Anoncoin

I2P provides us a (hopefully good) network and to me it often seems it’s just waiting to actually get used. I am looking around for what usages there are currently and noticed the Anoncoin project. Namely, because the software is distributed by packages and installation, thus, promised to be easy …

So I just installed it, as I read it would be able to work in I2P only. Easy apt-get install anoncoind. First thing to realise, is that you need to tell it to stick to I2P by starting it with the -onlynet=i2p option. I also used -daemon, which results in the program running in the background and giving me a shell to enter further commands. The output currently still happens on that shell, but that’s ok for now …

I had fiddled around with bitcoin before and remembered these crypto-coins have large chains to download, so it might be worth starting with a preseed or something. While anoncoin.i2p wasn’t reachable for me, I had to use clearnet sources for this. There is a page on the wiki about bootstrapping which states the file is available as a torrent. I found it on Postman. After the download I stopped anoncoin and copied it to the directory I restarted anoncoind:

user@host:~$ anoncoind stop
user@host:~$ tar xvf anoncoin.bootstrap.tar.xz
user@host:~$ cp bootstrap/bootstrap.dat .anoncoin/
user@host:~$ anoncoind -onlynet=i2p

The console output didn’t show much about the file, but in the log there was much action visible:

user@host:~$ tail .anoncoin/debug.log
[...]
2015-11-01 19:34:42 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED
2015-11-01 19:34:42 SetBestChain: new best=feee57bdbe4c4ed2e07ae4800781c25ad5757c1e93e4d3f0a447e43ff6ac02f9  height=246314  log2_work=55.664755  tx=408003  date=2014-09-25 10:35:47 progress=0.013590
2015-11-01 19:34:42 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED
2015-11-01 19:34:42 SetBestChain: new best=0bcc969baeca5968e607bb6fafad9357a4c43a36c40f987354da007f260d21a0  height=246315  log2_work=55.664797  tx=408006  date=2014-09-25 10:50:12 progress=0.013591
2015-11-01 19:34:42 ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED
2015-11-01 19:34:42 SetBestChain: new best=0ec425c33f1a9684c3050fd43d2401fb0ceee538db88677641c7cd1b0e1e5ce6  height=246316  log2_work=55.664839  tx=408007  date=2014-09-25 10:52:25 progress=0.013591

While the program was loading the blockchain, I read on in the wiki. That was partly rather confusing though, for example the coming version 0.9.x is already described there. That made me think I’d have some stone-old version, but it seems to still be current.

After the scrolling there stopped and the block chain was updated, the block count shown by getinfo has rised remarkably. Like from the initial 0 to 350000. However, the console output kept repeating:

Send: HELLO VERSION MIN=3.0 MAX=3.0
Reply: HELLO REPLY RESULT=OK VERSION=3.0
Send: STREAM CONNECT ID=NDJPN DESTINATION=hL51K8bxVvqX2Z4epXReUYlWTNUAK-1XdlbBd7e796s2A3icCQRhJvGlaa6PX~tgPvos-2IJp9hFQrVa0lyKyYmpQN9X7GOErtsL-JbMQpglQsEd94jDRAsiBuvgyPZij~NNdBxKRMDvNm9s7eovzhEFTAimTSB-sgeZ4Afxx2IrNXDFM6KS8AUm8YsaMldzX9zKQDeuV0slp4ZfIAVQhZZy9zTZSmUNPnXQR7XPh5w7FkXzmKMTKSyG~layJ3AorQWqzZXmykzf4z3CE4zkzQcwc0~ZIcAg9tYvM2AdQIdgeN6ISMim6L8q6ku6abuONkyw-NJTi3NopeGHZva21Tc3uHetsKoW434N24HBVUtIjJVjGsbZ7xBfz2xM5kyhPl6SlD-RJarCw47Rovmfc9Piq6q3S~Zw-rvRl-xDMJzwraIYNjAROouDwjI9Bqnguq9DH5uFBxf4uN69X7T~yWTAjdvelZKp6BGe~HGo7bNQjBmymhlH4erCKZEXOaxDAAAA SILENT=false
Reply: STREAM STATUS RESULT=CANT_REACH_PEER
Send: HELLO VERSION MIN=3.0 MAX=3.0
Reply: HELLO REPLY RESULT=OK VERSION=3.0
Send: STREAM CONNECT ID=NDJPN DESTINATION=8w-NRnXaxoGZdyupTXX78~CmF8csc~RhJr8XR2vMbNpazKhGjWNfRjhCmwqXkkW9vwkNjovW2AAbof7PfVnMCff0sHSxMTiBNsH8cuHJS2ckBSJI3h4G4ffJLc5gflangrG1raHKrMXCw8Cn56pisx4RKokEKUYdeEPiMdyJUO5yjZW2oyk4NpaUaQCqFmcglIvNOCYzVe~LK124wjJQAJc5iME1Sg9sOHaGMPL5N2qkAm5osOg2S7cZNRdIkoNOq-ztxghrv5bDL0ybeC0sfIQzvxDiKugCrSHEHCvwkA~xOu9nhNlUvoPDyCRRi~ImeomdNoqke28di~h2JF7wBGE~3ACxxOMaa0I~c9LV3O7pRU2Xj9HDn76eMGL7YCcCU4dRByu97oqfB3E~qqmmFp8W1tgvnEAMtXFTFZPYc33ZaCaIJQD7UXcQRSRV7vjw39jhx49XFsmYV3K6~D8bN8U4sRJnKQpzOJGpOSEJWh88bII0XuA55bJsfrR4VEQ5AAAA SILENT=false
Reply: STREAM STATUS RESULT=CANT_REACH_PEER

Also, while the block count looked better, it seems anoncoind was stuck to having only 2 connections as shown by getinfo:

user@host:~$ anoncoind getinfo
{
    "version" : "v0.8.5.6-g832e187-beta",
    "protocolversion" : 70007,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
    "balance" : 0.00000000,
    "blocks" : 379497,
    "moneysupply" : 1753199.36200000,
    "timeoffset" : 0,
    "connections" : 2,
    "proxy" : "",
    "ip" : "0.0.0.0",
    "difficulty" : 105.07008029,
    "testnet" : false,
    "keypoololdest" : 1446403822,
    "keypoolsize" : 101,
    "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
    "mininput" : 0.00010000,
    "errors" : "This is a pre-release test build - use at your own risk - do not use for mining or merchant applications"
}

I assumed this would be a problem and asked for advise on irc. I was told to restart anoncoin after the preseeding was done. In the meantime I had read that I need to specifically advise anoncoin to stick to one destination instead of generating a new one at each start. So I thought I should do that at the same time.

user@host:~$ anoncoind stop
user@host:~$ anoncoind -generatei2pdestination
PUB=xxx PRIV=yyy
user@host:~$ vim .anoncoin/anoncoin.conf
i2p=1
static=1
mydestination=yyy
daemon=1
server=1
maxconnections=100

The output of the i2p-destination is rather long. Take note that it consists of two parts. As those are not seperated by a new line, it might be rather hard to find there the private key starts, but only that is needed for the option in the configuration file.

Looking at the status of getinfo after writing these notes down, the blockcount has risen to above 400k, but it still reports only 2 connections. Let’s see how it looks tomorrow after a night of running …

ClearNet Links:

• https://wiki.anoncoin.net/How_to_use_a_bootstrap_file_to_speed_up_initial_synchronization
• https://wiki.anoncoin.net/Sample_anoncoin.conf
• https://wiki.anoncoin.net/Anoncoin-0.8.5.conf