[ANNOUNCE] SolidCoin - new and improved block chain. Secure from pools

[Chris Acheson]

I'm talking about the protocol.  You know, that thing that's actually kind of difficult to change once a blockchain gets established?  What have you done that can't just be released as a modified client for the Bitcoin blockchain?

All of the changes can't be released as a modified client for the Bitcoin blockchain; doing so would cause a fork in the blockchain which would be a lot more disruptive than simply starting a new one. In particular, the problem with forking the blockchain is that transactions can be carried from one side to the other and this can be used to double-spend bitcoins - once on each side of the fork - and obtain bitcoins that are valid on both sides, guaranteeing that exchanges and e-wallets will be screwed over.

I didn't say that all of the changes could be merged into Bitcoin.  However, CoinHunter is crowing about supposed UI and API improvements in the SolidCoin client.  These aren't protocol level changes, so presumably if any of them have merit they can just be copied, and aren't a good reason to switch to the SolidCoin blockchain.

The reason I'm asking about protocol changes is that those can't just be copied easily.  If there were significant protocol improvements, it might make for a compelling reason to switch.  As it stands, SolidCoin's protocol changes are unimpressive

• Difficulty algorithm aims for 3 minute blocks instead of 10 minute blocks.  Achieved by changing one constant.  Of questionable merit, due to scalability concerns.

Sounds like a good reason to implement it on a new, smaller network rather than Bitcoin then.

If an alternate blockchain currency is going to survive, it can't aim for being smaller than Bitcoin.  As I said before, we're dealing with a natural monopoly.  Some have stated that "Ix/I0/SolidCoin can be the silver to Bitcoin's gold".  This is a poor analogy, as BTC is divisible enough that there's no need for a lower-value cryptocurrency to "make change" with.  So really, mBTC are the silver to BTC's gold.

• Difficulty retargets more often.  Achieved by changing one constant.  Essential for an underdog blockchain to survive, but not really relevant for Bitcoin.
• Difficulty increases limited to +10% per retarget.  Achieved by changing one constant.  Essentially an extra subsidy to miners, not relevant for Bitcoin.

Not relevant to Bitcoin now; it's an open question as to whether it will be in the future. Also, the limited difficulty increases aren't just a subsidy to miners, they're also necessary to stop the difficulty from overshooting wildly. (For some reason they're not just implemented as a simple change to one constant either; the way difficulty increases are calculated is substantially modified.)

If it becomes relevant to Bitcoin, then Bitcoin will be pretty much doomed anyway.

The difficulty retargeting algorithm doesn't really overshoot.  You're not going to get a 400% difficulty increase just because blocks are being solved every 9 minutes instead of every 10 minutes.  The problem occurs when the majority of your mining power leaves, not when the difficulty changes.

The limited difficulty increases aren't bad per se, it's just that in combination with the fast difficulty decrease, the average number of blocks produced ends up being far higher than the target rate, hence my subsidy comment.

(Also, am I the only person that's more worried about the security implications of their changes to difficulty targetting than anything else?)

I'm not familiar with how the network enforces time synchronization.  Maybe if you find the last block in a difficulty retargeting period, you could give it a fake timestamp to mess around with the difficulty calculation.  It seems like if this would be a problem for SolidCoin, it would be a problem for Bitcoin too, but with fewer opportunities to exploit it.

[1714106509]

1714106509

[CoinHunter]

Can't work it out with the dude if he's not going to answer PMs, which he isn't.
Front page of funkykit.com, posted when there were still numerous bounties available for publicity, got a reply from him saying he'd read it and asking if I was claiming the promotional bounty.  I said yes, and that was the last I heard from him.

I figure if he can't resolve it in private or be bothered with PMing me, I might as well drag it out into the open and see what happens.  I certainly don't lose anything from doing so, though an unresponsive promoter doesn't help Solidcoin much.
There's an old saying about squeaky wheels and such, generally it's even true.  Hence the squeaking.

Well I'm sorry for the confusion here. Your message said you were *about to do* something for promotional bounty. Given how many PMs and requests I got when I see someone say they are going to do something I don't process it until I have verified it, and seeing as you said about to do it instead of done I didn't check and forgot about it, I apologize.

If you join the SolidCoin forum and post a message in the bounty forum the new bounty manager can sort you out with one of the current bounty prizes for that one. There is now someone dedicated to processing those bounties as I was inundated with requests, processing over 120 valid ones, and sorting through another 80 or so that were spam or not valid.

I and others appreciate your SolidCoin support so please don't think there was any ill intention here to wrong you.

[Chris Acheson]

For a start many of those things if you look in the code aren't a "constant". I can tell you haven't looked at the code because you would see there is 3 bands of increase, 2%, 6% and 10%. So already you're coming from a ridiculously ignorant position.

Alright, you got me.  I assumed that since changing the difficulty increase cap doesn't require anything more than changing a single constant, you would have been smart enough to do it that way.  Instead, you decided to add pointless complexity.  Good job?

Secondly the majority of the Bitcoin procotol works well, so the majority of the the protocol needs little changing in my mind, but when it comes to the important things I did change them, as small as they may be. They make SolidCoin a resilient network, BETTER than Bitcoin. This isn't subjective.

Are you really making your stand on 3 minute blocks vs. 10 minute blocks?  That's the reason we're all supposed to switch blockchains, because you think 10 minutes is too long and 3 minutes won't cause scalability problems?

Thirdly if you think all that Bitcoin is about is the protocol you probably share the same characteristics as many of the developers, most with their heads in the sand. Where is the ease of use to get grandma using it? Where are the tools to help developers make secure sites so that MyBitcoin.com's aren't happening every second week. Where is the education of the people who are now losing money for others through careless mistakes? Where are the optimizations to the most commonly called APIs? We have sites going up and down like a yoyo as they try to balance a broken program.

The reason I stress the protocol is that everything else can be fixed without switching blockchains.  Hell, even if there's a problem with the protocol, it can still be fixed if you achieve consensus on the change.  So why start over?  If you absolutely can't work with the mainline client devs, you can always fork the client and stay on the same blockchain.  Your ego trip would last longer too.

[CoinHunter]

Are you really making your stand on 3 minute blocks vs. 10 minute blocks?  That's the reason we're all supposed to switch blockchains, because you think 10 minutes is too long and 3 minutes won't cause scalability problems?

...

The reason I stress the protocol is that everything else can be fixed without switching blockchains.  Hell, even if there's a problem with the protocol, it can still be fixed if you achieve consensus on the change.  So why start over?  If you absolutely can't work with the mainline client devs, you can always fork the client and stay on the same blockchain.  Your ego trip would last longer too.

You are wrong. The developers aren't going to change some core things in Bitcoin, I already discussed this with some of them prior to making SolidCoin. The consensus from them was it was never going to change, and there was no purpose to it. You sound like them, are you one?

What these "developers" don't understand however is that people that use Bitcoin, actually want fast confirmations. They want a fast network. This is why SolidCoin is successful, it's fast and always will be. My other protocol changes are intelligently designed to protect SolidCoin from a variety of attacks that Bitcoin cannot.  This isn't subjective, it's something that Bitcoin doesn't do that SC does. Your argument that "it's easy to make those changes" is irrelevant because no one before me made those changes and Bitcoin is still vulnerable to them regardless of your banter. If Bitcoin was to adopt them it's going to be a major PITA getting people to accept it.

On top of the protocol improvements SolidCoin's start has been many times more fair than Bitcoins. Again this isn't subjective. Educate yourself here :- http://solidcoin.info/five-reasons-to-own-solidcoins.php and see why people are jumping aboard.

[Bobnova]

The speed is the number one plus to solidcoins IMO.  It is very nice indeed to be able to send coins and receive them within a few minutes!
The long delays are probably the #1 thing standing in the way of bitcoin growing hugely.  It's like doing business by mailed cashier's check.

I'll go post on the SC forums, I did PM you after finishing the posts and you replied to that one, but I can understand being woefully busy.
SC forum post here:  http://solidcointalk.org/topic/48-bounty-request/

[dub0matic]

how long does it take for the difficulty to drop?or does it ever drop? it seems like it just keeps on increasing

[FlipPro]

how long does it take for the difficulty to drop?or does it ever drop? it seems like it just keeps on increasing

Wondering the same exact thing?

"Twice daily difficulty retargets" ?

[Bobnova]

If it's increasing, it's because it hasn't risen to the "proper" level yet.

[smoothie]

If time it takes to mine 240 blocks exceeds 12 hours then the difficulty will drop.

Got it?

[FlipPro]

If time it takes to mine 240 blocks exceeds 12 hours then the difficulty will drop.

Got it?

No not yet, trying really hard to though lol.

Is there anywhere we can get stats on the SC network with projected difficultys?

[Chris Acheson]

You are wrong. The developers aren't going to change some core things in Bitcoin, I already discussed this with some of them prior to making SolidCoin. The consensus from them was it was never going to change, and there was no purpose to it.

Maybe you should have taken the peer review seriously.

You sound like them, are you one?

Nope.

What these "developers" don't understand however is that people that use Bitcoin, actually want fast confirmations. They want a fast network. This is why SolidCoin is successful, it's fast and always will be. My other protocol changes are intelligently designed to protect SolidCoin from a variety of attacks that Bitcoin cannot.  This isn't subjective, it's something that Bitcoin doesn't do that SC does. Your argument that "it's easy to make those changes" is irrelevant because no one before me made those changes and Bitcoin is still vulnerable to them regardless of your banter.

3 minute blocks are the only thing that SolidCoin has going for it.  Your other protocol changes:

• Difficulty retargets more often
• Difficulty increases limited to +10% per retarget
• Block reward changed from 50 to 32
• (Again, anything else?  Seriously, if I missing anything, I'd like to hear specifics from you, instead of hand-waving)

...are all irrelevant to Bitcoin.  Only the more frequent difficulty retargeting actually defends SolidCoin from anything, and it's an attack that Bitcoin isn't even vulnerable to.  In order to get Bitcoin stuck in the same difficulty trap that Namecoin and Ixcoin are currently in, you'd have to destroy miners' faith in the future value of the currency in a very short amount of time.  If you can pull that off, Bitcoin would be pretty much dead anyway, so whatever.

If Bitcoin was to adopt them it's going to be a major PITA getting people to accept it.

And it would be a major PITA to get any significant number of people to switch over to SolidCoin too.

On top of the protocol improvements SolidCoin's start has been many times more fair than Bitcoins.

Bullshit.  Bitcoin was publicly announced when the blockchain was started.  It took two years to reach a price of $1.  There was ample time to buy/mine plenty of bitcoins if you thought it was going to take off.  Most people (myself included) didn't think it would and didn't bother.  If SolidCoin were to ever take off, it'll be the same situation.

and see why people are jumping aboard.

From the price and hashrate charts, it looks more like people are jumping overboard.

[Jimmy2011]

If time it takes to mine 240 blocks exceeds 12 hours then the difficulty will drop.

Got it?

I think so, and the difficulty adjustment is just lag against the increase of miners. It took such a long time to balance the change of miner power in the present year 2011. So 2%, 6% and the limited 10% increase of difficulty has nothing, just a meaningless parameter arbitrarily chosen. CoinHunter, could you please explain why limited 10% is chosen? Is there any theory behind it?

[CoinHunter]

...are all irrelevant to Bitcoin.  Only the more frequent difficulty retargeting actually defends SolidCoin from anything, and it's an attack that Bitcoin isn't even vulnerable to.  In order to get Bitcoin stuck in the same difficulty trap that Namecoin and Ixcoin are currently in, you'd have to destroy miners' faith in the future value of the currency in a very short amount of time.  If you can pull that off, Bitcoin would be pretty much dead anyway, so whatever.

Just wow, if you read this back and don't understand the hilarity of what you're saying then .....

"Bitcoin isn't even vulnerable to that" - "But if you can pull that off it will die"

Haha. Wow.

The scenario where SolidCoin price starts to rise and rise , encouraging more and more miners away from Bitcoin is a likely one, and it will destroy the Bitcoin network as it has no defense against such things. Unlike SolidCoin.

Bitcoin owners could wake up in 3 days and find that their confirmations are now taking 12 hours, nearly every site supporting them is taking 3 days to confirm any transfers they make. If you do not see how very vulnerable Bitcoin is then you are not worth continuing a debate with, as it is obvious to anyone with a passing understanding of the protocol.

Bullshit.  Bitcoin was publicly announced when the blockchain was started.  It took two years to reach a price of $1.  There was ample time to buy/mine plenty of bitcoins if you thought it was going to take off.  Most people (myself included) didn't think it would and didn't bother.  If SolidCoin were to ever take off, it'll be the same situation.

It's bullshit is it? Considering we can number the guys who mined the first million Bitcoins on a single hand how is it bullshit when SolidCoin has over 10000 individual owners of coin already?

Just because Bitcoin was available publicly doesn't mean much at all, it takes time for a concept such as a "p2p currency" to become well known. I suspect SolidCoin wil also be deemed unfair to "X" once it has global acceptance, simply because we didn't get millions of people making that first coin. "They only got over 10000".  So I can categorically say SolidCoin's existence is more fair than Bitcoins. Whether it's "fair" from the majority of the worlds viewpoint we will wait and see.

From the price and hashrate charts, it looks more like people are jumping overboard.

LOL, yeah except did you notice we can survive a drop in half of hashrate and the network is still 3 times faster than Bitcoins? What other chain can do that? None.

[Syke]

It's bullshit is it? Considering we can number the guys who mined the first million Bitcoins on a single hand how is it bullshit when SolidCoin has over 10000 individual owners of coin already?

I like some of the changes in SC, but at least tell the truth. Lying just doesn't help the cause. You have no idea who owns the first million Bitcoins.

LOL, yeah except did you notice we can survive a drop in half of hashrate and the network is still 3 times faster than Bitcoins? What other chain can do that? None.

I'm not sure losing half the hashrate is something you should brag about.

[Chris Acheson]

...are all irrelevant to Bitcoin.  Only the more frequent difficulty retargeting actually defends SolidCoin from anything, and it's an attack that Bitcoin isn't even vulnerable to.  In order to get Bitcoin stuck in the same difficulty trap that Namecoin and Ixcoin are currently in, you'd have to destroy miners' faith in the future value of the currency in a very short amount of time.  If you can pull that off, Bitcoin would be pretty much dead anyway, so whatever.

Just wow, if you read this back and don't understand the hilarity of what you're saying then .....

"Bitcoin isn't even vulnerable to that" - "But if you can pull that off it will die"

Haha. Wow.

It's glaringly obvious that you're running on pure rhetoric.  You either aren't bothering to think through what I'm saying, or don't care.  I know you're desperate to stop SolidCoin from sinking, but letting it show is a bad idea.

No matter how often you retarget difficulty, the magnitude of such an attack would kill any blockchain-based currency.  Getting stuck with high difficulty and a low hashrate is an afterthought.

The scenario where SolidCoin price starts to rise and rise , encouraging more and more miners away from Bitcoin is a likely one, and it will destroy the Bitcoin network as it has no defense against such things. Unlike SolidCoin.

In order to get the price to rise that quickly, you need to win over pretty much everyone who's invested in Bitcoin.  In that case, congrats, you've already won and difficulty retargeting is irrelevant.

Bitcoin owners could wake up in 3 days and find that their confirmations are now taking 12 hours, nearly every site supporting them is taking 3 days to confirm any transfers they make. If you do not see how very vulnerable Bitcoin is then you are not worth continuing a debate with, as it is obvious to anyone with a passing understanding of the protocol.

12 hours?  So you think Bitcoin's hashrate is going to drop by a factor of 72 overnight, but it would all be fine if only difficulty retargeted more often?  ಠ_ಠ

Bullshit.  Bitcoin was publicly announced when the blockchain was started.  It took two years to reach a price of $1.  There was ample time to buy/mine plenty of bitcoins if you thought it was going to take off.  Most people (myself included) didn't think it would and didn't bother.  If SolidCoin were to ever take off, it'll be the same situation.

It's bullshit is it? Considering we can number the guys who mined the first million Bitcoins on a single hand how is it bullshit when SolidCoin has over 10000 individual owners of coin already?

You're just making shit up now.  Care to provide citations for those claims?

I suspect SolidCoin wil also be deemed unfair to "X" once it has global acceptance, simply because we didn't get millions of people making that first coin.

And right now, we have you making the same claim about Bitcoin.  Though I doubt you'd care so much if you weren't pimping SolidCoin.

From the price and hashrate charts, it looks more like people are jumping overboard.

LOL, yeah except did you notice we can survive a drop in half of hashrate and the network is still 3 times faster than Bitcoins? What other chain can do that? None.

And before long you'll have that nice fast network all to yourself.

[CoinHunter]

And before long you'll have that nice fast network all to yourself.

Chris buddy, even though you seem to be a rather bitter and annoyed person,  good luck with whatever you're doing. Just wanted to make sure I get this in quote for later in case you edit.

[sharky112065]

Sounds like Chris Acheson has some money invested in Bitcoin. I personally do not care if Solidcoin replaces Bitcoin. I do like the fact that if the exchange rate drops way down and miners drop like flies because they cannot pay their electricity bills, that it resets the difficulty much quicker. What would happen on Bitcoin if that happened? Say it dropped to a dollar tomorrow and stayed there for a month. How long would it take for transactions to go through then?

[Lorna Morgan]

LOL, yeah except did you notice we can survive a drop in half of hashrate and the network is still 3 times faster than Bitcoins? What other chain can do that? None.

I'm not sure losing half the hashrate is something you should brag about.

I actually think that is something to brag about.

We all knew that the miners would move away, that was a given, but the fact that it's still going (unlike i0coin) is testament to the intelligent choices made in the design.

[CoinHunter]

What would happen on Bitcoin if that happened? Say it dropped to a dollar tomorrow and stayed there for a month. How long would it take for transactions to go through then?

It would likely would take about 3-6 months to reset, and until then people would be jumping from BTC to SolidCoin or perhaps nothing at all (being disillusioned with the whole p2p currency thing).

[Chris Acheson]

And before long you'll have that nice fast network all to yourself.

Chris buddy, even though you seem to be a rather bitter and annoyed person,  good luck with whatever you're doing. Just wanted to make sure I get this in quote for later in case you edit.

Here, I'll sign it for you:

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And before long you'll have that nice fast network all to yourself.
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Seriously though, back this claim up:

It's bullshit is it? Considering we can number the guys who mined the first million Bitcoins on a single hand how is it bullshit when SolidCoin has over 10000 individual owners of coin already?

Your victims investors deserve to know how you came up with that "10000 solidcoin owners" number.