rss
Blackcoin Burns

Blackcoin Burns

Originally conceptualized by Ian Stewart as an alternative self sufficient consensus protocol (an ambition not yet fully realized), Proof of Burn has been used mostly for "bootstraping" new chains - starting with the second level Bitcoin protocol Counterparty (XCP) in 2014.  

Blackcoin Deflation Feb. '14 to April '20

BlackNet

The first Blackcoin Burn, by Rat4 for BlackNet (BLN), 14,729,295 BLK burnt.

It was described by Rat4 as being account based Proof of Stake v3 (PoSv3; as opposed to UTXO based) project with a highly restrictive copyright. Being account based there are some benefits, but also severe security complications.

His original plan was to fork the Blackcoin chain, but with the help of KyrzysiekJ it was decided that a Burn was a better option.

Projects created by coin burns are:

  1. More tightly held: As only a few people participate in the burn, the project is controlled by fewer parties.
  2. Initial value established without an Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

Vexed by the many "copy coins" that forked from Blackcoin's code, Rat4's primary motivation for BlackNet seems to have been to adopt the Jelurida Public License (JPL).

The main idea of the Jelurida Public License (JPL) is not only to ensure that the source code of any work based on a work released under this license remains open, and remains released under the same license, but also to make sure that the community of the original blockchain token holders also receives back some of the new token value created by any such derivative projects, if those have opted to create their own blockchain instead of using the blockchain instance for which the original software is being developed.

Blackcoin itself, a descendant of Bitcoin, will remain forever free from such constraints due to the original MIT License imposed by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Ercoin

The second burn, by KyrzysiekJ for Ercoin (ERN), 3,511,422 BLK burnt.

Ercoin, based on Tendermint, is much more different from Blackcoin than BlackNet.

Ercoin is a cryptocurrency which aims to be simple, fast, efficient and fairly distributed. Written in Erlang using Tendermint, it is released under Apache License 2.0.

Tendermint takes very a different approach to security than Bitcoin-like protocols. It is designed to enable arbitrary application states and distributed systems and not simply online currency.

Tendermint was considered a sort of Proof of Stake algorithm, but one very different than Blackcoin. As this Proof of Stakeness is a common point of confusion I will quote their docs:

In the early days, Tendermint had a simple currency built in, and to participate in consensus, users had to "bond" units of the currency into a security deposit which could be revoked if they misbehaved -this is what made Tendermint a Proof-of-Stake algorithm.

In contrast to the 51% attack vector Blackcoin and other Bitcoin-like consensus Tendermint is a bit less tolerant:

It is Byzantine Fault Tolerant, meaning it can only tolerate up to a 1/3 of failures, but those failures can include arbitrary behaviour - including hacking and malicious attacks.

As a result,

a Tendermint blockchain will halt momentarily until a supermajority, i.e. more than 2/3, of the validator set comes to consensus.

These design choices are not accidental and suit the goals of their project goals.

Ercoin and Tendermint are both awesome projects in their own right. Just very different than Bitcoin and Blackcoin!

The Blackcoin community maintains close connections to the Ercoin community and we have a #Ercoin room in our Discord Server.

Deflation, Burnt Stake, and Ethics

From a peak of 77,062,634 BLK (09/07/2018) at the start of the BlackNet burn to a low of 59,645,910 (12/10/2019) after the Ercoin burn - Blackcoin had a major deflation around the same time other centralized projects were conducting burns in an attempt to bolster their coin's price through centralized currency supply manipulation. The Blackcoin community was working to support the bootstrapping of new and interesting projects based on principles of mutual benefit.

Rat4 is now full dictator of BlackNet, Blackcoin is provably free of his influence, and those who wanted him as dictatorship have left with him, leaving Blackcoin to the community which had worked so hard to build it's legendary place in cryptocurrency history. By staking out new territory he and his followers have burnt their stake in Blackcoin - increasing the value of each remaining BLK. A win/win for everyone involved.

And for KyrzysiekJ, Ercoin was launched in an ethical way without the burning of excess fossil fuel normally associated with Proof of Work. Read more about that on his website!

Need Help?

BlackcoinNL supported chatrooms:

Other commonly used Blackcoin Social Media: