Albus (ALB)
in detail
For anyone who wants to know more. The short version is here: Simple version
The idea
The idea in one picture
Picture a thick book that lists every transfer. Every participant holds a copy.
Only someone who has first solved a hard puzzle may write new pages. Whoever writes the page receives Albus as a reward.
Because anyone can recompute the page, nobody has to trust anybody else.
Numbers
The numbers to remember
Reward per page
like an hourly wage
New page
roughly one tick per minute
Halving
every 1,050,000 blocks (about 2 years), like a cake that gets half as big each time
Upper limit
the cake has a fixed size
No pre-mine
a fair start, everyone begins at zero
Flow
How a transfer becomes truth
- The wallet signs the transfer. The signature is valid only on this network.
- The node checks the signature and the fee.
- The transfer waits in the mempool (the waiting room).
- A miner searches for the right number (nonce) for the next page.
- Every node recomputes the new page itself.
- If this chain wins, nodes switch to it. Otherwise it stays as a side branch.
Rules
The most important decisions
Heaviest chain wins
The taller wall does not count, but the one that took more work to build.
All or nothing
A chain switch is checked completely first. If one block is broken, everything stays as it was.
Replay protection
A cheque valid “only for this bank”. Testnet money is worthless on the main network.
Time cannot be faked
A new page must be later than the median of the last 11, and at most 2 minutes in the future.
The puzzle adapts
If a step is 30 minutes late, the puzzle becomes half as hard. Whole numbers only, so every machine computes the same.
Hash rule frozen
sha256(seed "|" address "|" nonceHex) Like a power socket: if the shape changes, no plug fits any more.
Miner
The miner for Windows
A background program with a tray icon uses the graphics card (CUDA) and the processor (SHA-NI/AVX2).
RTX 4070
measured on one machine
Smart in the background
Mines when the PC is idle. While you work it runs a medium mode with about 50% of the graphics card and 40% of the processor. During games or heat it slows down or stops.
The GPU hash is not trusted blindly
Reference values, a self-test at start, and every hit is recomputed on the PC.
Honest
What is deliberately not claimed
- It is a learning project. Nobody should store real value in it.
- Nobody else has checked its security.
- The worker is built and tested on one machine only (Windows 11, RTX 4070).
- Not yet checked: long runs, impact on games, running as a service.
- Solo mining: with little computing power you will practically never find a block. Whether a pool returns is open.
Included: a node in TypeScript, wallet and explorer in React, the mining worker, 27 tests, a testnet script with three nodes and a decisions.html with all decisions.