You can buy madcoin here : https://wallet.crypto-bridge.org/market/BRIDGE.MDC_BRIDGE.BTC

The price was very low this morning (2K), but it just went up 2.8K.

I bought one node.

Since Dash moved to a sentinel based gouvernance system, our master nodes have yet a new way to fail. Before we had "NEW_START_REQUIRED" from time to time, but now we have to deal with "WATCHDOG_EXPIRED".

This does not affect only Dash, it also affect any currency based on Dash 12.1+. E.G: vivo, sucr, etc.

For some coins, I see everyday a third of the MN that are not getting rewards because it decided to go "WATCHDOG_EXPIRED", EVEN WITH A WELL CONFIGURED RUNNING SENTINEL.

I've been trying to find the source of the problem. I don't understand fully the sentinel yet, but I discovered a bug in it a few days ago (https://github.com/dashpay/sentinel/pull/32). However, the solution I suggested has been rejected by the dev team. Indeed, they are working on a more general solution (https://github.com/dashpay/sentinel/pull/34) that they will probably publish on the next release.

But while waiting for the "clean" fix, our master nodes are still missing payouts, so I tried to implement it anyway, see if it would work.

I tried it on my nodes, then on some friends, then published it on the vivo discord channel. So far, I see a massive improvement of my node availability and I've got good feedback from the other users.

So I forked sentinel and added my patch to it, and you can find it here: https://github.com/Tetricoins/sentinel/tree/watchdogfix

(You can see the changes here: https://github.com/Tetricoins/sentinel/commit/48fbf36433a4a81e452db032ea9e88be985861c7)

If you look at the commit, you'll see it's a very small change, most of the sentinel works the same.

You are free to use it, and report back here to let me know if it helped you.

This is NOT a permanent solution. Once the Dash team release their own fix, you should switch to their version. I don't think I have the time and resource to maintain a fork for months and months and keep it in sync.

But for now, it's good enough.

How to use it ?
===============

I assume you already have a sentinel working and that you know how to install a one. If you don't, don't ask for help here. It's not a tutorial.

You can just clone my sentinel fork next to the official one realdy on your server. It doesn't matter which coin your are using, sentinels all work the same for all the coins.

Once you have cloned my fork, switch to the watchdogfix branch.

Then you can remove the cron with your old sentinel, and replace it with the new one. It's exactly the same command to use, except YOU NEED TO USE AN ENVIRONEMENT VARIABLE TO DECLARE THE PATH TO YOUR sentinel.conf.

E.G:

* * * * * SENTINEL_CONFIG=/path/to/sentinel.conf && /path/to/virtualenv/bin/python /path/to/bin/sentinel.py 2>&1 >> sentinel-cron.log

With my setup, I this for vivo:

* * * * * cd /home/coins/.vivocore/sentinel; SENTINEL_CONFIG=.vivocore/sentinel/sentinel.conf && ./venv/bin/python bin/sentinel.py 2>&1 >> sentinel-cron.log


So basically, move to the sentinel directory, point to the sentinel configuration file with the SENTINEL_CONFIG variable and run the sentinel from the virtualenv.

It's also very important that the configuration file of your master node (the one you mention in sentinel.conf) is named after your coin. If you use vivo, it must be named "vivo.conf", if you use sucr, it's "sucr.conf", etc.

How to know if it works
========================

Wait a day, and see if you node gets into "WATCHDOG_EXPIRED". That's pretty much it.

If it doesn't suit you, you can always go back to the previous sentinel version.

If you want to learn what's going on, you can activate the sentinel debug mode by setting the SENTINEL_DEBUG to 1 and running the sentinel manually (not in a cron).

E.G:

SENTINEL_CONFIG=.vivocore/sentinel/sentinel.conf SENTINEL_DEBUG=1 && ./venv/bin/python bin/sentinel.py

You'll notice that the sentinel is trying to vote, but that there is a timer for that. If the timer is not up, the sentinel won't do anything.

You can force the sentinel to ignore the timer and vote anyway with the -b option:

E.G:

SENTINEL_CONFIG=.vivocore/sentinel/sentinel.conf && ./venv/bin/python bin/sentinel.py -b

Combined with SENTINEL_DEBUG, it's an nice way of trying to understand what's going on. Careful though, don't use -b too much since it can get you banned.

Those are very general things.

Saying "I don't want this problem" is interesting, but has limited effect on solving the problem.

Indeed, how to achieve "price is stable" and "more advanced technology than any coin right now" ?

It's like saying "I want peace in the world and the end of hunger".

For the post to be interesting, it's better to point out solutions working eslewhere about specific issues.

I'll add "specific" in the OP for this.

I've been giving a lot of thinking about the altcoins recently. Because there is so much money in it, most projects copy / paste an existing one, change variables, names and logos and post on bitcointalk, hoping to moon and pocket the pre-mined coins.

But we have now way more experience with alternative technologies. We have smart contract, pricate send, master nodes, sentinel, asic resistance, etc. We also know what makes a team we trust, and what make community help each others.

So, if you could cherry pick any stuff from any existing coin, what would the perfect coin look to you, give what we know right now ?

Your answer must be:

- realistic. It must be something that can be done right now, not something on a white paper somewhere or out of your dream last night?
- technical. "it must make me a lot of money" or anything like is not interesting. We all want that.
- specific. "It must be fast" or "widely accepted" doesn't help. What specific thing we currently know in other coins would achieve that ?

E.G: "the coin must not use proof of work" or "

You can think outside the box as well and request things about the team (eg: must post at least everyday here) or the garanties (eg: there must be a prepaid hosting for running nodes for the next 10 years to garanty it exists) or the stability (hard forks are mandatory every 5 years) or the marketing (eg: no premining or ICO at all).

@ice552 : some people complained there was no discord. I'll delete the new one.

Good that you did that.

I also created a discord channel to help each other: https://discord.gg/PZrhcG

It's a small coin. It works super well :

- the wallet works
- the mn is easy to setup
- the transaction are easy and instant on coinsmarket

We don't need a lot of dev to make it go the distance. We only to take care of it on the long run. In this game, going far is better than going fast.

Also: I made some binaries for the wallet and MN on Ubuntu 16.04. Anybdoy want them ? Let me know where I can upload them.