FACT0RN

A blockchain replacing hashing as Proof of Work (PoW) by integer factorization. A fork from bitcoin V22.0.

The FACT0RN blockchain seeks to allow its user to pay FACT coins to place integers in a deadpool for factorization.

The whitepaper will be published in May, 2022.

Installation

Binaries are provided for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. To build from source follow these steps:

Depends build

From the repository root folder run the following:

make -C depends NO_QT=1                                && \
./autogen.sh                                           && \
./configure --prefix=`pwd`/depends/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu && \ 
make

Binaries

You can grab the binaries from the releases page, untar them and run them as-is.

Tor

To run nodes uing Tor you will need to install Tor. For ubuntu,

sudo apt install tor 

Now you will need to add the folowing three lines to /etc/tor/torrc,

ControlPort 9051
CookieAuthentication 1
CookieAuthFileGroupReadable 1

Now you can start the factornd client and it will use the Tor Network.

Running a node

Running a node can be done for two purposes: relaying transactions and/or mining. For relaying transactions all you need to do is run the executable and you are good to go. If you want to mine then you need to set a username and password so that your miner is able to connect to it.

There are two ways to do this: set them in your config file or pass them in using parameters.

Method 1: config file

The advantage of this method is that you don't have to enter it anywhere. You can run your node and use the cli tools wihtout passing in the rpcuser and rpcpassword flags all the time.

Create the file ~/.factorn/factorn.conf if it does not exist. Add the following to it:

rpcuser=<Type a username of your choice>
rpcpassword=<Type in any password of your choosing>

That's it. You can start your node or use the cli tools and it will use that username and password automafically.

Method 2: Command line RPC flags

From the directory where you untar-ed your binaries from the release page do the following:

./factornd -rpcuser=<set your username here> -rpcpassword=<set your password here>

Your miner will need these to connect to your node and ask for the next block to mine. If you are mining locally your port are the standard ports: mainnet -> 8332 and testnet -> 18332. By default factornd runs on mainnet. To run testnet do:

./factornd -rpcuser=<set your username here> -rpcpassword=<set your password here> -testnet

You will need to know this ro run FACTOR.py from the mining code at https://github.com/FACT0RN/factoring.

Mining

We have created a python script to mine. Here's what you will need to mine:

1. Wallet
2. Python 3
3. Put it all togehter

First, we need a node running. See the installation section. Once you have your node running here's how to create a wallet, generate an address and extract the scriptPubKey value that will allow you to earn mining rewards.

From the project's root folder:

src/factorn-wallet  -wallet=<wallet name>  -descriptors create
src/factorn-cli    loadwallet <wallet name>
src/factorn-cli    getnewaddress
src/factorn-cli    getaddressinfo <address from previous command>

For example, from the get getaddresinfo command above you should get something similar to:

{
  "address": "fact1q4zjycg88kyk72szmhpjvm82mu0zm6p26g7zeh8",
  "scriptPubKey": "0014a8a44c20e7b12de5405bb864cd9d5be3c5bd055a",
  "ismine": true,
  "solvable": true,
  "desc": "wpkh([67f532c6/84'/0'/0'/0/0]02de55517a22dc5a66d4a193cb877a3658b1c456827c1404d18e79dec82d5d937a)#0hcn4tny",
  "parent_desc": "wpkh([67f532c6/84'/0'/0']xpub6D7gQbDdRjuiMN9EqbEzWY4owSUfNNcRdA4E5aaYCX4VoRPMzgeaF4C15D6hSCUpvUkZvjKJTLktDVvjZ3beL8sfW1ATsNQ6qCsAkV6STtr/0/*)#zylutadk",
  "iswatchonly": false,
  "isscript": false,
  "iswitness": true,
  "witness_version": 0,
  "witness_program": "a8a44c20e7b12de5405bb864cd9d5be3c5bd055a",
  "pubkey": "02de55517a22dc5a66d4a193cb877a3658b1c456827c1404d18e79dec82d5d937a",
  "ischange": false,
  "timestamp": 1650416082,
  "hdkeypath": "m/84'/0'/0'/0/0",
  "hdseedid": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "hdmasterfingerprint": "67f532c6",
  "labels": [
    ""
  ]
}

You will need the value from "scriptPubKey" to mine. In this example, this person would use the value "0014a8a44c20e7b12de5405bb864cd9d5be3c5bd055a" to pass to the python mining script. This would credit the rewards of the block to their address.

Once you have this scriptPubKey value from your wallet clone the miner code from https://github.com/FACT0RN/factoring.

You will need to install the following python packages:

cypari2
gmpy2
numpy
sympy
base58

If you are using Anaconda, here are the commands to install the needed packages.

conda install -c conda-forge cypari2 
conda install -c anaconda numpy 
conda install -c conda-forge gmpy2 
conda install -c conda-forge sympy 
conda install -c conda-forge base58 

You will only need the FACTOR.py script.

python FACTOR.py <scriptPubKey>