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Any ideas if the mining scripts will run on a mac?
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I agree with dree12.
Can anyone explain how merged mining would NOT drop the price down to 0?
* just opinion and speculation* This would essentially make SC and BTC nearly identical at least to an uneducated consumer as this breaks one of the nicer to see features ie. the difficulty algorithm ... from then on it would be a race for adoption (SC's speed enhancement to transactions gives it a plus here and BTC's current level of adoption gives it a plus here) and once the whole "green address" concept takes off it could hurt SC's speed effect but likely both would add the support but SC probably more natively... since that would then be mostly negated it's a race for pure fiat value. At the moment (But changes tomorrow with Ruxum) to get SC you have to go through BTC but once they are both trading directly to fiat it will be the one that is more ideal to investors/speculators currently with no major mishaps SC is favorable here, but BTC already has a head start and with a few million less total coins SC has a slight value advantage, but this is negated somewhat because SC users have learned from the BTC mishaps that caused thousands if not more coins to be lost or those really early people who were just "playing" with BTC and have just left dead wallets so that advantage may be somewhat negated as well. Merged mining between these currencies will likely result in a "battle royale" where one will eventually come out on top plummeting the other to nothingness... SC has the advantages of lessons learned, BTC has the advantages of head start so it could be interesting ... on the flip side if one or the other does not participate in merged mining that one would cease to exist rapidly because I can't see a case where miners wouldn't participate in merged mining to maximize profits among the several cryptocurrencies. You forget that BTC has also learned the lessons. It's not just SC having the advantage of lessons learned. You also are not taking into account the networking effect. All current bitcoin users/investors/merchants have incentives to make bitcoin successful and not adopt another currency. It would be really hard for SC to overcome this network effect. Hard but not impossible. As an example of this networking effect, Google Plus will have a hard time overtaking Facebook. But Facebook has overtaken MySpace because it was drastically better. So if SC is drastically better than BTC, then yes it has a shot. But right now, SC is only marginally better than BTC, if you don't put any value in the new attack that's possible with the new targeting algorithm. |
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No I get you you're just overstating the impact here.
If someone did start messing with timestamps/speed/etc it would be detectable. It's not like a ninja attack in the night. It's the same with any >51% attack, they are very visible and you need to take advantage of them quickly before people realize. In both instances confidence in the network will be shattered.
So this is all in theory, but it's good to think about it to help keep these coins secure. If you have >51% of the network, and want to perform the solidcoin attack I mentioned. You can work in secret and keep all your blocks to yourself and only announce them after you've successfully completed the attack. So no one would know that an attack is taking place until you release your longest blockchain and wipe out the other chain. After that, people will see that their confirmations got totally wiped out and their transactions reversed. And they will see that someone performed a 51% attack and mucked with the timestamps/speed/etc. Yes, confidence will take a big hit afterwards. I'm guessing on the order of magnitude as the mtgox hack or the mybitcoin theft. But I'm thinking it won't kill solidcoin similar to how mtgox/mybitcoin did not kill bitcoin. Let say this attack happened when there are 7 million solidcoins, and each solidcoin is worth $10, and this guy minted 150,000 coins. These numbers are equivalent to current number of bitcoins and mybitcoin theft. So what do you do then to save solidcoin? Only about 2% inflation, and no one really lost their coins. So this guy made $1.5 million. Do you: A) rewrite the blockchain to start at before the hack took place and try to kickstart the economy at that point? B) accept that there was this hack and fix the algorithm to prevent the hack in the future? If you do (A), that might totally kill solidcoin b/c how can one trust it anymore if you can just rewrite history. So you will probably do (B) and this guys comes away with $1.5 million. |
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So I take that back about bitcoin not being dead with a 51% attack. With 51% and malicious, you can hurt bitcoin, and the whole bitcoin economy. You can effectively kill the bitcoin economy by not accepting any transactions into your blocks and not accepting blocks found by other miners. But you still cannot "write the chain pretty much however you like." You cannot spend money that doesn't belong to you. And you cannot earn more coins than you would otherwise. It's actually irrelevant about not being able to spend others coins, because you can continue to spend your own, you simply give the vendor the amount of confs they want, then take the chain back to a point in time before the TX and rewrite history. Because no one is going to beat your length there is nothing they can do about your rewritten history. The higher over 50% you are the quicker you can repeat this process. ie MtGox would be cleaned out or would be forced to shutdown, freezing the entire economy. Bitcoin dies. On the other hand with solidcoins, you can benefit yourself and not kill off solidcoin by performing a 51% attack. Sure the solidcoin economy will take a hit (mtgox/mybitcoin level hit), but it will likely recover. And the attacker would have created hundreds of thousands of solidcoins for himself during that attack and no one could do anything about it.
Yes you could manipulate the speed of the network to increase coins. But it's kinda irrelevant when you can just spend whatever you want over and over again. Either way there is utter chaos and doesn't end well for the chain. In both instances the malicious team have to work fast to get wealth out of the system before it is noticed, so in both instances it will be very obvious something is happening. It is why I don't understand why people support pools like SCguild or deepbit when they are too powerful for their respective networks. SCGuild at least will be moved down soon as other large pools join but it's just as likely deepbit will do the same to SC as it is now to BTC. I don't think you got my point. Let me lay it out for you. Bitcoins: 51% attack => Make some money from cheating mtgox => Keep doing it and MtGox can't function and stops withdrawal and bitcoin dies. You can't make a lot of money, so no monetary incentive to do 51% attack. Solidcoins: 51% attack => Mint a lot of solidcoins for yourself => Stop doing it and solidcoin recovers. => Convert those coins you minted for Bitcoin/USD. You can make a lot of money, so there is monetary incentive for 51% attack. |
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At 51%, bitcoin will not be dead. They can just do some double spending and maybe reverse some transactions. They can create near infinite amount of coins. But solidcoin would be dead, because they can create near infinite amount of coins for themselves.
A little education doesn't go astray  . At 51% you are guaranteed to be able to always produce the longest chain and hence you can not just "do a few double spends" you can write the chain pretty much however you like. So yes, bitcoin would be dead because that "group" would effectively devalue the entirely currency as they plundered it. Mtgox would be bankrupt in a few hours/days. No business could any longer trust transactions unless there were massive amounts of confirmations, likely reaching days (even then they are still vulnerable). >51% and malicious = death. Bitcoin isn't designed to protect against it, and one of the only known ways is centralization. So I take that back about bitcoin not being dead with a 51% attack. With 51% and malicious, you can hurt bitcoin, and the whole bitcoin economy. You can effectively kill the bitcoin economy by not accepting any transactions into your blocks and not accepting blocks found by other miners. But you still cannot "write the chain pretty much however you like." You cannot spend money that doesn't belong to you. And you cannot earn more coins than you would otherwise. So your only incentive to gain 51% of the network hash is if you wanted to kill bitcoin, because you cannot benefit from it. So bitcoin's argument against someone doing a 51% attack is that they would benefit more to work with bitcoins (and earn 51% of the found coins) as oppose to against it. Unless of course, the government wants to shut down bitcoin and performs a 51% attack to kill it. But that's another story altogether. On the other hand with solidcoins, you can benefit yourself and not kill off solidcoin by performing a 51% attack. Sure the solidcoin economy will take a hit (mtgox/mybitcoin level hit), but it will likely recover. And the attacker would have created hundreds of thousands of solidcoins for himself during that attack and no one could do anything about it. |
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I talked to ArtForz on IRC and he explained this 51% attack to me. This attack is only possible with this retargeting algorithm introduced in SolidCoin. So it doesn't affect Bitcoin. The gist of it is that you fork the block chain and keep finding blocks on your own without reporting them. You fake the timestamps to make it seem like it took 4 times as long to find blocks. After this period of 240 blocks, the difficulty will be reduced to 25% of what it was. Since the difficulty can only climb by 11% each time, you can do 13 fast periods before the difficulty is back to where it was. Then you introduce this blockchain to the rest of the network. Since you were hashing at >51%, your block chain will be the longest and will be accepted by everyone. ArtForz calculated that you can make ~3.5 times the number of coins that would normally get. The effect can also be compounded. So if you do 2 slow periods and reduce the difficulty by %25^2 (or 6.25%), you can make about 3.5^2 (~12.25) times more coins.
While 51% attacks are not likely, they are still a possibility. Especially when the reward can be so huge. If you just do 4 slow periods, you get 150 times the normal output.
Well he is right that it introduces some more "fun" you can have with a chain at 51%, the point is if you're at 51% it's not healthy regardless whether you're on SC or BTC. At 51% and having a malicious attacker both chains are dead. Discussing the new ways you could die is kinda irrelevant. Do you understand what I'm saying? At 51%, bitcoin will not be dead. They can just do some double spending and maybe reverse some transactions. They can create near infinite amount of coins. But solidcoin would be dead, because they can create near infinite amount of coins for themselves. |
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You should give a small discount for paying by bitcoins. Basically transfer the paypal savings to the buyer. Plus there's no chance of chargeback. So it's win-win. What do you think?
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raise by a maximum of 10% every 12 hours
So that's wrong too? There's no 12 hour calculation in the difficulty adjustment period at all? It's simply every 240 blocks exactly, no matter how fast or slow those blocks were found? Exactly. So it could possibly takes months for the difficulty to retarget. But since SolidCoin is set to retarget every 12 hours ideally, it won't be as bad as what we are seeing with namecoin. I0coin tried to fix that by introducing retargeting every X blocks or every 2 weeks (whichever is faster). But there was a coding bug that caused the whole network to crash when the 2 weeks came up. |
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They don't even have to turn off mining 1. Pull a mining cartel attack and fork the chain when another miner finds a block. 2. Start fucking with block timestamps. 3.  . 4. Near-infinite number of blocks! Similar things are possible with BTC so not sure of the relevance to only SC? Things need to be done to ensure network balance, both SC and BTC are powerless in that regard. Howeer like I said SCGuild is concerned with such things and I'm sure he would realize he would face consequences if he attacked peoples investments. Other pools, who knows, there has been open talk from people like LukeJR (elegius owner) to run malicious attacks on IXCoin. So obviously this kind of behaviour isn't unheard of when it comes to pools. I talked to ArtForz on IRC and he explained this 51% attack to me. This attack is only possible with this retargeting algorithm introduced in SolidCoin. So it doesn't affect Bitcoin. The gist of it is that you fork the block chain and keep finding blocks on your own without reporting them. You fake the timestamps to make it seem like it took 4 times as long to find blocks. After this period of 240 blocks, the difficulty will be reduced to 25% of what it was. Since the difficulty can only climb by 11% each time, you can do 13 fast periods before the difficulty is back to where it was. Then you introduce this blockchain to the rest of the network. Since you were hashing at >51%, your block chain will be the longest and will be accepted by everyone. ArtForz calculated that you can make ~3.5 times the number of coins that would normally get. The effect can also be compounded. So if you do 2 slow periods and reduce the difficulty by %25^2 (or 6.25%), you can make about 3.5^2 (~12.25) times more coins. While 51% attacks are not likely, they are still a possibility. Especially when the reward can be so huge. If you just do 4 slow periods, you get 150 times the normal output. |
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Let's assume we lose almost all the rest of the miners. What's the longest time that can pass until the next difficulty adjustment? We can't really have a discussion unless you give actual numbers. The longest time it can take is infinite, with 0 miners. Don't know if that really answers your question or not. I'm sorry if "almost all" means 0 to you. Let me try some easier questions for you. The FAQ states: it can lower difficulty 400% in 12 hours
First, what does 400% lower difficulty mean given a current difficulty of 18,246? Why hasn't the difficulty lowered in the last 13+ hours? I'm not sure why CoinHunter keeps on using this 400% number. It makes absolute no sense. You can't lower a number by 400%. If you lower by 100%, you get 0. Lowering by 400% gives you -54,738?!? I think what he's trying to say is that it can lower at most 75%. Also the 12 hours is an estimate. The actual time depends on how long it takes to find 240 blocks. At the ideal rate of a block every 3 minutes, you will find 240 blocks in 12 hours. But if you lose 90% of your miners, it could take 5 days. And when the difficulty adjusts after 5 days, it will only reduce by 75% max and not 90%. So, CoinHunter, please fix the text on your website. |
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Yeah, unit tests, test suites, ... who needs that shit for a network handling $M of transactions daily? Just focus on adding features to the GUI! *facepalm*
If you had ever looked at the ugly state the Bitcoin code is in (and the inherent issues in it) you wouldn't be thinking it's fit enough to run millions of dollars worth of transactions a day. It's like someone turned in a highschool assignment and everyone else went "well that works" and off they went. I mean, which "designer" decided to start dumping GUI and other settings in wallet.dat ? Do they know there is a .conf file for this? Where is at least some attempt at backing up wallet.dat's which are worth tens of thousands? Is it really the mantra that if the power goes off and your wallet.dat was being written to that it's your fault for not running some sort of sophisticated backup system for it? Is it that hard to always have a backup file there (a single copy command) ? These type of things are standard for bulletproof applications that customers have to use, anyone with experience in the industry would see it in a second. This is only the tip of the iceberg. I have to laugh at the trolls who can't program and don't understand how awful the situation is for BTC at the moment. Satoshi had some great ideas, but he wasn't a good programmer, and since he left barely anything has been done with the code. The client has stagnated, badly and nearly no one wants to touch it. So keep the false worship up and let's see how deep people like you can keep digging the Bitcoin hole. What these Bitcoin Kool Aid drinkers will not admit is that, as soon as MTGox, TH or another exchange start changing SC to USD, it's game over for Bitcoin in it's present state. Bitcoin only dominates in the fact it can be changed into USD. The end is coming and I am laughing my ass off that the few that hold the majority of BTC will screwed. Just because you can exchange USD for SC, bitcoins will die? What kind of SC koolaid have you been drinking? lol Well, in a few days Ruxum will start a USD/SC exchange. Let's see what you mean by "game over for Bitcoin", ok? |
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Do you plan to implement on demand payout soon? It has been more than a few weeks. :p
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That's great to hear! Now it just run off my laptop. |
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Oh, and if you want to talk, then defend your reasoning for your changes. So far (AFAIK) you have just been claiming SolidCoins is so much better than Bitcoins without any real evidence.
Why 32 coins instead of 50? Just to be different or is there a valid reason that 32 is better?
Why 2%, 6%, and 10%? Like someone suggested, you could have made a constant change to cap the difficulty increase at 10%. That would have accomplished nearly the same thing as your complicated change, which could potentially introduce bugs or security holes. What's the point of 2% and 6%, other than inflating the number of coins faster than it should? Does increasing difficulty by only 2% and 6% really do anything material? Have you run simulations to see what it does? Or is just because you felt like it was the right thing.
Why 3 minutes target for blocks? Have you done network analysis to show that 3 minutes is the optimal time? Or did you just choose it because it felt right and 10 minutes felt too long? Have you analyzed how susceptible 3 minute blocks are to blockchain forking or double spend attacks?
If you really want others to believe in the SolidCoin hype, these are the questions you need to answer.
Still waiting for an answer... Saying that you did not do the analysis and the simulation is a perfectly ok answer. People need to know if these decisions were made with solid (pun intended) data or was it just a stab in the dark. And for those that claim that satoshi's 10 mins was also a stab in the dark... you are probably right. But satoshi released bitcoin with nothing like it at all. So he had nothing else to copy and make better. There's now 2 years of bitcoin network data that you can study. If CoinHunter did study the bitcoin network and figured that these numbers were optimal, then props to him. If not, then how is solidcoin much better than the other pump and dump coins like ixcoins and i0coins. |
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Oh, and if you want to talk, then defend your reasoning for your changes. So far (AFAIK) you have just been claiming SolidCoins is so much better than Bitcoins without any real evidence.
Why 32 coins instead of 50? Just to be different or is there a valid reason that 32 is better?
Why 2%, 6%, and 10%? Like someone suggested, you could have made a constant change to cap the difficulty increase at 10%. That would have accomplished nearly the same thing as your complicated change, which could potentially introduce bugs or security holes. What's the point of 2% and 6%, other than inflating the number of coins faster than it should? Does increasing difficulty by only 2% and 6% really do anything material? Have you run simulations to see what it does? Or is just because you felt like it was the right thing.
Why 3 minutes target for blocks? Have you done network analysis to show that 3 minutes is the optimal time? Or did you just choose it because it felt right and 10 minutes felt too long? Have you analyzed how susceptible 3 minute blocks are to blockchain forking or double spend attacks?
If you really want others to believe in the SolidCoin hype, these are the questions you need to answer.
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CoinHunter, honestly, I think SolidCoin has potential to be a decent alternative currency. Much more than the joke that was Ixcoin and I0coin. But, please don't try to sound like you are so great and the bitcoin developers all suck. And claim that your SolidCoin will kill off Bitcoin in a few weeks because it's so much better.
Could SolidCoin eventually catch up to and replace Bitcoin as the dominant crypto-currency. I guess... it's possible though I don't think likely. But in order for that to happen, you need to work hard on making SolidCoin much better than it currently is. Currently, SolidCoin fixes a few things that are crucial for a secondary currency. But those problems don't currently exist with bitcoins. It's true that maybe 10% of the bitcoin miners were mining these alternative currencies the past few weeks, and thanks to that the difficulty has decreased twice. But once it has started to become unprofitable compared to Bitcoins, miners will just go back to Bitcoins. Mining SolidCoins will not stay more profitable than mining Bitcoins forever even with your new difficulty retargeting algorithm. And thinking that SolidCoins will be so successful that all of a sudden, 50% of the Bitcoin miners will jump ship is just delusion of grandeur.
So, my advice is to give less rhetoric and do more. Go and actually add real improvements to the SolidCoin codebase and let the software do the talking.
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Oh, and I'm afraid bitcoins might be worthless in a few weeks, so I moved all my BTC back to USD. Did I forgot to mention that they are in my MtGox account still stored as BTC?  |
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At a price of 0.035 BTC/SC, you would have gotten 23,800 SC. It's so nice of you to give away 13,300 SC to others! And that's my most conservative estimate.
CoinHunter, the ball is in your court. Either make the claim that you have indeed given >13k SC to others, OR admit that you were not truthful about your actual SC holdings, OR admit that you exaggerated when you said you invested $10k in SolidCoins.
Lol, keep going this is funny. What about the btc in the exchange? What does that add up to you think? Keep the guesses coming! Yeah, it is funny. I'd assume you have 0 BTC from this quote: I've moved all my BTC and USD into SolidCoins (not that much anyhow, only about $10,000) simply because I'm unsure about Bitcoin's future and don't want to be left with worthless coins in a few weeks
You probably have a different definition "all." Are you not worried that bitcoins might be worthless in a few weeks? lol! Actually, FIFY: I've moved all my BTC and USD into SolidCoins Bitparking exchange.
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Oh, I forgot. You also said you lost some through trading. You will only lose SC if you buy high and sell low. What? You don't believe in your own coin? When the market price drops in half, you panic and sell them just like other speculators? What a joke.
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Haha doesn't add up? Jeez. I bought most of my SC at a relatively high price (0.03ish) after transferring from gox, I have donated quite a lot, I have also lost some through trading. Like I said, I don't value BTC anymore and I'm pretty much doing whatever I want with them. I also didn't say how much BTC I have in the exchange either. Oooo it's such a mystery, better get your detective hats on and find out the "truth". Haha. Kids are funny.
Fine. I will bite. I've moved all my BTC and USD into SolidCoins (not that much anyhow, only about $10,000) simply because I'm unsure about Bitcoin's future and don't want to be left with worthless coins in a few weeks.
Let's say your estimate of $10,000 is when BTC was worth the most in the past 2 weeks ($12). That's 833 BTC. I didn't take my money out of Mtgox until after speaking with them (around .035 price). I have about 10500 in holdings currently.
At a price of 0.035 BTC/SC, you would have gotten 23,800 SC. It's so nice of you to give away 13,300 SC to others! And that's my most conservative estimate. CoinHunter, the ball is in your court. Either make the claim that you have indeed given >13k SC to others, OR admit that you were not truthful about your actual SC holdings, OR admit that you exaggerated when you said you invested $10k in SolidCoins. |
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