Normal for zeus based ASICS.  I've actually seen worse.

I also appreciate him dropping by. I didn't even care much about the LTC instamine, but someone here was waving about their "fairest launch" in the history of cryptos flag, and I had to point out the reality, even if it was purely accidental.

I disagree that there will be widespread adoption of tipping currencies. That seems much more like an idea that people thought of as they were sitting there with their crypto and wondering how it could be useful. Merchants will accept bitcoin because it benefits them. Perhaps people will accept litecoin if btc transaction fees get too high (something i doubt?). But why would someone be bothered to get a wallet and a tip bot when someone wants to tip that 4 cents of a currency they haven't heard of?

As a note, there is an interesting discussion (well, more like a troll battle) that is currently going on in the Alt-Currency parent board regarding LTC and coblee (the creator or LTC) spoke to it. He actually alludes to the fact that when LTC was chosen, there were battles with parameters and algorithms (because at the time, there was a nifty little battle with deriving an FPGA and ASIC-resistant chain); sounds familiar?

Link to coblee's post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=648429.msg7304748#msg7304748

The reason why I chose Scrypt for Litecoin is more so because Litecoin needed to be mined by a different class of hardware than Bitcoin than it is because it was ASIC-resistant. I never believed Scrypt was ASIC-proof. The ASIC-resistancy was important though and it helped delay ASICs for as long as possible. The reason why that was important was because you need the coin's early miners to be as decentralized as possible. Why? Because in the beginning, the miners are the users. These will be the people that support the coin and help spread it. If the coin started with only 100 people able to mine it, then it won't go anywhere. As the coin matures (like Bitcoin and now Litecoin), the user base is no longer the same as the miner base. And having a more centralized miner base is not a big problem.

Hi merc82, can you help me understand the vardiff please?  how come sometimes i get cycles such as the below



I'm hasing with 3 Furys, 4 Mh/s total.  But the diff is so ridiculously high (16384!) that I haven't submitted a share in 5 minutes.  This happens often, and it takes quite a while for the pool to recognize that the diff is too damn high:



And eventually it goes back to a reasonable diff but it doesn't stay there... eventually it spikes again and hangs the share submissions for who knows how long. Its not just this way for my Furys on Scrypt but my rigs on X11 and X13.  Is there a way to request a steady diff by my miner's config?

Update #2: Proof of Stake

<@Rofo> We're going PoS, im finalising it now. The abuse PoW, malicious coins multipools and ASICs can do to a small PoW coin is getting ridiculous. However PoS is not my forte, were going to get in another developer or 2 on contract, so if you have any in mind that would be happy to contribute to a transition for a good fee please discuss it with me. I can then step aside and finish the infrastructure, a future PoW coin will be linked with us that is secure, centralized and reward miners for merge-mining for the security of all coins & a greater reward on the marketplace.

<@Rofo> Constantly trying to combat with hired rigs, fork/checkpoint reversals after it's too late and the constant demoralization any selloff is doing to the noble community has to end. PoS is the only thing that stops the arguments and fear of ASICs, algorithm arguments (plus future implementation of ASICs to any successful algo. regardless) and the damage PoS coin multipools is doing to us. Rather than any external promotion of the positives of noble i had hoped for in our first months, were only getting external fear and selling because of this.

<pikuchato> Awesome news, thank you rofo Long live NOBLE !!

<@Rofo> No worries i dont agree 100% with the choice, but we feel its the right one in this environment. Our ideals cant stand up against malicious and semi-anonymous actors with huge hashpower. I will be rewarding miners and ASICs with a partner coin after this is all settled though.

<pikuchato> This sounds awesome, in my opinion the most important part here is the extra developers, you DO need more time to focus on core issues, you can't do everything
<pikuchato> About the algorithm change, I count on you  - I dont realy have the technical knowledge to know which is better against those attacks.
<@Rofo> exactly. i have enough that we can reward trustworthy PoS devs well to work with us, and once they help us do the transition we can follow a roadmap of necessary PoS updates as they come

<@Rofo> Well no algo is safe with our market cap, simply because we wont have a huge amount of hash whatever route we go, and it wont stop those who just hire rigs to dump on us and demoralize people even more.

<pikuchato> So it will be POS & another algo? So thr attacker will need 51% of the hasing power PLUS 51% of the coins? something like that?

<@Rofo> I'm a big believer in PoW from a crypto/purist perspective, unfortunately PoW gives all these malicious actors with more money/resources the ability to constantly stomp on competitors. PoS is not 100% secure, it will be 100% PoS, even PPC relies only on the PoS part. PoS has its own issues but they can be better mitigated/monitored and we might improve the 'centralized' security in the future if we *must*.

<pikuchato> Respect for doing the opposite of your opinion just because the community wants

<@Rofo> They will need 51% of the coins currently being staked, but we have some projects and promos we will be doing to improve the transparancy of staking. Not even though, the odds/numbers are lower depending on success rate but im not 100% sure of them. My only real problem with this is the fact I haven't touched PoS in my spare time, I've been looking at MM, centralized/decentralized checkpointing ideas & tx messages. Which is why we'd like to contract an extra dev. or 2 to help us and make it worth their time. But thats OK, PoS will help us in other ways, and we can figure out PoW equivalent when we come back from the brink

<pikuchato> If you write a message I can use - I am a member of few israeli bitcoin groups, lots of well known developers hung around there I will be happy to post it

<@Rofo> Sure thing, Ill post this on the thread and then write a little 'looking for' ad

<pikuchato> But don't do it specially this is for bitcointalk
<pikuchato> lol exactly

<@Rofo> We're already talking with a few, wed just like our best odds with someone we can trust who we know will do the right thing with as little hassles as possible. So whoever is walling us down with cheap coins as well as dumping, well there wont be cheap easy coins coming in soon enough, we'll go PoS and triple our promo efforts.

<pikuchato> Well I can't complain look what just happend to me 10 minutes before your first message: 2014-06-14 05:02:37   SELL   0.00000011   17577564.57062612   1.93353210

<@Rofo> As a coin and community our reputation is infrastructure is great, our biggest problem was my 'purist longterm' perspective that wont survive in this environment, and our scrypt/ASIC fears & long distribution/inflation (as well as this scenes constant focus on daily price).

<pikuchato> ))))

<@Rofo> Thats all gone soon enough. My msg is also a result of seeing the dumping in a way. I don't know if its another attempt at double spending or people dumping/panicing to buy cheap before the change or its just people giving up so I had to say something.

<pikuchato> I bought nobl not sold, it says SELL because of the market action. People have no patiance and going to eat their hats

<@Rofo> yes sorry i figured it was the BUY you were talking about When we stop worrying about ASICs/miners/algos we can start going back to the core infrastructure and what noble was meant to represent. That's why PoS felt like the best choice.

<pikuchato> I don't think it is doube spending any more, just idiots who can't understand how come they money did not double itself in 3 days.

<@Rofo> Yeah perhaps, I really dont know. I do know of a number of people who are renting rigs at a 10% loss just to dump on noble, there's also the multipools from PoS coins that mine to stick us low profitability and dump, ASICs might be in there somewhere, but i dont think they're the key factor.

<pikuchato> I thought about this calculation: Big pool sell some coins before starting to mine -> others miners leave -> more coins for the pool

<@Rofo> Pretty much.

Little update on the Dogecoin MMO VoidSpace by the Universe Project. It's currently in the process of being kickstarted:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2078503895/voidspace

It also looks like it has a strong chance of being Greenlit on Steam:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=269740803&src=kickstarter-update


It will be available for PC, linux, iOS, Android, and Blackberry, ect. Fully cross-platform. The game will have fully player developed infrastructure and economies. No NPCs. The in game currency will be Dogecoin.

YACoin is on there - you have to select and enter an NFactor 15 hashrate.  YAC is at the top for one of my rigs at 500+% profitability of Litecoin  It's third for my other rig, but still over 300%.

It's doable with 2GB cards, but the hashrate is going to be sub 1KH/sec.  Granted, it will be using a lot less power than anything else at that point as your card is memory bound in a big way and will only be using about 33% of the shaders (1280 shaders into 2GB = *sadface*).  

 Another option is to buy some Yacoin on an exchange (VERY low cost right now) and enable stake minting if you have an old computer laying around. You'll earn YAC interest with basically no additional power usage.

Just point it at the R9 270 2GB YACoin multipool... ok that doesn't exist YET, but that is what I want to say I just posted about it in forums.yacoin.org

If they're all 4GB cards, maybe 800 YAC per day?  If they aren't 4GB cards, YAC is probably not going to be the best choice for you.  Give a visit to http://whattomine.com and put in the hash rates you get for each algorithm - fredeq is pretty accurate on what is most profitable to mine.  I find each to be higher than actual payout, when you compare them to each other it's moot if they're all slightly high.

Yacoin introduced SHA3 to cryptocoin world and is currently at Nf15. Rather than being ASIC resistant, I would say Yacoin is ASIC PROOF. It would require completely new technologies and concepts to change that.

...

changing mine on account of yours being cooler.. lol

Currently. But I think there is a chance of using true randomness within an algo to make ASICs impossible to make. It just hasn't been done yet.

Aw Hell, I'll put my two cents worth into the mix.

ANY predefined algorithm can be performed by an ASIC.

As long as the algorithm is known ahead of time, it can be performed by an ASIC.  Some ASICs get around that rule by embedding specialized CPUs to adapt to minor changes in the logic while running, but they sacrifice speed in doing so.

I do many forms of engineering and FPGA programming is one of them.  (For those who care FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array.  Clear as mud, right?)  FPGAs are "firmware" versions of integrated circuits.  They are, in a manner of speaking, reprogrammable ASICs.  An FPGA can be reprogrammed to become most any digital circuit.  One of the costs for this flexibility is speed.  Very high-end FPGAs can come within 97% of the speed of an ASIC, but they are significantly more expensive at the high speed and large logic-quantity ranges.  So, FPGAs are usually just used to prototype ASICs.  Once the "firmware" version of the code is perfected on FPGAs, it is converted into photo masks for mass producing ASICs, analogous to a photocopier

A miner hardware vendor that is an exception to this is KnC Miner.  They produce miners that are sold with the FPGAs in them rather than ASICs, for the most part.  (They may now have some products with just ASICs in them or FPGAs and ASICs.)  That is how they have gained speed to market, by skipping the ASIC chip production process.  However, their pricing reflects the additional cost of using high-end FPGAs in their products.

To say an algorithm is ASIC resistant is just a pipe dream.  There are only two things I can see that would make a cryptocurrency algorithm "ASIC resistant."

1) If the market for the coin is insignificant.  Creating ASICs is a very time and capital consuming venture.  (This is the crux of most of the constantly slipping ship dates for preordered miner hardware.  Some aspect of the ASIC did not come out as predicted and adjustments must be made to the product design to accommodate those variances.)   ASICs specialize in executing specific algorithms VERY fast.  HOWEVER, the logic is cast in stone and metal, pretty literally.  Once they are designed and set up for production, they can be churned out by the millions relatively cheaply.  The only way to justify the creation of an ASIC is if there is sufficient market to consume those millions of chips to pay back the development costs... and then make a profit.  Insufficient market, (as in the number of interested miner purchasers) no ASIC will be created.  Period.  Basic business economics.

The exception to this would be coins that, though different in some way, still use existing algorithms.  Ie. A SHA256D ASIC can be used to mine any SHA256D based coin.  The same is true for Scrypt ASICs.  Even "Bitcoin-sCrypt" will subverted by this rule eventually.  If there is enough money to be made, someone will figure out a way to get an advantage and turn a buck... er... coin.

2) If, as part of the design of the coin, the algorithm for the coin changes significantly and randomly during the life-cycle of the coin, it would be resistant to specialized hardware because the algorithms would not be fully known ahead of time.  IMHO, this "shell game" method of implementing the logic would not work well in practice, but would lend itself to CPUs and GPUs because they can have their code changed "on the fly."

Those are the only two scenarios I see that would make a coin algorithm truly "ASIC resistant."

The way I see it, the Noble team has produced as much if not more than other coins, but the reason that it has failed to be recognised is that the price never reflects the news so there is no media coverage that is linked with the big price rise.

It has to be intentional that someone is trying to keep the price down, and it is a shame. As is all the FUD that is being spread at the moment.

Fortunately the core supporters of Noble can see past the price into the future and can see how great this coin is going to be. Essentially they rock!

I personally think we need to make a big deal out of the block halving (I know it is a long way away yet) and try to get the news out there.

indeed there really is no point to harming a coin like this that aims to help so many people. it would take a rather decrepid sort of individual or group. there is no scam here and noble team are from what i gather very respectable people.

i will remain in the thread to counter fud with intelligent justification. for those who left their morality caps at home.. that's all on you.

From all the puzzles that i collected, i think that someone has something personal to Rofo, maybe after reading the PDF's and Rofo's strong points there.
So that person(s) wants to prove that Rofo's coin fails (and in that way prove that his opinions are also wrong).

Which, as we all know, is very childish.

So, as they form maybe a group with LOT of btc (look at extraction. also consider that only the last attack should have costed easily more than 12-15 btc, depends if the rigs were rented), now they can do all kinds of dirty tricks (dbl spending, fud on this thread, ddosing the pools (?), renting high hashrates from time to time for another fork etc.) just to prove some point and without any obvoius reason.

At least to me.

And the funny part is, that you cannot even prove who is "they", because they never stand clearly in the front row, telling: "My name is... AND I want from your coin this and that." No. Always messing things up from the background, speading fud and dezinformation, playing those little kid's games. ...
Something like 4chan but worse.

I definitely see glimmers of that on a more and more regular basis with NOBL.

To me, it looked like within the last two months the effort has been centered around one of two things:

1) Pump the price and then crash it back down so that people will avoid this coin (along with the according "sky is falling" posters in this thread).
2) Attack the coin directly (using various types of concerted efforts) to maintain consistent downward pressure on NOBL (along with the according "this coin is crap" posters in this thread).

When I take a look at a bunch of these posters that fall into one of these two categories, they only post on this thread a few times but their post history usually shows hints of an allegiance to another coin that has had a community subset that has attacked NOBL in some fashion.

Well the way I see it (and I am aware that I am not that experienced), if you fork to a certain flavour, and then an ASIC is developed for that, you would have to then fork again to avoid ASICs.

To me this shows weakness and that the coin is scared and running from change rather than embracing it. It also shows that the devs are a little too trigger happy to fork the coin and that it could potentially mean that they unknowingly fork to an untested method and ruin everything.

ASICs are inevitable and I think that us weathering the storm and fighting back, rather than running would be the sensible and strong thing to do.

hhhaaayyy... Poolerino and Coinmine are both still down... ah, had just directed my GPUs to mine Bitcoin head-on... hope tomorrow, everything will be normal then we can mine NOBL again... i'm just doin' a positive thinking...

There are people/groups that can get GHs worth of mining power from GPUs alone.. How will a different algo defend against GPUs? I'm afraid we will see a similar hashrate distribution as we are seeing now. (though it would cost the attackers more resources)

True, I've seen a guy who has a 4.6GH GPU farm in the industry environment; he said he used to run only part of minging force...

Scrypt-N may not be the way to go as there are ASIC miners availabe soon. Can we come up our own aglo, more or less that will delay the GPU or ASIC miners, but if we can mine with cpu only, we may lose miners too, ... just a thinking, anyway, never mind.

Why would people attack this coin?

Do they target all scrypt coins and try to make double spend attacks?

Or is it noble that get a special treatment for some reason?

I think we have some enemies, probably the same people who are involved in the scam coins and see us as a threat.

My opinion is that we should stay with scrypt, inevitably this will happen with any algo. The only way to not have this happen is to constantly switch algos, which is a crap idea.

I think there will only be a temporary spare of attacks, then the "good side" will catch up in terms of hash power.

Please chill a bit. Everybody has their right to say what they think.

@ cryptsy: They ignored us since launch, adding only crap after crap after crap, never considering us. Even took multiple mails to get us on the voting list.. We choose to not actively pursue getting on cryptsy anymore.