In the Litecoin miner community, a project that has been dormant for ten years—Bellscoin (BEL)—has recently sparked widespread discussion. With multiple mining pools launching LTC+DOGE+BEL merged mining, Bellscoin has quickly reactivated in the market with strong support, drawing renewed attention from miners and investors to this long-sleeping project.
While Litecoin and Dogecoin are well-known among miners, Bellscoin’s long period of inactivity means that many are unfamiliar with it. To provide more insight, ViaBTC invited two experts—Bellscoin developer Luke Wrightmain and veteran enthusiast Adam Mcbride—to discuss the background and latest updates on Bellscoin. They also shared valuable mining tips to help miners gain a better understanding of the project.
If you missed the AMA, don’t worry, we’ve prepared a summary for you!
Q1: Could you give us a quick overview of how Bellscoin ties in with Litecoin and Dogecoin?
Adam:
Billy Marcus is the creator of Dogecoin, but eight days before creating Dogecoin, he first launched a cryptocurrency called Bellscoin. In fact, Dogecoin was forked from Bellscoin’s code, a process that took him only about 5 minutes. As a result, if you look at Dogecoin’s genesis block, you will see the message “Nintondo,” which originated from Bellscoin.
Billy’s inspiration for creating Bellscoin came from Nintendo’s popular game "Animal Crossing." At the time, he wanted to experiment with something fun through this new project. However, just eight days later, he released Dogecoin. Today, Dogecoin has become one of the most well-known blockchain projects globally, while Bellscoin has been nearly forgotten. To honor Billy’s contribution, we revived Bellscoin at the end of last year and shared its story to highlight its unique place in MEME COIN history.
Now, we are fortunate to collaborate with the development team to “revive” Bellscoin as a modern blockchain project that supports merged mining, making it more secure. We can also conduct various interesting developments and experiments on it that Dogecoin and Litecoin cannot achieve.
Q2: How did you come across Bellscoin? What inspired you to breathe new life into this project?
Adam:
That day was actually Dogecoin’s birthday. People on X were posting memories about the creation of Dogecoin. One of these posts caught the attention of a friend of mine—it was an old tweet from Billy asking Jackson Palmer about setting up Dogecoin. In that tweet, Billy mentioned that his first cryptocurrency was Bellscoin. This led me to dig deeper into the history, and then I reached out to Luke, who said he could retrieve the old code and restart the blockchain. This happened at the end of last year.
When we revived Bellscoin, Billy Marcus—who is also a prominent figure on the X platform, frequently interacting with people like Elon Musk—reached out to us in a very friendly manner. He suggested we quickly implement merged mining. He was aware of the blockchain’s performance issues caused by a spike in on-chain activity. With the number of inscriptions on Bellscoin now exceeding 140 million, the blockchain had slowed down considerably. The introduction of merged mining significantly enhanced the chain’s processing speed and helped us manage the increased usage. Billy’s support was instrumental in advancing the future of merged mining.
Q3: Can you break down how Bellscoin is distributed and talk about what miners might expect to earn at different times?
Luke:
Bellscoin’s reward system is different from traditional projects like Bitcoin. While Bitcoin offers a fixed block reward of 3.125 BTC, which halves every four years, Bellscoin employs a lottery-like mechanism. In the current phase, block rewards vary between 5000 BEL and 20 BEL, with the exact reward determined by a probability distribution.
During this cycle, you might receive 5000, 500, 250, 125, 50, or 20 BEL, each with different probabilities. For example, the chance of getting 5000 BEL is around 1%, whereas the chance of getting 20 BEL is about 50%. This system adds a game-like excitement to mining and encourages competition among miners. It also brings fairness, as smaller pools might have a 50% chance of a reward, while larger pools might only have a 1% chance. This dynamic reward mechanism helps balance hash power differences, allowing both small and large miners to pursue the 1% chance of winning 5000 BEL. It’s a unique approach that we haven’t seen in the PoW blockchain space for a while, where rewards are typically fixed.
As Epoch 4 approaches (expected to begin within 65 days or so), rewards will decrease by 80% to 90% once block height 25900 is reached. This event, known as “Epoch” in Bellscoin, is similar to Bitcoin’s “Halving.” In Epoch 4, the 1% reward will drop to 500 BEL, and the 50% reward will reduce to 5 BEL. Eventually, Bellscoin will enter Epoch 5, where the block reward will stabilize at 2 BEL, akin to Dogecoin’s tail emission strategy, which aims to stabilize the price by reducing the daily supply.
On August 27, ViaBTC officially supported LTC+DOGE+BEL merged mining.
Q4: What do you think about Bellscoin's value and its future? Do you see it becoming as popular as Litecoin or Dogecoin, or are there different goals you have in mind?
Adam:
Clearly, it is going to become more popular. Who knows? I think what makes Bellscoin unique is its deep connection with MEME COIN, which is something very special and not replicable by other projects. Since we reintroduced Bellscoin, although other coins have tried to imitate, they cannot compare with our close connection to the pioneer of MEME COIN—Billy Marcus's first project.
Therefore, Bellscoin has a very unique background story, combining this with its tail emission and economic model to form a mechanism that I believe far surpasses Dogecoin. Dogecoin issues 10,000 new DOGE per block, with unlimited supply. When Bellscoin enters its final Epoch (about six to eight months later), each block will be fixed at 2 BEL, also with unlimited supply. Thus, I think Bellscoin’s economic model is superior. Many people in the Bellscoin community agree, seeing our economic model as highly competitive. So, we are clearly very excited about this.
Currently, we are still in the early stages. When the supply reaches around 60 million BEL, the new BEL added each year through mining will only be one million. It’s worth noting that Epoch 5 might occur during the U.S. presidential election, which will make the situation even more exciting. It is a very interesting time, and we look forward to the future.
Luke:
Regarding the issue of issuance volume, Bellscoin has now entered Epoch 4. The real mining rewards for BEL are crucial for mining pools and miners, as a lack of sufficient rewards may lead miners to stop mining. Therefore, transitioning to merged mining is particularly important. This not only enhances the stability of the blockchain but also increases the security of Bellscoin, achieving a hashrate scale comparable to that of Dogecoin and Litecoin. Regardless of BEL's price, it will continue to be mined; miners will not leave the Bellscoin network due to low prices or excessively mine it due to high prices.
Currently, Bellscoin’s mining revenue has reached approximately $500,000 per day, which is also notably significant compared to LTC's output. At present, Bellscoin ranks sixth after Litecoin. Although this position may fluctuate, it remains a project with considerable profitability. If you are considering mining Bellscoin, now is still a good time.
Q5: Could you talk about how this V3 update has impacted Bellscoin users and miners?
Luke:
I believe that the V3 version has indeed brought significant upgrades, especially with the addition of descriptor wallets, which lays a better foundation for future development. We must acknowledge this. When we rediscovered Bellscoin, it was still running on the old software from 2013, which was very cumbersome, susceptible to 51% attacks, and had easily predictable block rewards. However, with the upgrade to V3, not only were joint mining and descriptor wallets introduced, but new indexing methods were also added. These improvements make nodes more lightweight, more friendly to mining pools and exchanges, and reduce system burdens, leading to smoother overall operation. It can be said that V3 is a pioneering core update that provides us with a stable foundation to continue driving innovation in Bellscoin in future updates.
Additionally, the V3 update is also crucial for miners. Previously, miners had to separate their hashrate from the original Scrypt projects because, before the V3 release, Bellscoin could not be mined alongside Dogecoin and Litecoin. As a result, some miners were unwilling to allocate their hashrate solely to Bellscoin due to its inability to offer the same profitability as Dogecoin and Litecoin. The release of V3 has made scrypt mining more profitable, with BEL providing an additional revenue source. Overall, this may be one of the most significant PoW project updates in recent times.
Q6: How are Bellscoin inscriptions doing right now? Also, are there any new areas where Bellschain is looking to make changes or introduce new things?
Adam:
As mentioned before, we currently have around 140 million inscriptions, with high activity and many artists actively creating. We have also launched some interesting community-driven projects. One of these projects aims to reward Billy, the founder of Bellscoin and Dogecoin, as he does not hold any Bells. This project has distributed around 50,000 Bells to Billy. Once the project is sold out, Billy will have about 100,000 Bells, which is truly incredible. This community-driven effort is meant to compensate for Billy's regret of selling all his Dogecoin in 2015 or 2016 to buy a second-hand Honda Civic.
Additionally, we have completed the V3 upgrade and will be enabling Taproot in the future. Taproot will be activated once the blockchain meets certain conditions. We have discussed conducting some interesting experiments on Bellscoin with developers, and Bellscoin will serve as a testing platform for various cutting-edge experiments.
Luke:
One very important thing we missed in the V3 update is SegWit. SegWit primarily improves blockchain throughput by increasing block space and reducing user fees, which is crucial for blockchains competing for leadership in the ordinals space. For example, Bitcoin's standard block time is 10 minutes, and with SegWit enabled, the throughput reaches 4 MB every 10 minutes. Litecoin has a block time of 2.5 minutes, resulting in 16 MB throughput every 10 minutes. Dogecoin has not enabled SegWit, with a block time of 60 seconds and 10 MB data throughput every 10 minutes.
In comparison, Bellscoin now surpasses Dogecoin in throughput. Bellscoin has the SegWit update that Dogecoin lacks, and with a 60-second block time, our throughput reaches 40 MB every 10 minutes, making it one of the most data-intensive and high-throughput UTXO blockchains currently available.
Regarding inscriptions, they are crucial for users and the blockchain network as they allow Bellscoin to truly grow and expand, differentiating it from other UTXO networks. I view ordinals and inscriptions as an initial approach to on-chain data storage. This can be seen as the first step, and it will continue to improve with updates. As Adam mentioned, Bellscoin is almost like a testing ground.
Q7: What role does community engagement play in the development of Bellscoin? How does the team measure community sentiment, and what impact does it have on project decisions?
Adam:
It is important to point out that the concept of "team" we are discussing is different from that of traditional blockchain projects. For example, Solana is led by a group of venture capital firms, whereas Bellscoin is entirely community-driven. The community not only drives everything but also handles all marketing efforts. Although I play an important role in marketing, many others have invested even more time and effort into promoting Bellscoin. This project truly embodies the community-driven characteristic.
Our development team also formed naturally rather than being pre-planned or organized. So, when you understand this, you can appreciate that it is a community-driven effort. When people discover Bellscoin on the X platform, they realize that it is not a project supported by venture capital firms but one where real people are working hard for its sustainable development. This community-driven nature sets it apart from other blockchain projects.
Luke:
The only reason we can discuss this topic today is that the community has truly seen Bellscoin and brought it to its current state. While many projects claim their communities are the strongest, many communities may not drive actual updates or development. However, for Bellscoin, the situation is entirely different. As Adam mentioned, our ability to make updates is entirely due to community demand. The community uses Bellscoin, discusses it on the X platform, and provides feedback, all of which we seriously consider and test. We are very grateful for the community’s contributions.
Q8: How does Bellscoin ensure that community feedback is effectively integrated into its development roadmap?
Luke:
In fact, a community developer named Poland has created an application that allows users to vote on and submit ideas for Bellscoin's development. Users can propose features or improvements they want to see, and these suggestions may not necessarily be implemented by Bellscoin's core developers. Any community developer can adopt and implement these suggestions. To submit ideas or vote, users need to sign using the Bellscoin wallet, ensuring that participants are genuinely part of the community and preventing bots from abusing the platform.
This platform provides users with added security, and its emergence is truly exciting. Thanks to Poland's efforts. Although many ideas were previously proposed in community channels like Telegram and Discord, this platform truly embodies Bellscoin's commitment to open and innovative operations.
*For more exciting content, listen to our full live broadcast: