NobleCoin[NOBL] - 8% PoS | 1Yr+ | MARKETPLACE | PAY | GIFT | CHARITIES/MERCHANTS

[eagleflies]

Short update 2014-01-16

I think it makes sense to build both wallets: typical (but with improvements) PoS and another containing Magi Coin's PoS. Then to test them and see how they work. So far I have made progress on linux wallet with typical PoS for Noble. This still needs more work to be done and I will continue next week.

Apart of that I have asked Joe about some help with his wallet and will work on this when I get more information.

I will be busy with my personal life this weekend so expect another update next week.

[NorrisK]

Short update 2014-01-16

I think it makes sense to build both wallets: typical (but with improvements) PoS and another containing Magi Coin's PoS. Then to test them and see how they work. So far I have made progress on linux wallet with typical PoS for Noble. This still needs more work to be done and I will continue next week.

Apart of that I have asked Joe about some help with his wallet and will work on this when I get more information.

I will be busy with my personal life this weekend so expect another update next week.

Appreciate the effort!

Also of all others who picked up responsibilities!

[eagleflies]

Also bear in mind Apex was a dead coin to start with, with little or no stake. It's 51% of the stake that is needed, not 51% of the entire supply. A lot of difference.

I know, but check https://chainz.cryptoid.info/apex/#!extraction and the links, it's more complicated than 51% of the stake.

The attack was done with 0.07% of the coins, but among the apex stakers, there was an average of 15 nodes during the period of the attack, and there were larger holders, #10 & #14 alone held 4% of the coins and were staking.

At the moment the Noble node network is less than 10 nodes on average, which means exchanges, mining pools, explorer, and almost no users.

The problem is that on normal PoS the weight of staking depends not just on coins, but on age, so lots of smaller amounts that have not staked for a while (just keep the wallet offline) that are suddenly allowed to stake in a private sub-net will have field day, same as a "whale" suddenly coming online in a small PoS network. The only missing technical step is to tweak the attack to work around the centralized checkpointing (if there is one), which can be accomplished in a variety of ways.

I think such attack could be mitigated with typical PoS if we used quite low Max Stake Age e.g. 1 week? And Min Stake Age of couple of hours? This way it does not matter if someone keeps staking for months since Weight will be capped.

[Honeypot]

Also bear in mind Apex was a dead coin to start with, with little or no stake. It's 51% of the stake that is needed, not 51% of the entire supply. A lot of difference.

I know, but check https://chainz.cryptoid.info/apex/#!extraction and the links, it's more complicated than 51% of the stake.

The attack was done with 0.07% of the coins, but among the apex stakers, there was an average of 15 nodes during the period of the attack, and there were larger holders, #10 & #14 alone held 4% of the coins and were staking.

At the moment the Noble node network is less than 10 nodes on average, which means exchanges, mining pools, explorer, and almost no users.

The problem is that on normal PoS the weight of staking depends not just on coins, but on age, so lots of smaller amounts that have not staked for a while (just keep the wallet offline) that are suddenly allowed to stake in a private sub-net will have field day, same as a "whale" suddenly coming online in a small PoS network. The only missing technical step is to tweak the attack to work around the centralized checkpointing (if there is one), which can be accomplished in a variety of ways.

I think such attack could be mitigated with typical PoS if we used quite low Max Stake Age e.g. 1 week? And Min Stake Age of couple of hours? This way it does not matter if someone keeps staking for months since Weight will be capped.

It's entirely possible that general pos can deal with such problems with some tweaking and adjustements during building phase. It's good that we are aware of these problems now.

Looking forward to the wallets, eagleflies. Thank you for taking up this work

[eagleflies]

PoS wallet testing

I am looking for people who use linux and are capable of testing our PoS wallet. Do not feel intimidated - it is not about writing a code, but about ability to compile wallet, generate transactions to other people on test network, monitoring if staking works properly etc.

Not that I need you right now, but would like to have general understanding how many people are interested.

[NorrisK]

PoS wallet testing

I am looking for people who use linux and are capable of testing our PoS wallet. Do not feel intimidated - it is not about writing a code, but about ability to compile wallet, generate transactions to other people on test network, monitoring if staking works properly etc.

Not that I need you right now, but would like to have general understanding how many people are interested.

Not on linux unfortunately

[james6546]

PoS wallet testing

I am looking for people who use linux and are capable of testing our PoS wallet. Do not feel intimidated - it is not about writing a code, but about ability to compile wallet, generate transactions to other people on test network, monitoring if staking works properly etc.

Not that I need you right now, but would like to have general understanding how many people are interested.

I'm not on Linux but ill give it a go if you talk me through it.

[joelao95]

I am working with eagleflies and will make sure PoS happens (again either general or special ); it'll be better that the whole community takes a look at the source code (PoS-II), also an opportunity for me to get it improved.

https://github.com/magi-project/m-Noblecoin

We can work on this code base from now on. I've cleaned up many codes which are for prior magi hardforks but unnecessary to NOBL. To make sure changes are valid, I've tested it in testnet; so basically it's working. If all want, we can do the testnet. Also, I made changes to adapt to NOBL's specifications:
- 1 min PoS block time (5 min PoW block time, we have to have PoW block chain going before PoS is self-sustainable)
- 2 billion premine NOBL
- 7.5% APR for PoS (I don't yet look into PoS-II parameters carefully)

Though you guys already decided the interest rate; I have to say 7.5% is something I would concern. For comparison, magi uses 5% maximum, currently at 2.6% or so, number of coins generated by PoS-II can be seen here (currently 1.9 million supply) http://xmg.makejar.com/xmg-per-day. Question is that what if NOBL gets into top 10, would the interest generate too much value then? Never mind, just my thought.

A few comments:

I really think that now would be a good time to open discussion for a custom POW algo again. Or one of the tougher POW algo's that are not cost effective to asic. The POS train really has left the building.

Changing POW algo is tricky, that might cause hidden GPU miners. I'm not advising the magi's design, but I've been thinking these stuffs for few months; the most likely course to me is to encourage mining at a moderate hashrate level by enabling dynamic block reward; as what magi is doing, that basically makes multipool mining unlikely too.

Right now there is also PoS pool staking, that's definitely not good at all to PoS, centralization & potential security issue. I guess they will catch NOBL if NOBL takes the general PoS and uses a high interest rate, just be careful of this kind. Stakemybit was trying to get magi, but simply delisted it because of the PoS-II; you know how the staking pool is doing; I personally don't like this kind of things, too much speaking of profits, just not a coin all about.

It's entirely possible that general pos can deal with such problems with some tweaking and adjustements during building phase. It's good that we are aware of these problems now.

That's absolutely right, and that's how we get to PoS 2.0 and PoS-II.  

I think such attack could be mitigated with typical PoS if we used quite low Max Stake Age e.g. 1 week? And Min Stake Age of couple of hours? This way it does not matter if someone keeps staking for months since Weight will be capped.

For this, the better solution is blackcoin's PoS 2.0 which completely takes out the staking time, i.e., one never gets the advantage of offline time; but obviously, people can still stock a significant amount of coins to initiate an attack. That's not easy to be done, but possible (for example, pool staking, you'd never know what they are doing).

If one thinks about these issues further, he might end up with conclusion: stakers should not gain any advantage by staking significant amount of coins (per transitions), or offline time, that's just what PoS-II is about.

Feel free to point out any points I've missed or I was wrong.

[RD965]

So community POS takeover??? Sounds fun

[eagleflies]

I think such attack could be mitigated with typical PoS if we used quite low Max Stake Age e.g. 1 week? And Min Stake Age of couple of hours? This way it does not matter if someone keeps staking for months since Weight will be capped.

For this, the better solution is blackcoin's PoS 2.0 which completely takes out the staking time, i.e., one never gets the advantage of offline time; but obviously, people can still stock a significant amount of coins to initiate an attack. That's not easy to be done, but possible (for example, pool staking, you'd never know what they are doing).

If one thinks about these issues further, he might end up with conclusion: stakers should not gain any advantage by staking significant amount of coins (per transitions), or offline time, that's just what PoS-II is about.

Feel free to point out any points I've missed or I was wrong.

I like it - never getting advantage of offline time. There should be an incentive for keeping wallets online.

I am not concerned about attacks with significant amounts of coins. Big holders have to spend a lot to purchase these coins. It is unlikely someone will be willing to invest heavily into a coin just to attack it.

Joe, I would like to understand how Magi Coin's PoS works, could you tell roughly how many coins will be minted by:

- wallet with 1 Magi Coin
- wallet with 10 Magi Coins
- 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 coins?

Let us presume these wallets are online all the time for a month.

[ctenc001]

My Social Media Action Campaigning system at promoplugs.com is now complete, and it is ready for NOBL to set up a campaign.
Example Campaign: http://promoplugs.com/Campaign.aspx?CID=32

Funds will need to be raised to handle the payouts.

Their are two forms of campaigns. the 1st is a Raffle system, where a select few (as few as 1) are selected to earn a moderately large sum at the end of the campaign. If you choose this kind of campaign, I would be happy to run it for a small fee. Alternatively, and generally with better results, you can choose to pay out a small sum for every actions performed. This type of campaign takes a significant amount of management, 50-100 addresses to pay out a day on a good campaign. I could not manage this campaign myself, and so we would need to find someone trustworthy within your community to handle the payouts and Campaign funds. Let me know which option you choose.


If someone wants to volunteer to run the 2nd type, Post here.

If you'd like to pledge towards the Campaign pool, post here how much. Once we reach 1000,00 NOBL pledged, I'll either give the go-ahead for a volunteer to set up the 2nd type of campaign, or if no volunteer comes forward I'll set up the Raffle type campaign.  Once we hit 100,000, a Campaign pool address will be posted by the campaign manager (me or whoever volunteers to help out).

The free campaign will be 3 days long.

TOTAL Pledged: 0 NOBL
Needed: 100,000 NOBL

[jawitech]

Joe, I would like to understand how Magi Coin's PoS works, could you tell roughly how many coins will be minted by:

- wallet with 1 Magi Coin
- wallet with 10 Magi Coins
- 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 coins?

Let us presume these wallets are online all the time for a month.

Some more details can be found here at the bottom of the post

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=735170.msg9991269#msg9991269

Just something to read til Joe replies. But I'm sure Joe can explain it better.

[NorrisK]

My Social Media Action Campaigning system at promoplugs.com is now complete, and it is ready for NOBL to set up a campaign.
Example Campaign: http://promoplugs.com/Campaign.aspx?CID=32

Funds will need to be raised to handle the payouts.

Their are two forms of campaigns. the 1st is a Raffle system, where a select few (as few as 1) are selected to earn a moderately large sum at the end of the campaign. If you choose this kind of campaign, I would be happy to run it for a small fee. Alternatively, and generally with better results, you can choose to pay out a small sum for every actions performed. This type of campaign takes a significant amount of management, 50-100 addresses to pay out a day on a good campaign. I could not manage this campaign myself, and so we would need to find someone trustworthy within your community to handle the payouts and Campaign funds. Let me know which option you choose.


If someone wants to volunteer to run the 2nd type, Post here.

If you'd like to pledge towards the Campaign pool, post here how much. Once we reach 1000,00 NOBL pledged, I'll either give the go-ahead for a volunteer to set up the 2nd type of campaign, or if no volunteer comes forward I'll set up the Raffle type campaign.  Once we hit 100,000, a Campaign pool address will be posted by the campaign manager (me or whoever volunteers to help out).

The free campaign will be 3 days long.

TOTAL Pledged: 0 NOBL
Needed: 100,000 NOBL

I suggest we take 100,000 from the leftovers of the community fund to get this started. Let me know an address and Ill transfer the 100,000.

[ctenc001]

My Social Media Action Campaigning system at promoplugs.com is now complete, and it is ready for NOBL to set up a campaign.
Example Campaign: http://promoplugs.com/Campaign.aspx?CID=32

Funds will need to be raised to handle the payouts.

Their are two forms of campaigns. the 1st is a Raffle system, where a select few (as few as 1) are selected to earn a moderately large sum at the end of the campaign. If you choose this kind of campaign, I would be happy to run it for a small fee. Alternatively, and generally with better results, you can choose to pay out a small sum for every actions performed. This type of campaign takes a significant amount of management, 50-100 addresses to pay out a day on a good campaign. I could not manage this campaign myself, and so we would need to find someone trustworthy within your community to handle the payouts and Campaign funds. Let me know which option you choose.


If someone wants to volunteer to run the 2nd type, Post here.

If you'd like to pledge towards the Campaign pool, post here how much. Once we reach 1000,00 NOBL pledged, I'll either give the go-ahead for a volunteer to set up the 2nd type of campaign, or if no volunteer comes forward I'll set up the Raffle type campaign.  Once we hit 100,000, a Campaign pool address will be posted by the campaign manager (me or whoever volunteers to help out).

The free campaign will be 3 days long.

TOTAL Pledged: 0 NOBL
Needed: 100,000 NOBL

I suggest we take 100,000 from the leftovers of the community fund to get this started. Let me know an address and Ill transfer the 100,000.

If we decide on the raffle, then i'll just have you pay out the winners. If someone else wants to manage the other type of campaign, I'll have them post an address.
Also, 100,000 was just the minimum i felt would be needed to keep this going for 3 days (based on our previous action campaign). More is always welcome, especially if we go with the 'pay out all actions' campaign type.

[Rofo]

For those who ask for my permission, blessing or opinion I don't really have much to say. My stance was always reduced rewards/merge-mining with DOGE/LTC and not touching PoS due to huge security concerns. The PoS drive began with the community 'democratic' vote so I didn't feel like the dictator of a decentralized coin. It's a shame I couldn't get delivery of PoS sorted which is why I felt it best in the community hands. I'd advise a real vote in IRC and for those ultimately chosen to determine the future of NOBL to really understand the technology/industry future and care about things more important than short-medium term price/position protection. Good luck with your choices.

[Honeypot]

For those who ask for my permission, blessing or opinion I don't really have much to say. My stance was always reduced rewards/merge-mining with DOGE/LTC and not touching PoS due to huge security concerns. The PoS drive began with the community 'democratic' vote so I didn't feel like the dictator of a decentralized coin. It's a shame I couldn't get delivery of PoS sorted which is why I felt it best in the community hands. I'd advise a real vote in IRC and for those ultimately chosen to determine the future of NOBL to really understand the technology/industry future and care about things more important than short-medium term price/position protection. Good luck with your choices.

Good call. Will call an irc vote asap.

[joelao95]

I am not concerned about attacks with significant amounts of coins. Big holders have to spend a lot to purchase these coins. It is unlikely someone will be willing to invest heavily into a coin just to attack it.

This is about right; there could be many possibilities to make it happen though, for example, unintentional staking with big amount because of the "greed", let alone pool staking is happening. More or less this is a security hole.

Joe, I would like to understand how Magi Coin's PoS works, could you tell roughly how many coins will be minted by:

- wallet with 1 Magi Coin
- wallet with 10 Magi Coins
- 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 coins?

Let us presume these wallets are online all the time for a month.

It's a bit difficult to estimate a month staking. In general, reward = coinage * APR / 365. To be simple, coinage is about linearly increasing with staking days (within the first four days). As an example, 100 XMG staking gets reward in the 3rd day, then reward = (100*3) * 2.6% / 365 = 0.021 XMG; 1000 XMG will get reward within half day: (100*0.5) * 2.6% / 365 = 0.036 XMG. For 10000, 100000 coins in staking barely gets reward. I assumed above coins are staked in a transaction. One can split 10000 over 10 transactions, that will lead to 10 times of staking with 1000 coins.

[joelao95]

So community POS takeover??? Sounds fun

NO, not at all, no one is taking over; me, just proividing some help here, that's about it. I believe NOBL is not about PoS or anything like that, but with the big business plan.

For those who ask for my permission, blessing or opinion I don't really have much to say. My stance was always reduced rewards/merge-mining with DOGE/LTC and not touching PoS due to huge security concerns. The PoS drive began with the community 'democratic' vote so I didn't feel like the dictator of a decentralized coin. It's a shame I couldn't get delivery of PoS sorted which is why I felt it best in the community hands. I'd advise a real vote in IRC and for those ultimately chosen to determine the future of NOBL to really understand the technology/industry future and care about things more important than short-medium term price/position protection. Good luck with your choices.

Rofo, good to see you; my little suggestion regarding your prior takeover post: DO NOT hand NOBL over to someone else if you want to see it alive "forever", or it will be dead soon. I'm seriously saying that, no one else can handle a coin as much as its original dev. Only you know what the coin was and will be in the future. Just ask the question, for what reasons, somebody/party would take over the coin? I never see a successful coin because of taking over (correct me).

I am free to take some tasks to pass NOBL over the PoS or whatever else. Let the community handle marketing stuffs etc, so that you can focus on your plan. But man, don't push yourself too hard; you know the crypto stuff is crazy, simply don't rely on it. I don't see any anticipation that we can get something out of it readily & quickly, unless undergoing the scam scheme (for quick profits), that's absolutely not what we're gonna do. Just relax yourself, few hours of crypto, few hours of your real life business. That's it!

My stance was always reduced rewards and not touching PoS due to huge security concerns.

I think this would be about right choice too; magi did have a specific design on the dynamic block rewards; I bet that will be resist to multipool. For anyone who is interested to it (again this post, or PM me for more discussion; I am actually keen to see it's combining with the scrypt ago to resist ASIC (it's a soft control though; I'm quite serious on this): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=735170.msg9991269#msg9991269 (also find the paper in the OP).

Edit: implementing this design into NOBL will only need a hardfork that can be done quite easily. No swap is needed, and we will be able to keep everything else the same, including the original NOBL code.  

[Rofo]

My stance was always reduced rewards/merge-mining with DOGE/LTC and not touching PoS due to huge security concerns.

Is the correct quote because of the long-established and proven algo (non-experimental) as well as specific/efficient technology/money dedicated to it (Scrypt/ASIC). The community is free to vote on what they prefer though, I'm done trying to make my cases for specific paths.

[fairglu]

I think such attack could be mitigated with typical PoS if we used quite low Max Stake Age e.g. 1 week? And Min Stake Age of couple of hours? This way it does not matter if someone keeps staking for months since Weight will be capped.

Yep, tweaking can help, but it's all a matter of compromise and making it "harder" to attack.

For instance, even with stake age and other tweaks, you could envision someone stashing coins in thousandths of wallet addresses, distributing them in dozens of cloud VMs with a client modified for the purpose of the attack, and then starting them all at once, thus take over the chain.

If the attack is timed well enough, the above may not even be that costly: each address would need to hold the bare minimum for staking, and each VM would only need to run as long as necessary for the attack. Using digital ocean f.i., you could have 60 VMs (and daemons) up for 12 hour for just $5, which would be quite enough to overwhelm any low-volume PoS chain. You could even DDOS the few "friendly" top-staking nodes for good measure.

Preparation for such an attack would be very obvious if not planned well in advance (lots of transactions to distribute coins), and would be very obvious when it's running (lots of new nodes in the network), but would likely happen faster than anyone could react.

AFAIK the only protection against this would the be PoS difficulty retarget, but if that diff starts too low, it would not be able to move higher fast enough, as an attacker can throw a lot of cheap staking power.