MaxCoin Pre-Launch Announcement
MaxCoin (MAX)An alternative cryptocurrency disrupting the already rather disrupting crypto market.
Quick Technical SpecificationsBTC Scrypt or SHA-256? Keccak (SHA-3)
BTC How many coins? 250,000,000
BTC Block reward? 96 MaxCoin per block, halving every ~12 months
BTC Difficulty? Retargeting using Kimoto Gravity Well algorithm.
BTC Block time? 30 seconds
A Larger Paragraph Or Two Of Information That Takes Longer To ReadOne of the most important things for MaxCoin is to achieve a fair launch. In the current world of 100-alts-per day achieving a fair distribution at launch seems like a rare occasion. MaxCoin will have a zero % premine, proven by the timestamps of the first blocks in a block explorer, and we have attempted to combat low-difficulty instamining with a fast retarget rate up until block 200. At block 200 the Kimoto Gravity Well implementation will take over the retargeting. You can read more about KGW and it's benefits against pool hopping issues (such as coins stuck in high difficulty)
here.
After we filmed the show we decided releasing the coin binaries and source at show's airing in our timezone would be unfairly beneficial to those also in our timezone, and those that live elsewhere or had simply yet not heard about the coin would be disadvantaged. For this reason we want to set a hard deadline for the release of the MaxCoin clients as
7.30PM GMT on Wednesday 5th February 2014 to allow the news of the coin's launch to spread, and to provide a fair chance for everybody to prepare and mine at official start time. This also afford you enough time to prepare yourself for mining without waiting with idle machines, or if you're not a miner to learn about it in time to to join in mining MaxCoin.
Keccak is of the SHA-3 family, winning a 5-year long competition to create the successor or an alternative to SHA-2 (Bitcoin uses SHA-256, a member of this SHA-2 family). You can read more about the SHA-3 family in relation to Bitcoin in the Bitcoin Wiki under
Future Hash and you can read more about the hashing algorithm Keccak
here. You
pronounce Keccak like "Ketchup".
We're working on having a lot of services ready for launch. Some are ready and some are longer term goals. These include a branded block explorer, mining pools, exchanges, faucets, wallet apps for phone, web wallets, bitcoinwisdom style charting, a fiat/max exchange and a max-payment processing system (which will be added as a payment method for StartJOIN's crowdfunding as soon as it is functional).
We are also working on some less-basic altcoin things and features we'd love to see implemented in Bitcoin - a testing ground. Information for these will come out as progress occurs as this is very much a research driven aspect of the coin's implementation. For service-related talk addressable in the lead up to code release section below q/a.
Common Questions and Their Respective AnswersQ: Can I mine MaxCoin? How?
A: We'll provide config files for the wallet client upon release to allow anybody to CPU mine from day one. There will be mining pools available from launch, too.
Q: I am on Windows... can I mine?
A: Yep, there will be a client for all major OS.
Q: What about Mac though?
A: Yep! A client for Mac too! All major OS!
Q: Linux?
A: ... Yes. Linux also.
Q: So is it CPU only? Will I be able to use my Butterfly Labs ASIC when it arrives (... any day now...)?
A: Using Keccak as a hashing function renders current Bitcoin ASICs and the upcoming Scrypt ASICs useless on the coin. GPU parallelization of Keccak
is possible but currently does not exist for mining with our implementation of SHA-3.
Q: Can I buy MaxCoin?
A: Not yet, but it will be listed on exchanges in the future. Coins-e has made contact to add it to their exchange, so it is looking to be the first to list the coin. I am sure others will make it available in time!
Q: Can I buy MaxCoin from you?
A: Nope! I don't have any yet. Zero percent premine, so you will have as much chance as us to mine the coin on day one. MaxCoinProject accounts will not be issuing any private sales, either, so if anybody claims to be from the dev team offering you coins for Bitcoin please do not pay them - we don't have any until it is in public domain! We observed this scam a couple of times on Twitter with other coin launches we have followed recently so thought a warning could be helpful.
Q: Can I help with MaxCoin?
A: Yes! Please get in touch if you'd like to throw your skillset at the coin. We're more than happy to have people come on board and help out and teach us things we may not know. We have already had some guidance from leading cryptography researcher Prof. Nigel Smart and are very open to learning more. Additionally, Max is using the MAX he mines in addition to some BTC to fund cryptocurrency startups and apps via StartJOIN. Check it out, sign up, build something. Get involved!
Q: Haha! I saw your laptop said 'Aborted' on the television! ROFL!
A: This is actually supposed to happen. It's ugly, but it's true. See
here and ctrl+f 'error' or 'aborted' - it happens both when generating the merkel hash and when generating the genesis block. We told Max this happened ahead of the filming but he requested we keep it in for legitimacy instead of some CSI style zoom to enhance or
two person keyboard hacking.
Q: I have a question that isn't listed as a common question, can you add it to the common questions?
A: If a question occurs a bunch of times and we know the answer then we will put it up here. Ask away.
Stuff That Doesn't Fit Into The Other SectionsAs I mentioned above, here are some things that are addressable right now that we'd like people to get in touch about. I will be adding to and growing this list during the week as goals are achieved and additional infrastructure is created.
Mining pools: We'd like to encourage the creation of as many mining pools as possible to distribute the network hashing power. We are currently finalizing the details of a zero-fee mining pool for launch, but if you would like to run a pool please do get in touch also.
Other altcoin services: If you run an exchange, a market cap site, an altcoin service, (etc), and would like to list or implement MaxCoin, please also get in touch.
Tl;dr - SHA-3 coin. Launches 7.30PM GMT on Wednesday 5th February 2014. More info to be seeded out via
@MaxCoinProject. Not a fork of dogecoin.
