GOSTCoin. The history of the first cryptocurrency in I2P

The information space is filled with various videos and articles on the topic of cryptocurrencies. The bright rise of anonymous digital money in the public consciousness began around 2016. This is primarily due to the active use of Bitcoin on underground trading platforms. Due to the openness of the technology and the great popularity of the words “crypto”, “blockchain” and the like, a mass of fly-by-night cryptocurrencies appeared, which artificially grew in price and attracted investors from both business figures and ordinary onlookers. The classic scheme looks like this: create a bunch of candy wrappers, then inflate the price for them on any exchange, and at the peak of the price, sell all your crypto dummies, taking the real money of gullible people in exchange for unnecessary digital assets.

By 2018, in people’s minds, cryptocurrency had transformed from a panacea for anonymous payments into a tool of speculation. By that time, hundreds of fly-by-night cryptocurrencies had died, and the Bitcoin rate showed large jumps that could not only make money, but also wildly go bankrupt.

This article is dedicated to cryptocurrency, which was born at the peak of the technology's popularity. Unlike other know-names, it was developed by a team with a name, and the currency itself was not advertised on Instagram profiles with an audience of millions. Below you will learn about the world's first crypto coin, which has become fully adapted to work through I2P without any need to access the regular Internet, where requests are subject to interception, analysis and blocking.

AnonCoin and GOSTCoin

The development of the first cryptocurrency that would operate over an anonymous I2P network began in 2013 by a Norwegian programmer known as Meeh. It was AnonCoin. At that time, cryptocurrencies were not widely used, but those in the know saw special promise for a coin operating through a hidden network. In 2015, orignal, the founder of the project, joined AnonCoin i2pd, and then several more anonymous people with nicknames recognizable in narrow circles. In short, little by little I joined the project purplei2p - I2P router development team in C++.

AnonCoin had a great future, if not for one “but”... The main developer suffered (and perhaps enjoyed) drug addiction. As a result, his lack of critical thinking prevented him from listening to advice. Eventually Meeh disappeared altogether. As the old-timers say, he was stuck. It was not possible to carry out a project with many of the details of which the majority of the developers did not agree. The Russian-speaking part of the small community decided to make a fork and develop it separately. The new project is called GOSTCoin. By the way, at the time of the split in the community, AnonCoin could not adequately work through the I2P network.

GOSTCoin is a cryptocurrency that uses cryptography according to the Russian state standard and is initially aimed at working through the I2P network. The project was founded in 2017. The beginning of GOSTCoin actually marked the complete extinction of the previous project.

The very first thing that catches your eye is GOST. The name GOSTCoin is based on the use of GOST R 34.10-2012 and GOST R 34.11-2012: 34.10 - digital signature function, 34.11 - hashing function. The digital signature standard 34.10 is similar to the foreign ECDSA algorithm - elliptic curve signature, and the hashing function 34.11 (Stribog) is similar to the foreign SHA256 and SHA512.

There seems to be a note of humor in the use of GOST, but in fact the choice in favor of the Russian standard was not at all accidental - all Bitcoin forks used the same secp256k1 curve in their signature, which theoretically made them equally vulnerable. At the peak of the popularity of cryptocurrencies, there were many specialists who were not averse to experimenting with various attacks. If we assume the existence of a complete lexicon of digital signatures on the secp256k1 elliptic curve, it would cause damage to almost all cryptocurrencies at once. The use of the GOST R 34.10 signature is a solution that removed GOSTCoin from under the common comb of identical signatures. Currently, it is not the only coin that uses a non-standard signature for other cryptocurrencies, but there are still few such coins, but special software there are only more and more Bitcoin-like addresses available for selection.

The Russian Cryptographic Standards explicitly mention the Federal Security Service. This raises some concerns, but on the other hand, it suggests that GOSTCoin uses the same cryptographic security standards as Russian government departments. In truth, common foreign cryptographic standards are also directly or indirectly affiliated with European and American security agencies. It just so happens in the world that avant-garde technologies are first of all mastered by the security forces.

On the Internet you can find information about the audit of the above-mentioned Russian standards and conclude that there are theoretical weaknesses in everything, but their practical exploitation for the purpose of attacking GOSTCoin is from the realm of science fiction. There are no calls to the FSB office when GOSTCoin is working.

Who and for what?

Since the split from AnonCoin, a lot of work has been done to make GOSTCoin a viable tool for anonymous financial transactions. It is noteworthy that there was no investment in the development of a stable coin working via I2P, other than the enthusiasm of the developers themselves. This is not uncommon for free open source projects, but in the case of GOSTCoin, an additional factor speaks of the purity of intentions: the developers could make money on their brainchild, because this is not just a cryptocurrency, but an anon’s dream, but until now you probably never heard about GOSTCoin. It is clear simply because no one has widely advertised it. Both after the first release and four years later, GOSTCoin is exchanged on only two or three exchanges, one of which is on I2P.

Initially, the rate rose above twenty rubles per “gost”. At the time of publication of this article, the exchange rate fluctuates around two rubles. The fact that the currency has existed for several years at a low rate, and the same people are involved in it, confirms the judgment that the purpose of creating the currency was anything but quick profit. Most likely, a discussion about ideology, about the desire for privacy and anonymity, about something that underlies the credo of old-school anons, is appropriate here. I would like to note that this material was created by me free of charge and at the time of publication I am the holder of one hundred coins, mined for fun on a gigabyte video card. This is less than three hundred Russian rubles, so my interest is also from the plane of enthusiasm and research passion.

The enthusiasm of the developers of the new cryptocurrency in 2017 was not exclusively “in itself,” to use Kant’s language. The weekend hobby had quite understandable horizons. According to one of the active figures in the community, there were discussions between the developers that their coin, thanks to the use of standardized Russian cryptography, could attract the attention of some major Russian financial player like Sberbank or VTB. To attract attention, a topic was created on Reddit (due to lack of moderation, the channel was banned) and a couple of Russian-language ones were published news. At that time, cryptocurrency in Russia was not legally a means of payment, although the technology itself was already well-known. Perhaps a group of anons harbored hopes that the world was on the verge of crypto-anarchism... But alas. Based on the current state of affairs with digital money, I can assume that an anonymous coin actually did not have a single chance to take a place in a world where transparency of financial transactions and total control are at the forefront.

GOSTCoin's established niche is quite modest: the only place where it is practically used is in the anonymous I2P trading platform. There is also one of the few exchange exchanges where players sell and buy “gost” for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (I will not leave a link for ethical reasons, since surfactants are still traded on the exchange). The hashrate of coin mining is very modest. At the time of publication of the article, it can be compared to mining on sixty average video cards. Despite this, the network still supports a mining pool.

GOSTCoin in 2021

Perhaps after hearing this you will have a desire to look at the coin live. It's easy to do. To get started, visit official site, where you will find all useful links. Ready-made binaries wallets for Windows and Android are located in the official Git repository of the project, but users of other operating systems will need to assemble the wallet themselves from the source code. Instructions for this case attached. It should be noted that to work via I2P you must have an I2P router with the interface enabled SAM, as stated on the main page of the official repository. In i2pd SAM is enabled via the configuration file with the parameter enabled = true In section [sam]. The mining software is also open source and easy to use find.

To make a backup of the created wallet, save the file wallet.dat from the application's working directory. On unix-like operating systems this is usually, ~/.gostcoin/, and on Windows - %AppData%\Gostcoin\.

The article is compiled from text from video. The material does not call for giving up everything and buying the mentioned cryptocurrency. You carry out any financial transactions with GOSTCoin at your own peril and risk.