Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

This is a mandatory update for all digitalcoin users.

Profitability Hopping
Recently, pool hopping software has made it easy for people to negatively affect crypto-currencies without a second thought. This update attempts to address that issue by capping the maximum difficulty rise at 100% and the maximum drop at 50%. This should help to stabilize the difficulty and lower if not eliminate the negative effects of such websites and software.

FAQ
Q: How will this update be effective?
A: Profit switching pools target the most profitable coin at any one point in time. This update smooths the digitalcoin difficulty drops to avoid the extremely low difficulty that pool hopping software thrives on.

EXAMPLE
Before:
1. Pool hopping software mines the easy blocks and pushes difficulty to 5
2. Pool hopping hash power leaves and DGC retargets to difficulty 1 because of the lack of hash power
3. Pool hopping software gets on again, mines most of the easy blocks, and pushes difficulty to 5
4. Repeat....

After:
1. Pool hopping software mines the easy blocks and pushes difficulty to 5
2. Pool hopping hash power leaves and DGC retargets to 2.5 difficulty
3. Regular miners join the network because of the improved profitability
4. Network stabilizes at that hash rate because pool hopping software will not switch due to low difficulty spikes

Q: Will regular miners benefit?
A: Yes. Regular miners were being forced to mine high difficulty blocks, and weren't able to get the lower difficulty blocks without joining the profit hoppers. Normal pools and solo miners will benefit from the stability and profitability they'll receive. Once the network stabilizes at an appropriate hash-rate, the lack of difficulty spikes will keep digitalcoin within the proper difficulty.

Q: Will the difficulty be kept artificially high or low?
A: No. The difficulty will function completely normally. The 100% maximum rise and 50% maximum drop are high enough to allow the network to adjust very quickly, but low enough to disrupt profit hopping pools's ability to dictate difficulty.

Other
Additionally, the update makes client improvements and builds on the stability and security of the client.

You must update before block 476,280. That is the difficulty protocol switching point.

Download
digitalcoin Windows QT EXE: http://digitalcoin.co/download/digitalcoin-qt-V0-2.zip
digitalcoin Mac QT: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6gdafrojcuji1ys/Digitalcoin-Qt-0.2-Mac.zip (thanks to maxpower)
digitalcoin Source: http://digitalcoin.co/download/digitalcoinSource-V0-2.zip
digitalcoin GIT Repo: https://github.com/baritus/digitalcoin

it's a sexy new client, i like it :) good work sir :)

Thanks for the update, baritus.  As usual, excellent work from the best developer in the biz.  A well tested difficulty update, designed to properly handle today's issues while also planning for the future.  No "thrown together" overreaction, just a well executed plan.

Great things lie ahead of us for DGC, SRC, and ARG (yes even ARG lol.)  Anyone not on board will surely regret it.

I just put a 100 DGC bounty up for someone (probably/hopefully maxpower) to make the new binaries for OS X.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=216672.msg3103244#msg3103244

If anyone is inclined to match/exceed that it would help keep DGC viable on the Mac platform.

Is the github updated yet?

Lets home that the 50% difficulty drop won't scare off lots of the miners..  ::).

Thanks Baritus! I can't wait to see this in action! We've posted about this on our site: http://cryptosource.org/digitalcoin-releases-mandatory-client-update-to-combat-against-profit-hopping-pools/

Top stuff as usual Baritus. Thanks again for all your hard work in getting this update out. Lets all support this and keep things on the move and improving for our community.

Good job! A+!

nice one  :)

updated, good work

There shouldn't be any bugs, but if you find any, let me know please.

Just installed yesterday and seems to be running sweet. Good job!

Good to hear.

wrote up a small piece about the update :

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2013/09/09/digitalcoin-update-attempts-to-ward-off-multipools/

I had some issues with the format of the old repo and my server's configuration but I've setup a new repo and included the link in the first post.

Nice article Baritus! Tell me is the diff fix already effective?

I've updated the main post with additional details.

Just to lend a hand and put a little water on the fire.  This is a convo I had with Baritus on cryptsy. The subject is a faster difficulty adjustment and why he decided that was a risky option.  He said the problem comes down to variability and he explains it like this:

baritus320: Variance is the potential random variability in the computing power of the network. In the extreme example of 1 block retarget variance: One guy gets lucky and mines the block in 1 second under 1 difficulty, the next guy also gets lucky but now the difficulty is 3, so it goes to 30. network = struck.  The more blocks, the less the chance of something like that happening due to variance.

Yes, please make sure you update.

no version bump in the client?

I didnt change the version number, because thats just the version of bitcoin the client is based off of.

Only the client name is changed.

Just reminding everyone that there are only about 1000 blocks left before the update.

Nice! Not long now. Giddy up!  ;D :D

Very Nice !!!

I've got all my hashrate pointing to DGC now. Can't wait for this fix. Also, going to take advantage of the last of the 20 second 20 DGC blocks. ;)

Danny, you still have a couple of weeks before the generation rate reduction update takes place.  But yes, take advantage of it while you still can.


-tb-

That's what I meant ;). Who knows when the reduction update comes out. Could be 2 weeks... or 3 or 4... I'm gonna scoop up as much DGC as I can until then :P