FTC Diff Change
-
[quote name=“sl1982” post=“16400” timestamp=“1371645766”]
Not a good idea. This can allow people to sabotage the coin with very little effort. If someone had enough hashpower they could jack the difficulty up a ton without staying on the network very long. This has happened to another coin, cant remember what one.
[/quote]They would have to stay on the network because once they left it would readjust. And they wouldn’t benefit anything. That would limit the miners on the network to exactly what was needed. But I think the difficulty rise should affect those who jump on in excess of the required miners. There needs to be a way to tell the late comers or the jumpers “there is no room for you right now, please mine another coin.” If that cannot be done then difficulty jumps will just persist and the coin growth will be retarded.
In a real life mining operation, random miners can’t just show up all of a sudden and start digging in your mine. They need to find another source which is not being mined. The problem with altcoins is that they did not mature in the vacuum that BTC did. BTC didn’t have another coin to compete with. With all the alts you just jump around to which ever is providing the greatest profitability and naturally you will get difficulty swings. The hardware and software which perfrom the mining also developed in pace with BTC price, acceptance, etc. This is not the case with Alts - the hashing power is already there, sometimes idle and ready to jump around.
There should be a “Share” allocation. Each coin has so many mining sites or shares which solve the blocks. The number of potential shares will be tied to the amount of hashes required to meet the block times. There can be no more hashing power on the network than that which is capable of meeting the block requirements - there can be less but not more. If there is less then the difficulty decreases to meet the block time target.
Altcoins need to function a bit differently than BTC.
-
Thats not how it works at all. If you have a dynamic difficulty of every block I can just on the network for 10 minutes with a ton of hashpower and jack up the difficulty so much that if will take you hours to find a block. Once you finally do I can jump on again for a little while.
See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/[/url] -
there is your answer :) well sort of.
lock the pools - admittedly it would be difficult as 98% of those who only mine the highest profit coin will already have pool accounts.
how to create a new pool is well documented but of sufficient difficulty to deter those after the highest profit.
as it stands now those that continue to mine will only gain profit should ftc reach a higher exchange rate - that takes a lot of faith.
things will continue on a swing where hashrate falls off as difficulty gains, only to be exploited when difficulty drops.
there has to been an incentive to mine at the higher difficulty.
like right now. and i am starting to wonder. -
Why must DiffIncrease be equal to DiffDecrease? The issue I see is that we are having difficulty maintaining the 2.5 minute block target. What would be the negative potential if the 41% increase algorithm was separated from the algorithm that determines the diff decrease based on dropping hash power. The goal being to maintain the block time, not the profitability factor. Thinking long term, the survival of any currency depends on a consumer’s ability to use it. What I see hurting the FTC value is the long block times in period of reduced hash power.
Wouldn’t this set FTC apart from other coins (not just alts)? Thinking of a currency from a payment processing perspective, digital currencies will [i]never[/i] be able to reach parity with actual cash {not thinking of bank to bank transfers} unless there was [b][i]instantaneous[/i][/b] confirmation. Part of the reason credit cards work so well for consumers is that they [i]perceive[/i] the confirmation to be instantaneous, just like if they handed over paper bills. Let’s not get into the semantics of credit as that is whole other discussion.
My point is that consumers/users of a medium of payment don’t think about the technical aspects. If we are trying to build a long term currency/economy we must remove the variability of payment processing in some way. Since transaction confirmation depends solely on the miner nodes on the network…it follows that the time period to confirm must be as fast as possible nearly irregardless of the technical backbone (miners) of the system.
The way I understand it the positive benefit of digital currency is to move [i]large[/i] amounts of currency quickly, with moderate anonymity. Cash is king because I can go down the street and hand over a bundle to my neighbor to buy his car. The legality, and proper reporting, of that transaction isn’t and shouldn’t be up to the producer of the currency.
I’m not speaking about the diff change and it’s impact on miners necessarily, rather I am thinking about it’s affect on the viability and perceived stability/staying power of currency (FTC). What I perceive as killing the network’s strength right now is that we had a huge jump in hash power which necessarily raised the difficulty (and by proxy the profitability and market value), however once the difficulty adjusted accordingly and miners jumped off the network strength suffered.
This may be a very naive point of view from an admitted n00b, but please help me understand why this wouldn’t be beneficial for long term success. We need to think ahead to the days when FTC is humming along at 5 TH/s and suddenly a major internet backbone goes dark and we lose a significant portion of the network nodes for a short period. The network needs to be able to maintain it’s confirmation times or [i]consumers[/i] lose faith.
Again, please be kind…
-
[quote name=“sl1982” post=“16414” timestamp=“1371648408”]
Thats not how it works at all. If you have a dynamic difficulty of every block I can just on the network for 10 minutes with a ton of hashpower and jack up the difficulty so much that if will take you hours to find a block. Once you finally do I can jump on again for a little while.See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/[/url]
[/quote]I don’t know. I don’t think what you are talking about is the same as what I am talking about.
Good comments from SixGun. Yes, it has to be independent of the miners. That is what I was trying to get at - regardless of hashing power we need to always hit the block time target.
-
[quote name=“Vigil” post=“16424” timestamp=“1371650189”]
[quote author=sl1982 link=topic=1741.msg16414#msg16414 date=1371648408]
Thats not how it works at all. If you have a dynamic difficulty of every block I can just on the network for 10 minutes with a ton of hashpower and jack up the difficulty so much that if will take you hours to find a block. Once you finally do I can jump on again for a little while.See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/[/url]
[/quote]I don’t know. I don’t think what you are talking about is the same as what I am talking about.
Good comments from SixGun. Yes, it has to be independent of the miners. That is what I was trying to get at - regardless of hashing power we need to always hit the block time target.
[/quote]“See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems”isnt this pretty much whats happening now to ftc?
-
[quote name=“vipertsniper” post=“16426” timestamp=“1371650605”]
[quote author=Vigil link=topic=1741.msg16424#msg16424 date=1371650189]
[quote author=sl1982 link=topic=1741.msg16414#msg16414 date=1371648408]
Thats not how it works at all. If you have a dynamic difficulty of every block I can just on the network for 10 minutes with a ton of hashpower and jack up the difficulty so much that if will take you hours to find a block. Once you finally do I can jump on again for a little while.See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/[/url]
[/quote]I don’t know. I don’t think what you are talking about is the same as what I am talking about.
Good comments from SixGun. Yes, it has to be independent of the miners. That is what I was trying to get at - regardless of hashing power we need to always hit the block time target.
[/quote]“See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems”isnt this pretty much whats happening now to ftc?
[/quote]I know about TRC. You just posted that article. If you read what I am saying you will see that the difficulty can never adjust the block time to anything but 2.5 minutes. With TRC the massive jump in Hash power caused the retarget to a much higher difficulty and then it took a long time for retarget. In my case, as soon as the high hasher jumps on the difficulty adjusts to maintain 2.5 minutes and as soon as he leaves the difficulty adjusts again to 2.5 minute block time. So, for a simple example, after 2.5 minutes and no solved block, the difficulty would adjust to the last known 2.5 minute block time difficulty prior to the jump. It could make the difficulty adjustment based on estimating the hash rate differential through the current block time and past block times and the target block time.
It would be even better to control all mining shares within the protocol to keep him from jumping on in the first place, in addition to the above.
Edit: Ahhh, but the difficulty of the current block can’t be changed… is that what you are saying?
-
[quote name=“SixGun” post=“16421” timestamp=“1371649501”]
Why must DiffIncrease be equal to DiffDecrease? The issue I see is that we are having difficulty maintaining the 2.5 minute block target. What would be the negative potential if the 41% increase algorithm was separated from the algorithm that determines the diff decrease based on dropping hash power. The goal being to maintain the block time, not the profitability factor. Thinking long term, the survival of any currency depends on a consumer’s ability to use it. What I see hurting the FTC value is the long block times in period of reduced hash power.Wouldn’t this set FTC apart from other coins (not just alts)? Thinking of a currency from a payment processing perspective, digital currencies will [i]never[/i] be able to reach parity with actual cash {not thinking of bank to bank transfers} unless there was [b][i]instantaneous[/i][/b] confirmation. Part of the reason credit cards work so well for consumers is that they [i]perceive[/i] the confirmation to be instantaneous, just like if they handed over paper bills. Let’s not get into the semantics of credit as that is whole other discussion.
My point is that consumers/users of a medium of payment don’t think about the technical aspects. If we are trying to build a long term currency/economy we must remove the variability of payment processing in some way. Since transaction confirmation depends solely on the miner nodes on the network…it follows that the time period to confirm must be as fast as possible nearly irregardless of the technical backbone (miners) of the system.
The way I understand it the positive benefit of digital currency is to move [i]large[/i] amounts of currency quickly, with moderate anonymity. Cash is king because I can go down the street and hand over a bundle to my neighbor to buy his car. The legality, and proper reporting, of that transaction isn’t and shouldn’t be up to the producer of the currency.
I’m not speaking about the diff change and it’s impact on miners necessarily, rather I am thinking about it’s affect on the viability and perceived stability/staying power of currency (FTC). What I perceive as killing the network’s strength right now is that we had a huge jump in hash power which necessarily raised the difficulty (and by proxy the profitability and market value), however once the difficulty adjusted accordingly and miners jumped off the network strength suffered.
This may be a very naive point of view from an admitted n00b, but please help me understand why this wouldn’t be beneficial for long term success. We need to think ahead to the days when FTC is humming along at 5 TH/s and suddenly a major internet backbone goes dark and we lose a significant portion of the network nodes for a short period. The network needs to be able to maintain it’s confirmation times or [i]consumers[/i] lose faith.
Again, please be kind…
[/quote]This is all well and good, except
- we can’t wait for things to progress until it’s all smooth,
- mining is independence from gatekeepers,
- anything that is possible in the future is possible now,
- the established traditional system doesn’t actually work.
The 2.5 minute block target and profitability are inseparable. To separate them you have to pretend we are already at the performance we should be at. We’re not. The ridiculous hashrate in bitcoin way over the amount needed for transactions.
My definition of the best solution is a balance between adaptability and ease of use. There’s so many possibilities yet unexplored.
-
Really good work guys I like to see creative juices flowing all around! Zero had some really good points about the diff adjustments. I think the biggest point that he convinced me of recently is near instant or quick changes too diff is nearly impossible because of confirmations required by transactions. If you have a lot diff change while waiting for confirmations this can really hurt or kill trading which in turn hurts the market. This is because it will increase unknowns for merchants, investors, and traders.
If you want a live diff change using an algorithm it is simply not possible for the current nature of cryptos. A complete redesign of the transaction structure would be required.
After 24 hours of watching our stats page I really still think the diff decrease adjustments are too slow. We are having 8-24 hours of extreme profitability followed by 1-3 days of slow transactions and low profitability. I know personally once I move in two weeks and my power rates double (yes double) at my new appt I will not be able to mine FTC any longer at a loss.
When our hash rate drops like this between our outrageous highs we are really opening ourselves up for an attack. People want to be able to target their miners at a coin and let them stay there. I think our fork to change the diff alg was the right thing to do and I think we should consider doing it again. There have been a lot of good ideas in this thread and I personally love to follow the KISS rule (keep it simple stupid). I think doing some minor modifications of the diff change could do a lot of good for this coin. We are still in our infancy and are going to be subject to much larger hash rate swings because of LTC.
-
Question:
Say the difficulty rises and a block is generated under that difficulty… that block is stuck at that difficulty, correct? There is no way to change it?
-
[quote name=“zerodrama” post=“16436” timestamp=“1371655048”]
[quote author=SixGun link=topic=1741.msg16421#msg16421 date=1371649501]
Why must DiffIncrease be equal to DiffDecrease? The issue I see is that we are having difficulty maintaining the 2.5 minute block target. What would be the negative potential if the 41% increase algorithm was separated from the algorithm that determines the diff decrease based on dropping hash power. The goal being to maintain the block time, not the profitability factor. Thinking long term, the survival of any currency depends on a consumer’s ability to use it. What I see hurting the FTC value is the long block times in period of reduced hash power.Wouldn’t this set FTC apart from other coins (not just alts)? Thinking of a currency from a payment processing perspective, digital currencies will [i]never[/i] be able to reach parity with actual cash {not thinking of bank to bank transfers} unless there was [b][i]instantaneous[/i][/b] confirmation. Part of the reason credit cards work so well for consumers is that they [i]perceive[/i] the confirmation to be instantaneous, just like if they handed over paper bills. Let’s not get into the semantics of credit as that is whole other discussion.
My point is that consumers/users of a medium of payment don’t think about the technical aspects. If we are trying to build a long term currency/economy we must remove the variability of payment processing in some way. Since transaction confirmation depends solely on the miner nodes on the network…it follows that the time period to confirm must be as fast as possible nearly irregardless of the technical backbone (miners) of the system.
The way I understand it the positive benefit of digital currency is to move [i]large[/i] amounts of currency quickly, with moderate anonymity. Cash is king because I can go down the street and hand over a bundle to my neighbor to buy his car. The legality, and proper reporting, of that transaction isn’t and shouldn’t be up to the producer of the currency.
I’m not speaking about the diff change and it’s impact on miners necessarily, rather I am thinking about it’s affect on the viability and perceived stability/staying power of currency (FTC). What I perceive as killing the network’s strength right now is that we had a huge jump in hash power which necessarily raised the difficulty (and by proxy the profitability and market value), however once the difficulty adjusted accordingly and miners jumped off the network strength suffered.
This may be a very naive point of view from an admitted n00b, but please help me understand why this wouldn’t be beneficial for long term success. We need to think ahead to the days when FTC is humming along at 5 TH/s and suddenly a major internet backbone goes dark and we lose a significant portion of the network nodes for a short period. The network needs to be able to maintain it’s confirmation times or [i]consumers[/i] lose faith.
Again, please be kind…
[/quote]This is all well and good, except
- we can’t wait for things to progress until it’s all smooth,
- mining is independence from gatekeepers,
- anything that is possible in the future is possible now,
- the established traditional system doesn’t actually work.
The 2.5 minute block target and profitability are inseparable. To separate them you have to pretend we are already at the performance we should be at. We’re not. The ridiculous hashrate in bitcoin way over the amount needed for transactions.
My definition of the best solution is a balance between adaptability and ease of use. There’s so many possibilities yet unexplored.
[/quote]Good points…
I should have said “The goal being to maintain the block time, [u][b][i]and subsequently[/i][/b][/u] the profitability factor.” instead of “not”. I didn’t mean that they way I expressed it. Thanks for pointing that out.
For the sake of discussion, can you expand more on your point 4?
[quote author=RIPPEDDRAGON link=topic=1741.msg16440#msg16440 date=1371655837]
After 24 hours of watching our stats page I really still think the diff decrease adjustments are too slow. We are having 8-24 hours of extreme profitability followed by 1-3 days of slow transactions and low profitability.
[/quote]This is more on the track of my thinking… diff [i]decrease[/i] readjustment is where the gremlin lies. Perhaps decrease re-target would be happier at an evaluation period of 50% or less of the increase re-target number of blocks. It can’t be too small of a quantitative period, or else I would think we open ourselves to a new attack vector. Of course, though, that would cause issues for stating definitively [i]when[/i] the next re-target is going to occur.
-
Now heres a thought. If we could somehow decouple the difficulty adjustment from being a fixed amount of blocks then we could dynamically adjust the difficulty and thus the block generation rate mid block. Say for example (numbers just pulled out of my ass) we are getting a block time of 2.5 mins at 100 difficulty and a lot of miners jump on and push the difficulty up to 500. Block generation goes to 12.5 mins. If somehow through the block we could have it say ‘block generation is at double the target generation time’ and retarget down that would fix the problem right there.
Edit: Or if difficulty adjustments are unable to be changed on the fly like that then maybe a dynamic amount of blocks for retarget based on an averaged hash rate
-
Sunny’s thoughts on diff change:
-
Watch them get dumped when last week’s investment in hardware earns no advantage.
People forget that it’s not just payment for services rendered. It’s a payment rate which has to continuously be increased to maintain profit. And again, how high is the block generation rate versus the actual transaction rate? We’re going to have to move to demand based generation of coins soon.
-
a couple of questions. please be kind i am new to mining :)
- is this rut normal or is it a follow on from the 51% ?
2)looking at the stats the current 650,525 KH/s if i asume that most people have the same kh/s as me (im sure some will have less and a lot will have more) my current is about 720kh/s that makes about 903 people currently mining. the hash rate needs to increase for the transactions to function properly, is anything going to be done to increase the hash rate (other than to wait for the vultures to return once the difficulty drops)?
just to add i understand that increasing the popularity of the coin will in turn increase the hash rate and i understand people are working very hard on that side.
looking at things the current difficulty is set to drop by basically one third, surely quicker but lesser drops would be better.
- is this rut normal or is it a follow on from the 51% ?
-
After every swing, the hashrate decreases, but in each case it decreases more slowly and does not fall as low as the time before. This is all part of a normalisation for a coin which is only a few months old.
I wish I had 720kH/s, I rarely top 200kH/s, there are many smaller miners who just keep plugging away and I believe this number is slowly increasing.
-
thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions :) I had made a decision to stay and continue mining, although my questions may have seemed somewhat materialistic. here in the uk when i started mining the cost of elastictrickery means i am on a loser from day 1.
after mining for 26 hours and getting 7.5ftc alarm bells started ringing :( hence the questions :(
I feel a lot happier now :) and am pleased to stay put :)
