[announce] Namecoin - a distributed naming system based on Bitcoin

[nelisky]

I have no idea is nelisky is trolling, but I know for sure zamgo is for whatever reason. 

I know he knows where the heck to find the sources. ( https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin )

The mac build is just an update to the one already featured on http://dot-bit.org/  , and the windows build is similar  as what I used to do.  Just in this case someone at least updated it already.

That's new, being hinted as a troll. Look, I'm sure you mean well and everyone will know that you just meant you compiled the latest from namecoin git but that's not what I read on your post, I read it as "I altered the code, improved it somehow, here's a shiny binary and no reference to the source code".

Now that you explained I know that was not the case, you didn't change anything, just compiled. Fine, but a set of instructions on how to build it would be much better received.

I can quickly cook a namecoin version for windows/mac with a small easter egg added and you have no way of verifying, and you know the type of easter eggs that are common around here, right?

Be cool, and stay safe. Distributing binaries is a major no-no in most cases, and advocating it even if your intentions and code are the best will teach users to trust binaries referenced from threads, and that usually ends in "help, my wallet has been stolen and I don't know why" kind of posts.

[phelix]

btw: I just put my old windows makefile and some stolen instructions on git: https://github.com/phelixbtc/namecoin

[twobits]

I have no idea is nelisky is trolling, but I know for sure zamgo is for whatever reason. 

I know he knows where the heck to find the sources. ( https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin )

The mac build is just an update to the one already featured on http://dot-bit.org/  , and the windows build is similar  as what I used to do.  Just in this case someone at least updated it already.

That's new, being hinted as a troll. Look, I'm sure you mean well and everyone will know that you just meant you compiled the latest from namecoin git but that's not what I read on your post, I read it as "I altered the code, improved it somehow, here's a shiny binary and no reference to the source code".

Ah, well I checked what I wrote, and I put updated mac port.  Guess maybe I should have just put build.   I figured people would know what I meant by port, especially  since my old port/build is still featured on the official site. A port typically does not have improvements, and minimal code alterations only as needed to get it to build.

Now that you explained I know that was not the case, you didn't change anything, just compiled. Fine, but a set of instructions on how to build it would be much better received.

https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin/tree/master/doc  has the build instructions already though. 

I can quickly cook a namecoin version for windows/mac with a small easter egg added and you have no way of verifying, and you know the type of easter eggs that are common around here, right?

Be cool, and stay safe. Distributing binaries is a major no-no in most cases, and advocating it even if your intentions and code are the best will teach users to trust binaries referenced from threads, and that usually ends in "help, my wallet has been stolen and I don't know why" kind of posts.

Seems some people want binaries.   Only way to offer them is to distribute them that I know of.  I was for awhile known as the person who supplied the builds for windows and mac put on dot-bit.org.  Personal life kept me distracted with other things  for most of 2012, and I noticed that while someone had updated the widows builds, no one ever did it for the Mac.   As I did back in 2011,  I also build the gui version as they can be useful to some people as well.   I used to use Multicoin as the gui for awhile, but that is too far out of date now.

I do get your point, and that is why I avoid binaries myself, or usually run them sandboxed in a VM for awhile.  I am just not sure what the alternative is for people that don't want to build it themselves.  People that want binaries are going to have to pick who they trust I guess.   If you have a better idea, I would like to know of it, so I can use it myself.

[twobits]

btw: I just put my old windows makefile and some stolen instructions on git: https://github.com/phelixbtc/namecoin

Maybe I am picking the wrong repository?  Why did you pick to fork from  https://github.com/khalahan/namecoin  and not from https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin ?

[phelix]

btw: I just put my old windows makefile and some stolen instructions on git: https://github.com/phelixbtc/namecoin

Maybe I am picking the wrong repository?  Why did you pick to fork from  https://github.com/khalahan/namecoin  and not from https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin ?

"the binaries that majority of clients are running are built using khal's source git tree"
https://dot-bit.org/BuildNamecoinFromSource

v350 windows is built from Khal's source.

[snailbrain]

nmc client based on the default bitcoin qt client coming soon..

Are you serious?? ... this would be exceptional, i hope you are not jagging our chains here?

yes.. in process now..
eta 14 days qt client (should work linux/windows)
2nd part, 2 weeks later, should include name registration, with some fixed fields to change, like ns, IP).. anything really advanced will need to be done in console window

if all goes according to plan

Looking forward to it ... will you submit pull request to namecoin/namecoin github repo (khal still controls this I think)?

all code will be given, and will submit pull request on github

development is in progress.. namecoin-qt (slight modifications for compatibility due to old code).. nothing major will change..
1st will be without name creation... 2nd will be with name creation (although will only display/edit d/names.. any other prefixes or searches for others will unfortunately need to be done in the console window)..
so basically, will be ok for bit domains..
if i managed to recoup some costs for bounty( ?) and donations.. we can have a look at the old namecoin code.

Encryption of wallet may not be in the first release.....

if patient i can have the old namecoin code looked at, but we will need to create a thread of issues and what needs doing, as i currently have less clue than most.... i actually think namecoin should have it's own section, being the oldest / best altcoin created IMO)... (the dotbit forum needs cleaning up).
We can then work together in making this coin better than every other.. i personally believe that NMC should be as or more valueable than bitcoin...

the possibilities are endless


If someone else is working on this project, let me know asap and I will give up... i wouldn't bother changing or trying to roll out an update namecoin (3.50+) until we find out off the Khal/vinced and/or the community what updates are required... also what i have had done thus far will have been a complete waste of my time.

what has happened to Vinced and Khal?

I'll keep all updated..

I am passionate about NMC, and would love to see this crypto become no1 coin

[nelisky]

if i managed to recoup some costs for bounty( ?) and donations.. we can have a look at the old namecoin code.

My part of the "unofficial bounty" is completely unrelated to the work you are doing, unfortunately. I'll be glad to spice it up a bit more if someone can commit to do what I need done soon, otherwise I'll end up doing it myself as soon as I can find the time.

Reiterating my needs once more: I need namecoind (command line daemon, don't care for GUI) to be rebased on top of a current bitcoind source code so I have access to the newer RPC calls and to allow easy tracking of bitcoin development to leverage the amazing work being done there constantly. All else is sugar, although said sugar is certainly important to increase adoption that is not my current priority.

Also, I will accept paying the bounty for a working namecoind as described above even if it doesn't have the merged mining stuff in, as that is something well served afaik with the outdated client.

If instead of a bounty there's someone willing to take this task for a set price I'll be happy to chip in with NMC, BTC, XRP, LTC and/or TRC. Just state your price and expected time to delivery and we can try and fund that (but ultimately only paid after delivery, though I'll be glad to put the 'prize' in escrow)

[snailbrain]

if i managed to recoup some costs for bounty( ?) and donations.. we can have a look at the old namecoin code.

My part of the "unofficial bounty" is completely unrelated to the work you are doing, unfortunately. I'll be glad to spice it up a bit more if someone can commit to do what I need done soon, otherwise I'll end up doing it myself as soon as I can find the time.

Reiterating my needs once more: I need namecoind (command line daemon, don't care for GUI) to be rebased on top of a current bitcoind source code so I have access to the newer RPC calls and to allow easy tracking of bitcoin development to leverage the amazing work being done there constantly. All else is sugar, although said sugar is certainly important to increase adoption that is not my current priority.

Also, I will accept paying the bounty for a working namecoind as described above even if it doesn't have the merged mining stuff in, as that is something well served afaik with the outdated client.

If instead of a bounty there's someone willing to take this task for a set price I'll be happy to chip in with NMC, BTC, XRP, LTC and/or TRC. Just state your price and expected time to delivery and we can try and fund that (but ultimately only paid after delivery, though I'll be glad to put the 'prize' in escrow)

It sounds easy ---- but i suspect this could be very complex based on the age differences... or at least very time consuming...

is it JUST the rpc commands that you need? (can you list them in PM)..

no harm in looking into it.

[twobits]

btw: I just put my old windows makefile and some stolen instructions on git: https://github.com/phelixbtc/namecoin

Maybe I am picking the wrong repository?  Why did you pick to fork from  https://github.com/khalahan/namecoin  and not from https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin ?

"the binaries that majority of clients are running are built using khal's source git tree"
https://dot-bit.org/BuildNamecoinFromSource

v350 windows is built from Khal's source.

Hmm... I see that page is from Dec 2011.  I can say that that was not true at that time since I built two of the three clients  available from dot-bit at that time and my two got built from Vince's source at the time.  Of course it was never the head, but when he announced a tagged release.

At that time also, there was no official source.   Guess I will have to ask what is the right one to use then, I thought it would be the official source at this point now that they have one.

[twobits]

Reiterating my needs once more: I need namecoind (command line daemon, don't care for GUI) to be rebased on top of a current bitcoind source code so I have access to the newer RPC calls and to allow easy tracking of bitcoin development to leverage the amazing work being done there constantly. All else is sugar, although said sugar is certainly important to increase adoption that is not my current priority.

The bitcoin source is really not architectured to support alts, and given that changes since 0.3 have made this more the case then it was even then I am pretty sure it never will be.     I personally would really like to see the major alts put some effort to bring something like the picocoin codebase into a usable form for this.  As it is built around a library it should prove more easy for the alts to share work and advance some things on their own rather then just somewhat blindly taking random patches from bitcoin on an uncoordinated basis.

It may be easier or at least quicker to add in the RPC calls you want.  That of course does not give you the tracking of the development, but I still think that will only last for a short term once again and a better long term solution is needed.  That said, I think most currently agree with you, as they see it easier to just keep mirroring bitcoin development.

Also, I will accept paying the bounty for a working namecoind as described above even if it doesn't have the merged mining stuff in, as that is something well served afaik with the outdated client.

That is simply not going to work, unless you mean a namecoin fork or alternative.  Namecoin needs merge mining to at least validate the blocks already made with it active, even if you turn it off in this new version.   Merged mining is a forking change.

ead of a bounty there's someone willing to take this task for a set price I'll be happy to chip in with NMC, BTC, XRP, LTC and/or TRC. Just state your price and expected time to delivery and we can try and fund that (but ultimately only paid after delivery, though I'll be glad to put the 'prize' in escrow)

I might be up for that, even if I do disagree with the approach.   I know there is some talk of doing this once leveldb is more stable for some of the other chains, and it would be easier to do both at once.

[nelisky]

I didn't think the merged mining issue through, you are correct. I was going for "no need to allow mining" but obviously full merged POW is needed to verify blocks, so that's moot.

So the only viable option is improve on the current 0.3.50 codebase, I guess. I would still think it possible to hook into the latest bitcoind to support NMC, but that's likely much less trivial than I assumed from the start.

How's this for a plan? I need the following RPC calls added:
- importprivkey
- dumpprivkey
- importaddress (from codeshark's PR, I can dig the number if needed)
- listunspent
- createrawtransaction
- decoderawtransaction
- getrawtransaction
- sendrawtransaction
- signrawtransaction
- signmessage
- verifymessage
- listaddressgroupings (I can live without this one, but it is useful)

I also need all the tx to be available for querying, not just those for wallet addresses (I think that's already the way it is).

[jonytk]

If someone else is working on this project, let me know asap and I will give up... i wouldn't bother changing or trying to roll out an update namecoin (3.50+) until we find out off the Khal/vinced and/or the community what updates are required... also what i have had done thus far will have been a complete waste of my time.

what has happened to Vinced and Khal?

I'll keep all updated..

I am passionate about NMC, and would love to see this crypto become no1 coin

what happend? no idea... please someone explain...

Man, i hope you have the knowledge and time to keep going.
We need the Gavin Andressen of namecoin, someone that can do proper bitcoin follow up,

and as the good guys here offering the bounty, they really need to setup a dev team and convince them that nmc
can be as valuable as ltc or more if the proper dev follow-up is mantained.

i'm sure some more people are holding huge stacks of nmc,
they should step-up, join together, make a foundation or something to manage the bounties and pay someone

i would love to help but i'm out off the loop, since i've work long time in IT admin.

[marcus_of_augustus]

what has happened to Vinced and Khal?

I'll keep all updated..

I am passionate about NMC, and would love to see this crypto become no1 coin Smiley

As far as I know, Khal is still around but difficult to get hold of ... 

Namecoin has great potential but had a rocky start with the miners basically raping it in the early days before merged mining, left it hanging for months stuck on a too high difficulty for a short term gain (it actually makes a great case study for a potential bitcoin attack). Many early developers lost interest and moved back to bitcoin and surrounding ventures after the mining attack.

Vinced hasn't been seen since v. early days ... there is some suspicion he was satoshi also (the level of code changes needed, speed and accuracy with which it was produced, use of british english and his disappearance around same time all point towards that). The namecoin idea was partly to keep bitcoin blockchain free from data storage and exclusively for transactions by providing namecoin for data storage ... so nothing has changed, we are still arguing over keeping data storage off bitcoin blockchain but namecoin cannot get even one bitcoin dev interested ...

It is probably the best piece of coding of the alt-coins next to bitcoin but is becoming out-dated and there are some unresolved issues regarding appropriate levels for fees (yes that old chestnut again) which are more complex than bitcoin's issue with fees since name transactions are involved. Nothing insurmountable in my opinion. Namecoin DNS is only a tiny part of what namecoin is capable of ....

Yes, please we need a gavin for namecoin ... or at least a coordinated dev effort. Khal needs help or may even want to hand over the keys to the main github source and forum to allow some new blood in ...

[Portnoy]

what has happened to Vinced and Khal?

I'll keep all updated..

I am passionate about NMC, and would love to see this crypto become no1 coin Smiley

As far as I know, Khal is still around but difficult to get hold of ...  

It seems this project has kept him busy recently:
Free bitcoins with Surf4Bitcoin.com


This quote may explain a little more:

Will you use some of the money you make from this to do something for namecoin and bring it back from the dead? Or is namecoin a lost cause?    

I had no time to give to namecoins those last months (spent on charityad mainly), and we still lack support from developers or anybody. Maybe there are some things that could be done to improve this ?
Now that i'm a bit more available (I started to read this forum again some weeks ago :p), i'll take [some] time to make things evolve a bit ( do you know a magical way to get help from people ? :p).

Namecoin has great potential but had a rocky start with the miners basically raping it in the early days before merged mining, left it hanging for months stuck on a too high difficulty for a short term gain (it actually makes a great case study for a potential bitcoin attack). Many early developers lost interest and moved back to bitcoin and surrounding ventures after the mining attack.

Vinced hasn't been seen since v. early days ... there is some suspicion he was satoshi also (the level of code changes needed, speed and accuracy with which it was produced, use of british english and his disappearance around same time all point towards that). The namecoin idea was partly to keep bitcoin blockchain free from data storage and exclusively for transactions by providing namecoin for data storage ... so nothing has changed, we are still arguing over keeping data storage off bitcoin blockchain but namecoin cannot get even one bitcoin dev interested ...

It is probably the best piece of coding of the alt-coins next to bitcoin but is becoming out-dated and there are some unresolved issues regarding appropriate levels for fees (yes that old chestnut again) which are more complex than bitcoin's issue with fees since name transactions are involved. Nothing insurmountable in my opinion. Namecoin DNS is only a tiny part of what namecoin is capable of ....

Yes I feel it is the only legit cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin itself, since it is not just some pump-and-dump clone coin created only as some get rich quick scheme but has an actual use (potentially many) which, as mentioned, will compliment Bitcoin and not be in competition with it among speculators.  

Yes, please we need a gavin for namecoin ... or at least a coordinated dev effort. Khal needs help or may even want to hand over the keys to the main github source and forum to allow some new blood in ...

Perhaps if khal sees more people willing to step up and help out he may find more time to devote to it himself.  I hope it can start moving again. Namecoin has so much potential...

[luv2drnkbr]

ooohhhh aaahhhhhhhh, namecoin updates.  im so excited!

[midnightlightning]

Also, I will accept paying the bounty for a working namecoind as described above even if it doesn't have the merged mining stuff in, as that is something well served afaik with the outdated client.

That is simply not going to work, unless you mean a namecoin fork or alternative.  Namecoin needs merge mining to at least validate the blocks already made with it active, even if you turn it off in this new version.   Merged mining is a forking change.

I just arrived at the same conclusion myself; I got a nodejs implementation able to connect and download the namecoin blockchain up until the merged mining fork at block 19200. Looks like I'll have to delve into the Aux-POW logic to make any more progress.

Updated Mac port, and a gui version for sending coins for windows as well.

--URL REMOVED--

Can you share the source code? Pushing binaries around is dangerous (for users) at best.

Yes.   Binaries from unknown sources are very dangerous.  

It's great there is some new namecoin work being done, but it has to be in the open for all of us to see or else no one will trust it.

Post the source on github or another suitable location and let us all review it.  

The benefits of having a compiled binary is speed and simplicity in that its one file to move around, but then you run into these issues; you need to have a trusted compiler who can GPG sign the results and be trusted by the community. That's why I'm liking the possibilities of a Nodejs implementation; it has the power of server and a client, and doesn't have to be compiled, so is a lot easier to verify it's not been tampered with. The advancements in the Bitcoin source have added lots of great features for wallet manipulation and security, and building on a different platform doesn't take full advantage of that, but those can be added incrementally. I'm glad this thread necromancy has revitalized some developers to come out of the woodwork!

[snailbrain]

funny.. i actually thought this myself

Satoshi = Vinced

[virtualmaster]

I have done a little bit Namecoin development in JavaScript but I think it will be useful.
It is still not ready the logo, domain reservation and some translations are incomplete.
Do you want to see it now or do you wait a couple of days until it is ready ?

[snailbrain]

Namecoin-qt - based on Namecoin 3.50 + Latest Bitcoin-qt

not far off..

currently encrypt wallet not working
and ----->> sending coins seem to go into oblivion (but working from console it seems).. other than that, seems "ok"... will upload something soon

[virtualmaster]

Namecoin-qt - based on Namecoin 3.50 + Latest Bitcoin-qt

not far off..

currently encrypt wallet not working
and ----->> sending coins seem to go into oblivion (but working from console it seems).. other than that, seems "ok"... will upload something soon

Good work. I like it.
Namecoin is great.
-----------
My utility is a Merged Bitcoin and Namecoin Address and Brain Wallet with the same private key.
Its a fork of bitaddress.org and the same pass-phrase can be used to generate the BTC and NMC address.
So it is less to memorize. I took this idea from the Casascius utility.