[ANN] Catcoin - Scrypt meow!

[Mikellev]

Morning, what rly concerns me is the hashrate.

Our Pool is at 10mh/s and net hashrate down to 270 ? Any info why ppl lost interest in mining that coin?

Please also come to http://cat.poolerino.com and help getting the hashes up. Sorry for kind of advertising, but if nothing happens, we have to close the pool then

[TheLotusPod]

Morning, what rly concerns me is the hashrate.

Our Pool is at 10mh/s and net hashrate down to 270 ? Any info why ppl lost interest in mining that coin?

Please also come to http://cat.poolerino.com and help getting the hashes up. Sorry for kind of advertising, but if nothing happens, we have to close the pool then

Net hashrate is probably down because we got some multipools to leave us alone which is good

[skillface]

Odd, we have lost quite a significant amount of hashrate over the last few hours. We're at around 168MH/s according to the Catcoin Hashrate & Difficulty charts.

I wonder what happened? It shouldn't have dropped to this level under normal circumstances, it should be closer to 260-300MH/s if the last few days were any indicator.

Also WTF @ those 32k and 36.6k CAT sell orders @ 0.00059 and 0.000595 respectively. To think there's someone out there that actually has that much (I very much doubt they are from separate people).. I mean that's almost 41BTC worth combined. What the flying FUCK.

[busabus]

Odd, we have lost quite a significant amount of hashrate over the last few hours. We're at around 168MH/s according to the Catcoin Hashrate & Difficulty charts.

I wonder what happened? It shouldn't have dropped to this level under normal circumstances, it should be closer to 260-300MH/s if the last few days were any indicator.

Probably because Europe has woken up and jumped onto Coinye

[etblvu1]

Odd, we have lost quite a significant amount of hashrate over the last few hours. We're at around 168MH/s according to the Catcoin Hashrate & Difficulty charts.

I wonder what happened? It shouldn't have dropped to this level under normal circumstances, it should be closer to 260-300MH/s if the last few days were any indicator.

The current difficulty is excessive at 78.951, which was caused by excessive hashing power (most of them opportunistic coin-hoppers), while the coin was 'profitable' to mine-and-dump onto the exchanges, at difficulty 29.833. Rest assured, though, when the difficulty drops way down into the 20's again soon enough, the coin-hoppers will be back to collect their cheap Catcoins to dump onto the markets. Somehow, our difficulty adjustment algorithm never seems to stabilize in the middle ground that is probably more realistic, in the upper 30's or lower 40's. But the algorithm is old, designed in times when miners coin hopping was never contemplated as a factor.

Meanwhile, loyal Catcoin miners are noticing that their overall average profitability is not as good as many other coins out there, perhaps not even as good as Litecoins, and are defecting to mining elsewhere quietly in some cases, and with a quiet protest on this thread in other cases. Economically speaking, in terms of incentives, even though we say we appreciate them and need them, we are telling them through market signals that their services are not welcome, or at least that the services of coin hoppers are more welcome. And that is truly tragic, speaking from one who wants the Coin to succeed.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we should all want to see loyal Catcoin miners get maximum rewards possible, so there is reason for them to stay on and continue mining. They can be paid for out of reduced rewards paid out to coin hoppers who can easily be detected by their making an appearance when it is conveniently overly easy to mine which makes clear their intention to cherry-pick profits. This cherry picking comes at the expense of loyal miners. Once we get them to stop because we've de-incentivized them, there are no longer cheap coins getting dumped onto the exchanges, so coins can have the chance to gain in value over other altcoins (they still have to contend with miner-dumpers still). This rise in value in turn would attract more long-term miners based on the coin's own merits. Then we have sustainable growth, comparable to BTC and LTC, and not typical of other altcoins. What could be a happier ending?

[kisa2005]

Odd, we have lost quite a significant amount of hashrate over the last few hours. We're at around 168MH/s according to the Catcoin Hashrate & Difficulty charts.

I wonder what happened? It shouldn't have dropped to this level under normal circumstances, it should be closer to 260-300MH/s if the last few days were any indicator.

The current difficulty is excessive at 78.951, which was caused by excessive hashing power (most of them opportunistic coin-hoppers), while the coin was 'profitable' to mine-and-dump onto the exchanges, at difficulty 29.833. Rest assured, though, when the difficulty drops way down into the 20's again soon enough, the coin-hoppers will be back to collect their cheap Catcoins to dump onto the markets. Somehow, our difficulty adjustment algorithm never seems to stabilize in the middle ground that is probably more realistic, in the upper 30's or lower 40's. But the algorithm is old, designed in times when miners coin hopping was never contemplated as a factor.

Meanwhile, loyal Catcoin miners are noticing that their overall average profitability is not as good as many other coins out there, perhaps not even as good as Litecoins, and are defecting to mining elsewhere quietly in some cases, and with a quiet protest on this thread in other cases. Economically speaking, in terms of incentives, even though we say we appreciate them and need them, we are telling them through market signals that their services are not welcome, or at least that the services of coin hoppers are more welcome. And that is truly tragic, speaking from one who wants the Coin to succeed.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we should all want to see loyal Catcoin miners get maximum rewards possible, so there is reason for them to stay on and continue mining. They can be paid for out of reduced rewards paid out to coin hoppers who can easily be detected by their making an appearance when it is conveniently overly easy to mine which makes clear their intention to cherry-pick profits. This cherry picking comes at the expense of loyal miners. Once we get them to stop because we've de-incentivized them, there are no longer cheap coins getting dumped onto the exchanges, so coins can have the chance to gain in value over other altcoins (they still have to contend with miner-dumpers still). This rise in value in turn would attract more long-term miners based on the coin's own merits. Then we have sustainable growth, comparable to BTC and LTC, and not typical of other altcoins. What could be a happier ending?

I reserved 250 CATs for the bounty plan for loyal miners who can prove they stayed with CATs during high diff.
If you loyal miner guys recruit your friends from outside mining circles and teach them how to mine, I will add yet 250 more CATs to such Loyal CATminers Rewards Fund. This is not a silver bullet, but a suggestion to complement other efforts such as coding, marketing etc. It should be in the interest of any substantial CAT stakeholder to back such functioning reward program.

@etblvu1 - would you pls create addess for such fund. whom can we trust to administer that?
and lets discuss what would be reasonable compensation for 1Mh/s allocated to CAT per high diff period, and how to figure out honest reports, work out guidelines etc.

[etblvu1]

I reserved 250 CATs for the bounty plan for loyal miners who can prove they stayed with CATs during high diff.
If you loyal miner guys recruit your friends from outside mining circles and teach them how to mine, I will add yet 250 more CATs to such Loyal CATminers Rewards Fund. This is not a silver bullet, but a suggestion to complement other efforts such as coding, marketing etc.

@etblvu1 - would you pls create addess for such fund. whom can we trust to administer that?
and lets discuss what would be reasonable compensation for 1Mh/s allocated to CAT per high diff period, and how to figure out honest reports.

I did play around with this idea a bit ago - I believe we don't have to trust anyone - we should be able to harvest from the blockchain information (e.g., from catchain.info) a list of wallet addresses to which the block solution reward was paid during the last difficulty phase (which would turn into a list of 36 addresses). So if someone would manually or automatically post this list, anyone can donate 1 CAT each per miner who found a solution during the last difficult period, for a grand total cost of 36 CATs. Or for 72 CATs you can donate 2 CATs per. Or for 144 CATs, 4 CATs per. Or you can study the last four difficult periods, and donate 1 CAT per successful person who found a solution, for 144 CATs. If we post a list of these miners, it should facilitate people donating on their own. But this clearly is not a sustainable long-term solution (it would end up costing too much), but any measure of appreciation expressed (by extra random CATs showing up in wallets), could be good for the morale of loyal miners. Maybe someone can make a website/webpage where a donation can be sent, to be automatically divided up to the wallet addresses of those who solved blocks during the most recent difficult eras, so by sending to that one wallet address, it is equally divided up and sent to the qualifying addresses.

I think this is a good short-term solution to make the loyal miners feel appreciated. I think the next longer term step would be convince one or two pools to implement the simple rule/logic to watch for special conditions (the difficulty level dropped more than 50%), and impose a simple 1/2 share policy on miners who show up during those periods, who were not mining during the immediate difficulty level that came before it. Then, we are effectively taking CATs from opportunistic (but maybe a bit careless) miner who shows up at the pool, but still in accordance with pool rules, and redistributing them to loyal miners. This is more sustainable, at least until this same logic can be applied to the coin itself, so it applies to everyone no matter whether they mine through any pool or solo mining, or even coin hop mining.

Etblvu1

[kisa2005]

I reserved 250 CATs for the bounty plan for loyal miners who can prove they stayed with CATs during high diff.
If you loyal miner guys recruit your friends from outside mining circles and teach them how to mine, I will add yet 250 more CATs to such Loyal CATminers Rewards Fund. This is not a silver bullet, but a suggestion to complement other efforts such as coding, marketing etc.

@etblvu1 - would you pls create addess for such fund. whom can we trust to administer that?
and lets discuss what would be reasonable compensation for 1Mh/s allocated to CAT per high diff period, and how to figure out honest reports.

I believe we don't have to trust anyone - we should be able to harvest from the blockchain information (e.g., from catchain.info) a list of wallet addresses to which the block solution reward was paid during the last difficulty phase (which would turn into a list of 36 addresses). So if someone would manually or automatically post this list, anyone can donate 1 CAT each per miner who found a solution during the last difficult period, for a grand total cost of 36 CATs. Or for 72 CATs you can donate 2 CATs per. Or for 144 CATs, 4 CATs per. Or you can study the last four difficult periods, and donate 1 CAT per successful person who found a solution, for 144 CATs. If we post a list of these miners, it should facilitate people donating on their own. But this clearly is not a sustainable long-term solution (it would end up costing too much), but any measure of appreciation expressed (by extra random CATs showing up in wallets), could be good for the morale of loyal miners. Maybe someone can make a website/webpage where a donation can be sent, to be automatically divided up to the wallet addresses of those who solved blocks during the most recent difficult eras, so by sending to that one wallet address, it is equally divided up and sent to the qualifying addresses.

I think this is a good short-term solution to make the loyal miners feel appreciated.
Etblvu1

agree this is sensible proposal as a bridge solution to sustainability.

[ebi]

Also WTF @ those 32k and 36.6k CAT sell orders @ 0.00059 and 0.000595 respectively. To think there's someone out there that actually has that much (I very much doubt they are from separate people).. I mean that's almost 41BTC worth combined. What the flying FUCK.

rly ? here :

Retarget: 2016 blocks
Starting difficulty: 0.00024414

...

[skillface]

Also WTF @ those 32k and 36.6k CAT sell orders @ 0.00059 and 0.000595 respectively. To think there's someone out there that actually has that much (I very much doubt they are from separate people).. I mean that's almost 41BTC worth combined. What the flying FUCK.

rly ? here :

Retarget: 2016 blocks
Starting difficulty: 0.00024414

...

The point is that up until now I have not seen a single buy or sell order anywhere near that high, and now suddenly there's two massive sell orders at below 0.0006 BTC. I mean yeah, I've seen some pretty large ones (around 15k or so max), but nothing in that league.

Looks like we won't be hitting 0.0006 again any time soon.

[mavis369]

Here is a new exchange, maybe they can add catcoin if enough people request it on their twiiter page, I just did.
https://openex.pw/index.php?page=home

[NyanCat]

Here is a new exchange, maybe they can add catcoin if enough people request it on their twiiter page, I just did.
https://openex.pw/index.php?page=home

Everyone, please send messages to admin@openex.pw

[envy2010]

Is there a chart you can see the nethashrate ?

Here: http://catcoins.biz/charts/#hashdiff

That's based on block times, which is the only way anyone can guess how much hash is pointed at the network.

[tossball]

reserved

mark

[NyanCat]

Is there a chart you can see the nethashrate ?

Here: http://catcoins.biz/charts/#hashdiff

That's based on block times, which is the only way anyone can guess how much hash is pointed at the network.

This site shows wrong data. You can check current hashrate here: http://catpool.pw/

[janos666]

Wouldn't the proposed loyalty system scare away any newcomers and cause a slow monotone decrease in the network speed?
People possibly would either simply skip the coin if they take the time to read about the system (and don't risk it / sacrifice their freedom), or jump out of the mining soon because they don't understand why they get less shares compared to other similar miners.
This is similar to the pool loyalty systems like PPLNS. PPLNSs take away the miner's freedom, so nobody joins to a new PPLNS pool unless he plans to stay for a while (but he needs to be convinced that he will want to stay) or he has no idea what to do (but he will probably join to a multipool or squer one LTC).
It works because most of the pools use PPLNS, so the miner doesn't really have a choice (and this fact makes the remaining few PPS pools look like the target of the oldschool poolhoppers).

I don't say it's a bad thing to have courage for trying new things. But may be it's not the best idea for a weak coin if you want to keep it alive for all costs, instead of being ready to sacrifice it anytime.
I just say it's risky and CAT might not need more risk factors right now.

[whiskers75]

We need another fork - the difficulty is just too spiky.

[etblvu1]

Wouldn't the proposed loyalty system scare away any newcomers and cause a slow monotone decrease in the network speed?
People possibly would either simply skip the coin if they take the time to read about the system (and don't risk it / sacrifice their freedom), or jump out of the mining soon because they don't understand why they get less shares compared to other similar miners.
This is similar to the pool loyalty systems like PPLNS. PPLNSs take away the miner's freedom, so nobody joins to a new PPLNS pool unless he plans to stay for a while (but he needs to be convinced that he will want to stay) or he has no idea what to do (but he will probably join to a multipool or squer one LTC).
It works because most of the pools use PPLNS, so the miner doesn't really have a choice (and this fact makes the remaining few PPS pools look like the target of the oldschool poolhoppers).

I don't say it's a bad thing to have courage for trying new things. But may be it's not the best idea for a weak coin if you want to keep it alive for all costs, instead of being ready to sacrifice it anytime.
I just say it's risky and CAT might not need more risk factors right now.

Thank your thoughtful reply.

This may be a chicken-or-egg type thing where it may be argued that the chicken had to come first or that the egg has to come first. A related question is, if having incentives in place for coin hopping miners to come only when they can cherry-pick, and people who are inclined to mine the coin long-term are given incentives to just drop the coin and mine elsewhere, is it wise to value the coin hoppers above the would-be long-term miners, or the other way around? Which type of miner is healthier for the coin's longer-term success?

I would suggest if we take it for granted that long-term miners are going to leave anyway, and the only hope we have to have any miners at all, is the coin hoppers, then I would suggest this means in effect the coin is already dead and there is no hope for the coin. Why? Because if all the long-term miners go away, then in one of these high difficulty eras, the coin will have unacceptably long confirmation times which stretch into days or more, and the exchanges and pools would drop them because it appears there is simply no activity anymore on the coin.

On the other hand, if we lose all the coin hoppers and the network hashrate drops to something pretty low, but more consistent regardless of jumps in difficulty level, then the coin would continue to generate blocks at approximately the rate of one per 10 minutes, so in that respect the coin would be very much alive; and since coin hoppers engage in dumping cheap coins on the market, the coins would have less downward pressure on price. If I am right on this, then some of the people who have cheap sell orders would rethink getting rid of Catcoins for cheap - by making them rethink they can always get more CATs for cheap. Then the prices can show a modest and consistent gain, and win more believers who mine the coin longer-term, and we see the network hashrate rebounding.

I am in no position to guarantee any outcome, and once a coin is in decline there is a lot to overcome, but in my estimation, the coin hoppers phenomenon has been putting a downward pressure on altcoins (into their graves) for a long time, and upward pressure on LTC and BTC (because when they dump, they are dumping *for* LTC's and BTC's to hold generally, otherwise they can't compute any "profit"), and just compare the market capitalizations of the coins involved. So either an alt can find a way to climb up in relevance and stability and value to hopefully have decent market cap one day, or they continue to have bad reputation as a graveyard for any BTC's you convert into them, unless you can dump them and get out in time, we will continue to lose more and more loyal miners and loyal coinholders.

Catcoin is not alone in this - most of the altcoins are languishing in the rapid oscillation of difficulty territory, and this is a systemic problem with incentives built into the difficulty adjustment algorithm. Systemic problems generally call out for systemic solutions, unless we are satisfied with the status quo.

So the real question seems to me - is it preferable to do everything possible to stabilize the difficulty and reward structure of the coin network, so maximum generated coins go to loyal miners - watch as the slowest portion of the difficulty cycle picks up network hashrate while the fastest portion of the difficulty cycle loses network hashrate, and accept the outcome what may come, knowing we did everything possible to make the coin healthy? Or is it preferable to try to chase after a higher hashrate from coin hoppers, bribing them with lots of cheap coins, knowing full well they have zero belief in the coin's potential and only come mine when they can "make a killing" doing so to obtain the coins for "cheap" and dump them on the exchanges - and hope somehow while keeping this reward structure in place, underpaid loyal miners continue to mine underpaid during high difficulty times so we don't end up with many hours between blocks?

I also specifically want to address the "new miners" angle, because this argument has a strong emotional appeal in that it paints a picture of a sympathetic wide-eyed and inexperienced person trying out Catcoins. I suggest that coin hopping for maximum profit is sophisticated behavior of someone who has been in the coin mining activity for a long time and not someone likely to change this mode of behavior until the incentives are fixed. Someone who is actually new to mining a coin would tend to just mine Litecoins, or if they find a non-LTC coin to mine that they like, they would tend to set their rigs up to mine that coin without particularly paying attention to 'profitability' ratings, at least for awhile. So if anything, keeping profitability low for loyal miners (who are more likely to be people new to mining) seems more likely to me to scare away "new" miners who will realize sooner or later they are being fleeced. On the other hand, fixing the incentives would scare way old-timers who are exploiting employing a sophisticated scheme to extract cheap Catcoins at the expense of the loyal miners many of whom may be unsophisticated miners - almost in a scam-like fashion. So if we want to be pro "new" miners, as miners who are too inexperienced to pay attention to profitability - then we should fix the incentives. Unless - do you really believe we should be taxing loyal/unsophisticated miners to pay for coin hoppers to only mine sometimes, when it's convenient for them, and to hell with people who are too "dumb" to mine when the difficulty is too high to be profitable?

stupid fork with idiotic parameters

i agree need second fork
adjust max diff increase to MAX! 1.5x current diff
..and the cat is saved

How does this not equate to a recipe to generate lots of cheap Catcoins just when the coin starts to get going? If the value of the coin goes up 50x or 100x due to some positive development we cannot currently foresee, then it means it would take many cycles of being at the top of profitability charts all over the place, inviting every tom, dick, and harry engaged in coin hopping to pick up "cheap" catcoins and dump them on the exchanges and put an end to the upward trend of the coin valuation, before we have had the opportunity to truly see how high it can go.

So we should be asking ourselves what is the root cause of our predicament? Is it that the difficulty adjustment has the freedom to make large changes when it seems appropriate - or that we have coin hoppers systematically show up to mine the coin on a cherry-picking basis, and cause an unhealthy oscillation in the difficulty levels? I submit that the former is merely a symptom, and the latter is the actual root cause. If you have good arguments in the other direction, please show the arguments, because if it is indeed the other way around, then a more general approach like you suggest may be more effective and/or there is no hope for any altcoins.

[envy2010]

Is there a chart you can see the nethashrate ?

Here: http://catcoins.biz/charts/#hashdiff

That's based on block times, which is the only way anyone can guess how much hash is pointed at the network.

This site shows wrong data. You can check current hashrate here: http://catpool.pw/

It's different data, not wrong data. NOBODY KNOWS what the real network hash rate is, we can only estimate based on blocktimes (which are random) and published pool hashrates (which are only a fraction of the network, and based on shares which are also random).

[Nullu]

Tomorrow I get my new graphics card, so with the one I currently have, I should have around 1 mhash/sec to throw at Catcoin whenever needed.