The X11 algo should be compatible with GPUs and very difficulty to port to ASICs. I did some work on a GPU miner for X11, which is here: https://github.com/evan82/darkcoin-sgminer

I have some 7970's laying around here, I'll see if I can get it working for us

And any thoughts on implementing KGW? I think the current retargeting actually works pretty well, if we have to hard fork after this I'm not opposed to implementing something like that.

The algorithms I used for our proof-of-work came originally from here:
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/hash/sha-3/Round2/submissions_rnd2.html

It's no problem if it comes to that. We actually did that early on already, it's pretty simple.

However, I have a feeling the "whale" is just using GPUs. The X11 algos are very hardware optimized to run on a GPU and I think it would have taken someone about this much time to implement that and launch a farm. Time will tell if I'm right, but it seems likely.  

If I'm correct, the hashrate shouldn't fall when difficulty resets (not > 20%) because the cost of running that setup is minimal.

I have a lot of news, I'll make a full post later detailing all of the progress

There's a little over 3 million total, with a market cap near $300,000+

Looking to buy 10000 DRK, PM Me your offers!

Yeah, I'll have to update the image when I get a moment, in the mean time if you want to update your ami:

The instructions to update the server are almost exactly what's in this tutorial: http://blog.kvvs.nl/?p=239/

it's missing a couple packages though, so you'll also need to run this:

sudo apt-get install automake libcurl4-openssl-dev

1.2, there's a better one out now

Added your post to the front page! Awesome work.

Good idea, added.

So, without getting insanely technical, Doge and DarkCoin are setup differently. The block reward function in DarkCoin is set on a very even curve and reward is higher toward the beginning. Later on people will forget that it was ever not fixed and they'll just talk about the halving. So there's not anything to really take advantage of, right? After a difficulty of 100, no matter what the blocks will return 15 DRK.

When I wrote the reply to the email earlier, I was thinking we'd hit 100 difficulty in a few weeks, but we're already at 600Mh/s for the network (up from 200 yesterday). If this keeps up we'll have a difficulty of 21 tomorrow and we only need 5x the growth of the network to reach that lower cap.

So I guess it's a question of incentives, knowing that we're going to cap at some point who wouldn't mine right now? From an economics point of view it's a feedback loop and it should actually make the growth exponential.

Someone asked me this via email, I thought I'd post the answer for everyone:

I'm looking for some clarity on the amount of Darkcoins that will be minted.  I've read some where that it is something quite large.  I'm looking to invest founds into emerging crypto's that have a possibility of longevity.  I'm very concerned thought with the total number of coins that will be minted.  Please advise. thanks.

--------------------------------

DarkCoin is unique in the since that it has a variable block reward that is based on difficulty. This means that while currently the block reward is 120, when difficulty rises the block reward will fall. Eventually the block reward will be driven down to it's lowest amount which is 15DRK. After that, every 2 years the block reward is halved again. So in 2 years, 7.5DRK, in 4 years, 3.75DRK, etc.

So, we don't know how many there will be, but it definitely won't reach anywhere near 84 million. It mostly depends on how long it takes us to reach the lower block reward cap. At this of rate of growth that should happen this month (it happens at about 100 difficulty).  

WTB 20,000 Darkcoin for 1 BTC, PM me!

Try the exchange: https://c-cex.com/index.html?p=drk-btc

The block reward in 2 years will be 7.5DRK (A difficulty of 100+ will force the block reward down to 15DRK and reward halves every 2 years). It'll be very scarce and supported by actual transaction volume. If we're successful in adding all of this functionality it'll be the only other real alt-coin.

Some of my debug output this morning....   I'm making lots of progress, still a ways to go though (i.e, I just implemented the pooling commands and signing of transactions via commands.)

Btw, to get this working I had to add like seven functions to the core bitcoin code. It's no wonder why no one has done this yet. It's pretty difficult. It definitely doesn't support anon transaction pooling as the code stands.

CCoinJoinPool::SetNull()
2014-02-05 15:00:50 ThreadRPCServer method=sendtoaddressanon
2014-02-05 15:00:50 has coinControl
2014-02-05 15:00:50  -- 0
2014-02-05 15:00:50 Found unspent input larger than nValue
2014-02-05 15:00:50 CCoinJoinPool::SendMoney() - Added transaction to pool.
2014-02-05 15:00:50 AddQueuedInput
2014-02-05 15:00:50  --- -- input
2014-02-05 15:00:50  --- adding my input
2014-02-05 15:00:50 sending: txpli (41 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 AddQueuedOutput
2014-02-05 15:00:50  --- -- output
2014-02-05 15:00:50 CCoinJoinPool::Check()
2014-02-05 15:00:50 vin 1 vout 0
2014-02-05 15:00:50  -- ACCEPTING OUTPUTS
2014-02-05 15:00:50  --- adding my output
2014-02-05 15:00:50 sending: txpoolv (4 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 AddQueuedOutput
2014-02-05 15:00:50  --- -- output
2014-02-05 15:00:50  --- adding my output
2014-02-05 15:00:50 sending: txplo (34 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50  -- ACCEPTING SIGNATURES
2014-02-05 15:00:50 sending: txpoolv (4 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50  -- SIGNING
2014-02-05 15:00:50 sending: txpoolv (4 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 nTotalValueIn 50000000000
2014-02-05 15:00:50 nTotalValueOut 500000000
2014-02-05 15:00:50 txNew:
CTransaction(hash=d255c1fd0bf9f22394f314d7ea08799ba50ab62f9cc5ddce68f7c5f4ce5e6645, ver=1, vin.size=1, vout.size=1, nLockTime=0)
    CTxIn(COutPoint(30e6124be617de34556db387cc51b0e11b95c2e662cb79ec8418898e35452667, 0), scriptSig=304402207e82e87fea86173e)
    CTxOut(nValue=500.00000000, scriptPubKey=OP_DUP OP_HASH160 4bbd190c1389)
 -- TRANSMIT
2014-02-05 15:00:50 CCoinJoinPool::SetNull()
2014-02-05 15:00:50  -- after -- vin 0 vout 0
2014-02-05 15:00:50 received: txpoolv (4 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 sending: inv (37 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 received: txpoolv (4 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 received: txpoolv (4 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 trying connection 92.242.140.2:19999 lastseen=116.2hrs
2014-02-05 15:00:50 received: getdata (37 bytes)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 received getdata (1 invsz)
2014-02-05 15:00:50 received getdata for: tx d255c1fd0bf9f22394f314d7ea08799ba50ab62f9cc5ddce68f7c5f4ce5e6645

Checkout the new website!: http://www.darkcoin.io

Awesome! Added to the front page

Done

+1 DRK

You don't need a port configured. It's baked into the client. It's 9998 and 9999 though.