CRYPTONITE (XCN)

Cryptonite is the first implementation of the light weight mini-blockchain scheme. Nodes will never again spend days synchronizing with the network and the average user will not have to fear becoming a full node. This is possible because of our decentralized balance sheet approach.

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DOWNLOAD

Here you can download pre-compiled Cryptonite binaries for Windows and OS X. Please, note that these are all 64bit binaries, Cryptonite does not support 32bit systems.

New releases can now be found on GitHub: github.com/pallas1/Cryptonite/releases

Linux

New wallet release, including all-new gui dark theme, windows improvements, build enhancements for newer libraries and distributions, detailed peers view, and more.

Windows version:
Built with Berkley DB 6.1. If you are still using the old 4.8 format, it will be upgraded to the new version and will be incompatible with the older wallets.

Linux version:
Compiled on Ubuntu LTS 16.04, should work on similar distibutions as well. Daemon and cli for sending commands are included, no GUI. For any other use, please compile from the latest sources. You can now build against Qt 5.11, miniupmp 2 and openssl 1.1.

Windows

ABOUT CRYPTONITE

Coin Features

Mini-blockchain Scheme

Cryptonite is the first implementation of the mini-blockchain scheme, a scheme designed for maximum scalability, achieved by addressing the problem of blockchain bloat and providing a solution which allows all old transactions to be forgotten by the network after they become old enough. This allows new nodes to synchronize with the network extremely quickly and allows existing nodes to free up disk space by deleting old transactions. As a result of this scheme the network doesn’t need to become increasingly centralized only by nodes capable of handling the full blockchain, so mining can remain more decentralized.

Micro-transactions & Messages

Thanks to the mini-blockchain scheme Cryptonite has superior support for micro-transactions and custom transaction messages attached to transactions. In Bitcoin and other altcoins where the full blockchain is required to synchronize with the network, small value transactions and transaction messages tend to be discouraged because they cause “blockchain bloat”. The scalable nature of the mini-blockchain scheme relieves us from the concern of blockchain bloat and we can have full support for transaction messages and micro-transactions because nodes don’t need to store transactions forever.

Withdrawal Limits

Cryptonite is the first altcoin to feature withdrawal limits, allowing users to set a limit on how many coins they can send from an address in one block. This is useful because it helps to prevent double spending and increases confidence in low-confirmation transactions. If a merchant can see that the withdrawal limit on an address prevents it from being emptied in a small number of blocks they can have much more confidence in any transactions sent to them from that address, even without any confirmations at all. So the main advantage of withdrawal limits is that 0-confirmation transactions become safer in the right conditions.

Unmalleable Transactions

If the claims of Mt. Gox and other businesses are to be believed, transaction malleability has caused quite a bit of damage to the Bitcoin economy. Of course even if that’s the true reason why Mt. Gox went out of business, it’s still their fault for not understanding transaction malleability when it was well known about for a long time. Cryptonite features unmalleable transactions in order to avoid any repeat of such undesirable events and allow the transaction ID’s to be reliable. This is achieved by having the sender sign the txid and by ensuring the txid will always change when the contents of the transaction changes.

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HOW IT WORKS

The basics

Cryptonite can be summarized as a decentralized payment network where computing power is required in order to mint new “coins”. It can be used to send money all around the world at any time of day over the internet, much like an email. Cryptonite “addresses” are used similarly to email addresses for sending and receiving payments. Cryptonite is based on Bitcoin and overall it works very much like Bitcoin except that it uses a very different mechanism for maintaining address balances to improve scalability and it includes some innovative new features.

Balances

Cryptonite uses a self contained “balance sheet” called the account tree to maintain address balances instead of using transactions to derive address balances. Unlike Bitcoin, the balance of any address can easily be checked without much computational effort because the final balance of every non-empty address in the network is stored in the account tree and every node in the network has a copy of the account tree. The cryptographic properties of the account tree mechanism ensures integrity and agreement between nodes about which version of the account tree is valid.

Transactions

Transactions are how coins can be sent between different addresses. More broadly, transactions are instructions for applying some type of modification to the account tree. For example: “Move X coins from address A to address B” or “Update withdrawal limit of address C”, etc. A normal transaction will simply decrease the balance of the input address and increase the balance of the output address. There are no scripts, only a pre-defined list of valid transaction types. Public key cryptography is used for transaction signing like in Bitcoin but it’s done in a way that prevents transaction malleability.

Mining

Mining is a process used to control the coin minting process by rewarding miners for solving computationally expensive problems. Mining is also the process used to confirm transactions and allow nodes to agree upon the order of transactions, so in essence miners are getting rewarded to secure the network by contributing their computing power to it. In Cryptonite all block rewards are subtracted from the balance of the coinbase account, a special address in the account tree which starts off with a balance equal to the total coin supply and shrinks as block rewards are paid out to miners.

FAQ

What are the specs of Cryptonite?

The specs of Cryptonite are fairly exotic in comparison to most other alt-coins. The block time is fairly normal at 1 block per minute, but the block reward, the max block size, and the difficulty all change every block using a range of different techniques. The M7 PoW algorithm was custom designed for Cryptonite and the coin supply has a full 64 bits of granularity. See the Cryptonite wiki page for more detailed information.

Why should I care about Cryptonite?

Well you don’t have to care about Cryptonite, but if the question is why does Cryptonite stand out among the ever growing selection of alt-coins, the answer is that Cryptonite offers next generation scalability along with an array of new features never seen before. Cryptonite is not a cheap rip-off of Bitcoin, a lot of money and many months were spent on development before we even released the source code.

How is Cryptonite different from Bitcoin?

Cryptonite is similar to Bitcoin in many regards but it uses a very different mechanism for maintaining address balances to improve scalability. Instead of deriving address balances from transactions, the balances are maintained in a “balance sheet” structure we call the account tree. Transactions are fundamentally much simpler in Cryptonite, they do not contain scripts, instead we have a pre-defined list of valid transaction types.

How secure/safe is Cryptonite?

Cryptonite is still highly experimental and the concepts underpinning it lack extensive testing and analysis. It will take time before the code base has been properly reviewed and the robustness of the network has been established. Theoretically, Cryptonite should have a level of security similar to Bitcoin, but there are a few manageable weaknesses and attack vectors that come as a trade-off for the extra scalability.

How anonymous is Cryptonite?

Cryptonite provides essentially the same level of anonymity offered by Bitcoin. Since old transactions can be forgotten it might be slightly better than Bitcoin but it’s extremely unlikely some dedicated nodes wont store the full blockchain. Anonymity was one area we didn’t have much time to focus on during development but we plan to do more research into block mixing techniques and how they can be applied to the mini-blockchain scheme.

NEWS

The Team

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    bitfreak

    Creator of The Mini-Blockchain Scheme and core developer...

    bitfreak

    Creator of The Mini-Blockchain Scheme and core developer of Cryptonite.

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    Pallas

    Lead developer of Cryptonite. Helps maintain several...

    Pallas

    Lead developer of Cryptonite. Helps maintain several cryptocurrencies and mining software.

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    sekker2k4

    Coordinates a lot of social media platforms and promotion...

    sekker2k4

    Coordinates a lot of social media platforms and promotion efforts for Cryptonite.

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    enexus

    Handles Windows development for Cryptonite, upgrading...

    enexus

    Handles Windows development for Cryptonite, upgrading and building QT releases for Windows environments.

THE MINI-BLOCKCHAIN PROJECT

The Mini-blockchain Project is an open source community project first founded with the aim of developing and implementing the mini-blockchain scheme in order to create a new breed of scalable cryptocurrency. As a result of this initiative the project has been able to develop Cryptonite, the first open source cryptocurrency to implement the mini-blockchain scheme and a range of other innovative features.

One of the main areas we focused on during the initial development of Cryptonite was any improvements which would increase long term stability and feasibility of the coin, with scalability being the central focus. The basic philosophy behind Cryptonite is to follow the ideals set by Bitcoin as closely as possible but improve upon everything that could be improved using our own solutions and ideas inspired by other altcoins.

We enjoy working on the cutting edge and we’re always researching new ways that we can make cryptocurrency even better. We also encourage people to find interesting ways to extend and modify our protocol in their own altcoins. If you would like to work with us we’re always looking for more open source developers to help us work on Cryptonite and related projects. You may contact us by visiting the contact page.

Credits

Project founder: J.D. Bruce
Lead developer: pallas
Original developer: catia
Support developer: Sam A.
Technical advice: aaaxn
Graphics: sadface

CONTRIBUTE

Development

Cryptonite is a complex and ever evolving project, so we’re always happy to have more eyes on the code and we welcome experienced developers to get involved and contribute code. We have many future plans for improvements and optimizations of Cryptonite, and we wont be able to get that done without a strong open source development team. The project repository is hosted on github if you want to check it out or get involved.

Documentation

The project wiki is a community maintained wiki which contains a lot of technical and useful information about Cryptonite and the way it works. You can help make it better by fixing mistakes, adding translations, and keeping it up-to-date.

Report Bugs

You can use the bug tracker over at github if you wish to report any bugs and help us make Cryptonite more stable.

Donate

You can help the Miniblockchain Project fund development of Cryptonite by donating to our Cryptonite address:

CTPV2WinMctR2DFoKZTKWJvffMmMGnkMnK
BTC address:
bc1qds640j68warccz5mt7hglw60cpspzpwc5dgpxc

CONNECT WITH US

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