Announcing the first v0.1.0 release of Patchcoin, a cryptocurrency with a fixed supply and proof-of-stake consensus.
Like Bitcoin, Patchcoin has a fixed supply of 21,000,000 coins, except secured by the proof-of-stake consensus pioneered by Peercoin.
Patchcoin’s supply remains constant by matching the transaction fees paid with the staking reward for each block.
The entire supply of Patchcoin can be claimed for free by active Peercoin holders as of block height 795,000. Make an automated claim in the Patchcoin client wallet for 10 PTC per 1 PPC, up to a maximum of 50,000 PTC per Peercoin address. Instructions are below this announcement.
Claims will be available for 180 days from today. Afterwards, if a small amount of Patchcoin remains, they may be auctioned to fund future development.
That said, our focus is helping Peercoin holders claim every PTC before this occurs. You can track claims in real time in the Patchcoin client wallet.
Join our community at patchcointalk.org and help build a sustainable replacement for Bitcoin.
Our thanks to @noface for his inspired work on Patchcoin.
IMPORTANT: only @patchcoin, @noface, and @arthurwilkins are associated with the Patchcoin project on this forum. All communication will be done publicly through these accounts.
1. How do I make a Patchcoin claim with my Peercoin?
Go to the “Transactions” tab of the Patchcoin client wallet.
In the left search box titled “Enter address, transaction id, or label to search”, enter your PPC address.
In the bottom right field you will see your PPC address, the PPC amount held, and the eligible PTC claim amount. Right-click on your address and select “Claim address”. You will see a generated PTC address.
Open your Peercoin client wallet. Under “File”, select “Sign Message”. Select your PPC address. Copy the PTC address from the previous step into the message field. Click “Sign Message” at the bottom.
Copy the resulting signature and then return to the Patchcoin client wallet. In case you closed the previous window, right click your PPC address again in the bottom right field, select “Claim address” and then enter the signature.
Click “Publish Claim” to submit the claim. You should see your claim enter the queue in the top right field.
Note that claims may take several hours or days to arrive if there is a high volume of claims submitted after release. Your Patchcoin should arrive if there is supply remaining to be claimed, if you owned PPC at block height 795,000.
2. How does Patchcoin maintain a fixed supply of 21,000,000 coins?
Patchcoin’s design sets transaction fees burned in a block equal to the staking reward paid. This results in an equal balance between a coin sink (transaction fees) and inflation (staking rewards).
Bitcoin will also rely on transaction fees once all 21,000,000 BTC have been mined.
Patchcoin does not have to subsidize expensive mining operations like Bitcoin does.
3. Why should I stake Patchcoin when rewards could be zero?
Staking with Patchcoin is not predictable like Peercoin. Patchcoin staking is more like a lottery ticket, where the rewards are variable and can be large or small.
Staking rewards will grow as network usage does, aligning the interests of stakers and Patchcoin users.
4. Why is my claim capped at 50,000 PTC per PPC address?
The top 50 Peercoin addresses hold more than 50% of all Peercoin, which in our view is a concentration risk for a pure proof-of-stake network.
The claims cap means that at least 210 Patchcoin addresses are required to hold a majority of PTC upon release, and this number should increase over time as PTC is sold, traded, and shared, similar to Bitcoin.
The claims cap limits the impact of large and/or defunct exchanges claiming PTC.
There are just over 55,200 eligible Peercoin addresses. The claims cap means that about 55,100 addresses are eligible to receive more PTC than the PPC used to claim them. Put another way, about 99.8% of Peercoin addresses are eligible to receive a greater number of PTC than their PPC address holdings.
5. How does the 180 day claims period work?
For the first 180 days, we have set the genesis key to only spend to addresses that are permitted by the claims made. That is, the genesis key can only make stake transactions, not normal ones.
This is an important trust and security measure to prove that Patchcoin developers are not able to secretly send themselves PTC that are not backed by a PPC claim.
6. Why give away the entire Patchcoin supply to Peercoin holders?
It is important that Patchcoin is widely distributed for its network security. Since August 2012 Peercoin has made use of proof-of-work to fairly distribute its coin supply.
Patchcoin will benefit from Peercoin’s proof-of-work stage and transition to the future with pure proof-of-stake.
7. What amount is the Patchcoin development team claiming?
Patchcoin’s development team will claim a small amount of PTC through the client wallet claims process after this release announcement. This is the same process as everyone else.
The development team has recently purchased its PPC to make our claim, supporting the price of PPC.
The total amount claimed by the Patchcoin team will be far smaller than the top individual Peercoin addresses or Satoshi Nakamoto’s presumed stake in Bitcoin.
8. How can I monitor ongoing claims?
There is a progress bar at the top of the “Transactions” tab in the client wallet that shows how many PTC have been claimed.
9. What does the “Patch” name mean?
A “patch” can mean several things. In the realm of computing, it refers to a small update or correction to a program. A patch can also be a collectable.
Patchcoin is intended to be both. It is a fix for Bitcoin’s increasing mining centralization and energy destruction, as well as a collectable token.
The Patchcoin logo also can be viewed in different ways. Viewed 3D, the logo contains hexagonal blocks representing a blockchain. Viewed 2D, the logo resembles an embroidered patch. In both instances a subtle “p” is seen in the center.
10. Is this Peercoin 2.0?
No, Patchcoin is not Peercoin 2.0 and has no affiliation with the Peercoin development team.
Our claims system will allow Peercoin holders to make a Patchcoin claim while supply remains.
11. Is Patchcoin a competitor to Peercoin?
No. Patchcoin and Peercoin are connected in a familial way, with a shared background, values, and purpose, but each having its own unique characteristics.
Patchcoin is a direct competitor to Bitcoin and other fixed-supply cryptocurrencies.
12. Does Patchcoin use less energy than Bitcoin?
Yes, Patchcoin uses far less than 1% of the energy of Bitcoin because it uses proof-of-stake consensus, not proof-of-work.
13. Where can I learn more about proof-of-stake and the benefits of Peercoin’s underlying technology?
21M token supply seems so arbitrary. I presumed this will be more original, like having 1:1 distribution backed by Peercoin balance. Which would result in maybe 5M total supply. It would not be a round number either, but something like 5012109, which would def seem more organic.
Other than that, the change is only with removal of PoW distribution blocks and removal of fixed/static PoS block reward in favour of fee economy. I.e. the block producer gets the fees.
Both of which can be done in a single hard fork, but nobody ever came with concrete proposals and arguments to implement such changes around here.
Looking forward to seeing what happens with block producers in an economy with no subsidies and low transaction count. It will very much tell us what would happen with network if similar steps are taken. It is a good experiment.
This with limit per address is also extremely arbitrary and when combined with 10:1 ratio it is obvious done to favour those who knew the information by the time of snapshot. Pretty much ruins the fairness narrative.
@noface@patchcoin is this based on peercoin v0.15 or some older version? Does it include the APO?
The wallet does it for you by calling the same function “Create new receiving address” would. You can choose any other address as a target if you like.
Why are the claims so slow and not processed maximally in each block? The progress is only 1.31% for me with supposedly few unprocessed claims in the queue and yet I’m not receiving anything.
It’s because we’re using stake inputs to output to claim targets, and the genesis block tx has been split into 8750 outputs, 2400 coins per chunk. This should cover roughly 2-3 months of network activity.
For some reason it felt natural to me to handle it that way. Not only because other nodes won’t be able to drive block production until after 30 days minimum.
Although the ordering of claims is enforced internally, currently the UI only stores and shows claims your node sees during runtime and in past blocks. There is an update planned to address that.
I did notice an issue when making a claim after searching for an address. The queue shows a single row after the claim is submitted but with the incorrect information. This resolves itself when the search input is emptied.
Question: “I made some claims on the 23rd and havent received any PTC yet. I know it may take a few days but I see others that claimed after me have received the full amount. I hope that I have signed the message properly. Its not something I do regularly. Will I get a notification if it isn’t signed properly?”
Answer: The Qt clients UI might not show all the information because your node currently only displays claims it itself has encountered during runtime. For a more complete picture do check out Patchcoin Claims. You should be able to see your slot in the queue on it.
Question: “To claim PTC does the qt wallet need to be connected online all the time? Or after claiming can I turn if off?”
Answer: No, once a claim has been sent to the network and has been marked as accepted, you do not have to run your node. Your client will show an X on the claim in case it thinks it has not been accepted, in which case you could simply re-send it.
How many peercoins have participated in the airdrop so far? Any other statistics, for example how many persons have participated. The later could maybe be estimated by grouping timing of claims or by IP address (if you log such a thing).
We don’t log this information and it would be difficult to estimate.
Groupings of addresses submitted closely together could be different people unaware of other submissions happening at the same time. This is especially likely during the first week when claims activity is frequent.
It could also be an investing team, a mining pool, or other groups. One individual could also submit claims at different times too.
By tying our claims to PPC addresses, we are relying on the wide distribution of Peercoin to ensure that Patchcoin also has wide initial ownership. We won’t know exactly how many people that represents.
Claims are made and verified entirely peer to peer. We cannot log IP addresses and logically tie them to claimants even if we wanted to.
Think of claims being a bit like transactions and our job is to work through a mempool of claims, publish our findings and then being required to adhere to that strategy.
I am utterly lost. On the right side of my PTC QT, I have two big blocks of data. It seems that I got the application process right. But I don’t understand how I would check . . . anything else. For example, I don’t understand the Patchwork Claims site. I can’t post any address into the search bar. That is, it doesn’t seem to work. So, first – thanks in advance – how do I know if my claim is being processed?
