[Cryptography] Bear Bonds - a new crytpocurrency

[Arnold Reinhold]

On Thu, 12 Nov 2015  allen at bearbonds.org <mailto:allen at bearbonds.org> wrote:

> ...
> In order to achieve acceptable speeds, Bear Bonds uses a novel hash  
> algorithm that involves three knapsacks and a Diophantine polynomial  
> all computed in the prime field.  The details are given in the "Bear  
> Bonds Transaction Protocol" paper that can be found on our website at  
> https://www.bearbonds.org/ <https://www.bearbonds.org/> (at the bottom of the "Technology" tab).   
> We also have a pre-release version of our software that can be found  
> under the "Software" tab (binaries only--the source code has not yet  
> been released but we would be willing to provide it for research or  
> security auditing purposes).
> 
> The time required to create a proof on a midrange laptop is roughly 4  
> seconds per input, with a modest memory requirement of 85 KB per input.

Why not include a well-tested algorithm, such as SHA-512, in the hash chain? And assuming one would trust a novel hash algorithm before years of analysis have taken place, why is "a modest memory requirement of 85 KB per input” a good thing? It seems to me such a tiny memory retirement quickly leads to control of mining by the custom chip crowd. 

Arnold Reinhold
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