[ANN] [MINT] Mintcoin (POS / 5%) [NO ICO] [Fair distro, community maintained]

[MarSas]

As far as I know the Bittorent Sync is the only one. I see no reason for another since this one works great and gets updated daily!

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[dragonseer]

Just a reminder to people that I bought the www.mintcoin-central.com domain from the old developer, and I have all the assets for the old site in wordpress format. Now that mintcoin is going so strong, maybe we can table some ideas for what this website can do that would be of benefit to mintcoin.

This whole debacle in Greece, where banks have shuttered and have tiny daily withdrawal limits, really shows how important something like Mintcoin is. We can leave it to Bitcoin to advocate for Cryptos in general and have infastructure in place, while Mintcoin can quietly generate interest and make gains for people that know about it, but what can a new site do to help bring 'Mintcoin to the masses' so to speak?

[dragonseer]

In case you missed it, The Greek banks are going to be closed for at least a week. If/when banks reopen a 60€ withdrawal limit will be imposed. Greek stock market also being frozen.

GREEK PRIME MINISTER SAYS "GREEK PEOPLE SHOULD REMAIN CALM"

Good luck with that  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/11704054/Greece-crisis-live-banks-to-close-on-Monday-and-capital-controls-imposed-after-ECB-caps-funding-at-current-levels.html

Now do you understand the corruption??? They wont even let you take your own money out.

I'm on my 3rd day syncing mintcoin wallet and at 64%, that's worse, I can't even put money in!

I just used the Bittorrent Sync method to speed things up, I'll post directions because when people say 'Just use the bootstrap!' this isn't very clear. These steps will save you waiting once the torrent is downloaded.

1. Get Bittorrent Sync from https://www.getsync.com/ and install, set a sharing directory.

2. Once installed, open this link: https://link.getsync.com/#f=Mintcoin_daily&sz=12E8&t=1&s=SNTPNBS7OXQM5TZCEPZLPAGSB37LAJUF&i=CW6PY36ZAT2EPXWS7DTBOJMHJGMOXANPQ&v=2.0 (this link posted on reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/MintCoin/comments/3ajk5b/wallet_not_syncing_again/

3. When finished, the file you want is in 7z format, use 7zip to open the archive. This archive has everything you need to go into the C:/Users/*yourusername*/Appdata/Roaming/Mintcoin directory, which is normally hidden. You just need to paste in your wallet.dat file, or keep it in this folder and delete everything else.

4. Run the wallet, using the checkwallet, repairwallet, and rescan commands if required.

[cryptomommy]

In case you missed it, The Greek banks are going to be closed for at least a week. If/when banks reopen a 60€ withdrawal limit will be imposed. Greek stock market also being frozen.

GREEK PRIME MINISTER SAYS "GREEK PEOPLE SHOULD REMAIN CALM"

Good luck with that  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/11704054/Greece-crisis-live-banks-to-close-on-Monday-and-capital-controls-imposed-after-ECB-caps-funding-at-current-levels.html

Now do you understand the corruption??? They wont even let you take your own money out.

I'm on my 3rd day syncing mintcoin wallet and at 64%, that's worse, I can't even put money in!

I just used the Bittorrent Sync method to speed things up, I'll post directions because when people say 'Just use the bootstrap!' this isn't very clear. These steps will save you waiting once the torrent is downloaded.

1. Get Bittorrent Sync from https://www.getsync.com/ and install, set a sharing directory.

2. Once installed, open this link: https://link.getsync.com/#f=Mintcoin_daily&sz=12E8&t=1&s=SNTPNBS7OXQM5TZCEPZLPAGSB37LAJUF&i=CW6PY36ZAT2EPXWS7DTBOJMHJGMOXANPQ&v=2.0 (this link posted on reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/MintCoin/comments/3ajk5b/wallet_not_syncing_again/

3. When finished, the file you want is in 7z format, use 7zip to open the archive. This archive has everything you need to go into the C:/Users/*yourusername*/Appdata/Roaming/Mintcoin directory, which is normally hidden. You just need to paste in your wallet.dat file, or keep it in this folder and delete everything else.

4. Run the wallet, using the checkwallet, repairwallet, and rescan commands if required.

Right now I am discussing with a developer potential next steps for wallet improvements.

Here is a recap of the conversation - would love the communities input on the discussion.


SECURITY UPDATE - FORK REQUIRED
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would say that mints biggest security risk is the 2 hour time drift allowance. Read about the vulnerability here http://bitcoinist.net/interview-presstab-pos-vulnerabilities/

Have you or any of the community ever put any though into reducing the target block time? Current looks like 30 seconds. My concern would be long term syncability of the chain. It isn't too easy to sync it at the current 1.5 million blocks, and a few years from now it will be even harder. Raising the block time could be a beneficial long term change to throw in while a hard fork occurs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

USER INTERFACE - FORK NOT REQUIRED
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to release an improved wallet with the current price increase as I believe now would be a good time to stride forward; however I want to wait until the newbie minters out there have had a chance to see how profitable minting really is before mentioning a hard fork (2-3 months) - the price is more than fair - I am happy to pay out of pocket to get these changes implemented.

Do you have any ideas for improvement on the existing wallet without a hard fork that we could release first? This way I can make sure everyone has time to mint - while developers can test the changes and report to the community on upgrades.

It would be awesome if we could figure out a way to incorporate the latest blockchain which is updated daily and hosted giving a more easy to use integration. I would also like to make repairwallet easier to find (under Help)

When the wallet opens it would be nice to have the client choose between import wallet or create new wallet.

What do you think about requiring people to use a password for Mintcoin?

This has always bothered me that Mintcoin does not require a password. I would even go as far as requiring a pass "phrase" to log in (note that capital letters and punctuation are required)

Anyways let me know your thoughts on this - these are just a few ideas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The non-fork ideas have been collected while troubleshooting upgrades, wallet issues and new wallet installs.

My thoughts are to release the non-fork required wallet first and than release the fork required wallet once everyone has had a chance to get comfortable with the existing wallet and mint a few times. (Assuming there are many new minters out there)



MARKETING
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had a campaign pending for the announcement of a new hard wallet. Basically we would have an option for a mintcoin hard staking wallet with a custom gui and social partnership between the two parties. There is also a partnership area on their website which we would be featured in. Unfortunately the project has not been completed due to this issue:

Also just finally got the daemon built

I'm getting the following error:

root@bigsmall:~/Mintcoin-Desktop-Wallet/src# ./mintcoind
mintcoind: main.cpp:2585: bool LoadBlockIndex(bool): Assertion `block.GetHash() == (!fTestNet ? hashGenesisBlock : hashGenesisBlockTestNet)' failed.
Aborted

The line

mintcoind: main.cpp:2585: bool LoadBlockIndex(bool): Assertion `block.GetHash() == (!fTestNet ? hashGenesisBlock : hashGenesisBlockTestNet)' failed.

--------------------------------------

I am planning on finishing up the NGO paperwork for Wisconsin, United State of America this week.
In preparation of this new filing we could really use some help collecting Non-Profit Organizations that currently accept Bitcoin and document them for partnership contacts. This way we can vote on pre-existing organizations and make our own personal community goals to achieve to help the causes chosen by the community.

As we build up partnerships we can start generating marketing plans to support them as well increasing our reach.
---------------------------------------------------

We are currently lacking in two areas : IRC & http://www.mintcoinofficial.com/forums/

-----------------------------------------------------

[dragonseer]

Right now I am discussing with a developer potential next steps for wallet improvements.

Here is a recap of the conversation - would love the communities input on the discussion.

SECURITY UPDATE - FORK REQUIRED
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would say that mints biggest security risk is the 2 hour time drift allowance. Read about the vulnerability here http://bitcoinist.net/interview-presstab-pos-vulnerabilities/

Have you or any of the community ever put any though into reducing the target block time? Current looks like 30 seconds. My concern would be long term syncability of the chain. It isn't too easy to sync it at the current 1.5 million blocks, and a few years from now it will be even harder. Raising the block time could be a beneficial long term change to throw in while a hard fork occurs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

USER INTERFACE - FORK NOT REQUIRED
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to release an improved wallet with the current price increase as I believe now would be a good time to stride forward; however I want to wait until the newbie minters out there have had a chance to see how profitable minting really is before mentioning a hard fork (2-3 months) - the price is more than fair - I am happy to pay out of pocket to get these changes implemented.

Do you have any ideas for improvement on the existing wallet without a hard fork that we could release first? This way I can make sure everyone has time to mint - while developers can test the changes and report to the community on upgrades.

It would be awesome if we could figure out a way to incorporate the latest blockchain which is updated daily and hosted giving a more easy to use integration. I would also like to make repairwallet easier to find (under Help)

When the wallet opens it would be nice to have the client choose between import wallet or create new wallet.

What do you think about requiring people to use a password for Mintcoin?

This has always bothered me that Mintcoin does not require a password. I would even go as far as requiring a pass "phrase" to log in (note that capital letters and punctuation are required)

Anyways let me know your thoughts on this - these are just a few ideas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The non-fork ideas have been collected while troubleshooting upgrades, wallet issues and new wallet installs.

My thoughts are to release the non-fork required wallet first and than release the fork required wallet once everyone has had a chance to get comfortable with the existing wallet and mint a few times. (Assuming there are many new minters out there)

MARKETING
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had a campaign pending for the announcement of a new hard wallet. Basically we would have an option for a mintcoin hard staking wallet with a custom gui and social partnership between the two parties. There is also a partnership area on their website which we would be featured in. Unfortunately the project has not been completed due to this issue:

Also just finally got the daemon built

I'm getting the following error:

root@bigsmall:~/Mintcoin-Desktop-Wallet/src# ./mintcoind
mintcoind: main.cpp:2585: bool LoadBlockIndex(bool): Assertion `block.GetHash() == (!fTestNet ? hashGenesisBlock : hashGenesisBlockTestNet)' failed.
Aborted

The line

mintcoind: main.cpp:2585: bool LoadBlockIndex(bool): Assertion `block.GetHash() == (!fTestNet ? hashGenesisBlock : hashGenesisBlockTestNet)' failed.

--------------------------------------

I am planning on finishing up the NGO paperwork for Wisconsin, United State of America this week.
In preparation of this new filing we could really use some help collecting Non-Profit Organizations that currently accept Bitcoin and document them for partnership contacts. This way we can vote on pre-existing organizations and make our own personal community goals to achieve to help the causes chosen by the community.

As we build up partnerships we can start generating marketing plans to support them as well increasing our reach.
---------------------------------------------------

We are currently lacking in two areas : IRC & http://www.mintcoinofficial.com/forums/

-----------------------------------------------------

About the wallet and syncing time. So with Bitcoin now, not many people will run the Bitcoin core wallet on their computer with it's massive blockchain download, and takes a very long time to sync. However, there are alternatives like Multibit that work really well, this doesn't require the whole blockchain locally to run, and also, there is the option to require a password whenever transacting out of the wallet. I don't like the idea of a password being forced on us much at all, but the option is always good.  However, I recently tried to install a fresh wallet on a mac and the wallet took a few days and synced most of the blockchain before crashing, and now this error stops it from starting up. We have to avoid this kind of user experience as it may completely turn off a newcomer. So I think it is more important to release an alternative wallet that doesn't require the whole blockchain than it is to make another hard fork and require everyone to update at this stage. It would be great to see a hardware wallet though.

[I2S2SI]

How big is the mintcoin wallet/blockchain right now?

[publicjud]

How big is the mintcoin wallet/blockchain right now?

I don't know, but it takes forever to sync...

[dragonseer]

How big is the mintcoin wallet/blockchain right now?

I don't know, but it takes forever to sync...

The 'Mintcoin Daily' files you get from the torrent sync right now unpack to 1.86 GB. But it takes most people 3 to 5 days to sync a new wallet.

[Testing Crypto]

How big is the mintcoin wallet/blockchain right now?

I don't know, but it takes forever to sync...

Not if you keep a backup of the entire appdata folder, SD cards are getting cheaper everyday & storing a complete backup of everything once a week/month is something I would strongly recommend. Hardware wallets are even more simplified, if they were to come prebuilt with a simple link right on the desktop. Showing the wallet.dat file location, also a text (+ a video would be 10x better for the entire world, google or bing translate would work though. Just might not be as easy to follow as a video, as translations are often not 100% correct at times?) with detailed instructions on using the MINT client. I have actually talked about keeping the spec's of what it takes to run the wallet, just like you would with any other software. Detailed CPU/RAM/HDD needed to run is something that should be in the OP, some will be different & take more depending on the addresses/staking/etc... A minimum requirement is kind of a standard in software, wouldn't hurt to have it on the OP & website though.

// I also sent a message to the mintcointeam account with an update to the block explorer list, adding PressTab's block explorer to the OP. Great work, nice to see another place to find all the charts/info one is looking for & even a few new features

https://github.com/TestingCrypto/ANN-OP-Thread-BBcode/commit/6481dfd29219d9a82f4eddefad9000eda84d5ee5

P.S. If it takes a few minutes to start the client with an wallet.dat from over a year ago, it does help to create a new wallet & transfer everything over. Since starting the client searches from the newest to the oldest (not 100% sure, but testing looks like it does pull from new to old?), so having a wallet closer to the top of the chain does help.

[Flyskyhigh]

How big is the mintcoin wallet/blockchain right now?

About 2gb

[Flyskyhigh]

Right now I am discussing with a developer potential next steps for wallet improvements.

Here is a recap of the conversation - would love the communities input on the discussion.


SECURITY UPDATE - FORK REQUIRED
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would say that mints biggest security risk is the 2 hour time drift allowance. Read about the vulnerability here http://bitcoinist.net/interview-presstab-pos-vulnerabilities/

Have you or any of the community ever put any though into reducing the target block time? Current looks like 30 seconds. My concern would be long term syncability of the chain. It isn't too easy to sync it at the current 1.5 million blocks, and a few years from now it will be even harder. Raising the block time could be a beneficial long term change to throw in while a hard fork occurs.
----------------------------

My question is, why doesn't peercoin do it then? Peercoin has one of the greatest PoS developers in the world...Sunny King created Proof of stake. Obviously there is a reason why he designed it the way he did. Is there any discussion that includes Sunny on this topic? I for one would like to hear his take on this issue.

[kiklo]

Problem:  BlockChain Bloat  
Blockchain becomes too massive and takes too long to sync even with a bootstrap.


Solution: Genesis Block    
No matter , 30 seconds or 10 minutes for block time, eventually they all are going to be too big.
The only real solution to blockchain bloat,  that I can currently see is what is called a Genesis Block.
Once every 1 or 3 or 7 years, depending on how fast the blockchain grows,
a new Genesis Block is created that holds every address & updated balance, and from that point on the Genesis block becomes block 0 of a new blockchain removing the bloat from all future syncs.


 


FYI:
Fixing your Timedrift issue will require a Hard Fork, if everyone does not update , it still leaves you open to the timewarp attack from anyone on the older client.

[kiklo]

My question is, why doesn't peercoin do it then? Peercoin has one of the greatest PoS developers in the world...Sunny King created Proof of stake. Obviously there is a reason why he designed it the way he did. Is there any discussion that includes Sunny on this topic? I for one would like to hear his take on this issue.

FYI:
Some are looking into it, but peercoin has not responded yet?
https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/issues/82


 

[cryptomommy]

My question is, why doesn't peercoin do it then? Peercoin has one of the greatest PoS developers in the world...Sunny King created Proof of stake. Obviously there is a reason why he designed it the way he did. Is there any discussion that includes Sunny on this topic? I for one would like to hear his take on this issue.

FYI:
Some are looking into it, but peercoin has not responded yet?
https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/issues/82


 

If I understand correctly this is what presstab is offering to work on for Mintcoin as he has found a fix on his other project HyperStake. The thing is it requires a hard fork - something I feel is extremely important to make sure it is done; however I am wondering if it is something deserving of an immediate hard fork or if we have some time to let the new wallets take one or two times before requiring the upgrade?

[cryptomommy]

Just a reminder to people that I bought the www.mintcoin-central.com domain from the old developer, and I have all the assets for the old site in wordpress format. Now that mintcoin is going so strong, maybe we can table some ideas for what this website can do that would be of benefit to mintcoin.

This whole debacle in Greece, where banks have shuttered and have tiny daily withdrawal limits, really shows how important something like Mintcoin is. We can leave it to Bitcoin to advocate for Cryptos in general and have infastructure in place, while Mintcoin can quietly generate interest and make gains for people that know about it, but what can a new site do to help bring 'Mintcoin to the masses' so to speak?

What a press release site that takes releases from mintcoinofficial.com http://mintcoinfund.org/ and other 3rd party websites that include Mintcoin in their podcasts, articles and imagery?

I would not be able to maintain this one other than hosting and wordpress upgrades maintenance so someone else would have to claim responsibility on collecting the content - I can of course email that person when I submit content across the spaces.

Someone else would have to design it.

[cryptomommy]

"While the altcoin markets were not as exciting as they usually are, there were still gains made this week. Altcoin markets seem to be reflecting similar trends to Bitcoin, with the interest in trading declining. The coins that received higher gains this week were of lower volume, like Mintcoin, with its approximately 90% increase.

While there were altcoins that had greater earnings this week, they were all of minuscule market cap and volume which could have been the work of just one entity controlling the market. Mintcoin is 15th on the list of 7-day gains but is the 1st to on the top 100 coin market capitalization list.

While Mintcoin does have a low volume in comparison to bigger cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ripple, there does seem to be a continuing demand for Mintcoin."

http://bitcoinist.net/bitcoin-market-wrap-621-628-btc-holds-steady-mintcoin-demand-increases/

[kiklo]

My question is, why doesn't peercoin do it then? Peercoin has one of the greatest PoS developers in the world...Sunny King created Proof of stake. Obviously there is a reason why he designed it the way he did. Is there any discussion that includes Sunny on this topic? I for one would like to hear his take on this issue.

FYI:
Some are looking into it, but peercoin has not responded yet?
https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/issues/82


 

If I understand correctly this is what presstab is offering to work on for Mintcoin as he has found a fix on his other project HyperStake. The thing is it requires a hard fork - something I feel is extremely important to make sure it is done; however I am wondering if it is something deserving of an immediate hard fork or if we have some time to let the new wallets take one or two times before requiring the upgrade?

It is up to your community, the timewarp attack is very simple to do and can even happen by accident.
If it does happen, the signs are your network difficulty will drop like crazy, up to ½ per block until it is a very low amount, and if you check your block explorer , only a few or as low as 1 mint address will be getting every stake in a row until they run out of stakable coins.

Now this will not harm transactions as they will go thru normally, your number of blocks created will also be faster than every 30 seconds, which will cause your network to give a higher interest rate than designed.  

The biggest dangers are the difficulty drop which will weaken network security , possibly allowing an attack that is currently blocked. Also almost no one else will be able to stake except the ones running the attack which is a bad PR issue as it destroys fairness in staking.

But with that much control of the blockchain , other dangers could arise , such as a person doing that on 1 side to set the difficulty really low , and then bringing up another wallet for a 2nd attack , with sightly higher difficulty and length and overwriting your blockchain after a few days, which would erase all transactions before the original attack started.
That would be worst case as transaction history must be protected at all costs.

FYI:
Fix is mainly just changing the timedrift from 2 hours to a lower amount.
Less time involved , the less the difficulty will drop.

[Flyskyhigh]

My question is, why doesn't peercoin do it then? Peercoin has one of the greatest PoS developers in the world...Sunny King created Proof of stake. Obviously there is a reason why he designed it the way he did. Is there any discussion that includes Sunny on this topic? I for one would like to hear his take on this issue.

FYI:
Some are looking into it, but peercoin has not responded yet?
https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/issues/82


 

If I understand correctly this is what presstab is offering to work on for Mintcoin as he has found a fix on his other project HyperStake. The thing is it requires a hard fork - something I feel is extremely important to make sure it is done; however I am wondering if it is something deserving of an immediate hard fork or if we have some time to let the new wallets take one or two times before requiring the upgrade?

It is up to your community, the timewarp attack is very simple to do and can even happen by accident.
If it does happen, the signs are your network difficulty will drop like crazy, up to ½ per block until it is a very low amount, and if you check your block explorer , only a few or as low as 1 mint address will be getting every stake in a row until they run out of stakable coins.

Now this will not harm transactions as they will go thru normally, your number of blocks created will also be faster than every 30 seconds, which will cause your network to give a higher interest rate than designed. 

The biggest dangers are the difficulty drop which will weaken network security , possibly allowing an attack that is currently blocked. Also almost no one else will be able to stake except the ones running the attack which is a bad PR issue as it destroys fairness in staking.

But with that much control of the blockchain , other dangers could arise , such as a person doing that on 1 side to set the difficulty really low , and then bringing up another wallet for a 2nd attack , with sightly higher difficulty and length and overwriting your blockchain after a few days, which would erase all transactions before the original attack started.
That would be worst case as transaction history must be protected at all costs.

FYI:
Fix is mainly just changing the timedrift from 2 hours to a lower amount.
Less time involved , the less the difficulty will drop.

I am still not convinced. I really like the way the coin is right now. Is there a way to test this attack on a mintcoins testnet, to really examine the risk? I am not for hard working anything if it is not absolutely necessary. At this point I'm not convinced that this won't have some unforseen consequential side effects that would be detrimental.
How do you know 2 hours is too long and 15 seconds is too short? It seems really subjective, and if it affects minting rates and difficulty that is a concern. I like the balance mintcoins has to offer on its parameters. How do you know how much to drop it? What would be the problem of making it limited to say, 5 seconds?

[kiklo]

I am still not convinced. I really like the way the coin is right now. Is there a way to test this attack on a mintcoins testnet, to really examine the risk? I am not for hard working anything if it is not absolutely necessary. At this point I'm not convinced that this won't have some unforseen consequential side effects that would be detrimental.
How do you know 2 hours is too long and 15 seconds is too short? It seems really subjective, and if it affects minting rates and difficulty that is a concern. I like the balance mintcoins has to offer on its parameters. How do you know how much to drop it? What would be the problem of making it limited to say, 5 seconds?

LOL ,

Presstab discovered the issue, if he says your coin is at risk.  Then It is.
He could tell CM how to do it , and then observe the block explorer for the results.
Difficulty halving and her mint address getting all of the staking will be your proof.



 

[Flyskyhigh]

I am still not convinced. I really like the way the coin is right now. Is there a way to test this attack on a mintcoins testnet, to really examine the risk? I am not for hard working anything if it is not absolutely necessary. At this point I'm not convinced that this won't have some unforseen consequential side effects that would be detrimental.
How do you know 2 hours is too long and 15 seconds is too short? It seems really subjective, and if it affects minting rates and difficulty that is a concern. I like the balance mintcoins has to offer on its parameters. How do you know how much to drop it? What would be the problem of making it limited to say, 5 seconds?

LOL ,

Presstab discovered the issue, if he says your coin is at risk.  Then It is.
He could tell CM how to do it , and then observe the block explorer for the results.
Difficulty halving and her mint address getting all of the staking will be your proof.



 

You don't have to mock me. I'm trying to learn and understand.  If it is at risk I want to be sure, not just create FUD. Answering my questions would help. Why is 2 hours too long? Why is 15 seconds too short? How do you know what the right balance is, really? Why do we have to have to allow any amount of time at all? What factors go into affecting it? Does more people connected and staking help prevent against that sort of attack? Mintcoin is pretty established, just comparing it to some other coin that nobody used, is not the same for comparison IMO. I just want my questions answered, because obviously if there is a threat of making it too short, that would be bad too. Maybe 2 hours is actually enough. I'm trying to understand this issue. What is the reasoning for why 2 hours was chosen before?