[GLBSE] Introducing: Bitcoin Syndicate, a new mining op trading publicly!

[marked]

Oh I see; the P2Pool chart is roughly inverse of the main chart give or take a few pixels to the left.

I was looking at the stats page but didn't register that it was in essence two charts for the same thing.

marked

[Glasswalker]

Just a quick update, sorry about the delay in fixing the stats chart. I hope to have it resolved in the next 24h. Until then please refer to the P2Pool chart.

Thanks!

[Glasswalker]

Hey everyone, just another quick general update.

• Our first batch of FPGAs should be on their way today! I'm just watching the thread and my emails closely for a notice from ngzhang that he has shipped our 17 Icarus boards!
• Our stats page is repaired. And all stat graphs are working again. Also I've added a "detailed stats" page to show all the more detailed P2Pool Graphs.
• P2Pool migration is complete
• We are experiencing an outage on John's miners, as discussed in this thread: http://forum.btcsyn.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=40 we hope for it to be resolved this week.
• We are also experiencing a momentary downtime of Andrew's miners as per this post: http://forum.btcsyn.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=26#p156 it will definitely be back up and running Monday at full strength.
• (so the above 2 points should help to explain why our hashrate is short 2GHash from what it should be).
• Also wanted to point out that our share prices have been steadily climbing after the IPO completion. We're up over 0.40BTC now! WOOT! that's a jump in price of approx 40% in a very short time. And our first batch of mining gear isn't even here yet! I imagine that will see another spike in value
• Also in reference to the IPO, I've been busy last few days, but I'll raise a motion early next week, and run it for a week, to end the IPO period early, so that our first dividends can be paid out in early April.
• Lastly I've been continuing development on our FPGA solution. And following FPGA news in the bitcointalk forums closely too. Looks like our investment in FPGAs will be a good one, since there are plenty of very good things on the horizon in the form of bitstreams that boost performance. Looks like we might get very close to the same price performance as the BFL offered in the end (in a few months time, possibly earlier).

Overall things are going extremely well so far!

[mila]

• Also wanted to point out that our share prices have been steadily climbing after the IPO completion. We're up over 0.40BTC now! WOOT! that's a jump in price of approx 40% in a very short time. And our first batch of mining gear isn't even here yet! I imagine that will see another spike in value

you see your mistake?

hint take your hands of the pockets if counting on fingers. it's not decimal anymore
it would be 40% if the price on your mind was 0.35
hard to tell or choose, it changes daily

edited & big thumbs up for the fixed stats. I like graphs

[Glasswalker]

I got the shipping confirmation and tracking number last night! The 17 new Icarus FPGA Miners are on their way now, shipped via EMS Express from China to Canada.

From past experience with shipping from china (I used to run a business regularly importing from china) I expect they will arrive somewhere between the 19th and the 23rd (likely closer to the 19th though). Provided Canadian Customs doesn't have a problem.

Just wanted to post this great news!

Also I already have all hardware and parts needed to get them up and running, so once they arrive I can start spinning them up right away (I'll likely do them in small batches so we can monitor and validate them as we go, so I expect it will take me a total of one week or so to get them all up and running in full power).

12+ GHash/s here we come! WOOHOO!

(and yeah after re-reading my previous post, I realized my math was broken... thanks mila)

[Glasswalker]

Since the IPO is sold out, and we have our first batch of hardware ordered, I see no reason to continue the "IPO Period" through to the end of March as stated in the bylaws. We can end it early so we at least see a partial dividend payment in the beginning of April, followed by our first "full" dividend payment in the beginning of May. This Motion will run for a full week to allow adequate time for vote.

The Motion ID is #87 and it will run until Monday March 19th 2012 at 5PM EDT.
Please log into GLBSE and Vote ASAP.

Motion Text:
BTCSYN Motion:
Motion to end IPO Period Early. The IPO has now sold out, there is no need to continue the IPO period any longer. Ending it now will allow us to begin making dividend payments as of the beginning of april (for the March period).
This IPO will run until March 19 2012 according to GLBSE. If the vote is successful, at that time I will move all remaining funds to the Growth Fund, and consider the IPO period complete. All remaming funds earned after that will be divided as usual at the end of the month, and dividends paid in the first week of the following month as per the bylaws.

[mila]

hi folks,
the http://btcsyn.com/financial page should only display last 100 entries (so I've heard) and since the switch to p2pool the payout is for every block that is found (instead of a mining payout 2x day) we will soon loose the tx history for early transactions and slowly also medium history and so on.
one shareholder offered help with accounting, I call him (yes, you) to cooperate in spontaneous control of the published numbers. PM me or reply here. I'm collecting the data every few days to be able to reconstruct the flow of bitcoins in and out and have an independent view of the syndicate's balances. observing, providing alternative view (even if the numbers should be the same). It does not have to be this public (this forum or the syndic forum) but I believe it should be done. I'll try to post bi-weekly updates of my observations and am willing to disclose them for a peer review before posting.

bitcoin accounting is relatively new and has its specific issues (p.ex. there will always be unbalanced accounts while waiting for 120 blocks maturity of new coins) plus syndic specific book entries like the unpublished gox history and operational spendings (glbse fees, forum advertisement). I'm not interested in all of it. I'm just interested in keeping the most important records and see if we come to the same conclusions.

[Glasswalker]

To clarify, the web interface only publishes the last 100 tx. But the database that backs the site holds all tx ever on the wallet. (so it's merely a ui change to add some pagination, or an "advanced" page to the financial page that gives all transactions or something... Just haven't taken the time to write that code yet lol...

The other problem is right now I'm pulling the transactions (last 100) from the bitcoin client, so once the transaction falls off the last 100 it will stop updating confirmation count and status changes this shouldn't be a problem for the forseeable future, and I can always crank up the number of transactions to grab I believe. (so it grabs the last thousand or whatever).

The reason this could be a problem is if we mine more than 100 transactions in say 24-48hr. Then the mined transactions may not have time to update to "generated" from "immature" (this wouldn't affect the real wallet, only what's shown on the site, but still not ideal).

Anyway, this week sometime I'll try and add a makeshift "advanced" page which shows ALL transactions (and later once that gets too big, I'll write the code to paginate it lol)

In theory the maximum number of mining payouts per day is the number of blocks per day (and that's only if P2Pool was mining 100% of all blocks lol). At 1 every 10 minutes (plus say a 50% buffer for absolute safety) that's 216 tx per day max... So once we get close to 500+tx, I'll have the wallet start pushing out the last 500tx instead of the last 100tx, which should solve the "stale data" issue, and as I said, the transactions will live in the db indefinitely. So it's just a UI change to have it show more than 100.

Thanks for bringing this up though mila, as I hadn't thought about it.

And of course if other shareholders/members want to undertake their own accounting initiatives using the blockchain (or blockexplorer) please feel free!

It would be interesting to see what you come up with, and if something good comes out of it, I may consider merging it into the official site's financial pages.

Thanks!

[Nefario]

I'm just after getting back from London(gone since Tuesday),  charts.glbse.com is not showing any updates since the 12th.

For the moment, all the latest trades for GLBSE can be found on it's twitter feed here.

I'm contacting the operator of charts to find out what the story is.

Nefario

[Glasswalker]

Thanks for the heads up Nefario!

[Glasswalker]

Our Icarus FPGA Miners have arrived!

SUPER fast shipping from EMS to Canada. I was shocked actually.

The order, which was shipped on the 11th was delivered this morning!

First I'd like to say, FANTASTIC packaging job ngzhang! Very professionally and well packaged. Nicely done.

The package included each board wrapped in an oversized static bag, and sealed, and then 2 of those packages packed in a small box. Several of these boxes were then packed into a larger shipping box lined with bubble wrap.

In addition in one of the boxes there was 1 Icarus (since we had an odd number) along with the Xilinx platform cable and dev kit from ngzhang. (and I had suspected at first a "third party" platform cable, but in fact it's the original xilinx package).

In addition the box contained a healthy pile of power connectors/leads (I ordered these without the power bricks to cut down on shipping weight, and plan on powering the cluster from an ATX supply). And a big bundle of USB cables as well. Also several bags of assorted size brass standoffs was included as well.

I have to say, I'm thoroughly impressed!

Unboxing photos attached below (sorry for the bad pics, they were taken on my cell)
I'll post more pics of the finished cluster once I have it up and running

I will be doing testing of the cards for the next day or two to confirm all is well. Then I'll begin building the cluster proper this weekend.

I expect to have it mining by the beginning of next week!

[mila]

you have a script for cross posting or you do that by hand?

but more important hooray! 4 the cards
... and let's try them : )

[Glasswalker]

I do it by hand

(and I intend to!)

(...try them that is) lol

[mila]

(...try them that is) lol

well, I did not want to suggest to plug them all in ... some testing and precaution was kinda expected (like don't fry them all at once if something goes horribly wrong ; )) aaand I was a bit suspicious if you did your part of the shopping (power adapters, usb hub) but was too shy to ask and just suggested if you'd try one of them. seeing it plugged in and up & running would solve all my doubts ; )

[Glasswalker]

No of course not. I'll be testing them in a controlled fashion, then this weekend firing up the cluster if I can get it assembled by then.

I have done most of the shopping, still need to pick up some more hardware for the cases, 3D Print the mounting brackets, and pick up some more USB hubs. I have the cooling fans, power supply, and hardware needed to mount that, and rig up the power adapters from ATX to the Icarus DC inputs.

I'll post pics once I get into building the cluster.

[mila]

good luck in your work and thanks for the update

... 3D Print the mounting brackets

I'm looking forward to the pictures of the finished syndicate tower
(I saw the pics of the testing rig after assembly before shipping, hope this rig will be proportionally impressive)
and also the 3D parts you'll print
I saw some prints and this technology fascinates me
roommate had access to commercial printers at the school where he led the 3D modelling lab
and the local hackerspace has rep-rap printers.
the quality and approach to printing are very different but they seem both to do the job.

[Glasswalker]

I've been involved in 3D Printing for some time. And I have access to a couple commercial grade printers (unfortunately the one in my lab at work is out of commission for repairs right now, and the other is a bit of a pain to get to for large print jobs), I also have a RepRap and an Ultimaker at home. The RepRap will be more than enough for this job though. It doesn't need super precision, just simple mounting "slots" for the cards to be vertical in the case. And some mounting brackets for 120mm fans to blow air past all the vertically mounted cards.

I'll show pics once I get them printed to explain better what I mean.

It's not the finished product. The plan is to have a custom rackmount case fabricated from steel. But that will come later. Right now I'll be using a wooden mock-up case which will be mounted in my rack taking up approximately 3U of space, and having room for (I believe) 36x Icarus boards. Then once we get a few more (24+) I'll get the custom case made so we can get it all prepped to move it to a professional datacenter at that point.

All that's way down the road though. For now it should be fairly impressive looking lol. And I'll definitely post pics of the build, as well as the finished rig.

[Glasswalker]

Here are some more pics for you. The build is taking a little longer than I wanted, I hope to finish and have it fully operational tomorrow.

Ran into a few issues, one of which was the power supply failing. Had to go pick up a different PSU (went with a slighly more expensive model to give us some room to grow)
Also the Testing was becoming problematic with multiple miners on Windows. Apparently this is an issue with the driver, and Linux is expected to resolve the issue, so I moved onto the build and will finish testing on the actual host machine. May have also been related to the psu failing (was giving voltage dropouts on the 12V rail under load)

Anyway, things are rolling along now, so...

Here are some pics of the build along the way (a little more eye candy for you to look at):

A block of 4 being tested together:


My RepRap producing a prototype of the brackets to hold the cards:


The RepRap producing 4 brackets at once:


Getting ready to dry fit the parts in the wooden rackmount box:


Fans mounted, and cards on brackets (still dry fitting):


Close up of the rig so far:


Still left to do:
- Solder 2 more power leads (bundles of several power leads for several cards, back to either a molex, or a PCIE connector to distribute load on the ATX supply properly)
- Adjust the standoffs on the blocks (in this config with the dry fit there isn't enough room for 8 wide without causing airflow problems, if I reverse the standoffs there will be)
- Screw everything down
- Run all the wires and clean it all up
- Install the host OS (Linux) on the computer
- Mount it all up in the rack, and get mining!

I hope/expect to get done tomorrow. Worse case Tuesday if something holds me up tomorrow.

[HorseRider]

where is the promised 12G/s hashing power? will it be there in 12 hours?

[Glasswalker]

As stated in the previous post. I'm working on getting our FPGA rig up now.

Unfortunately I injured my back (just a pulled muscle) yesterday so was only able to get a minimal amount of work done. I expect to be finishing it up tonight.

Once it's done it will bring 6+ GHash online. The remaining hashing power is online now (with the exception of approximately 1.5Ghash of mining power from John, who should be coming online this week, due to the renovations of his house, you can see details on this in our forums at forum.btcsyn.com)

Thanks!