Code reviews for altcoins

[earlz]

Hello,

I just wanted to alert people to some stuff I've been doing for a while, but just now is being made public. I code review coins. Some of the reviews are requested, some I do on my own.

For reference, I only analyze the source code, it matching the ANN, and sometimes the blockchain with a local or remote block explorer. I do not analyze binary wallets, nor try to evaluate how trust worthy a developer is (though I sometimes point out when a developer is especially good or bad)

You can see my listing of reviews on Github.

Note, all of the reviews are best effort and not at all guaranteed to be exploit free. I only try to find the more obvious exploits.

My old thread was moved to the marketplace and is here. I'm not trying to really sell this as a service, and would like continual discussion around my reviews (think I am wrong about something? Tell me!) and generally I am looking to ensure coins with critical bugs or exploits are called out on it.

[digitalindustry]

seems like a decent service well done  - will check it out .

[muddafudda]

Cool. What you really should do is drop the git release repository against say the LTC or BTC source and analyse the differences.

You should also keep a copy of the launch source and update it against releases if you want to really look into it. By that I mean look at gits that are wiped clean or moved from the initial launch. Dig and you will find   

[earlz]

Cool. What you really should do is drop the git release repository against say the LTC or BTC source and analyse the differences.

You should also keep a copy of the launch source and update it against releases if you want to really look into it. By that I mean look at gits that are wiped clean or moved from the initial launch. Dig and you will find   

It's not possible to effectively compare most coins directly to Bitcoin. Most coins are forked from peercoin, or novacoin, or novacoin with some modifications, or changes backported, or a weird version in between releases. So, I match them up against coins that have been out a relatively long time and never had any serious problems.

I'd rather not go into detail about everything I exactly look at and compare against, because I do not want it to be easier for scam developers to know where to hide things. And I have local copies of every coin's git repository that I review. If a git repository is ever wiped clean, deleted, etc, I can easily upload my own local copy. But, doing it for every coin would just be too much of a pain with my slow upload speed.

Also, if anyone has a known source of USBCoin or Ninjacoin (before exploits were patched), I'd love to get a copy of it

[muddafudda]

Cool. What you really should do is drop the git release repository against say the LTC or BTC source and analyse the differences.

You should also keep a copy of the launch source and update it against releases if you want to really look into it. By that I mean look at gits that are wiped clean or moved from the initial launch. Dig and you will find  

It's not possible to effectively compare most coins directly to Bitcoin. Most coins are forked from peercoin, or novacoin, or novacoin with some modifications, or changes backported, or a weird version in between releases. So, I match them up against coins that have been out a relatively long time and never had any serious problems.

I'd rather not go into detail about everything I exactly look at and compare against, because I do not want it to be easier for scam developers to know where to hide things. And I have local copies of every coin's git repository that I review. If a git repository is ever wiped clean, deleted, etc, I can easily upload my own local copy. But, doing it for every coin would just be too much of a pain with my slow upload speed.

Also, if anyone has a known source of USBCoin or Ninjacoin (before exploits were patched), I'd love to get a copy of it

They know its a pain that's why they do it.

Obviously you would just use the base LTC, BTC, Novacoin, Darkcoin etc.

Good work.

[almightyruler]

This is great. Thanks for sharing these reviews.

[earlz]

I've updated the github repository with some new reviews:

usecoin

xuro

[solstice]

I've updated the github repository with some new reviews:

usecoin

xuro

It would be great if you will create a list of all the coins that you've been reviewed in the OP.

[almightyruler]

* MINOR: Uses floating point in critical code

I'm curious about why this is considered minor. Could there be the potential for a fork, say between a Windows and Mac executable built with different compilers, that don't come up with exactly the same value for the next retarget/reward etc? Or is it more likely that floating point between these mainstream platforms will be fine, and this is only likely to affect oddball systems?

[earlz]

I've added some more coin reviews:

axron
rootcoin
greenbacks
fibre
petro
clustercoin

[earlz]

Added a lot of reviews, but I'm too lazy to try to list them all. Check them out and see if your favorite coin is listed!

[BitJohn]

Cool. What you really should do is drop the git release repository against say the LTC or BTC source and analyse the differences.

You should also keep a copy of the launch source and update it against releases if you want to really look into it. By that I mean look at gits that are wiped clean or moved from the initial launch. Dig and you will find  

It's not possible to effectively compare most coins directly to Bitcoin. Most coins are forked from peercoin, or novacoin, or novacoin with some modifications, or changes backported, or a weird version in between releases. So, I match them up against coins that have been out a relatively long time and never had any serious problems.

I'd rather not go into detail about everything I exactly look at and compare against, because I do not want it to be easier for scam developers to know where to hide things. And I have local copies of every coin's git repository that I review. If a git repository is ever wiped clean, deleted, etc, I can easily upload my own local copy. But, doing it for every coin would just be too much of a pain with my slow upload speed.

Also, if anyone has a known source of USBCoin or Ninjacoin (before exploits were patched), I'd love to get a copy of it

They know its a pain that's why they do it.

Obviously you would just use the base LTC, BTC, Novacoin, Darkcoin etc.

Good work.

Make the comparison to BTC or LTC a % difference and list them all haha

[Willisius]

Very nice analyses. I was wondering why someone would provide such a great service until I saw on your site that you're a shibe.

[coinsolidation]

Earl,

Fantastic service, thank you so much. I just found your report and immediately fixed the minor bug from Bitcoin you noted.

I've submitted an issue on your repo with link to code to reflect this.

Thanks again,

Mark

[earlz]

Lots o' coins added, even a few fresh ones

https://github.com/earlz/coinreviews

[ProTradeZ44]

Lots o' coins added, even a few fresh ones

https://github.com/earlz/coinreviews

Can you do one for ARCH?

https://github.com/archcoin/archcoin

https://github.com/archcoin/archcoin/graphs/code-frequency

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Cool. What you really should do is drop the git release repository against say the LTC or BTC source and analyse the differences.

You should also keep a copy of the launch source and update it against releases if you want to really look into it. By that I mean look at gits that are wiped clean or moved from the initial launch. Dig and you will find   

This could be very valuable intel in operation shitcoin cleanup and clean out.

Bump

[earlz]

Lots o' coins added, even a few fresh ones

https://github.com/earlz/coinreviews

Can you do one for ARCH?

https://github.com/archcoin/archcoin

https://github.com/archcoin/archcoin/graphs/code-frequency

I've been wanting to get to that one.. So I probably will get to it in a few days. A modest tip of some sort would get it pushed to the front of my queue though.

[earlz]

Cool. What you really should do is drop the git release repository against say the LTC or BTC source and analyse the differences.

You should also keep a copy of the launch source and update it against releases if you want to really look into it. By that I mean look at gits that are wiped clean or moved from the initial launch. Dig and you will find   

This could be very valuable intel in operation shitcoin cleanup and clean out.

Bump

I keep archives if every coin I review. I see no need in publishing them though unless they come into question. It would take extra time for each coin to create a github repo for it and publish and upload and all

[coinsolidation]

Lots o' coins added, even a few fresh ones

https://github.com/earlz/coinreviews

Can you do one for ARCH?

https://github.com/archcoin/archcoin

https://github.com/archcoin/archcoin/graphs/code-frequency

I've been wanting to get to that one.. So I probably will get to it in a few days. A modest tip of some sort would get it pushed to the front of my queue though.

ARCH has heritage from https://github.com/novacoin-project/novacoin/releases/tag/v0.4.4.6-nvc-update4 - no novacoin commits / fixes after this date are in the source. It may be a fork of a coin which forked this version of NovaCoin.