Bobsag, So no chance of also paying for heatsinks with chips?  Similar to how we would be paying for boards/assembly with chips.

The cost of enough coolers to cover 12 boards (48 total) is a lot.  25 * 48 = 1,200 bucks.  You could go with $10 coolers (look just like the stock intel coolers) and maybe be okay if you had other fans blowing over your setup.  That would knock it down to $480.  Then you would ideally power two boards (each requiring 3 pcie power plugs) with around a 1000W PSU with 6 PCIe plugs.  That would mean 6 PSUs at around 150 each.  That's another 900.

I love the idea it seems like a good way to get out of this mess with something to show.  But that's a lot of extra capital to throw at this endeavor that I wasn't planning on spending.  Maybe if we could use chips to offset some included heatsinks or PSUs?  If each chip is valued at $50, two chips would cover four heatsinks.  Maybe for every 100 chips get 10 boards with heatsinks (4 mounted + 4 for assembly + 2 for the four heatsinks)?

I'm not quite clear on this... the board mounts 4 chips and then we can pay for the board/assembly with 4 chips, so for every 8 chips we will get a board with 4 mounted chips ready to start hashing (minus PSU, host controller and HSs of course)?

If this is correct, then we would get 12 x 400GH boards with 4 chips left over for each X3.  This would give us 4800 GH/s.  Just need the extras parts to get up and going.

Does this sound right Bobsag?

I've said this in the past and I'll say it again.  What this coin needs is the one thing it's never really had:  CONSISTENCY.

We had a bumpy launch, we had serious issues with our first exchanges, learning to configure hardware for the various N-values became a nightmare, we changed block reward, Devs left, new Devs showed up...  We changed POS from 1 year to 1 week, and before we even reached the block where we switch over we announce we're going to full POS?!  I mean, seriously, the LAST change hasn't even gone into effect yet!

Even aside from the consistency issues, I'm also very troubled by the "manipulation" as some have labeled it.  And I have to agree.  You can rationalize it any way you want by using words like "unsustainable" but the bottom line is, you're intentionally changing (manipulating) the supply of coins available to the market in order to increase the price.  I feel like we're all buying into a common misconception: Limiting supply is the same as increasing demand.  THIS IS NOT TRUE.  They are two completely different things with unique causes and effects.  The price may go up in the short term as a result of limiting supply, but without the "organic" growth that comes from liquidity and ACTUAL demand, the price will only sink further in the long term.

This community is doing a lot of things, and some of it includes trying to increase that demand rather than just limit supply.  But judging by this forum, our discussions, and the headlines we're broadcasting to the crytpo-world, this community is more concerned with limiting supply than increasing demand.  And this is a BIG turnoff and red flag for investors.

So I put a couple of Scrypt ASICs on the multipool today.  The hashrate at the pool is right, but the worker dashboard says 0 scrypt shares.  However, for some reason, I have a lot of SHA256 shares?  I'm using port 3333 in cgminer.  Is this normal or is something wrong with my setup?

If I did the math right, that puts us right at a month away from the new POS.

Yeah, you're probably right about that.  But I have to say, I get pretty riled up about the Monarch.  And I didn't even order one.  How they had new/repeat customers after the SC ASIC debacle is beyond me.

I have to agree with Xukanik to an extent.  The "mob mentality" in this thread is getting just stupid ridiculous.  For two reasons:

1) We all knew (or at least should have known) that by placing a pre-order we could easily end up in this situation.  I mean, it's not like this has never happened before with pre-order ASICs...  Enough people waded through these waters way before the Prospero/Minion was even announced that every single one of us knew the pitfalls.  Now everyone's just mad they took the gamble and lost.  It's the same reaction I've seen at blackjack tables.  Someone goes all in to double-down on an 11, gets a 2, looses everything.  Then they storm off like they're mad at the dealer/casino for taking their money, forgetting they put the cash on the table to begin with.  I'm not saying BA is in the clear and has no responsibility, but we can't honestly act totally surprised either.

2) Nobody, especially BA, cares what you have to say in your angry rant post.  They say they care, and maybe they do a little, but demanding 6TH or else, talking about getting "the police" involved, etc will more than likely go ignored like the white noise it has become.

Again, I'm not taking up for BA.  Just pointing out that over half of this thread is an exercise in futility.  The really interesting thing is the contrast between BA's thread and other ASIC manufacturers' threads.  Have you looked at the BFL Monarch threads?  Sure, there's people who are impatient and some who are downright angry, but it's nowhere near as hostile as this thread or the ecointalk thread.  And they've been strung out twice as long as us.  Either BFL's customers are just more patient, or BFL is better at getting people to drink the Koolaid than BA.

It depends on a couple of things like what generation/architecture you're looking at.  For example, Radeon 6XXXX cards are relatively poor miners whereas 7XXX/R9 cards are very good.  But I assume you're talking about newer cards currently available on the market.

If you're looking for shear mining horsepower for any algo, the R9 290/290X is where it's at.  BUT if you're looking for the best price/performance/power efficiency combination, the best (by a good margin) I have found is the nvidia 750ti.  They hash at around 300 kh/s on scrypt (comparable to a 7870/R9 270X) but they only use around 60-70 watts, run very cool, most don't require PCIe power connection, and the EVGA SC model with 2GB GDDR is only 150 USD.  The 750ti is based on nvidia's  new Maxwell architecture which is looking to be extremely power efficient.  Keep an eye out for future nvidia cards based on Maxwell, as I believe they will become a new favorite for GPU miners.

I really don't know where some of you came up with the X1 was supposed to be "chainable"... I have never read anywhere (other than speculation by non-BA folks) that they could be strung together.  That doesn't even make sense.  The X1 was never intended to be part of a mining farm.  It's design is based on the notion that you could place one anywhere in your home (actual living space, not a garage, shed, bedroom-turned-datacenter) and let it quietly and coolly generate bitcoin for you.  BA originally described the X1 as a small machine you could place on your computer desk, on your desk at work, under the TV in your living room or on the counter in a kitchen etc.  ... They even made some comment like "The X1 may even generate enough bitcoin to pay for electricity for the entire home"... or something of the sorts.  Obviously, now that is quite a stretch and to make any kind of real money you would indeed need a small farm of X1s, but that is NOT what they were designed for.

20 pages have been added to this thread in the last seven days.  If you take away the "drama" and posts regarding the coinpayments vote, you would be left with about 1-2 pages of actual discussion about coin features or constructive feed back regarding Ultracoin.

There are several bad actors.  Unfortunately, Bumface, you are guilty as well.  I know it is very hard and disheartening to not only be attacked personally, but to also have you idea, project and investment attacked as well.  And a natural response will always be to defend yourself and your project.  But you just can't.  You can't commit enough energy to developing the project and defending yourself to naysayers at the same time.  You have to make a choice.  If you want to sit on this forum and the trollboxes and spend your time and energy defending yourself and your coin, then pass the development of the coin to someone else.  Or take the criticism like a champ and focus the negative energy on Ultracoin.  Nobody, you, me or anyone else, has the capacity to do both.  And honestly, if you left the trolling alone, many of us would greatly appreciate you for it.

I used to really enjoy contributing in this thread.  But I don't anymore.  Why should I spend my time writing out a thought (like this one) when it will get lost in 20 pages of bickering and only be read by people more concerned with who's to blame for a problem than how to fix it.  I'm still holding my UTC mined since launch.  But with every new page of horsesh*t added to this forum, I find it harder and harder to believe in the investment I've made.   I'm not giving up on Ultracoin (yet) but I see very little on it's horizons at this point.  Until things change, starting with the attitudes of this community and it's leaders, this coin will remain stagnant, or worse.

(meanwhile, at the adults' table...)

Bumface/community, is there anything the community can be doing right now?  (besides buy/hold and make a presence on the troll boxes and twitter)  Maybe the community should pick ONE SPECIFIC TOPIC regarding a development, promotion or strategy and discuss that here in the thread for a while.  We need to regroup a bit, and I think a great way to do that would be pick one idea and brainstorm it.  At the least, we could have at least ONE page that doesn't consist of "trollolololol" and who knows, we might actually come up with some good ideas.

Bumface, I think you should consider giving a "state of the coin address".  Nothing immediate, as it should be well thought out, polished and presented to the community in a clear and formal manner.  Pick a day in the near future (and tell the community WHICH day) and on that day, post a formal address to the community highlighting the progress since launch, the pitfalls, and what your expectations are for the near future.  Now, I know you like to keep some of the dev plans close to the chest, and that's fine, but sharing some general ideas would not only bring confidence to the coin, but also to you as the lead developer.  Also, the more we talk about the coin and all involved, the more we can dilute the spam that litters this forum.

*Edited for clarity*

Well, N-factor increases were implemented to make the coin ASIC resistant.  However, scrypt ASIC isn't proliferating as fast as the Devs had originally predicted.  So now we have an unnecessarily high N-factor.  One which makes configuring mining hardware very difficult, even for miners who have been mining UTC since day one.

I'll agree that one could argue cutting the block reward was a poor decision and is probably a large part of why many miners left (who wants to have their mining reward cut by 70%?) but hind-site is 20/20.  BUT, we can't keep driving 100 mph in the wrong direction.  High N-factor is a barrier-to-entry for a lot of potential miners because A) it's hard to properly configure hardware B) they don't realize the low hashrates are normal/don't know what normal for their setup should be and C) it's inconsistent; they will have to rework everything in around 1-2 months.  I agree that constant changes appear as though we are manipulating the coin, almost like the Fed manipulates the USD supply.  We don't want to just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, but we DO need to find the right balance and track for this coin, and soon.  And when we do, we will let it grow on its own from then on.

I'm making more UTC/day now, with less hardware, at N-factor 13 than I was at N-factor 11.  Difficulty drops at each N-factor due to the decrease in hashrate which makes it very difficult to gauge the long-term trend in difficulty over several N-factor changes.  But as I said, I'm making more coin with less hardware than two months ago.  The only way this is possible is if less hardware is on the network (fewer miners/fewer dedicated rigs).  Since I generate more coins, I can sell them cheaper and net the same profit as two months ago.  It's supply/demand economics in it's most basic form.  Price wasn't higher two months ago because N-factor was lower (although that made it easier to config hardware, which is another, yet related issue).  Price was higher two months ago because there were more miners dividing up the same coin supply (actually more since reward was still 50 UTC/block).  Less coin per miner meant they sold at higher prices.

Profitability is still a great marketing point for this coin.  And there are several areas where we can position ourselves to win over new miners:

*Continue providing better tools for configuring mining hardware such as the configgen page.
*Continue to investigate changing N-factor scheme to make mining consistent and user-friendly
*Develop tools and market to Nvidia miners.  I'm mining on 750ti's and they are loads easier to configure than my AMD cards are WAY more efficient.  Look for a big market of miners to arise when new Maxwell GPUs are released later this year/early 2015.
*Shorten POS - obvious
*Continue to position ourselves as the GPU mining alternative when scrypt ASICs push LTC/DOGE difficulty to the stratosphere (probably in 2014)
*Other thoughts?

Lol I haven't spent much time in this thread for well over a month now...  I'm remembering why.  It's turned into a bad daytime talk show of the likes of Jerry Springer.  I'm just waiting for someone to drop the "YOU DON'T KNOW ME!" line.

In regards to the falling price, I have been observing some very interesting things lately.  I'll take this moment to share while we wait for them to reveal if Bumface is really the father...

One of the economic principles that bitcoin is based on concerns the relationship between coin price, mining difficulty and cost to mine.  The idea was that price of bitcoin would reflect the cost of mining that bitcoin (how much hashrate/hardware and power it would take to mine a BTC) which is derived from the difficulty.  In theory, as the cost to mine increases, the price would increase-- leading to more mining > increased difficulty > higher cost to mine > increase in price and so on.  This pattern is well established throughout BTC's history as well as other cryptos like LTC:  Increases in price correlate very well with increases in difficulty, especially in the early days of a coin.  There's a bit of "chicken-egg" argument here, but I believe the reality is a positive feedback loop where ^ price drives ^ difficulty which drives ^ price.

Now consider Ultracoin.  Because UTC has very little utility (liquidity) outside of arbitration (which negates itself as bought UTC is immediately sold), UTC's price is almost entirely influenced by the pattern outlined above.  Only in UTC's case, the positive feedback loop is causing price to fall along with difficulty.  Price dropped after launch (amplified by a severe crypto bear market) which caused miners to go elsewhere.  As miners left, difficulty fell lower and lower.  Miners who stayed with UTC generated UTC at a quicker rate-- the cost to mine went down.  If you'll remember, even while UTC was dropping it was almost always one of the most profitable coins to mine.  In fact, at current prices, UTC is STILL very profitable compared to many other alts (depending on your power cost, hardware, etc).

To sum up:  
*UTC price is almost entirely influenced by cost to mine at this point, as there is little else to affect the UTC market, much like the early days of BTC.
*Cost to mine is decreasing due to miners leaving > decreasing difficulty > more coins for miners who stay > miners can sell at lower prices

If all this holds true, then the best short term boost for UTC would come from increasing the cost to mine.  But it has to be done naturally, not by cutting block rewards or increasing block times.  The only solution for this would be bringing in new miners to boost difficulty.  Features such as shorter POS, more consistent N-factors, and better resources for miners (configgen, how-tos, etc) will go a long way towards helping this issue.  This community should continue to focus on these items.

+1  I'm always been a little nervous about them using a backplane anyway.  Backplanes are one of those slick design feature that sound good in theory but tend to fall short in practice.  Also, what happens when one of our X3 backplanes fails?  All 5 hashboards in that module are dead in the water.  Now, I'm not sure what all components are located on the backplane, but could it be possible to just replace it with 5 ribbon cables and a hub of sorts?  It would help if we had a datasheet for the backplane.  Are there any controllers on the board?  I was assuming there was a separate control board and/or this function was located on the hashboard...?  What type of com is being implemented here?  (*I know very little about this kind of stuff, but have a very basic working knowledge of how the data is "piped" around*)  Where exactly does the problem lie?

I'm sure nobody is more eager to see the end of this than Bobsag3 and the rest of the minersource gang.  I can't imagine their profit margin is anything meaningful at this point, if it even still exists.

Our individual voices can often fall on deaf ears, as was likely the case leading up to late February.  But BA can't ignore their largest reseller (and thereby, customer) when they want answers.  So yes, without Bobsag3 traveling and and having some face-time with BA, we could very well be more in the dark than we are now.  Bottom line:  Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Well, I haven't even really tweaked it yet.  That's one of the things I'm impressed with; I just swapped them out and swept/installed appropriate drivers.  I was expecting to spend all afternoon "tweaking" like I did with my AMDs to get rid of HW errors and get a decent hashrate.  But this is all I did:

cudaminer --algo=scrypt-jane:UTC -o stratum.blah.blah.com:port -u [username] -p [pass] -l (that's a lowercase L, not I which causes problems) t5x24

Also, I have the EVGA 750Ti OC version, non acx or whatever just one fan, and I overclocked it +30 gpu, +300 mem using evga precision. I tested +50 and +500 and it was stable, but warmer for only an extra 2-3 kh/s.  I'm sure there is a lot of headroom for tweaking, especially the -l parameter and probably many others that I'm not aware of.  But 20-25 kh/s at 65W TDP with little effort is pretty darn good imho.

Just an FYI for anyone who may be interested, since there isn't a lot of current talk regarding "Green Team" miners:

I just replaced a pair of 7970's with a pair of GTX 750Ti's and I'm really liking the results.  Just for comparison sake, I'm hashing the same on the 750Ti's as my 7870/270X cards: low to mid 20s kh/s.  Both cards running along with a hdd array (rig doubles as a file server) on an old 65W athlon II under load and the Kill-a-watt says just under 200 watts at the wall.  Not to mention the drop in temperature; I can actually stand to be in the same room with my rig again!  Anyway, just wanted to share my results in case anyone else is looking into Maxwell based GPU's for mining UTC or anything else.  So far it looks like decent performance at a great price and fantastic efficiency.  And I don't think CUDAminer has even really been optimized for Maxwell and Compute 5.0, so who knows how things could look in a few months.

Done, and thank you again for your support in the past.  Best of luck!