[BTC-TC] Virtual Community Exchange [CLOSED]

[burnside]

Hi all, sorry about all the excitement. 

Two things going on here.

The first is that as you guessed, the bitcoind has been causing some pretty crazy slowdowns.  Simple getBalance requests are taking forever.  You can tell what pages hit bitcoind vs what pages are cached by how long they take to load.  I'm pretty sure I can shore this up with the upcoming bitcoind 0.8.1 upgrade.  (which will be a several hour long outage, most likely tomorrow night.)

The second, and more immediate issue tonight was that the bitcoind crashed.  I'm not sure if it was load related or what, but it crashed while I was commuting.  Perfect timing.    If it was load related, then the 0.8.1 upgrade should also help out with that.

Cheers.

I suggest moving to a separate system for balances and such instead of relying on bitcoind. You can just take the bitcoin transaction processing part offline (people can still deposit 'n' withdraw) while you work on bitcoind.

Sure, it's going to take some work to overhaul your current system, but maybe it's worth it?

I've definitely been thinking about this.  It would allow another layer of abstraction away from the *coind's, which is definitely good.

I really thought going into it that it'd be best to use the *coind's because it seemed like they were built with a feature set intended to run a site like this.  I'll do the 0.8.1 update and see if things change much at all.  If they don't then we'll make a new plan and do a transition to doing everything balance related in SQL.

[ThickAsThieves]

Hi all, sorry about all the excitement. 

Two things going on here.

The first is that as you guessed, the bitcoind has been causing some pretty crazy slowdowns.  Simple getBalance requests are taking forever.  You can tell what pages hit bitcoind vs what pages are cached by how long they take to load.  I'm pretty sure I can shore this up with the upcoming bitcoind 0.8.1 upgrade.  (which will be a several hour long outage, most likely tomorrow night.)

The second, and more immediate issue tonight was that the bitcoind crashed.  I'm not sure if it was load related or what, but it crashed while I was commuting.  Perfect timing.    If it was load related, then the 0.8.1 upgrade should also help out with that.

Cheers.

I suggest moving to a separate system for balances and such instead of relying on bitcoind. You can just take the bitcoin transaction processing part offline (people can still deposit 'n' withdraw) while you work on bitcoind.

Sure, it's going to take some work to overhaul your current system, but maybe it's worth it?

I've definitely been thinking about this.  It would allow another layer of abstraction away from the *coind's, which is definitely good.

I really thought going into it that it'd be best to use the *coind's because it seemed like they were built with a feature set intended to run a site like this.  I'll do the 0.8.1 update and see if things change much at all.  If they don't then we'll make a new plan and do a transition to doing everything balance related in SQL.

It seems to me that the 0.8.1 update would be a band-aid at best, assuming you think your site will continue to grow and grow

[solstoce]

Any ETA on how long trades are gonna be down for? I guess its a good thing no big announcement of this was coming we might have got GOXed

[burnside]

Any ETA on how long trades are gonna be down for? I guess its a good thing no big announcement of this was coming we might have got GOXed

It's back.    Upgrade complete.

Cheers.

[boomerlu]

Burnside - I suggest two sided options quotes. Might get into the options market making game here in due time... two sided would be very natural for this, and having MM would improve options liquidity.

[FatMagic]

Burnside,
Deposited funds to my BTC-TC account this morning, and it instantly showed up as confirming (within 30 seconds) - but it's been at 0/3 confirmations for about 3-4 hours. Is that normal? Just curious. Thanks.

[burnside]

Burnside,
Deposited funds to my BTC-TC account this morning, and it instantly showed up as confirming (within 30 seconds) - but it's been at 0/3 confirmations for about 3-4 hours. Is that normal? Just curious. Thanks.

I've seen transactions outside BTC-TC take 8 hours before their first confirmation before.  I think there are a bunch of factors that play into it.  One is if there are any other transactions this transaction depends on that got hung up.  (no fee set so noone wants to mine it)  Another is if this transaction itself is zero fee or low fee.  The miners these days just don't like the zero fee transactions.

I've been wondering if BTCT.CO should be setting a fee on every withdrawal for similar reasons.

Cheers.

[ThickAsThieves]

I can tell you that Weex doesn't include fees and it's very rare that it causes an issue. However, when I send my own, I ALWAYS include fees. Time is money.

[gramma]

Hrm.  Went to check my little portfolio:

---

Error:

Xcoind backend failure in getbalance at 77

[burnside]

Hrm.  Went to check my little portfolio:

---

Error:

Xcoind backend failure in getbalance at 77

I was just about to make a post. 

That was my fault, got overly aggressive with a firewall rule.  It should be good now.

[gramma]

That was my fault, got overly aggressive with a firewall rule.  It should be good now.

And so it is.  Many thanks for getting on top of it, especially in the middle of the workday.

Blame me and all my microshares.   

I <3 you and your microshares.  Gives me a feasible place to re-invest little dividends.

[burnside]

I can tell you that Weex doesn't include fees and it's very rare that it causes an issue. However, when I send my own, I ALWAYS include fees. Time is money.

Yeah, maybe better to just allow the sender to set the fee if they want it.

This has logistical issues because of how bitcoind does the settxfee in the interface, but I think I can work around it.

[inh]

I'm working with the oauth API right now, and it seems it doesn't support 'oob' for situations when you don't have a callback url available. If you could implement this, I'd be really grateful. All it needs to do is if there is no callback url, or the callback url is 'oob', just display a page with the token and verification information in it so the user can copy and paste it where they need it to go.

[btharper]

I can tell you that Weex doesn't include fees and it's very rare that it causes an issue. However, when I send my own, I ALWAYS include fees. Time is money.

Yeah, maybe better to just allow the sender to set the fee if they want it.

This has logistical issues because of how bitcoind does the settxfee in the interface, but I think I can work around it.

If/while you're giving the withdrawal code some love, would it be possible to request a way around the account reservation (to withdrawal all funds). I'd be perfectly happy adding an option to delay tx for a while and piggyback off a larger tx or something else to reduce overall/my fees.

[burnside]

I can tell you that Weex doesn't include fees and it's very rare that it causes an issue. However, when I send my own, I ALWAYS include fees. Time is money.

Yeah, maybe better to just allow the sender to set the fee if they want it.

This has logistical issues because of how bitcoind does the settxfee in the interface, but I think I can work around it.

If/while you're giving the withdrawal code some love, would it be possible to request a way around the account reservation (to withdrawal all funds). I'd be perfectly happy adding an option to delay tx for a while and piggyback off a larger tx or something else to reduce overall/my fees.

I'd love to get around the reservation somehow.  Unfortunately it'd take a bitcoind rpc call allowing you to plug everything in, and have it spit back what the tx fee would be.  (maybe it has this and I've somehow missed it?)  Which is why prominent sites like btc-e have a flat 0.01 BTC withdrawal fee.  I suspect that our 0.0025 BTC reserve at 1/4 of that is reasonable, especially since we only take out of it what bitcoind takes, not a full 0.01 on every withdrawal.

I definitely plan on playing with other options when time permits.  Bitcoind is a pretty bad performance bottleneck for us right now.

Cheers.

[Krellan]

Great exchange, but I made a rookie mistake.  I got my PIN locked.  Reason is, I got confused as to whether or not certain PIN fields require the chosen PIN when creating the account at btct.co (4 digit PIN) vs. using the PIN number obtained from Google Authenticator (6 digit PIN).  Evidently I filled in the wrong PIN once too many times.

Now every transaction attempt gives me "Repeated Incorrect PIN -- PIN Transactions Temporarily Locked."

How long is this lockout for?

Thanks!

[burnside]

Great exchange, but I made a rookie mistake.  I got my PIN locked.  Reason is, I got confused as to whether or not certain PIN fields require the chosen PIN when creating the account at btct.co (4 digit PIN) vs. using the PIN number obtained from Google Authenticator (6 digit PIN).  Evidently I filled in the wrong PIN once too many times.

Now every transaction attempt gives me "Repeated Incorrect PIN -- PIN Transactions Temporarily Locked."

How long is this lockout for?

Thanks!

Hey hey!  It works. 

I believe the lockout is ~15 mins.

Cheers.

[Krellan]

Hey hey!  It works. 

I believe the lockout is ~15 mins.

Cheers.

Nice, glad I could test that feature for you!

I (nervously) waited around, and good news, it reopened again, right about that time.  Now I can buy my share and go to bed

[bitcoinmike]

Hi All,

What occurs when I "Recall" one of my "Open Written CALL Options" that have been purchased by someone?

Thanks,
bitcoinmike

[burnside]

Hi All,

What occurs when I "Recall" one of my "Open Written CALL Options" that have been purchased by someone?

Thanks,
bitcoinmike

The recall will only cancel written options that have not sold yet.  I wasn't sure what to call it... maybe there's a better word for it?  Or maybe I should just add some hover text.

Cheers.