Don't agree with that @ all, although most said here is fodder, so rarely speak up.  You guys should chill.  Hang tight IMO. 

Personally had a <very> long weekend with the code, the master branch.  It was the 1st time I've dug into ANC code, and primarily figured another set of eyeballs looking at the problem couldn't hurt.  From a longer term perspective, I'm planning on helping out, be a part of the dev team keeping this coin code base current.  Once these immediate problems are resolved, so to that end....
...was trying very hard to track down the smallest detail, which could possibly be causing the problems reported by you, Mullick and others.  Several times thought I had something significant enough to report, but eventually rejected them upon closer inspection, although I did find several places where the code could be better, none account for the transaction processing problems.  Then synced up the network and conducted some of my own transfers, monitored the debug.log output line by line as spelled out in the code, my coins transferred 1 third the way around the planet, and my logs look correct.  This is not an easy problem to understand and fix.

Also while looking @ the Anc code, I was comparing side by side with an equivalent v0.9.3 bitcoin code base looking at these relevant sections of the code, becoming familiar with what would be required to upgrade it.  From what I can tell Meeh is working on that, others are conducting a variety of tests.  From what I can tell, allot of manpower is going in to try to address these issues and when some conclusions are reached and/or solutions ready to release, I would expect you'll hear about it here.  I'm not in the loop anymore than the rest of you, but have a positive outlook on what is trying to be accomplished.  Read Gnosis last post, he obviously has put allot of thought into just about every aspect of what could be happening, to be able to respond to that specific point within 1h:59m of Thunderjet's post.  That is only possible, if you've familiarized yourself with all the relevant code sections, and have in your head about 13 levels deep into how the code is being executed.

The immediate problems are being looked at, bounties have been put up for seed nodes to go into the code, and a longer term perspective has not being forgotten about.

GR

Thanks Jotaceo - got me looking @ the CEX.io 24hr volume, right now @ 227+ THOUSAND coins!  That is over 1% of all the coins ever mined. GADS! 

Congrats to the new Ixcoin holder(s) involved in buying up all that IXC on the cheap, only direction from here is up. 

https://cex.io/trade#IXC-BTC

@cinnamon_carter - glad you finally got the encrypted message ok.

@ahmed_ - Good to hear, keep us posted on your progress with testing, final build releases and repository reorganization.  See where you've brought in the main Bitcoin staging tree.  Relying on your expertise to best setup the IXCoin  repository, so that those changes can be done as quickly as possible.  Been looking at all the code changes as Bitcoin prepares to go release candidate #1, and thinking holy crap that will be allot of changes to keep our coin current with the latest version over there.  The important thing for us right now is getting a complete, stable and fully functioning and tested 0.9.3 Ixcoin build out, so everyone can upgrade to it and we can move forward from that level.  After it's proven itself, or even if we have one or more 0.9.3.x releases to make minor changes, it stands to shine as the defacto upgrade for nearly all of the altcoin community.

We don't have all the problems bitcoin is having right now that require it to take blockchain size reduction steps & transaction processing to the next level for volume handling, but when I see things in the code like Gavin working on a sliding transaction fee schedule, that allows users to pay more for faster transactions, it kinda gets me excited to work on an upgraded for Ixcoin after we've completed the work on a 0.9.3 release.  It potentially could go along way towards addressing & solving the issues we've been discussing here on transaction fees costs.

GR

That is interesting, thanks for posting.  Will spend sometime researching it more this week.

Was myself looking at the 'Open Assets Protocol', and thinking how it could easily be used with Ixcoin Core.  

An important aspect to both, from just spending a short time reviewing them, is that they appear to me to be non-disruptive concepts to our commitment in keeping current with the latest Bitcoin Core.  

https://github.com/OpenAssets/colorcore

ETA: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=767548.0

Thanks, Yap that is what I finally figured out <duh>, don't see why it needs to be stored in the ixcoin blockchain and it threw me for a loop earlier today, but if I go back far enough in time on our blockchain it shows up as 50.<something>, guess it's just part of the overall proof of work data structure.

Finally committed the Ixcoin 0.9.3 source code changes to GitHub, that I've been working on this past week.
https://github.com/GroundRod/IXCoin

Not producing a pre-release build on it just yet, nor do I plan on it, kinda depends on Ahmed's schedule.

Generated a pull request so he can bring them into our main repository.  Soon he should be able to generate new builds using the efforts made to keep our code up-to-date and spiffy  

GR

Not bad, not bad at all Jumbley   

Thanks for the reports kraizi, I've pretty much determined it's not a problem with the network chain, perhaps its wrong in our latest code, I'm not even sure that is true at the moment.  Looking into why the getblock command is returning that 25.16255556 value now, it's being returned as part of the aux-pow coinbasetx fields, when human readable (somewhat) JSON responses are generated.  Found that is true for almost any block I look at, and I'm not sure why or what it means, this is Ahmed's place of expertise, so hopefully we'll hear from him about it later today....in the meantime I'm getting up to speed on this section of the code, if I figure it out will let you know.  My current thinking is that I'm being a little to jumpy, need to cut back on the caffeine, & looking for problems that aren't there or ones that we'll need to fix as we wrap this upgrade project up.... 

GR

@publicjud - Ya that is how I see it too, looks to me like the blockchain is holding up really well!

Was wanting to ask anyone running the ixcoin client, please go to your console and do 'getblockhash 227500', then 'getblock <hash>', if it shows a 25.something coin spend tx in there, shut down the node and let me know.  Not sure if this was widespread or a targeted attack, I would have been the only one showing up on the network with a client version of 090300 last night...


@Vlad - Actually I think I do know where some, if not all those 94 coins are at, it's kinda a long story, but not a serious problem.  Think you, cinnamon_carter and ahmed have all heard about it, will try to give the short version here for everybody.  Back in Sept I found & coded a solution to some blockchain damage.  Analyzed the problem in great detail, weekend before last.  Finally added my notes to the comments section of the source code that I'm committing to GitHub today.  All the latest 0.9.x client releases know about what happened back in April 25-26th, 2013 to the Ixcoin blockchain, a miner was creating duplicate tx values, until today I thought it was just software gone wacko, now I'm not so sure, we have 4 Tx dup hashes that effected 13 blocks, so 8 are found as duplicates, that would acccout for some missing coins.  We were mining 96 coins/block back then, so I would expect it to be more than 94, looked to me like the miner screwed himself out of some of the rewards though, as the coinbase Tx outputs were spent soon after it happened.  Actually it's because the new 0.9.2.1+ software is so superior that I was able to find it, with the 'verifychain' command set to level 3 or above your local copy of the blockchain is ripped apart, one block @ a time, backwards in time, with calls to DisconnectBlock() all the way back to the genesis block, if you set the num of blocks to 0.  Its a really good test for your copy of the blockchain, level 4 is even better as it then reconnects all the blocks forward in time to the present.  All the details and the fix are now coded into the source, bitcoin has had similar such problems as well in the past, it is though, one of the reasons I want to get everybody upgraded to newer software as soon as possible.

GR

On my 1st cup of joe & started out by looking at my debug log, just happen to get up before block 227500 was created to find all the peers on 227499, then saw zebedee toasting champagne and deadsea33's 'Thats all folks', thought oh shit we have a problem, now see the network is still humming along ok too, working on block 227506 here.

Still trying to figure this out, so bare with me, looks like we have an attempted attack by the same miner address that messed with Ixc back in April 2013, I recognize the receiving address, an attempt is being made now for block 227500, a 25.09 coin spend has shown up in my copy of the blockchain, according to http://darkgamex.ch:2751/chain/IXCoin the attach failed as they are showing the block as having  0 total value.  In any case, I'll not be building a new bootstrap.dat file just yet, with this copy of the chain, until I've reloaded at some non-disclosed point in the future, after many confirmations on all the blocks that I build into the new bootstrap.dat file.  Sorry asshole you will have failed.  

So wanted to let everyone know that I'm checking things really close & otherwise things are looking super!  All the new blocks so far have a coinbase of 0 and total value of 0, block 227505 just showed up with some transactions, and creation seems to be humming along nicely, even with the above issue discovered.

GR

Sounds good cinnamon_carter. 

Hold off another day on testing 0.9.2, I've made the necessary changes to our source code files to bring Ixcoin up to the 0.9.3 level. 

Will try to get those changes committed tomorrow on GitHub, too tired tonight and will also build an updated bootstrap.dat file to put out.

Links here when I'm done, and will let you know the commits and  pull request to Ahmed are in, running great right now on the network with 7 or 8 connections.

Gads lots to learn, edit and build.  Have focused on just the needed source code file changes for the builds, to keep Ixcoin current with the lastest Bitcoin build.  Or this would have taken me allot longer.  See lots of work to do to make things cleaner in our repository, we'll get there, and the documentation updated as well.  Started down the road in Sept. to setup a machine so I could do Gitian builds, have to get back to that project now that the basics for 0.9.3 are ready. 

GR

Just submitted a support ticket on cex.io:

@funbitcoins - Remember that too, just didn't believe it.  Can't even access my acct on Mintpal anymore, it seems to have vanished.  resetting password fails, nor a support link to help.

Thankfully had very little or no coins left on the exchange before the switch over, perhaps that is why they deleted me.  Would recommend caution using them @ this point.

Yap in the same boat alalalk71, my acct no longer exists. 

What is the right procedure for us now?  Create a new account on the support site and file a ticket requesting reactivation and access to our original one?

This sucks, glad I had most everything off of it before it went belly up. 

Mintpal, if your reading this, think it would be in your best interest to response and take action on those problems that your hard working members are having, or at least respond with status reports on what is going on...

GR

Me too!

Hope this helps for those trying to wrap their mind around the concept...
From http://myriadplatform.org/myriadcoin-mining/

In our case substitute 'Myriadcoins' in the above text with zAnc as you read it....

GR

ETA: Simcom has it right. & sure would like to see it added to bitcoinwisdom as well.

@JohnnyBTCSeed - Some good points to consider, from my viewpoint counterparty may be a nice idea, don't know how much work would be involved in adding it, just doing that will take some time I haven't had.  We've got other priorities right now, like getting the best possible merged-mining code into GitHub, fully tested and then built into binary releases for all of you.

While Ahmed is @ the hashers united convention, I'm focused on making the changes required to upgrade ixcoin to the latest bitcoin core code 0.9.3.  About 1/2 way through the /src directory and still have all the files in the src/qt directory to-do.  So far the list of issues that need additional time to make sure it's correct is very small, other stuff like the language files will have to be regenerated etc. etc...  Bitcoin core is in a state of rapid flux, with lots of new code being pulled into its base now, its hard to keep up.  Yet that is what I've agreed to work on.  Think we all can agree this is an important aspect to IXC, that we stay current with Bitcoin Core code from here onward.   See the counterparty stuff constantly being brought up as a 'got to have', that maybe true, but I don't think it should be the main focus, at least for right now.

GR

Appreciate you asking publicjud, yet don't seem to be more than a very few that interested in upgrading right now.

Have yet to see any in my debug log as peers, out of 8 connections for me, 5 are v0.8.6 and the last 3 are Thomas's old 0.3.24.30 edition.

All the versions carry these lines of code in their main.cpp source file:

int64_t GetBlockValue(int nHeight, int64_t nFees)
{
    int64_t nSubsidy = 96 * COIN;

    // Subsidy is cut in half every 218750 blocks, which will occur approximately every 4 years
    nSubsidy >>= (nHeight / 210000);

    //Hard limit to 21M Ixcoins
    if (nHeight >= 227499)
          nSubsidy = 0;

    return nSubsidy + nFees;
}

As I type this block 226642 is about to be mined, that leaves 857 blocks to go, before the nSubsidy goes to 0.

My guess is that it will be a non-event, except for the price.

GR

ETA: At 8 minutes per block that's about 115hrs from now.  I'll be updating the compressed bootstrap.dat file on that releases page shortly after it occurs.  Is everybody ok with 7Zip for the compression?  It gets it down to ~160MB.

ETA2: In the last 24hrs the average time/block was 10.59 minutes, so that would move the transition date out past 152hrs from now, it's probably going to be somewhere in there.

https://github.com/GroundRod/IXCoin/releases

The Ixcoin BootStrap.dat (3+years of bockchain) I made on Sept 28th, and the Win32-Setup executable, latest build there.

Thanks much, and sounds good.

Yes, the win32-setup I built didn't have the 9/28 updates, so tonight upgraded miniupnpc to the latest, and QT to 5.3.2, rebuilt the source and everything went smooth.  Should be good to go with the latest toolchain.

@mmpool - Fantastic to hear we have more miners supporting Ixc, really important right now, thanks for posting! 

GR

Hey Kraizi,

more good questions...

'sidhujag' is a lead developer on DVC, at the time Ahmed forked a copy of his work, as a starting point for porting Ixc into the 0.9.2 codebase.  We had both been looking around and agreed it was the best starting point then in early Aug, I think it was.  By the end of Aug, Ahmed had stripped the DVC specifics and had a working build that ran on the Ixcoin network, but looked and acted every bit like the Bitcoin 0.9.2 client, the basic components for auxpow code is there to implement merged mining, but that is as far as Sidhujag and the DVC team had gotten.  It was at that point, Ahmed was time-wise taken off our Ixcoin project to work on other things, in particular I think he would tell you its been the PolyMYR pool software development, a really advanced new concept in merged-mining IMO, just read that whitepaper myself the other night, you can find it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R78lUtwnVB9o0CZpYnxWDSyZP-adgfcN4yfu1PM8jzQ or visit http://myriadplatform.org/polymyr/ for a short description.  At that point you'll know as much about it as I do.

Anyway, realizing how important these different project were to one another, I stepped up and started building source and compiling changes, learning to use GitHub, completed allot of the loose ends through Sept, pretty much brings us up to today.  We've had numerous discussions on here about the transaction fees, I've argued we need to force them higher or at least enforce them, however Ahmed comes from a mining background and seems little concerned about there being any fee changes at this time, CEX.io has pledged their support & sets on the Ixcoin Foundation board, also seems little concerned over there being transaction fee changes at this time.  This still makes no sense to me, and to answer your question, the decision was to leave the transaction fee calculations alone, so they operate just like Bitcoin.

Regardless, I've been looking at the code, thinking about how to make changes to the transaction fee routines, it's actually kinda complex, but from where I set, it's an inevitable change that we will have to be making.  The example you see from me, is because I set it to 0.001 on my options page, and I doubt that I'll ever expect a miner to carry my payload for less than that, pretty darn cheap, from my perspective and I'm not going to be changing it to zero, just to see if a can get the transaction to go through for less, in fact after the last block is mined, I'll probably change it to a higher value, although I'm not certain yet what that might be, it most definitely will be part of our ongoing discussions here in the months to come.

For the time being the speed with which I'm seeing transactions being processed over the Ixcoin network right now, combined with what is basically 'near' free transactions fees could mean that Jumbley has it right: Build it and the people will come!

@Ahmed - correct my if I'm wrong on any of that, but I think it pretty much covers it.

Indeed, many thanks to you Jumbley.   

Forgot to add,

...had a couple pm's asking about what contributions I've made to the project. 

Sorry that it wasn't made clear in my previous posts, now that I'm starting to feel comfortable on GitHub and doing shared development work for open source, it seemed obvious, still only 2 months ago I wouldn't have had a clue either.

Instead of a long typed out summary, here is a shortcut to those details:

GitHub GroundRod commits to Ixcoin Development

Even if your not a programmer, you should be able to get the jest of it by clicking on the last 5 commits made since Sept 9th.

Those changed source code files have been sent upstream & merged into Ahmed's Ixcoin-Dev repository (if you want to look at that, be sure and select the Ixcoin branch, not the master)

Where there was major work done, I tried to comment the source directly.  Assuming there isn't allot of code work to do in the months ahead, there are a # of documentation files that need to be brought current and correct within the Ixcoin context, just scratched the surface on that aspect of development.  Have worn those different hats in a past life, so will take a stab at it, as time allows...

Feel free to ask about anything you care too...

As we don't really have a website master to send Ixcoin treasures too just yet, I've decided (at least for right now) to use GitHub for posting the latest release:
https://github.com/GroundRod/IXCoin/releases

You'll find the Ixcoin BootStrap.dat (3+years of bockchain) I made on Sept 28th, and the Win32-Setup executable, latest build there.

Thank to GitHub for providing the bandwidth.

GR