Great support, dooglus, Graham, et.al.

Is there a Clams TechSupport FAQ or Wiki currently, where these kind of tips and techniques are collected?  I see similar types of questions recur.  It would be great to pull this expertise into a ready reference for new users and investors.  There is lots of expert info in the pages here, but not so easy to search.

My analysis of recent Clam market situation, does it sound about right, anyone have additional or alternate info:

A huge amount of Clam coins were forced on the market by margin calls at Poloniex, in a tiny amount of time, which sold thru all the buy orders.  Something like 300,000+ Clams sold in hours, that's a staggering 10% of the entire circulation,  over $3M in hours versus avg daily volume $20k-200k.  I think far beyond what any whale controls. 

Was not news or fact-driven event, not even a real market event by actual human trading, it was artificial, basically an accident, a glitch.

Because of the margin pool, after the initial trigger sale, it went into an automatic feedback loop: price drop triggers margin calls to sell, which drops the quote price more, which triggers more margin calls, etc.  Many of the investors didn't even intend to sell, it was automatic.  And some or even most of them had profits, and are obviously Clam traders, holders and enthusiasts, so they might well be buying back in now,  except their accounts are frozen while Poloniex sorts it all out.  The margin calls likely extended to other coins in the overall pool, which probably had related effects, resulting in the overall 1800 btc margin lossage figure (i.e. that figure seems way more than can be just from Clams)

So it will take a while to sort out. Right now the trading is very light, people who need to sell or  aftershocks, everyone obviously very nervous and wondering wth happened.

It seems this unfortunate "glitch", was triggered by either a naive whale (who would have profited a lot more by sensibly managing their position), or more likely imo, professional manipulators, who intentionally played the margin exposure and algorithms. It's a heckuva glitch, but I think Clams will recover; whether in days or months, who knows.

*

The reality is, there was no negative news or event, Clam coin functions extremely well, fast and reliable, with ongoing development and many features builtin and service sites offering free anonymous wallets, escrow, games, etc, and is an excellent basic money coin.  Plus the Eco-sensible stake mining, that invites and rewards anyone to support the network, participate in mining without a huge power/computing cost.

Seems to me we just saw several months of steady organic growth, reflecting growing awareness and exciting developments like at FreeBitcoins for example, the Swap feature effectively adding more Anon/Privacy options, and easy convenient access for people who don't want to bother with exchange trading.  (really great contribution BAC, Xploited)  I can see that enthusiasm coming back quickly, once the hysteria dissipates.

The good news is, if the trigger was a whale, that's one less killer whale now,  and if manipulators,  at least Poloniex has turned off the margin, so it will be much harder to repeat.

What we need to do with Poloniex, is identify if their slow dep/withdrawals are from some technical issue in the Clams wallet.  Perhaps there is a problem when the wallet has many thousands of accounts, or fractional amounts.  If we can identify what problem they are having, if any, developers can fix it in the software.   Or if they are operator errors, let's give them workarounds, best practice instructions to coalesce their wallets, optimize the efficiency.  Is there an FAQ, tech support document somewhere?

I imagine Just-Dice, FreeBitcoins, various gaming sites, have wallets on a scale approaching Poloniex.  And you guys might well be way ahead of them technically and operationally, and can reach out to help.  They just need your support, and should be considered ally of the community, not adversary.  I think Poloniex have done all cryptocoin investors a great service in early identifying Clams as a strong offering in the cryptocoin market, and long-term supporting it. 

Clams is an excellent coin -- technically, features, fair distribution and grassroots community -- and all you hard-working devs, site operators and miners have well-placed dedication.  I hope we should see continued organic growth, and it's easily worth the recent price highs, and beyond. 

Let's stop the rumor mill. Why would Poloniex delist the excellent Clam coin?   Sounds ridiculous.  It's a great coin, solid features, support and community, generates significant volume for them, and they are the primary trading site, making a tidy profit.

It appears there may be confusion in regards their notice at
  https://medium.com/circle-trader/overview-of-btc-margin-lending-pool-losses-a2f0905aaa56

where they will stop **margin** trading, for a while, on Clams, Factom, BTS, MAID, out of market depth considerations.

That has nothing to do with Clams trading in general and overall listing status.

It fact, it's a great move, they should never have allowed in the first place.  The margin pool on Clams was a terrible vulnerability, and is exactly a fault cause of the recent price drop, and possibly the prior one too.  It's very good for Clams that Poloniex remove exposure to the margin pool.

The emphasis on network security is definitely vital.  But in regards Mining Rewards, let's not forget the substantial fact that IFC was to be a transaction-fee supported coin, zero inflation.  Like eventually Bitcoin and others, except IFC is encountering all the challenges first.

A key problem is, a minimum transaction fee was not enforced in the software, and the miners don't currently have enough political/economic power to force it.
Consequently, many exchanges and users are chintzing on the fee, like setting it to 1 ifc.

Meanwhile, some exchanges are charging huge fees for withdrawals, like 1%,  with this money going straight into their own pockets, never making it back to the miners.  Then they want to turn around and complain the network isn't secure enough, not their fault, etc.

If a good chunk of those 1% fees was going to mining rewards, that would substantially improve the mining incentive! 


So, in addition to tech upgrades to the coin, or rebasing to newer code  (which should also be explored if community has the resources),  a couple other approaches that can be applied immediately with no risk are:

1) Education, pressure, beseech exchanges (and users) to set their mining transaction payout fees higher.

2) A software upgrade to more strongly suggest (and/or enforce) a higher transaction fee.  This could be done without affecting the protocol.    (It would still be possible for a determined user to set low fees by re-compiling with their own source code edits, but hardly anyone would do that.)


As part of these efforts, it would be useful to analyze/graph the transaction quantities and fees, and publish reports about totals per day, by payer, etc.   Especially, if one could tie transactions back to specific exchanges, and chart/document their fee payouts, that could be a strong factor to help shame/motivate them into paying a reasonable mining reward.

We could also use donation/faucet funds to reward good exchanges and high-volume user wallets.  Like with a "Rebate" to wallets that are paying out highest % fees, per week.   

The general idea is:  Rather than just use community funds to directly pay miners (which is essentially subsidizing the exchanges),  use those funds to incentivize  users/exchanges to produce more transactions and better fee payouts -- which in turn supports the miners, and network security.

Excellent work and generous contribution. Thanks on behalf of everybody.

Are we changing back to BBR as the official ticker then?  What about XBB like it was on Bittrex?  I recall reading Bittrex charged an outrageous 1.5 btc just to change the ticker, so let's make we sure get the right best one upfront.

I like both tickers, just wondering. My understanding is the X has some official meaning, like 'denotes a non-national affiliation or a monetary metal such as gold or silver'. And XBB has a robust solid look.

The fee is not 83%,  rather it's based on how complex the transaction.  If you had a lot of 'dust' inputs (small amounts), it's a lot of work/complexity to collect them all into your target amount, so the fee gets multiplied.  I think even 2 years ago the block reward was small enough, that it would take dozens or hundreds of inputs to make 10001.

Note that transaction amounts like 101 or even 10001 are relatively microscopic in IFC.  It's like sending BTC 0.000001 amounts or smaller, which has similar problems. 

The default fee base, before multiplying, was set to 100 IFC,  and you can send millions for that very low fee,  if you have large inputs (ie. you mined or received large amounts).  It's quite reasonable actually.

You should also be able to override the default base fee in the UI,
or by setting in the .conf   file
  paytxfee=<amount>
or at cmdline via
  infinitecoind settxfee <amount>

I believe all these settings refer to the base unit (before multiplying for complexity), not the total fee.  So if the default 100 that multiplied to 8300 is too high for your txn,  can set it to another amount, say 10 or 5.  (which should multiply to 830 or 415)

Bear in mind, a core issue for this coin was that people have been chiseling the fee via those settings,  even setting it down to 1, which is ridiculous and counter-productive.   (I believe even some of the exchanges are doing this!)  Then folks wonder why the coin looks dead and losing miner interest.   

As the *first txn-supported coin*, IFC InfiniteCoin has been facing in advance issues that will  eventually also affect the others like btc, ltc, etc   

So for now, try to work within the economic scale of IFC,  moving Thousands to Millions, for fees of just a couple 100, which is actually fairly cheap.  When the price/marketcap merits, those relative numbers can be re-addressed.

So, anyone whose wallet is full of 'dust' amounts that need consolidation, just set the fee to a smaller amount (temporarily!), to assemble a big transaction to some exchange, then withdraw your amounts as larger lump sums in future.   

(And try to keep your base fee at default 100, to support the IFC miners)


ps. If anyone doesn't want their IFC coins, or wants to tip for this info, I'll accept.  I put a lot of work into supporting this coin, and lost a big chunk at Cryptsy.

IFC: iNTDpSKXVNN7i48P9HNdSxQaghjUrXBC6Q
BTC: 13xN2MvG9RcvWY92HeMpMFgBbGq9RLW64z

Good work, MikeMike!

By the way, developers, note in the above screenshot another bug, I had seen it too.

BUG: In the Settings-KnownPeers list, sometimes the list gets repeated into 2 successive series.  For example, note in the screenshot above, there are really only 8 unique IPs.  They are listed, then listed again. 


(please crowetic and/or devs, pick up these bug reports from here into your tracking system)

Good testing links and port info.  I tunneled 9084 TCP to the server, but no change so far.  Seeing the same 4 Qora nodes.

Also I've seen mention of two other applicable ports:
123 UDP  for the NTP time server  (I tunneled that one too)
9085 TCP for RPC commands   (do *not* put that on public, presumably)

In settings.json I have:
        "maxconnections":100,
        "minconnections":10,


If anybody is getting more than those 4 node connections, or is seeing equal Heights, in the Debug-Peers,  please let us know.

Yes, mine the same, all "initiator=you".

So maybe those are the only 4 nodes accepting incoming, and everyone else has it blocked.

So how do we configure to allow incoming?   Settings flag... Open router ports? 

which port(s) did you open on router/firewall?
(it apparently wasn't the correct/enough ones yet though, since you didn't get incoming conxns either, but it's somewhere to start.  I don't recall there being a specified need to open ports for this coin.)

I think it's a network issue not db, maybe directly relating the fork/sync problems we've been seeing.  However I swapped in that db snapshot just for good measure.  Same exact 4 nodes.

Is there anyone with more or different nodes showing? 
Anyone have the Heights all matching, instead of varying like here?
(look in the gui under Menu-File-Debug-Peers)

Interesting,  our Peer lists match, but we're not seeing each other, and probably noone else is either.  Yes, I get lots of others showing up and immediately dropping off too, just like that.

Why is it not connecting to more?

Do we need to open a router port, or other configuration steps... ?
Maybe there are speed/latency assumptions in the code?
I'm on DSL, and then wifi,  in case that's relevant.

It seems many nodes that might have been trying to forge/sustain the network for a long time, were maybe not really connected, just like this.   (that would explain a good bit)

They/we need an external Block Explorer, because the built-in one is self-referential (it shows what the node itself is doing).  It's helpful for quick reference, but if a forging node (like Poloniex) starts spinning away on it's own fork, their own block explorer can't show that.  They need the external one to check if their blocks are getting out to the network.


I checked out the one at burstkore, looks good, nice work!

Running the wallet in forging mode several days. 
There are only ever 4 lasting connections (other ones show up transiently for a few seconds and go away). 
For example  (from  File-Debug-Peers)


The number after the IP above is "height".    The heights are all widely different!!  And they generally stay different, all counting up or jumping ahead to catch each other, but never in unison.  I've *never* seen them all the same height!

Why, what's going on?   Is this right, or just a debug display issue?  It seems worrisome, and maybe indicates why there are syncing/forking problems.   If all of these nodes were actively forging, seems they'd all be chaining up different blocks.

Also, why only 4 peers?  I thought there were more other nodes active by now?   Anyone have active node IPs not shown in that list?

Settings parameter   "weballowed"  is the list of IPs that can connect, and empty list apparently means all.  You can set that by editing settings.json,  or via the File-Settings dialog.    However, there appears to be a bug:

BUG:  File-Settings dialog is overwriting/truncating the settings.json file when you click Apply.  It's only writing some of the settings, (maybe just the changed ones, or just the ones on that tab?),  and ignoring the rest.  And it overwrites the file in place,  so you see the cruft from the prior settings still there, but they're past the closing bracket so won't be read.   Observed on Wallet 0.26,  Linux

EDIT:  Also, it seems wrong that empty list on a parameter called "weballowed" means everyone allowed.  Empty should mean none allowed.  Should be something like "*" or "*.*.*.*", or a broadcast/mask address to mean everyone allowed.

Keep a backup of your settings.json
Here is a standard one:

The moderators can speak for themselves if they have a concern, which is unlikely.

It's not a giveaway, per se.  It's trying to solve a compelling urgent problem, in the only way possible.   

In case you weren't following along:   A huge percent of the Qora coins have been locked in Poloniex exchange for several months.  They disabled dep/wd,  so noone can get their coins out.  They say the network wasn't stable enough because not enough wallets forging.  But the wallets can't forge *because they have no coins*  !   We can't add new users, because noone can get any coins from the main exchange!

This is the only way to solve the problem, untangle the knot.

The so-called "giveaway" amounts are relatively small, and for people pledging to actually do work (ie. get the wallet installed, synced and forging, which is not very easy at the moment).

That said, crowetic, we probably do need a smallish cap on the number of added forging wallets here, to avoid a giant string of 'me too' posts  (which is really the only point of that restriction).   And maybe use another word like 'bounty'.

I was trying this for a while, but catch-22: how do we get coins to forge with, if withdrawals are disabled, and network flaky (it took me a couple weeks to get synchronized the first time, because it *starts over* if it doesn't get to the top of chain.  Just be patient and let it run.  And maybe turn off your other coins for a while).

I hear the network sync issues have been addressed in latest code?  (at least make it not start over) Might be better to roll out a version easier to sync, as a first step in this effort.

Is the forging proportional  to the number of coins you have?  Poloniex is holding 2.5B...  so are we going to make a dent?

Donations welcome, and I'll try to keep it online 24/7:

Qora:  QNSGh4gjYnpkoFwwLQDyXJxf9gkCnusJCH

Hello, I noticed your posting about Bittrex planning to drop IFC InfiniteCoin !?? That tells us rather a lot about your so-called “exchange”, and I will be sure to keep my balances in numerous coins far away from your unprofessional operation.

We don't need johnny-lately “exchanges” parasitically feeding on all the work that has gone before, and hurting established *ground-breaking* coins, because they're not “producing enough return for you”. The question is, what are *you* providing to the market, coin owners and investors. We are not here to maximize your profits! You, and every exchange, should be here to support the people, coins, communities you claim to be serving. And ignorantly dropping quality coins in your greedy tail-chasing after the next big popularity wave, is not it.

I can't speak for the others, but fyi, IFC InfiniteCoin is an Excellent coin -- *uniquely* the first fully transaction-fee supported coin, and one of the fairest, if not *the* fairest and widely distributed coin in circulation, and has strong technical features, developer support and community. (see infinitecointalk.org) Your transaction volumes may be low at the moment, firstly because much of the IFC community has never even heard of you, and also because the price has been decreased by malicious selling from a “whale”, and it will take a while for the situation to stabilize. As an exchange, you should be actively supporting and promoting the coin, not attacking it.

If Bittrex is not in this for the long haul, and willing+able to actively support the coins you are trading, then please seriously close your “exchange” now. You are not doing anyone any favors, and the greedy self-serving approach makes you look ridiculous and unprofessional.

SUMMARY:

IFC InfiniteCoin = UNIQUE FIRST purely txn-fee supported cryptocoin, fairest distribution, no pre-mine, no insta-mine, widely distributed, strong tech features, developers and community, IN.

Bittrex, engage and connect with the IFC community, and maybe you'd get some volume.  You should be out there trying to promote and build quality coins like IFC, not just feed on them!

Right now, everyone can see Bittrex as ignorant, short-timer greedy profiteers, and I think you will find your “market strategy” to be incredibly short-sighted and foolish.

(note: I'm not affiliated with IFC, just an independent observer familiar with that quality coin)

From what I can see, IFC is now alive and running fine. The current block is: 251454

With v1.7 I am able to pick up the old blockchain, sync to current and solo mine, and I did *not* need to mass download any blockchains, nor even any special addnodes. (It found everything by itself). This is not a fork that monocolor plucked out of nowhere -- rather he found it on the network, probably from a solo miner(s) that turned on his wallet at the right time and managed to route around the stall, by computing enough blocks while they were synchronizing, to get ahead of it. This reflects a “working as designed” p2p recovery from the situation.

Note that if you had the wallet active right up to the stall, it's probably a good idea to delete the old block database and re-download (note: KEEP your wallet.dat and .conf files!). (and I mean download via the standard wallet sync-ing, not that file from mega.nz)

This pool is on the active chain:
http://coin-base.net/infinitecoin/

These pools are on the broken series:
http://infinite.netcoin.pl/
https://ifc.epools.org/
http://ifc.scryptmining.com/
Also remember that the block explorers, coin chooser sites, etc showing the old series may not even be upgraded to the v1.7 software yet.

The old stalled/bad block (246953/4) has little chance of proceeding because the diff is ultra-high and still climbing, and noone is mining at those stalled pools now anyways.

It seems probable that some big pools/miners/exchange sites, including Cryptsy were caught out by the rapid flurry of releases and did not upgrade fast enough to v1.7, which contributed to the forks.

If a few blocks got orphaned around 246953 (perhaps a total 5?), that's fairly inconsequential. From what I understand, for anyone who had txns inside those orphaned blocks, the txns will either be in the new blocks, or if they never registered then the coins will be back in your wallet. (might have to rescan/reindex wallet). The coins don't just disappear!

Also note: trades happening inside Cryptsy (with coins already there) are purely on those internal accounts, and don't affect the blockchain. I would recommend holding off any transfers to/from your exchange until confirmed they are on the active chain. (you can also send a small test amount first).

The new difficulty algorithm from PPCoin, active since block 248000, looks good and is oscillating up and down nicely so far, and climbing up.  Any coin is going to have problems with mass surge-waves of hashing - an easy, perfect solution to that is not known. Fisheater has done a commendable job of responding quickly, and the PPC algorithm should be a robust improvement.

I'm not sure more checkpoints will help right now, and it could induce yet another fork point if miners fail to upgrade in time. Depends on how strongly the community wants such a confidence booster from you, fisheater.

So Lollaskates,

The lost coin tally from your pool now stands at least 58230 EXC - which is 4.2% of the coin mint to date that you've single-handedly vaporized. (and 1.16% of the total scheduled amount of 5M). And the real amount is surely more because not all the miners are following this thread or bothered with a claim.

The reasons you've given not to pay out the miners are self-serving, nonsense. You say:

1) it was their fault for not setting autopay. -- A classic blame the victim. It's a good idea to check your bank statements, too, but that doesn't mean the bank can empty your account if you don't.

2) the amount is just too trivial for your excellency to bother with. -- On the one hand you scoff it's hardly worth anything. And yet you're curiously unwilling to lay out that minor expense, which would make a good name for yourself, plus help the coin and community.


There are guys here out 3 solid weeks of mining, including newbies excited to *finally* get a piece of something, and you can't spend a couple hours and “1.1 BTC” (by your own (lowball) estimate) to make good on it -- and you're sleeping okay??   What's your day job, slipping plaster into the gruel down at the orphanage? 

(Note: actual cost would be 2.4 to 6 BTC, at current exchange prices ranging 0.00004 to 0.0001 for this qty).

The miners just want some or all of their coins. You the operator should make good on them.
Just pick up my tally list, collect the user addresses, and payout. Then you get a thumbs up and 3 cheers.
How hard is that?

If you can't be bothered with the bookkeeping - then just obtain a lump sum on the exchange, 58230 EXC or BTC-equivalent, and send to CaptChadd, me, or some other nominee, and we will undertake to divide it up fairly.

I've made this darn easy for you to Do The Right Thing.

What do you say?