[ANNOUNCE] Ixcoin - a new Bitcoin fork

[Raoul Duke]

A bug?
It's a Bitcoin feature
You just can't copy Bitcoin, modify 3 numbers and expect it to run like you want. Yes, creating a working fork needs some work

Yah its a bitcoin feature alright that client will send to an invalid address as well so this flaw was there to begin with.

No, dude, it's a Bitcoin feature to accept Bitcoin addresses... In Ixcoin, it's a bug. LOL

I dunno how many persons already said that Bitcoin doesn't send to invalid addresses, but it seems you haven't read it.
I guess you meant to say that bitcoin sends to unexistent addresses, but that's another story, as the client doesn't know if the addresses exist. But if you input an INVALID(like an address starting with an x) it will not send.

[1714997247]

1714997247

[1714997247]

1714997247

[Xephan]

So does anybody know how long til the next retarget?

~1300 blocks probably a day or two.

Does it still go by 2016 blocks per retarget?

He hasn't made any real changes to the code so yes it appears to be the same.

[jackjack]

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26808.0
s/testnet/ixcoin

[Nasakioto]

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26808.0
s/testnet/ixcoin

More details here https://ixcoin.org/forum/index.php?topic=55.0

[jackjack]

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26808.0
s/testnet/ixcoin

More details here https://ixcoin.org/forum/index.php?topic=55.0

prevent the conversion to Ixcoin address format. So if it's sent, at least it is possible to retrieve if you own the receiving bitcoin wallet.dat

Wat?
Even if it is converted you can of course retrieve the coins

[Nasakioto]

Even if it is converted you can of course retrieve the coins

Correct. I did correct this in my subsequent post.

[forrestv]

There are currently ~7M (as of August 2011) in existence and it is expected that all 21 million Bitcoins will have been generated by 2033. Whereas there are currently ~580K Ixcoins (as of 10th August 2011) in existence and it is expected that all 21 million Ixcoins will have been generated by 2015. This is because 16*6=96 IXC are created per new block, instead of 50 BTC in Bitcoin.

Ixcoin maturity will be reached ~18 years before Bitcoin's. By mid-2013, the number of IXC and BTC will reach parity (for a brief moment).

Ixcoin does not actually have a "shorter maturation period", as stated as the reason for forking Bitcoin. Did nobody wonder why the 'total ixcoins over time' graph suddenly just stopped? Or did everybody just accept the fact that this is a futureless blockchain, designed to be abandoned once its creators had gotten rich?



The truth is that the "developer" here just increased the block reward from 50 to 96, without changing the decay factor, which halves the reward every 210000 blocks (or ~4 years). Instead of a total of 21,000,000 IXC being created, there will be 40,320,000 IXC in the end.

The graph should look something like this:



Draw your own conclusions. Relevant source code: https://github.com/ixcoin/ixcoin/compare/f08736405e98d0f16ec2...b721315ff7adf959e76a#L43L637

[bansal]

The truth is that the "developer" here just increased the block reward from 50 to 96, without changing the decay factor, which halves the reward every 210000 blocks (or ~4 years). Instead of a total of 21,000,000 IXC being created, there will be 40,320,000 IXC in the end.

Draw your own conclusions. Relevant source code: https://github.com/ixcoin/ixcoin/compare/f08736405e98d0f16ec2...b721315ff7adf959e76a#L43L637

Well I'm no expert on the code, but MAX_MONEY is still set to 21000000 in main.h, so unless I'm missing something it's still capped at the same amount.

[JoelKatz]

Well I'm no expert on the code, but MAX_MONEY is still set to 21000000 in main.h, so unless I'm missing something it's still capped at the same amount.

The thing is, they may or may not change that. They may say that's an obvious bug and change it. Or they may say that's the way it's supposed to be, and all coins after MAX_MONEY will fail in strange ways. We don't know.

[doublec]

That issue has already been raised and discussed in this thread and the ixcoin developer has responded.

[payb.tc]

That issue has already been raised and discussed in this thread and the ixcoin developer has responded.

not commenting on whether or not ixcoin will 'succeed', but i do think this is rather funny:

changing 50 to 96 = developer

[forrestv]

Well I'm no expert on the code, but MAX_MONEY is still set to 21000000 in main.h, so unless I'm missing something it's still capped at the same amount.

That constant does almost nothing. All it limits is the amount of money that can change hands in a single transaction, not the total amount of money in circulation.

That thread is incorrect in stating that blocks will begin being rejected. Things will continue past 21 million IXC as usual, unless one person happens to hold half of the money.

The point I was trying to make here is that Ixcoin's fundamental reason for existing (at least, the publicly stated one) isn't actually real, but it's still documented as such in the forum posting and the Ixcoin FAQ. What's wrong with re-raising the issue here? It seemed rather important to me.

[bansal]

Well I'm no expert on the code, but MAX_MONEY is still set to 21000000 in main.h, so unless I'm missing something it's still capped at the same amount.

That constant does almost nothing. All it limits is the amount of money that can change hands in a single transaction, not the total amount of money in circulation.

That thread is incorrect in stating that blocks will begin being rejected. Things will continue past 21 million IXC as usual, unless one person happens to hold half of the money.

The point I was trying to make here is that Ixcoin's fundamental reason for existing (at least, the publicly stated one) isn't actually real, but it's still documented as such in the forum posting and the Ixcoin FAQ. What's wrong with re-raising the issue here? It seemed rather important to me.

You're right, that constant is used in a function called MoneyRange which seems to be mainly used to check transaction size.  Where is the total supply actually limited in the original bitcoin code?

Edit:  Actually I see it is just based upon the subsidy being cut in half in the code every 210,000 blocks.  Interesting I just always assumed that constant was responsible.

nSubsidy >>= (nHeight / 210000);

[Xephan]

You're right, that constant is used in a function called MoneyRange which seems to be mainly used to check transaction size.  Where is the total supply actually limited in the original bitcoin code?

Edit:  Actually I see it is just based upon the subsidy being cut in half in the code every 210,000 blocks.  Interesting I just always assumed that constant was responsible.

nSubsidy >>= (nHeight / 210000);

You're right, there isn't a hard limit on the amount of bitcoins. 21 million is just rough level at which new Bitcoins generate per block is effectively negligible.

To make it clearer, this is what actually happens
1st "Stage": 50 BTC per block
2nd Stage : 25 BTC per block
3rd Stage : 12.5 BTC per block
4th Stage : 6.25 BTC per block
5th Stage : 3.125 BTC per block
6th Stage : 1.5625 BTC per block

So it just gets smaller and smaller so total Bitcoins would never reach the next million.

[bansal]

You're right, that constant is used in a function called MoneyRange which seems to be mainly used to check transaction size.  Where is the total supply actually limited in the original bitcoin code?

Edit:  Actually I see it is just based upon the subsidy being cut in half in the code every 210,000 blocks.  Interesting I just always assumed that constant was responsible.

nSubsidy >>= (nHeight / 210000);

You're right, there isn't a hard limit on the amount of bitcoins. 21 million is just rough level at which new Bitcoins generate per block is effectively negligible.

To make it clearer, this is what actually happens
1st "Stage": 50 BTC per block
2nd Stage : 25 BTC per block
3rd Stage : 12.5 BTC per block
4th Stage : 6.25 BTC per block
5th Stage : 3.125 BTC per block
6th Stage : 1.5625 BTC per block

So it just gets smaller and smaller so total Bitcoins would never reach the next million.

Actually it is a right shift, so it is more like this:

1st stage: 50
2nd stage: 25
3rd stage: 12
4th stage: 6
5th stage: 3
6th stage: 1
7th stage: 0

Total should be 210000*50 + 210000*25 + 210000*12 + 210000*6 + 210000*3 + 210000*1 = 20370000

Again, unless I'm missing something or screwed up my math/logic somewhere

[Xephan]

Actually it is a right shift, so it is more like this:

1st stage: 50
2nd stage: 25
3rd stage: 12
4th stage: 6
5th stage: 3
6th stage: 1
7th stage: 0

Total should be 210000*50 + 210000*25 + 210000*12 + 210000*6 + 210000*3 + 210000*1 = 20370000

Again, unless I'm missing something or screwed up my math/logic somewhere

Your numbers are probably more accurate than mine since I'm basing mine based on reading wiki rather than delving into actual code
Doing a right shift sounds more sensible than dividing and getting fractions early as well.

Although I don't think it stops at 1, does Bitcoin count represent 1 BTC as an bigint 1 or actually 1000000 and simply putting the decimal for display purposes?

[Chris Acheson]

Actually it is a right shift, so it is more like this:

1st stage: 50
2nd stage: 25
3rd stage: 12
4th stage: 6
5th stage: 3
6th stage: 1
7th stage: 0

Total should be 210000*50 + 210000*25 + 210000*12 + 210000*6 + 210000*3 + 210000*1 = 20370000

Again, unless I'm missing something or screwed up my math/logic somewhere

The mining reward is measured in Satoshis.  It'll eventually get rounded down to zero, but not that quickly.

[bansal]

Actually it is a right shift, so it is more like this:

1st stage: 50
2nd stage: 25
3rd stage: 12
4th stage: 6
5th stage: 3
6th stage: 1
7th stage: 0

Total should be 210000*50 + 210000*25 + 210000*12 + 210000*6 + 210000*3 + 210000*1 = 20370000

Again, unless I'm missing something or screwed up my math/logic somewhere

Your numbers are probably more accurate than mine since I'm basing mine based on reading wiki rather than delving into actual code
Doing a right shift sounds more sensible than dividing and getting fractions early as well.

Although I don't think it stops at 1, does Bitcoin count represent 1 BTC as an bigint 1 or actually 1000000 and simply putting the decimal for display purposes?

Actually I screwed up a bit here.  There is another line of code I forgot to take into account:

int64 nSubsidy = 50 * COIN

and COIN is set to 100000000

So it goes like this:

Stage 1 : 50
Stage 2 : 25
Stage 3:  12.5
Stage 3 : 6.25
Stage 4 : 3.125
Stage 5:  1.5625
Stage 6:  0.78125
Stage 7:  0.390625

and so on

I was just using 50 and shifting it, so you were actually closer to right than me, lol.  It will eventually reach zero but very slowly.  I guess I'm not exactly exploring new ground here, but we can at least say it is maybe more clear what is happening in the code, it just right shifts the subsidy every 210,000 blocks, and so yeah IXcoin would generate many more coins since it would be starting the right shift from 96 instead of 50.  That one line of code basically controls everything as far as new coins are concerned.  Does that matter?  Not sure in my opinion both overall counts are relatively low given that there are 6 billion+ people on the planet.  I know you can divide it out to 8 places, but who wants to do that?

Edit:  Also seems to be laziness on the part of the original developers of ixcoin that they didn't keep that consistent.  Bitcoin put MAX_MONEY in to check the size of a transaction, any transaction that tried to move more than 21000000 coins would fail since there aren't any more coins than that.  There will be almost twice as many coins in the new block chain, and the most they could still move is 21000000, admittedly a nice and rare problem for someone to have, but something they should've caught.  There is nothing in the code that would cause any other problems, you just wouldn't be able to spend more than 21mill all at once...

[jtimon]

I've added the currency to the list I'm maintaining but I won't touch this currency because I don't like it at all.
On the other hand, I own namecoins and I'm waiting for the rise in difficulty that merged mining will cause.

I think it would be great to see ixcoin fail for not adding any advantage (in fact, adding a disadvantage) over bitcoin. This way some concerns about forks "stealing" value from bitcoin may disappear.

[afro25]

Holy crap, the price has crippled! I'm buying in! The more people that buy in the higher the price will rise