The Feathercoin testnet is up and running for 0.6.4.4. If you are able please download a client to add to the testnet and do some solo mining on it. The intention is to run this over the weekend with an official release on Monday if no problems arise. Currently RC1 is set to hard fork on block 87948 which is approximately on the 1st October.
Primarily this is furthering the refinement of the difficulty adjust. Though the current Feathercoin difficulty which we changed to got us out of a tough spot it is not fair for long term miners who have to experience 41.4% swings on every adjust. The new code will adjust four times more frequently at 126 blocks but to approximately 9% which still gives the exact same overall adjust. To prevent the difficulty from being sent up or down too rapidly the current 504 sample window is being maintained and damping is being introduced to reduce fluctuations between extremes.
There have been long running discussion and arguments on the Feathercoin forum including simulations of various different options surrounding this solution. Feel free to take a look at the latest discussion
here.
Download Feathercoin 0.6.4.4 RC3To run the client on the testnet use the following flags.
-testnet -addnode=64.90.183.217
To download and compile from source please get the code from our testing branch on GitHub.
GitHub Feathercoin testing branchFrom the command line you can clone the testing branch with Git using.
git clone https://github.com/FeatherCoin/FeatherCoin.git -b testing
Changelog:
Move to 126 difficulty adjust with 504 averaging window and .25 damping
Reduce effectivness of Time Warp attack
Bring back CAlert system for new keys
Make getnetworkhashps more accurate
Release Windows binary with QR encode
