[NEW CURRENCY] Maria 2.0 was banned, here is her proof. The birth of Bytecoin!

[LucasJones]

I am using GUIMiner.  I can connect to Slush or BTCGuild with bitcoin and mine ok.  I have not been able to connect to radon, pool8, or http://pool.bytecoin.in
Has anyone had success with GUIMiner and Bytecoin?

GUIMiner is incompatible with p2pool.

I know that at least radon and pool8 are p2pool, and bytecoin.in could be too.

This has been discussed already, the best solution is to just use another miner, if you can.

[1715182472]

1715182472

[1715182472]

1715182472

[1715182472]

1715182472

[ProfMac]

I am using GUIMiner.  I can connect to Slush or BTCGuild with bitcoin and mine ok.  I have not been able to connect to radon, pool8, or http://pool.bytecoin.in
Has anyone had success with GUIMiner and Bytecoin?

GUIMiner is incompatible with p2pool.

I know that at least radon and pool8 are p2pool, and bytecoin.in could be too.

This has been discussed already, the best solution is to just use another miner, if you can.

I remember reading that.  I could not find the posting it in several minutes of searching. 

Assuming that we want more users, and more miners, it would be good to post a summary of known working miners, pools, and sample configurations.

Is there a consensus of whether p2pool or GUIMiner is broken? 

[saigo]

I am using GUIMiner.  I can connect to Slush or BTCGuild with bitcoin and mine ok.  I have not been able to connect to radon, pool8, or http://pool.bytecoin.in
Has anyone had success with GUIMiner and Bytecoin?

GUIMiner is incompatible with p2pool.

I know that at least radon and pool8 are p2pool, and bytecoin.in could be too.

This has been discussed already, the best solution is to just use another miner, if you can.

I remember reading that.  I could not find the posting it in several minutes of searching. 

Assuming that we want more users, and more miners, it would be good to post a summary of known working miners, pools, and sample configurations.

Is there a consensus of whether p2pool or GUIMiner is broken? 

This is a good start, add to this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=169559.0

[jhd]

If someone wants i have 150BTE to sell

[Come-from-Beyond]

If someone wants i have 150BTE to sell

0.05 BTC ?

[LucasJones]

Just to let people know, the bytecoin faucet pool is now back up, thanks to hosting provided by Digigami!

Only a 1% fee, point your miners at http://bytecoinpool.us.to:6327/

[frga13]

If someone wants i have 150BTE to sell

0.25 LTC?

[chris200x9]

If someone wants i have 150BTE to sell

0.07 btc?

[Grover]

Eh Bytecoin.

I like my idea for a new coin much better.  Of course I would it's my idea.

The new coin is called KingCoin^TM, Copyright 2013, (R).  Proof of work is complete a level of Donkey Kong that has a many floors as there are in the Empire State Building.  plus 15% of the coins value is indexed against all other digi-coins that have over $100mil market cap.

The Donkey Kong will have captchas to make sure people are playing and not bots.

Also this is KingCoin RC2 since RC1 had guess a number between 0 and 99 as proof of work.  So we have a major step forward with this release.

The Donkey Kong game has a built in AI that varies difficulty based on the player's ability, and the payouts have a funky cool algo to make sure that more experienced players cannot game the system and take over the network.

This coin will be as truly Democratic as a coin can be and be digital.  There will be none of this I have 50k to drop on ASICs or GPUs for LTC and can mine more cons than most people so I get to make more coin.  Anyone with access to the net can play King Coin, and the game saves in progress any time.

[WiseOldOwl]

BTE <-> LTC

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alm0J1q_7-D9dFA3VF9WSGU3OHhjNHdlVWVNU3dJMUE#gid=0

[FJBourne]

Eh Bytecoin.

I like my idea for a new coin much better.  Of course I would it's my idea.

The new coin is called KingCoin^TM, Copyright 2013, (R).  Proof of work is complete a level of Donkey Kong that has a many floors as there are in the Empire State Building.  plus 15% of the coins value is indexed against all other digi-coins that have over $100mil market cap.

The Donkey Kong will have captchas to make sure people are playing and not bots.

Also this is KingCoin RC2 since RC1 had guess a number between 0 and 99 as proof of work.  So we have a major step forward with this release.

The Donkey Kong game has a built in AI that varies difficulty based on the player's ability, and the payouts have a funky cool algo to make sure that more experienced players cannot game the system and take over the network.

This coin will be as truly Democratic as a coin can be and be digital.  There will be none of this I have 50k to drop on ASICs or GPUs for LTC and can mine more cons than most people so I get to make more coin.  Anyone with access to the net can play King Coin, and the game saves in progress any time.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAryFIuRxmQ

[LucasJones]

Hey everyone,

I just launched the bytecoin emerald site. It's still in beta, so there might be bugs, just PM me or let me know on the topic if there are

If you want to try it out, it's over here:

http://bytecoin.us.to:9000/

[aadje93]

I have a little question about the bytecoinpool When does my balance get "confirmed"

And at what time do you expect to implement PPS (i like steady payout, but until today the pools were all around 5-6ghash, so it didnt help me getting to a pool instead of solo mining bytecoin, now mining @ bytecoin pool with my 4ghash (aadje93 on bytecoin pool)

And lastly, i would like to see a worker time-out warning (like ~no shares from worker X in the last 15 minutes warning message when you get on the site, shouldn't be that hard to code hopefully.

If you could help me with the confirmed/unconfirmed balance thing i would be happy


kind regards

aadje93

[FJBourne]

how is bytecoin doing?

[Anon136]

how is bytecoin doing?

its doing very well! we have more than enough hashing power now to keep this train rolling. The future looks bright.

[dreamwatcher]

can someone fill me in, I heard that byte coin might be fairly invulnerable to 51% attacks with the BTC retargeting

is this true, can someone give me the rundown?  I just lost alot of faith in alternate coins from seeing my investment in terracoin cut in half with the system froze.  it was whacker than whack, but I have heard bte isn't as affected by 51% attacks is this true, can someone explain this to me real quick?

much appreciated

bte is a perfect clone of bitcoin. It has all of bitcoins strengths and weaknesses. Bitcoin can be 51% attacked so can bytecoin.

so... what's stopping asics from doing to bytecoin what they did to terracoin?  anything?  

we are the bytecoin community, you and me and a hand full of other people. So long as we understand that a 51% attack can only do very limited damage than we wont be shaken out of our position because of it. Its important to understand that a 51% attack doesnt destroy the network, it just puts it on hold for a little while. and all the time that a person is 51% attacking is costing them lots of money, so eventually the attack will end and things will return to normal.

BBQcoin had a 51% attack early in its history.  It's now ancient history.  BBQcoin is a perfectly viable coin at this point in time.

As you say, a 51% attack does not destroy the network, and can really only do limited damage.

In the future, as alt-coin supporters have more hashing power, this will be much less of an issue.

The 51% attack is not what any of the alt-coins should be concerned about. The only thing a 51% attack does for the "attacker" is allow very easy double-spends. When he/she has enough hash power to create a chain faster then the rest of the network, he/she will build a chain in private and when ready place that chain on the live network he/she is targeting. The "attackers" chain is longer, so the client/daemons will adopt the attackers chain as the "valid" chain.

This allows the "attacker" to reverse transactions, allowing him/her to double spend at will. However, notice the second part of this attack, he/she has to have somebody/something to trade the coins for in order for the double spends to mean anything. Once this happens, it becomes easy to see the "attack" and his/her trading partners simply stop taking transactions. This stops the usefulness of the attack.

What we will see is a difficulty type of attack to kill an alt-chain. There are two types of this kind of attack.I will start with the one TRC is going through now.

1. TRC is being manipulated by somebody with an ASIC. He/she is basically ramping up the difficulty by running his/her ASIC until the difficulty hits a certain height. When his/her target difficulty is reached, he/she points the ASIC elsewhere, and waits for the difficulty to plummet. Once the difficulty floors out he/she points the ASIC back at TRC generating blocks extremely fast and hence generating a large amount of TRC for him/herself. The solution to this, besides my recommendation of ASIC hardening or changing to PPC type difficulty targeting , is to increase the amount of time (time is measured in number of blocks with cryptocoin clients/daemons) between difficulty switches or increase the averaging length for calculating difficulty.

However, those solutions allow attack number 2 to happen:

2.Use an ASIC(s) to ramp up the difficulty to absurd levels and simply stop mining that chain. With long adjustment and averaging times, it can take a long time for the difficulty to come back down to a level acceptable for the user base. During this time the chain will essentially become frozen as blocks can take hours, even days to solve. If the attacker wants to, he/she can simply wait until the difficulty hits a certain level, and once again point his/her ASIC(s) at the chain until the difficulty get absurd again. This will effectively kill the chain.

FRC went through this a couple of months ago, though I do not believe it was an attack but more the symptom of a balloon growth of mining. With so many coins being brought to market, hash-rate got diluted. FRC has a longer averaging time and difficulty switch time than average and it took a good month(s) or so for the difficulty to drop down to a reasonable level compared to users. FRC caught a break , as it's difficulty drop happened right in the middle of the HUGE rally that occurred among all the coins a few weeks ago, it survived and it's difficulty is pretty consistent with its current user base.


Anyway, just throwing that out there. The developers of SHA-256 alt-coins are either going to harden against ASIC or adopt a PPC like difficulty algo. I fear otherwise these chains will be destroyed and fail, not on their merits or the natural death of free market decision, but by people who happen to have technology not available to 99.99% of the market.

I continue to look at using scrypt as a way to harden SHA-256 to ASIC's, not in the sense of making the SHA-256 coins into LTC/NVC clones, but just enough to cause ASIC's to lose their advantage over the GPU miners and allow these young coins to grow or die by natural market conditions.

Yes some people will use their ASIC(s) to help strengthen alt-coin chains,  but most honest people will mine BTC ($100 BTC = $2500 blocks). The hardcore BTC community will probably be the first and have the most ASIC(s), think about what their intentions for the alt-coins might be like.

[FJBourne]

In a difficulty algorithm, is it possible to just cap the hash each individual miner can utilize?

[dreamwatcher]

Just thought I would add what the current TRC attack looks like:


Notice the rise in difficulty into the ~17k - 21K range, then the extremely fast drop, then the very fast rise to 17K ~ 21k again.

Code:

104285	2013-04-13 13:37:45	1	20	17500.834	2085750	30.1172	169.185	64.8663%
104284	2013-04-13 13:28:02	1	20	9333.76	2085730	30.1107	169.178	64.8714%
104283	2013-04-13 13:40:18	1	20	11122.708	2085710	30.1195	169.187	64.8649%
104282	2013-04-13 13:20:13	1	20	22245.417	2085690	30.1059	169.173	64.8755%
104281	2013-04-13 13:20:08	1	20	11122.708	2085670	30.1061	169.173	64.8755%
104280	2013-04-13 13:20:02	2	6087.959	5561.354	2085650	30.1063	169.173	64.8756%
104279	2013-04-13 13:19:30	1	20	2780.677	2085630	30.1063	169.172	64.8758%
104278	2013-04-13 13:19:38	1	20	1390.338	2085610	30.1067	169.172	64.8757%
104277	2013-04-13 13:19:30	1	20	695.169	2085590	30.1069	169.172	64.8758%
104276	2013-04-13 13:18:58	1	20	347.584	2085570	30.1068	169.172	64.8761%
104275	2013-04-13 13:19:19	1	20	194.066	2085550	30.1073	169.172	64.8759%
104274	2013-04-13 13:18:44	1	20	113.204	2085530	30.1072	169.172	64.8762%
104273	2013-04-13 13:18:39	1	20	72.639	2085510	30.1074	169.172	64.8763%
104272	2013-04-13 13:18:33	1	20	50.847	2085490	30.1077	169.172	64.8763%
104271	2013-04-13 13:18:28	1	20	38.982	2085470	30.1079	169.172	64.8764%
104270	2013-04-13 13:18:26	1	20	32.81	2085450	30.1081	169.172	64.8764%
104269	2013-04-13 13:18:22	1	20	30.076	2085430	30.1084	169.172	64.8764%
104268	2013-04-13 13:18:19	1	20	30.326	2085410	30.1086	169.171	64.8764%
104267	2013-04-13 13:18:16	1	20	33.612	2085390	30.1089	169.171	64.8765%
104266	2013-04-13 13:18:14	1	20	40.894	2085370	30.1092	169.171	64.8765%
104265	2013-04-13 13:18:10	1	20	54.526	2085350	30.1094	169.171	64.8765%
104264	2013-04-13 13:18:05	1	20	79.517	2085330	30.1096	169.171	64.8766%
104263	2013-04-13 13:18:02	1	20	127.227	2085310	30.1099	169.171	64.8766%
104262	2013-04-13 13:18:19	12	3593.43145456	225.828	2085290	30.1104	169.171	64.8764%
104261	2013-04-13 13:04:21	1	20	284.166	2085270	30.1054	169.162	64.8786%
104260	2013-04-13 13:04:17	1	20	393.093	2085250	30.1056	169.162	64.8787%
104259	2013-04-13 13:04:12	1	20	596.179	2085230	30.1058	169.162	64.8787%
104258	2013-04-13 13:04:07	1	20	988.663	2085210	30.1061	169.162	64.8788%
104257	2013-04-13 13:04:02	1	20	1796.072	2085190	30.1063	169.162	64.8788%
104256	2013-04-13 13:10:20	1	20	4160.898	2085170	30.111	169.166	64.8755%
104255	2013-04-13 13:02:07	1	20	8876.577	2085150	30.1056	169.16	64.8798%
104254	2013-04-13 12:42:04	2	3053.9845	17753.154	2085130	30.0919	169.146	64.8903%
104253	2013-04-13 12:38:08	2	135.82684967	22931.074	2085110	30.0895	169.144	64.8924%
104252	2013-04-13 12:21:33	1	20	13758.6	2085090	30.0783	169.132	64.9011%
104251	2013-04-13 12:20:56	1	20	8713.757	2085070	30.0782	169.132	64.9014%
104250	2013-04-13 12:17:37	1	20	4647.332	2085050	30.0762	169.129	64.9031%
104249	2013-04-13 12:16:32	2	140	2478.576	2085030	30.0757	169.129	64.9037%
104248	2013-04-13 12:14:35	1	20	1239.288	2085010	30.0746	169.127	64.9047%
104247	2013-04-13 12:14:30	1	20	660.953	2084990	30.0749	169.127	64.9048%
104246	2013-04-13 12:29:03	1	20	864.747	2084970	30.0853	169.137	64.8971%
104245	2013-04-13 12:14:22	1	20	612.529	2084950	30.0754	169.127	64.9048%
104244	2013-04-13 12:14:19	1	20	474.71	2084930	30.0756	169.127	64.9049%
104243	2013-04-13 12:13:46	1	20	391.634	2084910	30.0755	169.127	64.9051%
104242	2013-04-13 12:13:37	1	20	352.469	2084890	30.0757	169.127	64.9052%
104241	2013-04-13 12:13:58	1	20	355.404	2084870	30.0762	169.127	64.905%
104240	2013-04-13 12:13:22	1	20	385.019	2084850	30.0761	169.126	64.9054%
104239	2013-04-13 12:13:29	1	20	458.807	2084830	30.0765	169.126	64.9053%
104238	2013-04-13 12:12:57	5	183.12877133	588.794	2084810	30.0764	169.126	64.9056%
104237	2013-04-13 12:27:25	1	20	1251.188	2084790	30.0871	169.136	64.8976%
104236	2013-04-13 12:24:51	1	20	2763.04	2084770	30.0856	169.134	64.8989%
104235	2013-04-13 12:19:15	1	20	5963.559	2084750	30.082	169.13	64.9018%
104234	2013-04-13 12:16:42	2	3053.9985	13368.299	2084730	30.0805	169.129	64.9032%
104233	2013-04-13 11:34:42	1	20	26736.599	2084710	30.0528	169.1	64.9239%
104232	2013-04-13 11:34:33	3	226.41565365	13368.299	2084690	30.053	169.099	64.924%
104231	2013-04-13 11:31:15	1	20	6684.149	2084670	30.051	169.097	64.9257%
104230	2013-04-13 11:30:26	1	20	3342.074	2084650	30.0507	169.097	64.9261%
104229	2013-04-13 11:29:58	1	20	1671.037	2084630	30.0507	169.096	64.9264%
104228	2013-04-13 11:29:25	1	20	835.518	2084610	30.0506	169.096	64.9267%
104227	2013-04-13 11:29:05	1	20	417.759	2084590	30.0507	169.096	64.9268%
104226	2013-04-13 11:29:27	1	20	208.879	2084570	30.0512	169.096	64.9266%
104225	2013-04-13 11:28:53	1	20	104.439	2084550	30.0511	169.095	64.9269%
104224	2013-04-13 11:28:50	1	20	52.219	2084530	30.0514	169.095	64.927%
104223	2013-04-13 11:28:49	1	20	26.109	2084510	30.0516	169.095	64.927%
104222	2013-04-13 11:28:47	1	20	13.054	2084490	30.0519	169.095	64.927%
104221	2013-04-13 11:28:46	1	20	6.853	2084470	30.0522	169.095	64.927%
104220	2013-04-13 11:28:45	1	20	3.94	2084450	30.0525	169.095	64.927%
104219	2013-04-13 11:28:43	1	20	2.495	2084430	30.0527	169.095	64.927%
104218	2013-04-13 11:28:43	1	20	1.726	2084410	30.053	169.095	64.927%
104217	2013-04-13 11:28:42	1	20	1.309	2084390	30.0533	169.095	64.927%
104216	2013-04-13 11:28:41	1	20	1.09	2084370	30.0536	169.095	64.927%
104215	2013-04-13 11:28:40	1	20	1.0	2084350	30.0538	169.095	64.927%
104214	2013-04-13 11:28:40	1	20	1.0	2084330	30.0541	169.095	64.927%
104213	2013-04-13 11:28:39	1	20	1.0	2084310	30.0544	169.095	64.9271%
104212	2013-04-13 11:28:39	1	20	1.086	2084290	30.0547	169.095	64.9271%
104211	2013-04-13 11:28:37	1	20	1.457	2084270	30.055	169.095	64.9271%
104210	2013-04-13 11:28:36	1	20	2.15	2084250	30.0552	169.095	64.9271%
104209	2013-04-13 11:28:35	1	20	3.476	2084230	30.0555	169.095	64.9271%
104208	2013-04-13 11:28:35	1	20	6.17	2084210	30.0558	169.095	64.9271%
104207	2013-04-13 11:28:33	1	20	12.031	2084190	30.0561	169.095	64.9271%
104206	2013-04-13 11:28:57	1	20	26.069	2084170	30.0566	169.096	64.9269%
104205	2013-04-13 11:28:26	1	20	61.479	2084150	30.0566	169.095	64.9272%
104204	2013-04-13 11:28:48	1	20	160.358	2084130	30.0571	169.095	64.927%
104203	2013-04-13 11:28:43	1	20	458.356	2084110	30.0573	169.095	64.927%
104202	2013-04-13 11:27:49	1	20	1420.902	2084090	30.057	169.095	64.9275%
104201	2013-04-13 11:26:50	1	20	4771.862	2084070	30.0566	169.094	64.928%
104200	2013-04-13 11:17:11	8	5330.32727793	15349.474	2084050	30.0502	169.087	64.9331%
104199	2013-04-13 10:33:40	1	20	30698.949	2084030	30.0245	169.057	64.951%
104198	2013-04-13 10:29:17	2	27.15003499	39908.634	2084010	30.0217	169.054	64.9533%
104197	2013-04-13 10:09:18	1	20	19954.317	2083990	30.0083	169.04	64.9637%
104196	2013-04-13 10:08:15	1	20	9977.158	2083970	30.0079	169.039	64.9642%
104195	2013-04-13 10:06:57	1	20	4988.579	2083950	30.0073	169.039	64.9649%
104194	2013-04-13 10:04:35	1	20	2494.289	2083930	30.0059	169.037	64.9662%
104193	2013-04-13 10:04:48	1	20	1247.144	2083910	30.0064	169.037	64.966%
104192	2013-04-13 10:04:12	1	20	623.572	2083890	30.0062	169.037	64.9664%
104191	2013-04-13 10:04:23	1	20	311.786	2083870	30.0066	169.037	64.9663%
104190	2013-04-13 10:04:20	1	20	155.891	2083850	30.0069	169.037	64.9663%
104189	2013-04-13 10:03:41	1	20	77.945	2083830	30.0067	169.036	64.9666%
104188	2013-04-13 10:03:28	1	20	41.571	2083810	30.0069	169.036	64.9667%
104187	2013-04-13 10:03:24	1	20	24.249	2083790	30.0071	169.036	64.9668%
104186	2013-04-13 10:03:22	1	20	15.56	2083770	30.0074	169.036	64.9668%
104185	2013-04-13 10:03:16	1	20	10.892	2083750	30.0076	169.036	64.9669%
104184	2013-04-13 10:03:13	1	20	8.35	2083730	30.0078	169.036	64.9669%
104183	2013-04-13 10:03:10	1	20	7.028	2083710	30.0081	169.036	64.9669%
104182	2013-04-13 10:03:14	1	20	6.501	2083690	30.0084	169.036	64.9669%
104181	2013-04-13 10:03:07	1	20	6.555	2083670	30.0086	169.036	64.9669%
104180	2013-04-13 10:03:04	1	20	7.265	2083650	30.0089	169.036	64.967%
104179	2013-04-13 10:03:02	1	20	8.839	2083630	30.0092	169.036	64.967%
104178	2013-04-13 10:02:59	1	20	11.786	2083610	30.0094	169.036	64.967%
104177	2013-04-13 10:02:55	1	20	17.286	2083590	30.0097	169.036	64.967%
104176	2013-04-13 10:02:52	1	20	27.803	2083570	30.0099	169.036	64.9671%
104175	2013-04-13 10:02:50	1	20	49.118	2083550	30.0102	169.036	64.9671%
104174	2013-04-13 10:02:47	1	20	94.963	2083530	30.0104	169.036	64.9671%
104173	2013-04-13 10:03:12	1	20	204.169	2083510	30.011	169.036	64.9669%
104172	2013-04-13 10:02:34	3	487.43891043	476.395	2083490	30.0108	169.036	64.9672%
104171	2013-04-13 10:02:14	3	552.15832484	1210.83	2083470	30.0109	169.035	64.9674%
104170	2013-04-13 10:01:56	3	569.1368338	3370.145	2083450	30.011	169.035	64.9676%
104169	2013-04-13 09:56:50	4	318.07495168	9464.491	2083430	30.0077	169.032	64.9702%
104168	2013-04-13 09:18:27	1	20	18928.982	2083410	29.9814	169.005	64.9904%
104167	2013-04-13 08:59:58	1	20	9464.47	2083390	29.9689	168.992	65.0001%
104166	2013-04-13 08:59:37	1	20	4732.235	2083370	29.9689	168.992

[Anon136]

can someone fill me in, I heard that byte coin might be fairly invulnerable to 51% attacks with the BTC retargeting

is this true, can someone give me the rundown?  I just lost alot of faith in alternate coins from seeing my investment in terracoin cut in half with the system froze.  it was whacker than whack, but I have heard bte isn't as affected by 51% attacks is this true, can someone explain this to me real quick?

much appreciated

bte is a perfect clone of bitcoin. It has all of bitcoins strengths and weaknesses. Bitcoin can be 51% attacked so can bytecoin.

so... what's stopping asics from doing to bytecoin what they did to terracoin?  anything?  

we are the bytecoin community, you and me and a hand full of other people. So long as we understand that a 51% attack can only do very limited damage than we wont be shaken out of our position because of it. Its important to understand that a 51% attack doesnt destroy the network, it just puts it on hold for a little while. and all the time that a person is 51% attacking is costing them lots of money, so eventually the attack will end and things will return to normal.

BBQcoin had a 51% attack early in its history.  It's now ancient history.  BBQcoin is a perfectly viable coin at this point in time.

As you say, a 51% attack does not destroy the network, and can really only do limited damage.

In the future, as alt-coin supporters have more hashing power, this will be much less of an issue.

The 51% attack is not what any of the alt-coins should be concerned about. The only thing a 51% attack does for the "attacker" is allow very easy double-spends. When he/she has enough hash power to create a chain faster then the rest of the network, he/she will build a chain in private and when ready place that chain on the live network he/she is targeting. The "attackers" chain is longer, so the client/daemons will adopt the attackers chain as the "valid" chain.

This allows the "attacker" to reverse transactions, allowing him/her to double spend at will. However, notice the second part of this attack, he/she has to have somebody/something to trade the coins for in order for the double spends to mean anything. Once this happens, it becomes easy to see the "attack" and his/her trading partners simply stop taking transactions. This stops the usefulness of the attack.

What we will see is a difficulty type of attack to kill an alt-chain. There are two types of this kind of attack.I will start with the one TRC is going through now.

1. TRC is being manipulated by somebody with an ASIC. He/she is basically ramping up the difficulty by running his/her ASIC until the difficulty hits a certain height. When his/her target difficulty is reached, he/she points the ASIC elsewhere, and waits for the difficulty to plummet. Once the difficulty floors out he/she points the ASIC back at TRC generating blocks extremely fast and hence generating a large amount of TRC for him/herself. The solution to this, besides my recommendation of ASIC hardening or changing to PPC type difficulty targeting , is to increase the amount of time (time is measured in number of blocks with cryptocoin clients/daemons) between difficulty switches or increase the averaging length for calculating difficulty.

However, those solutions allow attack number 2 to happen:

2.Use an ASIC(s) to ramp up the difficulty to absurd levels and simply stop mining that chain. With long adjustment and averaging times, it can take a long time for the difficulty to come back down to a level acceptable for the user base. During this time the chain will essentially become frozen as blocks can take hours, even days to solve. If the attacker wants to, he/she can simply wait until the difficulty hits a certain level, and once again point his/her ASIC(s) at the chain until the difficulty get absurd again. This will effectively kill the chain.

FRC went through this a couple of months ago, though I do not believe it was an attack but more the symptom of a balloon growth of mining. With so many coins being brought to market, hash-rate got diluted. FRC has a longer averaging time and difficulty switch time than average and it took a good month(s) or so for the difficulty to drop down to a reasonable level compared to users. FRC caught a break , as it's difficulty drop happened right in the middle of the HUGE rally that occurred among all the coins a few weeks ago, it survived and it's difficulty is pretty consistent with its current user base.


Anyway, just throwing that out there. The developers of SHA-256 alt-coins are either going to harden against ASIC or adopt a PPC like difficulty algo. I fear otherwise these chains will be destroyed and fail, not on their merits or the natural death of free market decision, but by people who happen to have technology not available to 99.99% of the market.

I continue to look at using scrypt as a way to harden SHA-256 to ASIC's, not in the sense of making the SHA-256 coins into LTC/NVC clones, but just enough to cause ASIC's to lose their advantage over the GPU miners and allow these young coins to grow or die by natural market conditions.

Yes some people will use their ASIC(s) to help strengthen alt-coin chains,  but most honest people will mine BTC ($100 BTC = $2500 blocks). The hardcore BTC community will probably be the first and have the most ASIC(s), think about what their intentions for the alt-coins might be like.

Yes i worked this latter problem out in my head not too long before this post, and you have articulated it quite well. Since blocks coming in too fast is only a minor inconvenience and blocks coming in to slowly could kill the network. What about a change to the code that would cause the difficulty to adjust more often, say every 100 blocks and instead of 2016 and instead of relying only on data from the last re-target alone to calculate the new difficulty, it could look at the last 10 re-targets and compare it to the 10 re-targets before that. Of course these numbers are rather arbitrary but hopefully you will see my point.

[HiveLibrary]

Anon, messaged you.