This should solve the cheap-attack-to-fill-the-blockchain-with-crap vector?

Any guesses for #2?

Evan+InternetApe should be north of 100k easy.

And even if they arent, remember that an evolving coin's dev is an ALPHA "pumper" which can be a money-generating machine.

I argued this in how the XC devs should destroy their premine in equal proportion to the reduction of coins.

Quoting myself from the XC thread:

I'm not good at making wikis actually and I wasn't even familiar with wiki formating (it's elbereth's wiki, not mine - I simply write stuff. Stuff like labels, internal links, ordering of data, tables - I didn't even know how to do them).

What I'm good at is writing text -hopefully quality text- and loads of it Web authoring is not my specialty either.

Thus I would need a "spec". Where one says i need this, this and that written and then they order it in the webpage. A lot of the material can certainly be reused.

The Darkcoin wiki aims to be the most complete resource available, however I can't write about stuff that I do not know (like masternode setup or p2pools etc) so I link them.

I can make this to the extent of the knowledge*, but the donate part is problematic in general. Nobody donates. Done like a FAQ with >100 questions, filled the wiki etc, but not a single tip of 0.1 drk donated. To put it mildly: The donation / volunteer model doesn't work well in terms of rewards. Actually it is the opposite as one loses time (and money) to do so.


* For some things, especially on how Darksend operates or where the development will go, I would need Evan's knowledge. On stuff like P2Pools I would need chaeplin's knowledge. Masternodes are out of my territory as well.

I'm not concluding. I'm speculating. The alternative is problematic: If it was a fake hash issue -which is a known bug for months- it would have been spotted.

They kind'a reached 1 TH/s. That's the thing.

The elite are obsessed with controlling and tracking money flows. Obfuscation of money flows is a threat to them, whether it comes from DRK, BCN, XC - whatever coin. Even if they control the choke points (because in 2014 cryptos are still considered worthless without converting them to fiat) they know that a day will come when this won't be necessary (kind' a like the matrix/neo/morpheus pic which says that he won't have to trade bitcoins).

They are pro-active in the field because the dollar is the global lever that makes things happen. You don't spare a few million $$$ and let threats like crypto to fuck up the tens of trillions of dollars market. These guys are ruthless. They are manipulating markets like gold, which has a marketcap of >7 trillion USD and they have shown their aggressiveness in stuff like alternative currencies based on gold or silver through raids and confiscation. Things don't simply operate on chance.

Proof of FPGA is not required, we know that FPGA can do it if someone programs them to. However their acceleration factor is not that big and it's highly unlikely to find thousands of them.

ASIC = I don't know. But even at a 500x acceleration factor compared to a GPU (say a 3 MHs GPU / 1.5 GHs ASIC) it'd take HUNDREDS of them to pull stuff like 800-900 gigahash. FPGAs even more so because their acceleration is much closer to GPUs. I saw the link the guy gave as "x11 fpga program" which was bullshit, but hashpower is hashpower and it was tremendous.


If I were the NSA I'd make sure to have hardware ASICs for every single algorithm out there. If I want to break a wallet, or control a crypto network, I won't do it with GPUs. The budget for acquiring such equipment is pretty low for their standards. They could control 51% of bitcoin right now if they spent something like 100-200mn in ASIC for SHA256 and destroy bitcoin. Even 1 bn budget for ASIC hardware is peanuts compared to protecting the hegemony of the dollar.

I believe they have the theoretical possibility of overriding every single POW network out there with 51% but a POS coin would remain resilient from a POW attack as it works through POS staking. So they would have a mess at their hand with an anonymous coin that remains resilient. So their hardware would be useless for 51% override. But it wouldn't be useless in the coin generation phase (POW). That's where I suspect they put their hardware on and started mining with that insane hashrate to get a 51% stake and control the future of the coin. If they didn't manage that, they'll manage it through buying a few more to get there.

The absence of that hashrate from every other x11 coin is a huge indicator. The fact that, suddenly, 900gh of x11 hashpower appeared out of nowhere just to mine XC, doesn't "just" happen.

And better not be. It's an indication of insecurity to troll other coins. Let everyone do their job and the best coin will win in the end. A POS coin is not a direct competitor with a POW. It has entirely different risks and attack vectors that can render it useless.

Regarding (2), the main problem was not the webpage but rather the 600-900 ghash of x11 hashpower. This is unheard of. For a POS coin that would kill them since the miner was getting the entire monetary base (=in a pos system the 51% of the staked coins control the network). I don't know it if was NSA's asics, or "rented hardware" but this kind of hashpower is immense. It'd take 200-300k gpus pulling 3mhash each. So it was only sensible to cap production now otherwise the coin would be doa (that addresses #4).  

If there is no "mining interest" for the 4, hashrate goes down, rewards go from 5 per block (4+1) to 6, 7, 8 per block, miners get compensated.

This is a somewhat rushed decision. Not going through hard forks will probably sacrifice functionality for the tradeoff of avoiding discomfort of hard forks, through work-around systems which may be suboptimal.

Market pressure to deliver is taking an impact on product development. Investor pressure may also have impacted the decision by saying "oh you know what, I was expecting to make money and now I'm not". The move to comfort bagholders and masternode owners by having them get 20% instead of 10% is good for price recovery. On the other hand the plan to run a masternode with 20 tickets instead of 20 masternodes should be scratched. If the number of nodes is reduced by multiple tickets => more centralization.

When DarkSend needs improvement like encryption, ip obfuscation, new services running through the masternodes, how will they be applied without hardforks? By tweaking the system externally? Unlikely. I'm not coding the thing but it seems that way given the progression so far.

Perhaps that should be reconsidered. Hard forks aren't that dangerous. We'll need the best anonymous coin the money can buy and that should be also a priority compared to masternode payments and stability. Otherwise the competition will say "oh we are better than you" and then if you don't have the market edge you are a dinosaur.

I think a simple window on every wallet client saying "you need to update your client" will do the trick for everyone being on board prior or after a fork.

Could also be.

Some do (have lasting power) and can also be used for hedging BTC or for mid/long-term investment to multiply one's BTCs... the vast majority don't have lasting power because they have nothing new to offer. So not all alts are p&d but even if they have something to offer they can still be treated as p&d.

Says who?

The market decides about the price and if they will sell or buy. If whale buyers think it's ok, they'll sweep all the coins of those who say "I'm done - this is too volatile for my preference". That's the only reality of it.

Coinmarketcap took the price to the sky and now people are saying "yeah, don't tamper with it too much, a coin of that size shouldnt have these type of things". I mean, wtf... How is the project to complete itself if it doesn't finish its development AND deal with possible attack vectors? I'd rather have the attack vectors deployed now rather than later (which would require hard forks after finalizing).

My rationale is this: If DarkGravityWave -which is relatively simple as a diff adjustment- required 3 versions to get it optimized, something as big as masternode payments (in terms of "hack") would probably require quite a few patches to make it optimal.

I think that guy was accumulating through cryptsy and then moved it out around the time of the hard fork.

Darkcoin has had like 10 or more forks that I can remember, changing the diff / blocks, introducing DarkSend, changing DWG/2/3, two forks now with the masternode payments etc.

Those who'll lose faith are probably not familiar with the development plan:

People see success and failure in terms of price. When price tanks a coin is declared dead. When price is good, the coin is a success.

The altcoin field is populated with attention-deficit-disorder people who are like bumblebees moving from one flower to the other. If price is stagnant or falling for a couple of months, a coin is declared dead and they move along. Altcoins do not have the luxury of going with a bitcoin type of curve due to the perception of "being dead" that will actually "kill" them as people abandon these coins. If an altcoin waits 3-4 years to do its distribution before it makes its success it will have been overtaken by so many other coins who are now offering much more than it does.

It's a weird game, but the rules are different for alts than btc. They have to make an impression and make it stick - fast.

PoW/PoS hybrids are instamined by definition where the bulk of the monetary base is given out in a few days and late miners cannot mine it. But that's not bad, it's a plus to curb inflation. And it's good they are capping now.

Question for trolls: How much is the rate? Are you getting paid per post, per hour, per day? How does it work?

Tomorrows fork was pushed forth today to resolve it immediately. It's done.