Spock & CoinEx AMA Recap

CoinEx
5 min readSep 23, 2019

Spock Network is a decentralized storage platform. In the early stage, Spock Network mainly stores Proof of Capacity (POC) consensus data to effectively utilize the most suitable decentralization technology to encourage miners providing hard disk space. Recently, Spock has been growing rapidly and getting listed on four famous exchanges including CoinEx. On Sept. 19, CoinEx will launch Accelerator for Spock, allowing users to subscribe SPOK with 0.0075 USD.

In order to help our users to dig more about Spock, we have invited the open source code contributor of Spock, Titian Xie, to throw an AMA among our community. Below is the recap of the AMA.

Q1: How will Spock solve the existing problems in blockchain?

A: Spock is a decentralized storage application network. Judged from the current development of blockchain technology, PoC is the only choice for a decentralized incentive mechanism in a distributed network composed of a large amount of hard disk space and bandwidth. On one hand, this solves the problem of excessive power consumption in the current mining industry, and on the other hand, it solves the problem of fair competition among a large number of existing hard-disk mining machines. At the same time, on that basis, Spock also supports Solidity smart contracts, which makes the entire ecosystem more prosperous.

Q2: Could you please say something about the team?

A: The core members of our team are all early users on Bitcointalk forum and developers of Burst. They are very familiar with the technology development trend and the details of the bottom of the blockchain technology. Even I with such a R&D background could only throw myself down at their feet in admiration. Their ideals are also very pure, that is, to make Spock a community coin like Bitcoin and Litecoin.

Q3: Community building has just started. What will you do to build the social media that remain active and continuously focus on Spock?

A: Spock is a decentralized application platform. The community also relies on spontaneous word of mouth. Since Spock was put on the test net and later on the main net, many miners and holders have spontaneously joined in to become owners, and maintained and promoted the community. The upcoming Solidity smart contracts can be carried out by polling among the holders, and members of the community will vote through the smart contract to determine the project function expansion and community governance.

Q4: Spock is a decentralized storage application platform, so what advantages does it have compared with the traditional centralized storage platform?

A: Traditional centralized storage platforms generally adopt cloud storage. Most of the data is stored on a few cloud platforms, which leads to serious centralization problems arising from data accumulation. There are also problems including higher cost, slower transfer rate, and poorer data security. The decentralized storage application platform encrypts and distributes data through a distributed network, meaning that no party, other than the data holder, could get access to the data, thus ensuring security. And one of the key issues is that the open decentralized platform can do better in protecting private data. As with the case of the assets of the digital assets of Huobi, the private key represents the ownership of the assets, and, on the decentralized storage platform, it can represent the disposition and access rights of the data.

Q5: Spock adopts the consensus mechanism of PoC. What advantages and disadvantages does PoC have compared with PoW and PoS?

A: In terms of resource usage, PoC is just between PoW and PoS, unlike PoW which consumes a lot of power, or PoS that almost costs nothing. Besides, since the core mechanism of PoC is similar to storing the “hashrate” of PoW on the hard disk, it also makes it possible for the mining equipment to mine in different projects at the same time, provided that several different projects use the same data structure.

Q6: We noticed that Spock also introduced the PoS mechanism on the basis of PoC. What is the consideration?

A: With the POS mechanism added in SPOCK, when a miner package a block, if its address balance satisfies the condition, he or she get get all the proceeds; otherwise, the proceeds will be reduced, and those that fail to meet the conditions will be destroyed. So in my opinion, developers introduce POS mechanisms to create a more equitable and sustainable ecosystem.

Q7: What will the team do to attract more developers to join the Spock ecosystem?

A: Spock is the first public link that supports the Solidity Smart Contract and has been put on the main net. It allows developers to port the DApp on the Ethernet to the network at a very low cost, while developers can design the mining and pledge mechanisms for the tokens of PoC distributed on this network.

Q8: What is the form of Spock mining? What are the conditions for miner application?

A: In SPOCK, mining is carried out through the storage device. First, you write the result of the hash calculation to the device, and reduce the huge hash calculation required in PoW algorithm by retrieving the data in the hard disk. Only a small amount of hash calculation will be required in execution stage. You can mine as long as you have storage equipment and meet the hashrate conditions. Ordinary miners just need an ordinary computer with a hard disk and access to the internet, then they need to go through hard drive mapping, download the wallet, install nodes and so on before mining.

Q9: I am a Windows phone user. How do I download a SPOK wallet?

A: At present there is only the Android version. Versions of other platforms are subject to the official arrangement.

Q10: Miners don’t know how much hashrate they have or how much they could pledge.

A: Check http://www.spockpool.com. There is a calculator to check the amount of pledges required for the time being.

Q11: Does the mining cost anything or a certain amount of SPOK tokens?

A: Now we have a market for cooperative mining. Miners can borrow tokens from owners for mortgage.

Q12: Is there a detailed tutorial for mining?

A:https://www.spockchain.org/download/SpockChain%20Mining%20Tutorial%20V1.3.2.pdf

Q13: What are the advantages compared with Lambda or such? The larger the hard disk, the higher the hashrate?

A: My suggestion is to experience the mining process on both official sites so you may understand the differences between them.

Q14: Can we use the Raspberry Pi to mine at home?

A: Yes, theoretically. Yet the weak computing power of Raspberry Pi itself may affect efficiency in hard drive mapping.

This is the end of the sharing. See you next time!

If you have any suggestions, please submit a Ticket here: https://support.coinex.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

--

--