Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but it's not a reassuring signal that they chose to be coy about the origin.

The code isn't available AFAICT, so my default is to consider it to be proprietary and closed-source.

The unforced error of describing Keccak as “memory hard” doesn't fit very well with the size of the team implied by https://www.ziftrcoin.com/about-us/ziftr-team, are they all clueless?

But at least they seem to be a properly registered US commercial entity (as myVBO): http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=105672715


I'm currently entertaining myself by imagining the consequences if Mr Spread's anti-pool solution was ported to Bitcoin <giggle>.

Cheers

Graham

Is this solution a description of Spreadcoin? It it exactly the same as Spreadcoin?

http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/18/how-to-disincentivize-large-bitcoin-mining-pools/

I skimmed through it and seems to me that it is similar, but not exactly the same. this proposal talks about a signature with a different difficulty than the hash, while Mr. Spread solution does the signing and than includes it in the hash. It saves a lot of space and is as secure as the one in the article.

I politely disagree (spreadcoin) as in spread around the world makes good sense to me.  We want this to spread around the world and make us all rich.  I vote leave it alone.

+1000 to that people SPREAD the word about SPREADCOIN to thy neighbours

May I also propose a few more suggestions, beyond the fixing upgrading of the masternode payments system?

1) Block time of 1 minute could create bloat in the long run and might need upward adjustment. It is also worth looking into a mini-blockchain integration. If InstantX is also copied from Darkcoin in the future (something that only coins with masternodes can emulate - and spreadcoin will be in that position), block time can be safely revised upwards.

2) There are two DarkSend parameters which can be tweaked for a DarkSend implementation that can differentiate spreadcoin: Default and max mixing rounds. So Spread could opt for better anonymity by default by increasing the default number of rounds and taking the max number of rounds to 10 or beyond instead of 8 max (DRK).

3) Darkcoin faced an interesting problem with the compromise between speed of mixing and sybil resistance*. With 2 participants speed was ok but sybil protection was practically non-existant (the one party mixing knew the other party mixing). With 3 participants sybil protection is much better but it can still go higher (at the expense of mixing speed). Spreadcoin can use a higher number of mixing participants if it wants to. To ensure mixing takes place and mixing parties don't wait for a very long time, a happy hour can be established where the client has a scheduler to start mixing at a predefined hour, or a certain block. In this way a lot of participants can start mixing at a predetermined point and be almost assured of mixing success. This will be less of a problem when greater adoption happens and more of a problem as fewer people are mixing.

* Resisting the attempt of fake mixing parties to take all the mixing seats and thus know the rest of the legitimate parties who are mixing.

4) DRK's Sybil resistance is relatively low right now due to not having a fee structure that acts as a preventative measure. A weakness was discovered where through the fees paid by each mixing participant => the fees betrayed the participants. Evan kind of shut down the fees to solve the issue, or used the fee structure in a way where one out of several mixings is charged. This allows a degree of Sybil abuse which needs an alternate system in place to charge participants per use (so as to penalize sybil attempts), but without revealing the participants identities.

5) A strong IP obfuscation method, integrated to the client, is a must. DRK doesn't have an IP obfuscation method in place at this point of time - although it is on the cards. Anonymity is not complete without IP obfuscation.

6) It would be good to have a system of encrypted communication so that merchant and user (or user-to-user) can exchange encrypted information that preserve anonymity (like exchanging fund addresses, providing shipping details). There are probably implementations that could be ripped from other coins or open source software, modified, integrated and adopted for use.

7) CPU mining is ideal in the way it is conducted through the menu, but the mining speed should be faster more optimized for certain architectures and instruction sets. This needs some work.

It would be ideal if GPU mining can also be integrated or "associated" from the mining menu... ie spreadcoin-qt calling the gpu miner program with the right parameters (that the newbie user doesn't know how to setup).

8 ) Low network hashrate is a danger. Complicated solo mining (=anything that isn't click and play) creates the possibility of 51% by even moderate-size "whale farms whale miners". This creates the need for an upgrade of (7): If mining is to be decentralized by a multitude of solo miners, low-hashrate cpu mining need to be optimized and gpu-mining must be merged or "called" from the wallet client itself in a way that is noob-friendly.

9) A real problem that DRK-clones will face, is that the DRK network has a serious value in its own masternode network. This means that breaking sockpuppet* resistance is an expensive proposition. Coins implementing DarkSend do not have the same value on their network and are thus much easier to sockpuppet by obtaining a large number of masternodes. This will require a well-thought out strategy to deal with the issue of proper value per masternode. A much better alternative -if the dev can make it work- is to attempt blind signing of transactions where the masternode does not know who transacts what. IIRC from some discussions back in April-May, Darkcoin abandoned this approach because blind signing could be DOSed in a way where the network could not penalize the attacker (as the node didn't know who was transacting). Again IIRC, Kristov Atlas in his Darkcoin review believed that sockpuppet resistance could probably be improved through blind signing.

* Sockpuppet = Fake actor controlling masternodes to map transactions

10) Quantum-resistance: The ECDSA of Bitcoin Bitcoin clones is not quantum-computing resistant. This means that once a public key is known, a private key is weaker against a QC attack.

I believe there can be two solutions for this issue: Changing the algorithms to QC-resistant and thus creating the first QC-resistant altcoin (there is the possibility that they might introduce bloat). Alternatively a work-around QC-resistance can be created through a checkbox. When ticked, all addresses with even one spend transaction will have their funds moved, automatically, to new addresses with zero spends. This will prevent the pub key from being publicly known (and thus being reversed), if and when a QC attack occurs if and when a QC is developed and deployed. Futureproofing in this way could create a new way of crypto-diversification asset to counter a QC-attack risk (that will leave vulnerable the other coins).

I would definitely be down with that because the only miner I've ever been able to configure on my own is cgminer for scrypt lol and I would love a user friendly built in NOOB friendly way to mine more of these delicious coins

Well I would be more than happy to test that out if you could get something like that working because I haven't been able to mine hardly any of my SpreadCoins they have all been store bought but that's okay because the NoobStoryToGlory knows a good investment when he sees one

Is that your alt account or something?

Edit: I just realised that I can just make my batch file generate a .bat for mining. Much easier than what I was originally thinking.

Lol. I remember a long time ago I left my laptop on all day while I went to school. 11kh/s. And got home and I had 1 block!
Then I mined with my desktop for 3 hours @ 100 khash/s and didn't get 1 single block.