As anyone who has looked at the bitcoin protocol in depth can tell, it is really a huge mess of different encodings, hashing styles, and endian conversions. Although it would be a fairly cosmetic change, are there any projects out there to attempt to rewrite bitcoin and it's protocols to be more consistent and easier to maintain for the developers? (yes, I know it would have to be it's own coin or whatever)

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    I have voted to reopen this question because it's specifically asking about a different coin protocol, incompatible with Bitcoin. Mar 20 '14 at 0:53
  • Mh, I might have misread that. It seemed to ask for a rewrite of Bitcoin, more readable and cosmetic changes only, i.e. an alternative Implementation. I read the last sentence as an assumption that it might be another Coin. Perhaps @Earlz could clarify?
    – Murch
    Mar 20 '14 at 7:52
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    @Murch no I meant not just a new implementation, but a new protocol as well. Notice the *and it's protocols in the question. It would be something with only the ideas of bitcoin, but where the protocols and technical details would be completely incompatible
    – Earlz
    Mar 20 '14 at 13:51
  • Reopened, @GregHewgill thank you for noticing.
    – Murch
    Mar 20 '14 at 14:18
  • Isn't this the very definition of an altcoin? Mar 21 '14 at 3:53

I believe that is what the NXT project is attempting to do.

It is a from scratch implementation of the ideas introduced by Bitcoin et al. They use Proof-of-Stake and claim to provide "built-in support for robust features such as a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange, voting system, messaging/chat, decentralized DNS, and options for instant transactions".

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