[ANN] Guncoin(GUN) - GUN Core V2.0 - New Exchange for Guncoin

[VexusMalius]

I really didn't mean to derail this thread by posting that.  My intention was to express my feeling that the anti gun crowd, with every new invention like this, has been given yet another excuse to have something against this coin and to feel this coin is doing a bad thing simply by existing.  It makes them think every gun fan is an extremist, when quite the opposite is true. (yes, that is incorrect of them to think, but yelling at them that they are wrong doesn't help the matter)

This thread is supposed to be about guncoin, not gun rights, and I think any more discussion about the legalities of this box should be addressed in a separate thread like the BATFE stuff and automatics was.

I've never started a thread here, and don't have the time to right now.  So if someone else wants to start a thread about it before I get around to it, feel free to do so, as I definitely have opinions about it and might finally have the time to express some of them.  (sorry, been a busy week at work and home)

Agreed - let's kill this tangent discussion and back to Guncoin talking point.  FYI, word from my programmer is that he has updated our source code with the next Guncoin fork and just started checking it out today.  Once I have a working copy in my hands, I will provide all the details - maybe by this weekend.

Agreed. I'm excited to here that things are progressing well!

[damm315er]

I'm looking forward to testing it out too, the more I experiment with this stuff, the more I find out that I dunno about it.. 

Beta testing a wallet for another coin right now, and thinking that a previous release might have corrupted my wallet so the new release isn't working properly.  Re-syncing and only 2/3 of the coins show up..  Exporting and importing keys, and it's not going well either, the wallet that imported the keys doesn't recognize the correct blocks on the blockchain..  Next will be setting up a new wallet from scratch, syncing, and xferring all my coin from one to the other and hoping they all go.

Note to everyone else, backups are important BEFORE wallet updates!!!   

[GuncoinInfo]

We just picked up Twitter follower #800 today !!!!   Thanks so much for your support of GUN.

[damm315er]

^^  SWEET!!!!  ^^

Considering this is totally grass-roots, that's great!!

[GuncoinInfo]

After much discussion and internal debate, we have decided to upgrade Guncoin from the "Scrypt" algorithm to the "Neoscrypt" algorithm. While this was not an easy choice as there are so many options out there now, it became clear to us and many others in the crypto community that Neoscrypt will most likely be the next generation Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm designed to replace Scrypt. Neoscrypt consumes a lot less memory than Scrypt, but yet is more memory intensive and stronger cryptographically. The Neoscrypt algorithm combines the power of Salsa20/20, ChaCha20/20, BLAKE2s and FastKDF into a very secure ASIC-resistant solution. It is definitely not some kind of Scrypt-Jane or Scrypt-N or whatever - It is a VERY solid, well-designed and well thought-out algorithm which we feel represents the next generation of coins that will now include Guncoin (GUN). While Scrypt will continue to be used sucessfully by many other coins, we feel for better security of Guncoin and to protect our miners, that Neoscrypt offers the best of everything moving forward. Additionally, we think it provides the exact opportunities for the small-time business owner or newbie that we were looking for.

In case you did not know, the NeoScrypt algorithm has been running successfully on Phoenixcoin (PXC) since late July and Feathercoin (FTC) will change to it about a week in later October also. We are very fortunate in that the original Neoscrypt creator/developer (from Phoenixcoin) agreed to help us with the GUN upgrade and transition - no one better than him to do this for sure. If you remember, Scrypt was made very popular by Litecoin. The hashing technologies used by the Scrypt algorithm starts with PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 key derivation, and ends with 8 rounds of the Salsa20 cipher as its mixing engine. However, it has recently been shown that only having 8 rounds of Salsa20 can be broken through differential crypto analysis - not as secure as we all thought.

So the Neoscrypt creator designed NeoScrypt to be compatible with Scrypt, but to have several functional differences which provide significant advantages over Scrypt. So he wrote a custom key derivation algorithm which is much stronger and faster than Scrypt. NeoScrypt's mixing engine employs 20 rounds of Salsa20, followed by 20 rounds of ChaCha20. Not only is this combination faster and more secure than standard Scrypt, but it only takes 32KB to 64KB of memory, compared to the 128KB of memory used by Scrypt.

We are thoroughly convinced that NeoScrypt-based currencies are set to become the best option for those who have a low to medium budget for mining equipment and therefore cannot afford ASIC rigs. With the adoption of NeoScrypt by Guncoin, we ensure that our loyal miners and newbies will always be able to viably mine Guncoin by never having to compete against miners who have bought the next generation of expensive Scrypt ASICs.  With these Scrypt ASICs, the smaller hobbyist miner, or curious firearm enthusiast, will have no place left to mine anything on Scrypt-based coins, just like GPUs have no place on Bitcoin any more. Only those with deep pockets can mine Bitcoin and this will end up being just a few large companies or well-funded individuals. In our view, this does not make a good case for decentralization and not where GUN needs to go. Like we have stated before, we have no interest in huge ASIC farms mining GUN - that would eliminate the newbies trying to mine for the first time and put our market price in the hands of a select few - not what we want. We feel with this change that we have protected our current and future miners, while setting the stage for Guncoins' next phase of introducing GUN to non-crypto users who can benefit from our coins usage in their businesses and not just trade or dump it on exchanges for fun and profit.

In keeping with out support for miners and the small users, we have incorporated a miner into the wallet with this revision.  You can mine GUN directly from your laptop wallet with nothing else after the changeover. It is a standard Scrypt miner until block 120000, then it will change to a Neoscrypt miner after that.

We are fully aware that this change will have a huge effect on our hash rate, it will also bring some stability to it.  No longer will we see these 100 MH/s swings in our hash rate as ASIC's come and go on our network and then GUN gets dumped a few days later on Bleutrade or other exchanges.  We look forward to seeing 100 miners mining 10 MH/s, instead of 10 miners mining 100 MH/s. This will make for a much more stable coin we feel.  Is this the last change that we make to GUN?  Absolutely Not!  We will continually review new features and technologies that can make GUN better and benefit the GUN community.  We view this upgrade similar to upgrading your rotary home phone to a cell phone - while the old one still works fine, the new one does the job so much better.  

While the new code is already released and available on GitHub - the Neoscrypt algorithm changeover will not occur until Block 120000 - in a little over a week.  We have updated the Windows wallet also - those links (source and Windows wallet) are available on the Guncoin main website (http://www.guncoin.info)and recently updated in this thread.  We will also be providing a Linux and Apple wallet in a few days once we get all the announcements out.  The seed nodes and our new block explorer have already been updated and several users have been running the wallets successfully for a few days. We greatly appreciate all your input while we labored over the upgrade options and we thank you for your continuing support!  Here are a few useful links to get your started on Neoscrypt.

Documentation / White Papers:
   https://github.com/ghostlander/NeoScrypt
   http://www.feathercoin.com/neo-scrypt-press-release.pdf
   http://phoenixcoin.org/archive/neoscrypt_v1.pdf

Mining Tools:
   https://github.com/ghostlander/cpuminer-neoscrypt
   https://github.com/cqtenq/cgminer
   https://github.com/cqtenq/sgminer

[GuncoinInfo]

Wow - GUN hashrate is now 285 MH/s and difficulty is 9.55 - never seen it that high........lot of electricity getting used somewhere.....LOL

Why not just go on the exchanges and buy it cheaper and faster?  Use the ASICs while they still work.

[AR15usr]

Is there going to be a miner built into the Mac wallet?

[GuncoinInfo]

Is there going to be a miner built into the Mac wallet?

Well, that is a very good question.   Since I do not do the Apple wallets myself, I will have to get back to you on that one......Like I did mention before, we will be creating both a 64bit and 32 bit Linux wallet with this update and adding them to the website early next week we hope.  In regards, to the Android wallet, to my knowledge, no one is using it.  So we will hold off a few weeks getting it updated and put priority on the Apple and Linux wallets.

[damm315er]

Hey all, just to keep you posted, I've managed to get a gpu running on the new neoscrypt algo on a different coin, so there is no worries about the blockchain stability when the coin switches over.  This will be solo mining to a wallet well in advance of the change-over (and basically wasting hashes) but as soon as the switchover is made it will be a failsafe maintaining the blockchain while everyone else does whatever they need to to setup their own mining.

I've sent a few messages to the pool op at lifeforce (the biggest gun pool) about the update, and gotten no response, so don't be surprised if there is no pools running after the changeover.

[GuncoinInfo]

Hey all, just to keep you posted, I've managed to get a gpu running on the new neoscrypt algo on a different coin, so there is no worries about the blockchain stability when the coin switches over.  This will be solo mining to a wallet well in advance of the change-over (and basically wasting hashes) but as soon as the switchover is made it will be a failsafe maintaining the blockchain while everyone else does whatever they need to to setup their own mining.

I've sent a few messages to the pool op at lifeforce (the biggest gun pool) about the update, and gotten no response, so don't be surprised if there is no pools running after the changeover.

I have a support ticket into Cryptopoolmining.com about updating our source to Neoscrypt support and another pool who is already doing a mining pool for PXC and IPC that are both Neoscrypt coins. So hopefully, by the time that we switch over, there will be several pools activated for Neoscrypt and able to support GUN.  If not, solo mining is fine to keep things moving until everyone switches over.  We think that we have given every one plenty of time to switch over, so we are expecting very few issues.  Our nodes and block explorer have already been switched over and many are running the new wallet already.  Additionally, the upgrade was done by the same developer who did the Neoscrypt update at PXC.  So we are in good shape.  Just need to get the exchanges switched over now as well.

[damm315er]

Found in another forum..

https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?/topic/7780-neoscrypt-gpu-miner-public-beta-test/?p=68586

Imperial coin (IPC) is switching over to neoscrypt in about a day from right now, so if anyone wants to get their stuff tested out and tweaked in in advance of the gun coin switch, there's about a week long practice window.

I checked the IPC wallet, and it has a built in miner for CPU mining, GPU's are still in early stage development for neoscrypt.

[GuncoinInfo]

A nice article on GUN from a member of our community........

http://cryptocattrader.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/guncoin-gun-upgrades-to-the-neoscrypt-algorhithm-with-pending-hard-fork/

[damm315er]

A nice article on GUN from a member of our community........

http://cryptocattrader.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/guncoin-gun-upgrades-to-the-neoscrypt-algorhithm-with-pending-hard-fork/

Wow, that's a shining writeup...  (this I why I keep to the tech end of things)  ...but they didn't promise a smooth changeover.

Methinks I'm gonna take a quick look into the PHX changeover, just to make sure schtuff goes smooth as I can help make it go.   

[GuncoinInfo]

We have three wallets ready now for V1.1 with the Neoscrypt fork set to start at block 120,000.  Here are links to them......

Windows - http://www.guncoin.info/downloads/guncoin-qt-1.1.0.0.zip

Linux 32bit - http://www.guncoin.info/downloads/guncoin-ubuntu-14.04-i686.zip

Linux 64bit - http://www.guncoin.info/downloads/guncoin-ubuntu-14.04-x86_64.zip

[Dabs]

So, I download the wallet, it's now at block 115,000. Right now, it's still on classic scrypt. I click on the mining tab, and I'm mining (on my cpu) for about 3 KH/s. Solo mining. I'm not expecting to find a block, but hey I'll leave this computer on.

When it hits block 120,000, then the algo will switch to Neo Scrypt, and I'm still solo mining, I should get lucky and find a block, huh?

[GuncoinInfo]

So, I download the wallet, it's now at block 115,000. Right now, it's still on classic scrypt. I click on the mining tab, and I'm mining (on my cpu) for about 3 KH/s. Solo mining. I'm not expecting to find a block, but hey I'll leave this computer on.

When it hits block 120,000, then the algo will switch to Neo Scrypt, and I'm still solo mining, I should get lucky and find a block, huh?

My numbers may hit the lotto tonight also......With a hash rate of 150 MH/s ++, the chances of you finding a block with a CPU are about the same I would think.....LOL......With still a little less than 5000 blocks to go, you may want to try Imperial Coin (IPC) - switches tomorrow morning or Feathercoin (FTC) switches on Friday if you are in to switchovers or want a dry run for what is to come for GUN.  While solo mining is a lot of fun when you do find a block, I think mining in a pool with other CPU miners, would be more profitable in the long term maybe.  The Blocks Factory is a pool that has IPC and PXC setup to mine Neoscrypt and has told us that they will add GUN also. I have mined some PXC with them and it works great - Keep in mind the same programmer who did PXC helped with our upgrade - so it will pretty much work the same.   So far, they are the only pool I have heard that has switched or is going to for sure.  In regards to the exchanges, Bleutrade upgraded today - no confirmations on the others.  They will all get plenty of reminders over the next week.

[GuncoinInfo]

For what it is worth, Imperial Coin (IPC) forked to Neoscrypt today and after a very slow first hour - all is running fine.  As expected, the hashrate took a big hit from 20 MH/s down to 700 KH/s, but so far they have mined 70,000 coins today with laptops (CPUs) and GPUs.  We are looking forward to a comparable good start like that next week when GUN forks down the same path.  FYI, Feathercoin (FTC) with switch to Neoscrypt on Friday this week.

[lifeforcepools]

Quick Question from Lifeforcepools here.

http://gun.lifeforce.info


to confirm...

at block 120,000 can I just compile the new wallet and keep my existing wallet.dat and block chain data so that people can withdrawal their coins if they don't have GPU's to mine with the new algo and allow people with GPU's to continue to mine after I update my stratum?

[GuncoinInfo]

Quick Question from Lifeforcepools here.

http://gun.lifeforce.info


to confirm...

at block 120,000 can I just compile the new wallet and keep my existing wallet.dat and block chain data so that people can withdrawal their coins if they don't have GPU's to mine with the new algo and allow people with GPU's to continue to mine after I update my stratum?

Lifeforce Pools:

You can compile the new wallet that we have on GitHub today and all your pool miners will still work normally and you should see no difference - we designed it that way to give users, pools and exchanges time to change over with no impact.  When we get to block 120,000 next week, you would have to do nothing.  The code will take care of the change.  It is better to upgrade now and make sure it works rather than wait till the last minute.  FYI, Imperial Coin (IPC) just did the exact same thing yesterday.  They released their code and had a delayed switchover to Neoscrypt.  The first hour was a little slow because people waited till it stopped working to switch over and the difficulty was a little high.  So it took about 20 minutes to find the first block.  Right now, it is running smoothly.  We anticipate the same process for GUN.  We really appreciate your support of GUN to this point and hope you will continue supporting GUN with your pool.

[lifeforcepools]

Quick Question from Lifeforcepools here.

http://gun.lifeforce.info


to confirm...

at block 120,000 can I just compile the new wallet and keep my existing wallet.dat and block chain data so that people can withdrawal their coins if they don't have GPU's to mine with the new algo and allow people with GPU's to continue to mine after I update my stratum?

Lifeforce Pools:

You can compile the new wallet that we have on GitHub today and all your pool miners will still work normally and you should see no difference - we designed it that way to give users, pools and exchanges time to change over with no impact.  When we get to block 120,000 next week, you would have to do nothing.  The code will take care of the change.  It is better to upgrade now and make sure it works rather than wait till the last minute.  FYI, Imperial Coin (IPC) just did the exact same thing yesterday.  They released their code and had a delayed switchover to Neoscrypt.  The first hour was a little slow because people waited till it stopped working to switch over and the difficulty was a little high.  So it took about 20 minutes to find the first block.  Right now, it is running smoothly.  We anticipate the same process for GUN.  We really appreciate your support of GUN to this point and hope you will continue supporting GUN with your pool.

great - I have it compiled - I'll back up the existing version and get switched over now.