POW coins tend to consume huge amounts of Power, which isn`t only expensive but also completely "ungreen". One way to go is of course POS, but I decided to try something completely different:
All coins (at least the ones I know) are designed to be "specialized hardware-" or at least ASIC proof. SHA-256 ASIC`s are now around a long time, FPGAs even longer. Scrypt ASICs are maybe coming, but at least GPU rigs are already here. Of course there are things like QRK which are much less affected by this, but still I wanted to try something completely different. So here it is:
Silicoin runs not on CPUs, nor GPUs and never will, but instead it is locked to a purpose-made piece of hardware from the beginning on. The hashing algorithm is HMAC-SHA-256, where the HMAC part locks the mining to these special USB-sticks (SILC Miners). So it is kind of an "inverse" AltcoinA SILC Miner consumes less than 0.2W while mining, this means that a single USB slot could power more than 25 Miners!
This removes energy costs completely from the calculation. If done correctly (for example using a Raspberry PI as a host for 1 or more SILC Miners) there are almost no running costs, only the costs for buying the Hardware. This is possible because all Miners use the same chip, and thus all people have the same chances (proportional to investments in buying miners, of course), so there is no need for miners which can calculate say 1GHPS, because it does`t matter. A USB SILC Miner only runs at a little less than 2.7KHPS, but as ALL SILC Miners do that, it doesn`t matter. If there are no running costs that means the value of one SILC is entirely up to you and completely independent from kWh prices!
Of course, this also has some drawbacks:
-You NEED a SILC Miner to receive SILC as long as there are no online wallets (but as soon as somebody makes a SILC online wallet this disadvantage is gone!)
-SILC Miners are not free
Over the past months I have spent all my money and time (I`m a student...) on developing Silicoin. It is finally here now, and I hope some of you will try it. I have produced 100 Miners, and everything is ready. So here are all important facts in a compact manner:
Block target time: 3.3 minutes
SILC / block: 318
Halving: 318kBlocks (<2 Years)
Starting difficulty: Not set yet
Premine: None, I will participate in mining like everyone else: WITH A SINGLE MINER, NO MORE! (That means in the very beginning 1% of rewards go to me, with time this gets lower)
Cost: 30$ For a SILC Miner, 20$ For worldwide priority shipping. 30$ is quite high, this is to cover initial costs / bounties (more about this see below), and I guarantee that it will probably get cheaper, but never more expensive.
Supply capatibility: 100 Miners were produced, one will be used for mining / SW development by me and 99 will be sold. Production and shipping of > 10.000 Miners/Month is possible, so no problem there. Lead time is about 4 Weeks (from 0 to 10000).
Launch date: as soon as everyone got their miners to be fair.
HMAC Key: The key will be set before shipping, it will consist of some true random numbers and only be held on a single workstation used to inject it into the Chips. Afterwards they will be completely closed with a level 2 lock.
BOUNTIES: As a student money & time is very valuable, so I focused on the important bits. The miner Firmware is stable, but the client still needs some work. As there is no Premine there will be no Bounties in SILC form, but I am willing to give Miners as bounties, so people who helped can mine their own SILC.
I think for now payment in BTC doesn`t make sense as too much trust in me would be needed. This is the paypal address:
miners@sili.co.in, and if you are interested you can either send money as a "gift" or "payment for online shopping", I would choose the latter as you could get a refund if I were to scam you. But if you do, please pay the fees yourself and also don`t forget to give me your address.
For all code and hardware design files go to
www.github.com/Silicoin, the official website is SILI.CO.IN
There are no precompiled wallets (Heartbleed bug, but also reliability as I have no machine capable of compiling stable universal binaries)
There are only 99 Miners for launch, first come first serve, but Preorder after these 99 is possible. Lead time is 4 Weeks as written above.
Please feel free to ask any questions you may have, big apologies for my english and not having great designs or if I forgot something. Also, be aware that there are no profit guarantees, so it`s probably best to look at it as a game.
