When you are mining, whether solo or through a pool, you are always at risk of mining on a wrong fork. When you mine a block solution on a wrong fork, there is no coin generated because the blocks become orphaned, i.e., subsequent blocks on the right fork will not recognize them, i.e., will not recognize that any coins got created. So, it's not so much that you wasted mining power and electricity, as that you are always risking a certain percentage of the times blocks are found, they turn out not to be valid, and that's what appears to have happened in your case. But statistically, over the long-term, you should not suffer this anymore than anyone else, so you should consider it just an inherent risk of mining, not that you got singled out to take losses.

If people keep jumping in when the difficulty is easy, and jumping out when the difficulty is high, it's just going to keep jumping back and forth. I don't blame people for acting in accordance with economic incentives - if this continues though - it means cheap Catcoins are being made available to coin hoppers who will then systematically dump the cheap coins on the exchanges and suppress the coin prices. There is no rush, now that this hard fork has been done, but I respectfully suggest considering the loyalty credit logic to fix this incentive at some point.

Catchain.info is the main block explorer for Catcoins from what I understand, and it currently shows block 20324, generated approximately 2014-01-04 22:04:49 with 17 transactions, value out 294.56266897 and difficulty at 4.0.

If this is not correct, this website has potential to cause major confusion as to what is the correct fork. If it is displaying information from the wrong fork, then that needs to be fixed ASAP.

This may be a dumb question BUT - is it possible that the poolerino blockchain got so far ahead of the other blockchain, that its chainstate got replicated into a whole bunch of QT nodes, per the "longer chain wins" logic, and despite poolerino trying to get back to the "other" blockchain, what was the poolerino chain is winning despite poolerino's attempted corrective action, due to the Bitcoin logic which states that it's not any centralized authority that determines what is the correct fork, but which fork is the longer one?

Please someone with more knowledge than me confirm or refute this reasoning.

I just redownloaded the blockchain and it re-synchronized to the "wrong" chain, with 20356 blocks.

Isn't it the case that the Bitcoin blockchain logic is to recognize whichever blockchain is LONGER that it recognizes as valid over the one that is shorter? Wouldn't this cause the default to be the 20356 block chain to be recognized by the wallet at least until the one with only 20324 blocks "catches up" and becomes longer than the one with 20356 blocks? And if the one with 20356 continues to produce more blocks, wouldn't that eventually have to become the right fork by the rules of competing forks?

Please someone post if that is not correct.

Etblvu1

You got on the same fork I was on, which is apparently the wrong fork. I deleted the "blocks" directory to force a re-download, which my wallet is in the process of doing. I suggest you do the same.

[Edit: Please disregard - my wallet is now stuck on updates at block #8, I apparently don't know the right procedure to re-download the blockchain. Someone who knows the right procedure - please post instructions]

Hello,

My wallet apparently got on the wrong fork (shows block 20353, and difficulty 16).

I am sure I am not the only one in this situation.

Please someone post a list of seed nodes that are known to be on the right fork, and instructions on which files or folders to delete, to force the blockchain to redownload, to get back on the right fork (or if the wallet will eventually figure out on its own, how long I should give it for that to happen)..

Thank you,

Etblvu1

[Edit: I figured out deleting all the contents of the blocks directory seems to be forcing a redownload of blockchain data; just to be safe I also removed all references to seednodes in my catcoin.conf file. Hopefully, it willl download the correct blockchain data now.]

The way all the cryptocurrencies work, when a block has been solved, all the nodes receive notification they need to drop work, and start working on the new block. This should apply equally in this case.

We'd simply insert a call to a function or a method right before the block reward amount to recognize for a particular block solution is finalized (this would be done by all the nodes), to check if the reward amount should be halved for this particular block solution reward or not. If not, the program executes the same as before. If it comes back yes, then divide the block reward by 2 but other than that, the program continues executing the same as before. Now, what would this function do? First, it would check if the extraordinary conditions exist (e.g. the current difficulty is more than 50% easier than the last difficulty). Extraordinary conditions would not come up too often, and if it hasn't, it would return false (difficulty fluctuation is normal, we don't need to engage the compensating mechanism). Now, if we detect the extraordinary circumstance, then we'd step back through the blockchain to count the number of block solution awards generated and credited to the same address during the last, higher difficulty phase (call it lastPeriodCount), and in the current, easier difficulty phase (currentPeriodCount). If lastPeriodCount < thisPeriodCount, then return true (cut reward in half). Otherwise, return false (don't cut in half).That's the full extent of the complexity of what I am proposing in terms of what the code would need to do at the coin network level - maybe 30-50 lines of code (if that). Pools would then factor this into how to distribute coins to miners. Showing that this mechanism is in operation in the pool and wallet UI is optional. I believe this is so powerful that it will become implemented by all the altcoins (and even Bitcoin itself) sooner or later, and will end the era of jumping coins minute-by-minute to try to maximize profits. It eliminates the need to keep changing around difficulty adjustment parameters to try to outfox the minute-by-minute coin hoppers - their paradigm is permanently defeated. After this change, long-term incentives would match up with short-term profit maximization. Both would agree that the correct strategy is to switch coins no more often than every few weeks or months, based on reassessing the various coins' long-term positioning and potentials, and the primary strategy would be to mine-and-hold, rather than mine-and-dump-on-the-exchanges. This is bringing back the original dynamic of Bitcoin miners, before there was any such thing as an altcoin. With this dynamic, market capitalization of cryptocurrencies can then truly "go to the moon," and we'd just be duplicating what was successful before.

Sure. You buy video cards, install drivers, download the wallet, cgminer, set your mining gear to solo-mine or join a pool. I don't know how "simple" this procedure is for the average people out there in the world - but if they criticize it's too complicated, that applies equally to all the cryptocurrencies. And that might be an opportunity to make an easier way to do it.

As for details of how block rewards work, as a user, you really don't need to know anything about how it works. You follow well-documented procedures to do mining, and you get rewarded for your contribution, other people have vetted it's fair, you'll get fair value in coins for hashing work you contribute - you don't need to worry about the details.

However, if you are interested in squeezing out maximum profits, and want to get technical, then yeah, things can seem more complicated. But at that point, you've asked for the complexity. The loyalty credit system may seem complicated, but it's a designed to counteract people who are already engaged in a complicated strategy to take advantage of a weakness in the reward system as it works currently. It will have essentially zero impact on people who don't engage in that complicated strategy.

What you describe really is no problem, because you can start mining any time you want you will get adequate compensation in coins. There is no "penalty" in the sense of your wallet losing coins. It it just that when you jump in when things are particularly easy, and you have not mined recently when things are hard, your per-minute-of-mining profitability is more boring (cut in half but still profitable). Rest of the time, when difficulty changes are not extreme, you can jump in and out without any effect on block reward values. But it would train people to moderate hyperactive jumping-in behavior during the rare short-term incentives of apparent high profitability. The system/protocol is set up specifically so trying to jump in and cherry pick easy profits fails. The easy profits are reserved for people who provably were around mining during the recent tougher times. They deserve that reward. Otherwise, everything works exactly the same, you believe in the coin, you jump in without checking anything, stay through multiple difficulty swings, and generally, you are credited the full amount. It's just in the rare case you jump in conveniently when the difficulty happened to be very easy, then it's going to seem (just for that one brief difficulty period) like the reward rate is not exciting (closer to typical profit than extraordinarily profitable). Once you "serve out" one difficulty cycle, you are on exact equal grounds as everyone else. This is completely fair and totally temporary. The loyalty credit system does not have a long memory as to who has been loyal (except for the few coins you may have earned more of that you still have sitting in your wallet). There is no systemic problem, and hashrates are systematically modestly adjusting all the time, without the crazy spikes caused by short-term profitability seekers. The incentives are for once matched up with what is valuable for the coin network - its security and stability is better served from longer-term hash contributions that come regardless of difficulty changes - than by the same number of hashes that only show up during easy difficulty times. I doubt anyone does this, but think about it - if someone were to hash Catcoins only during times when difficulty level is high, and stopped mining when it got easy, they are helping the network far more than someone who does the opposite - yet they are compensated far less.

Is this something I have said, or something you are assuming?

If a low hashrate loyal miner goes through a loyalty-supporting pool, and mines 0.054 coins during a particularly difficult time, the pool would indicate to him he has earned 0.054 coins plus 0.054 loyalty credits. A high hashrate loyal miner solo mines, and finds 10 blocks during a difficult time, and each time he found a block, he sees in his QT wallet, that he has gained 50 coins, plus 50 loyalty credits, for a total of 500 coins and 500 loyalty credits.

Now, the difficulty level goes way down, and it is easy to mine blocks. The low hashrate loyal miner continues mining through the pool, and he pretty quickly earns 0.054 coins and in the process extinguishes the 0.054 loyalty credits. A non-loyal slow miner who did not earn loyalty credits contributes the same amount of hash to the same pool (jumping in for the easy difficulty), but not having earned loyalty credits during the previous high difficulty era, receives only .027 coins, per rules of the coin.

In the meantime, the loyal solo miner, quickly finds 10 blocks during this easy difficulty era, and each time he finds the block, he extinguishes 50 loyalty credits and receives 50 coins. At the end of the easy mining era, he has acquired 500 coins, and used up all the loyalty credits. A non-loyal solo miner decides to jump in to try to take advantage of the easy difficulty level with equal hash power, also solves 10 blocks, but because he did not have any loyalty credits to extinguish as he solved each block, he only got 25 coins per block solved, for a total of 250 coins. Maybe he decides he'd better stick around and mine this coin during difficult times, so next time the easier difficulty comes around, he can earn 50 coins per block. And this is precisely the behavior we want to encourage.

In what way do these scenarios fail to differentiate between slow loyal miners and fast hop miners, or reward the fast hop miners for their behavior?

Except if people jump into and out of mining the coin, it will not recalibrate to 10 minutes. Maybe the difficulty retargets it will be somewhat more moderated, but that's because we are hiding the symptoms by changing things so fast that we are hoping miner-dumpers don't keep up. But that is regularizing the difficulty adjustments, in the same sense as claiming that security by obscurity is real security. It is easily defeated by coding.

In a way, having the long block adjust time, serves to highlight the underlying problem, like a canary in a mine showing up toxic gasses before people start dying. I would consider this a subtantial virtue of the long difficulty adjustment period. It provides an opportunity to perceive the problem in purer, exaggerated form, so that a real fundamental fix can be test as a true long-term solution for real. Shortening the difficulty adjustment poriod is like simply taking the canary out of the mine, and would not be a legitimate way to improve the health of miners. (pun not intended).

Now, I find your comment about "every layer of loyalty credits leads to more loyalty fragmentation" interesting. Since loyalty credits are just expiring fictional units, not transferable, does not accumulate over time, and is not stored on the blockchain (but just derived from studying existing blockchain data), how would there be layers? Please explain.

That's just a simple software problem. Miner-dumper coders will sooner or later figure out how to write a program to watch the blockchain and switch into mining at the precise moment to maximize accumulating cheap Catcoins, and stop mining the coin, just as the high difficulty phase kicks back in - and also do the same for the other hyper-adjusting altcoins. I suspect this kind of program is already written, but being hoarded by miner-dumpers who think they have a trade secret on easy money mining, but it will become widely distributed soon, and the instant switch-on instant switch-off effect will become more pronounced. Miner-dumpers are after maximum profit, and this relatively simple logic would accomplish maximizing profits. The only solution to this is to fix the perverse incentive that is coded into the coin code, to engage in this behavior. If this is not going to be done, then loyal miners will see mediocre profits, miner-dumpers will see Catcoin as yet another useful-idiot type coin to mine and dump with zero loyalty, and we have lost the uniqueness among altcoins.

At least right now, despite the very long confirmation times, cheap catcoins are not being replenished to the miner-dumpers, months of scaricity (despite slow confirm times), would have I'm sure driven prices back up, to the point where more mining would have been attracted. And as long as we were collectively willing to put up temporarily with very slow confirm times, we could have used the time to strategize on how to normalize difficulty (with a loyalty credit type modification - or just some organized coordinated effort). But now we will just have a rapid mix of too slow and too fast mining times, perhaps too fast for most people to notice, but miner-dumpers can and will seize upon it., and more coins will be mined and dumped than mined and held.

Mark my words - this will lead to endless cycles of a 12-24 hours at high difficulty (e.g., 30 minute block time x 36 = 18 hours), followed by very easy difficulty for less than an hour (e.g., 1 minute block time x 36 = 36 minutes) during which time miner-dumpers will put massive hashing power to get cheap catcoins and dump on the markets, followed again by 12-24 hours at high difficulty when loyal miners suffer, and repeat over and over again. Just a speeded up version of the same problem. Coin prices languish. The problem is the oscillation with the inherent temporary high hash power combined with dumping of the cheaply mined coins, at the expense of loyal miners - and not just the particular unrealistically high difficulty phase / slow confirm times. High difficulty is merely a symptom.

And why reset to difficulty=16? We had too much mining going on (like 1 per minute or faster) when the difficulty was at 64. Faster confirm times means more coins being mined and dumped. This may temporarily pump up the coin value from the excitement, but look at the past week of DOGE prices, for a taste of what this excitement leads to. And what's with the "poll" that was open for only 4 hours? I go to sleep, wake up, and find my vote isn't counted. This smells like consensus manipulation.

I agree with the sentiment that changing block readjust parameter is changing the rules of the game after starting. My proposal for adding a Loyalty Credit is at least designed to restore normality, where under most circumstances 2016 blocks for readjusting, and 50 blocks per block solved, (and all the other parameters), would continue, minus the crazy difficulty swings.

But if the original developer has bought in, very well, I expect the coin prices to recover somewhat, and we will go from an underperforming coin (I believe based on FUD) with at least an intact soul, to a yet-another-mine-and-dump-altcoin, which in some particular sense is an improvement. Prices will probably go up somewhat, I will not dump CATs right now for this reason - a purely economic reason. But the decision to address only the symptoms is disappointing, in that now there is no particular reason why CAT is special anymore. It's like an artist selling out his soul, to get a respectable entry level job in middle management, giving up music, because his family harraged him about his slow rate of earning income, but at the cost of his potential to become a star.

Etblvu1

Sure, some people will coin-hop, for the same reasons people who sit in front of televisions in couches channel-surf on their cable TV.

The least we can do, to help the cryptocurrency movement, is to set up the code in such a way that people who do this are demonstrably receiving fewer coins than people who make up their minds and stick to mining one coin.

Once this is known, I believe coin-hopping will lose its appeal to most people who engage in it. Just ask anyone here who pool hops, if they would continue hopping, if they had a guarantee that by picking a single coin to mine for weeks at a time, they would end up with more coins. And ask all the people who say they support Catcoin but felt forced by economic reasons, to switch to mining another coin, if a mechanism guaranteed they would benefit from extra coins for mining high difficulty times, they would stick around for the long-term. You might be surprised.

It really isn't a human problem. It is a code problem. Humans are responding to the faulty economic incentives created by the code. Right now, with the way the coins function, if you mine "profitable" coins of the split second and dump it on the exchanges, you do end up accumulating more coins, than if you loyally mine your favorite coin. If the code stops giving economic incentives to behave in this way, humans will stop behaving this way. We really should not be satisfied with coin software which embeds economic incentive for users to act in a way that is destructive to the value of the coin. We are so close to achieving a perfect solution to this problem, it would be a shame if some other coin were to be the first to implement it.

The pools would calculate the profitability of the coin based on the formula that the coin is worth 25 coins per block. Using standard profitability formulas, this would show the coin as being only half as profitable as it would be for loyal miners. Thus, multipool type services would choose not to mine this coin,because it appears unprofitable, or if they forget to change the value to 25 coins per block, they would have some explaining to do to their userbase who is looking to maximize profits, and they seem to keep getting a low number of Catcoins. And in any case it does not harm the network that much, because other multipool type sites would pop up that specifically avoid coins that implement Loyalty Points because it attracts users not to end up with a low number of coins. While the coin jumpers receive 25 coins, the loyal miners are getting the benefit of 50 coins during easy difficulty times. People do respond to incentives. People do not set up elaborate multipool type systems just to complicate their lives - they are actually trying to maximize profits for their mining rigs. Deny them the profits, and they will seek the profits elsewhere. But in short order, as coins implementing Loyalty Credits soar in value, while other coins lose value, all the coins will in short order implement this change or find they cannot survive. So jumping around by the minute hunting for profits, will become a thing of the past. It is not human nature to coin-hop - it is human nature to try to eek out maximum profits - and when the code stops incentivizing people to behave this way, they will just pick a coin to be loyal to, and set the rigs to mine there, and forget it. This is how miners should behave, and will behave, once the Loyalty Credit system gets implemented. And this will help the entire cryptocurrency movement. And as a bonus, for people who report coin income to the tax authorities, mining a coin and holding it long term can result in favorable long-term capital gains treatment, whereas engaging in mining-dumping-buying behavior presumably would not.

There is no problem with fungibility, because each block solution reward claim event, deterministically creates exactly 25 coins or 50 coins, based on deterministic conditions, which can be independently verified by each node by analyzing block chain data, creating a network consensus on exactly what was created. Once the coins are created, it can wait the usual time to maturity, and can be spent, without there being any difference in quality between coins that were mined as part of a block of 25 or as part of a block of 50. All that is required is for all the nodes to agree on the conditions under which a successful block solution results in a credit of 50 coins, or in 25 coins. The loyalty points are ephemeral non-traded fictions which help the miner know whether they'll get more coins or less coins during the next easy-mining era, provides much needed morale boost (and assurance of rewards to come) to keep mining during the difficult era, and gets zeroed out after that, so there is no issue with fungibility between this and actual Coins. In pools, this would just be tracked like any other account balance is tracked, and there is a deterministic solution to how much a miner should be credited in coins, depending on whether or not they accumulated Loyalty Points (i.e., they contributed hashes while the special difficult conditions existed which created Loyalty Points). Forward thinking pools would realize this logic will eventually be implemented by all altcoins and even Bitcoin itself (because it inherently has to help a coin succeed), so they will invest the resources needed to code support for it. And once they do, they would naturally support Catcoins as the first coin with the Loyalty Credit feature in place. As other cryptocoins implement this feature, they can simply apply the same logic to them. Eventually, this would become universal, and quick and easy profits would be a thing of the past, and miners would mine coins based on what they believe will be the most successful long-term. They would generally engage in mine-and-hold behavior, not mine-and-dump behavior. Maybe the exchanges will hate this change (reduced dumping transactions), but this will be good for the entire cryptocurrency movement. Pools that don't implement Loyalty Point logic would simply go out of existence, because nobody would choose to mine there.

I agree that implementing this would be more complex than simply changing the difficulty retarget parameter. However, changing the difficulty retarget parameter is addressing only one of the symptoms of the problem (perhaps a pressing one - the very low hashrate we see right now), but not the root cause. That is why I would support lowering the difficulty retarget as a temporary solution, while a permanent solution to the harmful oscillation is worked on. I would not support it as a permanent solution in itself, because it does not actually solve the oscillation issue - we need to get out of the vicious cycle of miner-dumpers mining our coins when it is easy to mine, then dumping it on the exchanges. This dynamic is suppressing the value of altcoins because the only way any cryptocurrency gains value is by more and more people choosing to hold it. When people mine coins they believe in, they tend to hold it. When people mine coins for the purpose of "profit" they are inherently dumping it. By implementing a change where only loyal miners mine a coin, very few coins would end up in the exchanges on the sell side, and this would drive the prices up. I believe this is the dynamic by which Litecoins is maintaining high value relative to other altcoins because very few people mine Litecoins and systematically immediately dumping it. I believe we can benefit by the same dynamic, by completely solving the difficulty oscillation problem, i.e., by getting rid of incentives for temporary easy mining and dumping, from our beloved Coin.

I have almost 30 years of coding experience, having learned about 20 programming languages, mostly in the Apple and Windows environments. I am unfortunately not at the right expertise level in C++ or Linux to directly contribute code, so I can only contribute at a more pseudocode/abstract level. But believe I do have a pretty good grasp of coding fundamentals, and the logic of what we are talking about. I would be happy to describe how this could work in more detail, but I am not certain this thread is the best place to do that...

But I'll describe it generally, and maybe you can see it can work. The "loyalty credits" would be implemented as a user interface fiction, and each time the right conditions exist, it would just increment the value as a local variable in RAM +50, and get subtract -50 under the right trigger conditions, and zeroed out under the right conditions. The actual way this would be implemented underneath the skin, is that when a block solution is submitted to the network, the network would know which address is making the claim for the block reward, and each node can independently check how many block solution this particular address submitted during the recent difficult era, how many claims for block reward the address has submitted during the current easy difficulty era, and can compute whether to credit the 50 CATs or only 25 CATs, based on this verification step. This computation would be a matter of provable consensus, computed independently by each node without any extra coordinating needed, and correspond to the Loyalty Credit fiction shown on the user interface. The pools can do the same independent computation as solo nodes.

I have been here for a few days, which is pretty much the entire lifetime of the coin. I tried to get in by mining at the beginning, but could not get the QT client to work, until difficulty was nearing the end of the Difficulty 64 era. I got most of my coins by trading in other altcoin (and some bitcoin). I have been actively participating here for a few days, and have been actively working on presenting solutions to the current problems. I believe I have the luxury of more time I can invest in this than most people, who may have jobs or responsibilities which limit the time they can participate, and I believe we should respect that not everyone can put full focus on this coin just because they may have invested into it. Some people may be dividing their investments among many coins, and cannot afford to invest too much time on this coin. I believe we have quality people here collaborating to solve the problems, and there may be disagreements (and a few trolls we can try hard to ignore), but I am optimistic that we will see a good result.

For the record, I would be in favor of permanently addressing the difficulty issues, but speeding up the rate of destructive oscillations during which miner-dumpers can come and grab cheap coins is just copying an unsuccessful or semi-successful formula of other altcoins. I believe we can (and should) do better than that. So I do not support this particular rushed fork as a permanent solution. I would support this as an interim stopgap step until a true long-term solution is implemented (which may require more coding and testing time). In any case, I respect the original developer's wishes and I would defer to the original developer's judgment as being the correct one that should be implemented for this coin (even if that wish is to follow an unwise consensus). Maybe Catcoin is destined to end up as another altcoin with micro ups and downs in difficulty, with mercenary miners popping in on a regular basis every few hours, to easy-mine and dump coins onto the exchanges suppressing its value. Maybe a true fix to the difficulty oscillation problem will not be implemented in this coin. That would be unfortunate, but would still be correct because I believe a coin developer should decide the fate of his creation. It is up to anyone who has read my proposed permanent solution (a few posts back, at #5511) to post if they agree that the solution I have described is what they believe will promote the long-term success of Catcoins, and if enough people agree, this may be persuasive to the developer(s) who are responsible for implementing change(s) to the coin source code. That would make me very happy. By my statements, I do not mean any disrespect for  each and every participant in the Catcoin community, and I submit my ideas humbly, in the hopes it will add value to everyone here.

I have about 4000 Catcoins, if quantity matters for the vote or consensus.

Etblvu1