Starting Algorithm: Keccak (SHA-3)
Total coins: 250,000,000
Block reward: 96 MaxCoin per block, halving every ~12 months with min reward of 1
Difficulty: Retargeting using Kimoto Gravity Well algorithm
Block time: 30 seconds
Cryptography Tech Spec
MaxCoin uses the Keccak (SHA-3) hashing algorithm for its Proof-of-Work. Keccak was selected as an alternative to the NSA designed SHA256 after a 5-year long competition held by the NIST and will be seen increasingly as the algorithm used in banking and other secure applications. A single round of Keccak is used, resulting in a 256 bit hash.
We have also implemented a provably-secure signing algorithm, EC-Schnorr. Every existing cryptocurrency uses the ECDSA algorithm, as chosen by Satoshi; whilst ECDSA is in common use and is secure, EC-Schnorr is provably more secure and is currently being recommended over it (
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/identity-and-trust/library/deliverables/algorithms-key-sizes-and-parameters-report/at_download/fullReport). Additionally, MaxCoin changes the elliptic curve utilised within the signing algorithms from a Koblitz curve, secp256k1, to a more secure psuedo-random one, secp256r1. The use of the latter curve is recommended almost universally - and the decision by Satoshi to use the former is one that is often queried in the Bitcoin world. One theory is that there are some speed advantages to using the Koblitz curve, but, the implementation used in Bitcoin (OpenSSL) does not make use of this optimisation and, thus, the result is reduced-security.
The cryptography choices within MaxCoin have been made to maximise security and, where possible, to minimise NSA influence. We have been advised throughout by the renowed cryptography expert Professor Nigel Smart (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Smart_(cryptographer)).
These changes also lay the foundation for some key features we're aiming to implement in MaxCoin over the coming months, so while they may currently appear uninteresting changes they pave the way for our future growth.
What do you mean by "Starting Algorithm"?
This is an issue of hardware miner resistance, such as ASICs. Keccak is the starting algorithm for MaxCoin and at this point in time no hardware miner currently exists. However, creating a Keccak ASIC is not impossible. Therefore, in order to protect against a hardware-miner future we are going to implement an "ASIC protection" feature into MaxCoin. This will work by allowing the blockchain to decide a new hashing algorithm for MaxCoin every x blocks. More specifically, the last authenticated transaction's hash is used to determine an integer and depending on this value an algorithm will be selected. This will mean hardware miners will find it difficult to create hardware in enough time to see profitable return. Purely for example, these could be:
x Algorithm 0 Keccak 1 Blake 2 Grostlx2 3 JH 4 Skein 5 Blake2 6 JH(Grostl) 7 Keccak+Blake
Difficulty & Distribution
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.
Mining is done via CPU at release (mining guides about to be released also on this subreddit), but a GPU miner will not be far away. We've seen some versions in the works already after we released CPUminer yesterday, and while we have not yet seen a working version, this is very unlikely to take long. We'll update all official channels with Keccak GPU miner once it is available. It's also worth noting that any GPU miner created will not work after the first algorithm switch takes place.
