Why all this? :)
Where did you get the crazy idea to make an elaborate website about the Duinocoin?
Why a website about the Duinocoin, which cannot (and should not) be taken too seriously, considering its technology (code) and infrastructure? The simple answer: Well, why not!
It is fascinating how incredibly fast even ancient computers or microcontrollers can calculate in relation to our brain. There are many exciting projects that build on this computing power.
Computers and their processing power have interested me since the early days of home computing. Already on a DRAGON32 I programmed a rudimentary CAD software (it could display a wireframe model "in 3D") and a simulation of masses and gravitation (solar system emulator would be too much). In the course of time, I switched to one of the first IBM-PC compatible computers, a TCS GENIE 16B. On it I learned BASIC and Borland Turbo Pascal and of course also programmed an Appleman. This was the beginning of my journey into the x86 world and IT journalism with thousands of articles and about 3 metres of IT books - including a tuning article about a first overclocked dual Celeron system (2 x Celeron-366 @ 550 MHz) that ct-apple could calculate in under 1 second.
SETI@home
Later there was SETI@home, where from my then old Sun SPARCstation 10 under Solaris to pre-production CPUs from Intel (one of the first Pentium 4 as an "engineering sample") tried to identify signals from aliens.
Together with an article in PC Praxis/PC INTERN by Data Becker, we then called for a race: Who can calculate the most SETI@home packets within a few weeks? With my computers at home, I even beat the Data Becker editorial team, who ended up running all the computers from the publisher and all the test computers that were currently available around the clock. Of course, as a freelancer I didn't get/accept the prize - a Siemens server - that went to a reader.
It all started with the Bitcoin...
"Back then" came the switch from CPU mining to GPU mining with two HD6950 and two HD5970... and at that time a meagre 0.688 BTC/24h. If only I had HODLED these Bitcoin... unfortunately they are all gone.
Early on, I also got into bitcoin, mining these weird "digital coins". The coin was worth a paltry 3 US$ (yes, in words: THREE US dollars!) at the time I joined. My environment and the entire magazine editorial team at DATA BECKER (R.I.P., they don't exist any more) had a good laugh at the time - because in the basement there were several IBM and Sun servers and, a little later, HP xw9400 workstations with CAD graphics cards, producing not only Bitcoin but also a lot of noise and heat. I had additionally insulated the door to the server room of the "mini-data centre" with an old woollen blanket, but a slight humming could still be heard in the house. The warmth was welcome in winter and ensured a dry and not quite so cold cellar - here in Sweden it is partly hewn into the granite next to a small mountain and therefore really always freezing cold!
...and did not go so well
Bitcoin has gone up in value over time. It may well be that I am a bit gifted when it comes to technology.... I'm a total failure at the stock market, unfortunately! I already halved my self-created Bitcoin at the first all-time high (1200 US$) through my highly intelligent gambling, furthermore most Bitcoin and many Altcoins (Litecoin, Namecoin, Primecoin etc.) have been lost in various alleged exchange hacks and bankruptcies (hello Mt.Gox, Cryptsy, mcxnow and what all you bandits are called). I'm not a multi-trillionaire today, unfortunately, but I'm not exactly starving thanks to my writing and some leftover bitcoin crumbs.
A lot of Blockchain-Bullshit
An almost typical course of "new, innovative and mega-cool" coins is shown by Terra/LUNA (after the disaster, the old LUNA was renamed Terra/LUNC, the "new" LUNA is the (dead) rebirth of Do Kwon's coin - which probably nobody trusts anymore after the dubious crash and inglorious departure. [right the LUNC course, source: Huobi]
Time and again I have taken a look at new coins ("Altcoins") and blockchain techniques, but they have often and quickly turned out to be cheap knock-offs, pyramid schemes or scams. There are funny coins like the DogeCoin (DOGE), castles in the air coins for IoT devices (IOTA), an eierlegende Wollmilchsau (especially for developers) like Ethereum (ETH), pyramid schemes like Terra/LUNA (there we just have the crash) and of course by now almost another 20,000 pure rip-off coins (MAXcoin and consorts).
A coin that is different from others...
I once had the idea of developing an absolutely minimalist coin that would show beginners the function of a blockchain and the "Bitcoin" system. But the code alone for a simple blockchain and a miner based on Bitcoin is very complicated. A version that does without SHA hashes and private/public keys worked halfway, but was somehow programmed to miss the target. So I gave up.
And then came the Duinocoin by Robert Piotrowski (revox). The Duinocoin doesn't even try to replicate the technology of Bitcoin (as almost all altcoins do: Copy Bitcoin code, insert another name and another server IP, done!), but builds a completely new and own technology base. From the perspective of Bitcoin professionals, this may look ridiculous, but for learning and having fun, Robert's Duinocoin is simply genius! The whole system, from the miner to the server software, can be completely understood - with rudimentary programming knowledge.
Tip: You should download the very first version of the Duinocoin on Github.
And therefore also this website!
For this reason - and because I simply found it refreshing to let my Arduino UNO mine a cryptocurrency - I dug into the Duinocoin, wrote a MicroPython miner myself and ultimately also wrote this website and a Heise+ article.
The Duinocoin (DUCO) is ideal for anyone (young or old) who wants to get a taste of the world of cryptocurrencies, C, Python and JavaScript programming or microcontrollers.
In this sense: Have fun learning, mining and reading on this website!
