Still, we can't vote on cryptsy.
So after the Octoinvestor talking to them we should at least be able to vote. Shouldn't we?
Maybe they made the deal and everybody is only waiting for the right moment.
I'm honestly not sure what is going on with Cryptsy - the fact that it still isn't listed (and isn't even available to vote on) isn't part of the strategy. Now, we're in no rush to get listed on a major exchange from the perspective that it's keeping the multipools/etc away - especially when there are still bonus blocks out there. However, at the same time, we have 2 cloud-based programs finished that require a major exchange with an API to be production-ready. I would say continue to vote on MintPal and continue to contact Cryptsy inquiring about the status of 888 until we get through the bonus blocks. Then, at that point, we will reach out to our investors for an additional cash injection to help move 888 up the list at MintPal if-needed (although the closer we get without them the better so we can use more funds toward marketing/etc). I anticipate a flood of insanity as soon as OctoCoin is listed at Cryptsy and/or MintPal so we should be glad we've been sticking to this casual pace.
We are behind schedule on the new client being released but only because it will be the full upgrade we had planned initially - we have been experimenting with some additional functionality as well now that one of our devs has finished his main OctoCoin project and has some additional time. We're cruising along.
Most excellent! I'm glad you guys are making some progress and hope you're not running into too much trouble or opposition. As always, I'm excited for what the future holds in store for us OctoCoin fans! I know you guys are working on some kind of big gaming platform for Octo, and the last thing I want to do is step on anyone's toes or get in the way, but there's a couple of games I still have coming up as well, mostly for fun and maybe a little profit, but nothing to rival ya'lls Macau casino plans! I don't think anyone's played the grid game in weeks though, lol.
I've been so busy I have barely had time to read my emails or respond to PM's, I'm a little ashamed. But, new house (to us, at least, lol, it needs lots of work still), fixed my mom's car so they can go to Austin this weekend, found a dog, and a whole bunch of other things happened, except for 2. I still haven't shaved my beard, and I still haven't gotten laid, probably because I haven't shaved my beard. The good news is, I finally have a whole weekend of keyboard time in front of me, so it's time to -actually- get some stuff done and address a few issues. ***Any wallet bugs/issues mentioned in this post are of little/no consequence to the general end user and are not meant to spread FUD, only promote development*** had to throw that in, I mention some problem with something and I get PM's "edric stahp! FUD is bad, everyone run away! STAHP"
I'm going to go ahead and make this post my weekly/biweekly/whenever update, so the next couple of paragraphs are meant for the Octo devs. I know you guys are aware of issues, but I'm going to share my experiences, just in case there's something that's been missed or if it helps to pinpoint anything...
I'm pretty sure you saw my last few messages pertaining to the payout issues my pool was having with the updated wallet, would you be so kind as to pass that information along (if you haven't already)? If needed, at some point I can get something set up to do some more testing on different types of pool-related payout situations to help ensure we've squashed any more gremlins. I'm going to go ahead and try to reiterate the problems I've experienced with the updated wallet (and hopefully explain it clearly enough to understand). I hope I'm not annoying you guys, just want to help
The weirdest issue was it giving an error when manually sending out some small amounts (for the "weekly" giveaway), even when those amounts were outside of what was supposed to be "locked for users" (gave an error, failed to send specified amount but still subtracted the amount from the pool's liquid assets upon -each- attempt, subsequent attempt still gave an error but sent the transaction and did not return TXID). The perplexing thing was that even the failed transactions still counted off the pool's liquid balance, including the one that gave the same error, but sent out anyway (me persistently trying to send it), now the pool's amount "locked for users" exceeds our actual balance (showing a negative amount in liquid assets) which I'm trying to whittle down by donating my earnings directly to the pool, the value is always different depending on how much unconfirmed we have, MPOS has a couple of different options for accounting for actual and unconfirmed/immature balances but there's still something going on with that. It's possible that MPOS has some slight problem itself so it's just compounding the problem. With the older wallet, the pool still runs and processes payouts without the "locked for users" problem shutting off the payout cron. It has kept me up late a few nights pondering it, though, because I had 10k more than what was locked, and was only sending 2 payments of 1444 so aside from it deducting from the balance on every attempt with an error, it should have processed the transaction without error in the first place.
Ironically, since the update was meant to help out with people experiencing stuck transactions, I had never experienced it until using the new wallet, but did indeed get a stuck transaction. I sent what I had left in my personal wallet to the pool to help pad the negative liquid asset problem that I caused by repeatedly attempting to send those giveaway transactions I mentioned earlier. The incoming transaction was stuck, and one of the outgoing giveaway transactions was stuck for a bit too. When I switched back to the older version wallet, a rescan did the trick. Maybe through all of this, somehow, I made things worse or somehow caused problems with the "locked" coins in the wallet. I've never actually sat down and manually tested out coin locking features so my understanding of it is foggy, at best. It seems, though, that across the versions of the wallet that it handles locked coins differently.
God, it's so hard to make sense of in my own head let alone explain it clearly, lol. So we've established I suck at detailed explanations. When in doubt, just ramble and hope everyone understands.
As a pool operator my #1 priority is to every aspect of customer service, most importantly that everyone is getting every satoshi their hardware should (more on this later in this post!), but I'm also a borderline-OCD hacker and enthusiast so my drive to fix, tweak, customize, and do any good I can is pretty damn powerful and I feel a strong commitment to the things I'm involved in, particularly to Octo and MPOS.
The wall of text continues...
A (potential) matter has been brought to my attention by a user at my pool. He didn't mention anything in this thread because he didn't want to embarrass or badmouth me or anything, which is definitely thoughtful, but I feel that being transparent and honest is something that you guys, the community, really appreciates, so I think it's best to bring it up here as a matter of record and get everyone's input. Anyway, I was asked to look into his earnings because it didn't seem to match up to his figures or expectations. I've done a good bit of investigation into that today, and while everything checks out just fine, I'm left with some questions so I'm reaching out to you guys for a bit of help. The user that contacted me is running a 1.5mh miner his earnings seemed too low to him. I covered the first bases by making sure nothing got lost, no transactions were stuck or anything like that, no problems there. I've done a good deal of comparison in the last few hours between earnings/day estimations reported by my pool and from the earnings calculator at
http://cointweak.com, but am still left with some questions because of the semi-dynamic block rewards of Octo. To start off, in the "block reward" box, on the Octo mining calc at cointweak, the default value is 188, which I'm assuming is to help account for superblocks. What are everyone's thoughts as to the accuracy of the results provided by that? My pool's earnings estimation page gives you an estimation of coins/day, based off your hashrate, but only calculates it by the base block value specified in the pool's configuration (88), and doesn't factor in superblocks. In my conversations with my concerned user, I cited an example where I checked the pool's earnings estimation and it was showing 1200 coins/day, and checked back again a while later and it was halved, at only 600~/day (same hashrate, can't remember exactly but was 1.5mh-ish, don't remember difficulties at the time). He didn't quite agree that slight diff changes would have such a large impact on earnings, and I agree that's a little extreme, but coupled with bad luck getting superblocks I'm pretty well certain that's the deal. Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm not leaving anything to chance and want to make 100% certain that everyone gets the full value of their hashrates. I'd also like to get the pool to where it's providing a more accurate earnings estimate for everyone as well. I know most of you guys have busy lives and horny wives, but if you have a spare minute or two could you take note of your hashrates, diff, earnings/day estimation (MPOS - Statistics > Pool) vs your actual earnings? Even without the superblocks, diff goes up and down so quick it's probably impossible to get an accurate estimation, but the most helpful information would be actual 24h earnings per your hashrate, from any pool. I'd like to be able to compare people's earnings from other pools, just to be safe, and to put some minds at ease (mainly my concerned user, and my own). Like I said, I'm pretty certain rapid diff changes and bad superblock luck is throwing everything off, but I have to be sure.
That brings me back to what I was looking at on cointweak, the default value of 188 in the block reward box. I'm admittedly not the best mathematician but it stands to reason that it's impossible for any value in that box to give a reliably accurate result, when mining a superblock is left to chance (and the faster pool), but is it better than just using base values for estimations then being happy when you get bonus superblock coins??? If so I believe I can plug that value into the pool in such a manner as to base payout estimations off of it, without screwing up -actual- earnings. To be honest, I'd never really thought much about how the semi-dynamic rewards would mess up estimates. The important thing is just to make sure everyone's getting the proper credit.
Gotta give a shout out to shellbunner, the toughest general in the Octo Army! The rig is working pretty awesome, I can get it up to 2MH~, 3/4 of the cards work, gonna try to fix the other. The back of the PCB's are covered with thousands of teeny components, little resistors I think, lots chipped off one, possibly it still hashes even though it doesn't display. I don't have steady enough hands but my buddy Andy claims he could "solder the d!@k back on an ant", so I might let him have a crack at it lol. Right now got the others mining Octos, donating 99% back into the pool to fix the liquid balance bug and build up a buffer so it doesn't keep happening, though in the next day or so I'm going to divert some hashes to testing if earnings are what they should be across some other pools, I'm a traitor to myself! Once I can funnel some more coin into the pool's wallet I'm going to start doing the giveaways again. The glitch I had during the last giveaway set us back pretty far, ate up several weeks worth of collecting .8% fee, so once I offset that, there'll be weekly winners again!
Ok guys, my fingers are getting tired, I've been typing this on and off for about 5 hours or something. I let time creep up on me and now it's too late to buy beer
Pool hashrates have gone up and down quite a bit since we first opened up, but I think we're at an all time low right now. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that the downward slide in hashrate is a sort of "snowball effect". Hashrate goes down, we get less superblocks, user says "hey, I don't think this pool is paying me enough" and they switch, so hashrate goes down, we get less superblocks, and so on. I'm a fairly smart guy but that actually just now occurred to me, right before I hit post so I had to slide this in somewhere XD We'll survive the dark times, and one day those superblocks will be gone (don't remember when). I haven't figured out yet what causes an upward trend in our hashrate, maybe it's just a random decision to mine at my pool? Or when shellbunner connects a 150MH rental rig to my pool, then everyone sees, "oh yea Fedaykin's pool is where the love is!" Bring it on! lol
As always, thanks everyone, I appreciate all of you and all your support! If anyone is able to throw some numbers at me and answer some of my above questions, that'd be awesome. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any issues, questions, or concerns either, always happy to help.
