we've, both, been in constant contact with bittrex regarding getting that situation fixed. im hoping itll be done soon. we dont have another exchange set up for SOIL at the moment but ive contacted several again in the last week. the exchanges arent the best at replying to emails though, which as far as im concerned is shoddy business practices, but nothing i can do about that other than write them again and again. bleutrade i was REALLY disappointed in, id been a loyal member there for almost a year and they expressed early interest in us and then just stopped replying. things like that will eventually shut down exchanges like that.

anyhow, if you want to see us listed on YOUR personal favorite exchange, let me know and ill write them again. you can also write them and ask for our inclusion. many exchanges look for strong community involvement to decide if theyll be listing a coin or not. i think we've built up a fairly strong and loyal community here, so even a small scale campaign, letter writing and twittering.. tweeting?... would help swing the pendulum towards getting us listed in other places so that an exchange where things arent working doesnt hold us hostage. not that i think ritchie and the other fine folks at bittrex are doing that, but ill write them again and see what the hold up is.

we've been busy trying to update everything as we went along today. i STILL hadnt gotten my node up and listed yet. we got the explorer.soilcoin.xyz site back up running properly and added the rolling total minted and total supply information added to that. we've passed that link on to coinmarketcap, as thats the last information they needed for proper market capitalization mathematics, so hopefully we'll have that properly expressed over the weekend.

we got the pool set back up again at http://45.63.4.165:5000/ and managed to tweak the look of it a little as we went along as well. with suprnova closing his pool, we'd love to have those who prefer pool mining to come on over. the payouts are working well, and the format might be spare looking, but sometimes simpler is better...

im certain we will have both peter's node and mine up on the stats page tomorrow.

peter has spoken at length with ritchie from bittrex, talked him thru the update, and id touched base with him about an hour and a bit ago, (dealing with a sickly little 5 year old tonite as well, so im a foot in both worlds right now) and im not sure why the wallet remains disabled at bittrex, but im sure thatll be fixed up by morning as well. unfortunately, thats out of our hands at the moment, as our mind control DApp still has some bugs to work out.. (chuckles...)

this inadvertant forking took us off our other projects for the day, but we are still working on other projects as well. im hoping that ill have the twitter,reddit and slack tipbots compiled and working over the weekend; and peter is working on his project that he's calling "DUST" which will make DApps creation/deployment/interaction much more user friendly, among other things. i wont go any further into that until hes closer to releasing it. cant really give a timeline on it, we do have a working prototype right now but as with everything theres bugs and extensive testing and UI-wrapping to be done first, but likely before the new year.

our new block reward has been implemented and block times have been going up, it takes time for difficulty to increase enough to ensure our new block time is achieved and stable, as its an incremental process, but its getting there. last i checked the stats page our average block time was 39 seconds. we apologize for the fustercluck the system experienced today, it was completely unintentional and regrettable but things are quickly getting back on track, and we've learned a lot in the process.

what we've learned today from the shift over to the new parameters will make the eventual switch over to Proof of Stake much smoother. ill check in with bittrex in the morning and make sure everything is copacetic there again. have a great weekend folks!

we contacted ritchie over at bittrex yesterday with the updated platform information. it looks as though they simply havent updated their platform yet. ill fire off a message to them again and see if we cant get that fixed up as quickly as possible. thank you for bringing this to our attention.

and where do you draw this exalted wisdom from? ive looked over your "contributions" to the crypto world via your posts to several coins and there isnt a SINGLE post that isnt you just spreading negativity. generally in two or three one syllable words. how about you do a little research on the many developments we've made, the work we're still doing and our positive interactions with the community and then come on back and astound us with your sophistication.

our development team, as small as it is, works hard on this project, spending a good 40-60 hours a week each on this project and have a long term timeline to reach our end goals. we are presenting developments and applications at least once a week, and are also contributing to the overall education related to the mechanics of the parameters behind cryptocurrency and the economics behind it. we are actively contributing to the world of cryptocurrency as a whole, and are working on building a niche market serving blockchain that will become a brand. we are transparent in our work and have publicly known developers and community reserve wallets. our "premined" developers reserves have NEVER BEEN SPENT, there is no way to ever state that this project was a pump and dump scam.

we listen to the needs of our community and respond to their wishes for specific developments and utilizations. when inflationary stagnation began to affect our currency, we approached the community for a democratic stakeholder weighted vote on which direction THEY wanted us to go. we are actively working towards retail integration and building middleware DApps to build a scalable infrastructure upon.

what, pray tell, have you EVER done to contribute?

If you have problems to get peers:


the pool at soil.suprnova.cc and our SOILhosted pool (http://45.63.4.165:5000/) have been updated.

VOTE RESULTS re: Target Block Times and Block Reward adjustments.

BLOCK TIMES:
A - 10-12 seconds          compmaster voted, no wallet address                1 SOIL

B - 15 seconds             0x00a985c17a7b39d318444b35be762a2651e089d7     17306 SOIL
                                 0x6a8300875629d29c3f494a9fb78dc3d3291a8747           70 SOIL
                                                                TOTAL     17376 SOIL

C - 30 seconds               0xafc571db22ca80776def02150955026ff7329467    150000 SOIL
                                   0x4bee6966bd51bf448f40d89e65a9c93179fed002      9456 SOIL
                                   0xbd0beda67e12968514858d0facc90bdacc553224      5369 SOIL
                                   0xa3896a24f84072d2c28acc77d962db1e0248a910           8 SOIL
                                                                TOTAL    164833 SOIL

D - 60 seconds               0x4e2230c39dfcd0828a0b4dcad791a12cb084f11c    160240 SOIL
                                   0xe652f1ed4595256b12e4c2e9074c03b9d7e9040e      5235 SOIL
                                   0xe46731382fbc47621a6c480d4b6118026bbbcb3a     49999 SOIL
                                   0x519578237b2e362e67280160667e1bd5dece6d83     17618 SOIL
                                                                TOTAL    233092 SOIL
                    
E - 120 seconds            NO VOTES

                                                                RESULT   60 SECOND BLOCK TIME
BLOCK REWARDS:
AA: 8 SOIL block reward    NO VOTES

BB: 4 SOIL block reward    0x4bee6966bd51bf448f40d89e65a9c93179fed002      9456 SOIL
                                     0xafc571db22ca80776def02150955026ff7329467    150000 SOIL
                                    0xe46731382fbc47621a6c480d4b6118026bbbcb3a     49999 SOIL
                                   0x519578237b2e362e67280160667e1bd5dece6d83     17618 SOIL
                                                                TOTAL    233073 SOIL

CC: 2 SOIL block reward    0x4e2230c39dfcd0828a0b4dcad791a12cb084f11c    160240 SOIL
                                                                TOTAL    160240 SOIL

                                                                RESULT   4 SOIL BLOCK REWARD

So, there you have it, after counting the ballots, we have clear cut winners regarding the adjustments to the target block times and block rewards. We will adjust the Block Time to 60 seconds and the Block Reward to 4 SOIL. As there will need to be a required update to all users' gsoil software platform released and installed, we will release the new package as soon as possible and have the links to the new gsoil platform on our OP and all relevant social media presences. please update as soon as possible . thanks to all of you who participated.

im hoping that by the time we schedule the next vote for changes to the system, we will have found and/or built a DApp that will take into account queries to a wallet address for balances to give weight to each vote by shareholder. as a first exercise of democracy for our cryptocurrency, it went well, and i think it shows promise for the future of SOIL.

so what do these changes mean? well, at present, with a 15second block time and 8 SOIL block reward, we were minting ~ 45,000 SOIL daily. by halving the block reward and increasing the block time to 60seconds, we are reducing the minting to about 4,500 SOIL a day. this greatly reduced the potential coins on the market daily, which should invigorate the supply/demand relationship on the markets. im not sure if the changes we will implement based on this vote will create the sort of equilibrium between teh two driving market factors that will positively affect the overall valuation of SOIL, but i hope that these changes present more favorable economic conditions for the ongoing development of SOIL.

now, this change may disincentivize some miners in the short run as valuation is low, and supply is being cut to 10% of previous daily levels, but that trend should reverse once demand increases against supply and the value on teh markets increases. the 60-second block time will create a more level playing ground for block propagation across the network. while overall latency is difficult to change (the amount of time it takes new block information to be broadcast across the entire network),  a change from 15 to 60 seconds will reduce the possibility of the "selfish-miner attack" and also reduce the number of uncles created by the network.  

at 15-seconds, we were facing an average of 4% uncles created, which is actually much less than the excpected average (11%) whereas Ethereum which maintains a 15second block time, has, in the last 750 blocks has experienced 13.6% uncles. Expanse, with a 2 minute average block time has produced, in that same period of 750 blocks, 2.2% uncle propagation. uncles not only create a disefficient use of power in verifying the blockchain, but as there is a 7/8ths block reward granted for uncles under the ethereum-system based parameters, skews distribution. thus, our new block time will actually reduce our uncles to something likely similar or less than Expanse, which will keep our distribution on a steady and reliable pace.

with simple transaction confirmations with SOIL, we will see an increase in the time for these to be fully confirmed into the blockchain, but nothing as onerous as longer block time usages such as BTC, Primecoin and Peercoin (10minute blocks/40 minute confirmations), or Litecoin (2.5minute blocks/10minute confirmations); so while we do not have retail integration as of yet, and speed of confirmation would only be a major factor with Point of Sale purchases, a 60 second block time should not present itself as a major hurdle to retail usage. simple, for Point of Sale, a zero-time confirmation would be what would be ideal, which is not tenable for any cryptocurrency that wishes to retain blockchain security.

again, thank you to those for their participation in this vote. if anyone has ideas for future votes, please let me know so that i can research the implications of possible results and the question can be presented as a whole.  

my apologies for not getting the voting results published yet, had my car blow up, probably the transmission, so its going to be a bit of a scramble this morning getting it towed in and looked at. ill have the results up by this afternoon once everything in the real world disasterspace is taken care of. thank you for your understanding.

just a reminder... today will be the last day to vote on proposed changes to the SOIL network. either post your vote with wallet address here on the forum or thru PM to myself. we are using a 1SOIL/1vote schemata, and will not be accepting votes representing exchange held coins.

BLOCK TIMES: (explanatory post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1176709.msg13124367#msg13124367)
A - 10-12 seconds - what Buterin proposes would be sustainable
B - 15 seconds     - leave it as is
C - 30 seconds     - closer to what we intended in the first place
D - 60 seconds     - about the average block time target among all altcoins
E - 120 seconds    - about 1/5th the time of BTC, still leading to stronger stability but longer overall confirmations

BLOCK REWARDS:
AA: 8 SOIL block reward
BB: 4 SOIL block reward
CC: 2 SOIL block reward

we will accept votes until 23:59 GMT and will tally the ballots and release the results thereafter. thank you for your participation.

to be clear, regarding altsheets' post, when we were approaching launch, we decided to wait until after launch for implementation of the ABEE system as we were hoping a fair valuation of the currency would present a number he could be happy with. he had requested half his price to be paid in BTC, which was untenable at the time. of course, the price collapsed much lower than algorithmic valuation estimations would have allowed, proving human nature defies mathematical constants.

several weeks ago, he responded with an initial bounty of 42,000 SOIL for his "phase1" work to bring his system to SOIL. life, work and dozens of emails buried his next letters and we did not reconnect until last week regarding this part of the project. considering all things, we offered 40,000 SOIL to him for the use of his altered open-source project, 20k now and a further 20k when certain work was accomplished to bring the other features we requested online.

as far as i can tell, he is looking for $150USD for the use of his open-source-based system, which at current prices, would have required is disbursement of 75000SOIL, for just what has been done so far on his system, not withstanding further disbursements for the further needs of the block explorer, which we just couldnt do. i do like his system, its well put together, and of himself, he is a wonderful community member with a great deal of intelligence and enthusiasm; and we had, in fact offered him a place on the development team with peter and i to help push forward with the development of SOIL, which he turned down in order to continue working on his other software projects.

having a full featured block explorer with rolling minted coins and total coins information is important to have our market capitalization recorded at sites such as coinmarketcap.com, as well as some of the exchanges. we are independently looking into systems that would be workable with the features we require, but remain open to the use of altsheets' ABEE explorer.

with some of the responses to the vote, ive noticed a trend towards a smaller block reward alongside a changed target block time.

seeing as these sorts of changes require updates to our gsoil platform, i suppose the question could be queried now as well as to whether a block reward halving along with alteration of the target block time is something the community supports. the likelihood, from the votes already cast, is towards an increase in the block time (either 30 or 60 seconds... the vote towards those is close) which would reduce, at present block rewards between 12000-24000 SOIL a day at the current block reward of 8 SOIL. the plan has been to halve the reward at about 15 million SOIL, but is that something that you, as our community, feel could be better served, to fight inflationary distribution NOW as opposed to then?

it WOULD dramatically increase the life span of SOIL to reach our hard cap of 33 million coins, *IF* we were to continue on a strict PoW phase for the currency and not delve into Proof of Stake. so, i suppose the question is:

irregardless of the outcome to the block time vote result, would you support halving the block reward from 8 SOIL to 4 SOIL at the same time at block #300,000?

it seems like the community desired distribution curve is at about 10,000 SOIL/day. a 60 second block time with reward of 8 SOIL comes close to that, as does a 30 second block time with a 4 SOIL reward. the main difference between those two scenarios is that with a shorter block time there are more possible blocks for each individual miner to solve during a day. so, as an addition to our poll regarding block times, i suppose the options available would be:

AA: 8 SOIL block reward
BB: 4 SOIL block reward
CC: 2 SOIL block reward

whatever changes to the reward might be done at the same time any alterations to the target block time are performed. this is YOUR coin, really, so, we leave that option up to you.

to halve or not to halve, that is the question. whether tis nobler in the coin to suffer the nonces and hashes towards outrageous fortunes, or to make megahashes against a sea of miners, and by pooled mining, end them?

Our SOIL-hosted mining pool is now available.

http://45.63.4.165:5000/

use the following to connect, placing an appropriately named .bat file in the same folder you have ethminer in.


this is in beta testing right now, and we are still working on implementing some features. presently, the pool hashrate is viewable on the main page, but individual miner hashrates on personal pages arent implemented yet. you can check your personal hashrate within gsoil's command line interface using the command:

this presents your hashrate in H/s (hash operations per second). we will be adding that information in the coming days.

payouts are sent generally immediately upon confirmation of solving a block, and are set as the individual miner's proportional to the overall work by the pool.

we will be instituting a 3% fee on the pool, which we will be using as the "miners equity subsidy". 50% of fees will be used to pay for the cloud server costs for hosting the pool, so that the pool will be, in essence, paying for itself. we chose to use cloud services to host the pool simply to ensure uptime and reliance.
the remaining 50% will be split among the lower hashrate miners (<30MH/s, or essentially single video card users) who maintain their connection to the pool for at least 50% of the weekly time period. its a small gesture, to be sure, but for those who dont have multiple video cards set up and can hit the system with GH/s speeds, its just a little bit MORE than what you'd normally receive mining, and although it probably wont be a LOT, its simply a way to begin the attempt to democratize the mining process a little bit more.

we're still hammering out the final implementations of that, but this part of the program should be instituted by this weekend, and ill make an announcement regarding that here on the forums, likely running that from mondays thru to sundays with subsidy payouts sent to individual miner's wallets within 48hours beyond that. (by tuesday, at the latest, just in case i get called out to a search and rescue operation and cant ensure it is done immediately, although ill work hard to make sure theyre done on monday mornings). 

ALSO dont forget to vote on the present issue regarding targeted block times by wednesday. what changes that would be made will naturally require an update to gsoil, which we are targeting block 300,000 to implement. watch for the announcement. compmaster please send me your wallet address so that i can count your balance of SOIL towards your vote. thanks!

presently we are also working on having the full featured block explorer set up to replace the simple one we've had running from launch at explorer.soilcoin.xyz as well as setting up a tipbot to be run on our social media feeds. middleware development towards the large scale architecture applications continues to go on behind the curtain. constant letter writing and phone calls to perspective retail establishments goes on, and theres been a modicum of interest from these companies. right now im putting out about 50 letters a day to small-to-medium scale heirloom seed suppliers and receiving interest from 10-15 of those. the biggest holdback right now, as far as i can see, is setting up with a payment processor that will convert SOIL to Bitcoin or fiat, but work on that continues as well. theres never a dull moment.

anyhow, thank you all for you continuing support. i realize that the downward trend of our valuation continues on bittrex, and ive been contacting other exchanges for inclusion again, to spread out the supply. we will continue to develop the SOILcoin platform, and to remain in constant communication with our user base here on bitcointalk. this is going to be a long term project, and like any new technology, it will take time for market acceptance.. i said from the beginning that this wont be a complete project in six months or even a year, hell, with the immense scalability of the platform, i doubt we'll ever see the system *COMPLETED* as new technologies and DApps will always be developed. we are merely on the threshold of a new frontier.

nevertheless, i believe communication is one of the most important aspects of "running" a cryptocurrency, keeping a connection to the users and supporters. ive noticed with one of the other Ethereum off-sets the frustration with a silent dev team that stretches out a little over three weeks now, heck.. even the main Ethereum [ANN] thread lacks developer involvement, and this is something you wont have to worry about with SOIL. i check in here a couple times a day, and while my posts are generally lengthy, i try to make them as informative as possible. have a great monday to each and all!!

send me your wallet address, by PM if youd prefer, so that i can use your balance as voting weight. 1SOIL=1 vote.

i actually wrote poloniex this last week, as we'd tried to get listed with them in the first week after launch. they havent responded yet. theres a disturbing lack of communicatin that flows out from these exchanges, sadly, and its rare for them to even respond one way or another nowadays. if you want us listed on your favorite exchange, let THEM know, as well. community involvement and requests go a long way.

that being said, as therewere n oother issues brought up regarding our first public vote on SOIL, we'll go with the block time question. ive already received a few votes, with their connected wallet addresses. we'll tally the balloting up on wednesday, at 23:59 GMT,  and then post the results.

the options we've presented are:
A - 10-12 seconds - what Buterin proposes would be sustainable
B - 15 seconds     - leave it as is
C - 30 seconds     - closer to what we intended in the first place
D - 60 seconds     - about the average block time target among all altcoins
E - 120 seconds    - about 1/5th the time of BTC, still leading to stronger stability but longer overall confirmations

let us know what you think. have a great weekend everyone!!

a week back, or so, when talking about our short and medium term road map, a community member brought up the request for something akin to stats.ethdev.com for SOIL. so, here you go:

http://stats.soilcoin.xyz/

adding one's node is voluntary, so that the map presented doesnt show the ENTIRE health of the network, but is a good window to peer into. this service runs alongside SOILcoin, and tracks the network status; fetching information thru JSON-RPC, and connecting thru WebSockets to stats.soilcoin to feed information. the original author of the network intelligence suite is Marian Oancea, who maintains his repository at GitHub at https://github.com/cubedro.

if you would like to add your node to the stats, to help present a fuller picture of the whole network state, peter supplied a SOIL-specific walkthru after he cloned the stats service for SOIL. he also fixed a small bug in eth-netstats, so its best to grab your build from our github repository. he has provided instructions to install and start the application a couple messages down from this one..

the information behind the parent DApp at GitHub, which this is simply a pointed-at-SOIL instead implementation, and to whom all props should go is: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Network-Status. the network information, the down and dirty esoteric numbers, really give a person a great understanding of how well the engine is running.

right now its only got peters node registered. i wouldve, but to be honest, there was a leafs game on teevee tonite, and thats about the only time im allowed to take control of the remote control in this house. ill get mine up on it tomorrow. hope this network intelligence provides you with all the specs your heart desires.

ive been watching it in the background all evening, and our block rate averages 16.5seconds, which ties into my earlier post. (laughs)

while we are working towards retail integrations for SOILcoin, you can help!
cryptostore has a poll regarding what new coin should be included as currency on their online altcoin marketplace. currently Litecoin, Blackcoin, Dash, Doge, Ether, Feathercoin, Hyper, Mintcoin, Nubits, Novacoin, Potcoin, Peercoin, Startcoin, Unobtanium, and Vertcoin are accepted. they do partner with coinpayments, which we have launched our crowdfunding campaign towards, so getting voted in at cryptostore might also help get that accomplished without the need for premium inclusion needs.

you can vote here:
https://thecryptostore.com/index.php?id_cms=21&controller=cms
choose "Other" and then enter SOILcoin in the field presented.

their online altcoin marketplace, with a vast number of goods available, is at https://thecryptostore.com/index.php

p.s.: i want a quad copter with digital camera accessory for christmas, in case any of you are in good with ol' st nick....

that is the sad state of crypto. one might only wish that coins that are declared dead (dev has walked away from them, network hashing power has dropped to 0, stalled blockchain) would be immediately taken off the exchanges. so many languish. before i invest online, i check threads like (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=812247.0) and see if theres any point, especially if they just drop like rotten fruit off the exchanges. looking through bittrex, theres a LOT of coins that will be delisted on december 4th, due to low volume, no interest.

we have a healthy volume right now, which with constant development and interaction, i think we'll increase interest. we're cheap as hell right now, and "young" as far as cryptocurrencies go.

the altcoin investor world has become savvy, and perhaps somewhat jaded. i said it a long time ago, trust from teh community is paramount, and if you gain it, you fight like hell to keep it because if you lose that trust, you are DONE. transparency is important, but so is dedication. the natural deaths of many of those vanity coins that proliferated will happen, and less currencies are being created, although theres still same old-same old cryptos coming out, or being rebranded. once the markets have cleaned out the flotsam and jetsam of scam coins, the ones left standing, the ones with active communities and developers, theyll thrive.

there are decentralized voting DApps available against the ethereum platform, but they tend to be one person/one vote schemes. by going with oneSOIL/oneVote, we dont really have an option for that yet DApp-wise. ive crossed my eyes over the code behind the voting DApps but cant see how to call ones address balance to weight ones vote.

the community reserve balance will not be used for voting. i think thats an unfair advantage to create a voting bloc that truly, in the most basic way, BELONGS to the community. the developers reserves, seeing as they each represent a single individual, will be eligible, as peter and i SHOULD have input where we think the outcome should go, but with ten times the volume of SOIL compared to the developers reserves potentially available to vote (which is why i set the threshold for this to begin institution) i feel there will be a greater deal of democracy.

ill give it until friday to allow community members to offer up what elements of SOIL theyd like put to a vote and if theres a clear cut  majority regarding that, then thats what we'll vote upon. i have my personal idea of what id like to see voted upon, and ill present that, and reasons for and against.

i think that one thing that is important to have community input over right now is the targeted block time. if the mining process is the engine behind the blockchain, the targeted block time is its heartbeat. it underpins the frequency of currency issuance and the speed of transaction confirmations. it keeps the system running to the ordered rate, with the block difficulty adjusting itself compared to the overall computational power performing hashes against the algorithmic problem on the network, which keeps this heartbeat steady. to avoid extreme volatility in the difficulty, the retargeting adjustment is less than a factor of four per cycle, and with the kimoto gravity well algorithm acting as our difficulty adjuster, our system is fairly reactive to keep the block time fairly equal.

one of the things that has kept our valuation low is the healthy but inflationary distribution of SOIL through the mining process. At present, with the 15 second targeted block time, which with an 8 SOIL block reward, is equal to approximately 48,000 SOIL being minted every day. This brings us to the first scheduled block reward halving (at 15,000,000 minted SOIL), reducing from 8 to 4 SOIL per block, within a single calendar year from our launch, in ~ mid-October, 2016.

now, our original intention had been for a 35 second blocktime, but in refreshing gsoil thru the update of geth, oversight and standardized ethereum parameters resulted in a reduction of that time to 15 seconds, skewing our original distribution scheduling. realistically, in practice, doubling the target block time back to the approximate 30 seconds originally sought, would decrease the inflation rate by a third, and at the same time increasing the time until next halving from ~1year to closer to 2years... giving more people a chance to mine during its highest inflation period and presenting a convenient period to watch how PoS on ethereum-based systems works or fails in differing implementations on ETH or the other forks.

short block time cons
shorter block times causes more mining power to be wasted on orphan blocks  that are created thanks to block propagation delays across the breadth of the network. after a new block is generated for solution, it takes differing times to reach the whole of the network. some nodes receive the new block hash quicker than others. if, after a block is solved; and a new one is spawned; not everyone will receive the new block at the same time. nature of the beast. if the new block is solved nearly immediately, while the late receiver creates a separate new block with a -1 height compared to rest of the blockchain, it will most likely be an orphan block that will be rejected by the rest of the network. the mining power that went into creating the orphan block was practically wasted.

it usually only takes a few seconds for a block to propagate across the whole network, but for arguments sake, let's say it's averages out to 3 seconds. SOILcoin presently has a block target time of 15 seconds. so on average, every 15 seconds, someone makes a new block, and the rest of the network wastes 3 seconds of mining power trying to make an orphan block. that's 20% of global network mining power wasted. furthermore, individual miners with slower produced hashrates will waste much more mining power on orphans. this is on the assumption of 3 seconds total network propagation, it could be lower or higher than that, but it *IS* a factor.

there are also security implications. the ratio of typical generation delay to typical block mining time also affects how frequently confirmations may be reverted, as transactions could be confirmed on an orphan block. if the target block generation time is too short, then it is more likely that blocks may be solved nearly simultaneously. this causes the network to split its time mining power on both chains, on which MORE simultaneous blocks may be solved; and the resultant overall effect can sometimes be a something resembling a tree of blocks rather than the desired long and linear chain of blocks; before network consensus is remade and everyone is mining on the longest, and thus, official, chain.

short block times pros
a fast distribution has it advantages, it presents a vigorous amount of SOIL reaching the market every day, which benefits the miners in a way because they can sell in volume, and benefits the purchasers by presenting larger blocks of inexpensive assets. unfortunately, with a larger distribution, the process of accretional upward value momentum is much more difficult to attain.

it benefits retail integration as there are MORE SOILcoins available to spend. fast block times help retail confirmations occur in a much shorter time frame, which helps the merchant and customer using SOIL to purchase goods. especially in Point of Sale purchases, where the customer doesnt want to be standing at the counter for several minutes waiting for transaction confirmation. online purchases, this would be less of a problem.

with faster block times, difficulty can be adjusted much more swiftly, it can be more REACTIVE to the demands and hashrates of the system. this assists in keeping the difficulty from becoming impossibly high after a mining farm disconnects from the network, resulting in a stagnant chain. it helps solo miners and small pools as there are more blocks available a day that are solvable, which means more potential SOIL available.

short block times also reduce the risk of double spend attacks, where a transaction is made between X and Y. X sends his amount to Y and recieves the asset the Y returns. X then IMMEDIATELY cancels the transaction, keeping Ys asset and retaining his asset as well. with a short block time, this becomes MUCH more difficult.

long block times
if block confirmation time is too LONG, then blocks are propagated infrequently and creates inconvenience when transaction confirmations take too lengthy a time. this has been an issue with Bitcoins trouble at time gaining a stronger foothold with retail integration, whether this is truly the case with confirmations or just the general perception. it DOES make for a more stable blockchain, as there are less orphaned blocks and less mining power is thus wasted on creating those, even with network block propagation delay.

a reduction in the distribution creates a different supply/demand ratio, and this can help increase the valuation of SOIL via less making it to the market daily, even among the high hashrate dedicated miners, making mining more profitable and creating advantages for those who have held and not traded out at low valuations.

ANY change to the block time, shorter or longer, WILL require updates to the system, meaning a new downloaded update version of gsoil will be necessary to ensure everyone is on the same blockchain with the new block time.

i propose the following options for block time targeting


A - 10-12 seconds - what Buterin proposes would be sustainable
B - 15 seconds     - leave it as is
C - 30 seconds     - closer to what we intended in the first place
D - 60 seconds     - about the average block time target among all altcoins
E - 120 seconds    - about 1/5th the time of BTC, still leading to stronger stability but longer overall confirmations


thats my idea and reasoning why i think we should base our first community driven vote on the block time generation (and distribution schedule) for SOIL. id love to hear others ideas on what to vote on, or to hear their thoughts on my proposal.

800,000 community reserve originally set aside. present balance of  746718.085 SOIL  reflects first day deduction of testnet bounties, faucet balance, exchange and geeky bounty.
150,000 developers reserve for peter. present balance remains at 150000.05 SOIL
50,000 developers reserve for abvhiael. present balance remains at 49999.88081975 SOIL

212601 block height represents total mintage of 1,700,808 SOIL

total market available SOIL - 1,700,808 SOIL
total supply of SOIL           -  2,647,526 SOIL

i dont understand the lack of buy support. if one looks at the other ETH-offets.. EXP sees a 28% pump in its price again, this with a community board full of FUDsters complaining about a lack of "visible enthusiasm and development". SHF has a community board that has been stuck in place for nearly two weeks with complaints of "a lot of silence going around here" and users wanting to, sarcastically, take the coin over. hundreds of altcoins and vanitycoins have absentee developers that remain vigorously traded with healthy valuations.

conversely, we have a very positive and involved (albeit small) community, with a minimum amount of FUDsters coming along and blindly making prognostications to the future of the project. we have ongoing and regular development with nearly daily communication with a great enthusiasm for where we are going with this project.

eventually the community as a whole is going to catch on that we're busy doing a lot of things on this end with development... you wanted a paper wallet.. you got one within a week. you wanted an android wallet.. you got one. we have had a faucet up and running since the first week. we were set on an exchange a week after launch.

right now we're working on a full featured explorer to replace the basic but functional one we have had up and running since launch. we are beta testing our SOIL hosted mining pool and trying to prettify it, payouts are working, its simply the presentation of such are not presented in an attractive and simple to understand way.

middleware DApps are being worked on towards our pet projects (mine is the decentralized on-chain exchange, with cross chain interconnectedness which requires a lot of working cogs). we are pursuing retail integration aggressively, and seeking out capital investment and corporate sponsorship in a proper way. this hard work will not go unnoticed. and we are doing this entirely on our own, with no outside development being offered or pursued; and with no renumeration.

so, yeah, if you want to invest in a development team that is dedicated to its project, is willing to interact with the community and solve community issues and requests in a timely manner, if you want to grab a currency on the cheap and hold it until the market corrects itself, if you want a coin where there has been ZERO developer dumps and a concrete road plan for near and medium term investment.. then SOIL is a perfect investment. BUT... i doubt a lot of traders actually look behind the curtain, or perform due diligence towards what they actually invest in on the markets.

im going to keep working on this project irregardless. i can see where we can take this, where we already positioning ourselves with regards to focusing on the larger applications that will serve our long term goals and targeted niche industry needs. i have a futurists mind when it comes to realization of what a globally networked programmatic virtual machine is capable of, and it will hchange the landscape of cryptocurrency. i will continue to constantly watch what open source DApps are being built and finding ways of integrating similar ideas into our ecosystem. when the community is ready to jump on board, im sure theyll do in a hurry; but personally, im not going to wring my hands over where the present valuation is, because i know it is an artificial low, and truly theres nowhere to go but UP.

what YOU can do... word of mouth.. let others know about SOIL, point them over to our website or to this forum... start developing DApps for the blockchain and get your hands dirty. build something you think others would use.. be it a rock/paper/scissors gambling app or a microlending app... buy cheap and hold. get INVOLVED.

next week, when we have reached 2 million minted SOIL, i will begin the democratic voting process with relation to the future evolution of the system, and i would like to know what issue YOU feel is the most important to address with a vote. i have an idea as to what id like to have promulgated as an issue at the present time, but i want to hear your ideas rather than just force my thoughts of what needs to be voted upon down your throats. this will be a oneSoil/oneVote process, so you will be voting with your STAKED wallet address. coins held on the market wallets will not be eligible as they are "in flux". we will have a 2 week voting window set.

being as there are no applicable DApps created for this voting process yet; the mechanisms behind that are just not there yet; we will be hosting the vote here on this forum, and if you wish to vote on the matter up for balloting in the main thread, thats entirely acceptable; or if you wish to remain pseudo-anonymous you can PM me with your wallet address and cast your vote. open and impartial community involvement has always been one of the cornerstones behind the SOILcoin project, and your opinion will help craft the direction we pursue with the underlying mechanisms behind the virtual machine.

hello!

actually, what we'd have would be a silent, short term speculator. what we need are long-sighted investors who realize the positive value shift that retail integration would bring, overall and long-term to the value of the currency that they already hold.

we are looking for investors to come on board SOILcoin to accelerate the application development, and have made applications in many areas towards that, but naturally, ANY legitimate real-scale fiat injection like that into the project is something that takes SEVERAL months to realize. seeing as we are not yet two months with a live blockchain, such a monster would be impossible to have set up by now. peter and i have done everything, thus far, without renumeration and completely on our own dime and time...

now, if you know of corporate sponsors that would be interested in the project outcomes we are working towards, while remaining relatively hands-off in the general direction of development, definitely get them in contact with us! i have had conversations with a couple venture capitalist firms, who are vetting and investigating the project and the technology behind it; and have made preliminary contact with industry specific enterprises regarding corporate sponsorships for ongoing progression, but those things take time.

in the meantime, i will investigate what outlets are available to raise capital towards achieving the milestones that will propel us further along in a timely manner... hence, the bitcoin-crowdfunding campaign in hopes of raising the 2BTC needed to pay for express inclusion at coinpayments.net ( https://www.btc-funding.com/campaigns/5658e2b2069f95ce56000005 ) which will not only immediately enjoin SOILs ability at their online marketplace, but also provide the daily, low-cost crypto-to-fiat exchange for merchants who will accept SOIL as currency and which provides them with peace of mind when dealing with a volatile and swiftly changing cryptocurrency exchange rate (which is faced by EVERY altcoin).

a direct link to the application on the Google Play Store can also be reached by:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.soilcoin.currency

in case anyone has any troubles reaching it thru the link on the button in peter's post above, which brings you to the testing page. this is our first foray into android apps, so ... big old learning curve for both of us with this particular project. hope everyone is having a great weekend!! thanks again to Crypto4jan with the assistance in getting this project off the ground with his donation of .09BTC towards the cost of the Google Play publishers fee, and to the anonymous donation of 1000 SOIL from whomsoever you are!!