Distinction between assets and mining blocks

Question

As I'm trying to wrap my head around this, I've got a couple of questions regarding multichain.

I read on another thread that nodes connected to the blockchain mine by default if that's what's configured in params.dat, which in mine, it is. Until another node connects, the only node that would be mining would be the one that created the blockchain, correct? When I type getinfo, I get

{"method":"getinfo","params":[],"id":1,"chain_name":"testcoin"}

{
    "version" : "1.0 alpha 21",
    "protocolversion" : 10005,
    "chainname" : "testcoin",
    "description" : "testcoin instance",
    "protocol" : "multichain",
    "port" : 6821,
    "setupblocks" : 60,
    "nodeaddress" : "testcoin@xxx.xxx.xx.xx:6821",
    "burnaddress" : "1XXXXXXWhXXXXXXXX7XXXXXXXnXXXXXXYHYmPP",
    "incomingpaused" : false,
    "miningpaused" : false,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
    "balance" : 0.00000000,
    "blocks" : 93,
    "timeoffset" : 0,
    "connections" : 0,
    "proxy" : "",
    "difficulty" : 0.00001526,
    "testnet" : false,
    "keypoololdest" : 1468291815,
    "keypoolsize" : 2,
    "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
    "relayfee" : 0.00000000,
    "errors" : ""
}

It says blocks 93, balance 0. So where in my interpretation am I going wrong. I thought that when you mine a block, that adds some sort of value to your balance. I might be naive in my thinking, like I said I am new to this, but I thought that's kind of how bitcoin works. So what is the correlation between blocks and balance, if any.

If there is no correlation between blocks and balance or blocks and assets, etc, then what is the purpose of mining?

And what is the correlation between blocks, and assets? I understand you can create an asset which can be sent, received, traded, etc. Does the asset number received correlate to the balance? Could someone please clear these questions up for me?

Answer 1

By default a MultiChain blockchain has no native currency, so miners don't earn coins. You can change this behavior in the blockchain parameters for a new chain:

http://www.multichain.com/developers/blockchain-parameters/

Also note that only nodes which own an address with mining permissions can mine blocks. And the purpose of mining is to confirm transactions. It's not based on proof-of-work so no financial incentive is needed.

Comments

Thanks for the answer. So would the change in behavior be switching the protocol from multichain to bitcoin?

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You can use either protocol with or without a native currency, so not necessarily.

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So if I set the parameters initial-block-reward and first-block-reward then it will start to mine with currency?

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Yes, but this changes the chain's rules so you need to create a new chain with these settings.

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Right. I tried to create a new chain with those settings added, and still did not get anything in the balance parameter after blocks were solved. Could you please elaborate on exactly which settings I need to change in order to accomplish what I'm looking for? Thanks for all your patience and help!

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Did you check the balance on the node which performed the mining? And if so can you please show the output of getblockchainparams and getinfo in this thread?

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That was it. I had set to not mine unless other nodes were connected. Once I set that to false or connected other nodes (spun up more vm's and connected), the balance showed up. Thank you.

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Great - thanks for the update.