This is a neat. However, there is nothing explaining fundamental operation I can find except the source code itself, and it seems to me that it suffers from pretty serious scale limitations. I.e its ability to deliver on the value proposition in its current form is low.
Also, your proof of work is Sha256 which means that the moment this thing goes live and there is any value attached it won't work. You have to switch to a memory hard proof of work to even begin doing this.
Finally, most of what you are trying to accomplish can already be done using SPV onto existing digital currency networks. Pushing the entire network into the browser doesn't really help. The cynic in me wants to say this is an ICO pump for people who don't know any better.
> Partner with VISA payment services to create a VISA-to-Nimiq exchange (centralized in the first place).
By Q4 2017? This sounds outrageous, if not impossible. This also seems to contradict your comment that "'demystify blockchain technology'" is a perfect description for our intention!" Your intention seems to be to build a mainstream, browser-based cryptocurrency. Good luck.
Yeah I gave it a look. It is really light on details. I think you have to be clear why this is better than Ethereum, the fact that web browsers are nodes and are mining isn't really a feature. Having every node mine isn't very useful either, it is unlikely to increase the security of the network and has follow on effects for memory and cpu utilization for end users.
Anyway, I'll look forward to hearing more about it, but given the high barrier to writing a secure, scalable blockchain I'm reserving judgement until there is enough information to do a more formal analysis.
I'd double down on the simplicity aspect - for a lot of people cryptocurrency is a weird thing to get into and hard to understand. You guys have taken something as ultra-complex as mining and blockchain and stuck it in the browser, no small task. Make your focus a cryptocurrency for everyone - include demos of how cryptocurrency itself works.
Well, it is not good to do Proof-of-Work in the browser. It's inefficient and people will not keep mining if they have very small chances of getting a block.
I don't know how this could be solved, maybe you should experiment with other forms of ledger consensus that would fit better in a browser environment and at the same would not exclude normal people from participating in benefit of specialized miners.
The network part of this thing is amazing by itself.
I have a soft spot for removing barriers and making things accessible so this really resonates with me. With a single click of a button I'm connected to the network and have started mining. Pretty awesome!
I also love how the P2P is visualized in a straight-forward way. I definitely think this will help demystify blockchain technology. You immediately realize that you're part of a decentralized network and that blockchain nodes are nothing else than other nodes like you.
If this is an educational product then it would be even better to expose more details to the user. For example, the fundamental steps illustrated in the Blockchain Demo (https://anders.com/blockchain/). A nimiq blockchain explorer would also be a nice feature.
A blockchain viewer (showing most recent blocks) is in the works for the Betanet and should go live soon. Full chain explorer will follow for the feature-complete Testnet.
Left this running all day at about 30kh/s and got 200 coins
Couple of hints:
* Have a way of backing up your private keys! Many people delete browser local storage and this is not a safe or long term place for them to live!
NAG THE USER TO DO THIS. 99% of the people here betanet will lose their keys, fo sure
* Consider hierarchical deterministic (HD) generated keys, so a single seed can generate all future keys
* Consider brainwallet seed (must be long, suggest at least 256 bits entropy), custom dictionary words
Most cryptocurrencies use secp256k1 or ed25519 for ecdsa/xeddsa as their curve, this is using P-256.
Satoshi was suspicious of the NIST curves, thats why he didn't use P-256 for bitcoin.
You will need something better than SHA256 for PoW function too, others have identified memory hard hash as idea. Look at Momentum (ProtoShares), EtHash (Ethereum) and CryptoNight (Bytecoin/Monero) as approaches to this. All have rolled their own in this space, keep you tx hashes standard but use something creative for PoW function.
The protocol we've deployed in our Betanet is not final. The Betanet is just about getting early community feedback and testing in the wild. There will be lots of breaking changes.
We will not use NIST curves in our mainnet for the reasons you mentioned. We are working on an implementation of ed25519 in WebAssembly.
We will not use sha256 as in our mainnet. We are already working on a WebAssembly implementation of a memory hard POW.
We want to bring blockchain technology to the masses. So in the long run we are explicitly targeting users who are not yet familiar with cryptocurrencies.
Following from that we will put a lot of effort in creating user interfaces that take users by the hand and explain important aspects like "How to keep your private key secure".
Interestingly, I'm getting a significantly higher hash rate in Chrome than in Firefox (12,000 vs. 600). This is despite the fact that Firefox has a higher priority on my OS (High vs. Normal) and they're both using the same amount of CPU.
What hash rates are you seeing on your machine/browser?
I was getting ~4KH/sec then I've done some tuning and got to 20KH/sec with Chrome.
I plugged in the power cord, changed from Balanced performance to High performance option.
Also enabled GPU for use with Chrome instead of integrated graphics.
This is related to your local network. You will only be able to use Websockets for connections (which most nodes do not support) and not WebRTC. Go and fix your network, you likely have some UDP or NAT configuration issue (or a terrible ISP).
Before anyone gets too excited because the page doenst make this clear, you are all mining on the Test block chain, not the release block chain, the coins are worthless, they are fine for playing around with though.
There is a disclaimer under the "Connect to Network" button stating "Testnet Mining does not create permanent Nimiqs."
Do you think this we should make that more prominent?
Ok, you have a roadmap, but I'm left with more questions than answers, e.g.: if a blockchain relies on every node having a ledger of the whole transactions, and bitcoin's ledger now occupies more than 100GB, then how is this supposed to work when the ledger becomes big?
You only need the full blockchain to initially verify the proof of work chain, you can then run in pruning mode which requires having the latest blocks and unspent outputs.
I like how it starts you up instantly and how simple mining, helping the network and transactions seem to be. Really well done. I found a quick block too and sending/receiving transactions and getting the confirmations seems nice and fast. As a user it makes me pretty happy.
However, turning your coins 'permanent' somehow doesn't seem nearly as intuitive. I have no real idea how these coins are now tied to me. I found my block on chrome, and launching the site in incognito mode / firefox doesn't show the funds in my wallet. This would make me worry about deleting my browser history/cookies/etc and I'd have no idea how to access these coins on another computer. How do I go about making these coins tied to me beyond some form of browser storage, and why isn't that process explained somewhere? Right now it feels like a mild breeze might erase my wallet and the coins in it. Is this something that'll be dealt with in the future?
I like the idea of reducing the barrier to entry in the multitude of markets, but I'm also a bit cynical in that any web-based wallet seems extremely risky to me in terms of the potential for attacks and stolen coins.
This seems really interesting! For someone without too much knowledge about blockchain and digital currencies: How does this compare to Bitcoin and Ethereum?
It is written in Javascript, communicates over WebRTC + WebSockets and therefore you can connect to the network from your browser without an intermediary.
Additionally it is designed for light-clients (such as low-end devices) and transaction speed.
How does this compare to BTC with regards to privacy?
My thoughts: most regular users don't really care about privacy at the level that BTC promises. If people really cared that much about privacy, then social media platforms like FB wouldn't be where most people are today.
Combine what I've said above with the easy on-boarding facility that Nimiq provides and I think this solution carries the day. This might be the 'style' with which most first time cryptocurrency users (emphasis on miners) get started with cryptocurrency. With mass adoption, computing and securing the network might be easier (read cheaper) than is the case with BTC as it stands.
Because this one is built with one thing in mind: making it so simple that your mom can use it. Even the combined market cap of all Cryptocurrencies to date still only represents a small fraction of our financial transactions and monetary system (http://virtualrealitytimes.com/2017/05/30/chart-bitcoin-vers...). This is far from mainstream by any means. Nimiqs browser-based approach and clear focus on ease of use brings blockchain technology to everyone, everyday.
There's nothing inherently wrong with browser-based crypto. Most issues arise when you try to e.g. replace like TLS with JavaScript to encrypt passwords before sending them to a server. SHA256 doesn't become broken simply because it's run in a browser.
This is the Betanet. We will not use sha256 as in our Mainnet. We are already working on a WebAssembly implementation of a memory hard ASIC resistant POW.
Thanks, but while ASICs may not be a threat, in general finely tuned beefy machines might be? So that running this in a browser would be as efficient as mining litecoin in a browser?
Also, your proof of work is Sha256 which means that the moment this thing goes live and there is any value attached it won't work. You have to switch to a memory hard proof of work to even begin doing this.
Finally, most of what you are trying to accomplish can already be done using SPV onto existing digital currency networks. Pushing the entire network into the browser doesn't really help. The cynic in me wants to say this is an ICO pump for people who don't know any better.