[ANN]What’s New in TrustNote 2.0 Beta 0.1 Release

Following the TrustNote 2.0 Roadmap closely, the mineable testnet’s Beta 0.1 release will soon arrive. Comparing with TrustNote 2.0 Alpha release, 6 significant changes/improvements are implemented in the upcoming release, let’s take a quick look at what’s new here.

Before starting, we need to have a good understanding of 5 important address types, as they will be mentioned and used frequently in the following introduction.

Official Wallet Address: This is the address generated by the official TrustNote wallet download from the TrustNote website, this wallet is used to manage your $TTT and $TFans tokens.

Super Node Address: When the mining client starts running, the local super node’s address will be generated and printed in the same terminal window where you run the mining client.

Deposit Address: From the Beta 0.1 release onward, a smart contract used to lock-in your mining deposit must be created before the mining operation starts. When the smart contract is created, the deposit address will be generated at the same time.

Coinbase Address: It is the address to store all the mining rewards. From the Beta 0.1 release onward, miners can download the testnet wallet (different to the official TrustNote wallet) and change the Coinbase address as the address of your testnet wallet, or vice versa, so the mining rewards will be rewarded to the testnet wallet directly, and you can check the live status of your mining reward from the testnet wallet as well. Note the default coinbase address is the same as the super node address.

Deposit Guarantee Address: To make sure your deposits is safe, when creating the deposit smart contract, miners can specify a deposit guarantee address which will be the only acceptable address to receive the deposit after the miner decides to stop mining and withdraw the deposit. If not being set, the deposits can be withdrawn to the super node address only.

Now let’s take a look at what’s new in the Beta 0.1 release!
1. Mining Difficulty Adjustment
In the Alpha release, the mining difficulty of the entire network is the same for all miners. In the Beta 0.1 release, we introduce the concept of ‘deposit’, that is, the mining difficulty is adjusted according to the amount of the deposit deposited by the miner. To put it simply, for each single mining machine, the more the deposit is, the lower the difficulty is.

In the Beta 0.1 release, we hope the community will be able to understand and experience how deposit based mining works. In the next release (Beta 0.2) that is scheduled by close of December 2018, a strict mathematical equation based deposit and difficulty adjustment algorithm will be implemented.

2. The Change on Consensus Mechanism
After read into the concept of deposit based mining difficulty adjustment, you may start to realize that TrustNote’s consensus mechanism is changed from Proof of Work (PoW) to a hybrid PoW+PoS consensus mechanism!

Yes, such change came from a long heated debate. From Beta 0.1 onward, we hope instead of having miners competing solely on their hash power, this new change will be able to reduce the overall energy consumption whilst making the network a fairer place and bring more people on board.

3. How to Get $TTT-test
Different from the Alpha release, in the beta 0.1 release, miners don’t need to contact us in order to get initial $TTT-test to start the mining.

Now we’ve created a script to help every miners to get $TTT-test easily. The upcoming new mining tutorial will teach you how to use the script.

4. Deposit Smart Contract
Another big change in the Beta 0.1 release is that, to start mining, a deposit smart contract must be created after the miners receive his/her $TTT-test. Deposit smart contract will lock-in the miner’s deposit and make sure the deposit cannot be withdrawn before the mining operation ceased.

When the miner decides to stop mining and withdraw the deposit, the deposit will be transferred to his/her specified deposit guarantee address.

5. Testnet Wallet
During the Alpha testing period, we received many inquiries about how to check the status of mining reward, because the mining program itself doesn’t provide user interface helping miners easily figure out how much $TTT-test they have mined.

To solve this problem, we created a testnet wallet and after installation, miners can manually change it’s wallet address to the Coinbase address, or vice versa. The mining rewards will be automatically transferred to the testnet wallet address and displayed on it.

6. Cancelling Transaction Fees for PoW Units
In the beta 0.1 release, we decided to cancel transactions fees for all PoW units including TrustME unit, PoW unit, and Coinbase unit. We hope this change would enabling more people participate the mining more easily.

So, that’s all about the changes in the Beta 0.1 release. Right now, our developers are busy with the final testing to ensure you get a smooth mining experiences on our testnet. Good things always come to those who wait, thank you for all your support and patient, let’s wait for the Beta 0.1 release online, won’t be long!