[ANN] Catcoin - Scrypt meow!

[Nullu]

I ran a simulation of what would happen if we continuously adjusted difficulty based on taking the average time it took to solve the last 36 blocks, and used the ratio of (10 minutes) / (average time it took to solve last 36 blocks), to determine what the difficulty should be for the next block. I used real data pulled from catchain.info for when each block was generated. The blue lines indicate the algorithm we are using now. The red indicates the simulation of what is being proposed (unless I misunderstood the formula, or made a mistake in my simulation code).

I am going back over my code to make sure I did not make any mistakes, so I want to make a disclaimer that this is only the initial result. But since there is talk of a fork, I wanted to get  a graph of the simulation out as soon as possible, for discussion.

Etblvu1

The biggest error factor is that you didn't take it into account that hash power is a factor of the real-time profitability.
Different diff target algorithm attracts miners differently.

Which is the factor that is hardest to predict. How do you factor in market price when it's inherently unpredictable?

[etblvu1]

The biggest error factor is that you didn't take it into account that hash power is a factor of the real-time profitability.
Different diff target algorithm attracts miners differently.

Which is the factor that is hardest to predict. How do you factor in market price when it's inherently unpredictable?

Hi Nullu,

Thank you for your thoughtful contributions to this discussion.

I think it's impossible to directly factor in market price, and clearly if this graph is a fair representation of the "set difficulty based on the last 36" method, there are plenty of opportunities for the miner-dumpers to show up and keep the pumping and dumping of difficulty going (perhaps with even more extreme difficulty swings).

I do believe, though, you can generalize about what people would do when the market price has gone up, and distinguish it from the case of temporary spikes due to previous low difficulty - namely, put the miners through a test of endurance. If the difficulty climbs up in response to hashes going up, then a bunch of hashers disappear, and so the difficulty drops way down (as it should), a test of endurance would be to at that point constrain the difficulty from climbing very fast (say maximum of 1.25x per 36-block retarget) and simultaneously constrain the rewards to a fraction of the normal amount such that the coins-per-hash remains at the same level as the high difficulty era that preceded it. If the market price really had gone up a lot, then people would show up in large numbers and hash notwithstanding these constraints, until difficulty and hash levels recover to pre-crash levels. And at that point, the constraints can be removed, and we would be on solid footing. If the new people who show up find they are not making enough profits due to the low reward plus low difficulty (same ratio as normal reward high difficulty), they would leave after a short time, and the difficulty would remain at the low but realistic and sustainable level, until prices can go up and thereby attract people to mine long-term due to merits of the value of the coin moving forward rather than due to very short-term "profitability."

Etblvu1

[skillface]

Coin Payments Coin Vote Results

Ok well here are the coins that we will be adding...

Earthcoin - EAC     - 406
incakoin - NKA     - 172
Frozencoin - FZ     - 130
Xivra - XIV     - 99
Catcoin - CAT     - 95

Then we have a wildcard/dealer's choice, whatever you want you call it.
Spots - SPT

With the 300 josh accounts, then the 75% of the paid votes, LOT ends up with about 75...

Sorry to the coins that didn't get chosen, we wish them good luck in the next vote.

Thank you to everyone that participated.

We actually got in by a hair. Good news.

I bet LOT voters would be absolutely pissed right about now

[Evilish]

Coin Payments Coin Vote Results

Ok well here are the coins that we will be adding...

Earthcoin - EAC     - 406
incakoin - NKA     - 172
Frozencoin - FZ     - 130
Xivra - XIV     - 99
Catcoin - CAT     - 95

Then we have a wildcard/dealer's choice, whatever you want you call it.
Spots - SPT

With the 300 josh accounts, then the 75% of the paid votes, LOT ends up with about 75...

Sorry to the coins that didn't get chosen, we wish them good luck in the next vote.

Thank you to everyone that participated.

We actually got in by a hair. Good news.

I bet LOT voters would be absolutely pissed right about now

That's a great news.

[skillface]

Is this a spam thread?

.. what?

[kuroman]

Accepting Catcoin as a payment method in my new Steam and Minecraft shop. 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=411976.0

Quoting this for the good initiative
If you have many steam keys I would like to suggest you to make a website would be more interessting

Coin Payments Coin Vote Results

Ok well here are the coins that we will be adding...

Earthcoin - EAC     - 406
incakoin - NKA     - 172
Frozencoin - FZ     - 130
Xivra - XIV     - 99
Catcoin - CAT     - 95

Then we have a wildcard/dealer's choice, whatever you want you call it.
Spots - SPT

With the 300 josh accounts, then the 75% of the paid votes, LOT ends up with about 75...

Sorry to the coins that didn't get chosen, we wish them good luck in the next vote.

Thank you to everyone that participated.

We actually got in by a hair. Good news.

I bet LOT voters would be absolutely pissed right about now

great news hopefully we will join more services

[Nullu]

Good news for Catcoin. I think this coin is going to take some time to take off. I am currently mining other altcoins, and I hope they pay off. A 3rd of what I make will be invested back into Catcoin. I'll let everyone know exactly what my stake is in Catcoin.

I still have faith in this coin, but I need more BTC to be able to support it. When I invested I put 0.4 BTC into Catcoin. I need to buy back in for at least a couple of BTC.

[skillface]

So dogmaportraits.com already supports CAT according to the CoinPayments Directory. Hopefully other sites on that list will add it as a supported payment type soon.

[Maverickthenoob]

Honestly I'm a little concerned about how this new fork is being handled. This idea of 'expect another release and hardfork next Caturday' doesn't exactly inspire confidence, at least for me. I have a feeling that others share my sentiment and may even give up mining CAT entirely, leaving for another coin less likely to fork every other week. And some people will just scoff at this simply because the dev isn't anywhere to be seen.

I was pretty hopeful for the last fork, and it did help somewhat, but I'm not quite as certain about this one. There needs to be a proper consensus, and not by 'voting with your hash'. That implies that smaller miners like myself have less say than the larger miners. And the whole point of CAT is to appeal to the smaller miners and traders as well as the large ones. Even if I were to 'vote' for the new fork, my 300KH/s isn't going to influence that much now is it?

Still, something needs to be done about the difficulty oscillation. I'm just not entirely sure that re-targeting every block is the correct solution, even if it takes the average of the last 36 blocks.

I feel that the vast majority of the Catcoin community aren't even aware of this test. And given that the new fork is meant to take effect in a short period of time..

I'm not sure what part of this you're not understanding. This isn't our fork, the board or KR105 didn't authorize this, nor did we get a consensus from the community on it. Why? Because we didn't have anything to do with it. These are the actions of 1 community member providing an alternative. I can't tell him to take the code down, because I have no authority to. You could do this with any coin, clone the git repo and call it a fork. THe only way it actually becomes a fork is if people largely adopt it.

I've spoken with hozer about his weekly updates being a bad idea, but in this case he seems to want to do his own thing. He is providing assistance to Catcoins board, but these actions with the alternate fork are his and his alone. I have messaged KR105 to see if he will do another fork for us and we really need to get that done. Please people, don't let the actions of one person out to be more than it is. Stop focusing on this and focus on fixing this coin.

[skillface]

Honestly I'm a little concerned about how this new fork is being handled. This idea of 'expect another release and hardfork next Caturday' doesn't exactly inspire confidence, at least for me. I have a feeling that others share my sentiment and may even give up mining CAT entirely, leaving for another coin less likely to fork every other week. And some people will just scoff at this simply because the dev isn't anywhere to be seen.

I was pretty hopeful for the last fork, and it did help somewhat, but I'm not quite as certain about this one. There needs to be a proper consensus, and not by 'voting with your hash'. That implies that smaller miners like myself have less say than the larger miners. And the whole point of CAT is to appeal to the smaller miners and traders as well as the large ones. Even if I were to 'vote' for the new fork, my 300KH/s isn't going to influence that much now is it?

Still, something needs to be done about the difficulty oscillation. I'm just not entirely sure that re-targeting every block is the correct solution, even if it takes the average of the last 36 blocks.

I feel that the vast majority of the Catcoin community aren't even aware of this test. And given that the new fork is meant to take effect in a short period of time..

I'm not sure what part of this you're not understanding. This isn't our fork, the board or KR105 didn't authorize this, nor did we get a consensus from the community on it. Why? Because we didn't have anything to do with it. These are the actions of 1 community member providing an alternative. I can't tell him to take the code down, because I have no authority to. You could do this with any coin, clone the git repo and call it a fork. THe only way it actually becomes a fork is if people largely adopt it.

I've spoken with hozer about his weekly updates being a bad idea, but in this case he seems to want to do his own thing. He is providing assistance to Catcoins board, but these actions with the alternate fork are his and his alone. I have messaged KR105 to see if he will do another fork for us and we really need to get that done. Please people, don't let the actions of one person out to be more than it is. Stop focusing on this and focus on fixing this coin.

Well it's not like it's going to get the hashrate it needs to take effect anyway, so I guess the entire discussion is moot. Right now I'm more concerned that this may have an impact on any 'official' fork in the future.

[hozer]

Upon review that was an entirely different scenario. That was a direct and deliberate attack on the coin.

Apparently so.  Yet the 'guy' is still out there.  This is something else BTC didn't have to deal with when it was less than 1 month old.

 "The board" isn't talking about 51%ing anything, we want the community to reach a consensus on this coin and how to fix it ASAP, so we can begin implementing this fix.

I don't recall anyone suggesting the board is planning a coup.

The hash rate is in free fall, we must do something relatively quickly or we're soon going to be on the list of dead coins. These are not threats at all, just facts.

I've been living with my pad less than an arms-length away with two pages open since just after Christmas:  Coinium and the catcoins.biz/charts.  It appears that the hash rate is recovering again with 12 blocks to go before the next adjustment.  Are we truly in need of another 'emergency' fork?  Not to fight, but is it clear to the 'board' this is the case?

SO, will the 1 block 36 average method satisfy members of the community to fix the diff jumps for the short-medium term?

How the hell do we know?    Has it been looked-at?  Back tested?  Or are we 'doing something, even if it's wrong'?

Has anyone looked at other coins to see what/how they're adjusting?

Get me a genesis block for -testnet and a model that ALSO includes coin-jumper profitability calculations, and I'll back test it.

Can you please confirm the output of the mainline released catcoind, when run with 'catcoind --testnet' exits immediately on startup and paste the output?

You are running a coin with no test network, and no models to backtest with, and you still want backtesting?

It's clear to mean something is broke, and the only way to test it is run it live, unless the community is going to step up and provide a testnet with 10 Megahash we can turn on and off at will.

[asdlolciterquit]

does version 0.8.6.1 not syncronize anymore?

[strelok369]

Look people i have some simple research on diff recalc

Code(matlab):

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
clear
clc

N = 36*10+1;
hashrate   = zeros(1, N);
difficulty =  ones(1, N);
blocktime  = zeros(1, N);

lastchange = 1;
hashrate(1,1) = 1000;

%imaging floating hashrate somehow (i'm not a wizard of probability theory)
for i=2:N
   change = rand(1,1)/4*sqrt(i-lastchange);
   if change>1
      hashrate(1, i) = rand(1,1)*1000*2+100;
      lastchange = i;
   else
      hashrate(1, i) = hashrate(1, i-1);
   end
end

%hashrate   = [ones(1, (N-1)/3)*100 ones(1,(N-1)/3).*1000 ones(1, (N-1)/3+1)*100];
%single stepup stepdown
%end imaging floating hashrate somehow

%diff and approximate blocktimes with sliding window
for i=1:37
    blocktime(1,i) = (difficulty(1,i)*2^32/(hashrate(1, i)*1e6)/60);
end

for i=(37+1):N
    average  = sum(blocktime (1, (i-36):(i-1)))/36; %average of blocktimes
    averdiff = sum(difficulty(1, (i-36):(i-1)))/36; %very important, otherwise unstable
    difficulty(1,i) = averdiff/(average/10); %10 is target, such recalc have astatism
    blocktime(1,i) = (difficulty(1,i)*2^32/(hashrate(1, i)*1e6)/60);
end
%end diff and approximate blocktimes with sliding window

%show results for window
fig1 = figure(1);
stairs(hashrate./100, 'color' , 'red');
hold on
stairs(difficulty./10, 'color' , 'green');
stairs(blocktime, 'color' , 'blue');
hold off
%end show results for window

difficulty =  ones(1, N);
blocktime  = zeros(1, N);

%diff and approximate blocktimes with classic recalc
lastrecalc = 1;
for i=2:N
   if i-lastrecalc > 36
       average  = sum(blocktime (1, (i-36):(i-1)))/36;
       difficulty(1,i) = difficulty(1,i-1)/(average/10); %10 is target, such recalc have astatism
       lastrecalc = i;
   else
       difficulty(1,i) = difficulty(1,i-1);
   end
   blocktime(1,i) = (difficulty(1,i)*2^32/(hashrate(1, i)*1e6)/60);
end
%end diff and approximate blocktimes with classic recalc

fig2 = figure(2);
%show results for classic
stairs(hashrate./100, 'color' , 'red');
hold on
stairs(difficulty./10, 'color' , 'green');
stairs(blocktime, 'color' , 'blue');
hold off
%end show results for classic
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Graphs:
RED  - hashrate
GREEN - diff
BLUE - blocktime
Classic random hashrate:
http://gifti.me/i/VU1tRvI.png
Sliding window random hashrate:
http://gifti.me/i/NVtrkm.png
Step hashrate classic recalc:
http://gifti.me/i/PdguI.png
Step hashrate sliding window:
http://gifti.me/i/qBS3eE0I.png

Market reaction not implemented, profitability factor not implemented,
all values on graphs in relative "green parrots", see code to understand
real world approx values.

Matlab arrays starts from 1 not 0;

Warning: if sliding window then in next difficulty must take part average
difficulty on window, not previous difficulty, othervise system unstable.

[Nullu]

I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised with the research that's being put into this. Some smart people in this thread for sure.

[hozer]

Honestly I'm a little concerned about how this new fork is being handled. This idea of 'expect another release and hardfork next Caturday' doesn't exactly inspire confidence, at least for me. I have a feeling that others share my sentiment and may even give up mining CAT entirely, leaving for another coin less likely to fork every other week. And some people will just scoff at this simply because the dev isn't anywhere to be seen.

I was pretty hopeful for the last fork, and it did help somewhat, but I'm not quite as certain about this one. There needs to be a proper consensus, and not by 'voting with your hash'. That implies that smaller miners like myself have less say than the larger miners. And the whole point of CAT is to appeal to the smaller miners and traders as well as the large ones. Even if I were to 'vote' for the new fork, my 300KH/s isn't going to influence that much now is it?

Still, something needs to be done about the difficulty oscillation. I'm just not entirely sure that re-targeting every block is the correct solution, even if it takes the average of the last 36 blocks.

I feel that the vast majority of the Catcoin community aren't even aware of this test. And given that the new fork is meant to take effect in a short period of time..

I'm not sure what part of this you're not understanding. This isn't our fork, the board or KR105 didn't authorize this, nor did we get a consensus from the community on it. Why? Because we didn't have anything to do with it. These are the actions of 1 community member providing an alternative. I can't tell him to take the code down, because I have no authority to. You could do this with any coin, clone the git repo and call it a fork. THe only way it actually becomes a fork is if people largely adopt it.

I've spoken with hozer about his weekly updates being a bad idea, but in this case he seems to want to do his own thing. He is providing assistance to Catcoins board, but these actions with the alternate fork are his and his alone. I have messaged KR105 to see if he will do another fork for us and we really need to get that done. Please people, don't let the actions of one person out to be more than it is. Stop focusing on this and focus on fixing this coin.

Skillface, please mine on one of the p2pools, and post your address as a 'no-fork' vote. As far as I can tell, most miners with over a megahash are coinhoppers because they need to pay their electric bills. I take any hash, no matter how small, that STICKS AROUND DURING HIGH DIFF a hell of a lot more seriously as a vote by hash than the guys who only show up to grab some coin and leave. You can make your choice transparent to the rest of us by mining on a p2pool node (like http://p2pool.name:9333/static/ )

The difficulty changes in 4 blocks, (block 20984) and if, because I threatened to fork, the coinhoppers stay away, YOU might actually benefit. If we have reasonable behavior of hashes, and the next low-difficulty period takes more than a few hours, I have plenty of time to pull the fork at block 20999. If everyone shows up to make a profit and screw the little guys over, then I'm going to make it a little more expensive for them, at least this time.

Hell, I didn't even stick around for a couple of the high diff periods, I just could not justify it, and it pissed me off I had to make that decision to protect my own interest at the expense of the community, and I decided about the only ethical course of action I could take was do a live test.

Since I mentioned the need for a testnet and dedicated hashing power, what if we made a 'catcoin-test' pool who's primary purpose was to run on the catcoin testnet, and when we are NOT testing, run as a profit-switching auto-buy pool that pays out in CAT. Then we'd really know the best way to deal with coinhoppers because we ARE one.

[skillface]

Honestly I'm a little concerned about how this new fork is being handled. This idea of 'expect another release and hardfork next Caturday' doesn't exactly inspire confidence, at least for me. I have a feeling that others share my sentiment and may even give up mining CAT entirely, leaving for another coin less likely to fork every other week. And some people will just scoff at this simply because the dev isn't anywhere to be seen.

I was pretty hopeful for the last fork, and it did help somewhat, but I'm not quite as certain about this one. There needs to be a proper consensus, and not by 'voting with your hash'. That implies that smaller miners like myself have less say than the larger miners. And the whole point of CAT is to appeal to the smaller miners and traders as well as the large ones. Even if I were to 'vote' for the new fork, my 300KH/s isn't going to influence that much now is it?

Still, something needs to be done about the difficulty oscillation. I'm just not entirely sure that re-targeting every block is the correct solution, even if it takes the average of the last 36 blocks.

I feel that the vast majority of the Catcoin community aren't even aware of this test. And given that the new fork is meant to take effect in a short period of time..

I'm not sure what part of this you're not understanding. This isn't our fork, the board or KR105 didn't authorize this, nor did we get a consensus from the community on it. Why? Because we didn't have anything to do with it. These are the actions of 1 community member providing an alternative. I can't tell him to take the code down, because I have no authority to. You could do this with any coin, clone the git repo and call it a fork. THe only way it actually becomes a fork is if people largely adopt it.

I've spoken with hozer about his weekly updates being a bad idea, but in this case he seems to want to do his own thing. He is providing assistance to Catcoins board, but these actions with the alternate fork are his and his alone. I have messaged KR105 to see if he will do another fork for us and we really need to get that done. Please people, don't let the actions of one person out to be more than it is. Stop focusing on this and focus on fixing this coin.

Skillface, please mine on one of the p2pools, and post your address as a 'no-fork' vote. As far as I can tell, most miners with over a megahash are coinhoppers because they need to pay their electric bills. I take any hash, no matter how small, that STICKS AROUND DURING HIGH DIFF a hell of a lot more seriously as a vote by hash than the guys who only show up to grab some coin and leave. You can make your choice transparent to the rest of us by mining on a p2pool node (like http://p2pool.name:9333/static/ )

The difficulty changes in 4 blocks, (block 20984) and if, because I threatened to fork, the coinhoppers stay away, YOU might actually benefit. If we have reasonable behavior of hashes, and the next low-difficulty period takes more than a few hours, I have plenty of time to pull the fork at block 20999. If everyone shows up to make a profit and screw the little guys over, then I'm going to make it a little more expensive for them, at least this time.

Hell, I didn't even stick around for a couple of the high diff periods, I just could not justify it, and it pissed me off I had to make that decision to protect my own interest at the expense of the community, and I decided about the only ethical course of action I could take was do a live test.

Since I mentioned the need for a testnet and dedicated hashing power, what if we made a 'catcoin-test' pool who's primary purpose was to run on the catcoin testnet, and when we are NOT testing, run as a profit-switching auto-buy pool that pays out in CAT. Then we'd really know the best way to deal with coinhoppers because we ARE one.

Wait, which one is which?



Top two are votes for the fork and the bottom two are against? I'm a little confused.

[hozer]

Before anyone thinks 'fork' they might want to read this:
https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,2178.0.html

Can we resist this type of complex 51%-with-hax-fest?

Can someone please contact cryptsy and tell them to increase confirmations to a minimum of 12, and maybe up to 40 until there is a new consensus released code that results in an overnight/high difficulty period hash rate of at least 200 Mhash?

The FTC attacker would love to remain anonymous, and might have already been probing CAT to do exactly the same thing.

Now this is only my personal opinion, but I think we have two effective defenses:

1) lots more hash that sticks around
2) transparency (i.e., get people to publish 'well-known' generation addresses)

I also appreciate that some of you might want to remain anonymous, and I'd have to advise you to use **OTHER** cryptocurrencies if anonymous transactions are important for you. CAT is currently not big enough to pay the costs (in hash rate) needed to defend BOTH the integrity of the block chain, and your privacy. One of them will have to give.

[Nullu]

Is there some sort of collective amnesia taking place? You do realise Catcoin nearly died at the last fork, right?

This is such a bad idea. Let the network decide. If you start talking to the exchanges, they're just going to delist it and be done with it.

[foodies123]

Before anyone thinks 'fork' they might want to read this:
https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,2178.0.html

Can we resist this type of complex 51%-with-hax-fest?

Can someone please contact cryptsy and tell them to increase confirmations to a minimum of 12, and maybe up to 40 until there is a new consensus released code that results in an overnight/high difficulty period hash rate of at least 200 Mhash?

The FTC attacker would love to remain anonymous, and might have already been probing CAT to do exactly the same thing.

Now this is only my personal opinion, but I think we have two effective defenses:

1) lots more hash that sticks around
2) transparency (i.e., get people to publish 'well-known' generation addresses)

I also appreciate that some of you might want to remain anonymous, and I'd have to advise you to use **OTHER** cryptocurrencies if anonymous transactions are important for you. CAT is currently not big enough to pay the costs (in hash rate) needed to defend BOTH the integrity of the block chain, and your privacy. One of them will have to give.

stop doing drugs mate. Cryptographic Anonymous Transactions coin isn't going to fork because you're smoking a bad batch.

[hozer]

Skillface, please mine on one of the p2pools, and post your address as a 'no-fork' vote. As far as I can tell, most miners with over a megahash are coinhoppers because they need to pay their electric bills. I take any hash, no matter how small, that STICKS AROUND DURING HIGH DIFF a hell of a lot more seriously as a vote by hash than the guys who only show up to grab some coin and leave. You can make your choice transparent to the rest of us by mining on a p2pool node (like http://p2pool.name:9333/static/ )

The difficulty changes in 4 blocks, (block 20984) and if, because I threatened to fork, the coinhoppers stay away, YOU might actually benefit. If we have reasonable behavior of hashes, and the next low-difficulty period takes more than a few hours, I have plenty of time to pull the fork at block 20999. If everyone shows up to make a profit and screw the little guys over, then I'm going to make it a little more expensive for them, at least this time.

Hell, I didn't even stick around for a couple of the high diff periods, I just could not justify it, and it pissed me off I had to make that decision to protect my own interest at the expense of the community, and I decided about the only ethical course of action I could take was do a live test.

Since I mentioned the need for a testnet and dedicated hashing power, what if we made a 'catcoin-test' pool who's primary purpose was to run on the catcoin testnet, and when we are NOT testing, run as a profit-switching auto-buy pool that pays out in CAT. Then we'd really know the best way to deal with coinhoppers because we ARE one.

Wait, which one is which?



Top two are votes for the fork and the bottom two are against? I'm a little confused.

Is the latest http://kittyco.in/p2pool update any better?