[ANN] AEON: Scalable, private, mobile-friendly cryptocurrency

[smooth]

Update on Release Phoenix

Release Phoenix is a go!

I've successfully competed testing of:

1. New PoW
2. Block time switch to 4 minutes
3. Difficulty transition adjustment (prevents blocks from being mined too fast after switching to faster PoW)

I will be announcing a test release shortly, so people can try building and running on your own systems (it is set up to run separately from the main network).

Assuming no problems with the test release I will then push out a new general release with the hard fork set at some block in the future and a few other minor improvements.

[Phantas]

Thank you smooth.

[GlaadNie]

Sorry for such an obvious/newbie question... but I have been mining AEON on minergate for a while... and have almost 300 coins stacked up,
will I still be able to trade them once AEON is back on an exchange?

[smooth]

Sorry for such an obvious/newbie question... but I have been mining AEON on minergate for a while... and have almost 300 coins stacked up,
will I still be able to trade them once AEON is back on an exchange?

Yes your coins are still good, assuming minergate is still around. You might want to try to set up your own wallet and move your coins off when you get a chance. Never a particularly good idea of entrust your coins to a third party.

[GlaadNie]

Sorry for such an obvious/newbie question... but I have been mining AEON on minergate for a while... and have almost 300 coins stacked up,
will I still be able to trade them once AEON is back on an exchange?

Yes your coins are still good, assuming minergate is still around. You might want to try to set up your own wallet and move your coins off when you get a chance. Never a particularly good idea of entrust your coins to a third party.

Thx! Will wait for the new wallet release... also send a few coins to dev fund(for what it's worth)

[smooth]

Release Phoenix standalone test (PLEASE TEST!)

I have created a standalone test setup for the upcoming release Phoenix. Please test and report any issues.

Instructions:

git clone git://github.com/iamsmooth/aeon aeon-hf1-test
cd aeon-hf1-test
git checkout -b hf1-test origin/hf1-test
make

(you will get some errors with unit tests I haven't fixed yet, but you can ignore them)

cd build/release/src
./aeond --log-level=1
start_mining ADDRESS  <-- you can use any valid address (e.g. donation address), this doesn't mine any real coins
show_hr

(You do not need to connect to a network for this test so please ignore any messages about not connecting to seed nodes.)

Here's where the magic happens. You will see blocks being mined with a block target of 1 second, with the difficulty converging to your hash rate (eventually, but it usually gets pretty close within 5-10 blocks). Since you aren't actually sending any blocks to the network the 1 second block time causes no problems.

Once you get to block 1000 (about 15 minutes), it will switch over the to new PoW and a block target of 4 seconds. At this point you should see the difficulty increase by a factor of 8, your hash rate double (approximately -- depends on hardware), and of course the rate of blocks being created should slow down noticeably.

The added factor of 2 in difficulty is to compensate for the new PoW being roughly twice as fast. That transition is phased out over the next few hundred blocks at which point it is completely running on the new parameters and should continue to produce blocks with a target of 4 seconds.

This test version uses a data directory called .aeone (Linux) or AEONE (Windows) in the usual locations. Once you are done with testing you can delete that.

Since it doesn't download a blockchain or create much of a blockchain, you don't need a lot of memory or disk space for this test.

Please report any problems.

If none, I will reconfigure for the live network and create a new release!

cryptrol or whoever, if you are able to create and upload a Windows build of this, I would really appreciate it. I'd like to get testing done on as many platforms as possible before releasing it to the live network.

[cryptrol]

Release Phoenix standalone test (PLEASE TEST!)

I have created a standalone test setup for the upcoming release Phoenix. Please test and report any issues.

Instructions:

git clone git://github.com/iamsmooth/aeon aeon-hf1-test
cd aeon-hf1-test
git checkout -b hf1-test origin/hf1-test
make

(you will get some errors with unit tests I haven't fixed yet, but you can ignore them)

cd build/release/src
./aeond --log-level=1
start_mining ADDRESS  <-- you can use any valid address (e.g. donation address), this doesn't mine any real coins
show_hr

(You do not need to connect to a network for this test so please ignore any messages about not connecting to seed nodes.)

Here's where the magic happens. You will see blocks being mined with a block target of 1 second, with the difficulty converging to your hash rate (eventually, but it usually gets pretty close within 5-10 blocks). Since you aren't actually sending any blocks to the network the 1 second block time causes no problems.

Once you get to block 1000 (about 15 minutes), it will switch over the to new PoW and a block target of 4 seconds. At this point you should see the difficulty increase by a factor of 8, your hash rate double (approximately -- depends on hardware), and of course the rate of blocks being created should slow down noticeably.

The added factor of 2 in difficulty is to compensate for the new PoW being roughly twice as fast. That transition is phased out over the next few hundred blocks at which point it is completely running on the new parameters and should continue to produce blocks with a target of 4 seconds.

This test version uses a data directory called .aeone (Linux) or AEONE (Windows) in the usual locations. Once you are done with testing you can delete that.

Since it doesn't download a blockchain or create much of a blockchain, you don't need a lot of memory or disk space for this test.

Please report any problems.

If none, I will reconfigure for the live network and create a new release!

cryptrol or whoever, if you are able to create and upload a Windows build of this, I would really appreciate it. I'd like to get testing done on as many platforms as possible before releasing it to the live network.

I am on travel. Will do it on the weekend or ASAP.

[MoneroMooo]

Works for me. Hash rate went up about 3.5 times, dififculty 10 times. Everything else seems fine.

[Arux]

Release Phoenix standalone test (PLEASE TEST!)

Done, ubuntu 15.04 [edit] intel Penryn/Harpertown (no aes instructions) / 4gb of ram

Here's where the magic happens. You will see blocks being mined with a block target of 1 second, with the difficulty converging to your hash rate (eventually, but it usually gets pretty close within 5-10 blocks).

exactly happened

Once you get to block 1000 (about 15 minutes), it will switch over the to new PoW and a block target of 4 seconds. At this point you should see the difficulty increase by a factor of 8, your hash rate double (approximately -- depends on hardware), and of course the rate of blocks being created should slow down noticeably.

#1000: diff 24 --> ~170-200   hashrate: 23.8-->52.4

no problems at first sight.

[dEBRUYNE]

Anyone want to sell some? If so, PM me with an offer please.

[smooth]

Thanks for the test reports. Please note the OS and hardware if possible. Thanks.

[xen0s]

what is the actual price now?

[muchoman]

what is the actual price now?

Nobody knows, no exchanges.

[smooth]

what is the actual price now?

There is no exchange, only OTC trading. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1012944

I would like to push getting back onto exchanges once the latest software updates are done and I have seed nodes set up to restore normal service (i.e. people can actually download and run the software without assistance which is not the case now).

I've placed an order for a dedicated seed node in a data center to be paid out of my pocket for now (possibly the donations fund can cover the cost later).

[muchoman]

what is the actual price now?

There is no exchange, only OTC trading. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1012944

I would like to push getting back onto exchanges once the latest software updates are done and I have seed nodes set up to restore normal service (i.e. people can actually download and run the software without assistance which is not the case now).

I've placed an order for a dedicated seed node in a data center to be paid out of my pocket for now (possibly the donations fund can cover the cost later).

These days it's very rare thing to see dev as dedicated as you.

[MoneroMooo]

Thanks for the test reports. Please note the OS and hardware if possible. Thanks.

Mine ("Works for me. Hash rate went up about 3.5 times, dififculty 10 times. Everything else seems fine.") was Fedora 20 on x86_64.

[smooth]

Minimum mining reward

When created this coin was a clone/fork of Monero. At that time Monero did not have code implementing the minimum reward, although that was always part of the Monero specification (as being <1% inflation per year) and has recently been added to the code (though will not have any effect for approximately eight years).

As currently described, the mining rewards of this coin will decline quickly to a negligible level and will eventually go to actual zero. I believe this is unsound for any decentralized PoW coin, but also especially unsound for a coin without a fixed maximum blocksize, and my intent is to bring the structure fully back in line with Monero by merging the code for the minimum mining reward.

This arguably represents a small change in the specifications (though in some sense not since there is no divergence yet and won't be for several years), and one which will make the coin less deflationary or possibly somewhat inflationary. Actually being inflationary is in fact quite unlikely in practice since lost coins will likely exceed that rate of new coins in the final "minimum reward" state (especially with the pruning of stale outputs).

If there are strong objections to making this change, I will have to consider leaving the code alone and making a new fork instead.

[dlightman]

Update on Release Phoenix

Release Phoenix is a go!

I've successfully competed testing of:

1. New PoW

Hello!

What's the purpose of changing PoW?

[smooth]

What's the purpose of changing PoW?

To make it faster to verify and more efficient on mobile and mainstream (not high end) desktop CPUs. See roadmap

[dlightman]

What's the purpose of changing PoW?

To make it faster to verify and more efficient on mobile and mainstream (not high end) desktop CPUs. See roadmap

1. Mobile-friendly PoW (CryptoNight Lite). The current PoW is not ideal for smaller devices because the 2MB scratchpad is too large for the cache size on most mobile and lower-end desktop/laptop CPUs. A tweak to use a 1 MB scratchpad would allow it to run efficiently on lower end CPUs including some mobile processors as well as much better performance on mainstream desktops/laptops. Credit for this idea goes to the Louisd'or project (crypto_zoidberg and doe1138), although they didn't clearly explain the benefits of it.

I've stressed the most important part of quoted text.

I don't think that reduced scratchpad will give significant benefits to anybody because:

1. 2Mb and much bigger L3 cache becomes more and more widely used. Mobile CPU will follow soon.
2. Signature verification time is more important than PoW verification time in case of 100+ transaction per block.

Proper implementation of checkpoints will solve the full chain verification problem better than scratchpad reduction.

From the other hand small scratchpad will remove one of ASIC / GPU protection layer. It will be easier to build dedicated mining hardware: for example one can assemble a mining rig with embedded CPUs. I don't think that this is a desirable.

Can you measure relative GPU advantage over CPU with reduced scratchpad?
Original CryptoNight implementation is very good from this point of view: GPU is about 2 times faster. This is quite fair.