addnode=198.154.60.61

It regularly dies on failed DNS lookups but I restart it.

I had it on both my servers until yesterday but since there are still other people out there running it and I needed RAM on my other server I switched to only running it on dvcstable02.dvcnode.org (198.154.60.61).

"blocks" : 752514

Oops, connections zero, okay, I will start it on my other server too, I guess the other people it had been connected to have dropped overnight.

-MarkM-

It can be upgraded pretty darn easily to be based on a new version of Litecoin, based in turn on a recent version of bitcoin, once litecoin is updated.

Same for Fairbrix, which right now doesn't even have a daemon version.

-MarkM-

I am hoping that both I0Coin and GeistGeld might be a lot more amenable once the "Mergecoin" repo is ready and all the merged mined coins use it to update themselves to recent bitcoin code.

-MarkM-

If by Tenebrix developer you mean Artforz, yes he is a bit of a recluse it seems, but Lolcust is still in touch with him and Lolcust is still active on Freenode in #Tenebrix channel.

SInce people apparently do not want the super huge coin-mixer anonymity system the pre-mine was intended to enable he has been suggesting he might as well just destroy those pre-mined coins. Sheesh does he have to? Isn't there anything better they could be used for?

-MarkM-

Also isn't their code just as old as litecoin's?

Its not as if they took latest bitcoin code and put scrypt in, is it?

So if litecoin is old code they are just copies of old code they didn't even bother to copy the new code...

-MarkM-

Well they are on devtome somewhere, so if using an absolute path/URL to say exactly where is the only way I guess that is what we will have to do.

That is, find out where the heck devtome actually puts them, and then refer to them there just like referring to images on other sites.

Its a crappy way to reference them since they supposedly are in namespaces, but at least they are on our site not some third party site.

Maybe namespaces have to be activated in config or admin section or something to enable them or something...

-MarkM-

This is something DeVCoin itself needs to update its code, so in effect DeVCoin already is paying to have it done, as I am already basically "on salary" or "tenured"; I have to work on something free open source, today I chose to work on this that DeVCoin needs, that also of course all the merged mined coins and wannabe-merged-mined coins all also need.

So its just another case of DeVCoin helping out around the place.

-MarkM-

http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=start&tab_files=files&tab_details=view&do=media&ns=

(I found it by clicking media on the front page's menu (on the left of the front page), I think...)

The problem I have with it though is the syntax page about how to edit pages does not say how to refer to these built in images, instead of assumes you want to refer to an image on a third party site. I would expect there is some syntax that automatically uses the namespaces the image galleries use, so that one does not need to use some kind of "absolute path" or "absolute URL" but can just do like root:myimage.jpg or some such thing. I haven't discovered how to do that yet though.

-MarkM-

Well that is another nice thing about GeistGeld and the other low-difficulty merged-mined coins, and even Tenebrix and Fairbrix: they are really easy to mine, so far they have gone vast spans of time during which all the little people can mine them so very easily, much of the time even with CPUs.

So maybe all the pump and dump coins are doing the genuine smallfry a big favour by keeping all the big mining farm people distracted allowing still more time for the small miners to quietly stockpile low-difficulty coins.

Maybe once the Mergecoin repo is ready and all the merged coins upgrade to the fancy new bitcoin code with its new database and fast getting of blockchain and so on the small miner's long long opportunity to quetly stockpile those coins will finally end as big miners grab the new code and try to rape all the coins... that the small miners all have lots of by now, having had so many many months unmolested by the big guys...

-MarkM-

Novacoin is similar to PPcoin in using stake, isn't it? I expect it is also similar in being lopsided, vast numbers of coins coming out in first few minutes, hours, days etc.

A big difference now exists though apparently, since the big stakeholders of Novacoin have apparently decided that 1% per year is not enough loot, they are increasing the interest rate. The rich weren't getting richer fast enough I guess.

I kind of hope we won't see PPCoin go the same route...

-MarkM-

I have finally started that "bitcoin with ONLY the merged mining parches applied" repo I have so often mentioned.

https://github.com/knotwork/Mergecoin

The purpose of this repo is to provide the common code that all merged mined coins based on bitcoin all have in common, that is, bitcoin plus being able to be a secondary coin in a merge.

Most merged mined coins will be trivially easy to update to recent bitcoin code using this repo once the repo is ready and debugged.

Namecoin and Devcoin, being more than trivially different from bitcoin, will take more work to update, as they have more things they need to change. But most will be able to update as fast and easy as the creation of pump and dump coins shows us almost anyone can easily do.

Problem is, recent bitcoin is quite a bit different from the ancient version the merged-mining.patch was based on, so just getting the merged mining patches all applied is going to take some work...

-MarkM-

Many of them claim fast confirmations is their big innovation, that is the main reason I mentioned GeistGeld.

Basically we already have as fast as you can realistically get, damn near too fast, heck have we even really thoroughly tested it enough to be sure it isn't too fast, and we do it without diverting hashing power from bitcoin. So all the pretense that being fast is so useful are pretty much revealed as just pathetic/transparent pretences, their real motive being to pump and dump, since if they were seriously interested in exploring whether fast blocks can work we already have been trying to have that load-tested for years now and they don't seem to have even bothered with the experiment, preferring to just do another pump and dump...

In essence, "bitcoin CAN do very fast confirmations, simply by merging GeistGeld alongside..."

-MarkM-

The new ones you might be right.

But some old ones add something to bitcoin, by using the same hashing power via merged mining, adding features such as a database (namecoin), a support structure for supporting free open source stuff (devcoin), and very very fast confirmations (GeistGeld), all without diverting hashing power away from bitcoin.

-MarkM-

Both of those are simply bitcoin with the merged mining patches added then the specific alt-coin's "things that make it unique" added.

So both of those are now waiting for the new Mergecoin repo to be ready, so they can both apply to that the things that make them unique.

If your coin is based on some ancient version of bitcoin, then maybe you might be able to apply merged-mining.patch directly to your coin, and your coin will stay as ancient outdated code like IXCoin and DeVCoin currently are. They are so old they have no encrypting of wallets, gosh knows what other features they lack and what bugfixes they do not have. Is your coin's code THAT out of date?

As an example, does your coin use Berkely DB, like old bitcoin used to do? Or is it based on newer bitcoin, thus uses the new type of database?

Part of why this patch is hard to apply is because it was created back before the new type of database came into use...

I have now applied the merged-mining.patch to latest bitcoin, and even also manually gone through one of the .rej files of rejected chunks. But there are still three .rej files I have not tackled yet. I have pushed what I have done so far to https://github.com/knotwork/Mergecoin

-MarkM-

I have just now forked bitcoin to a new repo, https://github.com/knotwork/Mergecoin.git

This is to be the Mergecoin repo.

I am going to clone it at home and try to get the merged mining patches to apply.

If I can do that I can then push the changes back up to the repo and presto we will have the wonderful common ancestor repo from which all the merged mined coins can then update themselves, and from which bytecoin (and any other bitcoin clone that wants to add merged mining) can also create a new version of itself.

-MarkM-

Basically what we will get out of doing it right is all the merged mined coins, with the possible exception of namecoin, all being up to date with the latest bitcoin fixes and so on, including not using Berkely DB anymore thus not having its number of locks limitation that made bitcoin itself fork a while ago.

They will all download blockchain much faster than before and so on and so on. They will all have ability to encrypt wallets. Whatever other new features bitcoin has.

-MarkM-

No no no not namecoin.

It is way different from bitcoin and all the others.

It might even need to not work from this new repo thing at all but just do all the work separately on itself.

Namecoin might not be able to update so easily as its not really based on bitcoin.

So okay, maybe it is only all the other merged mined coins - all those that are actually based on bitcoin not on namecoin - that will be easy to update once this generic "bitcoin with merged mining" repo is created.

Namecoin is way more alien than the others, the others are just like all the recent scamcoins, they are only trivially different from bitcoin just like all the recent scamcoins are only trivially different from litecoin.

They are all just bitcoin with the merged mining patch applied then the new altcoin's own trivial changes applied.

But if you apply their own trivial changes first, before the merged mining patch, you could screw up the clean-ness with which the merged mining patch can be applied. So you should always start with bitcoin, apply the merged mining patch, and THEN alter the result into whichever altcoin you want.

They ALL need the merged mining patch, the rest of how they are different from bitcoin is unique to each of them, making them all different not only from bitcoin but from each other.

-MarkM-

Bytecoin is a simple clone of bitcoin with very little changed, correct?

So the best way to make a merged mining version of it is to make those same little changes to a copy of bitcoin that has merged mining patched in.

Every merged mined coin can also be easily updated too, once we have a copy of bitcoin that has ONLY the merged mining patches applied.

No changes other than those that enable merged mining. As more changes just confuse the issue, as what is needed is a new merged mining patch that applies cleanly to a new version of bitcoin. That will be needed next time all the merged mined coins need to update to a new version of bitcoin.

So the first thing to do is take bitcoin and apply the merged mining patches.

Make that a repo, so each and every merged mined coin can fork it to make a new version of themselves.

Bytecoin also will fork it but will need one additional thing the others won't: to pick a block at which to turn on the merged mining.

The others already picked a block at which to turn it on, so they won't need to pick, they will merely need to replace whatever the default in the patches is with the number they picked back when they first were adapted to be able to merged mine.

Basically all merged mined coins are just bitcoin with the merged mining patches then also with a few little changes like coin name, ports, block rewards and so on, which are different from each other. They all though all need bitcoin with the merged mining patches, it is the common ancestor from which each and every merged mined coin can then easily be brought up to date.

So it is the first thing needed, and each and every merged mined coin needs it.

Once it exists, they all have only tiny trivial changes to make to turn it into their own new updated client.

So it is crazy to make each and every coin go through the whole crap of making the merged mining patches apply. Just apply once, to bitcoin itself, then all the alts change the name etc to make that into their own new self.

ALso, getauxblock is not all you need, You need the entire merged mining patch set applied to a recent bitcoin, and with the way bitcoin has moved code out from main.cpp to separate files that means manually carefulyl checking each "blob" of patch to find out where it goes in the latest bitcoin.

That is manual work that only need be done ONCE for ALL merged mined coins to then be able to do the name and image and port etc changing that makes them different from each other.

A copy of the merged mining patch as it was when it once upon a time did apply cleanly to some old version of bitcoin is at

http://sourceforge.net/projects/galacticmilieu/files/

It won't apply cleanly to latest bitcoin, else it  would already have been applied to a recent bitcoin so all the merged mined coins could update from the resulting repo.

So someone needs to fiddle around with applying it to a very recent, but stable, version of bitcoin until it applies cleanly, call the result mergedcoin or whatever, check that it didn't break anything, then make that a repo so all the merged mined coins, plus bytecoin, can all take that new repo and change the names ports etc to form a new version of themself.

-MarkM-

All the merged mined coins all need the same basic template from which to update themselves:

A copy of bitcoin with the merged mining patches applied.

Given that, each coin then only needs to fork it and apply their own usually pretty trivial modifications that makes them different from each other, such as their coins per block, their difficulty adjustment system, their default ports, their IRC channel or channels, their magic handshake bytes, and the cosmetics.

So really the best place to start is with a good recent stable copy of bitcoin.

Otherwise its a huge waste of programmer time with everyone hacking directly at just one coin instead of all being able to work from the common ancestor, which is bitcoin with ONLY the merged mining patches applied.

NOTE that doing it this way would also allow I0coin and geistgeld, the most troublesome / hardest to merge, to be updated too, allowing more people to be able to successfully merge the full panoply of merged mined coins.

So for anyone who is actually going to merged mine, having this raw "pure bitcoin with ONLY merged mining patches applied" is pretty much a no-brainer, allowing all merged coins to then be upgraded thus allowing all miners who merge to maximise their merges.

(To update Bytecoin you would diff it against the version of bitcoin it was forked from, then apply that diff as a patch to the "raw bitcoin with ONLY merged mining patches applied" repo, nice and simple. Oh and pick a block number at which merged mining will turn on.)

-MarkM-

Congratulations, you've just motivated tomorrow's new batch of scamcoins!

(Give your FPGAs new life, mine our SHA3coin! Etc...)

-MarkM-