I expect that what we need to know is what sequence of four bytes they changed the handshake to.

It makes sense that they changed it, because the older version - the source code - used the exact same handshake bytes as bitcoin does, meaning it would actually connect to all the bitcoin daemons whose addresses it would have gotten from DNS and so on, and actually try to fit their blocks into its blockchain, and actually send bitcoin daemons its blocks and so on.

So it makes perfect sense they will have changed the handshake. The very first attempts to make GRouPcoin/DeVCoin we realised that had to be changed. I have changed it in this test of trying to implement proper merged mining, I changed it the way I have in other altcoins, a way that makes it easy for a human watching the packets to see at a glance which chains are trying to talk to each other: I am using "RUC:" for main net and "ruc-" for test net, just like GRouPcoin uses "GRP:" and "grp-", DeVCoin uses "DVC:" and "dvc-" and so on.

Once we are sure it works we can always change the handshake to whatever they want to use going forward; I didn't have any qualms about changing it since it is obvious from the fact their new proprietary version also changed it thus that going forward it is not going to be the same as bitcoin's handshake like it was in the 0.4 version the source code is for.

If you are into wireshark or ethernet sniffing or whatever, maybe for you it is trivial to find out what four byte sequence their new version does use, in which case we can easily adapt. And since I do provide source code, you can easily adapt it yourself to check that it really is using the bytes you think it is using.

-MarkM-

I maybe should try to job your memory though that maybe it might not even be only files that have the data you need, you might also have all you need in your database since all you deleted was one table. Often people who think in terms of PHP and MySQL do not use a plaintext log file at all, presumably because they back up their database so often that they figure there is a enough certainty that they have most of what they need in their daily backups that having to remember a bunch of log files to back up daily too is not worth the trouble.

So just think back to when you made the site. When someone makes a deposit you write down who deposited how much on what date using what method type of info in a list of such info, right? Either in a log file or in a database table that amounts to being a log since each row is one such occurence. If your database does not support "transactions" you probably also wrote down the fact that you have not yet actually changed the accounting to include this new deposit. Then you run around updating balances so they reflect the deposit. Then you log the fact that you have completed updating of balances to account for that deposit, so you know the machine didn't die halfway through the process.

So, look wherever you made your list of all deposits before updating balances, plus, if separate rather than just being a "done" marker in the first list, wherever you wrote down that the balances had been updated to reflect the new deposit.

Same for the withdrawals: look at the list of send commands sent to the bitcoin daemon and the list of transaction numbers the daemon returned when it made the sends. Plus too there is the daemon's own debug.log log to compare against if you think your records of what you told it and what it responded are somehow incorrect.

-MarkM-

P.S. Did Tom WIlliams ever actually get around to releasing his source code (as he claimed he would) that he claimed included a bug that was his excuse for ripping everyone off?

Only you know where you had your scripts/programs/website record all the important things such as what deposits had been sent to the database, what withdrawals had been sent to the bitcoind and stuff like that.

The bitcoind's log is usually debug.log in the daemon's data-directory.

-MarkM-

DId you delete all the logs as well as the list of withdrawal requests?

Your bitcoind log should show all transactions the bitcoin daemon did, and your deposits log should show all the deposits people made.

For that matter your withdrawals log should show what withdrawls your site thinks the bitcoin daemon already processed, or what withdrawls were actually submitted to the daemon for processing.

So it should be pretty easy to sort it out with awk or some other command/language that can add up values found in logs and stuff like that.

In fact you should have had cron automatically comparing the totals found in the database against the amounts shown in the plaintext logs just to make sure the database was keeping everything straight properly.

-MarkM-

To make miners even more of stake-holders, we could vary the maturity time of the mining rewards based on a modulus of the block hash.

Miners would thus have the choice of trying for a hash with a different modulus or settling for the first sufficiently difficult hash they happen across even if its modulus is one that means a very long maturity time.

For example we could use hash modulo 256 as multiplier of the maturity time so that some would take 128 times as long as the old unmultiplied maturity time to mature.

-MarkM-

Well from the look/sound of it, one is an open source branch the other is a closed-source / proprietary fork.

Which do you want to work with, open source cryptocurrencies or proprietary ones?

-MarkM-

Maybe instead of adding some kind of escrow system to hold miner's coins it would suffice to increase the number of blocks it takes for mined coins to mature? We could even tie that to the block number, so over time it will take longer and longer for newly mined blocks to mature?

-MarkM-

It does seem that the signatures problem is fixed, however we have now been experiencing delays while the messaging protocol is being re-done to be much more robust, since in real life on the net one can never really be sure one will hear back at any point in the message-passing.

This has meant a lot of coding deep in the guts of the thing; the next round of tests will be to make sure those changes have not introduced new bugs of their own.

Basically the actual accounting has proven to be very sound and robust but the networking, the actual communication been server and clients, was not as robust as it could be thus is being re-done.

-MarkM-

Hedging is doubtless a market, and it really need not have anything to do with actual fiat<->cryptocoin exchanges.

Just like one of the bitcoin<->USD conversion rate options sites resolves all balances only in bitcoins, hedging can also balance / strike only in bitcoins. All the people hedging need is a way to denominate their holdings in terms of a fiat unit of count during periods then they think the fiat unit of account will lose less actual buying power / value than the cryptocoin unit of account will.

It is merely about relative "value" of unit of account. Actually acquiring fiat upon eventually cashing out is totally independent of that.

So far the primary barrier really to doing this as blockchains has been the evident unwillingness of people doing merged mining to merged mine more chains, resulting in merged-mined chains having insufficient security so far to be suitable for this use.

Maybe we should right off the bat distinguish between fiat currency exchanges, cryptocoin exchanges and fiat<->cryptocoin exchanges, as they are maybe three different problems, albeit the first (fiat<->fiat) and third (fiat<->cryptocoins) might be somewhat similar in terms of the regulatory problems they might encounter (though still the third might have more or different regulatory problems in some details from the first).

Since the USD is not the only fiat in the world, and in fact some nations might even prefer that it not even be used as global reserve currency at some point going forward, the whole concept of allowing each Freeciv nation to issue their own blockchain-based currency was intended partly to actually get in place blockchains that could, once sufficiently secured, be used for this hedging type of use even if not directly convertible to fiat. I figured the whole problem of conversion of fiat can be left to bitcoin itself, allowing all other cryptocoins to get on with their own problems internalt to the cryptocoin world. If exchange to and from fiat does turn out to be a massive market, then bitcoin's position as the primary conduit for such exchanges should help keep bitcoin its current place as the pre-eminent cryptocoin. If however such exchange turns out to be a dwindling market as more and more business takes place purely within the cryptocoin world then who knows, maybe bitcoin will find being the main gateway will slowly lose its importance in the cryptocoin economy.

-MarkM-

They have one that can be merged mined as an auxilliary chain like all the other merged mined alcoins, so you can mine BTC as primary chain and all the alts including RUcoin as altchains??? I thought all they had was a copy based on bitcoin such that like bitcoin it can be used as PRIMARY chain, thus that theirs could not be merged-mined alongside bitcoin???

-MarkM-

Mine is based on the only one that had source code available.

DIdn't I mention that if you don't get connections please private message me your IP address so I can use -addnode to have mine reach out to you because I have no incoming ports? If you too have no incoming ports oops no go. But if you do have incoming ports yet others are not reaching out to you once they see you in the IRC channel, this method of having others add your IP using -addnode can work around that.

Once I make sure it works, I can build based on Bitcoin 0.6 code (master branch at github) to bring it nicely up to date.

-MarkM-

Thanks. Okay I set mine to chain ID zero too and left it overnight to catch up with the blockchain, looks like I am now in synch.

Have you tried the RUcoin that I added the merged-mining ability to? If not, might you be able to so? I would like to make sure it works and if not make whatever fises it might need. It is at https://sourceforge.net/projects/galacticmilieu/files/ in the RUCoin subdirectory.

-MarkM-

Well lets make sure it works first. I do not see any additional connections yet, how many connections do you have?

-MarkM-

What block are you up to? I tried different settings for the OurChainID, like the 6 that is a gap in the list of chains, and the 8 that other than outlier coiledcoin at 16 would be next on the list, but each time the blockchain became shorter, and changing it back to zero the blockchain still stayed shorter than the long I'd seen it.

-MarkM-

Yeah, thats because bitcoin's chain ID is zero and the default config file you get with GeistGeld doesn't set the OurChainID setting.

I am not sure its kosher to use the same ID as another chain, especially if both chains are going to be merged-mined together.

I'm not positive its not kosher either though.

-MarkM-

I grabbed it from github, but it does not seem to have set OurChainID anywhere. WHat ID are you using for it and how did you find out which one it is supposed to be using?

-MarkM-

I expect many would like to Know whether you Will Dare to (pretty please?) Be Silent.

-MarkM- (Grand Poohbah of the AntiBobulated ComBobuMat.)

I suspect though that there is also a non-zero chance that without being able to point at bitcoin itself and say "see, look, that right there is proof that this stuff works, even without our cool new features" there would be a non-zero chance that it wouldn't only be Trolls In TinFoil Hats who would say "I don't care how much you dress it up, the basic underlying concept just doesn't work, look at what happened to bitcoin fergoshsakes!" resulting in a non-zero chance that... something... that might not as great as being "the best thing since Bitcoin" and might be as bad as "another attempt to flog that same dead horse, lame duck SuperDuperCoin, proposes to speed up the life-cycle of all such un-backed funny-monies..."

-MarkM-

So far it just seems like spam.

What is it you want from the recipient?

Why is it them you are writing to and why is it you who is writing to them?

(Like, are you a customer of theirs? A prospective customer? A spammer who has some stake in selling bitcoins? Or what? Are you addressing them, or all the people on your CD of ten billion business' addresses? Etc.)

-MarkM-

Oh gosh, drama. So this is what Matthew has done for the bitcoin community eh? I wondered what some troll in the Speculation section meant by that.

I don't quite get the "Matthew is to Atlas as ___________ is to Satoshi" logic though. (I only read back a few pages so far.)

-MarkM-