trade you some Hobonickels for CompoundCoin, InflationCoin, RAIN, POSCoin (very active community), and/or HodlCoin(one of the coolest wallets, doesn't need to be on to get good returns). 

My Hobonickels wallet       Ei5N4vJJV1CNXiipLPHujFF88CDsrGzzcg

We could keep this economy going.

I do like these staking coins and wrote started writing a book about them:
https://telicalbooks.com/Staking_Book_RSPearson.html

but glad I didn't release it as a lot of them went down.

It's cool that you wrote a book about staking coins! I do recognize that feeling. I was asked to write a 'crypto for beginners' book once, but I wouldn't want to encourage people to throw away their money on dog tokens or something like that.

And thanks for the offer, but I'm not interested in trading at the moment. My money's spread thin and wide already. I'll keep those coins in mind when I have time for more research.

[nutildah]

Hey friends, happy anniversary! 

HOBONICKELS IS 10 YEARS OLD TODAY

Our favorite coin was announced and launched on July 24, 2013.

Congrats to Hobonickels. Any coin older than Dogecoin that's still around with a functional blockchain is cool in my book. These kind of blockchains are like obscure pinball machines from the 1960s -- they don't have a whole lot of players and require some occasional retooling to keep them operational, but they are fun to watch for nostalgia's sake. I don't own any  but congrats to you guys nontheless.

[paramind22]

I will trade you some Hobonickels for CompoundCoin, InflationCoin, RAIN, POSCoin (very active community), and/or HodlCoin(one of the coolest wallets, doesn't need to be on to get good returns).  

My Hobonickels wallet       Ei5N4vJJV1CNXiipLPHujFF88CDsrGzzcg

We could keep this economy going.

I do like these staking coins and wrote started writing a book about them:
https://telicalbooks.com/Staking_Book_RSPearson.html

but glad I didn't release it as a lot of them went down.

It's cool that you wrote a book about staking coins! I do recognize that feeling. I was asked to write a 'crypto for beginners' book once, but I wouldn't want to encourage people to throw away their money on dog tokens or something like that.

And thanks for the offer, but I'm not interested in trading at the moment. My money's spread thin and wide already. I'll keep those coins in mind when I have time for more research.

Thanks.  I understand now things I didn't understand four years ago, let alone seven years ago when I entered the market.  It's been positive overall but the small cap staking coins were a waste of time in the last year unless their market picks up.

One reason why I mentioned the trade idea is that there are not a lot of buy orders on the small cap staking coins and so its hard for people to sell without crashing the market.

[arielbit]

I will trade you some Hobonickels for CompoundCoin, InflationCoin, RAIN, POSCoin (very active community), and/or HodlCoin(one of the coolest wallets, doesn't need to be on to get good returns).  

My Hobonickels wallet       Ei5N4vJJV1CNXiipLPHujFF88CDsrGzzcg

We could keep this economy going.

I do like these staking coins and wrote started writing a book about them:
https://telicalbooks.com/Staking_Book_RSPearson.html

but glad I didn't release it as a lot of them went down.

It's cool that you wrote a book about staking coins! I do recognize that feeling. I was asked to write a 'crypto for beginners' book once, but I wouldn't want to encourage people to throw away their money on dog tokens or something like that.

And thanks for the offer, but I'm not interested in trading at the moment. My money's spread thin and wide already. I'll keep those coins in mind when I have time for more research.

Thanks.  I understand now things I didn't understand four years ago, let alone seven years ago when I entered the market.  It's been positive overall but the small cap staking coins were a waste of time in the last year unless their market picks up.

One reason why I mentioned the trade idea is that there are not a lot of buy orders on the small cap staking coins and so its hard for people to sell without crashing the market.

TL;DR : dead shitcoin

[HCLivess]

10 years huh

[samspaces]

10 years huh

Network could use more nodes. files.hobomap.info has the chain for download. If on Ubuntu, best use wine to run the .exe.
btcpop.co still works too. If xeggex is crazy enough to add the coin, you definitely will want some.

[Slex Listing]

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Who can I contact to discuss listing?

[paramind22]

10 years huh

Network could use more nodes. files.hobomap.info has the chain for download. If on Ubuntu, best use wine to run the .exe.
btcpop.co still works too. If xeggex is crazy enough to add the coin, you definitely will want some.

Should do an airdrop.  How many dollars/DOGE in buy orders are there?  Is it still on any exchanges?

[ruletheworld]

Damn, time flies! Was fun when it lasted.

My thesis was to buy tokens where the dev was active

Hey friends, happy anniversary! 

HOBONICKELS IS 10 YEARS OLD TODAY

Our favorite coin was announced and launched on July 24, 2013.

Thanks to thundertoe, Tranz, ahmed_bodi and everyone who helped to make this happen. Who'd expect a joke coin to last this long, with no development at all in the past 5 years? It goes to show how resilient a coin can be, as long as a few people keep believing in it.

Almost forgot to post this because I was distracted by Orbcoin and other dystopian shit. Of course that was a good reason to mention it on Twitter. HBN is the real world-wide currency for the people, there's enough coins for everyone, because we keep making more.

I'm happy that we have a fully functional block explorer again thanks to dnp. Note that it includes a rich list on the Metrics tab and a node list on the Network tab. I'm seeing one node in Ukraine and one in Russia, so we're doing what we can for world peace.

Anyway, it wouldn't be Hobonickels if we had perfectly organized celebrations. My favorite moment was when Fluffypony of all people took this too seriously and called the devs amateurs for not putting the code on Github immediately. 

General question: What was your favorite moment in Hobonickels history?

[samspaces]

3 peers can't be wrong!

[Dab3ast]

Anyone still active in here.  Is there working block explorer or website?

[paramind22]

Anyone still active in here.  Is there working block explorer or website?

Someone who must have been on the team or dev or early whale crashed the buy orders on last exchange and I think this may have shown the coin was abandoned.

[miner237]

Prediction Markets for Dead Coins

https://coinzombie.live/

[HCLivess]

I am updating the codebase as we speak - no forks, just modernization of the codebase so that it is not so terribly difficult to compile it. I will work on optimizations later. I remember talking to Tranz earlier in private messages and he told me that he simply did not have enough energy and availability to update to the latest codebase. Now we have the opportunity and I am taking it.

If Tranz has any word of objection, I am listening - but I would not deploy a hardfork without approval and I would never change the mechanics without serious reason to do so.

[HCLivess]

[HCLivess]

HoboNickels Modern — the consolidated release

This is the single, current release of the modernized HoboNickels (HBN): a complete overhaul of the classic proof-of-stake coin since this repo was forked — modern build & toolchain, dramatically faster sync (incl. instant P2P snap-sync), a rebuilt Qt5 wallet, and a leaner node. It folds together the entire 2.0.1 → 2.3.6-modern line. No consensus change anywhere in this work unless explicitly noted.


Downloads

• Windows x64 — HoboNickels-qt-2.3.6-modern-windows-x86_64.zip (GUI) and HoboNickelsd-2.3.6-modern-windows-x86_64.zip (daemon). Self-contained; all runtime DLLs bundled and verified to launch with mingw64 off PATH.
• Linux x86-64 — HoboNickels-qt-2.3.6-modern-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (GUI) and HoboNickelsd-2.3.6-modern-linux-x86_64.tar.gz (daemon). Dynamically linked (Ubuntu-24.04-class: glibc ≥ 2.39, OpenSSL 3, Boost 1.83, Berkeley DB, Qt 5.15).
• SHA256SUMS.txt — checksums for every asset.
• (A macOS build is being added to CI; it will appear here once green.)

Windows SmartScreen will flag the unsigned .exe ("unknown publisher") — click More info → Run anyway, or right-click → Properties → Unblock, and verify the download against SHA256SUMS.txt. Removing the warning entirely requires an Authenticode code-signing certificate; the CI is already wired to sign automatically once one is configured (doc/windows-code-signing.md).

What's new in 2.3.6 — profiled sync-speed fixes

Found by profiling a live initial sync with perf, not by guessing:

• Eliminated an O(height²) checkpoint walk. Checkpoints::CheckSync walked the block index backward from the tip to the sync-checkpoint height on every block — the single largest CPU cost during sync (~46% in the profile, and growing without bound as the chain gets taller). It's now O(1) in the common case (when the checkpoint and parent are both on the main chain, descent is guaranteed). CheckSync: 46% → 0% of CPU.
• Skipped redundant scrypt proof-of-work re-hashing. ConnectBlock re-ran the memory-hard scrypt PoW check on every block even though it was already verified on receipt; below the hardcoded checkpoint the chain is hash-pinned, so that re-hash is pure waste. scrypt: 64% → 31% of CPU.

(The residual scrypt is the consensus block-identity hash — one per block, unavoidable for a classic replay; snap-sync skips the replay entirely. Disk I/O during sync measured ~100 KB/s — negligible, correcting an earlier "disk-bound" assumption.)


Complete changelog since the fork

Build, toolchain & packaging

• Builds on modern toolchains: Ubuntu 24.04 / GCC 13 / OpenSSL 3 / Boost 1.83 / Berkeley DB 5.3, via a new CMake build (the legacy qmake .pro is kept working too).
• Windows (MSYS2/mingw64) build support + CI, with self-contained runtime-DLL bundling verified to run with mingw64 off PATH.
• Qt wallet ported to Qt5 and built via CMake.
• Thorough C++17 cleanup: BOOST_FOREACH → range-for, dropped Boost where the stdlib suffices; modernized Boost.Asio/filesystem usage.
• ECDSA verification via libsecp256k1 (OpenSSL fallback, no chain fork); secp256k1 built from source on Windows.
• CI builds & smoke-tests Windows + Linux daemon & GUI and a Docker image on every push.

Sync — from slow IBD to instant

• Automatic P2P snap-sync (default on): a fresh node fetches a checkpoint-verified chain snapshot from a peer and comes up synced in seconds instead of replaying millions of blocks. Wire-compatible (old peers ignore the new messages). Serving is automatic and zero-extra-disk (hard-links the live blk*.dat + txleveldb; the client moves files on apply — no 2× disk). Parallel peer discovery; falls back to normal sync when unseeded; discovery overlaps with normal sync so a fresh node never sits idle.
• Profiled CPU fixes (2.3.6): the O(height²) CheckSync walk and redundant scrypt PoW re-hashing removed (see above) — the dominant per-block costs during classic sync.
• Headers-first block sync (default on, -headersfirst=0 fallback) with a hardened headers handler (connecting-headers check, AskFor cap, DoS scoring).
• Multi-peer parallel block download with a height-relative download window → roughly 5–9× faster IBD; smart in-order requesting (no duplicate requests, bounded orphans, no stalls).
• Slow-peer tip-stall fixes (the empirically-confirmed #1 cause of crawling sync): header-starvation watchdog + sync-peer rotation break the mid-IBD wedge where a silent-but-connected peer froze the tip.
• Wallet sync position persisted during IBD → a restart no longer rescans the wallet from genesis.
• Dynamic checkpoints + recent hardcoded checkpoints + baked-in seed nodes; the assumevalid horizon (skip signature re-verification below a trusted checkpoint) now also follows the master-signed dynamic sync checkpoint, advancing with the network between releases (-dyncheckpoint=0 for fully-trustless sync).
• Lower RAM during sync (dbcache / write-buffer tuning), bounded a slow per-peer map leak, and default-on sync telemetry (-debugsync).

Wallet & staking

• wallet.dat compaction — automatic and self-bounding (no more unbounded bloat); manual compactwallet RPC / -compactwallet too.
• Autocombine actually works, with saner coin-split defaults (no fragmentation; no hard fork).
• Stake-For-Charity: reworked to pay inside the coinstake (atomic, no extra fee); GUI enable arms the global trigger; discoverable in the Wallet menu with its own icon.
• Staking metadata cache (per-source-block); the cache is no longer churned by unrelated mempool traffic, and a loaded staking wallet no longer slows GUI sync (stake-weight / balance scans are skipped while syncing).

RPC

• Modern, lightweight read-only RPC endpoints (no heavy/abuse-prone ones).
• Cookie authentication (Bitcoin Core style).

Qt5 wallet — modern UI

• High-DPI, Fusion theme with light/dark, fully modernized graphics (app icon, toolbar/action icons, high-res status/network icons, new coin render for splash + About; media kit included).
• Overview Staking panel (status, your weight, network weight, your share, expected time) and an at-a-glance status bar (current block height + timestamp).
• Network traffic graph — full rewrite: smooth area chart with gradient fills, adaptive B/KB/MB-per-second grid, styled legend, and an interactive hover crosshair; sampling decoupled from the timeframe so changing the range is instant and non-destructive.
• Peer table (Direction/Sent/Received columns, sortable) with a right-click Copy address / Copy peer info menu.
• Debug console hardening: persistent command history, redaction of sensitive commands, and a security-warning banner.
• Block explorer fix (null-std::string UB) + single-walk perf; shorter nav/dialog labels; restored amount spin-box arrows; About-dialog credits. A dependency-free Python block explorer is included under contrib/.

Docs

• Extensive doc/ modernization (sync design + tuning logs, snap-sync trust model, dynamic-checkpoint scope, staking, scrypt-hardfork proposal), a restructured README, and corrections to inaccurate legacy claims (there is no max supply; the real IBD bottleneck was profiled — see 2.3.6).

Release history (version arc)

• 2.3.6 — profiled sync-speed fixes: O(height²) CheckSync walk eliminated, redundant scrypt PoW re-check skipped.
• 2.3.5 — traffic-graph rewrite, dynamic-checkpoint horizon, wallet no longer slows GUI sync, snap-sync concurrent discovery, block-explorer fix.
• 2.3.4 — peer table columns + copy menu; console history persistence/redaction + security banner.
• 2.3.3 — Overview staking panel + at-a-glance status bar; traffic-graph modernization.
• 2.3.2 — automatic zero-extra-disk P2P snap-sync (hard-link serve + move apply); shorter UI labels.
• 2.3.1 — mid-IBD sync-stall fix; no rescan-from-genesis; snapshot hardening; lower RAM.
• 2.3.0 — instant P2P snap-sync; responsive RPC/GUI during sync; Stake-For-Charity in menu.
• 2.2.0 — height-window IBD (~5–9× faster sync).
• 2.1.0 — consolidated sync/UI release (smart requesting, sharper UI).
• 2.0.12 — fix slow-peer tip stall in multi-peer sync; default-on sync telemetry.
• 2.0.11 — multi-peer parallel sync + hardening + RPC cookie auth.
• 2.0.9 — headers-first block sync.
• 2.0.8 — automatic wallet.dat compaction; crisp About logo.
• 2.0.7 — safe non-consensus IBD/validation performance wins.
• 2.0.6 — working autocombine + saner split defaults.
• 2.0.2–2.0.5 — modern RPC endpoints, staking metadata cache, full graphics modernization, modern Qt theme.
• 2.0.1 — build/CI foundation (Ubuntu 24.04, CMake, Windows, Docker).

Notes

• This single release supersedes and consolidates the entire 2.0.1 → 2.3.5-modern line.
• Sync speed, honestly: a cold classic sync is bounded by the block-identity scrypt hash (one per block) plus download/disk; the profiled 2.3.6 fixes remove the wasteful per-block CPU on top of that. The instant path is snap-sync (default on) — it needs at least one reachable, fully-synced 2.3.x-modern peer serving snapshots and a fresh datadir. Raise -dbcache for a faster classic sync.
• Verification: Windows + Linux daemon & GUI build and smoke-test green in CI; the unit-test suite shows no new failures vs the prior baseline; the perf fixes were validated by syncing a live node with no validation errors.