[ANN][YAC] YACoin ongoing development

[alenevaa]

How it can be that blocks from 357620 to 357627 are POS blocks only?
Why there's no one POW-block during 3 hours?

[senj]

yacexplorer.tk has been hacked...
You get redirrected to some ad sites.

And regarding this:

How it can be that blocks from 357620 to 357627 are POS blocks only?
Why there's no one POW-block during 3 hours?

... here could be an explanation:
http://yacointalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,473.0.html

[sairon]

yacexplorer.tk has been hacked...
You get redirrected to some ad sites.

And regarding this:

How it can be that blocks from 357620 to 357627 are POS blocks only?
Why there's no one POW-block during 3 hours?

... here could be an explanation:
http://yacointalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,473.0.html

Not hacked, just the .tk registrar shenanigans again...
You can use this in the meantime: http://ec2-54-247-145-77.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com (direct hostname).
I should prolly get a proper domain for it.

[Joe_Bauers]

yacexplorer.tk has been hacked...
You get redirrected to some ad sites.

And regarding this:

How it can be that blocks from 357620 to 357627 are POS blocks only?
Why there's no one POW-block during 3 hours?

... here could be an explanation:
http://yacointalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,473.0.html

Not hacked, just the .tk registrar shenanigans again...
You can use this in the meantime: http://ec2-54-247-145-77.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com (direct hostname).
I should prolly get a proper domain for it.

OK, I updated the link on yacoin.org to point to aws. Let me know when you want to change it back.

[Thirtybird]

yacexplorer.tk has been hacked...
You get redirrected to some ad sites.

And regarding this:

How it can be that blocks from 357620 to 357627 are POS blocks only?
Why there's no one POW-block during 3 hours?

... here could be an explanation:
http://yacointalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,473.0.html

Not hacked, just the .tk registrar shenanigans again...
You can use this in the meantime: http://ec2-54-247-145-77.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com (direct hostname).
I should prolly get a proper domain for it.

OK, I updated the link on yacoin.org to point to aws. Let me know when you want to change it back.

Why don't you guys coordinate, and use "blockexplorer.yacoin.org" for the URL, so a separate domain name is not needed.

[gxp3848]

dead?

[Joe_Bauers]

dead?

?

[Sejnt]

dead?

?

Removed from Cryptsy

[bitdwarf]

Their wallet must be down, it seems it's automatic.

[Gorgoy]

Their wallet must be down, it seems it's automatic.

They, Cryptsy, were down the other day too, they were down for like two days. I was worried that there was a fork on the block but that might not have been the case. They are down again, but why do you think it is automatic? Just the way that the server's in Cryptsy are set up, or not setup properly?

[senj]

You will find more answers on yacointalk:
http://yacointalk.com/forum/index.php?action=recent

[Joe_Bauers]

Unless someone comes up with a better idea soon, I think we should implement the Novacoin solution to fix this problem.

There are .5 BTC and 10,000 YAC's in the dev fund for whoever can implement this fix asap. 

[obermensch]

yacexplorer.tk has been hacked...
You get redirrected to some ad sites.

And regarding this:

How it can be that blocks from 357620 to 357627 are POS blocks only?
Why there's no one POW-block during 3 hours?

... here could be an explanation:
http://yacointalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,473.0.html

Not hacked, just the .tk registrar shenanigans again...
You can use this in the meantime: http://ec2-54-247-145-77.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com (direct hostname).
I should prolly get a proper domain for it.

Hi, i redirected http://explorer.yacointalk.com to your explorer until you get a domain ^^,

[miawilkinson]

dead?

?

Removed from Cryptsy

poor YAC

[cryptrol]

The wallet has serious problems with ORPHANED blocks.
I tried to synch a wallet from the start, it took more than 10 hours to synch until December (I quitted then), and the debug log showed all the problems with the orphaned blocks (and forks). I would say right now it is unusable.

[bitdwarf]

PoW was always meant to "break". I'd say we speed it up and just disable it/zero the coin output from PoW. With the current altcoin bloat it's worthless anyway for coin distribution since only the few ones with so much processing they have to diversify will get most of PoW coins anyway. Regular trade is way more efficient at this point at distribution, while PoW is just increasing the inequality.

[sairon]

I've got a "workaround" for this issue. Still, it requires a hard-fork.
It's quite simple, just disallow two consecutive PoS blocks and lower PoS trust to match PoW (1).
There's no way PoS-only miner can orphan a single block.

PoW miner forking/orphaning still requires a substantial percentage of network hashing power.

However, this way we're essentially removing the intended purpose of PoS (checkpointing). I was unable to come up with any suitable solution that also preserved PoS checkpointing functionality - IMO it just can't be done (the right way) with current hybrid PoW/PoS design. In PoS-only system - no problem. But with hybrid chain it's just one hell of a mess.

I think I'll have the implementation ready soon (in 1 day methinks).

The only issue is deciding on the blockchain fork date. It should be fairly soon, but not too soon as we should give a majority of the network time to upgrade. How about 1 month?

[bitdwarf]

I was unable to come up with any suitable solution that also preserved PoS checkpointing functionality - IMO it just can't be done (the right way) with current hybrid PoW/PoS design. In PoS-only system - no problem. But with hybrid chain it's just one hell of a mess.

This should be weighed carefully. PoW is a bit hard to rely on long term due to not knowing how technology is going to affect it, not knowing if someone will plug in massive hashpower out of the blue someday, not knowing how future energy costs will factor in, etc.

[sairon]

I was unable to come up with any suitable solution that also preserved PoS checkpointing functionality - IMO it just can't be done (the right way) with current hybrid PoW/PoS design. In PoS-only system - no problem. But with hybrid chain it's just one hell of a mess.

This should be weighed carefully. PoW is a bit hard to rely on long term due to not knowing how technology is going to affect it, not knowing if someone will plug in massive hashpower out of the blue someday, not knowing how future energy costs will factor in, etc.

It's not relying on PoW per se. In the future PoW can be disabled completely and the "no 2 consecutive PoS blocks" rule removed (block trust value would not matter then anyway, and the same goes for PoS checkpointing).
However, this is a no-go short term, as we're still pretty much in the initial coin distribution stage and there's too few PoS blocks to be able to rely on it (and remember we need a huge amount of different people participating in PoS, not just 2-3 big hoarders).

Also, remember the increasing computing and memory requirements of scrypt-chacha. If/when we see a massive break-through in hashing hardware, Bitcoin will be the first to go, not Yacoin.
If we happen to see scrypt-chacha ASICs, the difficulty will adjust MUCH faster than in Bitcoin ('cause we do a retarget after each single block, compared to Bitcoin's 2016). In case of huge energy costs and the network hashrate experiencing a massive drop - YAC can also adjust fairly quickly (just look at the Nfactor change events).

As far as quantum computing goes - we'll have much greater problems than cryptocurrencies going bust then.

[Thirtybird]

I've got a "workaround" for this issue. Still, it requires a hard-fork.
It's quite simple, just disallow two consecutive PoS blocks and lower PoS trust to match PoW (1).
There's no way PoS-only miner can orphan a single block.

PoW miner forking/orphaning still requires a substantial percentage of network hashing power.

However, this way we're essentially removing the intended purpose of PoS (checkpointing). I was unable to come up with any suitable solution that also preserved PoS checkpointing functionality - IMO it just can't be done (the right way) with current hybrid PoW/PoS design. In PoS-only system - no problem. But with hybrid chain it's just one hell of a mess.

I think I'll have the implementation ready soon (in 1 day methinks).

The only issue is deciding on the blockchain fork date. It should be fairly soon, but not too soon as we should give a majority of the network time to upgrade. How about 1 month?

Seeing the reversals we've had lately, I don't want to wait too long, but I also don't want to see a knee-jerk reaction.  February 1 would be my vote.  I think once it's done, we'll simply need to make sure we contact the pool operators and verify they've updated the pool wallets well in advance.  This means reaching out to feeleep, obermench, and digger (the biggest pools I know of), and the exchanges (cryptsy and bter.com - are there any others?).

I'm glad you've got something in mind, I've spent a couple hours trying to find out what the fix novacoin implemented was, even digging through the code, but I can't isolate a single POS fix - there have been quite a few tweaks to POS in Novacoin.  I can see that  they currently have adjacent POS blocks, so what did they do to address this issue?