PPCoin Proof of Stake Minting Setup Guide

[dnaleor]

maybe we should create a PPC fund for these things... I am willing to add 5 PPC for the dev who implements a stake mining button.

[merockstar]

Need help on a Mac. This is what I've done so far:

1. Have PPcoin-Qt installed and encrypted. I have ppcoind in my documents folder.

2. I open PPcoin-Qt so it's running then I open up terminal and navigate to: cd /Users/username/Documents

3. terminal shows me that I'm in: Documents username$

4. then I try running: ./ppcoind walletpassphrase ************* 9999999 true
and I get the following error: -bash: ./ppcoind: Operation not permitted

Can anyone help?

you have to be in the same directory as qt is. on mine its /where ever i unzipped the client/bin/64/ so if your in just "documents" you need to cd /ppcoind/bin/64 (or 32, depending on system architecutre)

if that doesnt work trying putting "sudo" in front ./ppcoind...

[CycleSurfer]

I believe I read somewhere that user wouldn't be able to send payments from encrypted wallet while it is "open for minting purpose only". However, I tried sending 0.1 coins in this state and they went through without asking password. Can anyone confirm this observation?

Maybe I understood the logic wrong?

Oh ok so maybe I stand corrected. Only rpc on commandline is currently blocked from sending. This is actually considered a bug as the qt should ask you for passphrase in a future release.

Does anyone know if this bug has been fixed?  It's a huge security outage and deters holders of peercoin from minting...like me. :-)

[wachtwoord]

If you're stake mining how can you see what's going on? I have the "wallet is unencrypted for block minting only" message but I cannot see any progress/hash rate or whatever using any of the RPC commands. Even getmininginfo shows nothing useful for POS. How can I be sure everything is right? (I think this is still very bad UI-wise)

Also: how long will it take based on coin years? I have >75 coin years, how long will it take on average?

Can someone answer my question? After trying for 4 weeks I gave up. The way it's implemented now is really discouraging, even though it says it's unlocked for minting I kind of doubt it if it takes this long.

[TBCM]

If you're stake mining how can you see what's going on? I have the "wallet is unencrypted for block minting only" message but I cannot see any progress/hash rate or whatever using any of the RPC commands. Even getmininginfo shows nothing useful for POS. How can I be sure everything is right? (I think this is still very bad UI-wise)

Also: how long will it take based on coin years? I have >75 coin years, how long will it take on average?

Can someone answer my question? After trying for 4 weeks I gave up. The way it's implemented now is really discouraging, even though it says it's unlocked for minting I kind of doubt it if it takes this long.

If you see "wallet is unencrypted for block minting only" then it's already working. Have faith! It will give you stake eventually, but it could take a lot of time.

If you really need to see how this works faster, try mining some other coin with PoS implemented in shorter time segments (Hobonickels, Grain). I was also extremely skeptical of the PoS process until I got my first PoS coins.

[wachtwoord]

If you're stake mining how can you see what's going on? I have the "wallet is unencrypted for block minting only" message but I cannot see any progress/hash rate or whatever using any of the RPC commands. Even getmininginfo shows nothing useful for POS. How can I be sure everything is right? (I think this is still very bad UI-wise)

Also: how long will it take based on coin years? I have >75 coin years, how long will it take on average?

Can someone answer my question? After trying for 4 weeks I gave up. The way it's implemented now is really discouraging, even though it says it's unlocked for minting I kind of doubt it if it takes this long.

If you see "wallet is unencrypted for block minting only" then it's already working. Have faith! It will give you stake eventually, but it could take a lot of time.

If you really need to see how this works faster, try mining some other coin with PoS implemented in shorter time segments (Hobonickels, Grain). I was also extremely skeptical of the PoS process until I got my first PoS coins.

I was not skeptical, until I tried to figure out how long it was supposed to take and ended up empty handed. The I tried for 4 weeks straight with >75coin years and got nothing. Not having an idea how long it takes combined with the fact it takes so long I just got frustrated and was done with it. That is not really the idea behind a PoS coin (and I have far above average technical skills compared with the average user). Someone please tell me how long it should take or point to a resource which allows me to calculate.

Mind I was solo mining Namecoin back in the day when my average block time was 7 days. I didn't care it took so long because I knew what the average time was.

[CycleSurfer]

Getting PPC minting easier to use and monitor would make this coin skyrocket.  I've been holding some for over a year and didn't know it was yet possible to mint via PoS until now.  I only googled it just out of curiosity.  I.e. not from any news or pump from the PPC community.  I'm still holding out minting with my PPC until I can see more folks having success.

[ninjaboon]

Been doing some POS minting and got some PPC the last few days. (around 0.35 PPC to 0.99 PPC)
Also been doing PPC mining since NOV 2012 last year.
It's been a crazy ride and I hope the price goes over USD 100 soon.

[Bytas]

Can stake be mined in pools somehow? Would be interestin for people that don't have a lot of coins but would like to get that 1% interest yearly.
Stake coins to pool -> get shares equal to your coindays destroyed when the block is made.
Would be nice!

[jubalix]

what are the risks with minting?

I note the issue above

can some one post some images about what you would see when minting I heard it looks like you stake get sent somewhere, and then is sent back!

[dnaleor]

Can stake be mined in pools somehow? Would be interestin for people that don't have a lot of coins but would like to get that 1% interest yearly.
Stake coins to pool -> get shares equal to your coindays destroyed when the block is made.
Would be nice!

In theory it is possible I guess, but then you need to trust a counterparty with your coins... I do not think it is (yet?) possible to somehow "connect your stake" to  pool.

[torusJKL]

Do I need to have the PPcoin-Qt program open or will the "Proof of Stake" also be created if I only run the daemon?

[Sir Lagsalot]

I can't seem to get minting working.

I open my Peercoin wallet with the -datadir switch, the data directory is kept on a different drive.

I run minting.bat in a command shell from the Peercoin application directory.

It gives the following message:

error: You must set rpcpassword=<password> in the configuration file:
C:\Users\*\Appdata\Roaming\PPCoin\ppcoin.conf

-

OK, so it's looking in the default directory for the config file. I create a config file there with the same password as the config file in my -datadir directory.

Now I get this:

error: {"code":-14,"message":"Error: The wallet passphrase entered was incorrect."}

-

Is there a solution for this?

[jubalix]

maybe we should create a PPC fund for these things... I am willing to add 5 PPC for the dev who implements a stake mining button.

i will throw in some PeerCoin for this and dev, see peercoin forum I have suggested it thier, maybe fuzzy bear and ors can admin the fund

[cybnate26]

If you're stake mining how can you see what's going on? I have the "wallet is unencrypted for block minting only" message but I cannot see any progress/hash rate or whatever using any of the RPC commands. Even getmininginfo shows nothing useful for POS. How can I be sure everything is right? (I think this is still very bad UI-wise)

Also: how long will it take based on coin years? I have >75 coin years, how long will it take on average?

Can someone answer my question? After trying for 4 weeks I gave up. The way it's implemented now is really discouraging, even though it says it's unlocked for minting I kind of doubt it if it takes this long.

I'm kind of frustrated as well. Been looking and querying for weeks to understand the chance to mint a block given a certain amount of coindays. Other answers than random or depends on the network haven't come up.

It seems that wallets with low coinage have a very hard time to mint a block. And with a 90-day cap on the stake they might never be able to mint a block.

If chance of minting somehow depends on the network, which parameters would influence the chance of minting a block beside coinage. Number of total coindays at stake across all active wallets/nodes? If more coindays would give me a higher chance of solving a block what mechanism would cause this. Would I produce more hashes or is there just another formula somewhere hidden in the source code? And what does the PoS difficulty mean in this equation.

Who in the world can answer those questions or just provide some idea how it might work, please.

[cybnate26]

If you're stake mining how can you see what's going on? I have the "wallet is unencrypted for block minting only" message but I cannot see any progress/hash rate or whatever using any of the RPC commands. Even getmininginfo shows nothing useful for POS. How can I be sure everything is right? (I think this is still very bad UI-wise)

Also: how long will it take based on coin years? I have >75 coin years, how long will it take on average?

Can someone answer my question? After trying for 4 weeks I gave up. The way it's implemented now is really discouraging, even though it says it's unlocked for minting I kind of doubt it if it takes this long.

I'm kind of frustrated as well. Been looking and querying for weeks to understand the chance to mint a block given a certain amount of coindays. Other answers than random or depends on the network haven't come up.

It seems that wallets with low coinage have a very hard time to mint a block. And with a 90-day cap on the stake they might never be able to mint a block.

If chance of minting somehow depends on the network, which parameters would influence the chance of minting a block beside coinage. Number of total coindays at stake across all active wallets/nodes? If more coindays would give me a higher chance of solving a block what mechanism would cause this. Would I produce more hashes or is there just another formula somewhere hidden in the source code? And what does the PoS difficulty mean in this equation.

Who in the world can answer those questions or just provide some idea how it might work, please.

Ok, nobody answered over here. No audience or considered off-topic, I suspect. For who is interested I've added my thoughts and some models with calculations in a thread on Peercointalk here:

http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=809.0 (You may use my referral to post: http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?action=refferals;refferedby=28779)

First part of thread is about interest earned, second part is about the time and chance you have to earn that interest given some assumptions.

[sbogovac]

Sorry, but I'm really getting stuck here. Followed the tutorial to the letter, watched the youtube instruction and tried debugging and searching for the solution online (one member here has mentioned the same problem, but still no solution):

After I run the mint.bat file and enter the right (wallet) simple (only normal characters) password I keep getting this error message:

error: You must set rpcpassword=<password> in the configuration file: C:\Documents and Settings\Pc\Application Data\PPCoin\ppcoin.conf
If the file does not exist, create it with owner-readable-only file permissions.

Just to state the obvious:
- The file DOES exist (I followed the instruction, remember);
- The rpcpassword=<password> in the configuration file is set (rpcpassword=password); and,
- The appdata folder in WinXP is C:\Documents and Settings\Pc\Application Data\PPCoin\ppcoin.conf

The only part of the error message I do not understand (and I didn't see in any tutorial/clip) is: [...]create it with owner-readable-only file permissions. I've tried setting the file to read-only, but that didn't help...

Please help.

[sbogovac]

Solved it!

Thank you for your consideration (reading) and sorry for waisting your time (reading).

For others with the same issue, here's the "solution" (as instructed in the video...):

Windows prevented me from seeing the file extension.
I noticed I did't see any extensions exept the .conf
Once I enabled extensions I saw there was still .txt
[please don't laught]

So after deleting the .txt extension and a restart it worked like a charm...

[gorgatron]

Hello. Thanks for posting the information.

I'm new to this, and while I've some limited experience with setting up batch and conf files, I'm obviously missing something, as I still haven't gotten the batch file correct (mining still suspended), and i did find the conf template a little confusing due to the use of the hash tags that seem to have been either used inconsistently, or I'm just making an error (highly possible).

Before I bost the code I've entered sans sensitive data, I wanted to ask if using an old 856 MH/s BFL FPGA unit would work, since I know that their ASICs work  - since both are obviously SHA-256. I could pull one of my slower ASICs offline and not make much of a dent in my BTC operation, but I'm mainly wanting to test this out, since it's likely that I'll migrate to another SHA-256-based coin as my hardware becomes obsolete for BTC mining. So, should the FPGA work as well? Is difficulty already too high for a rig hashing under 1 GH to earn a little coin?  I earned ~6 on it from late-November 2012 to early-April 2013, and BTC was at about the same price when I started. Just curious if it, too, should work, and if not, I can pull my slowest ASIC off the line, which I might find myself doing anyhow. Got to get this other mess sorted out first...and if it's a mess, I made it that way.

First the .conf:

Code:

server=1

rpcuser=<xxxxxxx>
rpcpassword=<xxxxxxxxxxx>

reservebalance=10000

Not sure how to tell if this is correct or not, but these seemed like the only elements that were not meant as explanation, but rather the actual code. I realize my spaching may be at issue you here, but am not sure how many lines of spacing to include.

The .bat file I find a bit more confusing. I've tried several different methods of including my password in the file, including the most logical, which is to substitute the term 'variable' each time with my password. I've tried both my actual password used for encryption (my wallet passphrase) and the supposedly arbitrary password I included in the .conf file. At the bottom line, I've left the bracketing '%' and omitted them. I always get an error that there is a mismatch. Here's what it kind of looks like now:

Code:

@echo off
@echo Enter PPC password...
SET /P XXXXXXXX=Password : 
ppcoind walletpassphrase %XXXXXXXX% 9999999 tru

Sorry if these are easy questions for the rest of you. It all seems fairly straightforward, but I'm missing some crucial piece. Also, and this is the edit, I did enable the function to allow me to see the extensions - I do have working .bat and .conf files... They are not simply doing what I'm asking them to do. I'll be trying to sort this out on my own, too, but any help will be appreciated.

Cheers!

[cwizard]

How many of you actually hang on to these little copy cat coins for longer than the time it takes to hype them up and then dump them.

1 year?  Really?