As those of you who keep an eye on this thread know, I recently led a Tenebrix spinoff, Fairbrix, project. There is likely some confusion as to what happened.
First, I would like to make clear that I am not a programmer. I don't understand much of what is involved in the creating of Bitcoin-style cryptocurrencies. That said, there were a few people who helped me along the way, doing most of the work, if I'm honest. As far as I'm concerned, none of them intentionally misprogrammed anything or attempted to attack Fairbrix after either release.
So do we think what happened? The initial release was flawed, in that a programming error made every found block after 100 worthless. Why was this not found earlier? I was attempting to resolve the problem of premining. Instead of mining lots of blocks myself or loading the genesis block with millions of coins, I tried to keep the promise I had made that as many people as possible could mine the initial coins before things got difficult. In retrospect, this was a mistake, as mining the 150 blocks as I said I would, would have revealed the problem.
After the problem was discovered, we had a chat in IRC about it and decided to re-release Fairbrix, this time with the blocks after 100 properly generating coins. Unfortunately, the release was not accompanied by a good (easy) Windows release. Linux users and those familiar with Git (I am not) began to mine away, confirming that the new code was good. Later, a successful Windows build was released.
By this time, many of the initial users were still working with the original release, and others, growing frustrated with the haphazard nature of the release, gave up altogether. These things combined meant that an inadequate amount of hashing power was being devoted to the Fairbrix re-release.
At some point, someone with significant power attacked the chain, forking it, and invalidating everyone else's coins. And here we are.
I expect a better release, under a new name to come. It will be properly tested and released to thwart potential attackers. Stay tuned.
Thanks for your candor, Michael.
I'd like to see you succeed with this - clearly you don't have the right technical skills and need lots of hlep, but you have the right attitude.
I'd like to suggest that when you relaunch, you premine enough to distribute to people who had successfully mined in previous attempts rather than wiping them out. This supports people who support you, is fair, and will give confidence to people if the next attempt doesn't go successfully their support won't be wasted.
Disclosure: I didn't manage to successfully mine any Fairbrix myself so I don't seek any distribution.