Great works on the news Chris. The news is a good motivator for us devs

We are now in a good position to increase the depth. The threat of 51% attacks seems to be reduced now, our difficulty swings are much less we are not seeing the drop off in hash power we saw before. I will bring this up on the Feathercoin forum to get feedback. Balthazar you are very welcome on our forums, we need you as an informed critic

https://forum.feathercoin.com


So far each fork has made Feathercoin better, stronger and more resillient. The first fork was because we faced the fact that Litecoin's difficulty adjust takes its hashpower for granted, this fork aims to keep the hashpower up by reducing the swings in difficulty and it reduces the effects of Time Warp attacks.

Agreed. That is why the block depth is set to 3 when ACP went live rather than 0 based on feedback from technical users in the crowd. This allows some natural reorgs.


Can you get me the times and block numbers?

I would like to find out why this did not work.

You said those blocks got orphaned after updating but were those blocks minted before you updated or after?

Blocks found on the old chain will get orphaned by the new fork. If anyone wants to continue using 0.6.4.3 they would need to set ACP to advisory.

You are right, I got wound up and let out my grievances with PXC. John kept his cool and I owe him for that. There is not much history between us, JohnCarr seemed upset that Feathercoin pulled out of UNOCS and blames me for that. We should have given them and WDC a heads up to our departure before leaving.

We experienced attacks where Feathercoin blocks were being created two hours into the future. This is the most that the protocol will tolerate and is the default of Bitcoin which has 12 blocks in that time period. We have 12 blocks in a 30 minute period and our code as been adjusted to reject blocks outside of that time period. So the attackers can still swing out time but not by as much.

With adjusts every 126 blocks (5.25 hours) having attackers swing our time by two hours would be a huge problem so we had to limit this in some way.

You know what, for all that I got worked up JohnCarr stayed level headed and responded to me well. Perhaps he was just let down by the developer. I still feel like a fool for allowing Feathercoin to go in with the UNOCS venture, nothing will ever be able to change that.

You want to see something interesting. JohnCarr has come on to the Feathercoin forum to take personal responsibility and then starts to sling mud at others.

http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,3815.msg29594.html#msg29594

Maybe he thought that I do not work on a Sunday!

Feathercoin - The Miner Update - Hard Fork Block 87948

The latest Feathercoin version 0.6.4.4 is now available and is a mandatory update. This update includes a hard fork of the block chain to accommodate the changes made in this patch. This hard fork should happen roughly around the 1st October which is only a week away.  To be able to send and receive Feathercoin after block 87948 you have to use the new client. Continuing to use old clients after the hard fork could result in the loss of coins.

Primarily this update is to further the refine of the difficulty adjust. Though the current Feathercoin difficulty which we changed to get us out of a tough spot it is not fair for long term miners who have to experience 41.4% swings on every adjust. The new code will adjust four times more frequently at 126 blocks but to approximately 9% which still gives the exact same overall adjust. To prevent the difficulty from being sent up or down too rapidly the current 504 sample window is being maintained and damping is being introduced to reduce fluctuations between extremes.

There have been long running discussion and arguments on the Feathercoin forum including simulations of various different options surrounding this solution. Feel free to take a look at the latest discussion here.

To get the latest update please go to the Official Feathercoin Website and download the client from the homepage.

Official Feathercoin Website

Changelog:
Move to 126 difficulty adjust with 504 averaging window and .25 damping
Reduce effectivness of Time Warp attack
Reinstate CAlert system
Make getnetworkhashps more accurate
Release Windows binary with QR encode

Just being honest. Take it or leave it.

Damn right. I should have spent some serious time researching all the partners first especially as PXC as they were volunteering to do the dev work. I gave too much of my faith to Justabitoftime and regret that as some of his ideas needed sanity checking. Sorry Jabot but UNOCS was a total dud, I could have helped avoid it. PXC's infamous six hour notice hard fork which changed the mint rate was a total shock to me. Feathercoin should never have been involved with these guys.

Great thread by the way. I enjoyed the original post even though it was a great shock at the time. It may be biased but there are many truths in it.

RC3 should be the winner

Changelog:
Time Warp code limited until after change block

Original post updated to include RC2.

Changelog:
Created CAlert key for testnet
Updated CAlert to handle separate keys for mainnet and testnet


We are making good progress now that we checkpoint blockchain history. It was a bit oppressive working when we had the threats of large attacks.

 

The Feathercoin testnet is up and running for 0.6.4.4. If you are able please download a client to add to the testnet and do some solo mining on it. The intention is to run this over the weekend with an official release on Monday if no problems arise. Currently RC1 is set to hard fork on block 87948 which is approximately on the 1st October.

Primarily this is furthering the refinement of the difficulty adjust. Though the current Feathercoin difficulty which we changed to got us out of a tough spot it is not fair for long term miners who have to experience 41.4% swings on every adjust. The new code will adjust four times more frequently at 126 blocks but to approximately 9% which still gives the exact same overall adjust. To prevent the difficulty from being sent up or down too rapidly the current 504 sample window is being maintained and damping is being introduced to reduce fluctuations between extremes.

There have been long running discussion and arguments on the Feathercoin forum including simulations of various different options surrounding this solution. Feel free to take a look at the latest discussion here.

Download Feathercoin 0.6.4.4 RC3

To run the client on the testnet use the following flags.


To download and compile from source please get the code from our testing branch on GitHub.

GitHub Feathercoin testing branch

From the command line you can clone the testing branch with Git using.


Changelog:
Move to 126 difficulty adjust with 504 averaging window and .25 damping
Reduce effectivness of Time Warp attack
Bring back CAlert system for new keys
Make getnetworkhashps more accurate
Release Windows binary with QR encode

Just a reminder that we are only a stones throw from the upgrade dead line for Feathercoin 0.6.4.3 which is 09:00UTC 2nd September. If you have not updated then please do so now.
Download client

This release introduces Advanced Checkpointing to protect against 51% attacks.
Read more on Advanced Checkpointing

Major exchanges and pools have upgraded. If you do not upgrade and an attack occurs you could find yourself on the attackers chain for the duration of the attack. Please upgrade to the protected Feathercoin blockchain.

/facepalm. That should read September as it now does.

Just a reminder that we are only a stones throw from the upgrade dead line for Feathercoin 0.6.4.3 which is 09:00UTC 2nd September. If you have not updated then please do so now.
Download client

This release introduces Advanced Checkpointing to protect against 51% attacks.
Read more on Advanced Checkpointing

Major exchanges and pools have upgraded. If you do not upgrade and an attack occurs you could find yourself on the attackers chain for the duration of the attack. Please upgrade to the protected Feathercoin blockchain.

I know what you mean but I used to find the altcoin forum very useful but it is now very confined as there are so many 'alts' here and there is often a lot of hostility that is counter productive. I like to think that everyone on the Feathercoin forum wants to see it survive and succeed

I do not think that anyone was over joyed with this solution but eventually found that this was the most viable short term protection against the 51% attacks. What every crypto coin needs is protection from 51% attacks through decentralisation and that is where we hope to be. I believe alternative crypto currencies is where the real progress in cryptos will now be made. It has been said in this post that Bitcoin could never do ACP, that is correct, they have to maintain the status quo now and lack agility.  It is up to the 'alts' to do the work that no else wants to, we would hope that the end result is a solution for everyone to use.

To do that people need to go into the debug console in the Qt GUI. Are you saying that an option needs to be made available in the GUI as that is very doable?

In fact we would welcome you to make a commit for such a thing if you are willing