Carboncoin Ethereum (CCE)

What it is, what it does, how you get it

The following article serves as a position paper for the CCE token, sitting as it does between the current and future Carboncoin protocols, as well as including some parts of the forthcoming technical whitepaper on the new system.

What is CCE?

In short, CCE is Carboncoin (on the) Ethereum network. It exists to give people the opportunity to gain exposure to the new Carboncoin network, bringing the project in line with the very best technology applicable to our use case: creating an indefinite and perpetual source of funds for supporting nature in mitigating climate change, or put another way: making money flow to people who do good things for the planet.

Having originally stated that we would be using the forthcoming EOS codestack for development here on Medium in “The Carboncoin Story” as far back as August last year, we had to tread water for a bit just to make sure that their code repository was going to attract the developers we knew it would need to achieve its ambitious plans. Their ICO has been so successful however that they have been able to hire a small army of developers, so IT IS ON.

Building on the EOS codestack,with our own network infrastructure will leave us with a transaction capacity worthy of Visa/Mastercard and a custom environmental reward mechanism which might just have a shot at bumping the current Carbon Credits infrastructure with something far more effective.

We announced our intentions to interact with Carbon Credits which met our environmental criteria on Bitcointalk back at the start of June 2016, as with all our ideas this has now evolved somewhat — just in time to leapfrog the charming folk who decided to use the idea and the rhetoric on their own jolly similar yet strangely incomplete sounding ventures… We’re quite used to it at this point, mind.

The EOS project is a further iteration by Dan Larimer and co. of work greatly increasing the speed and all round efficiency of decentralised ledgers, demonstrated in the Steem currency, circulated by the Steemit social network. The technology enables transaction flow great enough that it has a genuine shot at the mainstream.

Ethereum moved blockchain forward by allowing not just raw data transfer in the decentralised system, but also computational tasks in the decentralised computation space. It is well known that both Bitcoin and Ethereum operate on a Proof of Work mechanism for distribution of computation power and sharing out of the network base currency. What is less widely touted is that all the computation power you read about consuming the same amount of electricity as entire countries, is to support the meaningful computation of what is, however decentralised, basically a single core CPU.

Larimer’s innovation was to effectively turn this decentralised single core CPU into a decentralised CPU with multiple cores. The natural next step in innovation, having applied this technology to numeric transfers, was to apply the greatly enhanced decentralised computation to the more general computing tasks made available by Ethereum and subsequent smart contract platforms. The result: EOS.io

The multi-core processing feature responsible for the massive theoretical transaction capacity, and massive theoretical computation power, he called “Graphene” — sounds like something Carboncoin might find itself at home on, don’t you think?

Original Carboncoin — same problems, different approach

It remains to mention here that the single-core cpu at the core of these gargantuan computation networks, has been something that we at Carboncoin have been aware of since the very start of the project. While going temporarily down the rabbit hole of approximating the energy consumption of the early cryptocurrencies, before concluding it was just too f-ing big and something needed to be done about it, we noticed that even Bitcoin, the largest of the SHA-256 coins, and Litecoin the largest of the Scrypt coins, were actually not processing very much meaningful data at all — in Bitcoin’s case 1MB every 10 minutes or so. Not simply a single core CPU, it’s actually quite a primitive one.

Carboncoin’s blocktime of 100 seconds divides the transaction waiting time by 6, while giving us 6 times the transaction capacity — these numbers make Carboncoin actually usable in physical payment situations ((we can all make nice with a stranger for 3 minutes [2 CARBON confirmations] bit trickier to do that for 20 minutes [2 Bitcoin confirmations] particularly when you’ve got to pick up the kids from school etc).

Now, we had also been noticing a feature in the PoW protocol called “difficulty” — this variable adjusted the rate at which new blocks (packages of transaction data with a coin reward attached to them) were released so as to keep the release rate of coins approximately constant over time. The big idea behind the energy efficiency of original Carboncoin’s implementation of our PoW blockchain, came from the realisation that this difficulty adjustment also adjusted itself downwards. With the right constants specified at genesis (the first block created), a couple of extra layers of randomness, and a steady reduction of computation power over time, we saw that it would be possible to get a system with the same (or slightly improved) user features as the major cryptocurrencies to run on an amount of energy not altogether that far removed from the amount it would take to complete the useful computation alone: that is to say watts, not Gigawatts.

The direction our development took was given to us by the resolution of the problems encountered when you run a blockchain on a small amount of computation power. The first job was insulating ourselves from 51% attacks (where someone comes along and uses a more powerful computer than your whole network on your network, effectively giving themselves “consensus”, thereby taking all of the software clients onto their version, potentially rewriting the blockchain, reversing transactions at will, double-spending — basically all sorts of very undesireable mischief.

Solving this problem, not surprisingly, took us some time. While we were operating on the low computer power, before we had launched this feature, we really couldn’t do much, having as we did the knowledge that any teenager with a half decent computer and a smattering of programming knowledge could have caused us more problems than we had the resources to fix. So we had no choice but to stay “under the radar”, distributing coins as much and as fairly as possible. The trolls came, accused scams — we couldn’t defend what we were doing because they would have just done exactly what we were trying to prevent.

What we wanted to do was absolutely shout from the rooftops, get everyone to stop the global hairdryer that might as well be the runaway greenhouse effect, and instead focus on trying to do something to make us more likely to survive on the planet for more time, instead of less. A small, slow-growing network that kept everyone’s holdings safe and secure will always be far preferable to a massive over hyped experiment that breaks and takes everyone’s money with it, without even having the decency to go “POOF”.

Our secured global network running on a few light-bulbs worth of energy still had one problem — indeed it says nothing good about the outgoing paradigm that it was even a problem — people could point computation power at our network (for ZERO financial reward, i.e. entirely an outgoing cost of energy usage) thereby increasing the “difficulty”and subsequently when switched off would result in our network slowing down until the difficulty re-adjusted. It wasn’t a huge concern as no ones coins were in any way threatened by this activity, nevertheless it wasted a lot of time, and inconvenienced a lot of people. It wasn’t until several years into the project that we found a way to technologically curtail the effects of this behaviour on our users.

What does CCE do?

The CCE token contract was successfully deployed on the Ethereum network on the 17th November 2017.

The contract is a no-frills ERC-20 token of fixed supply, created at inception. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible to avoid any unnecessary vulnerabilities created by non standard contract features. Security has always been at the forefront of our development goals.

One CCE token represents 100 Carboncoin much as a £10 note represents ten pound coins. It was created for the purpose of giving the members of the Carboncoin network a way of joining the forthcoming Carboncoin protocol — in accordance with that objective it is distinct from the fiat comparison above in that it is only intended to be forward convertable.

To extend the metaphor to death: say you knew that the pound coin was going to be converted to a different pound coin, but you were going sailing across the Atlantic in a dinghy — leaving before the new coin was to be released only to return after the deadline for exchanging the old coins — so you empty out your coin jar and go and buy yourself some tenners with your pounds, to change back when you return.
Note: In the example sailing safely across the Atlantic in a dinghy is thought to be of comparable difficulty/duration to developing a properly secure transaction protocol on a new codestack.
If you read “The Beaten Path” you might reflect that this comparable duration has not accounted for inclement (or tempestuous) weather conditions — but then you know what they say about smooth seas…

The forthcoming Carboncoin protocol will have the same 16 Billion total circulation as the original does.

Due to our plans to begin developing services in tandem to the development of the new core (multi-core?) and because it works so effectively, we decided that it was in the interests of the network to maintain equal exposure to both old and new coins.

The services we have designed to increase the size of the user-base and the frequency with which the system is used, it is felt, justifies keeping hold of the original Carboncoin — given that with even a relatively small amount of funds raised, in the grand scheme of crypto, these services would be able to be completed and launched on the existing network very quickly.

With this in mind we created CCE with a total circulation of 80M tokens, pertaining to half of the total circulation of Carboncoin, and allowed holders to swap a maximum of half of their holdings onto the placeholder for the new network.

Some compliance notes on Carboncoin Ethereum
We made it very clear that CCE would only be redeemable for the equivalent CARBON on the new protocol, and that we would not be entering into partnership with any exchanges — our express intention being that the CCE token would not be traded via any third party. As such it costs Ether to transfer CCE and the CCE supplied was supplied without any accompanying Ether.

There is no balance in the contract so without independent activity against our guidance, and non-standard technical expertise on the part of the holder (again acting against our guidance), there is and will be no market for CCE.

The route of entry to CCE to date has only been Carboncoin, a little changed fork of Bitcoin with a truly anonymous genesis-creator (not known to any of the current team). In the near future only specific other cryptocurrencies selected independently of any fiscal valuation, derivative or otherwise, and in accordance with a few other characteristics we are keeping proprietary for now, will be swappable for CCE, with each selected network only permitted for a short period of time.
Our intention has been and will continue to be to go some way beyond what is considered Due Diligence in the space.

Our efforts to adhere to the changing regulatory landscape as much as foreseeably possible, as announced in “The Beaten Path”, led us to abandon our plan to use smart contracts for the fundraising and subsequent apportioning of the remaining half of the total circulation (recall CCE total only 80M). As such we have elected to allow the other half of the existing Carboncoin to be redeemable on the new network, but subject to a rate of 2:1. The rate decision was taken for two reasons, firstly to reward those who participated in the CARBON-CCE swap and secondly to allow us the flexibility in the fine tuning of the new protocol to reward certain useful action taken by different participants/operatives, possibly analogous to block reward (but not rewarding energy consumption obviously!). 25% of the total circulation (2:1 applied to the non-CCE half) will be ample for us to build-in such reward mechanisms and have them last for long enough for the system to self-sustain. Any surplus, as ever, will go straight to the environmental initiative.

Sounds about right! How do I get involved?

As announced in the recent article “The Road Ahead”, having held the Carboncoin-to-CCE swap-out for over 2 months ending in late January, more than enough time for the active members of the community to participate, we were left with some 62% of the CCE unallocated.

Starting at 8pm GMT this coming Sunday 17th June, we will be reopening the CCE swap-out process but this time we will be doing it on a carefully selected basket of other cryptocurrencies, one at a time, for one week at a time, for 10 weeks, extending to no more than 12 in the event there are still some unallocated.

Last time when we did the swap, the process was very kindly written up by Urban Cohort, it went along the lines of

• Get some Carboncoin (with instructions on using the exchange we are on)
• Transfer the coins from the exchange to a wallet (with instructions on how to do that)
• Get in touch with the team (with instructions on how to do that)
• Give them your public Carboncoin address so that they can verify your holdings
• Transfer up to but not more than half of them to an address they will give you
• Sign up to myetherwallet.com to get an Ethereum address (don’t lose the file or forget your password)
• Send Ethereum address
• Receive CCE

Now this time, given we are going to be choosing one from a hatfull of handpicked currencies to swap each week, and that both the currencies and the exchanges they are on are in no way affiliated to the project, we are not going to require a demonstration of total holdings and you are free to swap-out as many as you like.

Each week the maximum number of CCE allocated will not exceed 6.2M — a tenth of the unallocated total. These will be allocated on a first come, first served basis until the week’s total has been allocated.

Each Sunday at 8pm GMT the week’s chosen coin will drawn and announced, along with the swap-out proportion in accordance with the equation

80 000 000 = T/k

where T is the total circulation of the chosen coin and k is an integer determined by our proprietary scoring system; 80M being the total circulation of CCE. In some cases we may need to specify a minimum trade size, and if this is the case then this will be included in this initial announcement. The announcement will appear first on the Carboncointalk forum and this is also to be the primary means of communicating with our swap administrators.

You will then have until Tuesday morning at 8am GMT to accumulate the coins you wish to swap-out (and of course until there are no more CCE for the week). No actual swaps will be conducted until then.

As soon as you have your desired total you can use the appointment booking service linked from the appropriately titled page on the Carboncointalk forum. When booking a swap appointment please do not forget to specify the exact total number of coins you wish to swap, these will then be allocated to you. The total number of CCE remaining in any given week’s allocation will be updated in real time, again on the forum. It’s safe to say joining Carboncointalk isn’t a bad idea if you are intent on supporting the project, there are also participation-related incentives there for everyone.

So, all you have to do is book yourself an appointment stating your total, then turn up to your appointment at your chosen time and the rest will be straightforward.

If you are reading this as someone who was put off by the various pitfalls apparent in the cryptocurrency space, energy consumption, general naughtiness, but have got this far down this article (well done), and would like to support us in this swap-out initiative but have no idea where to start, please head over to Carboncointalk and tell us what you want to do or even hit us up on our facebook or twitter do like/follow there anyway if the mood takes you.

The only other thing to note is that due to our coin selection being based on criteria deliberately unrelated to any fiscal value, implied or otherwise, and particularly considering the compatible coins will be drawn from a hat on the day of release, in some cases it may be occasionally cheaper to get the same number of future Carboncoin by buying original Carboncoin to swap for new ones even at the 2:1 old:new ratio. It’s probably worth bearing in mind anyway.

Given what happened to the price of Carboncoin in the Carboncoin-CCE swap-out — there were some who bought-to-swap (which we absolutely never encouraged them to do) right at our first proper peak of $39M! — even buying the 2s offer on yobit right now (timestamp)and including the ratio it’s about a tenth of what it was back then when we had to try to cool it down, as it began to dwarf the intended hard target of our ICO! That was when the old network had no representation on the new network and was going to continue alongside the new one indefinitely.

Basically: us being a scam, having cut and run, or otherwise given up is priced in to our market, so don’t tell anyone and please try not to get too excited!

I jest, but who knows what is going to happen in the next 10 weeks — the market, and the hat, will decide.

In conclusion:

You can get CCE with a different altcoin, announced 8pm GMT on Sundays, from Tuesday at 8am GMT until either the week’s allocation runs out, or the next coin is announced at the same time the following week, for the next 10 weeks, by booking an appointment following a link from our forum.

We made the existing secure Carboncoin network happen with virtually no funding: we got a working, energy efficient alternative to Bitcoin with greater transaction capacity and the means, if adopted, to plant hundreds of millions of trees. We fairly distributed it, mainly in the environmental demographic, many of whom at the time had zero experience, understanding or sometimes even awareness of blockchain technology. Capping everyone’s holdings-purchases at 2% of circulation we ensured that no one individual would benefit disproportionately from the success of the project. Remember: we did not initiate the blockchain in 2014, never had any access to any premine or created any of the current Carboncoins out of magical thin air to sell for pure profit— all coins in the community have been mined or purchased, oh and the very occasional prize awarded. We’re here because we think it could be good, no more, no less.

That said, it is with no small amount of frustration that I must report that the Carboncoin network itself, due to its reliance on the appreciation of coins in the central wallet for funding has been thus far unable to get the environmental project off the ground, that being the primary motivation for the entire exercise. We’ve planted lots of trees ourselves though, just because we do that sort of thing. We want to put that right immediately and keep it that way. The Carboncoin Foundation is mandated to use 50% of incoming funds on tech/payments and 50% on ecology/conservation. The tech is an independent global payment platform, the ecology starts with a biodiverse forestry test-bed which will become our flagship forest, and then with the launch of the new protocol our environmental initiative gets very decentralised, very big and very effective, very quickly.

This process, not only carrying forward the existing network, will see further and wider distribution of our idea. The subsequent development might just finish off changing the paradigm.

I leave you with this final thought:

If our 16 Billion coins, made it to a total market capitalisation of $39M at the start of 2018, having been timestamped with a market cap of just $11 000 in May of 2014, and the current network was comprehensively security tested at the highs and held up to all attacks; all of this while never having enough capital to get and staff an office, for example, and having spent no money on marketing — to list a mere fraction of our headwinds…

…well, what do you suppose we could do with a fully staffed development team? A fully staffed business development operation? The resources to publicly kick start the forestry project? The forestry project that is currently so well thought through and specified that it expands on its own paying for itself, with the currency only accelerating the process.

Exponential growth in coverage of biodiverse forest (on land not being used for anything else). Regenerating degraded soil, cleaning watercourses, providing habitats for wildlife, a source of food for anyone, and as much as possible work, food, shelter and income for those living in poverty. Well, it probably wont hurt our future selves. Ah yes then there’s of course the Carbon Dioxide…

Thank you for reading.