[ANN][RIC] Riecoin: constellations POW *CPU* HARD FORK successful, world record

[gatra]

The explanation of Riecoin's proof-of-work algorithm is now published in riecoin.org

So this is the secret: prime sextuples. Each block represents six prime numbers of the form p, p+4, p+6, p+10, p+12, p+16.

If you expected just finding prime numbers, one per block, and you fill cheated, please try to understand this:
It's not practical to just look for prime numbers, because verification would be almost as hard as mining. So there has to be a catch. Something to make finding more difficult than verifying.
There are many ways to do this, for example requiring that the primes follow some arbitrary rule like they should be k1 mod k2. Or spell my name backwards, or whatever, but this would waste resources arbitrarily discarding primes that don't fit, and it doesn't make the accepted primes more interesting mathematically speaking.
Requiring sextuplets make it harder to mine while still keeping interesting properties regarding the distribution of prime numbers.

About the Riemann hypothesis:
I don't expect to prove it or disprove it. I'm a computer scientist, not a mathematician, so I want to be very careful about my claims... otherwise mathematicians will come and hunt (haunt?) me down.
I might be wrong but I understood that the Riemann hypothesis implies a tighter bound on the error term of the prime-counting function than the Prime Number Theorem. It is possible that some mathematician could use Riecoin blockchain data in order to draw some conclusions about the Riemann hypothesis. But I don't expect that to really happen, and it's believed to be true anyway...

Maybe I should have named it "Hardy-Littlewood k-tuple conjecture-coin" since we are directly testing it... but it's not catchy... maybe LittleHardWoodCoin... oh, well, too late now...

[miramare]

Add to my waiting list.

[riecoin]

I just translated the launch post into Chinese as below:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=454135.0
By the way, I registered this ID for protective purpose, and the domain http://riecoin.net too.
I will only use them to promote riecoin in China, and will be pleased to return them if necessary.
Finally, have been looking forward to this for quite a few months, and wish riecoin stand out.

http://riecoin.org/logo_48small_png.png riecoin

Launches at 20:00 UTC on Tuesday, Feb 11th, 2014

General parameters:

• PoW: new idea, prime numbers, not Cunningham chains
• Blocks every 2.5 minutes
• Block reward of 50RIC, halving every 840000 (about 4 years)
• Cap: about 84 million RIC
• Difficulty adjustments every 576 blocks (24hs) 288 blocks (12hs)
• RPC port 28332, or 38332 for testnet
• P2P port 28333, or 38333 for testnet

Website: http://riecoin.org/

The process of money creation in Bitcoin - referred to as mining - involves executing software that utilizes your hardware running sha256 hashes until a certain criterion is met. This part of the mining process is called generating a "Proof of work". The whole mining process also has a critical role in processing transactions and providing security to the network. It is estimated that all the processing power devoted to Bitcoin mining represents more computing power than several of the largest supercomputers in the world combined. Wouldn't it be great to be able to use all that massive power for something else?

Even special purpose hardware was designed for Bitcoin mining. Some consider this a waste of resources, while others argue that supporting a decentralized currency is hardly a waste. We believe that the mining process required for currency to work does not need to include hashing functions as a Proof of Work, and that a "more useful" calculation can be done instead.

That's the point of Riecoin: the mining process, besides fulfilling its function to the operation of the network, generates series of prime numbers as a by-product. This prime numbers are of interest to mathematicians and the scientific community. Riecoin is proof that it is possible to effectively harness all that massive computing power to something useful other than hashing functions.

Fair launch:

Since this is a new PoW, it is very hard to define a starting difficulty that avoids instamining. To overcome this and contribute to a fair launch, the first 576 blocks will have no reward and the next 576 will linearly increase and reach the full reward at block 1152, after 4 difficulty adjustments were performed. Besides avoiding instamining, this should allow time for those who want to compile their own clients.
Expect the starting difficulty to be hard.
Source code will be provided a few days before launch, but the PoW functions will be replaced by stubs. The idea is that everyone would be able to examine the code and confirm that there's nothing strange and it is indeed pretty similar to bitcoin's. Everyone would be able to compile it, see if they have the correct dependencies, etc, but it won't run. At launch time, when the final code is released, everyone could easily check that the only thing that changed is the PoW code, so you'd only have to check the diff of a few lines of code and recompile.

Mining

A basic miner is embedded in the client (use "setgenerate true"), but a fork of cpu-miner that is much more optimized will be released too. Optimized mining requires a sieve, which in general create a RAM access bottleneck, so it's hard to predict how much improvement would you get by using the GPU. I'd bet someone will find a way to implement an efficient GPU miner. Same thing with ASICs. But if they make an ASIC for this, the would be making an ASIC that could be used to find interesting prime number structures. Cool!

Details of how the PoW algorithm works will be released this week, but the source code will be provided at launch time.

follow us on twitter: @riecoin

[gatra]

I just translated the launch post into Chinese as below:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=454135.0
By the way, I registered this ID for protective purpose, and the domain http://riecoin.net too.
I will only use them to promote riecoin in China, and will be pleased to return them if necessary.
Finally, have been looking forward to this for quite a few months, and wish riecoin stand out.

Thank you for your effort!

Promotion is welcome!

I only ask you to please make it clear that users "riecoin" and "gatra" are 2 different persons.
I hold riecoin.us, riecoin.com, riecoin.biz and riecoin.org. I'm not responsible for others.

Thanks and regards,
gatra

[Gcr0n]

well.. all i can say is ..i sincerely hope this launch will be great and fair

[riecoin]

I just translated the launch post into Chinese as below:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=454135.0
By the way, I registered this ID for protective purpose, and the domain http://riecoin.net too.
I will only use them to promote riecoin in China, and will be pleased to return them if necessary.
Finally, have been looking forward to this for quite a few months, and wish riecoin stand out.

Thank you for your effort!

Promotion is welcome!

I only ask you to please make it clear that users "riecoin" and "gatra" are 2 different persons.
I hold riecoin.us, riecoin.com, riecoin.biz and riecoin.org. I'm not responsible for others.

Thanks and regards,
gatra

sure, and please see my new signature.

[robust7]

I will mine it. for sure

[Vaxa]

Whether the cpu-miner (not wallet-miner) will be available during the launch?

[Mivexil]

That's interesting. But since we don't actually know whether there are infinitely many sextuplets (and certainly can't assume such sextuplets exist in a given range of values), doesn't that mean that it's possible to hit a difficulty with which no block will be possible to find?

Also, with pooled mining, since finding a quintuplet is O(logp) easier, that'd mean share value would need to adjust with the difficulty (since greater diff - bigger p - easier to find a quintuplet compared to a sextuplet). Which would be quite a nuisance (though I think XPM does that, it's still subject to readjustments on, for example, YPool).

[GreekBitcoin]

gatra which libraries are going to be needed for compiling? The same as bitcoin or do we need something else too?

Will we be able to solo mine with the client or are we going to need an external miner?

[gatra]

gatra which libraries are going to be needed for compiling? The same as bitcoin or do we need something else too?

Will we be able to solo mine with the client or are we going to need an external miner?

Whether the cpu-miner (not wallet-miner) will be available during the launch?

The client/daemon require the same libraries as Bitcoin.

The qt client has an embedded miner, but it's slow, the external miner is recommended.

The external miner "cpuminer" (executable file is "rminerd" to differentiate from the original "minerd") requires the same libraries as Pooler's cpuminer (libcurl) plus gmp. To compila, you will need autotools too.

[Vorksholk]

Excited for this project! Any ballpark estimates for memory throughput requirements? How large of a sieve is used?

[gatra]

That's interesting. But since we don't actually know whether there are infinitely many sextuplets (and certainly can't assume such sextuplets exist in a given range of values), doesn't that mean that it's possible to hit a difficulty with which no block will be possible to find?

It's not proven, but sextuplets are believed to be infinite. If we ran out of sextuplets I would be very happy because Riecoin would have served it's purpose of helping science! It would be an important result for mathematicians. And the coin wouldn't die because we could switch (hard fork) to prime septuplets or octuplets, etc.
We can't be sure such sextuplets exist, but it is conjectured that distance between sextuplets is O( (log p)^6 ) and the max distance between them is O( (log p)^7 ). An interesting article on this can be found here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.2242
This max distance (believed true but not proven) adds an interesting feature: in theory if you are very unlucky you could do sha256 hashes in Bitcoin style for years and still produce no blocks. But this maximum indicates that if you mine long enough then you will find a block: as long as k*(log p)^7 fits in the nonce filed, you could assume that there exists a nonce that produces a block. Bitcoin does not have a theoretic background that allows you to claim that. We do. It's only conjecture and not proven, but lots of mathematicians believe it to be true. I admit this is not very useful because not only you need to find it, you also need to find it before 2.5 minutes. But being (almost) sure that the nonce exists feels good.

Also, with pooled mining, since finding a quintuplet is O(logp) easier, that'd mean share value would need to adjust with the difficulty (since greater diff - bigger p - easier to find a quintuplet compared to a sextuplet). Which would be quite a nuisance (though I think XPM does that, it's still subject to readjustments on, for example, YPool).

It's true that share value has to be normalized for difficulty. But that's not a problem, since we have a formula for that. Moreover, the relative value of sextuplets to quintuplets, quadruplets or whatever the pool decides to accept, can be computed too using Hardy Littlewood k-tuple conjectures.
Ypool based relative scoring of XPM shares of different chain lengths based only on trial and error.

[gatra]

Excited for this project! Any ballpark estimates for memory throughput requirements? How large of a sieve is used?

In the external miner, sieve size can be configured via command-line parameters but the default is 1Mb (per thread). I believe best results are achieved when the sieve fits in the processor's cache. But this will depend on your hardware...

[Vaxa]

The external miner "cpuminer" (executable file is "rminerd" to differentiate from the original "minerd") requires the same libraries as Pooler's cpuminer (libcurl) plus gmp. To compila, you will need autotools too.

I hope compiled versions for windows will be available at launch.

[gatra]

I hope compiled versions for windows will be available at launch.

Yes, they'll be available. I'm having problems with some antivirus detecting it as malware because it's based on code from the cpuminer that may have been used for botnets (I even deleted the sha and scrypt mining code but they still complain).
But of course it's a false positive and executables will be available.

[wadili89]

ty waiting to mine it

[Hampuz]

Truly excited, I'm sure this coin can go places with an active and supportive dev as yourself gatra!

Keep up the good work and let me know if you need any help promoting.

Cheers!

[john117]

Hey,

i got following message after compilation and running riecoind on an x86_64 Archlinux os:

Code:

riecoind: main.cpp:2738: bool InitBlockIndex(): Assertion `block.hashMerkleRoot == uint256("0xb8fcc5eedac458fe02b8797ceff6c7ba4c05f749ff464b6ebf775e0eab0afa6c")' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

~/.riecoin/debug.log shows:

Code:

2014-02-10 12:45:38 riecoin version v0.8.6-4-g9caaa5e-beta (2014-02-07 00:51:34 -0300)
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Using OpenSSL version OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Default data directory /home/chief/.riecoin
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Using data directory /home/chief/.riecoin
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Using at most 125 connections (1024 file descriptors available)
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Using 4 threads for script verification
2014-02-10 12:45:38 init message: Verifying wallet...
2014-02-10 12:45:38 dbenv.open LogDir=/home/chief/.riecoin/database ErrorFile=/home/chief/.riecoin/db.log
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Bound to [::]:28333
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Bound to 0.0.0.0:28333
2014-02-10 12:45:38 init message: Loading block index...
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Opening LevelDB in /home/chief/.riecoin/blocks/index
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Opened LevelDB successfully
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Opening LevelDB in /home/chief/.riecoin/chainstate
2014-02-10 12:45:38 Opened LevelDB successfully
2014-02-10 12:45:38 LoadBlockIndexDB(): last block file = 0
2014-02-10 12:45:38 LoadBlockIndexDB(): transaction index disabled
2014-02-10 2014-02-10 12:45:38 15e0a1dafd6ccb844a25f9e47bda83b888498c3f416e937ea8b6630e03a7f37b
2014-02-10 12:45:38 f93cd1f3344da4a12219a6d2c4cd714ba277b6c3bf4ed62a561e21105f0cf04c
2014-02-10 12:45:38 c50286add8c871ee94deb5e03af03401e99481de327049afcec0271268b9e3cd
2014-02-10 12:45:38 forPoW: b667efd1a2a99bea0e202b62e7508ec66561eb6d10318db16162a423b831de23
2014-02-10 12:45:38 CBlock(hash=15e0a1dafd6ccb844a25f9e47bda83b888498c3f416e937ea8b6630e03a7f37b, ver=1, hashPrevBlock=0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000, hashMerkleRoot=c50286add8c871ee94deb5e03af03401e99481de327049afcec0271268b9e3cd, nTime=1375382507, nBitsCompact=0x02013000, nOffset=0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000, vtx=1)
2014-02-10 12:45:38   CTransaction(hash=c50286add8c871ee94deb5e03af03401e99481de327049afcec0271268b9e3cd, ver=1, vin.size=1, vout.size=1, nLockTime=0)
    CTxIn(COutPoint(0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000, 4294967295), coinbase 04ffff001d01041d746573746e65742120746869732077696c6c2062652075706461746564)
    CTxOut(nValue=0.00000000, scriptPubKey=04ff3c7ec6f2ed535b6d0d373aaff2)
  vMerkleTree: c50286add8 12:45:38 Initializing databases...

main.cpp:2738

Code:

assert(block.hashMerkleRoot == uint256("0xb8fcc5eedac458fe02b8797ceff6c7ba4c05f749ff464b6ebf775e0eab0afa6c"));

is this just a failur because the coin hasn't started yet?

[gatra]

is this just a failur because the coin hasn't started yet?

yes! it's because full source code will be released at launch time.
the good news is you were able to compile/link, so you have everything correctly set up.
At launch time, just update your source files from the repository, recompile, and you're ready to go