I'm sure merge mining will go great in his new project .. see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=587080.0 for further details.

Kitteh will not be employing merge mining for the foreseeable future, due to the additional effort of collaboration and code changes, and for many other reasons already detailed in this and other threads on the subject.

As it happens .. I -did- wonder about that ..

The blockchain was never broken, the 4K difficulty block was finally solved, and the coin is currently back functioning as we would all like it.

*The Dev* is very much aware, but with precious little spare time, limited expertise and backup, and currently no working testnet, changes cannot be fast-tracked risking worse problems than the coin already experiences. A fix is in the pipeline, and as I have iterated before, Will be thoroughly tested and abused before it is made public to secure Kittehcoin for the future. I'm sorry I cannot give a definite date for this .. I have had a number of unexpected real-life issues to deal with, and sporadic home internet making life that much harder. I simply cannot/will not Cease Sleeping/Eating/Working just because this problem exists and needs solving.
I have also been taking care of some other behind-the-scenes issues with Kittehcoin, and furthering the transition from the old Dev Team to the new.

As said above, what little Kittehcoin team there is (we may lack quantity, but I can assure you, we are fully and whole-heartedly devoted to the Coin), is fully aware of the issues facing not only Kittehcoin, but many many other altcoins too. We are not alone in this, and you may be surprised to learn that we are taking on board other coin's experiences to make sure that This coin not only survives, but thrives as crypto goes forward.

Please be patient, and you will find that we shall be delivering on our word - updates, enhancements and features - just as soon as they are ready and we are happy with them!

We know .. although some tweaks to KGW have been submitted, we are currently evaluating two alternative difficulty algorithms, and may develop these further, if time permits!

I'm personally determined that this hard fork will secure Kitteh for the foreseeable future, into the age of Scrypt ASICs, without causing too much havoc to other miners. It is to this end that development and testing (within the VERY limited time that I have available for this project) is taking that much longer than either Our Team or the community would like, but better to be confident of a fix than risk having to fork again in a number of weeks/months time when the next exploit/weakness is discovered. I'm taking advice from other coins too, of which several are experiencing very similar problems with the steady decline in network hash rates.

Hang on in there Kittehs - Fix IS coming ...

Webchat link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=Kitteh|....&channels=%23kittehcoin&prompt=1

For now, Firebird2000, see below.

The team (as it is) is working on a Win32 version, linux build from source, ofc, and in due course a Mac wallet.

Any problems, please visit the #starcoin channel on Freenode IRC (webchat here)

First and foremost, thanks to bee7 for getting this out .. myself and sirnubbles have been talking about a course of action .. but you're already ahead of us. Neither of us have sufficient knowledge of crypto wallets to push out an update quickly, and you've got something which, hopefully, will tide the community over. If you wish to stop by http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#starcoin would be good to meet and thank you in (digital) person.

If anyone is able to come forward to help build a new team (or equally knows anyone), PLEASE stop by http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#starcoin or sirnubbles has a channel open on EFnet too. I cannot devote much time to move the coin forward, but as others have said .. it would be sad to see an otherwise good coin die.

NekoMiko - be patient.. there are only probably a handful of 'new' nodes available with any new blocks, if indeed any have been mined/minted yet.

Has anyone tweeted/msg'd cryptsy or anywhere else yet?

I shall be compiling bee7's source later on today, and hopefully will have another node running soon after. I will ensure sirnubbles gets his pool updated too (starcoin.mining.sexy), and we have been talking about getting the checkpoint node set up again .. this will probably roll into v1.7.1 or v1.8.

Thanks again to bee7 - and lets get this coin up and running once again!

Hrm, yes I see what the issues are .. since this will force a global wallet update (fork) anyway .. let me see if I can rustle something up, will have a word with the other guy who's tentatively bug-fixing with me, and will try to get a release out asap.

You guys have definitely set the lines:-

rpcuser=myname
rpcpassword=mypass
rpcallowip=myip
rpcport=myport
server=1

in your StarCoin.conf (obviously matching the equivalent settings in your miner.conf or bat file/etc) ?

Theoretically, you can download a 'bootstrap' file which will get you started, but generally this is frowned upon because you are trusting a single authority on the integrity of that file, whereas the network is, by design, trusted to itself.

It's something I'd quite like to do for StarCoin, but the method for doing it seems a little vague.

What I can say, is that only this week I have done a complete blockchain sync for StarCoin over a 20Mbit connection in about a day .. obviously not watching it download, that gets tiresome very quickly - but it does sync up correctly. You will see the message 'Checkpoint is old' - this is ok, but there are steps in process to rectify this, and get a new wallet published. As always, patience is key

I also tried solo mining against the above wallet successfully, and have mined a small quantity of coins this way. Setup is a bit complicated, but there are guides online if you search. Alternatively there is a good stable pool running at starcoin.mining.sexy which you can use.

Incidentally, if you want somewhere to hang out and talk crypto, or want to rally the cause for Starcoin, I'm holding the #starcoin channel open on irc.freenode.net if you want to drop by

I think there used to be an IRC room on another network, but last I heard that network was barring use by cryptocoins .. so far no problems on Freenode . See ya there!

Glad to see some positivity shown towards Kitteh .. MEOW will go up .. how far and how fast cannot be predicted .. but there is lots of work going on behind the scenes, and the team is working hard to address many of the issues already raised here, and also innovative features not already present in other coins. More news over forthcoming weeks, as rodux says.

Well, the interesting news is that simply adding the lines to the sources, recompiling, wiping the blockchain, etc etc .. Doesn't work. So there must be another trick to it .. I suspected there might be, but I don't know enough about it to guess. Will do some more debugging .. the code itself seems simple enough .. but if there is supposed to be a node in the network that does something special, and its down or not functioning correctly .. I cannot compensate for this.

<snip>

Yes, that's what I did, and there's another section in 'src/kernel.cpp' as well, although I'm not sure I got this bit down yet.

As I posted before, as soon as I have proved this out, I'll publish my results here, and hopefully get a Windows compile going. As things stand currently, I might just get a few minutes to look back at it later on this week...

All I'm gonna say for now is:

    More news Will follow...

Ok I see a flurry of activity on here, so I will state my case & position.

I have taken a clone of the source code, in an attempt to fix the "Checkpoint is too old" error. This arises because the last checkpoint in the wallet code is, indeed, too far back in the blockchain history for the wallet to deem it 'secure'. However, no need to panic, since there has been no forks, there is only the one blockchain for people mining/trading. With the assistance of some other coin devs (I have little crypto coding experience to date, although have coding experience, and learn quick!) I believe I have added some new checkpoints, but at present I haven't fully tested these updates, and last time I checked the wallet was still complaining. This could be just because I have neglected some nuance of crypto wallets & coding, but I don't want to make any premature announcements until the testing is fully and independently verified.

I'm currently fairly heavily involved in the reorganisation of another coin, and my spare time is already quite precious (job, sleep, other projects) so I can't presently offer to take on the StarCoin dev or lead the project. My intention was simply to offer some remedial maintenance to keep the coin going until someone came forward.

I will try to complete this fix, and when the time is right, I will publish my 'version' .. I don't think at this time it represents a 'fork' from the original code. At that time, you will be able to see in the source repository that the changes are relatively minor. This was intended chiefly as an introduction for me into crypto coding, and hopefully it will prove a successful one, which also benefits a worthy coin in the process!

If anyone can come forward with Windows Qt building experience, please contact me via pm, I don't presently have a windows Qt setup, or equally .. if anyone knows how to cross-compile with mingw32/etc in linux, please also contact me via pm. Thanks.

PoS is a possibility for Kitteh, but this doesn't fall in line with current merge-mining plans. There is a possibility of evaluating a hybrid PoS/PoW situation, but this would have to be very carefully tested if it was used for merge mining, to ensure its integrity and no potential exploits.

Kitteh is undergoing a very awkward restructuring at the moment, but there remains a plan for a hard fork soon(tm) to address the difficulty and reward issues. There are lots of ideas and other developments also occurring in the background. Our Kitteh twitter is alive and kicking.

All I can say for now is 'Watch This Space' ... let's get Kitteh to Neptune ?!

Does anyone know how to contact the dev(s) for this coin? I have forked the source and tried to add some checkpoints to bring the wallet up-to-date, but I can't seem to find any contact details on the website or here to get them adopted upstream.