[ANN][Q2C] QubitCoin new secure hashing (CPU/GPU) (NEW) Update 0.8.4.1

[MaD!CaT]

Is it true Q2C is a dead coin now?

[szmarco]

Obviously yes.

[gjhiggins]

Is it true Q2C is a dead coin now?

That would be an ecumenical matter.

Qubitcoin is listed on Poloniex, blocks are being chained, the network's seeing the same modest but persistent hashrate as is typical with mature altcoins, there's a handful of persistent nodes. To my untutored eye, the depth chart on Poloniex suggests that the price could be quite labile at this level.

I'd say Qubitcoin is “as well as can be expected” for an altcoin that’s deep into the halving sequence, has an absent dev and isn't operating to any particular plan.

There appears to be a hard core of persistent residual belief in the validity of the notion of a “technical altcoin”, even if no-one’s quite sure what that actually is, just that Qubitcoin is one.

It's not that Qubitcoin is especially neglected as an altcoin, there're loads of others just bumbling along with a community that is basically not overly dissatisfied with the situation and not seeming to experience any pressing urge to change things in case it upsets the applecart mainly because no-one's quite sure why the situation pertains as it does so no-one's quite sure how to proceed and doing nothing seems to be a course that puts assets at least immediate risk.

But then someone comes along and asks “Is this coin dead?” My response is “Define ‘dead’ and maybe I can give you an answer.” But that’s a bit of a cheat, I know you can’t provide a definition of “dead” (it’s ostensive), so I can’t give you the answer you seek, other than to point to a collection of instances and suggest you develop your own notion, then come back and ask a more focussed version of the question.

Qubitcoin hodlers might recognise my userid from earlier posts and recall that I've been maintaining a “plan B” repository; part backup, part sandpit.

It's what I use to try out experiments, such as using a chain of the 256bit versions of the hash functions --- instead of a chain of 512bit versions of those hash functions and then throwing away half of the hash before returning.

The Merckle tree implementation in the Bitcoin reference client is coded to use uint256 so the uint512 returned by a SHA3-512 hashfn has to be trimmed to fit -- in effect throwing away some (but, importantly, not all) of the advantages accruing from the use of NIST candidates. Some of the NIST candidate hash functions are faster in 512 than in 256, nearly all candidate SHA3-512s are faster than SHA2-256, so most of the speed advantage is retained, almost no matter which NIST candidates are chosen.

I idly questioned: is there a more felicitous selection of 5 NIST hashfns that brings maximum speed for a pure 256 solution and how does that compare with a truncated 512 solution?

A visit to the SHA-3 Zoo and a tour of the pertinent NIST candidates brings up the documentation that accompanies the reference implementation, optimisations, etc. that each candidate is obliged to make available in an associated submission zipfile, e.g. http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/hash/sha-3/Round1/documents/Lesamnta.zip. I happily collected the lot. (Sorry but this is what’s typically entailed if we’re to treat the term “technical” with any degree of seriousness).

The other piece of Qubitcoin work I'm pursuing is a re-release of the original codebase as a full fork of the bitcoin codebase that was used for the original history-less commit.

This technique re-inserts the particular altcoin codebase back into the commit history as branch of the official repos so it can assume the full benefits of its heritage. I've done this for Mooncoin, paving the way for a simple iterated merge of the developments of the upstream version tree, right up to the latest master.

To keep you all in the loop, Zeljko and I are carrying on a “what do we do now to secure the immediate future of the coin” discussion which involves ugly topics such as Q2C2fiat points - DNSSeed nodes must be hosted: hosting == fiat, Q2C won't cut it.

Just so's that visitors don’t get the wrong impression about Qubitcoin's vitality, I'll set up an alternate github org project, qubitcoin-project (same as I've done for Mooncoin) which you're all welcome to sign up to. I'll ensure that everyone knows where the spare keys are kept and we'll work out some arrangement for community ownership of the IP of the various properties involved (official web site, block explorer, DNSSeed nodes, official p2pool, whatever).



Cheers

Graham

[gjhiggins]

I'm surely not the only person to note the June 27th. launch of a Qubit-algo coin?

Deepcoin - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=667470.0


Name : Deepcoin
Ticker : DCN
Algorithm : Qubit
Total coins : 99 000 000
Premine : 0 %
Block time : 1 Minute


Cheers,

Graham

[gjhiggins]

The other piece of Qubitcoin work I'm pursuing is a re-release of the original codebase as a full fork of the bitcoin codebase that was used for the original history-less commit.

I set up a github org as a “safe house” that would better support common ownership and direction of the resources and intellectual property - https://github.com/qubitcoin-project (feel free to request membership). I made forks of the original qubitcoin github repos and added QubitCoinQ2C which is the 0.8.4.1 version (well, based on an 0.8.3 version of SIFcoin, actually) merged up to the latest in the bitcoin 0.8 series, 0.8.6.

I added a plot of the difficulty to decorate the overview page; something to look at whilst syncing --- but a fishtank screensaver would probably be more effective.

Comme ci:



After a bit more tinkering and some prettification, I'll release PC & OS X binaries.


Cheers

Graham

[Majormax]

The other piece of Qubitcoin work I'm pursuing is a re-release of the original codebase as a full fork of the bitcoin codebase that was used for the original history-less commit.

I set up a github org as a “safe house” that would better support common ownership and direction of the resources and intellectual property - https://github.com/qubitcoin-project (feel free to request membership). I made forks of the original qubitcoin github repos and added QubitCoinQ2C which is the 0.8.4.1 version (well, based on an 0.8.3 version of SIFcoin, actually) merged up to the latest in the bitcoin 0.8 series, 0.8.6.

I added a plot of the difficulty to decorate the overview page; something to look at whilst syncing --- but a fishtank screensaver would probably be more effective.

Comme ci:



After a bit more tinkering and some prettification, I'll release PC & OS X binaries.


Cheers

Graham

Good work, novel features in the wallet really distinguish a coin !

Q2C is alive , but might be considered dormant in the promotional sense. It is amongst a large number of competing currencies, but the technicals are way superior. That only leads to real success if adoption/promotion is forthcoming, and those can happen at any time if the right people get involved.

[yugo23]

Sooner or later Q2C price ill explode.

[RedDiamond]

Sooner or later Q2C price ill explode.

It is now 0.00000012 in Poloniex   Let's hope that Graham's mods will give it a little boost.

[blg425]

I thought this coin was dead? Is there still promise?

[Majormax]

I thought this coin was dead? Is there still promise?

Not dead at all. Still trading, still mining, just very quiet, almost like hibernation. A bit of warmth will make it spring to life.

[blg425]

I thought this coin was dead? Is there still promise?

Not dead at all. Still trading, still mining, just very quiet, almost like hibernation. A bit of warmth will make it spring to life.

Do you think it is a good buy right now?

[Majormax]

I thought this coin was dead? Is there still promise?

Not dead at all. Still trading, still mining, just very quiet, almost like hibernation. A bit of warmth will make it spring to life.

Do you think it is a good buy right now?

Its similar to a lottery ticket.

[RedDiamond]

I thought this coin was dead? Is there still promise?

The coin is not dead but the situation of the previous developer is unclear. He was living in Crimea war area and has not logged into bitcointalk anymore. Of course we all hope that he is well.

[gjhiggins]

Announcing a modest technical program for QubitCoin

Acting as self-appointed technical lead, I created the qubitcoin-project organisation (https://github.com/qubitcoin-project) on github. Unlike an individual developer's account, an organisation account provides basic membership functions plus some support for team working. It is a practical means of effecting collective ownership and control of the coin's key resources. Feel free to PM me with your github a/c name or send me email at gjh@bel-epa.com.

As a first step to stability, I collected up all the QubitCoin code resources and committed them to the org's repository. This includes the original wallet code, the cpu miner and the p2pool code (which we should think about possibly running ourselves as a means of generating some operating/promotional budget.)

I also added the work I've been doing in parallel - reworking the graphics and upgrading the code to Bitcoin 0.8.6.

And so to the details of the announcement.

A modest technical program

I've been looking into ways of developing the coin technically without changing the economic parameters.  I've been making a few posts on Mooncoin in response to Moonies' suggestions of a change of pow algo and in the course of doing the background reading for the response, I found an interesting set of results from 2009 Classification of the SHA-3 candidates, including reported performance statistics in cpb (cycles per message block) for 256 and 512 output lengths (sometimes labelled "-32" or "-64") on 32 & 64-bit host architectures. I include it here because it's exemplary and I also need to reference the detail ....

Name_of_hash_function	32-bit_arch	Class'n	64-bit_arch	Class'n
ARIRANG-256	20	A	55.3	E
ARIRANG-512	14.9	AA	11.2	B
AURORA-256	24.3	B	15.4	B
AURORA-512	46.9	B	27.4	E
BLAKE-32	28.3	B	16.7	B
BLAKE-64	61.7	C	12.3	B
Blender-32	105.8	E	105.8	E
Blender-64	122.4	E	164.2	E
BMW-256	8.6	AA	7.85	AA
BMW-512	13.37	AA	4.06	AA
Cheetah-256	15.3	A	10.5	A
Cheetah-512	83.8	D	15.6	C
Chi-256	49	C	26	D
Chi-512	78	D	16	C
CRUNCH-256	29.9	C	16.9	B
CRUNCH-512	86.4	D	46.9	E
CubeHash8/1-256	14	A	11	A
CubeHash16/1-512	14	A	11	A
DynamicSHA-256	27.9	B	27.9	D
DynamicSHA-512	47.2	B	47.2	E
DynamicSHA2-256	21.9	B	21.9	C
DynamicSHA2-512	67.3	C	67.1	E
ECHO-256	38	D	32	D
ECHO-256	83	D	66	E
Edon-R-256	9.1	AA	5.9	AA
Edon-R-512	13.7	AA	2.9	AA
EnRUPT-256	8.3	AA	8.3	A
EnRUPT-512	5.1	AA	5.1	AA
Essence-256	149.8	E	19.5	B
Essence-512	176.5	E	23.5	D
Fugue-256	36.2	C	61	E
Fugue-512	74.6	D	132.7	E
Grøstl-256	22.9	B	22.4	D
Grøstl-512	37.5	A	30.1	E
Hamsi-256	22	B	25	D
JH-256	21.3	B	16.8	B
JH-512	21.3	AA	16.8	D
Keccak-256	35.4	C	10.1	A
Keccak-512	68.9	C	20.3	D
LANE-256	40.4	D	25.6	D
LANE-512	152.2	E	145.3	E
Lesamnta-256	59.2	E	52.7	E
Lesamnta-512	54.5	B	51.2	E
Luffa-256	13.9	AA	13.4	A
Luffa-512	25.5	AA	23.2	D
Lux-256	16.7	A	28.2	D
Lux-512	14.9	AA	12.5	B
MD6-256	68	E	28	D
MD6-512	106	D	44	E
NaSHA-256	39	D	28.4	D
NaSHA-512	38.9	A	29.3	E
SANDstorm-256	62.5	E	36.5	D
SANDstorm-512	296.8	E	95.3	E
Sarmal-256	19.2	A	10	A
Sarmal-512	23.3	AA	12.6	B
SHA-256	29.3	C	20.1	C
SHA-512	55.2	C	13.1	C
Shabal-256	18.4	A	13.5	A
Shabal-512	18.4	AA	13.5	C
SHAvite-3-256	35.3	C	26.7	C
SHAvite-3-512	55	B	38.2	E
SIMD-256	12	AA	11	A
SIMD-512	118	E	85	E
Skein-256	21.6	A	7.6	AA
Skein-512	20.1	AA	6.1	AA
TIB3-256	12.9	AA	7.6	A
TIB3-512	17.5	AA	6.3	AA
Twister-256	35.8	C	15.8	B
Twister-512	39.6	A	17.5	D
Vortex-256	46.2	D	69.4	E
Vortex-512	56	C	90	E

I checked the qubit algos against the results and there seems some technical (and promotional) advantage to be gained by revising the qubit algo. Revisions are unexceptional in cryptography, pragmatism rules; the result matrix seems to suggest that two of the slower algos could be simply replaced by two faster ones. I've pulled the qubit-algo results out of the big table, so I can illustrate what and how much.

Code:

/*
             512  |  256
            32 64 | 32 64
luffa       AA D  | AA A
cubehash     A A  |  A A
shavite      B E  |  C C < bmw   AA AA | AA AA
simd         E E  | AA A
echo         D E  |  D D < skein  A AA | AA AA

*/

I will have to dig deep into the crypto benchmarks (http://bench.cr.yp.to/results-sha3.html) for contemporary figures but it looks like a starting point

Why leave SIMD unchanged despite its E-grade performance in 512bits? Because it's irrelevant. In the candidate submission packs, each algo's performance is described and for nearly all the NIST candidates, the 256-bit length implementation is faster than the 512-bit. Bitcoin itself (our code heritage) uses 256-bit hashes throughout. The choice of a 512-bit format can be traced back to SiFcoin, the first chained-algo altcoin and QubitCoin's direct ancestor. The rationale for the decision is google-translated here:

Topic: Sifcoin (inflationary fork). Start 23/06/2013
hesh function for the signature block header changed from sha-256 (sha-256 ()), on the daisy chain of the candidates / finalists and winner sha-3. Blake, BMW, Groestl, JH, Keccak, Skein. All functions of the 512-bit, but the end result is truncated to 256 bits. [...] Complication chain to a length of 6 different hash functions and increased bit depth to intermediate 512 - an attempt to protect from further development of highly efficient Mh / s gpu-algorithms and theory, "simple" Gh / s devices)

If that strategy ever afforded any protection it has now long since expired and the declared “rationale” has since mutated into a rich tradition of security theatre and superstition that's well on its way to becoming out-and-out pantomime.

The performance of NIST candidates on ASIC and FPGA implementations is what they were judged on. In Nov 2011 NIST were giving away all-in-one ASIC chips that carried implementations of all of the finalists plus a reference implementation of SHA2. The literature is very specific, the SHA3 session of 2010 CHES Workshop has some very good papers, e.g. “Fair and Comprehensive Methodology for Comparing Hardware Performance of Fourteen Round Two SHA-3 Candidates using FPGAs”.
I've been gaining invaluable insights by working through post-NIST review papers such as AlAhmad  and Alshaikhli’s “Broad View of Cryptographic Hash Functions” (IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 10, Issue 4, No 1, July 2013).

We also evaluated the impact of technology scaling on FPGA and ASIC, i.e. we estimated the impact of more advanced technology nodes on our results. For FPGAs, the scaling factors are generally hard to quantify because different FPGA families may have drastically different architectures. In [3], researchers have already demonstrated the influence of different technology nodes on the FPGA results for SHA-3 Round 2 candidates. For example, when moving from a 90nm Xilinx Spartan3E to a 65nm Xilinx Virtex-5, the basic logic element changes from 4-LUT to 6-LUT. In addition, the presence of hardened IP blocks, such as embedded memory (Block RAM), clocking management blocks and DSP functions, can lead to differences between two FPGAs within even the same technology node. Therefore, our comparisons of the 14 SHA3 designs in FPGA are specifically made for a Xilinx 65nm Virtex-5 FPGA. For other FPGA technologies, we recommend the use of an automated framework such as ATHENA [3].

As they say, “the devil is in the detail”. Following up the ATHENA reference, I found results for both FPGA and ASIC benchmarks for the SHA3 2nd- and 3rd-round candidates. They have rather a fine selection of options of ASIC benchmark:


Algorithm Group:
    o Round 3 SHA-3 Candidates & SHA-2
    o Round 2 SHA-3 Candidates & SHA-2
Implementation Type:
    o 130nm Process, Virginia Tech, Optimization for Throughput/Area
    o 65nm Process, ETH Zurich and GMU, Optimization for Throughput/Area
    o 65nm Process, ETH Zurich, Optimization for Minimum Area at Throughput = 2.488 Gbit/s
Ranking:
    o Throughput/Area
    o Throughput
    o Area
    o Power
    o Energy/Bit

All this was in full flood well before SiFcoin was launched in mid-2013; there was no justification for hand-wavy references to theoretical ASIC solutions.
Angles of approach

We can see an opportunity for couple of possibly useful speedups that might act to reduce the differential between CPU and GPU:

i) we might gain a speed-up by switching to a couple of allegedly-faster algos and
ii) we might be able to gain some performance improvement by abandoning the ineffective, unnecessarily burdensome 512-bit format and returning to 256-bit hashing.

If there is a performance penalty for using 512-bit hash lengths, then it's quite a high price to pay for unnecessary extra security - ECRYPT II's 2012 annual review of key lengths maintains that 256 bits will provide protection from 2014 to 2040 and the NSA Suite B recommends 256 bits for SECRET, reserving a whopping 384 bits for TOP SECRET.

However, it's not obvious that either course will be successful, contemporary hardware is considerably more sophisticated and performance varies by algo and architecture. There are extensive graphs of performance at bench.cr.yp.to, in cycles per byte of message block, here's a scaled-down screenshot



Clearly, there's only one sane option, try it and see.

1. Reducing hash length to 256-bits

Straightforward to do, everything's limited to a single file: hashblock.h

I'm using an i3 2367M (1.40GHz) with AVX.

I used QubitCoin version v0.8.3.15 for tests

mainNet 512bit -> 256bit
"hashespersec" : 33939,
"hashespersec" : 34336,
"hashespersec" : 35520,
"hashespersec" : 34927,
"hashespersec" : 35380,
"hashespersec" : 35380,
"hashespersec" : 35046,
"hashespersec" : 35155,
"hashespersec" : 35126,
"hashespersec" : 35019,
"hashespersec" : 32447,
"hashespersec" : 34966,
"hashespersec" : 34717,

After the change, running on testnet3

testNet 256bit -> 256bit
"hashespersec" : 40336,
"hashespersec" : 40458,
"hashespersec" : 39867,
"hashespersec" : 39558,
"hashespersec" : 40691,
"hashespersec" : 40526,
"hashespersec" : 40566,
"hashespersec" : 38682,
"hashespersec" : 40358,
"hashespersec" : 39698,
"hashespersec" : 40623,

Seems clear enough, a noticeable speed-up, about the magnitude one might expect

2. Swapping algos
Again, quite straightforward, just a couple of files affected:

After the algo swap, running on testnet3

revised qubit
testNet 256bit -> 256bit
"hashespersec" : 44704,
"hashespersec" : 44259,
"hashespersec" : 44392,
"hashespersec" : 44673,
"hashespersec" : 44580,
"hashespersec" : 44103,
"hashespersec" : 44552,
"hashespersec" : 44552,
"hashespersec" : 44113,
"hashespersec" : 44315,
"hashespersec" : 44660,

As above, apparently.

After migrating the code from its 0.8.3 branch to the 0.8.6 master, I was dismayed to see the hash rate drop to 20k. A brief investigation fingered the disabled KGW, so I swapped it out for the more favourably-viewed Digishield block retargeting - and the hash rate returned to its prior elevated level.

The next step is to invite people to make a direct comparison on their own machine: hashespersec for 0.8.3/4 client vs 0.8.6 client. The code is in the organisation's repository: https://github.com/qubitcoin-project/QubitCoinQ2C, I hope to be able to make an OS X binary available.

To enable a client for testnet, you either call it on the command line with a -testnet=1 argument or add testnet=1 to the config file. There's a temporary testNetDNSSeed hard-coded in, so the client should find the node straight away.

With respect to DNSseeds: as far as I can ascertain, DNSSeeds (as a source of node IPs) don't actually need to be an node running on a server of their own, they (or it) can be simply implemented via common-or-garden DNS resolution, resolving to the address of a known server hosting a full node. It's horribly centralized but that's the practical reality of hard-coding DNSSeeds into the source.

The upshot of this is ... to be independent of addnode lists, the source code needs to include the IP address of at least one known, hosted node assigned with the responsibility for broadcasting the peers. In QubitCoin, this function was originally combined with a mining pool (and perhaps even the block explorer) all running off the same IP address but, as we are discovering, this degree of centralisation can be problematic when the centre collapses.

We (Ngaio and I) run a server (for as long as we can afford to pay for it) and we could host it all, just as krecu did. But sustaining that demands fiat, not q2c (even if we had any) and we're unsure whether the community is strong enough to support stumping up real $$$.

From a pragmatic standpoint, for as long as we have the bitcointalk and reddit threads, DNSSeeds are mainly a technical nicety which we can't afford right now but can hope to have again soon.

Now that there's some genuine basis for viewing Qubitcoin as a “technical altcoin”, the next order of business will be to address the issue of setting up an organisational structure. Hopefully, I'll have a little less to say.

Cheers

Graham

[penambang]

Great news... 

[skeem]

Could somebody make a native FreeBSD port?

[bittercoinist]

What is the minimal number of miners that can keep a coin alive?

I'm curious about this (for any coin). In general, the trend for alt coins is the price keeps dropping. At some point, most people will stop mining a particular coin.  If there is only one miner left, then no one will be verifying his finds. Can two miners verify each other and keep the coin going?  I think different coins have different requirements on how many verification is needed. But can the one miner repeatedly verify the same transaction and count as multiple verification?

[u5sos]

Q2C still alive. more then alive. Nice news!

[bigc1984]

Hello I was wondering if someone in this community could help me (us) out in the deepcoin community? we share the same algo (qubit) and was wondering if anyone could help us build a block explorer. we got someone on it now but as you can see here ran into an issue:

any news about the block explorer?

+1 no block explorer, no exchange

I would make a block explorer except I don't know how to make the qubit python module that'd be needed for ABE, and I can't seem to find one anywhere...

if anyone can help, I am offering 10k bounty in deepcoin

[penambang]

Q2C block explorer already there for long time: https://coinplorer.com/Q2C