Bitcoin Forum

TL;DR All blocks mined with NWO's orginal client after block 109680 can't be traded in Coins-e because this was a hard-fork, and those coins are in obsolete chain. Without updated client you can't send any prior coins either.

I've been interested in innerworkings of coins for sometime, after getting a "go ahead" from NWO (orginal powercoin dev) I decided to give this coin a closer look. What I've mostly done so far is that I updated coin parameters towards nowadays requirements. As some of you might remember this coin was "killed" with 51% earlier so I added something little to ensure more secure chain. This is initial client update, and I couldn't do much more without breaking compatibility to NWO client. In the next update I have more tools, because everybody is using this client :)

new block setting in summary:

45 second blocks (compared to old 30s), less stales is better imo.
3hr (240 blocks) retarget interval (old 12hr / 1440 ), faster retarget = less stalefest / stuck at high diff.
6x retarget limit (old 4x), diff adjusts better compared to hashrate changes.
60 PWC per block (old 40 PWC), I want that "new" coins have same value than "old".
same coin cap.

added more checkpoints.
added external checkpoint file, no need to download/compile new client just to add checkpoint.

- Users can add checkpoints into external file at
  C:\Users\'USERNAME'\AppData\Roaming\Powercoin\checkpoints.dat
  ~./powercoin/checkpoints.dat

  format is:
  blockheight hash

  example (which is actual checkpoint) is provided in the package, copy it in to the data directory.
  checkpoints from the file are added on the fly. If the checkpoints doesn't match your current blockchain client tries to hop into right blockchain automatically.
  Removing checkpoints requires client restart (you need to first remove it from the checkpoints.dat).

  I'll provide checkpoints at this thread, to ensure we all work on same chain. You need to manually edit checkpoint.dat (I'll add functionality for it to commandline/UI later)

lil tweaks to irc settings, new channel and prefix. I wanna take PWC more apart from LTC, as they share some common parameters (It was possible to   connect powercoin client to litecoin client. It still is but now were closer to remove that).

client is available at:
http://ge.tt/api/1/files/87ZDP2n/0/blob?download
win32 binaries only, sorry.

rest have to use source:
https://github.com/urpoapina/powercoin.git

example powercoin.conf:
rpcuser=user
rpcpassword=password
listen=1
server=1
testnet=0
rpcport=9863
port=9862
addnode=94.237.84.48

pools:
p2p -
http://94.237.84.48:9777 (1% fee, mine, damn ugly but supposed to work, supports +0.00xxxx, stratum)
http://next.afraid.org:8113/static/ (updated)

conventional-
http://94.237.84.48:9900 (1% fee, used for giveaways etc...)

http://silverwolf.ath.cx/pwc/ (old client, dont mine here)
http://pwc.minepool.net/ (old client, dont mine here)
http://pwc.cryptcoins.net/ (old client, dont mine here)
I have contacted these pool operators with no responses....

exchanges:
https://www.coins-e.com/exchange/PWC_BTC/   (using our chain)

blockchain explorer:
http://94.237.84.48:9902

this is a Mandatory update.

btw my motivational / dev fund is at pLWX8axRvcf4TLPHqAKjQUzNYCER22ZLJ2 :)

If you notice that you're client says that youre 200k+ blocks behind you have also connected to litecoin network.
Go download updated client, issue has been taken care of until I can separate us from litecoin network for good.
fixed in v1.011

TL;DR All blocks mined with NWO's orginal client after block 109680 can't be traded in Coins-e because this was a hard-fork, and those coins are in obsolete chain. Without updated client you can't send any prior coins either.

checkpoint.dat

V1.02 features:
 - Permanent separation from litecoin/old pwc network (ready)
 - Primitive fork failsafe (testing)
 - Adaptive difficulty algorithm (on drawing board)
 And of course bug fixes.

Planned on future releases:
 - Advanced fork failsafe (on drawing board)
 - Adaptation of PoS style alternative blocks (on drawing board)

Other
 - Fix mining with QT (low priority)
 - Blockexplorer / pools, other supportive stuff (altcha, silverwolf... Im looking at youre way ;) )

This great news +1.

how about your marketing campaign?  will my eyes explode if I download the new client?

I let my coding do the marketing, I have some ideas tho...  ;)
btw. UI is the same.

I thought the attacker had lots of coin waiting to be dumped. Not sure if it is good idea to resurrect the chain.

Theres over 400k 4M coins mined anyway, so I would trade with caution. I dont have exact details how many coins attacker did get :(

The powercoin trading was not stopped after the attack. The trading was transferred to coins-e. If the attacker didn't deleted the wallet he could dumped it already. I think the attacker has 10% of all total pwc now.

If someone has debug.log from the time all that happened I would be interested to look at it

Is it possible to add proof of stakes to powercoin?

I havent really even considered it, because it wouldn't be "fair" to add it when some ppl have alot of coins allready.
I have some somewhat similar ideas tho... ;)
Suppose nothing is impossible when holding the source, but it could possibly require step-by-step implementation and it could possibly reflect into future blocks only.

I think security is more important. What if the attacker attack again. You can make the interest very small in the first month like .1% second month .2% and so on. Once the price go up and down I'm sure pwc will change hands many times.

Fantastic work minerapia! You're a really talented dev, you have my full confidence and well wishes in resurrecting PWC.

Why the hell, would you choose a dead coin, that was attacked, and nobody likes. There's lots of failed coins to choose from ::)

I'm willing to bet BigVern at cryptsy has a debug.log file stored somewhere.

updated qt client with small ducktape and glue patch which stops fetching blockchain from litecoin.
sorry for inconvenience, I prolly spent too lil time on QT as I were busy testing settings change fuctions.

is there any reason i would get a weird block reward 43.80 ????

Thanks, tho I smell a scent of sarcasm here ;)

Maybe this was a wrong coin, I am bit of a noob and had no bad wibes from this coin (as I werent altcoiner back when this was launched).
Reasons I went on this was:
 -allmost dead coin = I can run some tests in mainnet without messing other ppls mining.
 -allready listed, very low value = No need to "sell" this to exchanges, not much money involved if I **** this up
 -cought my eye in coinchoose ;)
 -I really didnt want to launch new coin, I'm not that much into marketing.

maybe I could have found better candidate, but I'll stick with this for awhile.

theres prolly 3.80 PWC fees included in the block. which hash?

abbe9e0cb6a9b7420ddf56da7eb329ba9b17c035911318d0c8ed75b92b28cc4f

I guess the block is orphaned, as I cant find it.
Tho I got no other explanation than 3.80 PWC of fees. New settings havent even kicked in yet.

./powercoind getnetworkhashps
4224919

Hope people arent just reaping the last easy blocks, lol
While I was testing in main net, my poor gts8800 (37khs) was alone :P

Switchover to new settings is done
Its confirmed that Coins-E is with us.

remember to keep your checkpoints updated ;)

anyone else having high orphan/reject since changover i have had nothing but

Coin is still suffering from long retarget interval original code had. Actually at the change over nothing really happened except block reward got bigger. First retarget in new settings is at 109680.

EDIT: 0.02 diff with 3Mh/s == stale fest. new code should adapt to network hashrate changes better.

I meant it. Its the best thing to happen to PWC since the attack, so I hope you are successful.

If you're new to the altcoin section, you probably don't know but Hydroponica is a foul mouthed 30 something year old troll with 9 kids. Don't listen to him and do what everyone else does, ignore.

Thanks for the hint ;) I hope I can get something built from this, time will tell.

And blockchains are forked now, old blockchain is longer atm (it has lower diff anyway). I can only hope that majority will hop into new client

Updated title to enforce things.

Actually, 4 kids. And, if you took the time to read through the PWC thread from NWO, you'd see, he's just butthurt, because I called his scammer ass, on all his lies and bullshit ::) And lets see, who has me on ignore? Oh, thats righ, you, IGotspots, and a slew of GLD supporters. Yeah, I'm ok with that

Lately I have gone thru alot of logs and hashs/txid, Ill get all of this confirmed after I get blockexplorer running (It's currently adding blockchain into database, and adding 100k+ entries takes some time).
Preliminary analysis from the settings change reads as follows:
During blocks 109500-109680 (Subsidy with new clients changed at 109500, first retarget with new settings was 109680), blockchains with new and old clients forked and merged several times. Fortunatly no fork was long enough to generate possibility of a double spend, accordin to my logs longest one was:
As the first block in the reorganize is the same that leaves only 6 blocks that actually got disconnected. so worst case is that next block from e3c80b289823f910f1ca has transaction leaving only 5 blocks to confirm that transaction, before the tx gets removed from the blockchain.



This issue was real, I just didnt understand hows and whys back then. Now I'm wiser. Problem lies here:
For those who are not into coding, basicly this checks if the block we just had from the network doesnt have greater block value than it should have. Now as the old client block subsidy is 40 PWC, its smaller than 60 PWC new one has. So blocks generated by old client got accepted by new one and not vice versa. Before the first retarget, old clients (around 3 Mh/s) had more power behind than the new ones (around 2 Mh/s). This led into situation where old clients constantly over ran blocks generated by new clients. at blockheight 109680 chains finally forked, because the difficulty was different between the clients.
In theory this could happen again if the difficulties would be exactly the same, tho I find that very very unlikely. During the testing phase I obviously didn't get this one covered, I could say some of this is just bad luck as I ran old and new client side-by-side in testnet both having one core each hashing. and old client never got ahead of new client (tho i had smaller variables back then so the difference between subsidy and retarget wasnt as great as it was in the live launch). Still totally my fault not to get this test case covered.

I'm working now on to get the new client into a separate network.

Lesson learned:
- change all variables at the same time.
- make changes depend on time rather than blockheight, as hashrate etc is not easy to predict.

thanks for the explanation

pushed quick fix into github, it prevents coins with old value from getting connected to chain. just to be sure that if the difficulties ever match. windows client prolly has to wait until next bigger patch, or atleast tomorrow. too late for me ;)

I'm currently testing new protocol for the network, it will be implemented in next version, which will be also a mandatory update. This time I'll give you plenty of time to upgrade youre clients. Next version will also implement couple new safety features, after that I'm prolly cleaned the table enough to start adding something lil more innovative to the coin.
Gotta make this coin work first, before talking bout stores and such.
Blockchain explorer is currently in beta, but I prolly need better hardware to run it properly. I've also cloned pushpool and taken preliminary tests with it, tho diff is so low I dont think theres really that much need atm for it.

ps. I wonder when I see another coin with external checkpoints ;)
pps. I also wonder what those miners hashing away in the old chain are bout to do with their coins.

Please stop mining the old chain and mine the new one.
pwc.minepool.net, wheretomine.com and coinchoose.com are still on the old chain.

Yup, dunno what theyre trying to prove mining worthless chain.
meanwhile bout 10 hrs ago we got dropped a hash bomb on us (around atleast 10 Mh/s), leaving diff floating kinda high. they got around 25K PWC in around an hour. Suppose PWC was the most profitable on somebodys algo ;)
Gotta make something more advanced in the retarget algo to minimize effect on regular miners.
I'll include it into next patch aswell. I'll try to fit as much as I can in the next patch as it is planned to be a mandatory update allready.
I know ppl hate updating software, but I wanna develop coin itself rather than adding pictures and logos into the client.

simichent, I forgot to thank you about feedback. Post youre wallet mate (or pm),  I'll compensate (some of) youre loss in mining. I know it won't be much today, but It can be someday ;)

blockexplorer is up, but atm I don't want to make it public. It's too slow even for a single user tbh. If you need something checked pm me (or post here).

It will take me couple days at least to code all of it, couple days more to test it. But I promise you'll see stuff, that you don't see in copy-paste coins.

I updated the roadmap abit to give you more insight whats going on here. I also PMd admins of PWC related services to consider upgrading. Im not gonna rush things, haste makes waste, or so they say.

Whoever just joined, is causing alot of rejects. I'm now seeing about 40%.

Is it because of the very low diff ?

HT xD

Yup, diff is just too low atm. and around 2 Mh/s mining. avg block time is aroun 10 secs atm, so stales are kinda inevitable.
I see lil boost in sell prices for this coin, bids still remains at the bottom.
Today has been a bit quiet, at coin progress. Personal stuff to do, sorry ;) I'm mostly working on now with the diff parameters and ways to implement it. I Prolly need to add some variables to the blocks themselves, but thats not so big issue cos next update is mandatory anyway.

The previous difficulty was only 288ish and took less than 2 hours with 5-15% rejects.

I believe it might be someone learning to scrypt mine or they're purposely burning off these low diff blocks for whatever reason.

It's the crickets/grasshoppers/middlecoin/multipool profiteers, which came me idea howto "deny" their work. My initial idea/feeling was to make system that just disconnects/bans those kind of services out, maybe even altering blockchain to leave these crickets empty handed.
Im gonna gonna softcore here and allow this kind of activity (freespeech etc... :)) and make changes to the diff algoys to minimize crickets miners income vs honest miners.
At this point I can reveal that its based standard used in industry for a long time and its called PID.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller

Minerapia, I'm sure the guy who attacked Powercoin big time appreciates your efforts. BTW, he's got away with over 2 million PWC.

The pool: http://next.afraid.org:8113/static/ is now fully updated and uses the last client.

At the time of attack (15/16 june, according https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=239451.0) there was just around 1,2 M PWC mined. I've looked at the blockchain and find out that the attacker had 500k PWC which he used in the double spend attack (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=236519.20 this thread supports this ammount). I've asked BitJohn if he has debug.log or something around the time to verify all this. I still havent went far enough to see where those coins actually ended.

At the time of this attack in June there was two blockchains. The checkpoints here are on the right blockchain so these coins don't have to exist anymore.

both wheretomine and coinchoose still seems to have old client, so dont believe what they say atm.

23580.1 PWC for trade.

Best BTC or LTC offer takes it. ;D

Is mine still wrong?

Nope, you're on the right chain. thanks.

When will coinchoose display the correct client? I can ask if you don't know the owner on here.

Wait - so above I am told it is the right one, but now the wrong one.  So - is my site correct or not?

Sal002, You are on the right chain (diff is right). If you downloded client/daemon from post1 links of this thread you cant go wrong. Only thing that puzzles me, is the value of the coin (and most/some, checked also VLC and SPOTS of the coins traded at coins-e) is not right. Maybe something is not syncing with the api.

The price is based on a weighted average of the current open buy orders for a particular coin to a set depth.  So it is not a specific order but is based on a weighted average of orders currently open.  This was done to deal with people skewing pricing by putting in place small orders (and reporting all over BCT that they did it and asking others to manipulate coinchoose in the same way).

atm I'm trying to get ratios right in the new diff algo, It requires alot of testing to get it react fast enough but not to drive zigzag with the diff.
Also gotta test new functions to keep everyone synced with the new diff algo.
Apart from that, code just needs clean up and some triple checks to ensure its safe to launch. V1.02 is not that far from being ready.

Meanwhile my test miners have been driving diff up and down in the testnet, I've set up a pool and a block explorer for powercoin.
Both are still lil bit in beta, and have alot of default values still writen in em, but working as intended.

just had 250 000 coins vanish lol.. and i thought i was mining right chain. in any case  blocks are 60 now as   stated.  but price is reflected with the  other coins.. any plans to get price up? i mean  its the same price  or close to infinity coin but that gives you 130000 per block not 60 lol

2M is what BigVern says (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=239794.msg2567613#msg2567613). The attack was started at #29294, so there were 1.17M PWC by that moment. The last double spends were at about 200K. The attacker withdrew nearly all PWC from Cryptsy and got away. They say to have destroyed the remaining PWC at Cryptsy. Have you checkpointed and rolled back the block chain to a moment prior to the attack?

I have tracked down (pretty much) all PWC attacker had and thought many ways to null and void certain blocks to revert hes coins. It would require alot of work, enough that it will be easier to take a fresh start rather than patching all the holes in the current PWC. I'll never gonna release version 1.02 for this coin, as it would require alot of testing/pathing/etc work which seems not to be reasonable as community is still afraid from attacker coins. Learning curve in altcoins is steep and I took cpl wrong steps here and there, which I can now avoid. I started to work on this coin as a hobby and I'll end it as a hobby. I never sold any PWC and never will (I actually bought some). Ill post screenshots later if someone doubts me ;)
Ill discontinue my work with PWC, Its just not worth it.

ps. some wiseguy imported blocks from old chain which causes retarget nightmare (Those blocks aren't accepted by latest client), so I added one more checkpoint to address that.

pps. Actually i didnt sell my stack now, some ppl kept setting up bids, so if someone wants to collect dead coin, fine by me. I gave ppl enough headstart to dump coins before me tbh.

So - can I remove PWC from CoinChoose as it is effectively dead?

yup

At least this was a good learning experience!  I think most of these alt coins are just micro experiments to make the community stronger!