There have been a lot of posts since I posted last, so I'll answer a bunch at once:


I don't know who he is. If I have talked to him, I didn't know it was him.

I don't like the idea of offering a wall. Why pay him 300-400 BTC for his remaining CLAMs if we can pay him less (by NOT putting a wall on polo and letting the price find its own level)?


So you would be in favour of putting it to the vote I presume?


Right. I'm guilty of being sloppy with the terms. When I talk about "digging" I generally mean the act of moving initial-distribution CLAMs for the first time, rather than the act of importing an old wallet into your CLAM client. That's because importing old wallets is not detectable - nothing shows up on the CLAM network until you stake or spend your dug up CLAMs. So the client would need to be modified to interpret unmoved distribution CLAMs differently - either value them lower, or ignore them completely.


Are you saying "please don't stop digging" or "please don't let the community vote to decide what to do about digging"?

Those are two very different things.


I don't know if I understand your questions, but I'll try:

1) the network targets one block per minute

2) each block reward is 1 CLAM plus any transaction fees

3) newly staked blocks take 500 blocks to mature; the default client won't attempt to spend them until they have 510 confirmations; other transactions take 4 hours to 'mature' such that their outputs can be used to stake

4) see 1; I guess I didn't understand your first question

5) see 2; there's no limit, since 1 CLAM is staked each minute on average


Good point. We could start voting immediately. But there seems to be some dispute as to whether it's legitimate to have the community decide CLAM's future or not. So before we start voting, we need to decide whether we're going to even have a vote... I've no idea how we make such a decision. Maybe we should vote on it?...


It's true. We knew from the outset that this was a risk. We also knew from the outset that having a "lottery" style staking system (block rewards 'randomly' between 0.1 and 1000 CLAMs) was probably gameable. When it became clear that it was being gamed, the rules were changed to remove the lottery system. That was before JD started using CLAM, but it happened. The CLAM rules have been changed several times already in reaction to observations. It's not like the current ruleset is somehow untouchable. It's just the current ruleset.

Previous changes have been handed down to us by the CLAM developers with little to no consultation with the larger community, and certainly no voting.

I understand that quite a large percentage of the community thinks we should leave digging just as it is now. If that's the most widespread opinion (modulo CLAM holdings) then that's what a vote would result in happening.

Is there anyone who thinks we should leave digging just as it is now even if the majority of CLAM holders want it to be changed? ie. is there anyone who doesn't want this put to a vote?


And on clamchecker.com. Last I heard they were paying 0.05 BTC per private key, and 0.02 BTC to whoever referred you there. I'm not sure if they have a policy against referring yourself, but if not then you can get 0.07 BTC per private key, or 0.00151993 BTC per CLAM. That's currently a little below the market price, but worth bearing in mind.

I decided to give betcoin a try. I tried going to the in-browser flash poker app. It told me I had to change my password "for security reasons", so I did, and then got confused when my old password still worked for the main site, so I spoke to support. They told me that there are separate passwords for casino and poker accounts, so that kind of makes sense now.

When the support ended, it seems to have switched to a different language:



but going back to another tab it looks OK:



Why is the support chat in different languages in different tabs?

While it is quite possible that the current digger would insta-dig all his remaining wallets in the face of such a change, at least then we would know what we are looking at in terms of the total money supply. Without this change, we never know when the next massive digger will come along and add another million or two to the supply.


He'd have to dig up his CLAMs to use them to vote, and having done so it would presumably be in his own best interest to vote not to allow anyone else to dig at a later date.


Yes, of course. I wrote the post as it occurred to me, and arrived at the conclusion that voting works better than fighting on-chain by the end of it. I should have gone back and removed the talk of orphaning.


Wait, what do you mean about wetware? How do you imagine any such voting working? It can't just be a poll on JD, since there are coins staking elsewhere, and they should have their vote. Are you suggesting we should just like - talk about it? And reach a consensus? So I was thinking that voting using messages in the coinbase of new stakes would be the way forward. Or do you not agree that the people holding CLAM should get to vote?


I don't intend to use JD's presence to force anything. As I see it, people with coins on JD should get to decide how their coins vote, and I shouldn't get to decide how any coins other than my own vote.


I agree, but I don't see it happening. You have said you're willing to go with what the community wants, but how do we gauge that?


That's always your "go to" when the question of the digger comes up, but I don't think it addresses the problem at all does it? It looks like it could maybe address the issue, because it makes fees depend on the length of time an output has been stored on the chain, but (a) it only starts counting from when the fork is made, and so the distribution coins pay no more fee than anyone else's and (b) the fees are collected by the stakers, who could well be the digger himself.

I may have misunderstood the proposal though. Could you give as simple as possible an explanation of how the full complicated and involved change helps out with this particular issue we're facing? To restate the problem it is that we have a digger who has been steadily selling fresh CLAMs for over 2 months and can probably continue to do so for another year at the current rate. This steady sell pressure causes a steady decline in the market price of CLAMs and makes them undesirable to hold for anyone.


He's already digging very slowly. If he had to stake every output before spending it, he could do so easily at the rate he is currently digging. By insisting that distribution outputs are staked before being spent you are only penalising small holders - the guy who has 5 or 10 old addresses, digs them up, then finds that he can't spend anything until they stake. He's likely to walk away, "I knew it was too good to be true".


If you make it possible for the small holder to stake in a reasonable time, you also make it possible for the big digger to continue flooding the market.

I don't think this proposed change works, and even if it was successful in slowing his dumping, that doesn't make any difference. He still ends up dumping his 500k into the market, it just takes him 5 years instead of 1 year.


I guess it goes something like this:

1. We come up with a list of proposals, for example:

  a. leave everything as it is
  b. disallow all digging
  c. some kind of decay in value of undug CLAMs over time
  d. CC's very complicated and involved change
  e. CC's quick and simple change

They'd need to be specified in detail.

2. Every time anyone stakes a block, they vote for their favourite proposal(s). In the CLAMspeech, or coinbase input, or wherever it fits.

3. As soon as any proposal has more than X% support when looking over the last Y% of blocks, that proposal is deemed to have been selected by the community. To avoid 2 similar proposals splitting the vote and making "tactical voting" a viable strategy, we could use instant-runoff_voting to decide the winner. It's unclear what X and Y should be. I guess 75% and "6 months worth" are reasonable starting points to consider.


I tend to agree, though I had to cringe at the "single entity" bit... Then again, it doesn't matter whether I agree. I shouldn't get a casting vote even though the coins are mostly in my physical control.


He gets heated at times. I find that engaging him while he's being like this tends to escalate things.

It sounds like you are suggesting that I should abuse my position of controlling the biggest CLAM address to effectively change the consensus rules - I would be saying "if anyone includes a 'dig' transaction in a block, I will orphan it".

That seems like a massive abuse of people's trust. People deposited their CLAM at Just-Dice with the assumption that I would stake them according to the network rules.

But, how about this for an idea? And it's just a thought I had, not a plan I intend to put into action. Comments appreciated!


What if Just-Dice ran two instances of the client (a regular one, and one that ignored all dig transactions) and allowed JD users to select which instance they want their coins staked with? The default of course is to follow the existing rules, but each user can opt to move their coins to a wallet that considers all new dig transactions as "illegal".

pros:

* the community gets to decide for themselves the future of CLAM, with each member having a vote in proportion to the size of their holdings; if the "economic majority" wants digging to stop, digging stops

cons:

* 1. if opinion is split close to 50/50 then the two clients could cause long reorgs, with associated chaos (confirmed transactions becoming unconfirmed, etc.)
* 2. creating a contentious fork like this feels 'dirty', and a bit too "Bitcoin XT" for my liking
* 3. hard to do this in a provably fair way; how can anyone be sure that I really stake their coins from the correct wallet?
* 4. such a rash move could well lose us the support of the CLAM developers

1. I suppose the 50/50 problem would be addressed the same way that XT forks the chain - only after 75% of the last N blocks somehow 'vote' for the change. ie. wait until a clear majority of the staking weight is in favour of the change happening.

2. idk

3. JD's weekly proof of solvency could include an indication of each investor's 'vote'

4. I know that xploited and creative have both said that they would be in favour of doing something to address the 'digger problem' if the community was in agreement. Maybe this is a way of finding out what the community really thinks.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Let me know what you think...

Maybe that's the whole point. It could be someone who hates altcoins in general or CLAM in particular.

Did you state what happens if only 1 or 2 players end up with more than 5000 bits?

I see that a bustabit clone is down after having its hot wallet stolen by a hacker using an exploit in their deposit mechanism:


I'm guessing that they implemented their own deposit mechanism (they talk about having been tricked into trusting fake blockr.io callbacks) and that bustabit itself is safe from the exploit, but it would be good to have that confirmed here.

Do you have an estimate of how long this will take?

I occasionally post charts showing the digging activity in this thread. I don't know of another one.



It has taken him over 2 months to dig up an estimated 34% of the wallet he is working through. The rate of digging has slowed during that time. At the current pace the digging could continue for another year. And then he could start on another wallet.

I don't see the price recovering any time soon, but doing anything to address the issue seems to be unpopular so it looks like we're stuck with things how they are.

Is there anything to report on this front? What's the problem with WINE? Is there some feature of Windows in particular that it doesn't support correctly? Did you ever post the bounty you were talking about?

I used to be able to play using an old Windows XP virtual machine image, but that stopped working a while ago.

Edit: I was able to get back into the game by creating a new VM, but would much prefer to be able to play on any other platform.

I read this as meaning that each player picks one seat and the mod plays a single hand for all of us.

But:


ie. each player gets their own hand. We get 9 seats out of 10, so a 90% chance of winning.

That's not a 9:1 bet - it's a 1:9 bet (or "9:1 on")

username: dooglus

Yeah, well done you two.

Last night I found myself a good 6k behind you both, and figured my only hope of catching you was to win the royal flush jackpot, so I played all 10 seats over and over with JP turned on, hoping to hit. The new fast-mode made it possible to play through my balance relatively quickly, but I didn't hit the pot.

If only this jack was a club:

Is it OK with you if I offer ClamChecker digging from the Just-Dice chat?

Maybe something like the user types:

    /dig <privkey> <btcaddress>

and it uses ClamChecker to dig up the privkey?

I can see this becoming +EV for users and JD if the price continues to drop.

I'm conflicted asking you this. It seems bad to exploit your service when it's paying too much for private keys, but if you're willing to pay me to refer people to your service then is it bad to make the most of it?

You've always said that ClamChecker would end up being the best way to dig CLAMs, and that's looking to be the case now.

Unofficial standings:

In case anyone missed it, during the contest you aren't allowed to bet more than 50 bits per seat.

The game will let you do it, but it's against the rules.

It would be nice if the game enforced the max-bet per seat limit to prevent people from accidentally betting too high.

I'm happy to see new and old services supporting CLAM, but apparently the problem is that advertising spam is not allowed and so the service announcements are being deleted.

I invested 1.36 BTC shortly before the doctors came to visit.

Now I have: 1,362,452.35 bits.

So I've recovered my losses, but not much more. My net profit is 0.18%.

Right now I can buy 17 BTC at CaVirtex for $490 each and sell them on Quadriga at $515 each. That's a $25 * 17 = $425 profit, minus fees. I can do that manually.

People have bots set up to automate the detection and execution of arbitrage opportunities like these, and so there must be a reason that this isn't as good as it looks. On the surface this is something like $400 of free money.

This guy is complaining that BTC withdrawals are disabled at CaVirtex, which could be part of the problem, although according to comments in that thread it's just an account verification issue.

I nearly won 16k bits - but didn't...