Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow
Recently, the founder of Dogecoin, Billy Markus, initiated a revival of the cryptocurrency project Bells.
In 2013, Billy Markus, co-founder of Dogecoin and a software engineer at IBM who was passionate about video games, created a cryptocurrency called Bells in his spare time, named after the currency used in the Nintendo game “Animal Crossing”.
The main difference between Bells and regular cryptocurrencies lies in the rewards: they are completely random. If you mine Bitcoin with a decent home computer, the rewards are consistent. But if you mine Bells, you don’t know if the reward will be one Bell or 500 Bells.
Similar to Dogecoin, Bells started as a “joke”, originally intended as a digital currency based on a video game, telling the story of animals living in a village going fishing together.
However, the cryptocurrency community did not fully understand this joke.
“People were just smashing it,” Billy said, as he quickly realized there was little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and gamers. Disappointed, Billy decided to exit the cryptocurrency field, only to read Jackson Palmer’s message on dogecoin.com, “If you want Dogecoin to become a reality, please contact me,” which led to the creation of Dogecoin. Dogecoin succeeded, and Bells was forgotten. However, two cryptocurrency professionals recently attempted to revive Bells.
On December 5th, the 10th anniversary of Dogecoin’s birth, Hot Sauce found Adam McBride, a marketing professional for a cryptocurrency project, who saw Billy Markus’ content about Bells on Twitter in 2013.
The two then found a post by Billy Markus on Bitcoin Talk on November 28, 2013, announcing the birth of BELLS, just eight days before launching Dogecoin.
They also discovered a BELLS community fork in March 2014, but it appears to have disappeared in 2021, although the original BELLS blockchain had already died by the end of 2014.
The two came up with a bold idea and immediately contacted Uber developer and Litecoin ecosystem developer Luke to ask if they could connect some nodes to the original BELLS blockchain and figure out how to restart it.
Luke was able to get the original code running smoothly in just two hours, and BELLS resurfaced since 2014.
Regarding this, Billy Markus responded, “It’s interesting because everyone used to think Bells was stupid.” Just like the original version, Bells mining rewards are random, with the possibility of mining a block with up to 10,000 coins.
In the past week, Adam said they have mined less than 1% of the supply, with less than 90 days until the first halving, and shared mining instructions. According to Adam, there are now over 300 nodes running BELLS.
Mining instructions:
Step 1: Download the wallet;
Step 2: Open the “bells-qt” file;
Step 3: Click “bells-qt” in the new folder;
Note: Your computer may block the file from running. If this happens, you may need to click “More info” and then “Run anyway”.
Step 4: The BELLS wallet and mining software are loaded, but you will see a “Not synced” notification;
Step 5: Visit this location on your PC: C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Bells
{username} is your username.
Step 6: You may not see the “AppData” folder, so click “View”, then “Show”, and select “Hidden items” and “File name extensions” to reveal the “AppData” folder;
Step 7: Click on AppData – Roaming – Bells;
Step 8: Right-click to display options and choose “New”, then click “Text Document”;
Step 9: Set the document name as bells.conf, and enter the following in the document:
dns=1
irc=1
listen=1
dnsseed=1
daemon=1
server=1
rpcport=19918
rpcuser=XXXX
rpcpassword=XXXX
Note: Replace “XXXX” in the text with your username and password that only you know.
Step 10: Change “Threads” to 2, then click “Start Mining”;
This way, you can start mining. To avoid damaging your computer while mining, there is one last step: open Task Manager, find “bells-qt.exe”, click and select “Set affinity”, uncheck all but two (2) processors, then click “OK”.
This completes the process.
This article is authorized to be reprinted from Deep Tide TechFlow.
Risk warning: This content is for information reference only, not investment advice. When conducting any blockchain operations, please increase risk awareness and take cybersecurity precautions.