thanks to most for some great replies and not bashing me for honest questions. i really am wanting to see the truth behind SolidCoin.
regarding it not being open-source, i would TOTALLY AGREE that any such system must be open source. but it seems to me that it *is* open source: i see the site has their open source posted at this page:
http://solidcoin.info/downloads.htmli downloaded the zip and it has several code files in it. i did not even try to compile it as i'm not even on a puter that has Visual Studio installed. (i'm a windows programmer [my appologies
] and c# is my specialty, but i'm familiar with c++ too.) so my point is at first glance, it appears that the source code is released. for those saying it's not open source, do you have a response to that?
i agree that he has a hot-head attitude tho. that shows a lack of professionality about him tho. i give that negative aspect too.
and thanks for that post to where he asked how many coins should be pre-mined. it was quite hillarious!
but about pre-mined coins, in the explanation at the solidcoin site, it explains that premined coins cannot be spent like normal coins. i have to give him/them/SC credit, that it's a good idea. (i think brilliant to overcome the 51% 'danger' that other cryptocoins face.) but i also admit that i only half understand stated solution as to how those premined coined and 'trusted nodes' actually keep the network safe from a powerful attacker. but i'm pointing out that SC claims those coins cannot be spent as regular coins.
and yeah, when i took a second look at difficulties, i found SC difficulties to be very low with as mentioned, hardly any miners. but in response to it not being worth the electricity to mine them, neither is BitCoins worth mining.
I'm happy to see some form of code made available for scrutiny.Also I didn't realise that Xcode on my Mac can also show me these lines of code as well.If you have a mac download Xcode to look into the code.I checked the wallet part and it all seemed straightforward.I'm not a programmer (I work as a filmmaker) so maybe someone with more skill can checkout the code made available.If all of this checks out to be solid and fully trasparent and that nothing suspicious or harmful is found,I'll issue a retraction on the closed source claim (which I actually picked up from other user of the forums here).
Upadte:I looked into file block.cpp of the source on Xcode on my mac and I see references to a trust fund (confirming that the topic on this to be true to those who are either critics or simply those who wish to know more about SC but not necessarily a critic of it).
An interesting thing to see is that on certain events/dates,different changes were implemented on thise particular dates as well like this:
if (fTestNet)
{
//pszTimestamp = "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks";
pszTimestamp = "New York Times | 6/October/2011 | Anti-Wall Street protesters marched to the capital";
txNew.vin.resize(1);
txNew.vout.resize(1);
txNew.vin[0].prevout.SetNull();
txNew.vin[0].scriptSig = CScript() << CBigNum(0) << vector<unsigned char>((const unsigned char*)pszTimestamp, (const unsigned char*)pszTimestamp + strlen(pszTimestamp));
txNew.vout[0].nValue = Block_GetCoinBaseValue(0,0);
txNew.vout[0].scriptPubKey = g_GenScript;
block.vtx.push_back(txNew);
txNew.vout[0].nValue = (TRUST_FUND_AMOUNT+200000)*COIN;
for(int x=0;x<TRUST_FUND_NUM;x++)
{
sprintf((char*)trustname,"TRUST%02d",x+1);
txNew.vin[0].scriptSig = CScript() << CBigNum(x+1) << vector<unsigned char>(trustname, trustname+7);
txNew.vout[0].scriptPubKey = g_TrustedScript
block.vtx.push_back(txNew);
}
block.blk.nBlockNum=0;
block.blk.hashPrevBlock = 0;
block.blk.hashMerkleRoot = block.BuildMerkleTree();
block.blk.nVersion = 1;
block.blk.nTime = 1318051965;
block.blk.dwBits = 503840767 ;
block.blk.nNonce1 = 152300;
block.blk.nNonce2 = 0;
block.blk.nNonce3 = 0;
block.blk.nNonce4 = 0;
strcpy(block.blk.miner_id,"RealSolid");
assert(block.blk.hashMerkleRoot == uint256("0x8d699b0a5524b3d8773ad46f0b974add6e922f422e7d99a8816ef17d712056ee"));
//if(block.blk.hashMerkleRoot != uint256("0x20b13f4cf37a0d49fb9e377b7ca7562de7518537cbd54f4c358f36b42e2a3ac3"))
{
}
Pesonally I find this rather intriguing as there are several instances of where things have been changed based on specific dates/events (although I suspect that this is simply a reference for RS to mark in plain text when he made particular changes in terms of his code).
Look further in the code and you'll see a lot more of these type of events in this file.