[ANN] official NovaCoin thread - the original PoS+scrypt coin.

[Bitinvestor]

when should it stake?

Nobody knows, it depends on the size of the payment and on how lucky you are. Just give it some time, it will happen eventually (probably soon). 

[Bitinvestor]

It seems that merged mining for scrypt has arrived:

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=15666.0

That makes me want to build a rig and start PoW mining again!
I think Novacoin should implement merged mining as well because it would make us truly energy efficient.

[Balthazar]

It seems that merged mining for scrypt has arrived:

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=15666.0

That makes me want to build a rig and start PoW mining again!
I think Novacoin should implement merged mining as well because it would make us truly energy efficient.

You are right about energy efficiency but there are a some problems:

• AUX PoW is cost-free for a miner;
• There are a few big mining pools which will be able to introduce a centralization into PoW mining.

These things are serious problem because one or two big LTC pools will take a major part of PoW emission for free. I presume that we shouldn't introduce a possibility of this scenario, especially if the pool operator decides to keep mined coins for himself instead of distribution. Because it allows somebody to get a significant part of stake for free, which contradicts to the network security model.

[Bitinvestor]

AUX PoW is cost-free for a miner

Yes, and that means we could reduce the PoW reward from currently about 10NVC to maybe 1NVC or so. That would restrict the supply of new coins and help lift the price.

These things are serious problem because one or two big LTC pools will take a major part of PoW emission for free. I presume that we shouldn't introduce a possibility of this scenario, especially if the pool operator decides to keep mined coins for himself instead of distribution. Because it allows somebody to get a part of stake for free, which contradicts to the network security model.

If significant extra income can be achieved from merge-mining NVC then miners will naturally choose the pools that will pay it to them.

I believe that if this is done right it could give Novacoin a much needed boost.

[Balthazar]

Maybe you are right but it couldn't be added without an appropriate discussion... I've already thought about a separate AUX PoW block type with own difficulty and reward ~6-7 months ago but this proposal was rejected...

The main argument is that balanced (proof-of-stake + proof-of-work) system is self-sufficient while (proof-of-stake + auxiliar proof-of-work) doesn't provide a self-sufficiency because it depends on stability of auxiliar chain. So we have to keep a support for native proof-of-work along with auxiliar proof-of-work to keep self-sufficiency.

This solution sounds simple but it's impossible to implement a sustainable proof-of-stake + native & auxiliar proof-of-work system. It's impossible due to self-competition between native & auxiliar proof-of-work miners.

Why self-competition isn't a good thing? It's quite simple, just one example:

PoS -> PoS -> PoS -> PoW -> PoS -> PoS -> PoW -> PoS

vs.

PoS -> PoS -> PoS -> PoW -> PoS -> PoS -> AUX PoW -> PoS

vs.

PoS -> PoS -> PoS -> AUX PoW -> PoS -> PoS -> PoW -> PoS

vs.

PoS -> PoS -> PoS -> AUX PoW -> PoS -> PoS -> AUX PoW -> PoS

Which chain should be preferred? It's obvious that auxiliar proof-of-work difficulty will be higher than native proof-of-work difficulty, so the last chain will be selected. But this solution is flawed because it makes native proof-of-work blocks less secure in comparison with auxiliar proof-of-work blocks i.e. malicious auxiliar miner will be able to fork native blocks out of the main chain*.

There is no way to calculate correct trust for so heterogenious chain. We can calculate a trust score for proof-of-work and native/auxiliar proof-of-stake blocks, but we can't make a correct difference between native and auxiliar proof-of-work.

Of course, we can fix a trust of auxiliar proof-of-work blocks at 1 or use another value but it makes no sense. Because such blocks wouldn't be able to provide any security into the block chain and native proof-of-work miner will be able to fork auxiliar blocks out of the main chain (direct opposite for * scenario).

So, we can't implement a sustainable PoS + PoW + AUX PoW system with separate aux and native difficulties. We have to use equal difficulties or remove native PoW to make PoS + AUX PoW design reliable.

P.S. I guess that beta implementation of coin mixing protocol will be ready for testing in the near future.

[Bitinvestor]

The main argument is that balanced (proof-of-stake + proof-of-work) system is self-sufficient while (proof-of-stake + auxiliar proof-of-work) doesn't provide a self-sufficiency because it depends on stability of auxiliar chain. So we have to keep a support for native proof-of-work along with auxiliar proof-of-work to keep self-sufficiency.

I'm not convinced that we need to be self-sufficient. Look at the link I posted yesterday:

Basically here you mine one of the 5 main chain coins (LTC, DOGE, POT, CAT or DGC), and then get the other 4 (PTC, USC, ORG and HUC) for free, without loosing any performance. Furthermore, even if you are only mining LTC, you will get also DOGE, POT, CAT and DGC, just because the pool shares the ones that the others are mining with you. If you are mining at 1250Khash/s, it would look like this:

PesetaCoin: you are mining it at full speed, 1250Khash/s
UnitedScryptCoin: you are mining it at full speed, 1250Khash/s
OrgCoin: you are mining it at full speed, 1250Khash/s
HunterCoin: you are mining it at full speed, 1250Khash/s
LiteCoin: You are mining it at 250Khash/s (1250 / 5), even if the main coin you chose to main was other
DogeCoin: You are mining it at 250Khash/s (1250 / 5), even if the main coin you chose to main was other
CatCoin: You are mining it at 250Khash/s (1250 / 5), even if the main coin you chose to main was other
DigitalCoin: You are mining it at 250Khash/s (1250 / 5), even if the main coin you chose to main was other
PotCoin: You are mining it at 250Khash/s (1250 / 5), even if the main coin you chose to main was other

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=15666.0

I haven't tried this, but it looks to me like the merge-mined coins do not rely on any particular main chain. If somebody can take down all of those coins at the same time then they can take NVC down as well, self-sufficient or not.

Self-sufficiency is nice, I agree, but it is expensive. I would like to be self-sufficient in food but it would be a fulltime job to achieve that. I'll rather buy my food at the supermarket and accept the small risk of starvation when all the supermarkets are closed.

[Bitinvestor]

Merge-mined coins do not rely on any particular main chain, it's true:

The child coin needs to be programmed to work with a SPECIFIC PARENT.  In this case USC (child) merge mines with LTC (parent) because that is the way USC was programmed.

I don't believe this to be true. USC does not care if a parent block comes from LTC or a similar copycat (with ChainID != 1, the only coin with ChainID == 1, is USC, other coins wanting to merge mined, should choose another ChainID). The reason is: USC does not know the genesis block of LTC, so it can't know if a block belongs to LTC. If no-one steps up to experiment, I will try to generate a block against an LTC clone.

The git repository contains the branch merged-mining. This branch is LTC + merged mining (starting at block INT_MAX, ChainID == 0). It can be a starting point for other developers to adopt merged mining as secondary chain.

Hmm that is a good point.  I hadn't considered that but looking both at USC code and NMC code I believe you are right it was an incorrect assumption on my part.  Since all SHA-256 coins use Bitcoin as parent I assumed that was encoded but it looks like it was not.  Would be interesting way to gain hashpower from many chains.   Obviously LTC is the biggest bang for the buck (10% of LTC network is worth a lot more than anyone else) but it may it does mean the coin isn't limited to the success of the parent as it can switch to whatever parent(s) are viable at the current time.  Thanks you helped me learn something today.

Another interesting idea (and it would be a little more complex probably requiring two different difficulty values) would be to create a coin which can use either hashing algorithm and support merge mining against chains with either algorithm.

[Balthazar]

Of course, but it depends on infrastructure of parent chain, which is used currently. DDoS attack or hacking against the parent chain mining pools is able to harm merged chains too.

Proof-of-work is required to be costly, that's why it's used in our design. We need a costly proof-of-work at the bootstrap stages, but that's not necessary in the long-term and it won't be required when the network will mature enough. Over time and the growth of the network, the role of proof-of-work will decrease... And once day it will become negligibly small on the proof-of-stake background. That's why we shouldn't care about energy-inefficient component of our system.

EDIT: By the way, we are able to speed up the reaching of this point by increasing proof-of-work emission rate. I don't think that it's necessary but there is a proposal of proof-of-work target spacing change in order to simplify calculation of trust score and make confirmations faster.

P.S. Currently we are working on new block signing protocol approach, which is able to provide an additional security. This approach could be extended to handle proof-of-stake blocks as well as proof-of-work blocks.

[crypto777]

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[ryanb]

every time i check the debug window the block numbers are not matching and it seems like the wallet is out of sync

when i restart it, it downloads the remaining blocks it seems like the wallet is not keeping up with the blocks

[StakeHunter]

Good morning,

Looking at the charts on http://charts.novaco.in/ - Specifically the difficulty chart and the PoS difficulty...

It looks like PoS for NVC was "stable" prior to 5th of Feb, but now there is a major increase in difficulty. Was there a code change back then that could have made this change? Or is it simply more NVC adoption by the community?

[Balthazar]

It looks like PoS for NVC was "stable" prior to 5th of Feb, but now there is a major increase in difficulty. Was there a code change back then that could have made this change? Or is it simply more NVC adoption by the community?

Last actual protocol change was activated at 1 January 2014, nTimeWeight value limit was increased from 60 to 90 days. This could cause 30% jump of difficulty, but the current difficulty jump is much higher than 30%. So, I suppose that it's caused by growth of the miners community.

every time i check the debug window the block numbers are not matching and it seems like the wallet is out of sync

when i restart it, it downloads the remaining blocks it seems like the wallet is not keeping up with the blocks

What version of client you are using?

[ryanb]

It looks like PoS for NVC was "stable" prior to 5th of Feb, but now there is a major increase in difficulty. Was there a code change back then that could have made this change? Or is it simply more NVC adoption by the community?

Last actual protocol change was activated at 1 January 2014, nTimeWeight value limit was increased from 60 to 90 days. This could cause 30% jump of difficulty, but the current difficulty jump is much higher than 30%. So, I suppose that it's caused by growth of the miners community.

every time i check the debug window the block numbers are not matching and it seems like the wallet is out of sync

when i restart it, it downloads the remaining blocks it seems like the wallet is not keeping up with the blocks

What version of client you are using?

I am using 4.4.7 windows and it is past 50 days and still no stake

[StakeHunter]

What front end are you using for the block explorer on novaco.in?
Its pretty slick. I didn't know whether it was open source or not.

[Balthazar]

What front end are you using for the block explorer on novaco.in?
Its pretty slick. I didn't know whether it was open source or not.

Core and front-end were developed from a scratch by zloy and penek. This software is proprietary ATM, but it's a subject of future discussion.

[StakeHunter]

Thanks for the info.

[weichao]

What front end are you using for the block explorer on novaco.in?
Its pretty slick. I didn't know whether it was open source or not.

Core and front-end were developed from a scratch by zloy and penek. This software is proprietary ATM, but it's a subject of future discussion.

ATM is a far away from future, or maybe never have ATM

[Balthazar]

What front end are you using for the block explorer on novaco.in?
Its pretty slick. I didn't know whether it was open source or not.

Core and front-end were developed from a scratch by zloy and penek. This software is proprietary ATM, but it's a subject of future discussion.

ATM is a far away from future, or maybe never have ATM

Just asked the explorer core dev team member.

It's a beta version yet, so we can't publish it due to possible existence of critical bugs and security vulnerabilities. In addition, we haven't even begun to implement of some planned functionality.

P.S. Engine is written in pure C, front-end is PHP based.

[glendall]

It looks like PoS for NVC was "stable" prior to 5th of Feb, but now there is a major increase in difficulty. Was there a code change back then that could have made this change? Or is it simply more NVC adoption by the community?

Last actual protocol change was activated at 1 January 2014, nTimeWeight value limit was increased from 60 to 90 days. This could cause 30% jump of difficulty, but the current difficulty jump is much higher than 30%. So, I suppose that it's caused by growth of the miners community.

every time i check the debug window the block numbers are not matching and it seems like the wallet is out of sync

when i restart it, it downloads the remaining blocks it seems like the wallet is not keeping up with the blocks

What version of client you are using?

I am using 4.4.7 windows and it is past 50 days and still no stake

Wow 50 days.  Probably not a factor but I'm going to ask anyways: you don't have your wallet locked do you?

50 days seems really extreme, even for difficulty like it is now.  

As noted, the PoS difficulty really did a huge, 45 degree change in the last while. I think maybe 'the cat is out of the bag' about PoS whereas before not as many people knew how it worked. But maybe it's something else, hard to say.

[ryanb]

It looks like PoS for NVC was "stable" prior to 5th of Feb, but now there is a major increase in difficulty. Was there a code change back then that could have made this change? Or is it simply more NVC adoption by the community?

Last actual protocol change was activated at 1 January 2014, nTimeWeight value limit was increased from 60 to 90 days. This could cause 30% jump of difficulty, but the current difficulty jump is much higher than 30%. So, I suppose that it's caused by growth of the miners community.

every time i check the debug window the block numbers are not matching and it seems like the wallet is out of sync

when i restart it, it downloads the remaining blocks it seems like the wallet is not keeping up with the blocks

What version of client you are using?

I am using 4.4.7 windows and it is past 50 days and still no stake

Wow 50 days.  Probably not a factor but I'm going to ask anyways: you don't have your wallet locked do you?

50 days seems really extreme, even for difficulty like it is now.  

As noted, the PoS difficulty really did a huge, 45 degree change in the last while. I think maybe 'the cat is out of the bag' about PoS whereas before not as many people knew how it worked. But maybe it's something else, hard to say.

It is unlocked, how long should i get my POS?

i don't know something seems wrong and it generated the POS few days ago and it was orphan