Goldcoin Invention Promises to ‘Hose Off’ Strip Mining Crypto Pirates

[MicroGuy]

Altcoin strip mining is a new ASIC attack whereby mining pirates unleash their beastly rigs upon profitable altcoins and then skim off their booty until the coin’s difficulty peaks. Then the profit-crazed hashers move on to the next coin, leaving their latest victim dead in the water, floating adrift with a limping blockchain.

Goldcoin’s (GLD) lead developer, Amir Eslampanah, decided he’d had enough of these antics so he created a new difficulty algorithm coined, “Golden River.” This newly invented code promises to rapidly adjust to incoming hashrate fluctuations and to hose off reckless crypto miners looking to flip a quick dime.

Golden River looks to be even bigger and better than his 2013 innovation which solved the unsolvable 51% attack. Not only will the difficulty now rapidly adjust to hashrate changes, but it will also ease future network congestion.

Recently, Akumaburn explained in his daily update thread:

The downward spikes are a very interesting property. These groups of low difficulty can help ease network congestion and remove the current block size issue bitcoin is facing. And the sinusoidal gain, even with vast difficulty changes, manages to match the hash power curve.

The previous difficulty algorithm performed a difficulty calculation every 60 blocks. Golden River will perform a difficulty change on each block. This will level the playing field for all miners, regardless of their mining equipment, and also protect the blockchain’s progression by making it immune to abusing scavengers.

During a recent conversation with AltcoinPress, Eslampanah stated that Goldcoin is 100% committed to the open source spirit and furthering the principles of decentralization. The Goldcoin (GLD) community hopes to build the strongest foundation possible as the world inches inevitably closer to global adoption.

Full Story: http://altcoinpress.com/2015/07/goldcoin-invention-promises-to-give-altcoin-strip-miners-the-hose/

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[Hazard]

Goldcoin’s (GLD) lead developer, Amir Eslampanah, decided he’d had enough of these antics so he created a new difficulty algorithm coined, “Golden River.” This newly invented code promises to rapidly adjust to incoming hashrate fluctuations and to hose off reckless crypto miners looking to flip a quick dime.

Is it similar to a golden shower? Come on, you could have done so much better with that name...

But in all seriousness, what does this do that KGW, KGW, DS, etc does not do?

[MicroGuy]

Goldcoin’s (GLD) lead developer, Amir Eslampanah, decided he’d had enough of these antics so he created a new difficulty algorithm coined, “Golden River.” This newly invented code promises to rapidly adjust to incoming hashrate fluctuations and to hose off reckless crypto miners looking to flip a quick dime.

Is it similar to a golden shower? Come on, you could have done so much better with that name...

But in all seriousness, what does this do that KGW, KGW, DS, etc does not do?

Thank you for your comments and questions. The community was also thinking about 24K and Gold Rush. If we get enough feedback to warrant a change, I guess we could always rebrand the algorithm. The golden shower connection never crossed any of our minds.

I have posed your question to the developer in his Q&A thread: https://www.gldtalk.org/index.php?topic=3157.msg14178#msg14178

[MicroGuy]

Goldcoin’s (GLD) lead developer, Amir Eslampanah, decided he’d had enough of these antics so he created a new difficulty algorithm coined, “Golden River.” This newly invented code promises to rapidly adjust to incoming hashrate fluctuations and to hose off reckless crypto miners looking to flip a quick dime.

Is it similar to a golden shower? Come on, you could have done so much better with that name...

But in all seriousness, what does this do that KGW, KGW, DS, etc does not do?

Hi Hazard,

Here is Akumaburn's reply posted a few minutes ago in the official Q&A thread.

Hello Greg,

DGW/KGW and their variants use something akin to a weighted moving average to determine the difficulty.. Whereas Golden River uses median and average times in accordance with various pre-defined clauses in step cases to provide near-best case movement without a pre-determined curve.

The result is that while KGW and their variants are prettier to look at in their implementation, Golden River vastly outperforms them in cases where the difficulty needs to drop quickly. With Golden River the network difficulty can fall ~42% in a single block and still be accurate, in terms of the targeted block times, to the network hash rate. KGW and their variants perform something similar in function(they take much longer).. but they are vulnerable to certain types of attacks(namely time warp attacks). Furthermore those algorithms typically over-adjust upwards leading to network slow down, whereas Golden River is on the spot with these changes..

The calculation with Golden River uses the median of the last 60 blocks and the average of the last 120 blocks for its final value. It is extremely robust as a method, and in fringe cases where the network is under attack KGW may slow down for ~20 blocks, but Golden River will only slow down for a 1-3 blocks, before returning to normal block time value calculation. The type of attack GoldCoin was facing earlier(90% hash-power difficulty increasing attack) would be solved in a day with KGW at work.. with Golden River, It'd be solved in a few hours at most. With KGW at work, the network block solving times would be consistently 1000% or more above target while the attack was going on.. with Golden River the block times would be on the mark for more than 80% of the time while the attack was going on with only occasional slow downs that compare to normal KGW at work..

Furthermore what is outstanding about Golden River is that the difficulty can still rise as fast as it used to with the previous algorithm.. There is no tangible benefit for anyone to flip their hash power on and off with GoldCoin because of our 51% defense.. but the latest attack was not profit motivated.. Rather the miners sought to cause us trouble whenever they could at their own expense. Initially our 51% defense warded off the multi-pools.. but these particular miners seem to be here to effectively DDOS the network difficulty algorithm.. but Golden River will stop them in their tracks. No other coin can claim to have 90% of their hash power flipped on and off like this and still survive.. and after Golden River.. even such a drastic change which even the "best" alt-coins out there cannot handle.. will be an easy task for GoldCoin.

We are truly building the Gold Standard of Crypto-currency here Greg.. we may take our time, but we build the best. I hope this answers your viewer's question.

Source: https://www.gldtalk.org/index.php?topic=3157.msg14182#msg14182

[Hazard]

If someone was to throw a large amount of power at you for 200 blocks or so, how are you getting over that in 1-3 blocks if you're using the past 60/120 blocks for the calculations?

[MicroGuy]

If someone was to throw a large amount of power at you for 200 blocks or so, how are you getting over that in 1-3 blocks if you're using the past 60/120 blocks for the calculations?

Rather than relaying questions back and forth to our developer, I would ask that you post your questions directly here:

https://www.gldtalk.org/index.php?topic=3157.0

[MicroGuy]

The new Golden River difficulty algorithm will kick in at block 251230, in approximately 20 minutes!

http://gld.cryptocoinexplorer.com/