First of all:
Congrats to the launch!Wow, this thread literally exploded. I have just finished reading 15 pages.
Some thoughts about the too-many-blocks-in-the-first~20 hours ...
Best way to prevent "instamine" of many coins on launch is (or was - in SOIL's case
to implement dynamic block reward: you start small, say 0.3 XXXcoin per block, and then increase it, steady and smooth, up to target (8 per block, for soil). That process could take several hours or several days, that's up to devs and/or community. BUT - that good thought came late
VERY good idea.
I had the same idea when I read what might have been happening here:
By now, tons of smaller miners, and seemingly even two three megaminers,
have succeeded in configuring their GPUs to ETHmining. And hopped onto soil,
and made it fly through the first blocks.
Just as a reality reminder -
This is even only a
small GPU farm of Sapphire cards:
or look at this
100 GPU video.
Now as increasingly many mining rigs are configured to the new algorithm,
the next ETH-clone coinstart will likely have an even worse situation.
i did research in the weeks approaching launch, if we could find a single IP governor to cap hashrates coming in, but sadly, theres no such thing invented yet.
That is an interesting idea. Any coding miners around, who would want to start that project? To protect the small guys' mining?
Actually as soon as that extra-layer is in place, there will be a workaround, and the first megaminers will decompose their rig towers into many IP addresses. But IP addresses cost real money, so there is a limit to that.
A second line of defense would be to limit mining per hour/day by coinbase addresses - but then each GPU tower will simply get a unique address, which are regularly aggregated. Still, if I were building that code, I would consider that, too.
There might be a third way to go against the big guys, that someone could come up with. Build many obstacles. And all will be trampled down, because:
Essentially, the base of the problem is a property of capitalism itself - the system deteriorates when the superrich appear, the biggest and most powerful are raping, and breaking the system for everyone else. Capitalism IS a one way street. And long-term-successful capitalism is an evil trap, for us 99%
(*). Money falls to the top. And mining will be ruled by huge mining farms. I see no way out, but leaving PoW behind. Why, small guy, are you still mining?
(*) And that is only the social aspect, and not even mentioning the
unspeakable ecological disaster, and the perpetual war that capitalism is causing. Still, this software "governor" how you call it, could be an idea that might work for a while, to protect decentralisation. Hey talented coder, here is a niche!
About coinstarts:
If the incentive for mining right from the start is lowered, it could smooth out the stampede of "me me me" miners who are hoping for an initially low difficulty, and high rewards. But that
initially low difficulty is seemingly a thing of the past, anyways! If I were still mining, I would probably miss out on such coinstarts, because too many people are trying the same thing at the same time - and that creates a huge difficulty.
And only the really big farms might have an edge then.
Here is the hope, and why it makes sense to learn configuring your handful of GPUs for SOIL: With every exponential explosion comes a sudden collapse, so I guess the difficulty might be decreasing now, or soon. Perhaps the best time for mining SOIL has not even started yet?
Don't mine too-high-difficulty coins, simple as that.
The second issue is the block times.
I guess everyone is surprised about how sluggish the difficulty adjustment reacted. And that is unfortunately something that simply could not have fully predicted on testnet, because it was sparsely mined. Sometimes there was not even 1 miner (see my surprised posts here:
116 and
119 and
122). A sudden rape with that many kilomegagigahashpersecond ... could not be tried out on testnet.
Still, whatever is in place to adjust current difficulty to recent hashrate ... is not reacting properly. Perhaps some deep research about how all the bitcoin clone coinstarts had solved the same question in the end, and porting the best solution to ETH, and improve it even more ... might help the ETHclone world in the future?
A crucial moment will be when the megaminers are switching away. How fast will the difficulty adjustment react to that?
This is insane:
... difficulty: 363G
What is
your hashrate? Why, small guy, are you still mining? ;-)
EDIT: (shameless-promo-plug 
) If you decide to switch to trading, I have built a not unuseful tool: AltFolio.
Ethereum and its forks have been really fun and rediculously profitable if you play your cards right. From what i made in just the first few hours of the EXP launch, after a few sales, i made 2x in btc than i make in a work day lol so yeah, didnt want to miss this one
THAT is the incentive that created this stampede.
But for each ETHclone start, such stories will get less, for sure.
we were hit with a massive mining farm (or three) almost immediately upon launch. it was halfway expected to happen, but nowhere near that much.
Will be an interesting side project, to study the difficulty evolution during this beginning.
"fair launch" isnt about how fast the network hashes, its about ensuring everyone has plenty of foreknowledge regarding WHEN the launch is, with ample communication regarding when the main net packages would be released, which to prevent malicious mining before our scheduled launch, were naturally released approximately 15 minutes before actual launch. there was no way to prevent how we were mined by third parties at the moment of launch
SIC!
the system is much ore stable now, block times are much closer to their targeted time, and the variant gravity well difficulty algorithm is operating as it should.
If that is the case, then: Good. And: What a relief. The coin is still quite fast, but much slower than last night. I suggest considering those first ~60 kSOIL of the first ~8000 blocks ... to be an unplanned subsidy to the mining world in general, be it big or small miners. And an ample warning for future ETHclones. Unplanned things can happen. (Look at the alert at the top of this forum, even Bitcoin ...). This whole distributed unbanking ecosphere is in evolution, anyways.
... and getting over it, because not only mining will decide about the future of this platform.
And also celebrate for a moment, because a new coin is alive:
Congrats to the launch!... ive been called out for a search and rescue operation here in cape breton, which is something that does take priority, when someones life could be on the line. some hunter who didnt come home last night..
I hope you are finding him! Real life does have priority over magic internet money
EDIT: If you like this, show it: 0x8da4fc05ca343e6a41646194e91931d9f413a40c Thanks.
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