[SKY] Skycoin Launch Announcement

[skycoin]

@Skycoin: "Similarly, Bitcoin survived for five years but we did not know that the mining process would continually drive down the price. We did not know that if miners are spending 100 million/year on electricity and ASICs, that people must buy 100 million/year into Bitcoin to just keep the price where it is against the miners selling Bitcoin. We did not understand the security issues."

Bitcoin is not dead at all. So be realistic if you are planning to launch a coin to compete with Bitcoin. If not, this will be a fail since the first day.

The Chinese exchanges are slamming Bitcoin, sending the price up and down $35 in five minutes. That is 10% of the price.

The whole Bitcoin network is controlled by four mining pools. MtGox went down, as hackers bribed or hacked employees of MtGox, to gain control over servers. 850,000 Bitcoins were stolen. A person infiltrating merely three or four mining pools can perform a double spending attack on massive scale and there is a very significant financial incentive to do so. The operators of some of the largest pools are known scammers.

Bitcoin is still growing rapidly and gaining momentum, but we need realistic worst case security analysis. None of the altcoins are "competing" with each other. Its going to be a mix of coins going into the future. Dogecoin moved a mass of people into cryotocurrencies that were not interested in Bitcoin and each additional coin will expand the audience and market.

This is the third cycle. The price goes up to new heights, then there is a long, decline and hashing rate falls, miners get shaken out. Price falls as miners are selling mined coins to pay electricity bills and eventually miners start to shut off hashing power. Then the price shoots up and the media goes into a frenzy, the public gets interested because everyone else is getting rich and they are jealous, the price continues to climb, hits a hysterical peak and the settles significantly above where it was before.

Bitcoin could hit $5,000 or $10,000 in the next cycle. However the peaks and bottoms have been leveling out. The ratio of peak to bottom for first media cycle was over 150x if I remember. Then second was 35x, then 15x. The recent one was $1200 to $300, so was 4x difference between the peak and bottom. As the price goes up, each peak requires more and more money to drive.

There are scammers out there with 850,000 coins from the gox raid and they will want to cash out. That is more coins than the miners are getting and the price heavily depends on how fast they try to cash their coins out.

[1714903507]

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[1714903507]

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[1714903507]

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[Porte]

what does the IPO consist of? I don't want to miss this IPO, is there a way I can register somewhere so can tell me when the IPO will happen?

[MemoryShock]

For those of us who see massive potential in skycoin, could you please PM me and let me know what other INNOVATIVE projects you're following that are in development and pre-IPO/ICO (e.g. zerocash). I'm only interested in truly innovative projects that solve a problem, not copy and pasted trash. Only an innovative project can serve as a hedge against bitcoin (e.g. potentially monero or skycoin could hedge against a massive and catastrophic failure in the bitcoin protocol).

These are the only currencies I am interested in.

Regards,
Wit

Interesting projects are Maidsafe, Ethereum, Storj, Emunie, maybe also Node, NEM, Bitshares, Ripple, NXT...

I don't think that any of the above projects are pre-IPO/ICO though I am following a few of them closely.

I am currently not looking at anything but this coin that is in active development (accurate statement here?  I think so) and pre-IPO/ICO.

[atleticofa_hacked]

For those of us who see massive potential in skycoin, could you please PM me and let me know what other INNOVATIVE projects you're following that are in development and pre-IPO/ICO (e.g. zerocash). I'm only interested in truly innovative projects that solve a problem, not copy and pasted trash. Only an innovative project can serve as a hedge against bitcoin (e.g. potentially monero or skycoin could hedge against a massive and catastrophic failure in the bitcoin protocol).

These are the only currencies I am interested in.

Regards,
Wit

Interesting projects are Maidsafe, Ethereum, Storj, Emunie, maybe also Node, NEM, Bitshares, Ripple, NXT...

I don't think that any of the above projects are pre-IPO/ICO though I am following a few of them closely.

I am currently not looking at anything but this coin that is in active development (accurate statement here?  I think so) and pre-IPO/ICO.

True, only Emunie is pre-IPO.

But Maidsafe, Ethereum, Storj, or NEM are on development and have not been released yet. They are all working with tokens, so it's still a good oportunity despite the recent climbs of Maidsafe and Storj.

[MemoryShock]

True, only Emunie is pre-IPO.

But Maidsafe, Ethereum, Storj, or NEM are on development and have not been released yet. They are all working with tokens, so it's still a good oportunity despite the recent climbs of Maidsafe and Storj.

I missed Emunie...for sure.  And I do agree with the rest.  Active development and several with really good opportunities if everything even goes half as planned...

[coin@coin]

Nice round of updates from Skycoin, seems like a shift to 5th gear!

Keep it up guys! Looking forward for this to happen!  

[TotalPanda]

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[bookmarked] 

[BTCspace]

First year Anniversary

[Porte]

nicely written

any roadmap for 2015?

OP SEC. The coin was done in January. The only difference if we launched today would be the coin would be trading. There are a few things missing on github, so no one can compile it and launch it before us, without knowing how to program.

For 2015
- we would like to have networking working for the darknet/meshnet.
- the new consensus algorithm will be implemented
- we would like to have some written standards for what is done and tutorials for developers
- then we have to do hardware
- we are deciding the roadmap for the next phase of the project.

If you look at Bitcoin, there are less then three people working on it. I would say three people but only one person at a time. People come in, finish something and then leave when its done. It took Bitcoin about a year to implement headers only downloads. "Ok we finished Litecoin!" What do you do after you finish Litecoin, Dogecoin or Ripple or anything else? There is no programming or design left, its just marketing. Pump and dump. Every existing altcoin is a pump and dump with no long term viability.

To survive and grow, Skycoin needs to meet a higher standard than other coins. Skycoin has to be useful. It must satisfy a need. It has to breach the great firewall. It has to make meshnets viable and offer an alternative to monopolistic ISPs. It needs to be an effective response to the encroaching threats on the internet. Skycoin needs be able to survive and carry on if Bitcoin fails for internal or external reasons.

People are measuring the success of Bitcoin or Ethereum in terms of piles of cash, instead of impact. They are asking whether Bitcoin is at $300 or $1200 instead of asking what has it changed and what impact it has had. Today Bitcoin was effectively banned in Australia. Bitcoin is being taxed at purchase and double taxed at the point of sale. The tax treatment is so punitive that Bitcoin has been effectively driven underground in Australia. It took five years from launch, until the first government decided to regulate it to death. If we released everything today and the meshnet hardware and software worked perfectly and it was mature, it would still be five years before the node density was enough to threaten ISPs or cell phone companies.

Similarly, Bitcoin survived for five years but we did not know that the mining process would continually drive down the price. We did not know that if miners are spending 100 million/year on electricity and ASICs, that people must buy 100 million/year into Bitcoin to just keep the price where it is against the miners selling Bitcoin. We did not understand the security issues.

Instead of coins with longer term duration, the vast majority of coins have lasted for significantly less time than Bitcoin. We have not seen a single coin that is as solid as Bitcoin, in the last five years.

Pump and Dump.

If stellar coin is a pump and dump what is paycoin?? Pay coin came number 4th in coinmarketcap from nowhere and its price is $11 per coin and a supply only of 5 millions coins, how can it be?

[entertainment]

nicely written

any roadmap for 2015?

OP SEC. The coin was done in January. The only difference if we launched today would be the coin would be trading. There are a few things missing on github, so no one can compile it and launch it before us, without knowing how to program.

For 2015
- we would like to have networking working for the darknet/meshnet.
- the new consensus algorithm will be implemented
- we would like to have some written standards for what is done and tutorials for developers
- then we have to do hardware
- we are deciding the roadmap for the next phase of the project.

If you look at Bitcoin, there are less then three people working on it. I would say three people but only one person at a time. People come in, finish something and then leave when its done. It took Bitcoin about a year to implement headers only downloads. "Ok we finished Litecoin!" What do you do after you finish Litecoin, Dogecoin or Ripple or anything else? There is no programming or design left, its just marketing. Pump and dump. Every existing altcoin is a pump and dump with no long term viability.

To survive and grow, Skycoin needs to meet a higher standard than other coins. Skycoin has to be useful. It must satisfy a need. It has to breach the great firewall. It has to make meshnets viable and offer an alternative to monopolistic ISPs. It needs to be an effective response to the encroaching threats on the internet. Skycoin needs be able to survive and carry on if Bitcoin fails for internal or external reasons.

People are measuring the success of Bitcoin or Ethereum in terms of piles of cash, instead of impact. They are asking whether Bitcoin is at $300 or $1200 instead of asking what has it changed and what impact it has had. Today Bitcoin was effectively banned in Australia. Bitcoin is being taxed at purchase and double taxed at the point of sale. The tax treatment is so punitive that Bitcoin has been effectively driven underground in Australia. It took five years from launch, until the first government decided to regulate it to death. If we released everything today and the meshnet hardware and software worked perfectly and it was mature, it would still be five years before the node density was enough to threaten ISPs or cell phone companies.

Similarly, Bitcoin survived for five years but we did not know that the mining process would continually drive down the price. We did not know that if miners are spending 100 million/year on electricity and ASICs, that people must buy 100 million/year into Bitcoin to just keep the price where it is against the miners selling Bitcoin. We did not understand the security issues.

Instead of coins with longer term duration, the vast majority of coins have lasted for significantly less time than Bitcoin. We have not seen a single coin that is as solid as Bitcoin, in the last five years.

Pump and Dump.

If stellar coin is a pump and dump what is paycoin?? Pay coin came number 4th in coinmarketcap from nowhere and its price is $11 per coin and a supply only of 5 millions coins, how can it be?

Actually is even worse... Paycoin is 95% premined coin, it's going up just because GAW promises to buy all Paycoin at 20$

[skycoin]

First year Anniversary

In celebration of the first year anniversary of the launch announcement, we are launching coin!

I will update when everything is on github.

I tried to launch it ten hours ago, but every time I open the directory I notice more things that can be simplified, removed, or refactored.
- I decided that micro-optimizing the block header size is pointless. I am doing 160 byte blockheaders instead of 105 bytes. Even with 1 block per second, the difference is 0.1 KB/s vs 0.2 KB/s. The overhead is less than single transaction.
- I never finished ripping out the wallet code from visor. Visor will agnostic over which transactions/addresses/wallets are yours. It just injects transactions and allows queries on the blockchain state.
- I am updating the blockchain serialization format, so its future proof.
- I am simplifying the command line options. There are too many useless command line options.
- the address checksum is now in the written version, but not the version on blockchain (which is redundant)
- the 100% coverage unit tests are broken, but I was never satisfied with them. They feel verbose and still miss most of the conditions I wanted to test for. I want functional and integration tests.
- I am cutting out flow paths in the coin core and moving out as much out as possible
- minimum coinhour fees for transactions will be soft enforced at consensus level, instead of hard failure checks in blockchain. If the parameter is wrong, then it can be changed without invalidating previous blocks. The network may need to dynamically adjust the rate if spamming becomes a problem.
- I found a memory leak, but it does not matter until the blockchain is a few hundred megabytes, so fixing it is not extremely urgent.
- Since the existing daemon works, I will not force upgrading the networking to the new library while it is still undergoing changes. We had people experiencing problems that depended on the date they fetched the libraries. Its better to get it working and use that, develop the new version and then swap it out once its done, rather than using a constantly changing library in dev that breaks builds.

I will try to do a soft launch, get it working with command line tools, so that it can launch and the the GUI wallet can be fixed later. I think the initial distribution of coins will be over tox group chat and there will be a google spreadsheet. There may be a trader bot to automate it later.

Ideally you should build client and run the client to generate addresses for receiving coins. However, we can always send coins to deterministic wallet and maybe add a bot for querying balances, getting addresses and doing sends from the wallet. We do not recommend this from a security perspective, but for small balances, should be fine. We do not trust TLS/HTTPS and feel the tox bot is more secure. Remotely hosted web wallets over HTTPS are becoming high-value targets.

We have hardened linux, behind a firewall with physically secure hardware, with all incoming ports firewalled, with a proxied public IP address. So should be secure enough for running a webwallet bot over tox.

If the build scripts are working, we will try to put binaries up. However, you should build from source if you are able to.

[Brilliantrocket]

Nice!

[LemonAndFries]

 

[MemoryShock]

Muy Interesante...

[mladen00]

First year Anniversary

In celebration of the first year anniversary of the launch announcement, we are launching coin!

I will update when everything is on github.

I tried to launch it ten hours ago, but every time I open the directory I notice more things that can be simplified, removed, or refactored.
- I decided that micro-optimizing the block header size is pointless. I am doing 160 byte blockheaders instead of 105 bytes. Even with 1 block per second, the difference is 0.1 KB/s vs 0.2 KB/s. The overhead is less than single transaction.
- I never finished ripping out the wallet code from visor. Visor will agnostic over which transactions/addresses/wallets are yours. It just injects transactions and allows queries on the blockchain state.
- I am updating the blockchain serialization format, so its future proof.
- I am simplifying the command line options. There are too many useless command line options.
- the address checksum is now in the written version, but not the version on blockchain (which is redundant)
- the 100% coverage unit tests are broken, but I was never satisfied with them. They feel verbose and still miss most of the conditions I wanted to test for. I want functional and integration tests.
- I am cutting out flow paths in the coin core and moving out as much out as possible
- minimum coinhour fees for transactions will be soft enforced at consensus level, instead of hard failure checks in blockchain. If the parameter is wrong, then it can be changed without invalidating previous blocks. The network may need to dynamically adjust the rate if spamming becomes a problem.
- I found a memory leak, but it does not matter until the blockchain is a few hundred megabytes, so fixing it is not extremely urgent.
- Since the existing daemon works, I will not force upgrading the networking to the new library while it is still undergoing changes. We had people experiencing problems that depended on the date they fetched the libraries. Its better to get it working and use that, develop the new version and then swap it out once its done, rather than using a constantly changing library in dev that breaks builds.

I will try to do a soft launch, get it working with command line tools, so that it can launch and the the GUI wallet can be fixed later. I think the initial distribution of coins will be over tox group chat and there will be a google spreadsheet. There may be a trader bot to automate it later.

Ideally you should build client and run the client to generate addresses for receiving coins. However, we can always send coins to deterministic wallet and maybe add a bot for querying balances, getting addresses and doing sends from the wallet. We do not recommend this from a security perspective, but for small balances, should be fine. We do not trust TLS/HTTPS and feel the tox bot is more secure. Remotely hosted web wallets over HTTPS are becoming high-value targets.

We have hardened linux, behind a firewall with physically secure hardware, with all incoming ports firewalled, with a proxied public IP address. So should be secure enough for running a webwallet bot over tox.

If the build scripts are working, we will try to put binaries up. However, you should build from source if you are able to.

nice

31.12. or 1.1 will be great for ann IPO/ICO for SKYcoin

[CECVW]

Why don't you do the IPO here  https://trade.secureae.com its easy to use and secure. This needs to be in a place where everybody are able to get stakes in an easy manner and safe

[wktian]

Why not use Counterparty

[RedPandaBoy]

Clearinghouse would be another good alternative.  24 second transactions versus 10 minutes on Counterparty.

[esuncloud]

Go learn Verilog, go get a CPLD and implement direct digital synthesis and go implement a SDR and then put it on github.

We are experts with Verilog, CPLD, FPGA, ASIC, SoC design, and how could we help you guys? According to my knowledge, there is no Verilog repo on Github for us to contribute code.

This is an amplitude modulated software defined radio for the whitespace band. 100 Mhz to 700 Mhz carrier. This is the most simple type of radio possible. Its pretty trivial.

Can you hook up an FPGA, maybe one on an ARM development board to an CPLD. We need to take a 600 Mhz to 700 Mhz carrier and amplitude modulate it (multiply the amplitude of the carrier by a value, which changes and can be set). The CPLD needs to implement a Digital to Analog (DAC) converter and then amplitude modulate the carrier. Then this gets amplified and is connected to antenna.

Then we need a Analog to Digital (ADC) implemented on the CPLD for receiving radio on other end. Changing the ADC/DAC 20 million times per second with a 4 to 8 bit ADC/DAC resolution is sufficient for now. A fulll 300 Mhz is ideal, but may not be possible without skillful pipelining.

For example. On beagleboard black, there are ADC/DAC units on the real time units. We can set output to "8" and then voltage level 8 comes out, we feed that into the gate on the amplifier. Then a ~50 Mhz HAM frequency carrier comes in to amplifier and is amplified an amount depending on voltage of gate. Then we change the 8 to a 40. With the real time unit, we can do that ~1 million times per second. Then the value gets amplified, fed into antenna and we are transmitting a sin wave with height 8. We have an array of bytes, one byte is read in a at a time and sets the output  value of the DAC, which updates 1 million symbols/second. So we are signaling with radio. This is same thing, except we want the ADC/DAC in the CLPD, so we can do hundreds of MHz and later modulation of the carrier twice per Hz, with changes applied at the zero crossing.

Eventually we want modulation at two symbols per Hz, so 1.4 billion times per second for 700 Mhz carrier (one output for positive part of sin phase and one for the negative phase) with 8 bit resolution for DAC output and +8 bit for ADC reception (or whatever is feasible). The value change for the analog output should occur at the zero crossing of the carrier, to prevent snapping. This will probably require moving the CPLD to ASIC to operate at this baud rate.

At 700 Mhz, with two 8-bit symbols per Hz we are at 11.2 Gb/s for maximum rate (two 8 bit symbols, 700 million times per second). That is the data rate for CPLD to the FPGA. Because of noise, antenna ringing and requirement for forward error correction (100 bits may have to be sent for each received bit), the data throughput may be significantly less than the symbol baud rate. The ASIC version may need a hardware IO protocol (PCIe or other) to interface between the CLPC/ASIC and FPGA at this rate. At those data rates the forwards error correction will need to be implemented in the FPGA, but CLPC prototype may be low enough baud rate for this to be performed in software. We are assuming that directional antennas are used and that the target signal is the loudest signal received, which significantly reduces the resolution requirements on the ADC for reception. Very simple circuit. We are not sure if phase locking or ability to set phase offset is a requirement.

Eventually the FPGA and CPLD, frequency generation and amplifier should be on a single PCB. The FPGA should implement Unipro so we can plug it in into an ARA baseboard. This is the end-target, but prototyping with ARM+FPGA dev board may be easier, or you may have better solution. Alternatively, the first device could be an CLPD + FPGA with a USB interface. Whatever is easier, you probably have a USB FPGA core already. The control board or system should use a Debian linux.

We can provide software in C for an initial forward error correction code. This can be on CPU initially, but move to FPGA is later required to handle full data rates (which may not be hit by the CPLD).

We understand the CPLD can go to 300 Mhz, so 300 MHz modulation of the carrier wave may possible without going to ASICs. Higher frequencies may be possible by including multiple copies of the circuit, with clock skews. For instance, having one DAC for the positive phase and  one for the negative phase. A simple CPLD design should be able to achieve a symbol rate of a few dozen Mhz. The ADC needs a floor and max and adjustment to bring the signal within range. This needs to be changed seldom (assume as most 1000 times per second).

I would get it working with a 1-bit or 2-bit ADC/DAC block on the CPLD and then go from there. Alternatively, if there is a very cheap ADC/DAC chip that can handle these ranges or 3 samples per second at 1.4 Ghz, we could use that and wire it into the FPGA. I have feeling that DAC/ADCs chip rated at the required sampling rate are $100 and that getting board down to $20 will require a degree of ASIC integration in the analog frontend.

So the objective here, is to get a lower frequency prototype working in CPLD
- to reduce risk for doing MOSIS/ASIC prototype that can handle full rate and higher resolution in the ADC/DAC. The symbol baud rate for the ASIC version may require integrated hardware IO pin for interface to FPGA, but is otherwise the same.
- then if that works, get a few wafers on an older process
- to have something working early, so that we can distribute dev boards and start on software development and prototyping, antenna development

That is first generation. Second generation
- multiple DAC/ADCs for running multiple antennas
- digital delay line (same signal from each output, but with defined phase shift and amplitude change) so that we can do phased array
- low frequency control or modulation of phase shift (to allow phase locking, reduce interference between transmitters)
- two antennas can resolve or filter on direction from phase shift of signal received by two antennas at a separation.
- N antennas elements each making independent reading of same signal, helps reduce noise floor.

Sorry for late reply cause we are working hard to commit a tape-out due at the end of this Dec.
Thanks for your update and we will try to do some homework and keep you posted.
It will be very helpful if you could release a soft implementation with C on a dev board, and we will look forward to that.

[yufu571]

Why not use Counterparty

Counterparty is real business.