[POLL] Geist Geld restart - is it a good idea ?

[Lolcust]

It has been repeatedly suggested that I should restart GG because some people have earned somewhere around several hundred thousands "in a manner that is against the rules of the network".

Specifically, I would use two quotes below (from a thread now locked, hence me not replying there) to elaborate on my opinion on the issue and hopefully foster a level-headed civilized discussion.

I guess you can exchange anything with value, but I would have less faith in these testcoins over any of the alternates, especially as you can see some of the "testing" has produced ....non valid results based on the rules of the coin.. see arts creative time stamping.

why would I want to buy gelds produced this way?

Well, I could restart the chain, especially since the timestamp issue is more or less resolved by now, but that seems to me a questionable proposition. First and foremost that would invalidate the coins that have not been produced by "exotic" means, which is kinda, well, mean to all those who joined in early on.

Second, there is no upper limit on the amount of GG in nature (well, theoretically there is, due to data type currently used, but it is upwards of one hundred billions) thus one can not claim that the people who have carried out said operations have "claimed an unfair share of finite resource" due to, well, said resource not being (in any meaningful way) finite

I think they first have to fix the bugs and restart the chain.
I'm sure this will happen soon.

As a matter of fact, the timestamp issues per se have been fixed

The case of Express run-in isn't technically a "code exploit" proper, since he used massive computational superiority to carry out the "51%" attack, and impose whatever rules he felt like for the duration of attack.

As long as 51% of any alt chain's hashing power remains within a given singular person's reach, said person can essentially do whatever s/he pleases.

P.S.:
I could restart GG with "licensed mining" on. It will be a key management nightmare, though, since people who want to mine will have to reach me via PM and IRC to get their "license"

[Spacy]

I think the option "Let Geist Geld die" is missing 

[ElectricMucus]

I vouch for it, even when I mined a few with legit means, the current state is unbearable. The thing is: Either ArtForz is still messing with it or some other people have adapted his code for crushing the difficulty adjustment. There are several new blocks on the network every second right now and if this continues it will become useless.

[Lolcust]

I think the option "Let Geist Geld die" is missing 

Awww, y u no love little experimental chain ? 

[Lolcust]

I vouch for it, even when I mined a few with legit means, the current state is unbearable. The thing is: Either ArtForz is still messing with it or some other people have adapted his code for crushing the difficulty adjustment. There are several new blocks on the network every second right now and if this continues it will become useless.

Um, are you observing it right-now or are you just now downloading Express's block-storm ?

What block are you now at (getinfo)?

[ElectricMucus]

Well it could be that there was so much missing I closed it overnight and just started it again so there might be a few hours missing, but shouldn't the downloaded old blocks not show up as new ones in the mining software?
But I will let it sit a little lets see...

[Lolcust]

They show up the diff as if they were new (they are "new" from the client's perspective) until you reach current block (at this moment 32400 on this very moment, diff 44-someth)

I too have found it mildly confusing some time ago.

[Isepick]

Personally I view them as being paid bounties for finding flaws in the code. It isn't as though any transactions got messed up and anyone else lost any gelds that had been mined. Providing of course there won't be any more 51% attacks for the moment, there shouldn't be any showstopping problems going forward. The 'creative timestamps' hole has been plugged and shouldn't happen again. I am not concerned about what has happened before in this blockchain. I am concerned about what happens later though.

Several million bitcoins were mined before most of us found it. It does not matter how they were mined, and if someone had executed similar attacks in the first 20,000 blocks of Bitcoin, would people be crying about it now? Most would not be aware there ever was a problem. Anyhow, my 2 satoshis

[Sekioh]

Yeah that was a spamfest, left on all night, took longer than bitcoin for less data, processing the chain must be a major part of the speed. ~28mb of data took few hours as opposed to bitcoin downloading the gig and being ready in the same time.

So, with GUIMiner on Solo for this to the daemon, are shares actual blocks solved? or does the daemon automatically make shares like a pool would when it delegates work? I check balance and transactions and everything still 0. It sounds like difficulty is low enough though to have gotten something over a day.

[Lolcust]

Yeah that was a spamfest, left on all night, took longer than bitcoin for less data, processing the chain must be a major part of the speed. ~28mb of data took few hours as opposed to bitcoin downloading the gig and being ready in the same time.

So, with GUIMiner on Solo for this to the daemon, are shares actual blocks solved? or does the daemon automatically make shares like a pool would when it delegates work? I check balance and transactions and everything still 0. It sounds like difficulty is low enough though to have gotten something over a day.

Well, it did enter a "meditative state" for about 5 secs with me when I downloaded the "Express run-in" chunk, but then again it's an old core2duo box with an old GPU and 2gb RAM here...

As for guiminer, I am currently running GUI miner with Geist on a prehistoric ghetto box with rather old GPU, and it is finding them blocks quite bearably for such a junk box.

Post your GUIminer settings, perhaps ?

[ElectricMucus]

They show up the diff as if they were new (they are "new" from the client's perspective) until you reach current block (at this moment 32400 on this very moment, diff 44-someth)

I too have found it mildly confusing some time ago.

Thanks, that clears it up a little.

What does the "not practically limited resource" mean in numbers anyway?
You wrote that the amount of Geistgeld would be comparable to the power of the sun, so the equivalent of mining all Geistgeld would be constructing a dyson sphere
So this seems out of the question right now but we have no idea what might come up in the future...

Just out of interest how much processing power would it take, and is it possible without converting earth into a giant computer running on molecular machinery?

[Lolcust]

What does the "not practically limited resource" mean in numbers anyway?

Bitcoin can support up to 130-something billions of coins in a chain (more would need fairly sophisticated code overhaul, I'm being told)

Let's be somewhat conservative and assume 100 billions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000000000_%28number%29)

100000000000 is, well, a fucking lot.

Consider this - a billion seconds is 11574,07 days or 31,7 years.
 
Even if Geist is to ever reach one block per 7 seconds (which, according to some people I am inclined to trust, might prove excessive for a coin that wants to be pool-friendly), it will take out about 31 year (give or take few) to mine out a single billion coins at such a rate.

Again, we have more than one hundred billions as a "technical maximum of coins" in a blockchain.

You wrote that the amount of Geistgeld would be comparable to the power of the sun, so the equivalent of mining all Geistgeld would be constructing a dyson sphere
So this seems out of the question right now but we have no idea what might come up in the future...

Dis is not how dem meta-phors are s'posed to work, mate

The sun metaphor was to indicate a semi-constant and   non-diminishing supply of resource, not to imply anything about stellar engineering's relationship with Geist Geld

Just out of interest how much processing power would it take, and is it possible without converting earth into a giant computer running on molecular machinery?

You mean "mine out 100 000 000 000 of Geists" ?

That would take a stupid amount of time (assuming no more 51% run-ins, lol ). By that time, bitcoin forks might very well grow self-aware or something   

[MaGNeT]

I have about 15,000 GeistGeld Coins but I think a restart would be fair.
I never thought it would be for real anyway, just testin'.

[Sekioh]

As for guiminer, I am currently running GUI miner with Geist on a prehistoric ghetto box with rather old GPU, and it is finding them blocks quite bearably for such a junk box.

Post your GUIminer settings, perhaps ?

host: localhost
port: 8777
device: GeForce 8600M GT

MH/s: 3.85

Shares Accepted: 25 (5)

I mean it's mining away and occasionally getting 'shares' from geistd but when launching a seperate command window and testing with 'getbalance' 'listaccounts' 'listtransactions' etc. everythings still 0'ed out and empty.

[CosicMiner]

I have mined about 13,000 gg. If a reset would be executed, fine. I knew from start that mining this would be a bit of a gamble.
The ultimate solution would be for BitcoinExpress to donate the 20,000 (or more?) blocks to the bounty fund. That way the small miners wont get screwed. This bounty fund would come in great use to promote new services for GeistGeld.

[Lolcust]

 

Looks like another run-in of same kind is in progress. Oh come on....

[CosicMiner]

Yep, all my recent blocks are orphaned..
Looks like 20k+ blocks again.

[Lolcust]

I am vaguely feeling like using lic mining

[CosicMiner]

How would lic meaning work? Can you pull someones license if they dont behave?

[Sekioh]

Yeah just searched for the thread a minute ago to post, I'm getting up to 60k blocks and still downloading, maybe thats what had happened, I had shares while I was sleeping which were blocks, but they all got invalidated and stopped hashing when it had to start catching up on the chain again :C