c2pool v0.1.0-alpha — First Public Alpha

p2pool rebirth in C++. Decentralized Litecoin mining pool with Dogecoin merged mining.

Features

• Full p2pool v36 protocol compatibility — joins existing p2pool network
• Embedded SPV nodes — no litecoind or dogecoind required
• Responsive web dashboard with PPLNS treemap, sharechain explorer, miner stats
• Startup status page — real-time sync progress with LTC/DOGE SPV counters and ETA
• Block explorer (Python) — bundled and auto-started via start.sh
• Automatic difficulty adjustment for Scrypt ASICs
• Merged mining (LTC + DOGE) with built-in merged mining manager
• LevelDB persistent share storage
• Recent checkpoints for fast initial sync (LTC: 3,088,000 / DOGE: 6,160,000)
• voidbind.com bootstrap seed node for sharechain + coin peer discovery

What's New (since initial alpha)

UTXO Bootstrap Pipeline — Critical fix: cold start went from 4+ hours to ~2 minutes

• Previous: tip block poisoned best_height, all bootstrap blocks silently dropped
• Now: ordered block buffer with sliding window, timer-based stall detection
• LTC: 289 blocks in ~20s, DOGE: 1400+ blocks in ~2.5 min

Coin Peer Discovery

• /api/coin_peers endpoint — any c2pool node shares verified LTC/DOGE peers
• HTTP peer fallback — new nodes fetch peers from seed nodes when DNS seeds fail
• Updated DOGE fixed seeds (all previous seeds were dead)
• Discovery chain: DNS seeds → fixed seeds (60s) → HTTP seeds (90s)

Dashboard & Loading Page

• Instant redirect to dashboard when ready (was stuck on loading page)
• Server routes / directly to dashboard on warm restart
• Auto-detect public IP via ifconfig.me (stratum URL shows real IP)
• Build-time version from git tags (shows exact commit)
• Explorer nav button auto-detects port 9090

Explorer Integration

• JSON-RPC adapter: Python explorer talks to c2pool as if it were a daemon
• Accepts both JSON-RPC 1.0 and 2.0
• getblockchaininfo, getblockhash, getblock, getmempoolinfo, getrawmempool

Download & Verify

VERSION="0.1.0-alpha"
wget https://github.com/frstrtr/c2pool/releases/download/v${VERSION}/c2pool-${VERSION}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
wget https://github.com/frstrtr/c2pool/releases/download/v${VERSION}/c2pool-${VERSION}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz.sha256
sha256sum -c c2pool-${VERSION}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz.sha256

Tarball SHA256: 1fe4c90d80e9dd1ff61dc88e971779550ce6c974bc38e0981e701dd698bae618
Binary SHA256: 392ad1d5974cedebf4df3c0fb50cb839a0ed6407594bde120fa6884cdb365f37

Quick Start (Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04)

tar xzf c2pool-${VERSION}-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd c2pool-${VERSION}-linux-x86_64
cp config/c2pool_mainnet.yaml.example config/c2pool_mainnet.yaml
./start.sh config/c2pool_mainnet.yaml

Point miners at stratum+tcp://YOUR_IP:9327 with your LTC address as username.

Dashboard: http://YOUR_IP:8080
Explorer: http://YOUR_IP:9090

First Start

On first launch c2pool syncs embedded LTC/DOGE SPV chains and downloads the p2pool sharechain. A status page shows real-time progress:

• Syncing blockchain headers (fast — starts from checkpoint)
• Downloading and verifying shares from p2pool peers
• Building UTXO set (LTC: ~20s, DOGE: ~2.5 min)

First start takes 3-5 minutes total. Subsequent starts load from LevelDB cache in ~5 seconds.

Port Forwarding

Package Contents

• c2pool — main binary (8.7 MB, stripped release build)
• start.sh — launches c2pool + block explorer
• explorer/explorer.py — Python block explorer (auto-started)
• web-static/ — dashboard, loading page, classic view, share explorer
• lib/ — bundled shared libraries (libleveldb, libsecp256k1, libsnappy)
• config/ — example YAML configs (mainnet + testnet)
• c2pool.service — systemd unit file
• INSTALL.md — full installation guide with build-from-source instructions

Requirements

• Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 (x86_64)
• 2 GB RAM minimum, 4 GB recommended
• Python 3 (for block explorer, included in Ubuntu)
• Public IP or port forwarding for P2P (9326) and stratum (9327)

Known Limitations (Alpha)

• First cold start takes 3-5 minutes (SPV sync + share verification)
• DOGE DNS seeds are all dead — uses hardcoded fallback peers
• No automatic update mechanism

Warning

Alpha release for testing and early adoption. Monitor your node. Report issues at https://github.com/frstrtr/c2pool/issues.