Primecoin Prerelease

[Luckybit]

People tend to think about security in terms of hashrate, but in fact the real number to look at is mining income. That's why the coinchoose mining market share pie chart is important, indicating the shift in market since last year (bitcoin share dropped from 95% to 75%).

As bitcoin loses mining market share, the supporting hardware business (SHA-256 ASIC) would also lose speed of growth due to lack of money in it. Of course this is relative to each currency's market capitalization.

The hashrate doesn't need to drop for security to be lowered, because it's the cost of attack that's the measurement of security, and it's a relative comparison between the competing currencies. There are already people claiming litecoin is more secure than bitcoin. But there is a grain of truth in it, based on the mining market share, bitcoin is now only 3~4 times more secure and dropping.

I don't understand exactly how this will reduce bitcoin's mining share. It does not compete with bitcoin mining hardware, because it is different kind of PoW right (first only cpu, later maybe gpu, and who is still mining bitcoins with cpus) ?  (Same with Litecoin, they only eat away the gpu's of bitcoin's mining share because they use scrypt, but since there are asics.. ) 

I understand how it would reduce the 51% security if bitcoin miners switched to an alt coin, but not with different algorithm and first cpu only? I guess I must be missing something

Why would there be lack of money in it? ASICminer will continue to produce and sell ASICs. Bitcoin is in a slump because BFL may go out of business. I think your judgment with PPcoin was a correct gamble on the difficulty algorithm mainly because you were correct to predict ASICS/Moore's law.

But how will that apply to Primecoin? How will Primecoin threaten Bitcoin? I doubt it can. I do think it can compete with Litecoin but so could PPC so I don't know what possible advantage Primecoin will have unless it's just much more profitable to mine and then yeah I'll agree it could work.

I think you're correct, the more profitable the coin is to mine the more secure it will be because people will all choose to mine it. But I don't see why Primecoin will be so much more profitable to mine even if it produced prime numbers, I just don't know enough to determine that I should quit mining PPC and mine Primecoin. You're going to have to convince miners who mine PPC to switch over and support Primecoin.

And if it's CPU mining then we have the Amazon EC2 problem, and guys with server racks with hundreds of CPUs who will basically make it unfair from the start unless we can somehow prevent this? I can see this centralizing real fast.

[MUTO]

After sleeping about it.. I'm still not a fan of the idea to release a second coin. Mainly this is because there are tons of work to do to get PPC userfriendly. And this is, what is needed to get mor people into PPC. I doubt primecoin will help PPC.

However, I decided to support primecoin with my CPUs andy I trust Sunny here even if I still do not fully understand the need of primecoin.

Since I have never mined for a coin in such an early state: How will mining work? Will it be integrated in the Wallet? Or will there be a dedicated mining software? Will there be a tutorial prerelease?

Cheers
Muto

[FuzzyBear]

After sleeping about it.. I'm still not a fan of the idea to release a second coin. Mainly this is because there are tons of work to do to get PPC userfriendly. And this is, what is needed to get mor people into PPC. I doubt primecoin will help PPC.

However, I decided to support primecoin with my CPUs andy I trust Sunny here even if I still do not fully understand the need of primecoin.

Since I have never mined for a coin in such an early state: How will mining work? Will it be integrated in the Wallet? Or will there be a dedicated mining software? Will there be a tutorial prerelease?

Cheers
Muto

Mining usually released in the client itself.... though as this is completely different to any other mining.... will need Sunny to confirm what he plans to release....

Hopefully we will see a thread start on here first for the setup and mining and client release

I am going to move this topic now to the Primecoin section.

[Sunny King]

Let me explain a bit more here. Primecoin is an important strategic move directly targeted toward the developing bitcoin/litecoin duopoly. Currently ppcoin does not have enough strength to weaken this trend by itself. Even though now ppcoin has many forks, the total PoS market share is about 0.3%, while litecoin's market share is over 5%.

The issue is that even though a large section of the market is now uncertain about bitcoin's continued monopoly due to the rise of litecoin, most folks are still convinced that proof-of-work is going to continue domination, likely in the form of bitcoin/litecoin duopoly.

I believe this thesis is not correct. Litecoin's success was not purely due to its marketing prowess or development capability (from a technical standpoint it's a copycat coin, nothing original by itself as its scrypt implementation was copied from Tenebrix/Artfortz), it's mainly because it has the right property at the right time in the market.

So it dawns on me that it's in fact a weakness in pure proof-of-work systems in general, that their dominant positions will inevitably weaken. Litecoin's rise is closely linked to two major events, bitcoin's first halving last year and bitcoin's mining specialization this year. This point will become more clear when litcoin halves in about two years and bitcoin halves again in about three years.

But the market needs a little push here, without the technology of primecoin, I don't see any of the new hashcash variations challenging this duopoly mentality any time soon. If primecoin is successful, there will be new types of proof-of-work designed by other developers following primecoin's footstep, breaking the myth that a SHA-256/scrypt duopoly should last.

How does it help ppcoin? Once people are over their obsession of the unrealistic promises of proof-of-work, they will start looking at the alternatives more seriously. Also, the users of primecoin will gradually be acquainted with ppcoin technology and this helps ppcoin to gain audience.

The design of prime proof-of-work in primecoin is a small feat by itself. Smart people are asking me how it is designed, it will be revealed in due time with a design paper. This is because designing a prime proof-of-work for cryptocurrency is not an easy task, in fact designing any non-hashcash proof-of-work is probably not easy, and that's why hashcash remained the only type of proof-of-work in cryptocurrency for over 4 years.

1) amazon ec2. In my experience, the market price of a cpu coin is typically below the cost of renting ec2 computing units for mining, so it is generally not profitable for miners to do so. But of course there are exceptions, at time of steep rise of market price of the coin it would be profitable. primecoin has 1 minute block spacing, so it should be able to accommodate up to a couple thousand miners without the help of pools.

2) how will mining work initially? it's the same with bitcoin's built-in cpu miner, you just open the client, go to debug window, type in command 'set generate true'. Or you can add 'gen=1' to configurations.

[PPCoinFX]

Sunny's above post contains much foresight, vision and truth imho. We can expect nothing less from such a great dev.

I've been floating between a few coins since returning to what is now very much a crypto-currency scene. I'm dedicating hashing power from some new USB Block Erupters to PPCoin and I'm very much looking forward to the release of the innovative Primecoin, that I'm also looking to mine with a x6 (dual core) i7 machine fully overclocked.

Those concerned that Primecoin will cause PPCoin to lose traction should be reassured by the fact that I for one have become increasingly interested in PPCoin due to the upcoming release of Primecoin.

In addition to the above I'm going to be adding PPCoin and Primecoin links to my free web proxy homepages, mainly for donation and advertising purposes, although to also generate some extra interest outside of the non-crypto-currency IT community.

See: proxy.primeoptic.net and xeronet.primeoptic.net (links and pools to be added soon) the primeoptic name is pure coincidence btw. 

Anyway Proof-of-Stake and much innovation FTW !

(I'm BitcoinFX on bitcointalk.org)

[jubalix]

I think Sunny's strategy is sound

The new prime hash system, will force a wedge into the LTC/BTC dupopoly, and provide a bridge to PPC.

Further No other coin system has this tandem approach were XPM  is a bridge to PPC. This is going to be hard for single house coins to combat. BTC not LTC DEV's can really say here is a road map to the future in this way, they can't go an develop another coin. If anything BTC and LTC may have to adopt PPC features in the future.

The only thing that may be required is Sunny some how make his DEV team a bit larger....I'm not sure who if anyone else is in it at the moment....maybe Fuzzy Bear of forum and Marketing.....

Having seen the work SK has been able to do on other coins, leads me to relive he has spare capacity, and that is why he has been able to develop XPM.

SK obviously dreams in cryto C++ code by now, and so is bursting with ideas and innovation.

[mullick]

I am really getting worried about the future of crypto these days. I have been defending sunny king on the trollboxs lately.

All the new comers to crypto seem to think since developers like Sunny King that are not pushing out "services" left and right they are "lazy". I have tried to point out the fact that these copy/ paste coins need the services because that is all they have. They are stealing developers away from the innovation. I hope there is a correction soon. They just dont get it

Sunny king's earlier post was dead correect. These new coins are taking devs away.

They have an idea for a service and they create a new coin. Instead of putting it behind something with a future

One of their valid arguments seems to be the ppc website. I may look into working with someone to "update" it if anyone would be interested. Messgage me here or bitcointalk if you would like me to. Same username

A simple update with most of the info from the bitcoin website with a few more explanations of PoS might attract more attention

[Buffer Overflow]

could I suggest a silent release of the complied qt client, to those who have over x amount of PPC or were registered on the PPC forum before a certain date,

Now that would just open a can of worms.

[urubu]

I don't think a pre-release to anyone is a good idea.   Although an easy to follow, step by step, set up and mining guide for ppcoiners would be ok. 

I will mine if there is an easy guide to cpu mining, I haven't ever cpu mined or solo mined.

[FuzzyBear]

I don't think a pre-release to anyone is a good idea.   Although an easy to follow, step by step, set up and mining guide for ppcoiners would be ok. 

I will mine if there is an easy guide to cpu mining, I haven't ever cpu mined or solo mined.

I will be round the whole day of the 7th july (planned release day) and if no guide, i'll write one up in the first few mins and post on here (for windows and Linux (Ubuntu) users) if sunnyking does not provide guide, but usually it very simple (just set gen=1 in .conf file on client)

FuzzyBear

[Tribex1301]

Cool Sunny, you and all the team look like making an intense and good job.
I am looking forward which results will bring this new step.