Avalon ASIC Batch #2 Income Sharing; arrived and hashing

[ProfMac]

I have decided to announce that a portion of the auction will end.  Conveniently, my birthday is Friday, May 10, and I have chosen a block with a pleasing number that may fall on that day as the closing block for the auction.

I should be clear on how a portion of an auction ends.  The highest 3 winning bids will become permanent winners, and that portion of the auction is closed.

To be considered, your bid must be included in or before block 235,532.  If you find that time is short, you may pray a higher mining fee for any last minute transactions.

Is this still valid? And if so, are the top three bids up to block 235,532 as follows?:

1   14Zqn3i1iDJzmkFCRjVqDe4YqgkrrmyEYd   1.23359794 BTC
2   1Fu4JaynbQrtkSPN73uoDqEPAxyzVfsqLu   1.2141 BTC
3   1cCXNG5mNFkErBWtCLaVLA9fZrGAzFCB1   1.211 BTC

And many happy returns on your birthday ProfMac!

I agree that these are the top 3 bids.

I have some PHP code that harvests all the payments where 17DCms43Vu2yusDjmpjHJuZihSSWkNzgSH is one of the outputs.  This means that I can tell how much has been paid to a given address.

Gmaxwell, a developer, says that it is not possible to find how much an address has paid out using the JSON interface on bitcoind, since it isn't necessary.  This means that I don't know how much has been refunded.  I can get the transaction if change was paid to the address, but not otherwise.  I really want to know that before I start refunding money.

I have found an additional API on blockchain.info that has all this information.  However, it has an output limit of the last 50 transactions.

Here are the amounts that are received.  Again, if I made a refund that included change to the 17DCms43Vu2yusDjmpjHJuZihSSWkNzgSH address, it is incorporated in the table below.  The developers seem to want anonymous transactions so much that they actively discourage any audit trail like I am trying to generate.

Anyway, I am still working on the complete package, that will give correct net balances.

Code:

count	address	received
2	14Zqn3i1iDJzmkFCRjVqDe4YqgkrrmyEYd	1.23359794
3	1Fu4JaynbQrtkSPN73uoDqEPAxyzVfsqLu	1.21410000
7	1cCXNG5mNFkErBWtCLaVLA9fZrGAzFCB1	1.21100000
5	18qDhkReMuFfciHshdpQhr3QhXZp82aWon	1.21000000
3	1Gor6F9rMXUhbKGT9iYRKpa4U4tW94Ycq8	1.20000000
5	1LktD4cXPmcJ75Sd2WgRs69rBZqNQd5L4P	1.18000001
4	1CwLwBgR16urEkcL5Su3LkzA7RYYqyjHy4	1.18000000
3	1NFtyTwefVtHXbxCPVZBG9H6SrujTxk4G6	1.17000000
1	12peTunkkUp88aRaUgndRBzPNSrEw3PDu7	1.17000000
2	1JzMp55NW22xjEE4QKUhN5iAmKyFnJSUDg	1.16950000
6	18jpEzLGFYeT4nACAUs5zrY2cDSwBXWVAt	1.16698120
1	1G17oxGNchntdDFQ1kCVHrRHxFHaDkhJ1S	1.16500000
1	1H8sdeiWCCkEQdHozeATnTu6tgDbYFBPQF	1.16500000
3	1EkWkthDoxCXTyxRYVjtnmq13e8SbQNbs2	1.15000000
3	1PnAWB2opLVyGFUmaCeyjdFZ3w88PgPbmb	1.10000000

[ProfMac]

I have decided to announce that a portion of the auction will end.  Conveniently, my birthday is Friday, May 10, and I have chosen a block with a pleasing number that may fall on that day as the closing block for the auction.

I should be clear on how a portion of an auction ends.  The highest 3 winning bids will become permanent winners, and that portion of the auction is closed.

To be considered, your bid must be included in or before block 235,532.  If you find that time is short, you may pray a higher mining fee for any last minute transactions.

Is this still valid? And if so, are the top three bids up to block 235,532 as follows?:

1   14Zqn3i1iDJzmkFCRjVqDe4YqgkrrmyEYd   1.23359794 BTC
2   1Fu4JaynbQrtkSPN73uoDqEPAxyzVfsqLu   1.2141 BTC
3   1cCXNG5mNFkErBWtCLaVLA9fZrGAzFCB1   1.211 BTC

And many happy returns on your birthday ProfMac!

I continue to receive feedback that it is important to end the auction.  I keep thinking the bidding will become active again when the units are being shipped, but I will make the following announcement.

SECOND PARTIAL END TO AUCTION
This announces another partial end for the auction.  Remember that the three bids above are permanent winners.  The highest remaining bid will be declared a permanent winner on or near this coming Friday, May 24.

The bidding will remain open with the possibility of extension until block number 237600.
If a bid is included in a block after 237590 and that address becomes the high bid and the auction is open, 10 is added to that block number to give the extended closing block.  That is, the auction is extended while bidding is active.
(The back end programmer, me, hates this complexity.)

The '1 hour' extension may keep some people up in the middle of the night.  That is not my intent.  I am completely comfortable making the extension for 25, 50, 100, 240, or another number of blocks.  Please feel free to ask for an alternate extension time. 

[dchou]

I think it's a fairly brilliant idea using the blockchain for auction purposes.

Can you explain the "partial auction" concept? I think it would be confusing for people who are just now seeing your auction to understand from the blockchain that the first 3 bids have already been won. 

Why not end the entire auction at a specific block number, and then start a new one if you wish to issue more shares?

[ProfMac]

I think it's a fairly brilliant idea using the blockchain for auction purposes.

Can you explain the "partial auction" concept? I think it would be confusing for people who are just now seeing your auction to understand from the blockchain that the first 3 bids have already been won. 

Why not end the entire auction at a specific block number, and then start a new one if you wish to issue more shares?

block-chain
Thanks.  I think using the block-chain for auction is a very natural thing to do with Bitcoin.  If I had not done it, someone else would have.  There is even a web based auction site doing it now that I just learned about.  That is where I got the idea of using a certain block number to end the auction.

The idea of a multiple winner auction is also not my idea.  In the early years eBay had something they called a Dutch auction.  This was a multiple winner auction with slightly different rules.  A change that I made was to let the auctioneer change the number of winning bids.  This was to solve a practical problem.  If I announced a bid for 70 shares, but only had 50 serious bidders, I could end up selling shares in my Avalon for very small bids.  However, if I limited the auction to a small number of winning bids, I should be able to avoid the tiny bid problem, but I might have to turn away people who wanted to buy, at a time that I wanted to sell at their price.  That's where the rule came from where the auctioneer can change (typically expand) the number of winning bids.

partial ending
People were asking for the auction to end but I was not ready to end the whole auction.  I happened to notice that changing the number of winning bids moves the boundary at the bottom of the list.  However, the list has a top as well as a bottom.  So I thought, I'll just shorten the list at the top, and the people at the very top are now final winners, they are no longer active bidders in the auction, and they can't lose their place.  So I suddenly have this idea of partially ending an auction.  I have never heard of this idea before, and I would be grateful for any reference to it that anyone knows about.  I think this gives certainty to those people who want it.

Rules grow in an organic fashion no matter how much logic people try to use.  Laws grow from problems.  I had a specific problem that one bidder wanted to retract his bids, and I do not want to change any rule during an auction.  I don't mind introducing a new rule, however.  The partial ending rule would solve two problems for me at once.  It let the auction end for some people, and it would generate some new high bids and make the remorseful bidder lose his winning status, and I could return his funds while keeping a firm "no retractions" policy.

end and re-start to issue more shares
There is a side conversation going on.  Someone put another Batch #2 Avalon for sale yesterday with bids starting at BTC 100, and I wanted to raise another BTC 50 or so to bid on it.  I thought a new auction in a pristine thread might have some vigor.  So I opened another auction.  It really is a separate auction from this one, and the rules for it are tuned a little differently.  Dchou and I have been having a discussion about both auctions, and I thought some of our discussion should be public in this thread. 

One of the things that I changed in the new auction is to speak of a facility (or mining farm) and that the shares are for the entire facility, not one specific Avalon.  Since I have a useful number of shares for this Avalon that have not been sold, I am comfortable putting those shares into the facility before discussing it with current shareholders here. 

That auction is entirely separate from this one.

A partially ended auction does mean that some of the status is not visible in the block-chain.  I don't like that.  However, I think it would be very peculiar to send serious bids back to the bidders, and ask them to turn around and re-bid at a different address.  So, for now, there are 3 bids that are final winners, 7 bids that are winning but not final, a new block number to make an additional bidder into a final winner, and some of that information is here in the discussion and not in the block-chain itself. 

[ProfMac]

SECOND PARTIAL END TO AUCTION
This announces another partial end for the auction.  Remember that the three bids above are permanent winners.  The highest remaining bid will be declared a permanent winner on or near this coming Friday, May 24.

The bidding will remain open with the possibility of extension until block number 237600.
If a bid is included in a block after 237590 and that address becomes the high bid and the auction is open, 10 is added to that block number to give the extended closing block.  That is, the auction is extended while bidding is active.
(The back end programmer, me, hates this complexity.)

The '1 hour' extension may keep some people up in the middle of the night.  That is not my intent.  I am completely comfortable making the extension for 25, 50, 100, 240, or another number of blocks.  Please feel free to ask for an alternate extension time.  

Looks like block creation is fairly fast. We are at block 237520 and it is only Thursday morning.
Don't forget to include miner's fees for last minute bids.

[dogie]

This has got way too complicated. Please tldr and simplify what you are offering, if anything currently.

[ProfMac]

This has got way too complicated. Please tldr and simplify what you are offering, if anything currently.

It is indeed way too complicated.

This morning, I am closing out 1 share (1% of production) for the Batch #2 Avalon that has been purchased.
Bids must be included in the block-chain by block 237600, with a 10 block extension for each new winning bidder.  Payments go to address 17DCms43Vu2yusDjmpjHJuZihSSWkNzgSH
For the life of me, I can't figure out what "TL;DR" means.


edited:
ROTFL
Too long; didn't read.
"omg you postwench. i can only say one thing in response - tl;dr"

Getting a short answer from a professor is like getting a thimble-full of water from a fire-hydrant.

[dogie]

This has got way too complicated. Please tldr and simplify what you are offering, if anything currently.

It is indeed way too complicated.

This morning, I am closing out 1 share (1% of production) for the Batch #2 Avalon that has been purchased.
Bids must be included in the block-chain by block 237600, with a 10 block extension for each new winning bidder.  Payments go to address 17DCms43Vu2yusDjmpjHJuZihSSWkNzgSH
For the life of me, I can't figure out what "TL;DR" means.

tldr = too long, didnt read. Its a hyper short single sentence summary of typically giant blocks of text people post.

So you have just 1% on offer? What is the opening/current price? Its very, very hard to tell in this thread.

[ProfMac]

This has got way too complicated. Please tldr and simplify what you are offering, if anything currently.

It is indeed way too complicated.

This morning, I am closing out 1 share (1% of production) for the Batch #2 Avalon that has been purchased.
Bids must be included in the block-chain by block 237600, with a 10 block extension for each new winning bidder.  Payments go to address 17DCms43Vu2yusDjmpjHJuZihSSWkNzgSH
For the life of me, I can't figure out what "TL;DR" means.

tldr = too long, didnt read. Its a hyper short single sentence summary of typically giant blocks of text people post.

So you have just 1% on offer? What is the opening/current price? Its very, very hard to tell in this thread.

Yes, I need to have some real time software that digests the payments and gives a summary.
At the moment, bidder 1LktD4cXPmcJ75Sd2WgRs69rBZqNQd5L4P is in the lead.  The total of bids from that address are 1.210 000 01
Another bid has been submitted without miner's fees.  I don't usually see zero fee transactions included in a block at this time of day.

This is the final standing effective with block 237,601

Code:

count	address	received

These 4 are permanent winners.
5	1CwLwBgR16urEkcL5Su3LkzA7RYYqyjHy4		1.265000000    (permanent)
2	14Zqn3i1iDJzmkFCRjVqDe4YqgkrrmyEYd	1.23359794 (permanent)
3	1Fu4JaynbQrtkSPN73uoDqEPAxyzVfsqLu		1.21410000 (permanent)
7	1cCXNG5mNFkErBWtCLaVLA9fZrGAzFCB1	1.21100000 (permanent)

Code:

count	address	received

These are current top bidders
1	1Fm1mN7o16Te6PrkpgirWzZ2daibW9jdUD	1.26
4	1JzMp55NW22xjEE4QKUhN5iAmKyFnJSUDg	1.25950000
1	18NQjpGcUdjMnqgCCz3F3SZcQfMyCi5Kyv	1.24
5	1LktD4cXPmcJ75Sd2WgRs69rBZqNQd5L4P	1.21000001
5	18qDhkReMuFfciHshdpQhr3QhXZp82aWon	1.21000000
3	1Gor6F9rMXUhbKGT9iYRKpa4U4tW94Ycq8	1.20000000

[dogie]

This is still too confusing for me. Still not clear how much you have for sale, how the auction works, how you even bid, what the price even is...

[ProfMac]

This is still too confusing for me. Still not clear how much you have for sale, how the auction works, how you even bid, what the price even is...

Those are fairly important things to know.

1.  I am selling a total of 10 shares in a multiple-winner auction.  Thus far, 3 of those shares have been declared as final winners, 1 share is coming up to end now, and 6 shares are still open with no end block specified.

2.  The workings of the auction are these:  bidders make bids.  The high bids win.  There are multiple winning bidders, and multiple ending times.  I refund bids that don't win.

3.  You bid by making one or more payments from your address to the bid address, 17DCms43Vu2yusDjmpjHJuZihSSWkNzgSH  The total of your payments is your bid.  Some people find it difficult to use bitcoin-qt for this auction, and have more success using a wallet at bitchain.info.

4.  The price changes with each successful bid.  I think it is difficult to keep track and make swoop bids at the end.  At the moment, BTC 1.21000001 is the winning bid.

[sealkid]

I would say that it is time consuming but worthwhile to read through the entire thread. I did so several weeks ago and am glad I did. Not only does this give a learned understanding of a fairly new (to the best of my knowledge) and inventive concept of using the block chain to perform auctions, it also offers the chance to buy shares of an Avalon ASIC that is confirmed batch 2 and shipping soon at a considerably lower price (right now anyway) than some other auctions taking place for batch 2 and 3 Avalon ASICs. Bids can be in increments as low as 1 satoshi, compared to higher increment auctions that only accept 0.1 or even 0.25 BTC increments, which are too high IMHO.

For more tl;dr minded folks out there, this tool provided by TheJuice is highly useful - http://blockchainauctions.com

Submit 17DCms43Vu2yusDjmpjHJuZihSSWkNzgSH as the auction address.

[ProfMac]

I would say that it is time consuming but worthwhile to read through the entire thread. I did so several weeks ago and am glad I did. Not only does this give a learned understanding of a fairly new (to the best of my knowledge) and inventive concept of using the block chain to perform auctions, it also offers the chance to buy shares of an Avalon ASIC that is confirmed batch 2 and shipping soon at a considerably lower price (right now anyway) than some other auctions taking place for batch 2 and 3 Avalon ASICs. Bids can be in increments as low as 1 satoshi, compared to higher increment auctions that only accept 0.1 or even 0.25 BTC increments, which are too high IMHO.

For more tl;dr minded folks out there, this tool provided by TheJuice is highly useful - http://blockchainauctions.com

Submit 17DCms43Vu2yusDjmpjHJuZihSSWkNzgSH as the auction address.

I do hope the price rises to par with the other auctions 

[ProfMac]

I do hope the price rises to par with the other auctions  

Here is an example of how you might bid on 3 shares.

Fund your bidders.

1.  Open a wallet on blockchain.info.  Be sure to use 2-factor authentication.
2.  Go to the bottom of the page on "receive money" and create a new address for each new bidder that you want to have, plus an extra.
3.  Go to the "send money" page and select custom.
4.  Click on the + button near the "To:" address until you have 3+1 addresses (4)
5.  Enter your addresses in the form.
6.  Enter the bid amount next to each account number.
7.  Enter 0.005 for the amount in the extra account.  This is the miner's fee for your forthcoming bid.
8.  Put the extra address into the slot for change, just in case.
9.  Send the payment

Bid on the auction.  Your funded bidders are ready to use before confirmation, if you work on blockchain.info.

1.  Go to the "send money" page and select custom.
2.  Hold down the control key in Windows, and mouse click on each one of your bidder addresses, and also the extra address.
3.  Enter the auction address in the "To" field.
4.  Remember the miner's fee.  Transactions without a miner's fee may not clear before the end of the auction.
5.  Again, put your "extra address" in the change field, just in case.
6.  Enter the total of all of your bids into the "amount" field.
7.  Send the payment.

Be sure to think before you send money.  I've done this procedure, and I have read these instructions, but be sure they make sense to you, I can't fix a mistake.

edited.
I followed my instructions.  They work.  Be sure to turn on "show scripts and coinbase" when you are viewing blockchain.info.

[ProfMac]

Last chance to bid.  See the standings.

[dogie]

https://blockchain.info/tx/e1e6b179d6596ffdde063f12fafbfd875b9e8fc9b8108efc2f8b119d395b2c8a
Bid 5@1.4, hopefully that worked

[Pistachio]

I thought I had won this earlier today with 1.2595 at block 235,532 (like it says in the heading), is this still open?

Last chance to bid.  See the standings.

[dchou]

Congrats Dogie, you've just paid 7 BTC for 1% of a 65 ghash Avalon.

Profmac, I think using one posting thread to hold partial auctions of 10% of an Avalon is much too confusing for anyone to sort through.  Even if someone reads the entire thread, there have been too many edited changes that no one knows what they are bidding on.

I do like using the blockchain, but this thread now holds your initial fixed price auction, your partial auction for 10% of your Avalon for 3 winners, and now for 1 additional winner.

It would seem to be easier to stop the auction and create a new thread and new address for the remaining 6%. 

[dogie]

Congrats Dogie, you've just paid 7 BTC for 1% of a 65 ghash Avalon.

Profmac, I think using one posting thread to hold partial auctions of 10% of an Avalon is much too confusing for anyone to sort through.  Even if someone reads the entire thread, there have been too many edited changes that no one knows what they are bidding on.

I do like using the blockchain, but this thread now holds your initial fixed price auction, your partial auction for 10% of your Avalon for 3 winners, and now for 1 additional winner.

It would seem to be easier to stop the auction and create a new thread and new address for the remaining 6%. 

7btc for 5%... ie 3.25 GH

[dchou]

Each bid represents 1% of his Avalon.

You need to send 5 bids of 1.4 BTC each from 5 separate addresses in order to do this.