Category: Blog

It might be worth noting here that in Q2 Year 7 LOG has traded in range 500 – 1000 sat on C-Cex.  Also the following nodes appear reachable:

37.187.27.4
85.25.214.175
104.236.69.105
144.76.238.2
82.247.134.167
178.33.126.221

View post on imgur.com

Orcs!

As I tell people about my travels in Mordor, it is quite often that they express great interest in the Orcs.  What are they like?  How did you learn the language?  Do they smell bad?  Etc. etc.  So, without further ado I will try to answer some of your questions on those generally Orcish folk.

Who are the Orcs of Mordor?

First off, Orcs are not only in Mordor.   They live throughout middle earth.
No, I’m not talking about the darknet market, and no I’m not only talking about 中国.  Middle Earth in this context is where you are.  Not in the heavens moving about as plasma (that is, unless you happen to be in the heavens moving about as plasma) and not deep in carbonitic chnodrite (unless you are in fact, a rock).

Secondly, its worth pointing out that Orcs are a new culture.  They are most definitely not an ethnic identity created from thousands of years of geographic isolation.

As you all know, one can attempt to describe a dwarf with physical characteristics alone.  “Short creatures with beards”.  Not bad, most of us do fit this description.  However, such a description can fail spectacularly.  There are plenty of Men who match this descriptions, as well as Orcs.  As you know in the Nations of Man, a person might appear to be of Gondor descent but a short conversation will let you know they grew up speaking the dialect of Rohan and in fact are more indicative of Rohan culture tha  n many others who might look like pure Rohan.  Fill in Godor and Rohan with any nations you like, this is always the case.  Culture is not a phenotype.

None know this fact better than the Orcs.  The Orcs are in fact some of the least racist folks that I have  ever had the pleasure of sharing a pint with.  Anyone can be an orc.  In my travel through Mordor I saw folks that looked like every possible combination of faces I have seen in all middle Earth.  None of them give a shit what you look like, apart from whether you are going to hurt them, or bestow favors or threats of hierarchy upon them.

How does one become an Orc?

That being said, there are few volunteers.  Immigrants are mostly press ganged, or taken as slaves.  Or hired, which in the Orcish tongue is basically the same meaning.  If you are born in an area to which Orcs claim control, they will force upon you whatever Orcish identity and rituals they like, and claim to officiate over who your parents are and what you need to do with your life.

So what makes the Orcish culture Orcish?  As with any culture it is hard to put your finger on exactly what it is.  Are Dwarves hard working and long living coin holding meisers?  Well we are much more than just that.  Are Men dim-witted copycats capable of occasional works of great heart and beauty?  They are also much more than that.

Probably the first thing one notes when immersed in the Orcish culture the constant reliance on fear to drive most all activities.  The hierarchical society is mostly driven by violence and the fear of incarceration, forced poverty, torture, etc.  Because the Orcs live their lives from day one (at least day one of Orcishness) like this, they become accepting of it.  They strive to increase their own position seemingly to carry out the same treatment to others, assuming from others behavior that that is the way to behave.  Those who are able to escape from this cycle generally flee.  Orcs seem to have really gotten themselves to believe that the hierarchy of Orcish society is all there is for them.

This constant fear of fear, as it were, desensitizes them to fear itself, making them generally agreeable in terms of having a good understanding of life and death.  The lack of what Men might call love in the life of an Orc means that they look for companionship wherever they can find it.  It is quite common to chance in a seat near an Orc, and solely by virtue of this coincidence be the recipient of what could be their greatest kindness they have available.  They will tell you their life story, and be ready to fight that evening defending you.  However, should the tide turn clearly against them in such a fight, you can bet they will disappear or double cross you.  After all, it is probably what happened to them and they will assume you would do the same.

In the eyes of an Orc, all others are Orcs.

It is surprising that such a society based upon self-destruction can surive, and indeed it would collapse very quickly if it were not for the influx of new blood, or support from above by wizards, Men, elves, and those who wish to use the Orcs for their own purposes.

So what of the lanugage?

Like most on Middle Earth, Orcs speak brief simple syllables conveying meaning, each of which can be traced back to its own origin.  The basic grammar and structure of meaning is too old to trace, many people claiming “ancient elvish” as the basis of all language.  In practice, it seems at first quite easy to learn as it has taken bits and pieces from all those in it’s grasp.  There are words of all tongues on middle Earth that have found their way into Orcish.  Perhaps surprisingly, there are a great many who are quite proud of their language and claim to be the ultimate arbiters of its correctness.  Well, maybe that isn’t so surprising.  Every language has such claimants I suppose, and in the case of the Orcs it appeared to me these were only the usual excuses from authority to blindly “exercise power”.  In practice, it is a neverending struggle as every Orc has their own dialect.  Well as you computer scientists and linguists know, all the languages are the same.

Do they really smell?

Yes.  In actuality it is the smell and the clothing that most quickly identifies an Orc.   Generally it is expected that one wishes to be as repellant as possible, to avoid contact.  This is because contact is generally expected to be of the violent nature.  Clothing also represents this Porcupine mindset, generally being a light armor that one can wear at all times, offensive if possible, a full armor being too cumbersome for permanent wear and anything less being dangerous to ones health.  Bathing, as are concerns of health of most any sort, are generally considered signs of weakness and will be dealth with accordingly.

Safety Guidelines

If you ever need to move about in Orc country, it is advised to dress like and Orc.  Generally it isn’t as hard as it sounds, as long as some weaponry is available.  Just get dirty.  Most important is to maintain the mindset and behavior of an Orc, as this will generally make you invisible very quickly.  Show suspicion of everything and anyone, and general disdain for anything weak.  Provide a clearly false facade of loyalty to hierarchy.  Work for fiat currency issued by whatever Orcish corporation seems to control the land, and feign importance of said fiat.  If you do find and trade in public coin, that necessarily means you are not an Orc, at least for that moment.  If you do hold Orcish coin, you are part of the Orcish heirarchy and are in support of the chain of command which is usually tangled, hidden, and constantly changing.

Final Comments

As you heard from my previous reports, Mordor has some redeeming features.  Nature is still alive, and from it hope springs eternal.  I hope you see that Orcs as well have some redeeming features, being at heart folks just like us.  You will encounter them in the days to come, because as the hierarchies that they imagine organizes them crumble, they fall out the bottom and hopefully find some identity in the process.  Orc is not a race, nor really a culture.  It is more a mental condition or illness which can spread in the right conditions.

1)  Merged upstream/master in woodcoin to include minor litecoin changes which coblee added this january.  See:

https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/commits/master-0.8

2)  Almost finished with woodcoin-b.

https://github.com/funkshelper/woodcoin-b

This is a fork of bitcoin core that runs the woodcoin chain.

In making these changes it is interesting to note how the litecoin repo and the bitcoin-core repo have diverged.  There are a ton of refactors and code changes in the bitcoin-core repo.  uint256 became arithunit256, and there is a new uint256.  whole new libraries for some core crypto that are used instead of OpenSSL and many other changes.  The one named “secp256k” is misnamed as it can be easily adapted for other curves.  The repo is probably harder to deal with for altcoin devs, but that has nothing to do with their goal.  However the new class chainparams actually makes the package more extensible by altcoin devs who are just starting out.  I only hope that it isn’t too crufty (bloated).  Litecoin has kept additions to a minimum and true to its name retained a lighter profile.  I only hope nothing important is missed in terms of network security.

One nice thing is that a given chain / coin can be accessed from whatever client you like.  A lot of people fail to realize this, and talk as if bitcoin-core “is” bitcoin, or litecoin-project/litecoin “is” litecoin.  Of course that is nonsense.

The original VPSs that are hardcoded into the client are down now, only a single one as dnsseed is up.  Because I have a goal of maximum decentralization, you might need to come to this forum or others to look for nodes when this comes down, if you are restarting a client from scratch.  It sounds annoying, but full decentralization requires it.

I am still looking for contributors and bounty hunters on:

3) Windows builds

4) Android client

5) iOS client

I have one contributor working on an electrum fork for SPV client.

More development ideas and suggestions are welcome!   happy chopping —

Good morning Woodcutters–

Woodcoin is 6 weeks old!  We have chopped more than 30,000 blocks and now there are close to 6 million LOG outstanding.  Nearly 1/5 of the maximum supply.  Difficulty remains low, mostly solo chopped, and there is no evidence of GPU or ASIC chainsaws nearby.  Our most often used block explorer at multifaucet is unfortunately down at the moment, not synching with the chain.  New ones are on the way, don’t worry.

As some of you might know from LOGging IP addresses, I have been travelling recently, through the infamous land of Mordor.  So without further ado, I give you Report from Mordor, volume 1.

—

Report from Mordor   —  Introduction

Mordor is a place that to most of middle Earth needs no introduction.  The long arms of its so called powerful, pushing old buttons of fear, control, and small ego, have reached to nearly every corner of this world spreading fiat wherever they go.  Mostly susceptible to this influence are Orcs and Men, though I will admit that Dwarfs also can be influenced, as well as hobbits, and it is said even the occasional elf.

While this influence is not arguable, I have found here that the idea that it has a nexus or source in Mordor may be overplayed.  In fact these important issues in the minds of the subjects are not always observable in the lay of the land.  Mordor can be a beautiful place, with some green fields and a large variety of birds that appear unphased by debtor’s prisons and the constant hum of massive concrete motorways.

True, the forests have been cut down.  This sad fact does stand out, though beautiful trees can be found here.  Alas I am unable to interact with their network here, without the help of elves and wizards, but I can surmise a few things.  The cutting of the forest for the so-called industry of Mordor has devastated the energy of this once great land as a full node of the Gaia consensus network.  The relics of great wizards of the old age can still be found here but lie unused as playthings of the citizens and are likely powerless with the loss of the forests.  However, I also notice that fungal life is very strong here.  It could be that the fungal networks partially compensate for the loss of the massive root networks.  The resilience of life is remarkable.

Some of you are probably disappointed in me.  Learning the Mordor tongue?  Aiding the enemy?  What’s next, stacking fiat?

Well, it is true that my motives are somewhat selfish.  I wished to learn more about middle earth, the influences that shaped our ancestors and our traditions.  The Mordor tongue is after all quite similar to my mother tongue (more on this history later dear reader, should you request it).  After following the creation of public coin by the great Satoshi, I want to see how the transition will go.  Where better to observe and understand the coming changes in the world than in the heart of Mordor itself?  It is true that to remain out of the view of the dark lords I have had to feign attraction to Fiat.  One way to go unnoticed here is to beg loudly for spare change.

I must admit that I have learned a lot here.  When I first ninja’d my way past the massive orcs that guard the border harassing all passers I was thinking that things would change here rapidly now that any citizen of Mordor can access verifiable coin networks.  It’s not that simple; I was naive.  Behavior is most often based on past experience and traditions.  My current opinion is that many orcs of mordor will continue their old ways for as long as they can, even while complaining about them the whole time.

Well that should be enough for volume 1, I know you have LOG to chop and great works to accomplish of all kinds.  If you like, I will tell you more of my stay in Mordor in the next installment.

Your humble servant —  Funkenstein the Dwarf

–Good evening woodcutters –Woodcoin is one month old!  Come take a breather from your chopping and hear of my tales of my travels through the lands of the ents.
It’s true, I have spoken with the trees.

.        _-_
.   /~~   ~~
./~~         ~~
. {                 }
.   _-     -_  /
.   ~  \ //  ~~
.        | |
.        | |
.        // \

To communicate properly with someone, you have to have some empathy with them.  One must be able to not only visualize but really to be in their predicament.  It’s not always easy with the trees.  It takes a lot of time.  Of course without the help of the wizards and the elves I would have never had the opportunity.

It turns out they run consensus networks as well, through massive root networks bridged by interaction with external fungal networks.  Block time is most often on the order of a year.

I asked in a trance by the roots of a tall pine about slow networks.  They won’t touch a coin with block time under 4 months.
You’d be amazed what they can do!  Even if the block time is slow they get much more rapid transaction depth than you’d think.  Some kind of distributed mempool and global.

And yet, apparently it was impossible for me to navigate.  The wizards said it was a spaghetti of multiple forks sometimes thousands of years old and yet all coexisting.  The ents are astronomers.  Big thinkers.  I’m not sure we’re ready.

Extremely friendly and beautiful creatures, the trees seem to speak in riddles.  I went into a trance and tried to visualize the network on the console and communicate with the tree beside me.  The tree seemed to tell me that I’m already mining in its consensus network!  Something about the mitochondria of our cells as ASIC cores.

I started to understand their transaction formats.  Extremely flexible protocols.  I realized part of what I couldn’t understand was I couldn’t find where the value or tokens were tallied in the transaction body.  The tree seemed to sense my trouble and told me that they had no need for artificial scarcity in their activities.

It might sound crazy but it seemed almost like the trees are in an upsidedown world compared to my usual viewpoint.  Their heads are where we would call below the surface, and they dangle their legs “down” into the sky.  One thing I felt sure about was that we would not be alive here without them.

—–

OK ok, lets get back to work.  I didn’t just start this post to hint at future donations to tree hugging organizations, but yes these are indeed in the timeline soon enough.  I also would like to take this opportunity to thank the early supporters of woodcoin, in a sacrificial ceremony in honor of the trees.

The ents gave me a placeholder address for when we finally plug woodcoin in as a sidechain to the Gaia mainnet:

WeHonorTheForestsAndTheTrees4pPXTQ

I have sent a generous donation

—   Funkenstein the Dwarf

(from bitcointalk.org discussion)

Thanks for your comment Salim, it gives us a chance to step back and compare mainnet bitcoin and woodcoin release functions.

It may seem like logarithmic is too fast for the very first part of the curve.  That’s why we have a forest.  However very quickly you will see that the logarithmic curve is the slower release.  Remember we reach half of our total supply after well over a hundred years.  Bitcoin released half the supply in four years.

Right now we are at about 34 LOG per block, and our two minute target means 30 block an hour or 720 blocks per day.  Thats close to 25,000 LOG per day.  Note that Bitcoin is at about 3600 BTC per day released at the moment.  Yes we are faster now.

When we hit block 200k, we will have a reward of 5 LOG per block and our units per day release will exactly equal BTC.  This will happen in about 9 months from now.  At this point, new LOGs will start entering the system more slowly than new BTCs.

However sometime in 2016 mainnet bitcoin will reach block 420,000 and the reward will drop in half, so only 1800 BTC per day.  At this point, the newly chopped LOG supply will again be larger than newly chopped BTC.

Then when woodcoin reaches block 400k, we will be at 2.5LOG per block and again we will be releasing newly chopped LOG slower than BTC.

In 2020 sometime, BTC will reach block 630,000 and the reward will drop to 6.25 BTC per block or 900 BTC per day.  This is about 1.5 million LOG blocks away from now.  At this point, newly chopped LOG will be coming in more slowly than newly mined BTC.

This kind of behavior will continue until about 2032.  At this point, the coinbase reward for BTC mining will be in total 112.5 BTC per day, to be shared by all miners.  There will still be more than 150 fresh LOG released per day at that point.  From there on into the future, there will always be more newly released LOG than BTC.

At that point and forever into the future, it will be clear that BTC is the coin that more heavily favors the early adopters.

—

So why do we mine or chop?  Of course we want to support the network, to help each other transact.  But also we are doing so because we think that the LOG we are chopping (or BTC we are mining) will be more valuable in the future.  We seek an early mover advantage.  Network participation is incentivised by the chance to be an early adopter.

It is not clear what will happen when that incentive is removed.  In 2016, with 3/4 of the BTC supply released, will miners still consider themselves early adopters?  How about in 2030?  How about in 2130 when there is zero coinbase reward?

With woodcoin, there is ALWAYS the early adopter advantage.  Even a thousand years from now, new choppers will come across woodcoin and say:   tomorrow’s choppers won’t be able to get as many LOG as I can.

Conclusions:  Get chopping!

Good moring woodcutters!  We have reached a milestone, as block 10,000 was chopped recently.  Woodcoin is 2 weeks old.  Chopping rewards will be under 100 LOG per block from now on.  Next milestone:  Block 100,000.  When we reach that point rewards will drop under 10 LOG per chop.  Then at block 1m, 1 LOG per chop.  See how this is going?  Currently there are about 4.7m LOG outstanding.  The long road to the 27m LOG cap continues.

Some other notable progress this week: website is up, whitepaper is out, chinese translation on bitcointalk is in place, and we are on another exchange.

It appears for now that pure Skein hashing makes for a pretty good CPU coin.  With little need for a pool OCminers pool remains down and woodcutters are chopping alone in the forest.  Difficulty remains low.

Movement on exchanges is still small as expected, at very low early prices and volumes of a two week old coin.  Caution is recommended when taking on counterparty risk.  Don’t get goxxed or zhou tonged.
It’s hard to not also mention we are in month 12 or so of a “bear market”  in cryptos.  The last bear market lasted 18 months or so beginning in June 2011.  It might seem easy to be disappointed in the small number of people trickling out the now open doors of Sauron’s prisons.  However remember that free folks don’t return voluntarily to slavery.  The word is slowly getting out and the days of private and counterfeit exchange commodities are numbered.

Anything you don’t like about the interace?  The website?  Anything else you want to do with your LOGs?  Please continue to bring ideas and criticisms to this forum.  Happy chopping.

Baruk Khazad!
Funkenstein the Dwarf

Adding here the status reports which appeared on bitcointalk.org during the initial release of the coin for posterity. 

Oct. 22, 2014.

Let there be LOG.

As of now there are no binaries, explorers, pools, pretty pictures, or soundtracks. The genesis block was chopped today. You will need to build this coin yourself if you wish to be one of the first woodcutters.

The woodcoind daemon works fine, and the Woodcoin-qt client. If you use the qt client, the gui chopping button doesn’t work yet. You will need to go to the debug console and type “setgenerate true” to start chopping.

Oct. 23, 2014

Wow, big thanks to the community for your interest in woodcutting and patience in dealing with this barebones release! We have chopped 1382 blocks now, quite ahead of schedule.

Windows binary released by AleCrypt0. Thanks!!

You need to do Help -> Debug Window -> Console and type ” setgenerate true ” to start chopping.

Would you believe, day two and we are on an exchange? Props to the team at EmpoEX.

Difficulty went up quite a bit today, now at 5. I estimate that if you are solo CPU chopping you will get ~ 1 of every 200 two minute blocks. About four blocks a day. The current reward is just over 720 LOG per block. I’m sure existing GPU codes will not be that difficult to modify to make chainsaws; keeping an eye on that diff. Stack your logs safely folks! Next milestone: block 10,000. Reward: 100 LOG.

Working on GUI improvement and suggestions from the community. Keep ’em coming!

Oct. 24, 2014

Good morning woodcutters! Today we have good news and bad news.

The good news: the orcs have not yet arrived in our lands. Thanks to the proliferation of hashables throughout middle earth the orcs have been kept busy with other coins and our difficulty remains low. 3.6 at last check. Enjoy solo chopping while it lasts, and don’t worry too much: Saruman’s GPUs will never touch the ents’ forest.

More good news: thanks to OCMiner we have our first woodcutting pool!

wood.suprnova.cc

And our first standalone woodcutter:

[url=https://github.com/ocminer/skeincoin-cpuminer]https://github.com/ocminer/skeincoin-cpuminer[/url]

Great work OC!

The bad news: Not today clever kitty! Yes, some errors were reported by woodcutters who had apparently stacked a LOT of logs and wished to move them about. Stack overflow! Thanks to the watchful eyes of AKIo0O the problem is fixed and merged into our github repo. This is not a hard fork (and your LOG are safe) but it is strongly recommended to update. Many apologies for those who received crushed fingers or toes in this snafu.

Translation: Don’t send more than 10000 logs until majority upgrade!

Oct. 25, 2014

Good morning woodcutters!

Have I got an update for you. With this update you will see that Woodcoin is here to stay. Check this out:

https://github.com/funkshelper/woodcoin

Woodcoin is now an armed, AND FULLY OPERATIONAL, up to date mergeable litecoin fork. AND fully backward compatible with your existing stacks of LOG.

For those of you who thought Woodcoin was FUBAR (pun intended), guess again.

Exchanges and pools can now rest assured, we are using the most up to date litecoin protocols for comms and storage.

I recommend caution at this stage, backups, and patience with your humble developer.

More updates soon! Happy chopping 😀

Oct. 26, 2014 (almost)

Baruk Khazad! Alert all woodcutters. Battle call.

Please immediately update as of Oct. 25, 2014 11:46 UT using

https://github.com/funkshelper/woodcoin

I hate to do it this way, and force you away from that lovable initial release, I know it chopped wood like butter but this is a hard fork.

Translation: anything you chop after this date will be lost to the void unless you update. Transactions from old clients will be reversed.

New client has protocol version 60101.

Thank you for your patience!!

Updated Windows builds available thanks to

WillowRosenberg:

[url=https://mega.co.nz/#!H4pgCR7I!_6IfE_8-RD6FaM5XqaKXUdyPbeIWcrEJxQ4j8-fBzQ4]https://mega.co.nz/#!H4pgCR7I!_6IfE_8-RD6FaM5XqaKXUdyPbeIWcrEJxQ4j8-fBzQ4[/url]

Tips: WTDXfMqvf1LvtiLURNie6vnxZjbhzEnjGH

SalimNagamato:

[url=https://mega.co.nz/#!F9kgxLBQ!jeF1Sbt7_T0ktdKSXwiswb2GgL8u4JQYStbLgbNkH_I]https://mega.co.nz/#!F9kgxLBQ!jeF1Sbt7_T0ktdKSXwiswb2GgL8u4JQYStbLgbNkH_I[/url]

To start woodcutting: Help –> Debug Window –> type “setgenerate true”

Oct. 27, 2014

Chop chop! A calm day in the forest, logs are stacking nicely today. Big thanks to the community for pulling off a brilliant move to the proper fork. To those woodcutters who found themselves swinging their axe at phantom trees, my sincere apologies. We haven’t had that kind of scare since March 2012 if my memory serves me right.

We are now listed on two exchanges (C-Cex and EmpoeX) but there’s not a lot of volume there. This is to be expected. As some of you have now noticed the purpose of logarithmic release is not just for the name. This is a gentle release curve and it is built to last generations. Millenia. My advice is to STCAK your logs. If you are here for a pump and dump coin to be discarded like toothpicks after one use I suggest you turn on autochop and play with another coin.

The next drama on the horizon will be figuring out just how much better a GPU can do at double skein hashing. The skein family of hash functions is top shelf cryptography and it is rather amazing that nobody has released a skein coin yet. This is it. Chop the dream. Funkenstein the dwarf out.

Oct. 28, 2014

Welcome back woodcutters. Chopping and stacking continues as planned today. LOG is one week old!

Wait, what was that?! Somebody came through swinging an axe that cut down ten trees with one swing. Monster CPU beast hashpower! If that’s not a good advertisement for IBMs new Power8 processors I don’t know what is. Somebody is going to have no problem keeping warm this winter.

More good news today: Working Block Explorer and Faucet! Grab yourself some free LOG and explore the block chain.

Don’t forget to leave a generous tip for these guys at multifaucet . tk , I am very impressed by their work!

Block Explorer: www.[Suspicious link removed]/index.php?blockexplorer=LOG

Faucet: www.[Suspicious link removed]/index.php?faucet=LOG

However it looks like Theymos is less than impressed. WTF? Does any dot tk domain trigger that like [Suspicious link removed]?

Well I haven’t had any problems with the site, and I gave them a nice donation in main net large. Please LOG any and all problems with all things LOG back here!

Many thanks and happy chopping — Funkenstein the Dwarf