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Ask HN: Want to look at this new way of mining cryptocurrencies?

3 points by srele94 12y ago

Hey everybody, I'm Srele and I'm a member of the three man team that is working on ManogCoinz. We believe that today’s method of mining cryptocurrencies with CPUs, GPUs and ASICs is hard for non tech savvy people to implement. And it consumes too much energy in the process. What we want to achieve is to make a new cryptocurrency that is more accessible to people in a way that is easier for them to use and mine. The premise was that people have their smartphones with them almost all the time, and that we can use that time that people carry them around for something cool and useful (mining cryptocurrencies (MangoCoinz)). The way you mine MangoCoinz is by giving movement energy to your smartphone (by moving, walking, running or just plain shaking your phone like a maniac). It’s that simple. Check it out and tell us what your thoughts are about cryptocurrenies (today and in general) and this new type of mining them (MangoCoinz). We are eager to hear your thoughts. Best regards from me and the whole MangoCoinz team. YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kPQFGH279s Website: http://mangocoinz.com Google Play link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mangocoinz.app P.S. For now it's just on Android, but we plan on expanding to iOS (iPhone).

wmf 12y ago
Presumably it's trivial to cheat this.
- gus_massa 12y ago
  Some ideas: * Attach (old) smartphones to kangaroos, just catch them one a week to recharge the phone. * Get a job as a carousel guard, and put the smartphones in the roof * Get an electric engineer and modify the movement sensor
  - srele94 12y ago
    Well, not quite. But nice ideas though. Because people can have amusement parks, tamper with hardware, and live in Australia and have a farm of kangaroos, there is a limit to how many MangoCoinz you can mine per day. Now you can sync up to 10 MCZ/day to your account. The system is a part cloud, part data on the phone. Coinz are only valid when they are synced to the cloud, but you can mine offline and the number of days that you didn't mine will be noted and added. Like if you mined for three days without syncing, you will be able to sync up to 40 MCZ (3 * 10 + 10 from the day that you are syncing). Ie. In those three days you mined 37 MCz, you will still be able to sync 3 MCZ more that day. Hope this answers this issue.
  - wmf 12y ago
    I was thinking more of reversing the app or running it in an emulator.
    - srele94 12y ago
      Well, if you were to reverse the app or run it in an emulator you still would hit the 10 MCZ/day sync limit. So if you were to manipulate and emulate the accelerometer sensor you would still have a max of 10 coinz on top of your existing sum and the rest would be cut off. The app uses the phone's accelerometer sensor. The app is intended for use by people who want to get into cryptocurrencies, but don't want the hassle of setting up and maintaining a miner or don't have the knowledge to do so. Hope this clears some things up. What are your thoughts about MangoCoinz now?
      - yen223 12y ago
        That's 10MCZ/day per account? What's to stop a person from opening multiple accounts?
        srele94 12y ago
        Yes, it is. You can sync a max of 10 MCZ/day per account. The amount of MCZ you get is in proportion to how much you move (or just the phone). With normal use you probably won't even get to 10, but if you shake the phone like a maniac for a few hours, you'll get there. But shaking becomes boring pretty fast and that's why the app is made to run in the background and you don't need to think about mining, it just does it when you move. Well, to be honest, nothing. If you think about it, what's stopping you from making a bunch of wallets for other cryptocurrencies, or any other service for that matter that you need to signup. The way we deal with this is by allowing you to mine only on one phone at a time with one account. This is because if something happens to your phone you can sign out and mine on another phone (your coinz will be synced with your existing coinz). If you have a couple of smartphones lying around you can make a couple of accounts and walk around with a phone in every pocket (I don't know how comfortable that would be). Hope this answers your question.