Previously called HardForkcoin
The Bitcoin vulnerability, solved.
Specialty
None of the big words, "global" "business" "enterprise" "worldwide" "infrastructure" ...
None of the complex good for nothing technology.
No IPO/ICO etc....
No Centralization ('gateway', automatic checkpointing etc...).
It's all about development of productive technology.
51% attack proofFinally it's here.
Unclaimed 51% attack bounty.BIGcoin uses ShortFork to protect itself against double spending attacks.
Regardless of how powerful the attacker is once a transaction is confirmed (12 blocks),
you cannot reverse it. With BIGcoin, feel safe with your balance.
Although the core technology has been developed, some major parts are still under development (the concept is made clear). Technically this is 51% proof but will be MUCH stronger when it's developed completely. For starters the protocol changes are pending. We're getting there.
If you cannot get on the correct chain, please read -fork option towards the end.Signs you're being attacked and how it's averted (see debug.log). There are a total of 4 types of these messages specific to 4 types of situations.
Another message type
The solution to the problem was something which any cryptocurrency developer did not realize; the purpose of a fork. This fact was realized by the Bitcoin protocol developers, but the same thing was never applied to the block chain.
Forks exist as tie breakers in case another block at depth n arrive before a new block is made; otherwise if anyone creates a block from a too low depth which risks unconfirming many heavy transactions, it can be a mistake (1) or an attack (2). Blocks created by neither of these situation must propagate; this has been realized by the protocol since the wallet only forwards the best chain. We applied a similar (but more complicated) concept on the whole of the blockchain.
1) Mistakes should not be allowed to propagate.
The mistake must be limited to the miner so whatever damage is limited to the miner.
2) The network should detect the attack blocks and reject them.
Using ShortFork, BIGcoin can detect and neutralize both of these.
The situation when long forks are desirable is when there's a coincidence of multiple genuine conflicting miners (considering non-restricting networks). The probability of the coincidence is very low and reduces dramatically as each block gets added in either of the forked chain. By the time 12 blocks have been mined on the forks, the probability has reduced to a practically impossible value. Had this not been true, a 51% attack would've been a coincidence. Till date, off all cryptocurreny history and the billions of blocks mined, this coincidence has never happened. A 51% attack requires skills, it can't be done by chance.
There is only one configuration in which long forks are genuinely made - when the miners produce forked blocks at the same height. If some miner has made a block at, say the 3rd or 4th last block (or lower than that), then it points to either 1 or 2.
Let's take an e.g. of a set of miners A and B. Suppose A mines a new block (named 100A, where 100 is depth and A is the miner's name), but before the block reaches B, B generates a new block (100B). In this situation a fork is made. B continues to mine on on 100B and A continues to mine on 100A. Let's take the probability of this happening -
(probability of B mining block 100B (depends on hash rate) at time t)*(probability of A mining block 100A (depends on hash rate) at time t+D)
Where D is the delta; D is a unit of time which is less than the time it takes for a block to traverse; that's why B found a new block and broadcasted it to the network without marking it stale.
A high hash rate and low difficulty will increase the probability of of a forked block. This is where eDRv2 kicks in and makes this situation less likely than normal.
There is low (but not impossible) probability of this situation.
For this fork to continue, B should generate a new block 101B, and A should generate a block 101A before each of the blocks reach the other set of miners. So the the probability involved here is -
(probability of B mining block 100B (depends on hash rate) at time t)*(probability of A mining block 100A (depends on hash rate) at time t+D)*(probability of B mining block 101B (depends on hash rate) at time T)*(probability of A mining block 101A (depends on hash rate) at time T+D)
So this is exponentially unlikely to happen and we're still at just the 2nd block of the parallel forks.
The game changer difference between this and the 100A/B situation is the difficulty of 101A/B. For A to continue mining on 101A and for B to continue mining on 101B, the difficulty of both these blocks must be identical; that means blocks 100A/B must have identical timestamps. So d has to be less than a second; otherwise one of 101A/B will be selected as the main chain.
All this has to happen for each block till block 12 (or 6, depending on the coin); so a 51% attack by coincidence is impossible to happen; and we've seen this happening.
We've acted on this fact; to make such a coincidence more unlikely, we've increased the confirmation bocks to 12.
Cryptocoin developers do know about forks starting form a very low depth and the risks associated with it, so they made checkpointing; but unfortunately that's not enough.
ShortFork works on 2 principles -
-From the point of fork, any chain cannot be longer than 11 except the best chain.
-Neither can any chain start from 12 blocks deep from the highest block in the main chain (counting backwards).
Based on these principles, 4 situations are made possible -
Situation 1 and 2 is very clear. Situation 3 and 4 assume the attacker has immense hashing power. In this situation when the shorter chain (A) is the main chain and if there's mining done on the longer forked chain maybe by the attacker itself, then regardless of how many blocks are added to the forked chain, if it's cumulative difficulty is lower than the main chain, then the forked chain will not be the main chain. The attacker continues to mine on B for a long time such that the point of fork is many blocks deep; now utilizing his immense hashing power, the attacker can mine B such that it's selected as the main chain; unconfirming many transactions. Thus allowing the forked chain to be longer than 11 blocks is not allowed cause it may rick reversing transactions.
On encountering any of these situations, the wallet disconnects with the problematic node to avoid it's traversal to other nodes.
The drawback with ShortFork is that since it rejects other chains which risks a transaction reversal or reverses a confirmed transaction; 2 isolated BIGcoin networks when finally have connectivity will fail to sync making 2 separate coins causing confusion. However if the same thing happens to a cryptocurrency which does not have ShortFork, one of the chains will be void, unconfirming many transactions.
Another small related drawback is the wallet's tendency to stay in the wrong chain in case the the wrong chain has grown long (on average this'll take 5.5 minutes). This is unlikely to happen cause almost all of the mining is done on pools and if a network disrupts, the miners will not be able to connect to the pool, so no mining.
If you're in such a situation, start the wallet with the -fork option after deleting peers.dat; after you've moved on to the correct chain, restart the wallet without -fork.
Block interval based rewardsSample block rewards while testing
Question is, why should the economy suffer if the difficulty retarget algorithm is not perfect?
BIGcoin itself is particularly susceptible to this. In an attempt to adapt the newer hash rates quickly, the block schedule is put horribly off target: the result: under supply. Difficulty retarget algorithms have a limited memory; they forget instances when the coins were instamined or undermined, as a result they don't see when the coin is off or over schedule and the error does not get rectified.
The following lists the block no. and the days by which these coins are off schedule -
Litecoin block 689769 40 days.
Doge block 489998 25 days
Quark block 1559364 23 days
NameCoin block 210522 117.3125 days
Bitcoin block 335255 150.24305555556 days
Block interval based rewards ensures that the currency in circulation is based on time, not block interval. Economics must not be mixed with the underlying technical details.There is a constant coins per second rating by which coins are mined (unless the date for inflation has come by, where the coins per seconds will be changed to match the inflation rate); block rewards depend on the interval between the last 2 blocks.
Transaction fee based inflationWith NoFork, double spending and transaction reversal attacks have been neutralized however, other less serous vulnerabilities still exist like preventing a transaction from being confirmed, taking up all the block rewards etc... So maintaining a certain difficulty is still important via inflation and a small amount of inflation is also good for the economy.
Inflation is targeted at 0.79274479 coins/s or lesser (depends on the transaction fee). This implies inflation of 5% or lesser (maybe even 0%) for the 1st year.
Transaction fee is not guaranteed although recommended;
in case the expected transaction fee does not come up to protect the network, BIGcoin has an automatic, flexible backup plan -- inflation. This is unlike Bitcoin which has no backup plan to secure it's network despite being completely open 51% attacks.
The inflation rate depends on the total transaction fee in each block; the
inflation rate is reduced by the transaction fee accumulated in the block.
Network synchronized updates."Forking a coin into 2 coins is confusing to users and can easily destroy confidence
We can fork, but the 2nd coin will never be born. Not by a single block.
"SHA-256 is very strong. ... It can last several decades unless there’s some massive breakthrough attack.
Yes, we can survive the attack.
"The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime.
No, ours is set on a chalkboard, we can change it anytime.
"It’s too soon to start junking up the API for backward compatibility at all costs.
Backwards compatibility? We rather hard fork.
"If we see a weakness in SHA256 coming gradually, we can transition to a new hash function after a certain block number. Everyone would have to upgrade their software by that block number.
Yes, we have a plan."We have not come across a proof of work algorithm that is truly ASIC-proof and quick to verify. All alternatives will only delay the problem, and at a considerable cost.
Yes, we have a solution.Bitcoin, Litecoin or any other wildly popular and established coin have the development team to implement any of the new innovative features provided by new coins. The reason why they don't implement it is cause it requires a
hard fork – something so risky, it can take the whole network down, cause of lost payments, balance and in general cause a huge amounts of loss.
This coin tries to improve on that by
'Automated blockchain forking', which makes implementing any
new feature which requires a hardfork a breeze with no risk of any loss regardless of how popular the coins is, or how many billion people are using it. This coin is infinitely
scalable.
We will never announce a hard fork in bold red letters ('urgent') cause
Automated blockchain forking technology
ensures you're always on the right chain and the chain is
never forked cause of incompatible changes to the wallet.
'Automated blockchain forking' ensures scalability along with the same decentralized feature of Bitcoin. Except BIGcoin peer addresses, the wallet does not connect to any other nodes in attempts to determine the next hard fork. The hardforking schedule is built in to the wallet. That means if the community abandons the developer team for another team/developer or the developer team suddenly goes missing, a takeover can be done in the same way as with other altcoins.
History of effortless and perfect hardforks -
No cyptocurrency has ever had these many hardforks in such a short time span. All this was done without a single fork being made.
The difficulty retarget algorithm has been tweaked and changed 5 times.
For the 1st time in cryptocurrency history we've change the network ID without a single connection being refused any BIGcoin wallet.
For the 1st time again with version 9 we changed the mined block reward maturity, which is not possible without ABF.
Again for the first time we provided 'bonus block rewards' for 1001 blocks, which is impossible to do without ABF.
We've changed the regular block rewards twice -- from 237 to 230 to a completely different timestamp based variable block rewards.
ASIC proofFor the first time in any cryptocurrency,
we guarantee you this coin
will remain ASIC proof cause of it's scalability. Unlike other coins, our method to do so is completely different and fool proof regardless of how much money a company spends to making an ASIC.
Instead of deploying complicated, CPU-friendly algorithms, we use use simple GPU and ASIC friendly algorithms. And as soon as an
ASIC is on the verge of being made,
we simply change the algorithm by automated hard forking, cause it's so easy to implement it for us regardless of how popular the coin is.
Difficulty retargetWe present 'Exception Detection and Rectification' (eDR) difficulty retarget algo which's the
most responsive difficulty retarget till date. Currently there is
no coin which provides better protection against both an instamine and a stuck block chain at an incredibly high difficulty. And best of all,
it provides 51% protection to some degree (although it's already taken care off by ShortFork, this adds a second protection.
'Exception Detection and Rectification' version 2 (triggers at block 230,001; since then obsoletes version 1) difficulty retarget algo is
7630% (by block count) to 8660% (by time) more effective in preventing an instamine and has
9675% (by block count) to 2480% (by time) faster recovery from an instamine (stuck block chain) as compared to KGW. Similar statistics follow for KGW siblings digishield and DGW.
Difficulty jump on instamine
An example taken off the live blockchain (see
blocks between 421100 and 421090in the block explorer)
Difficulty reset on blockchain hang
An example taken off the live blockchain (see
blocks between 425900 and 4259006 in the block explorer)
Paper:
To test how good eDR is compared to KGW we conducted benchmarks where regular mining was done at around 5.1 MH/s and an instamine was done at 1.15 GH/s (1150 MH/s) or around 225.5 times the regular mining power.
Configuration used for KGW is the same as in Megacoin.
Although one may expect an instamine with at best 10 times the hashing power, but we're testing on 225.5 time the hashing power.
The result of the benchmark is summarized in the links below as CSV documents. The source code of HFC (old ticker symbol of HUGE) which was used for the benchmark (these are not designed to run on a conected network) is also available on request. We'll provide both the HardForkcoin (old name of BIGcoin) with KGW and eDR source, the current implementation (after block 210000) being based on eDR.
The CSV documents have 8 columns:
Block - block no.
Diff - Difficulty at this block.
Time - Timestamp of the block.
Average (cumulative) - Please ignore this.
Moving average (50 blocks) - Moving average block interval of the last 50 blocks.
Relative to previous diff - Difficulty up/down relative to the previous difficulty.
Relative to current diff - Difficulty up/down relative to the current difficulty.
KGW stats interpretation -
With regular mining, the difficulty remains between 0.03 and 0.05, under mining by the instaminer, the difficulty peaks at 3.6 and then subsides to 3.5 and remains that way.
After we started an instamine at block 6410, it took 2826 blocks (and a total of 45722 seconds or a total of 12.29 hours) for KGW to reach to a difficulty 3.6 in order to prevent the instamine; at block 9236 this was finally done.
Instaming ended at block 9909 where the difficulty was left at 3.58. To reach the normal difficulty again, it took KGW 387 blocks; i.e. by block 10296 the difficulty was back between 0.03 and 0.05 range. Recovery phase took a total of 135333 seconds or 37.5925 hours.
eDRv2 stats interpretation -
With regular mining, the difficulty remains between 0.03 and 0.04 and in rare occasions reaches 0.05, under mining by the instaminer, the difficulty remains between 2 and 8 with an average of 3.65.
After instamine was started at block 983, it took 37 blocks (528 seconds or 8.8 minutes) for eDR to reach a difficulty of 3.65 in order to prevent the instamine; at block 1020 this was finally done.
Instaming ended at block 1329 where the difficulty was left at 3.45. To reach the normal difficulty again, it took eDR 4 blocks; i.e. by block 1333 the difficulty was back between 0.02 and 0.04 range. Recovery phase took a total of 3819 seconds or around 1 hour.
CSV data link -
KGW stats:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7gVckd84oOMSk0tY2ZlV1lCbk0/view?usp=sharingeDRv2 stats:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7gVckd84oOMaEJ1Vnc0Yy1pRTQ/view?usp=sharingBlockchain data (eDRv2) -
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=6C4001D3D644348A%21114Blockchain data (eDRv1 and KGW) –
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=6C4001D3D644348A%21113Blockchain hang preventionIn case the block chain has been hung for some reason (pool crashed, or a big miner left etc...), because of the time based block rewards, the miner incentive will keep on increasing until a block has been found.
This is an invitation to miners to mine the coin and get the large accumulating block reward in return of solving the large difficulty block.
An example taken off the live blockchain (see
blocks between 425900 and 4259006 in the block explorer)
Multipool immuneIf you want to benefit from BIGcoin, you should start mining early. The network gives no incentives to opportunistic miners or multipools.
That's because it take around 48 hours for your mined coins to get confirmed;
so no more dumping at a pump.
Instamine immunePrior to timestamp based block rewards, we were implementing regular block rewards; eDR2 took care of the instamine. It only allowed a few blocks to be instantamined.
But with the advent of coins/s block reward, instamining cannot be done by even a single block.
An example taken off the live blockchain (see
blocks between 421100 and 421090in the block explorer)
If the coin is being instamined, the block rewards will get reduced giving the instaminer no advantage.
Less orphansResponsive difficulty retarget algorithm means there are less orphans and so less chances of an accidental fork.
Changing block reward/plansAfter releasing a coin, devs usually realize the mistakes they have made when it comes to block rewards and other things. They cannot act on it frequently cause the changes require a hardfork, but we can.
After the main mining is finished, we can change inflation rates depending on situation (prices, network hash rate etc...).
Limited impact of security vulnerabilitiesCause it's mandatory to upgrade the wallet after a limited time frame, any wallet security vulnerability has limited impact
Frequent checkpointSince we can ensure the minimum version of wallets the network is running with, we can also confirm that the latest checkpoint is fresh for everyone. Following ShortFork, this ensures that a node is less susceptible to Sybil attack.
What HUGE will never be
Commitments form the team.
1) IPO/ICO - This coin's development is done as contribution. We'll never sell things which have no value like other IPO coins did.
2) Premine will not be spend except for marketing the coin, it's development and donations.
3) No PoS, ever. It's an economic and technical flaw.
4) Any new feature will never be advertised (it can be mentioned, but not advertised) before it's implemented and released to public. There're enough scam coins which promised but never delivered. We do the opposite.
Bounties/Giveaways
Please wait...
Specification
See above.
Block interval30 second block interval ensures this coin is fast enough for most applications and can replace the likes of Visa, Mastercard and other payment gateways.
AlgorithmBlake is a GPU friendly algorithm which provides maximum protection, cause GPU power is the most expensive to lend.
Block rewardsOn Sun, 31 Jul 2016 11:30:00 GMT (exact) 500,000,000 coins will be mined. After this time (1469964600 timestamp) block rewards will drop to 0.79274479 coins/s from 8.31367910 which is the current.
Before the timestamp based block rewards came up, the coin was horribly undermined (miners came and went). As a result, currently the block rewards are at it's highest (249.410373) compared to 237 (till block 310159) and 230 (till block 420000).
Current supply is 99541883 + (1421800017-current timestamp)*8.31367910
2 years is good enough to distribute the coin evenly to the public, and 2 years is the maximum you can do with high inflation rate of mining before it takes a serous toll on the prices. The inflation rate of 0.79274479 coins/s matches the inflation rate of the world's top economies.
PreminePlease donate to this premine address. That's all we have.
ALL EXCHANGES ARE ASKED TO REJECT TRANSFERS FROM THE PREMINE ADDRESS.
0.25% premine. Address – BZuh2LnvFazZUoGPK6ogfVpssQhwfUhqkU
The premine will only be used for marketing and donations.
Social
FAQ
None yet.
Pools
Explorers
Downloads
Hard forking schedule since version 8.1 of the wallet -
A new wallet will be released minimum of 41000 blocks before the expiry of the current wallet. This way notices can be issued to servers running BIGcoin.
Minimum life of the wallet will be 64000 blocks.
Exchanges
Contact
Compiling....
