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[localhost]

Diff is at 2791 now... indicating somewhere between your 10% and 15%.... try 13%, I think I read that somewhere as the "official" number.

Yup, the only thing broken in diff adjustment is its design. But otherwise it "works" as intended.

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[Red]

Ah, I see. For those wanting to do their own calculations, it would appear that only odd-numbered blocks are actually mined. Even-numbered blocks are created by some kind of trusted node or something and pay 3.2 SC to RealSolid's CPF in place of the usual generation payout.

That's actually pretty darn clever! He has created a trivial implementation of a vector clock. Basically the "trusted nodes" are really time keepers marking what happened in what order. I'm assuming they are known in number and non-anonymous nodes.

In the case of a network partitioning (intensional or otherwise) the known trusted nodes have to be partitioned as well. In this case, since you know the total number of trusted nodes, you have an additional piece of information to use in reconciling chain forks. The number of trusted nodes marking time on each fork. This defines the center of the SolidCoin universe.

If 90% of the trusted nodes are marking time on one fork, and you are hammering a fork with 10% of trusted nodes marking time, you will probably lose when the partitioned networks recombine. But fortunately, for you, that should become apparent as you see timekeepers drop off your chain.

[Caesium]

Diff is at 2791 now... indicating somewhere between your 10% and 15%.... try 13%, I think I read that somewhere as the "official" number.  And I have repeatedly said to johny that it is between 10 and 15 %

Max adjustment upwards is 13%. Retarget occurs every 360 blocks. Difficulty started at 8 but the first retarget was actually down, to 6.03 if I remember rightly (due to the genesis block being generated quite far into the past).

[magik]

Diff is at 2791 now... indicating somewhere between your 10% and 15%.... try 13%, I think I read that somewhere as the "official" number.

Yup, the only thing broken in diff adjustment is its design. But otherwise it "works" as intended.

so it sounds like difficulty is increasing as planned.  The problem was initial design having initial difficulty of 1.  And that doesn't seem like that much of a problem.  It does heavily favor whoever was mining for these initial low difficulty rates.  As throwing huge amounts of processing power at the chain would not increase difficulty heavily.

If the initial difficulty was 10, the difficulty right now would be 10x what it is now.  If it started at 100 it would be 100x what is now.  This was probably an unplanned problem due to the variables stated above.

The only problem I see with having the hard 10-15% difficulty increase cap is the chain does not adjust well to large amounts of processing power being added.  That coupled with the uneven % increases in the negative direction, and the "attack" mentioned a few posts back of strobing/throttling a large botnet onto the chain seem like it could become a problem.  Not so much a huge problem, just that a large amount of processing power could be used on the chain for a longer amount of time due to the retargetting scheme - which would mean potential attackers could "harvest" more out of the chain without affecting the difficulty as much.

I also don't think the huge # of stales at the start was an attack.  It more sounds like the extremely low difficulty of 1 coupled with a huge influx of unexpected miners caused a lot more problems than expected.  If you are generating a block every 1s - it's going to be real hard to keep the whole network on the same chain.  Propogation time alone of the blocks would probably take longer than generating a new block - and that was more the main issue it seems at the start of this chain.

As for central authority and % skimming of generated blocks that's a whole other issue not related to security, and more related to trust and design.  As people have been posting, that really is an issue with trust and with who controls that wallet.

Claims of 51% attack preventions - I don't believe there is enough evidence or proof here to refute or back up those claims.  But I'd be wary of assuming this is true without proof.  But I also wouldn't go out of my way to say it's not there.... There is no proof for either side to be true, just claims that their side is true....  Show me a 51% network control double spend and I'll believe it doesn't have protection, or show us/explain to us the code of how a 51% attack couldn't succeed.  But without proof on either side my bias would be to assume it isn't true because there's no gain, only potential loss by assuming it is true without proof.

edit: difficulty started at 8? or you could think of it as difficulty starting at 6.03 after first retarget?
6 * (1.13^69) = 27578.0688

[sd]

The trusted nodes are where the "51% proof" comes from.   Another name for them would be the central authority.
In theory anyone can be one if they meet the networks requirements, but CH/RS has ducked every time anyone asked what those are.

My guess is the 'network requirements' are that every second block has to be signed by some king of magic private key. Of course that would be terrible design as the key will leak sooner or later but I can't think of any other way of getting trusted super nodes to contribute to the block chain in the way SC2 seems to have done.

[localhost]

And why start difficulty at 8 instead of, say, 1000? Well, gifts for all fanboys 24/7 on IRC ready to start mining from second 0.
You can't at the same time say you're spreading early coins amongst "thousands" of early adopters and be surprised that a difficulty of 8 gives super fast blocks.

[Caesium]

And why start difficulty at 8 instead of, say, 1000? Well, gifts for all fanboys 24/7 on IRC ready to start mining from second 0.
You can't at the same time say you're spreading early coins amongst "thousands" of early adopters and be surprised that a difficulty of 8 gives super fast blocks.

Yeah great gift. 99% of all generations were invalid for the first hours anyway. I think the difficulty was started too low.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Someone must be gaming the difficulty.  Maybe the "pulsing attack" others have mentioned.

Difficulty adjusts ever 240 blocks (2 per day, 3 minute target block = 240 blocks per 12 hours).

I am showing 17873 blocks and difficulty of 2791
Initial difficulty was 8.

17873 / 240 = 74 adjustments (truncating the fraction)

The network has continually been behind the 3 minute target so every adjustment should be max upward.

If max adjust is 10%.  8 * 1.10^74 = 9205
If max adjust is 13%.  8 * 1.13^74 = 67,747
If max adjust is 15%.  8 * 1.15^74 = 248,159

Actual difficulty after 17873 blocks (74 adjustments) is 2791 (a mere 348x original difficulty).

What gives?

[Caesium]

Difficulty adjusts ever 240 blocks (2 per day, 3 minute target block = 240 blocks per 12 hours).

360. The target is 2-3 minutes (no I'm not sure what this means either, but anyone running the sc2 client can plainly see the difficulty change every 360 blocks).

[localhost]

Yeah great gift. 99% of all generations were invalid for the first hours anyway.

There were lots of invalid blocks, but only because valid blocks (thus valid SCs) were being created so fast.

I think the difficulty was started too low.

On this we agree.

[Red]

My guess is the 'network requirements' are that every second block has to be signed by some king of magic private key. Of course that would be terrible design as the key will leak sooner or later but I can't think of any other way of getting trusted super nodes to contribute to the block chain in the way SC2 seems to have done.

I don't think it requires a common key. It does seem to require making a donation to the central fund though. Assuming anyone could participate as a trusted peer if they wanted, then you have the following dynamic.

Fork A: One hundred independent trusted peers interspersing donations between 1000 generated blocks, means 10 donations each.
Fork B: One clandestine group interspersing donations between 1000 generated blocks, means 1000 donations.

Perhaps that is the disincentive?

[DeathAndTaxes]

You've been brewing over this all day with no break through, yet Magik here does the work and figures it out independently and you still fail to see the obvious?  And I don't think Magik has been spending hours wrestling with the concept.... heck I discovered the every other block thing that you all are up in arms about in beta through empirical observation... didn't even need the block explorer or the source code to do it....  so what really is your problem?

This answer?
6 * (1.13^69) = 27578.0688

I give a Magik a +1 for remember the first difficulty drop and working off that 6 w/ one less transition.

Only one small problem....
Difficulty isn't 27,578 right now.  

Other than that small glitch your right, it makes perfect sense.

Speaking of that difficulty drop.... WHY DID IT HAPPEN?  The first 360 blocks occured w/ average time of 2.2 seconds per block vs target of 360 seconds yet difficulty went down.  Got an answer for that one?  Since it is so easy and nobody needs source code anyways.

[BitterTea]

You've been brewing over this all day with no break through, yet Magik here does the work and figures it out independently and you still fail to see the obvious?  And I don't think Magik has been spending hours wrestling with the concept.... heck I discovered the every other block thing that you all are up in arms about in beta through empirical observation... didn't even need the block explorer or the source code to do it....  so what really is your problem?

This answer?
6 * (1.13^69) = 27578.0688

Only one small problem....
Difficulty isn't 27,578 right now. 

Other than that small glitch your right, it makes perfect sense.

In case he refutes that's the answer Magik came up with...

edit: difficulty started at 8? or you could think of it as difficulty starting at 6.03 after first retarget?
6 * (1.13^69) = 27578.0688

[Caesium]

Speaking of that difficulty drop.... WHY DID IT HAPPEN?  The first 360 blocks occured w/ average time of 2.2 seconds per block vs target of 360 seconds yet difficulty went down.  Got an answer for that one?  Since it is so easy and nobody needs source code anyways.

You actually going to read any of my posts? The answer is above.

[RandyFolds]

If you could understand all I've written why haven't you written it?

If you can understand English, why haven't you written the complete works of Shakespeare and Chaucer? Nice try, mongo.

It's funny watching everybody fight while the Titanic sinks.

The titanic isn't a good analogy. This is more like a 12' aluminum fishing boat sinking in the middle of a lake while the two drunk hillbillies in it wrestle each other over the last beer, both drowning in the process.

...you want to help, but you can't stop laughing long enough to catch your breath and swim out there.


Lastly, Maged, that was some shitty moderation.

[ThiagoCMC]

Diff is at 2791 now... indicating somewhere between your 10% and 15%.... try 13%, I think I read that somewhere as the "official" number.

Yup, the only thing broken in diff adjustment is its design. But otherwise it "works" as intended.

What is worse:

1) A possibility of a 51% attack OR:

2) CoinHunter being the POLICE of your entire economy??! (and earning 10% of all coins to himself!!)

LOL

[Maged]

Lastly, Maged, that was some shitty moderation.

As you can see, it was good moderation. BitcoinEXpress never attacked anything. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd love to hear it.

It is ok to warn people of an attack. It's ok to disclose details about the attack before, during, or after the attack has been done. It is not ok lie about an attack. That's just trolling.

At the current rate over 1 million coins will have been mined in the first day.  What do you think that just did to the value of Solid Coin 1.0 coins?

C) crushing attack that EXploited a design flaw.

I see what you did there.

my tribute since they banned him because maged get mad at him that he was actually winning.

Yeah, I thought the ban was unwarranted. If Maged wanted to ban someone, there's a much better target that's trolling all these threads.

Yeah totally unfair, i hope i don't get banned for civil disagreement with maged. From what i can tell maged got angry and magically somehow knew that bcx couldnt be responsible for what he said he was going to do, even he said before he did it. maged said no way bcx had that many server machines, maybe maged dont understand EC2 is not physical machines but instances in the cloud and some companies have unlimited access. yes bcx was not being abusive to anyone especially maged. dont understand it.

anyway, its clear what the conclusion is.

First off, we are taking out the trolls as we see them. Next, we don't ban people for disagreeing with us.

I understand EC2 just fine. I also understand that his company would have been charged about $100/hour for 400 instances, even on a contract (I don't know the exact amounts because he didn't say the types of instances). If I was just basing my opinion off of this thread, I would not have done anything. However, there's also the namecoin threat.

The simple reality is that his statements didn't add up.

I for one would have appreciated if 'banning' (and other implications) wasn't thrown around so easily by a Mod, especially with just minutes of room for explanation. Seeing as how there are numerous other reports of the blockchain growing peculiarly fast, I imagine it'd be beneficial to discovery for the alleged perpetrator to be active in this discussion.

Though I can see dealing with a personality like BCX could be tricky for a Mod, I think Maged dropped the ball on this one.

No big deal really in the grand scheme of things (no one bats 1.0), just my opinion.

All he needed to do was disclose his attack. He didn't. Even now there's no evidence that an attack ever happened.

Finally, I'm not even sure if he's banned. Only theymos can ban people, and he hasn't gotten back to me yet on his decision. If you look at his profile, he was at least still able to post for a hour or two after you guys started claiming that the attack was real.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I understand EC2 just fine. I also understand that his company would have been charged about $100/hour for 400 instances, even on a contract (I don't know the exact amounts because he didn't say the types of instances).

Last night price of small instance was $0.08 per hour.  400 instances would be only $32.  Amazon offers free computing time to repeat customers (I have 8000 hours of small instance time and I doubt I am what they consider a big spender).  They also offer volume discounts for major company buys.  Spot pricing was $0.025 per hour and looks like EC2 had almost 120 instances at that price (possible they could have had more earlier).  400 instances @ spot would have been $10 per hour.  Not sure where you are getting $100 per hour from? 

He may not have had 400 instances but one could easily run 400 instances for <$32 possibly even free. 

[RandyFolds]

Lastly, Maged, that was some shitty moderation.

As you can see, it was good moderation. BitcoinEXpress never attacked anything. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd love to hear it.

It is ok to warn people of an attack. It's ok to disclose details about the attack before, during, or after the attack has been done. It is not ok lie about an attack. That's just trolling.

He didn't attack anything? I really don't know, and after reading this whole thread, I still don't know. No one has proven anything one way or the other, at least not clearly enough for poor ole' me to get it.

[johnj]

Lastly, Maged, that was some shitty moderation.

As you can see, it was good moderation. BitcoinEXpress never attacked anything. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd love to hear it.

It is ok to warn people of an attack. It's ok to disclose details about the attack before, during, or after the attack has been done. It is not ok lie about an attack. That's just trolling.

Finally, I'm not even sure if he's banned. Only theymos can ban people, and he hasn't gotten back to me yet on his decision. If you look at his profile, he was at least still able to post for a hour or two after you guys started claiming that the attack was real.

@Maged

Solidcoin 2.0 uses a variable block generation time (really stupid) I just found a way to crank it up at will. Having the resouces I do I was able to take the beta client and put in a test environment.

I discovered if you hit Sc 2.0 at the onset hard it cannot readjust block rate regardless of difficulty LOL

So as long as I keep cloning EC2 instances and pouring it on, cha-ching!  

Dumbass coding supreme.

It *seems* that BCX's theory has so far proven itself: Block generation hasn't (meaningfully) adjusted, despite massive difficulty increases.