[ANN][MOTO] Motocoin

[MotoLevi]

If the bots generate maps and it can be seen by the server cant you just limit the amount of times you can generate a new map? No human would generate a map more than once a second or even 20 in a minute.

[e1ghtSpace]

If the bots generate maps and it can be seen by the server cant you just limit the amount of times you can generate a new map? No human would generate a map more than once a second or even 20 in a minute.

I don't think the maps are seen by the server, I think WilliamLie2 just saw that the number that shows how many times a map was generated until a good one was found.
It would be good if the person mining couldn't mine more than 5 blocks in a row in 5 minutes or they get blocked (maybe their IP address) until someone else mines the next block. But that would be easily bypassed.

[Vz]

That's interesting how fast was it botted again. This bot enumerates only about 1000-2000 levels to find a good one.

Wow. Since my desktop computer is broken, my laptop is the only thing I can mine with and it takes me 2.5 seconds just to generate 1 map

AFAIK only 25% of all maps are valid so you also enumerate several maps. There is also some time spend in precomputing some information that is necessary for rendering and bots don't need it.

EDIT: so if we count only valid maps then this bot enumerates only several hundreds.

Aaaaa.. it is a very sad.. really very sad.. I can't imagine that all is gone..((

[e1ghtSpace]

That's interesting how fast was it botted again. This bot enumerates only about 1000-2000 levels to find a good one.

Wow. Since my desktop computer is broken, my laptop is the only thing I can mine with and it takes me 2.5 seconds just to generate 1 map

AFAIK only 25% of all maps are valid so you also enumerate several maps. There is also some time spend in precomputing some information that is necessary for rendering and bots don't need it.

EDIT: so if we count only valid maps then this bot enumerates only several hundreds.

Aaaaa.. it is a very sad.. really very sad.. I can't imagine that all is gone..((

Well, there goes my whole months pay (0.1) down the drain.

Why does this always happen to me? First I forgot to buy motocoin and the price went up x5 and now I hold the coins and someone makes a bot. And he gave that fact away so now the coins are worthless. What was the point of that guys bot anyway! He just ruined the market for everyone, himself included so he can't even dump his coins.

[Spiky]

He just ruined the market for everyone, himself included so he can't even dump his coins.

It's not ruined, I think there'll always be some cycles: human-mined > bot-mined > human-mined again etc.

Besides, the price will definitelly go up when we get to the second exchange.

I'm glad I've mined plenty of moto during the last week.

[HunterMinerCrafter]

DON'T PANIC!

This bot has actually been active for several days.  I first noticed the pattern in the filtered maps before the weekend.  It was originally solving maps rather slowly, and not running full time.

It is, in some ways, a significantly more impressive bot than anything that we saw in "round one."  It appears to be filtering for low density maps, with low "diagonal" weightings to the perlin.  It then solves these maps through (I'm assuming) the same sort of annealing, but does so very quickly compared to round 1 solvers. It seems to be running with some decent processing power behind it as well, given the rates.

Does anyone want to step forward and take credit for it?

I'm not sure why the bot operator decided to "push" much harder all of a sudden. The only thing I would assume is that he actually wanted to create some panic sells to accumulate cheap. (It looks like he got exactly what he wanted.)

Having this bot active is not strictly a bad thing, however.  Although I'm personally kicking myself for not having found the time to finish a competitive bot first (hehe) having this bot come online does solve the "no hash-rate" problem we were facing.

Although I'm still mulling over all of the factors involved, I think right now that our best course of action is probably to simply do nothing.  We fully expected that bots would come online again at some point, and even fully expected them to have the capacity to dominate at low difficulty.  Because this bot is still somewhat reliant on a map filter we can expect it to be hit pretty hard by the anti-warp work kicking in.  Because the operator has decided to remove any throttle, we can expect that anti-warp to ramp up quickly.  I say we let it run the course, and take the opportunity to see a pragmatic test of the anti-warp in action.

Of course this creates some short term inconvenience for human miners, followed by a potentially longer-term period of slower map generation as the warp debt is repaid to the network.  I will move straight away onto background map generation work, which should alleviate much of the inconvenience of the slowdown.

If anyone thinks that more drastic measures should be taken more quickly (such as increasingly stricter map criteria, a larger hashing work requirement, etc) let's discuss the potential implications and consider it.  If anyone has other suggestions for better re-balancing work requirements, let's hear them!

[HunterMinerCrafter]

I don't think the maps are seen by the server,

There is no server.

I think WilliamLie2 just saw that the number that shows how many times a map was generated until a good one was found.

Correct, he is just looking at nonce value.

It would be good if the person mining couldn't mine more than 5 blocks in a row in 5 minutes or they get blocked (maybe their IP address) until someone else mines the next block. But that would be easily bypassed.

It would also hit false positives and block out the occasional human.

[sparkster]

Lol, every block bot 'wait' for last millisecond to get the coin.

And... maybe HMC should write his own bot now to secure the chain? Would be nice if Miniminer and other bot programmers participate too. Of course, we need at least 3 bot miners for more security, if we will have only two, one of them will always have more than 50%, but we can 'trust' to HunterMinerCrafter some more than to unknown crazy dumper.

[HunterMinerCrafter]

Lol, every block bot 'wait' for last millisecond to get the coin.

Yes, this is a clever "trick" which we only saw used very little in the first bots.  I imagine that as soon as a second competitive bot appears he would stop using it, and push to race on TT instead.

And... maybe HMC should write his own bot now to secure the chain?

I still intend to, but it will be a secondary priority below maintaining the wallet itself, and doing whatever we can to help facilitate human mining.

Would be nice if Miniminer and other bot programmers participate too.

It seems our other bot operators have fallen silent.  If any of you are still out there, get in touch with me by PM, please?

Of course, we need at least 3 bot miners for more security, if we will have only two, one of them will always have more than 50%, but we can 'trust' to HunterMinerCrafter some more than to unknown crazy dumper.

You are not wrong.  However, to date it seems we have been able to "trust" all of our bot operators.  This new bot operator appears to also be following suit and is mining altruistically, not attempting double spends.  (EDIT: This might imply that our new bot operator is one of our old bot operators, which would not surprise me.)

I don't care one bit if they hold coins or immediately sell into the market, as long as they don't abuse their hash-rate dominance to attack things.

[WilliamLie2]

If this bot is better than humans not only at searching for map but at actually playing the game (and it seems so, given how fast it can solve these non-trivial maps) then requiring more work to generate a map will not make humans more competitive. It may slow down him but he will still be superior to humans. We need to change game itself, not only map validity criteria, to fight these kinds of bots.

I must say that this bot is pretty impressive, old bots look like idiots compared to him. This annealing thing or whatever else he uses is pretty good. The one who made this bot probably put a lot of effort for very low reward.

[Vz]

Because the operator has decided to remove any throttle , we can expect that anti-warp to ramp up quickly.  I say we let it run the course, and take the opportunity to see a pragmatic test of the anti-warp in action.

Of course this creates some short term inconvenience for human miners, followed by a potentially longer-term period of slower map generation as the warp debt is repaid to the network.  I will move straight away onto background map generation work, which should alleviate much of the inconvenience of the slowdown.

If anyone thinks that more drastic measures should be taken more quickly (such as increasingly stricter map criteria, a larger hashing work requirement, etc) let's discuss the potential implications and consider it.  If anyone has other suggestions for better re-balancing work requirements, let's hear them!

What we can expect? I don't understand how anti-warp will help us.. Mmm.. maybe I don't understand what is anti-warp at all..


How long we need to wait?

I wait my wallet to sync (about 4 hours left ) i want to see how the bot DO new maps.. and maybe we need correct the algorithm of creating maps.. BUT.. if william is right and the bot DO maps better then ME so the moto is going to die(

[HunterMinerCrafter]

If this bot is better than humans not only at searching for map but at actually playing the game (and it seems so, given how fast it can solve these non-trivial maps) then requiring more work to generate a map will not make humans more competitive. It may slow sown him but he will still be superior to humans.

This depends on his actual ratio of map search to solving time, relative to that of humans.  Really, though, if he is doing any more map iteration than humans the anti-warp should significantly impact him. 

Let's look at some hypothetical numbers to quantify this.

Let's say that the bot iterates 500 maps and takes virtually zero time at all to solve it once found.  (Probably he iterates more like 2000+ maps and takes more like 5-10 seconds to solve, but...)  This means that when the anti-warp settles into a target, it will take an average of 0.12 seconds to generate each map. Let's say a human iterates only 10 maps (pretty reasonable assumption, I think) on average to find a solvable one, which will take them 1.2 seconds.  This leaves them 58.8 seconds to solve by hand before the bot finds its map.

On the other end of the spectrum, let's say the bot only had to iterate the same 10 maps that human does, and still solved instantly.  This would create a situation where (after anti-warp target settles, again) each map would take 6 seconds to generate.  Now a human has only 1/10th the chance of the bot on any given block, assuming the human can still solve within the 54 seconds remaining.  This is, of course, less than ideal but also still a significant improvement over our prior scenario where the humans were left with virtually no chance at all.  (Also, this is probably more or less our "worst case scenario" under the new configuration.)

So right now, with the bot still requiring large nonce iterations, we can expect the system to balance itself out, even though it is able to solve the traversal so impressively quickly, simply because humans can still "out intuit it" on map selection.  When the bots can significantly out-perform humans on both tasks simultaneously then humans will be cut out entirely, again, but that doesn't appear to be the case just yet.

We need to change game itself, not only map validity criteria, to fight these kinds of bots.

What changes, in particular, would you propose?

I must say that this bot is pretty impressive, old bots look like idiots compared to him. This annealing thing or whatever else he uses is pretty good.

Yes, this bot is much more along the lines of what I had expected to see come out of the Moto competition.  This bot is much more of what I would call a "real AI" than what we saw before.

The one who made this bot probably put a lot of effort for very low reward.

It is hard to really estimate what his "reward" will be until after the fact.

[Klubknuckle]

Is this coin overtaken by bot?

[HunterMinerCrafter]

Is this coin overtaken by bot?

That depends on how you define 'overtaken' I suppose.  The answer is probably "yes, temporarily" in any case.

It seems that the bot operator is intentionally targeting a precise average 15 second interval for his blocks.  I'm not sure why he would be doing this.  Does anyone have an idea?
EDIT2: 7-8 seconds, not 15.  Still interesting that it is so consistent.

EDIT: Another interesting observation about the bot - he appears to be running multiple separate/uncoordinated instances of the bot, as he has submitted blocks that compete with his own.

[WilliamLie2]

Because this bot is still somewhat reliant on a map filter we can expect it to be hit pretty hard by the anti-warp work kicking in.  Because the operator has decided to remove any throttle, we can expect that anti-warp to ramp up quickly.  I say we let it run the course, and take the opportunity to see a pragmatic test of the anti-warp in action.

There were several retargets and this bot still generates at this insane speed. Seems that additional work required to generate maps doesn't affect him. Moreover, according to nonce values http://37.153.97.65:3000/block/6e7aed75f4971bb185fb143dfbb7b6c4aacc0019c71fb3daf101bd561f3c620d he now enumerates even more maps. Or maybe he just tries to confuse us and intentionally uses larger nonce values.

[e1ghtSpace]

I don't think the maps are seen by the server,

There is no server.

Isn't everyone "the server". I knew there wasn't a central server.

[joanna12]

Looking good!

[dzust]

Is this coin overtaken by bot?

That depends on how you define 'overtaken' I suppose.  The answer is probably "yes, temporarily" in any case.

It seems that the bot operator is intentionally targeting a precise average 15 second interval for his blocks.  I'm not sure why he would be doing this.  Does anyone have an idea?

EDIT: Another interesting observation about the bot - he appears to be running multiple separate/uncoordinated instances of the bot, as he has submitted blocks that compete with his own.

I wanted to join, but BOT always destroy cool idea ;/ sad but true ;/

[HunterMinerCrafter]

There were several retargets and this bot still generates at this insane speed. Seems that additional work required to generate maps doesn't affect him.

I'm looking into potential bugs.  There probably is one.

Moreover, according to nonce values http://37.153.97.65:3000/block/6e7aed75f4971bb185fb143dfbb7b6c4aacc0019c71fb3daf101bd561f3c620d he now enumerates even more maps. Or maybe he just tries to confuse us and intentionally uses larger nonce values.

I think he may have added more hardware, and/or changed enumeration strategy.

[Vz]

There were several retargets and this bot still generates at this insane speed. Seems that additional work required to generate maps doesn't affect him.

I'm looking into potential bugs.  There probably is one.

I think he may have added more hardware, and/or changed enumeration strategy.

So as we can see the adding some proof-of-work to generation map isn't usefull?? Is there some method to not to do that proof-of-work? Is now some "proof-of-work to generate map" exist?