Information about Karbo

Information and Specification

Specification

Specification

  • Ticker: KRB
  • Symbol: Ҝ – Ka with vertical stroke, it is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Its form is derived from the Cyrillic letter Ka (К к) by the addition of a stroke through the short horizontal bar in the centre of the letter.
  • Proof-of-work algorithm: CryptoNight
  • Block time: 240 seconds
  • Difficulty: retarget each block
  • Block reward: slight decrease every block according to formula:
    BaseReward = (MSupply - A)/218
    where MSupply is the number of atomic units and 'A' is amount of already generated coins
  • Divisible up to: 1012 atomic units (up to 12 decimal places)
  • Emission: infinite, initial supply – 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 atomic units, or 10 million krb.
  • Tail emission: ~2% of initial supply per year, minimal block reward: 1 krb.

Live stats

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Emission chart

What is Karbo?

The goal of Karbo project is to create anonymous algorithmic stablecoin – decentralized cryptocurrency with low price volatility by using new to world of cryptocurrency techniques of regulating coin supply and its market price.

Key principle of CryptoNote is adaptive parameters. Karbo already has adaptive block size limit and difficulty. In addition to it Karbo will implement adaptive emission, minimal transaction fee and monetary deposit interest rate to achieve this goal.

These changes are based on Vitalik Buterin [2] and Scott Roberts [1] idea that coin price can be determined by difficulty. Hence it can be regulated by adapting above parameters.

Adaptive emission

As described by Scott Roberts (Zawy), one of the Karbo whitepaper authors, all variables for smoothing out volatility must be obtained not from third-party source, but from blockchain itself to be fully decentralized. It is possible and will be first implemented in Karbo:

  • “difficulty is exactly proportional to network hashrate, and network hashrate is closely proportional to coin price” (Zawy [1])
  • “difficulty is a function of both price and Moore’s law” (Buterin [2])

    • Presented whitepaper describes how price can be substituted with difficulty in equations (it’s not that simple, but will use this example for clarity sake) to calculate parameters for price stabilization.

    If difficulty (price) grows at the rate higher than Moore’s Law Karbo supply (mining rate) will slightly increase to reflect increase in mining efforts (demand). If difficulty (price) falls we decrease next block reward according to equation, making Karbo more scarce and thus creating deficit required for price stabilisation.
    Dynamic minimum fees

    Minimum transaction fees should be adaptive instead of being hardcoded as flat rate. This would prevent fees from skyrocketing if price grows (even for low volatility coin) and also prevent hard forks every time fees needed to be adjusted manually by devs.

    Premise for dynamic fees is the same as for less volatility in Karbo. Fees can adapt to price change without referring to outside source, using only difficulty and some other variables to calculate new value that balances itself even if price is changing.

    Deposits on blockchain

    Deposits in Karbo is another mechanism to smooth out volatility in price. Deposit interest rate will adjust itself according to the coin price.

    When difficulty (price) is dropping deposit interest rate will increase to stimulate deposits and therefore create deficit of coins which will lead to price support; and vice versa — lower deposit interest rate when difficulty (price) is raising.

    The maximum interest rate is proposed at level of 1,5%. Inflation levels of 1-2% per year are generally considered acceptable in economics.

    PoW/PoS hybrid and Masternodes

    We identified a problem in current state of PoW — the lack of security ensured by stake in equipment [3] and are going to implement the solution: add to PoW, what has become missing — a stake, combining PoS and PoW as a better alternative in PoW with Stake.

    Adding PoW with Stake and Masternodes doesn’t eradicate all problems, but helps to prevent: double spends, ’jump’ pools, centralisation of mining, erratic block times, transaction capacity limitation, stalled blockchain.

    In order to run a masternode, a node must prove it holds a collateral of a dynamically selected minimal amount of KRB. The reward and transaction fees will be divided between POW and POS participants.

    In summary

    New Karbo Whitepaper (34 pages) describes several innovative mechanisms to smooth out such a negative characteristic of decentralized coins as volatility. Being a stable coin doesn’t mean Karbo can’t rise in price. Whitepaper only describes how to prevent big swings in price so Karbo can become true decentralized medium of exchange and can be used normally as decentralized stablecoin in volatile price environment. With decentralized stablecoin participants of exchange can be less worried to lose buying power of their coins while exchange is processed.

    [1] “Using difficulty to get constant-value dev fees”, Scott Roberts

    [2] “The Search for a Stable Cryptocurrency”, Vitalik Buterin

    [3] https://twitter.com/zawy3/status/1082199522812612608, Scott Roberts

    Our misson

    To become "Fourth karbovanets" – People's Digital Exchange Medium

    The name "Karbo" is derived from Ukrainian word "karbovanets", that comes from an ancient way of recording settlements or debts by marking wooden stick called "tally stick" or "tally" with a system of notches that was very popular in the Mediaeval Europe from Antiquity up to the first decades of XX century. The stick would be split in half, down its length from one end to the other. The debtor would retain half, called the "foil". The creditor would retain the other half, called the "stock". Because wooden stick has natural and distinctive irregularities, the two halves would match only each other providing simple and effective protection against forgery. The way medieval tally sticks system worked resembles how blockchain works. Hence comes the name "karbovanets" and its shortened version "Karbo".

    The "karbovanets" has been a distinct unit of currency in Ukraine during three separate periods in its history. Nowadays it is obsolete and replaced by Ukrainian Hryvnia.

    "Karbovanets" therefore is a very well-known word, with very strong associations with "money" not only in Ukraine but also in Russia and other neighboring countries. It sounds familiar to people, which makes it more easy to adopt.

    It was resurrected in the digital form of cryptocurrency as people’s unofficial, independent exchange medium.

    Karbo is based on principles of the Austrian school of economics which emphasizes the spontaneous organizing power of the price mechanism and holds that the complexity of subjective human choices makes mathematical modeling of the evolving market practically impossible. Its scholars eschew what they consider "naïve" and pointless mathematical modeling of the economy, considering much of mainstream economics a form of economic charlatanism. Its proponents tend to emphasize the organic, subjective and evolving nature of market dynamics, advocating the strong protection of private property rights and the strict enforcement of voluntary contractual agreements between economic agents as the best way of facilitating economic exchange, and generally advocate a laissez-faire approach to the economy, arguing that the smallest imposition of coercive force (especially government-imposed force) on commercial transactions is the most effective way to secure long-run economic stability and well-being.

    In particular, they voice serious concerns about the distorting and damaging effects of government involvement in commerce, arguing that few government regulations in this area are necessary or desirable and often trigger a "ratchet effect" as problems associated with existing regulations are often blamed on the free market, thereby justifying further damaging, coercive incursions into the market. They are particularly critical of long-standing governmental incursions into the area of private money production, advocating instead the immediate abolition of all coercive legal tender laws and the return to full reserve - or free - banking, where the financial system is decentralized and not dominated or controlled by coercive monopoly government or a monopoly central bank.

    One of the most known scholars, Noble Prize laureate, economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek it it's book The Denationalization of Money states that instead of a national government issuing a specific currency, use of which is imposed on all members of its economy by force in the form of legal tender laws, private businesses should be allowed to issue their own forms of money, deciding how to do so on their own. Hayek advocates a system of private currency in which financial institutions create currencies that compete for acceptance.

    Karbo is proposed as one of such free exchange medium – egalitarian, decentralized system with enhanced privacy, where value of its units is based solely on supply and demand in the market, emission depends on constant mathematical algorithm, where everyone can participate in emissions of karbos, receiving them as a reward for the provided computing resources of their regular PC to support the network. For mining expensive specialized equipment (ASIC) is not required.

    Fungibility and privacy of Karbo

    Anonymity is implemented by ring signatures to hide the sender and one-time addresses that are hiding the recipient.
    Privacy

    Transactions in Karbo are untraceable and unlinkable. Karbo provides complete anonymity and privacy using cryptographic technology ring signatures. All transactions signed on behalf of a group so that it is impossible to determine who exactly from the group signed the transaction and, accordingly, one can not say with certainty who carried out the payment. The more participants in the group, the more confidential operation is. In addition, the transactions cannot be associated, – even if outgoing transactions are untraceable, everyone may still be able to see the transactions you have received. However, by using a variation of the Diffie-Hellman exchange protocol, a receiver has multiple unique one-time addresses derived from his single public key. After funds are sent to these addresses they can only be redeemed by the receiver and it would be impossible to cross-link these transactions.

    Fungibility

    Unique one-time addresses and ring signatures of transactions are providing resistance to blockchain analysis. Every transaction only increases entropy and creates additional obstacles for those who wish to dig into financial operations with Karbos.

    Resistance to the analysis, in turn, provides a very important characteristic inherent in real money, – fungibility. Fungibility of money means that all units of one denomination have the same purchasing power.

    Fungibility is the key difference and advantage over Bitcoin. All the karbos are interchangeable and uniform, unlike bitcoins. It is because in Bitcoin everyone can at any time view all transactions on the accounts of any and all participants and see how many Bitcoins is at the balance of an address. This can lead to censorship of the assets of people. Using Karbo you have enhanced privacy, independence, and freedom as if you used cash.

    Roadmap

    • SSL Support

      ETA Q1 2019

      SSL (HTTPS) support for nodes and eventually for wallets. In production.

    • PoW change

      ETA 2019

      The change of mining PoW algo. Preliminary candidates: Argon2 (testnet ongoing), Cuckoo Cycle.

    • PoW with Stake

      ETA 2019

      Combine PoW and PoS into a simple PoW/PoS hybrid called "PoW with Stake" or "Membership PoW" (mPOW). Read an article...

    • Adaptive emission

      ETA 2019

      The change of flat tail emission to dynamic, satisfying demand estimated via difficulty. More info in Whitepaper...

    • Deposits on blockchain

      ETA 2019

      Deposits on blockchain with variable algorithmic rate depending on difficulty and value insurance for long term deposits. More info in Whitepaper...

    • Masternodes

      ETA 2019

      Decision making Masternodes that create and vote for checkpoints and resolve network splits using gossip protocol.

    • Dandelion

      ETA 2019

      Privacy improvement when sending transactions.

    • Client-side Web-wallet

      01.2019

      Released Cliend-Side Open Source Web-wallet.

    • Prevent transaction cancellation in 51%-attack

      9.12.2018

      Update with protection against 51% attacks.

    • Proof of Funds

      Q4 2018

      Instead of modifying the viewkey to see outgoing transactions for tracking wallets we implemented the Proof of Funds that allows to prove the possession of specified amount while retaining privacy.

    • Proof of Payment

      Q3 2018

      Possibility to issue proof of payment or transaction's secret key to prove payment to destination address.

    • Karbo Payment Gateway with decentralized API

      22.09.2018

      Released karbo-simple-pay — a simple POS for receiving payments in Karbo that works via decentralized API of any Karbo node.

    • Stable fee

      Q2 2018

      Transactions minimum fee stable in fiat equivalent regardless of coin price (will stay on the same level if the coin price surges up). It will not be a fixed amount in KRB. It means stable low fee even in case of rapid value growth of the coin.

    • Untraceability enchancement

      Q2 2018

      Updating the output selection algorithm (triangular distribution) and other steps towards privacy enhancement.

    • Improvement of the Difficulty algorithm

      Q1 2018

      Newest version of Zawy Difficulty algorithm. This is the improvement of v1 algorithm that was discussed at our Github repository.

    • Web-wallet

      13.02.2018

      First Web-wallet karbo.me is live.

    • Lite wallet

      Q1 2018

      Lite Desktop Wallet that will work via remote nodes is planned with emphasis on ease of use for non-tech-savvy users.

    • Promotion campaign

      Q4 2017

      Promotion campaign to inform and promote Karbo in Ukraine and worldwide.

    • Rebranding & new website

      Q4 2017

      New website and transition to the name Karbo to be more friendly to the worldwide auditory.

    • Mobile Wallet

      13.02.2018

      The light mobile wallet that works via remote nodes and stores private keys and wallets on the device. Android version released. Ongoing development of improvements and new features.

    • Mnemonic seed in wallets

      12.10.2017

      Wallet update released with support of mnemonic phrase that allows to restore wallet.

    • Payment Gateway, E-Commerce plugins

      02.04.2017

      Free Payment Gateway karbo.club with e-commerce plugins arrived.

    • KRB/UAH exchange

      02.04.2017

      Listed on Ukrainian exchange BTC Trade UA.

    • Security update

      10.04.2016, 12:00 PM UTC

      Security update to address Disclosure of a Major Bug in CryptoNote Based Currencies wich was published later at 2017-05-17 00:00:00 +0200 by Monero developers. By the time of the disclosure, vulnarability was already fixed thanks to slb from Forknote and Monero team.

      Network ID was changed with this update to get rid of errors from foreign network spam and to ensure everyone is updated.

    • OpenAlias & Tracking wallets

      02.04.2017

      Introducing OpenAlias support that is another step towards usability and ease of use.
      Also released in wallet:

      • Tracking wallets
      • 'Transactions' tab overhaul
      • 'Contacts' tab overhaul
      • 'Mining' tab overhaul
      • Solo mining
      • Starting transition to Karbo branding
      • Various amendmends, usability improvements and fixes

    • Mobile phone top up service

      31.12.2016

      First real-world usage of krb! Here you can top up your mobile phone paying with krb.

    • URI support for wallets

      23.12.2016

      Introducing karbowanec: URI scheme support that is important usability improvement which allows to request and make payments conveniently.

    • Hardfork

      22.12.2016

      Hardfork at height 60001. This hardfork was made to withstand incursions of big miners who performed selfish mining, abusing slow reacting default CryptoNote difficulty algorithm by applying massive hashrate (in comparison to the average network hashrate) to quickly mine a range of blocks before difficulty was slowly starting to react and raise. Then they were going away leaving honest miners to struggle with too high difficulty to push through next blocks. This caused long gaps between blocks and unacceptable delays in transactions confirmations. To resolve this issue new Zawy difficulty algorithm v.1 was adopted as described here with our modifications.

    • Major update, scheduled hardfork

      19.10.2016

      • transition to Bytecoin 1.0.11 core
      • new difficulty algorithm
      • tail emission
      • restricted RPC (for masternodes)
      • fee for masternodes

    • Livecoin.net exchange listing

      07.10.2016

      Listed at Livecoin.net

    • Mac OS Wallet

      28.09.2016

      Mac OS GUI wallet and Command-line suite released

    • Cyrillic support in wallets

      28.08.2016

      Only Karbo wallets have Cyrillic support of filenames and paths in its wallets among CryptoNote coins. This is a quite important fix because lack of non-latin letters support can lead to the loss of the wallets and funds.

    • First exchange listing

      05.07.2016

      Listed at Cryptopia exchange

    • Forknote support

      27.06.2016

      Karbowanec was added to Democats pool:

    • First faucet

      22.06.2016

      First official faucet was launched

    • Karbowanec Blockchain Explorer

      07.06.2016

      New standalone block explorer: http://explorer.karbowanec.com/

      Open sourced and used by multiple CryptoNote cryptocurrencies.

    • Launch

      30.05.2016, 11:05:34