[PRE-ANN] Meros: An instant and feeless cryptocurrency for the future.

[podpod]

Seems this is slowing down down down.....

Meros been in development for a long time and nothing to show yet.

Its not looking good man

[MerosCrypto]

We recently launched a new episode of our monthly podcast! https://youtu.be/gqg0aeRILTU

And yes, we completely concede Meros has taken a while to be developed. It's a fact we've always been transparent about, along with the reasons for why and our dedication to releasing something quality, instead of rushing something poor. That said, we do have progress to show. While we don't have a mainnet, we do have full protocol documentation, the large majority of the node implemented with a wide range of features, a secondary implementation of the protocol in Python to test the first, and several testnets.

We also cover Meros's timeline every month in our podcasts, such as the one just linked. In case someone doesn't watch it, it should be noted development has picked back up and is moving quickly now. We're finishing a major feature before we do our next testnet, which should launch within the next week or so.

[MerosCrypto]

We recently hosted our most recent testnet, which was very successful! We've also released another episode of our monthly podcast which talks about it, which you can watch here.

[TimeTeller]

We recently hosted our most recent testnet, which was very successful! We've also released another episode of our monthly podcast which talks about it, which you can watch here.

After more than a year here in the forum, what major accomplishments do you have for this project?
As you are aiming to be a payment method and as you mentioned that bitcoin is not meant for payment because of its shortcomings.
But how is your coin in terms of popularity of usage. With over 1 year of existence, how many merchants or shops have you convinced to use your coin?

[MerosCrypto]

The reason this is a pre-announcement is because we have yet to launch our mainnet. Because of that, the major accomplishments aren't in merchants/shops using our coin, yet rather the tech stack we've built up overtime. Beyond our consensus algorithm enabling secure transaction verification in just a couple seconds, we've built a CPU-mined blockchain heavily resistant to 51% attacks via a checks and balances system based on PoS voting. We've built an adjustable yet firm spam filter, implemented tests in the node's native language, as well as tests in Python via a re-implementation of the protocol. We utilize both Ed25519 and BLS, taking the best aspects from both, and have a brand new decentralized funding system to enable long-term support and development.

[MerosCrypto]

We are very excited to announce the first atomic swaps between Meros and Bitcoin! This forms the basis of secure, decentralized trading, as well as cross-chain interop. You can read more about it in our blog post, here.

It's also important to note the protocol we've implemented is directly applicable to Nano and Monero! Our implementation is designed to easily allow integration with other cryptocurrencies. They should be supported within just a few days.

[MerosCrypto]

We recently announced that we performed our first atomic swap. This was done via a new swap protocol, developed by h4sh3d, for Monero. That said, we had only performed a swap with Meros. Today, we are happy to announce our atomic swap tool successfully supports Monero and Nano!

This is the first implementation of the new protocol, opening previously closed doors for quality cryptocurrencies. As our work is fully open sourced on GitHub, using the MIT license, we are excited to see how this proliferates throughout the wider space.

We wrote a series of blog posts for this news, and linked the initial one here. The full series is as follows:
https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/atomic-swaps-building-the-basis-of-cross-chain-interop-for-meros-monero-and-nano-5813b77e6a91
https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/atomic-swaps-enabling-nano-via-asmr-98ecde842110
https://medium.com/@MerosCrypto/implementing-monero-atomic-swaps-in-asmr-715e4bdb752

If you want to check out our codebase, we'd love further contributions. It's viewable at https://github.com/MerosCrypto/asmr.

[qq386437050]

Can it be mined? when?

[MerosCrypto]

Meros has no premine, ICO, IEO, token sale, or pre-determined distribution. It will be mined with RandomX, where miners participate in our own Merit Caching Consensus Mechanism, which we wrote a paper on, published near the start of our project. This will be possible as soon as Meros launches, and we plan for the mainnet to be ready by the end of the year.

[podpod]

I think you have missed the boat....
Ship has sailed.

Seems it's BTC or nothing lately

[waya]

Hello all,

The topic of mining came up and I am curious as to what kinds of mining will be available.  Will it be CPU, GPU, or ASIC for the mining of the coin??  Thanks in Advance!!

Cheers,
Waya

[MerosCrypto]

It's been a while since we've provided updates here!

We've actually done four new monthly podcasts! One of these was our 24th episode, and the latest one serves as a summary of what our project is, what it's done, and where it's going.

https://youtu.be/_OzBg6Yy7AM
https://youtu.be/JLl_rUqPHzk
https://youtu.be/hQio22cZUNo
https://youtu.be/-K_FHbG3YbE

We also hosted a testnet, gathering several participants who were immensely helpful. The net proved to be stable, with a couple of node errors which have since been resolved. We are dedicated to thoroughly testing Meros before we deploy it, and plan on having a new testnet soon. While all of our existing testnets have required users to compile their own node, a basic check that users are willing to spend a few minutes working through problems, future networks will have binaries provided. The next testnet's status of requiring compilation/binaries provided is still being determined though.

To reply to the comments below, we very much disagree that "it's BTC or nothing lately". Other cryptocurrencies can exist along with Bitcoin to provide different functionality. Ethereum, among others, offers computing like never seen before. Monero offers privacy. The recent upwards trends of cryptocurrency markets, which don't just apply to Bitcoin, haven't changed our minds, at all.

Mining will be CPU only via RandomX. We are dedicated to decentralization and CPU mining is the fairest system in front of us. IO bound mining was never developed enough, and storage based mining isn't something people are generally willing to participate in with their spare time due to the size and lasting nature of the files. That said, it should be noted we have a unique mining system in order to offer instant and feeless transactions. It's called Merit Caching, and it's the reason Meros is special.

Miners mine a non-transferable token called Merit, and this is used to vote on transactions. It's voting that confirms transactions, and voting is what earns Meros. This enables the security and decentralization of Proof of Work to be applied as quickly as PoS/DPoS thanks to being able to utilize it with just a signature.

If you'd like to learn more, we're happy to answer questions. While I'll personally do my best to be more responsive here, I do encourage joining our Discord via https://discord.com/invite/nZmdWGA. Thank you!

[MerosCrypto]

With the new year, we've released a new episode of our monthly podcast! https://youtu.be/y33RUYRZVnA

We're very excited as we're approaching the launch of our network, after years of development and multiple testnets. We aim to be an extremely proven network, even before we launch, and are doing everything we can to ensure that.

[MerosCrypto]

Our latest State of the Project went up a few days ago! https://youtu.be/-WiMhovESZg

We also released a brand new site to more clearly communicate what we're working on, which we would appreciate feedback on. https://meroscrypto.io