Primecoin (
Abbreviation
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
: XPM;
sign
A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or me ...
: Ψ) is a
cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...
that implements a
proof-of-work system
Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the ''prover'') proves to others (the ''verifiers'') that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this exp ...
that searches for chains of
prime number
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...
s.
History
Primecoin was launched in 2013 by Sunny King, who also founded
peercoin
Peercoin, also known as Peer-to-Peer Coin, PP Coin, or PPC is a cryptocurrency utilizing both proof-of-stake and proof-of-work systems.
History
Peercoin is based on an August 2012 paper which listed the authors as Scott Nadal and Sunny King. Ki ...
.
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, which are
mined using algorithms that solved mathematical problems with no extrinsic value, mining Primecoin involves producing chains of prime numbers (
Cunningham
Cunningham is a surname of Scottish origin, see Clan Cunningham.
Notable people sharing this surname
A–C
*Aaron Cunningham (born 1986), American baseball player
*Abe Cunningham, American drummer
* Adrian Cunningham (born 1960), Australian ...
and
bi-twin chain In number theory, a bi-twin chain of length ''k'' + 1 is a sequence of natural numbers
: n-1,n+1,2n-1,2n+1, \dots, 2^k n - 1, 2^k n + 1 \,
in which every number is prime. Eric W. Weisstein, ''CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics'', C ...
s). These are useful to scientists and mathematicians and meet the requirements for a
proof of work
Proof of work (PoW) is a form of Cryptography, cryptographic proof (truth), proof in which one party (the ''prover'') proves to others (the ''verifiers'') that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can s ...
system of being hard to compute but easy to verify and having an adjustable difficulty.
Shortly after its launch, some trade journals reported that the rush of over 18,000 new users seeking to mine Primecoin overwhelmed providers of dedicated servers.
Primecoin has a
block time of one minute, changes difficulty every block, and has a
block reward that is a function of the difficulty.
References
Further reading
External links
*
{{Portal bar, Anarchism, Economics, Free and open-source software, Internet, Numismatics
Cryptocurrency projects
Prime numbers
Currencies introduced in 2013