Ember is an entirely new, instant, and feeless cryptocurrency, designed to live up to the term and be a currency. Our goal is to enable payments between anyone, anywhere. We don’t believe in shouting buzzwords or centralization. We believe in providing the best tech possible (instant, feeless, trustless, decentralized, secure), for the best currency possible, focusing only on elements that improve the currency itself. We started this journey, and have gotten this far, with:
- No ICO.
- No Corporate Backing.
- No Venture Capital.
For a quick summary, all Ember transactions are stored on a DAG, allowing non-latent transactions, yet a blockchain also secures the network, providing heightened security via Proof of Work. The two work together according to the brand new Merit Caching Consensus Mechanism, designed and written for Ember. Ember also offers data transmission, yet makes sure that transactions will always be prioritized over data.
Our purpose in this announcement is to start building the Ember community and acquire new members for our core team! If you are interested in developing Ember, and have the skills to contribute, please get in contact with our lead developer at
lukep@meroscrypto.io.
Specifications:
- Name: Ember
- Symbol: EMB
- Block Time: 10 Minutes
- Block Reward: Not finalized.
- Total Supply: Not applicable.
- Mining Algorithm: Argon2d (CPU only)
- Signature Scheme: Ed25519 (DAG Entries) and BLS (Verifications)
- Address Format: Bech32
- Premine: The equivalent of 2 weeks of the block reward at launch. Then, 1 more week every 6 months, for a total of 7 weeks.
FAQ
How far along is Ember?Ember has been in development for over 5 months now. We currently are running a Developer Testnet, which means it's public to anyone who can compile the Node.
How is Ember instant if it uses a blockchain?This is due to the Merit Caching Consensus Mechanism. The Merit Caching Whitepaper is linked above, yet to summarize it:
- All transactions are published to the DAG.
- Verifiers submit Verifications, which are valid as soon as they are received.
- A transaction is confirmed when it gets 50.1% of the weight.
- The blockchain archives these verifications.
How is this PoW if there’s Verifiers and weight?The blockchain is mined via Argon2d. Mining the blockchain earns weight, which is used to verify entries on the DAG. Verifications are then archived on the blockchain, and new EMB is distributed based on those Verifications.
Why does Ember have data transmission but not a smart contract engine?Data transmission enables a smart contract engine, yet we believe that is a separate project than a currency, best left to a second layer. We will offer a BTC style scripting engine though.
How does Ember handle spam?Typically, transaction fees stop spam. Since Ember doesn’t have those, we have an adjustable spam filter where users must ‘spend’ CPU cycles to prove their transaction isn’t spam. Data transmission has a separate spam filter, which is how we make sure transactions will always be prioritized over data.
Why is the total supply not applicable?In order to continue to reward miners, when there’s no transaction fees, there will always be a block reward.
Why are you using two different signature schemes?Ed25519 is simply a better algorithm than the ‘traditional’ SECP256k1 algorithm. That said, BLS allows signature aggregation. This means we can have one signature for hundreds, or even thousands, of Verifications, and verify them all at once.
Why are you doing a premine and not an ICO?A time-locked premine means we only make money if we deliver a working product and the coin succeeds. An ICO means we make money for having a great marketing team. It’s fairer to the community to do a premine.
When will Ember be launched?Once Ember’s protocol is finalized, we’ll create a public testnet, and have the codebase audited. While this happens, we’ll build an Explorer and start work on mobile wallets. When the testnet is proven secure, the Ember mainnet will be launched! This is planned for the first quarter of 2019.
