BRENDON LINDSEY: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Can you introduce who you are?
MINTCOIN: We are an international team composing people from Europe and North America, and we met in Bitcointalk for a different idea of a coin that we didn’t release. We have been actively discussing new ideas and came up with the idea of Mintcoin.
Can you tell us a little bit about how Mint came to be? Was it one person who had the idea and brought others on, or was it a group of like-minded individuals? Was there a specific point in the crazy last few months of coin launches that made you guys say “This is enough, let’s make our own.”?
Without getting into details, we feel concerned about global warming, and we believe every daily action we can take to avoid making things get worse is a good deed. After a night of brainstorming, the name Mint came naturally for what we wanted to do. So we created MintCoin in the thinking that there’s an energy-saving way to mine the coins. Initially we wanted to create a pure PoS coin, which distributes the coins based on interest, but then there’s a problem of initially distributing the coins in a fair way. The mining is a fair way to distribute the coin, that’s why we had the idea to create a mixed PoW/PoS coin which will be a pure PoW initially and then transit to a pure PoS coin after the initial coin distribution.
For those new to crypto currency or are unfamiliar with the term, can you explain what Proof of Stake (PoS) is? How does it differ from something like, say, Dogecoin.
PoS is the Proof of Stake, as opposed to Proof of Work. With Proof of work, you get new coins by doing certain work (mining) with expensive hardware. With Proof of stake, you get new coins by holding coins in your wallet (minting). No need for an expensive computer, you can do that with any hardware, even an old one, or on your smartphone, when we’ll release a dedicated wallet. Minting is like interests for the coins held. It is an energy saving way to generate coins.
Why do you think it’s important for coins to begin looking at a transition to PoS, instead of the traditional PoW?
As PoS block generation is the low intensity CPU mining, with a lot lower difficulty, it does not need intensity computing, thus it saves energy in the long run. We’re not dependent on an army of miners, like other coins. Only a few computers running can ensure that transactions are processed. And we will make sure some are constantly online for that.
One thing some people often repeat is that PoS coins won’t last, because they lose the network security a vast number of miners provides. Can you explain how the network will remain secure and thriving?
This is not true. Similar to PoW that’s subject to a 51% attack, the PoS will need to hold 51% coins in order to be able to attack the coin. But holding 51% and then attacking your own coin normally is not in your interests.
Do you anticipate people to keep mining once block rewards drop to 1? Why keep block rewards for mining going, if no one will point machines toward it given the low reward?
If no one will mine blocks at 1 coin per block, we will happily mine them. Though not much, if no one competing with you, you still can get a lot.
Even no one mines, it doesn’t matter. As the transactions will be ensured and confirmed by the PoS block generations. The coin network will still go on fine, and remember that we will run a few servers to ensure a minimal service at any time.
The PoS interest for the first year is listed as 20%. Does that mean every 20 days period the coins held in your wallet will generate 20% interest? Or is that over the course of the year?
No, 20% is yearly interest. That’s huge already! After 20 days, the corresponding interests will be proportional to the time spent. So, doing quick math, what you can expect in 20 days is 20/365 * 20 = about 1%.
For users just now hearing about Mintcoin, they might be dissuaded to start mining given a majority of the mined rewards are gone, and many are saying it feels like a pre-mine to them. Is there anything you can tell those users to convince them to start holding Mint? Or do you think that’s just going to always happen when a coin tries a non-traditional model?
Any coins will be favoring the early adopters. Like Bitcoin, if I started mining in 2011, I would be laughing at so low of a production rate today. Mintcoin is no different. It provides a mechanism to distribute the initial coins, the distribution process is fair. At least, we’ve done our best regarding that.
You guys have been getting a lot of involvement from the community, both in the forum, posting to exchanges, and running contests/giveaways on Reddit. If someone is new to Mint but wants to be involved and help out, what’s the best way for them to go about doing so? Is there a specific place they can go to share their enthusiasm and offer whatever services they can provide?
Of course, any help is welcome! We’ve got a tremendous support from the community. Really, it’s amazing to see so much good will to make MintCoin a success. And we sincerely want to thank everyone involved in this community, because it has been awesome. If you want to apply, contact one of our Community managers. We cover a large part of the planet already, but we would like to expand even more in Asia for example. And a lot is still to be done in various ways.
We’re now less than a month until Mint switches to PoS. What kind of steps is your team taking as a developer to make sure that the price remains stable, and doesn’t drop off once mining operations stop?
Once the mining process finish or near finish, we don’t think the coin price will drop. It will likely to increase as it becomes more difficult to get them. We are working on the long term potential for MintCoin, making it accepted in more shops and games. For example, we are working on a lobby website somehow similar to Kickstarter in order to help merchant acceptance.
Lastly, is there anything you’d like to tell the “Mintions” who are supporting the coin?
We are a multi-continental team, so we cover almost 24 hours pretty well. We will support MintCoin and release new releases with bug fixes and new checkpoints to make the coin better for the community. We are also working on a way to ease the process of minting, called AutoMint. Basically, a program that launches your wallet automatically and unlocks it for a determined time without having to type in your passphrase everytime. We have a lot of creative ways up our sleeves to promote MintCoin, but it’s too early yet to talk about them.
I’d like to thank the MintCoin team for taking the time to chat with us. You can learn more about Mint at its official site, or on the BitcoinTalk thread.
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