Celebrating our 2 year anniversary we take a look a quick look at what has driven the development of the project and what changes we have in store for the next release to address the concerns of the community.
In this article, we will look at the some of the goals of the TurtleCoin project, the concept of centralization, where the project stands, and what the project is doing to remain true to itself by maintaining its commitment to the community.
FORK IN 3 DAYS UPDATE YOUR MINERS! UPDATE YOUR DAEMONS! https://github.com/turtlecoin/turtlecoin/
XMRig – Hey, Wixer here. I just wanted to let you guys know that xmrig as well as xmrig-amd and xmrig-nvidia have received an update. CryptoNight Turtle is now officially supported!
https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig/releases
https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig-amd/releases https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig-nvidia/releases
Huge thanks to Github users: lost-bro, fexra, brandonlehmann, davehlong, YetAnotherRussian, SChernykh, Bendr0id and of course xmrig who worked on making this happen! So far I’ve only tested xmrig-amd for a few days and it runs very stable. The hash rate for my rig has increased by 3.7 times. If you’re curious of how your hardware will perform after the upcoming fork, you can simply download or build the right miner for your system. There already is a CryptoNight Turtle coin you can mine to test xmrig. It’s called DeroGold and it’s a lot of fun to mine because of the high supply. So why don’t you update your miner, so that you’ll only have to change algorithm when it’s fork time? – Wixer
https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig/releases
TurtlePay – Just a tiny update at the moment. I’ve added a small “Powered By TurtlePay” badge that people can use on their TurtlePay sites. Check it out at https://turtlepay.io/start.html – IBurnMyCD
TurtleCoin Docs – 1000th commit! – Just wanted to say, the TurtleCoin Docs (docs.turtlecoin.wiki) just got it’s 1000th commit; it’s 1000th update, since its inception in around March of last year. Huge thank you and shout out to everyone who made this possible, and here’s to another year of more updates and information! – Sajo8
50,000TRTL bounty – Write a comprehensive introduction to TurtleCoin based on https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CFMWdGG-b44soTKblfXj6TWw-DQPzZYtMgojpFeA-Ig/edit#gid=763521774 So once PR is submitted and accepted I’ll pay out the bounty. thanks a lot. – SalmonDealer
Motivated by the recent dramatic increases in network difficulty, we’re testing out a new feature at our predictable solo mining pool that lets multiple users “mine as one” for faster payouts. Simply specify “pprop” in the password field of your miner config to join the mining collective. Come on by, check out the whitepaper on this new payment scheme, and jump on in — the water’s warm!
https://cryptonote.social/trtl
72hr 100KH RIg Rental Giveaway – https://twitter.com/mining4vets/status/1090034533913821190
turtle2.japakar.com 5 turtle fee! and turtle.japakar.com 5 turtle fee! *MIND BLOWN*
http://turtle.japakar.com
Great support from Belorion in helping get the Nibblebox all in one miner running smoothly for NibbleClassic! – sups
Shoutout to @Rock’s new avatar, which is scary-as-hell – funkypenguin
<3 the turtlecoin community. – dsanon
will you go to prom with me zpalm – anonymous
have a great week everyone 🙂 – rock
Core Update – For those of you who haven’t heard yet, at block 1,200,000 (or in 17d 4h 17m 0s) we will be upgrading the network to a new hashing algorithm, CN Turtle. If you’d like to know more about CN Turtle and the fork, check out the articles below, but in short, it’s about renewing our commitment to keep ASIC off the network.
If you’re a normal user, just update your core software or gui wallet and you should be fine, if you’re a miner, you may use TRTL Stak or XMRig, or SRB with more to likely follow. – rock
https://blog.turtlecoin.lol/archives/proof-of-work-algorithm-change/
https://blog.turtlecoin.lol/archives/cn-turtle-will-steal-your-girl/
TurtleEDU – We’re so proud of all of the helpers who have helped us find bugs and corrections for the TurtleEDU class “TurtleCoin 101”! Who could have expected us to launch our beta semester with over 60 people helping us search for bugs, I’m so impressed.
Next, Professor Fexra and I are looking for some Turtles in the community who are experienced with OpenEdX (the edu platform we use) to help us bring a more rich educational experience to you guys. We are looking for help with implementing the badging system, effective course design, as well as overall advice regarding the devops side of running an OpenEdX system specifically. If you think you have something to contribute, or advice to give, we’d be happy to have you, or if you’d like to try out our beta class “TurtleCoin 101”, swing by the Discord chat at chat.turtlecoin.lol and type *student to get access to the EDU chats, and grab an account at edu.turtlecoin.lol – rock
We are always pursuing a more fair mining experience. One of our early efforts to get the network to decentralize was to interview pool owners who had unique qualities about their pool to encourage new miners to adopt new pools. This next interview was more for pool admins and aspiring pool operators, and also just for general users alike. It’s a good one! Check out funkypenguin’s pool! https://blog.turtlecoin.lol/archives/funkypenguins-turtle-pool-secrets/
A while back, we had an actual journalist helping out witht he interviews, and this was one that slipped through the cracks and actually took a while to get published. It’s a great interview with a member of our core team, and I’m happy to show it to you! https://blog.turtlecoin.lol/archives/interview-w-soregums-from-trtl-core-team/
D4D – D4D luvs you all 😉
Top Secrets – 23
Rogerrobers – Shout out to Capetn!
Captain Jac) – Shoutout to all turtles and welcome to all new ones
Rock – You’re all pretty awesome
This Christmas we received the blessing of the community’s progress and our mutual friendship with other networks. TurtleCoin users are quickly becoming the most helpful crew in the industry, and that’s a hat we are happy to wear any time 😀
Here’s to another great year, and a good time this New Year for all of our new friends who’ve just joined us!
Core Update at block 1,200,000 !! Miners! Service Operators! Users! This is your update! Tell a friend!
What is a fork? -> Click here to see our article about updates like these and what they mean for you!
1,200,000 – This update is a big one, and unlike our normal fork upgrade schedule, this one packs a little bit more of a punch than others in the sense that we have a new hashing algo variant we’ve been working on called CN Turtle. This new algo affects miners two different ways, GPU miners will see about a 4x increase in power, and CPU miners will see about a 6x increase in power. This just means more heat for most of you but for us it means another upgrade without ASIC, and for the first time it means TurtleCoin is branching out from just using whatever Monero and Aeon use. We’re doubling down on our commitment against Nicehash and ASIC, and have already started research on the next PoW change for when that time comes. Everyone probably also wondering, but if you’re on XMR Stak or XMRig, you’re fine, with more compatibility for others coming soon. – TRTL Core Team
This wall of text means one thing- We’ve got you covered. This is our commitment to a 2019 without ASIC.
https://github.com/turtlecoin/turtlecoin
solo miner improvements – If you’ve ever used the solo miner, you might know it’s a little ‘meh’. You need to know all the arguments to start the miner with, it doesn’t even output barely anything on the default log level, and the output is pretty verbose. One thing you might not be aware of is it actually by default only scans for a new block template every 30 seconds. So, a lot of the time you might be mining on an old block template when the daemon already has a newer template. This fixes that issue, so there should be a lot less orphans. Annoyingly, the windows network stack seems to hold open the closed connections for some time, so polling for a new template every second can end up exhausting the available sockets. I’m working on a fix for this by reusing the same connection. I know most people don’t use the solo miner, but this should help out projects which fork TurtleCoin and don’t have any pools up yet. – zpalm
https://github.com/turtlecoin/turtlecoin
Oiboo’s Game Emporium – Merry christmas and Seasons greetings to all! Thank you for your support this year. So far we have 11 amazing games made by our community! Well done everyone! I have nearly finished the tutorial section of the website, so hopefully we will have loads more games next year! As always any ideas you have or if you have a project you want featured email me @ info@Games.Turtacus.com or message me in #Dev_Gaming Oiboo – oiboo
New Turtle Game – I’ve started gitting gud with Godot game engine, following guides and exploring uncharted lands! Me and bunny will be working on new turtle games, coming out sometime 2019. Stay tuned! – Sajo8
Do you run a TRTL fork, or are you part of a fork community? Take a second to tell us a bit about your fork and get some exposure for your project!
Name of your TRTL fork :
DeroGold
Github link for your code:
https://github.com/derogold/derogold
What is special or new about your network?
The DeroGold Association is the future of crypto today and we welcome you aboard. An open source project since block number 1, DeroGold plans to be one of the most illustrious cryptocurrencies ever. Forking our coin from TurtleCoin and using their new CN-TURTLE hashing algorithm will be instrumental in helping us to achieve this goal.
Some specs of DeroGold include 100 trillion max supply, only 2 decimals, 10 second blocks, cutting-edge lite-blocks, and a wallet prefix of dg. It has been said to be very reminiscent of the early TurtleCoin days, since we have a low nethash and large block rewards with a lot of questions about our huuuuge supply.
Join our discord to learn more about us: http://derogold.gq
Special thanks to RockSteady, Zpalmtree, ExtraHash, and Bearybullish for their contributions toward the making of this cryptocurrency, I appreciate y’alls help.
Name of your TRTL fork:
Tax
Github link for your code:
https://github.com/Tax-Project/Tax
What is special or new about your network?
High Fee, Low Emission -> No inflation but mining is still “worth it”. New hash algorithm to assure satoshis vision will be realised Scalable Blockchain (coming soon)
Good news everyone! If you’re mining TurtleCoin with us at Cryptonote.Social, you’re now also (solo) mining Aeon through the wonders of “merged mining”. For now if you’re lucky enough to mine an Aeon block, you get to collect the full reward. Make sure you specify an e-mail address in your miner config so you’ll be notified of any Aeon blocks you mine.
https://cryptonote.social/trtl
The NibbleClassic Faucet has launched! Come and have a little nibble!
http://nbx.faucet.llama.horse/
anon – shoutout to kev and beary for being awesome
sups – A thank you to everyone
soregums – Kudos to rashedmyt for lite blocks feature
morpheus – Merry Christmas to One and All! May your holiday be filled with warmth and cheer, and all the best of luck and good fortune for 2019.
rogerrobers – Shoutout zpalmtree :3
sups – Massive thank you to KSupremex#5671 for putting together the “How to” videos for NibbleClassic! Absolute star!
japakar – Best. Discord. Ever. Best. Coin. Ever.
gobble – Merry Christmas, eat, play, drink hard. Enjoy your time with mates and family. Crank up the volume on them Christmas Carols and enjoy the smiles on your kids faces. Build a snowman if you’re in the cold, but if you’re in the heat, put ya boardies on and bomb dive the pool, drink them beers, spread the cheers! (ps. eat bunnies not turkeys)
See you all next year 😀 – rock
The core development team has observed the fact that the network hash rate has climbed substantially over the last few weeks. Luckily, the hashrate has remained rather decentralized and balanced over the large number of pools that the community operates. However, the significant increase in hashrate has made it more difficult for the project to meet one of its core goals. To remain mineable for everyone. After careful consideration, we believe it’s once again time to perform a soft fork to a new Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm.
Such a change is not taken lightly, and we’ve given considerable thought to where the project should go in this regard. We’ve seen a few networks using CryptoNight Soft Shell variants with success. Although considerable work has been done to support Soft Shell pools and the like we’re not quite ready to move over to Soft Shell just yet.
You’re probably asking yourself, “So what’s the plan?”
If you’ve read through the TurtleCoin fork guide, forked TurtleCoin yourself, or have read through the code, the next few statements are going to come to no surprise to you.
We like to collect PoW algorithms like they are pogs. The more you have, the more fun you’re having with your friends.
Keeping this in mind, TurtleCoin currently has built-in support for no less than twelve (12) different PoW algorithms. Yes, you read that right, twelve.
They are, in no particular order:
To put it mildly, CryptoNight Turtle is a tweak to the standard CryptoNight family that significantly increases the speed at which hashes can be computed. This is accomplished in two ways.
We’re dropping the iteration count in fourth as well. From 524,288 iterations to 131,072 iterations. This will result in the base hashrate increasing for every miner.
We’re dropping the scratch pad size in fouth. From 1MB (CN Lite) to 256KB. Why? because we want to make everything go faster and when we’re dropping the iteration count, we need to make sure that the scratchpad is used effectively to prevent some interesting attack vectors.
It sure does! There’s a reason for what appears to be chaos and we’re just getting to the good part.
As you’re likely thinking, “This doesn’t sound better, no, no, these guys are crazy…”
Block Major version 5 is planned to activate CryptoNight Turtle v2. That’s right, variant 2. Those of you following other projects using v2 likely know that there is a performance penalty incurred by variant 2 hashing. We’ve personally seen a performance hit of anywhere from 12% to 45% on some hardware. We think that’s unacceptable; however, we do like the premise behind variant 2.
To balance the performance impact of variant 2 out, we’re going to hash faster with CryptoNight Turtle. The two effectively cancel each other out and we gain the benefit of soft forking away from potential ASIC/FPGA/etc. miners. As a matter of fact, you’ll see a hashrate increase on your miner(s) because of the move to CryptoNight Turtle.
The move to variant 2 will help strengthen TurtleCoin’s ASIC/FPGA resistance. Future PoW changes will also be designed to further strengthen the project’s ASIC/FPGA resistance to try to keep TurtleCoin mineable for everyone.
We’re confident that we have the core code ready for the soft fork to CN Turtle tentatively scheduled for block 1,200,000. The main pool software has been updated to support it as well as the underlying Node.js Hashing Library and the Node.js Cryptonote Library have been updated.
There’s still work to be done and any community assistance is, as always, appreciated.
We’ll need help from the community to test this algorithm change to try to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible. The more people that are involved, the easier it is to spot issues.
We’re working on adding support to common miner projects to support this change including:
Miner software needs support added before we can fully test the update pool deployments. If you want to give us a hand in getting that support completed, join us on discord at http://chat.turtlecoin.lol in #dev_general.
The pool software changes need ported to the other pools that the community service operators use on a daily basis. If you are familiar with one of the following pools, your assistance is appreciated in this regard.
As always, be mindful of TurtleCoin core releases. Watch or star the main TurtleCoin repo to help stay abreast of changes and updates. Join Discord and read the #announcements on a regular basis. Or, sign up for the @news role by typing *news in the chat and be alerted whenever a new announcement is posted in Discord.
Make sure you’re ready for the soft fork as early as possible.
As with any soft fork, if and when the fork occurs, prior versions of the software will no longer be compatible with the rest of the network after soft fork completion.
We’re already putting thought into the next PoW algorithm change after v5. Those discussions will be a different article, so as always, stay tuned.
There are a few types of forks, and the goal here is to give you a basic understanding of all of them so nobody has to be afraid of what they mean. If you have questions, or want to talk more, you can catch us in Discord.
We use a website to hold our code called GitHub. GitHub lets nerds from across the globe collaborate on the same project at the same time, with all of the changes recorded to see where something broke along the way.
In order to write code for TurtleCoin, you have to fork the code on GitHub, which just means clicking a button that says “Fork” in the top right corner. This just puts a copy of the code in your workspace so you can work on your part of the project without interfering with others, and then when you are done, you create a “pull request” which asks the main TurtleCoin project to pull in your changes. That’s why it’s called a pull request.
This can also be someone creating their own fork of TurtleCoin which is something we support, and have written guides how to do. Forking our code is not stealing anything, and it even helps us rank higher on CoinGecko, which measures the amount of developer attention a certain project receives. Our license specifically allows for other projects to use the TurtleCoin code as a base for their projects and learning, as long as they give others the same chance. This helps the community learn about how the project works, and helps us spot bugs and errors before they become bigger problems by having more eyes on the prize.
This is the second most common type of fork. We commonly refer to this as a fork upgrade. When you’ve been gone a while, and you come back and notice your old software wont go past a certain block on the network anymore, you’ve likely missed a soft fork upgrade. A quick update of the daemon will get you back on the network and your funds are right where you left them.
So what’s a soft upgrade do anyway? Well, it’s hard to come up with a real life comparison, but to put it in simple terms, the entire network has to agree on how blocks are produced, and when we create an upgrade to the format of how blocks are made or validated, then we have to place a bookmark in the chain that says “ok, people should be upgraded by the next 3 weeks, so anything after that needs to be running the next version to keep going”.
This does not create two chains, and this does not create free money. The old chain branches off and stops, the main chain keeps moving.
Future updates to the software will enable us to drop old clients from the network that haven’t updated, and give them a gentle message urging them to upgrade their software to regain access.
This type of fork is least common, and like in the Bitcoin and Ethereum world, is a result of a section of the network deciding to change the rules and the network_id and new seed nodes to create their own network signature and branch off from the main chain.
This type of hard fork is called a hard fork because the software has to be hard-coded to accept the new changes, which would consist of adding new seed nodes, removing old ones, and assigning a new network ID and so on.
This creates two chains that continue independently of each other, but does not necessarily give you double the coins, as the demand for the secondary currency doesn’t magically appear overnight.
These happen all the time, and they are always resolved automatically by the network, behind the scenes. When you see anything about “Resolved” on your daemon, that means a network fork was detected and resolved.
What this means is that two miners reached the conclusion to the same block at roughly the same time and momentarily, the network allowed both chains to continue while the rest of the network decides which one grows longer over the next few blocks. This is nothing to worry about and is what an orphan blocks is.
This is almost always because people are adding hash power to the network in bursts when the difficulty is low. It causes the network to spit out blocks quicker than normal, and raises the chances of two pools hitting the same result at the same time.