VirtualMiner 2.0 - Discussion (Closed)

[whiskers75]

SaltySpitoon: got 1 7100 miner working at Earnies.
Also got 3 7100's workin for Virtual Bitcoins!

[deadlyasp]

If I could make a humble suggestion, maybe a coin balance on the desktop? Having to exit out and go to the exchange every time I want to check my balance (which updates slowly it seems), or am I just missing something? (Also a help section would be lovely)

Oh, and is there anything that tells you say, shares submitted?

[Nachtwind]

Ok, finally i am back from holidays and that pile of work that was on my desk...

Sooo... there have been multiple requests.. let me try to answer to all of them:

- Mobile friendly Desktop mode
Very hard to do as i havent yet seen the same website on two mobiles look the same.. and this is especially happening for pages with a lot of javascript.. which would include virtualminer.. so i will try whatever possible.. but dont expect it to happen soon.

- "Implement a chain deflation feature; i.e. allow a chain to eventually reach a cap of coins (like bitcoin). This could be an optional checkbox and a setting "Block reward multiplied by [0.xx] every [xxxx] blocks". Said feature will also allow rampant-inflation coins as well, a double plus."
Its been in planning since the very first version.. and its high on my schedule.


- "Allow anyone (not just the chain owner) to "upgrade" a chain's infrastructure. There are many examples:
Open a new exchange market xxx->xxx for a fee
Allow usage of the coin to buy coupons, if volume is high enough (by default, make coins unsuitable for this)
Lower the exchange fee for an exchange market for a fee
Allow access to that coin's richlist (people who have the highest stake)
Advertise the chain on the frontpage in an auction-like process
Allow chain creators to set initial block payments to a list of people, acting as a "pre-mine"."

i like some of the ideas.. some.. well.. i think that introducing new chains to the frontpage would be interestering.. but i wouldnt like to have richlists. Same is with a premine.. for the sake of "realism" i could add it..

- "Decimal shift. Allow one virtual-coin to be priced at less than a satoshi (look at the prices now!)"
We will see about that.. maybe

"Chain support! Some revenue of the website is used to support the exchange price of random chains that have some volume and are reasonably distributed."
Been thinking about that for a while.. and since i cant seem to finish the faucet in any reasonable time anyway i might just do that with the money in the faucet account.. that might even be a very good idea.. got to find out a certain balance though..

[Bitcoin Oz]

This is basically a stock market....

It would be funny if someone bought a bfl single irl and dedicated the coins mined to supporting their "stock price" ie: their virtual currency....

[Nachtwind]

This is a changelog for the upcoming Virtualminer update. Besides countless minor bugs and fixes i have also included some major changes that will fluently blend into the game. But since some of the changes (Pooling e.g.) will interrupt the current gameplay a bit, i will give people a chance to adapt to these changes. Therefore i will upload the update by Wednsday evening 8PM (CET) - so in roughly 50 hours.

- Exchange
Since there are a lot of smallish trades that are even worth less than a satoshi i decided to enforce a minimum trade volume of 0.0001 BTC per bid/ask.

- Chains
Every chain now has a upper limit for block generation. I have just given the existing chains a upper limit that is roughly 3x higher than the current block count. If you started one of the chains and want to have a different upper limite dont hesistate to contact me. I will change this of course.

- Coin generation
In combination with the block generation limit i introduce now subsiedy cuts.. currently those are hardcoded.
Under 50% of all created blocks the payout is 100%
Between 50% and 75% payout per block is 50%
Between 75% and 87.5% it is 25%
After that: 12.5%
If a chain reaches the limit of the block amount no more coins get generated.

This change was to come for a long while already. First of all it removes the absurd condition of having unlimited supply of coins and secondly it feels more realistic.
Furthermore it allows users to have a early adopter Bonus without using pre-mines.

- Pooling VS Solo mining
One major step forwards, or rather towards a more realistic Cryptocoin experience is a new feature i will introduce soon. Pooling and Solo Mining.
When this update pack is installed all miners will run solo. Every block you find will be given just to you. Currently every chain runs one big pool that proportionally pays the coins to all users mining it.. now with soloing and pooling you can decide which way you will go.
Every user can create a pool and set the fee the way he wants and change the chain the pool is mining. Normal users can join and leave a pool anytime they want by selecting a pool instead of a chain in his rig managment window.

- Rigs
I have increased the maximum number of rigs to 35.

- The next generation
We have heard a lot about ASIC and FPGA Mining, about the death of bitcoin and microcash being the next big step in the world of crypto currencies.. that all is just rubbish! Here at Virtualminer we have a big announcement:

Largest Virtual Mining solution ships new vASIC Mining rigs

(BITCOINTALK) June 25, 2012
Virtual Miner (Virtualminer Inc.), the market leader in virtual mining services, is unveiling today the technical specifications for three of its next generation virtual mining products:

1)    Mothlabs Habanero: a single vASIC driven unit hashing at 10vGH (guaranteed!), priced at 0.07BTC

2)    Mothlabs Single: a standalone unit providing roughly 40 vGH/s, priced at 0.25 BTC

3)    Mothlabs Bug Bomb: a single unit containing a whopping 50 vASICs and running at 500 vGH/s, priced at 2.5BTC


"Virtualminer has always considered itself a serious simulation of real world crypto currency structures and scenarios and our customers are leaders in providing virtual hashing for great technological challanges," noted Nachtwind, head of Virtualminer. "I know that our vASIC linup is simply outpacing all available products currently available and I am proud we finally could make this giant leap forward."

Venture Capital Funding Acquired, Record Rate of First Quarter Growth
Virtualminer, the largest virtual mining game, is now backed by private venture capital, and looking forward to continuing its operations in what some have recently labeled the “Silicon backwater” of Germany.
Founded in 2011, Virtualminer is a worldwide leader in virtual mining gaming. The Game offers a lot of fun, a real mining experience, and a community of gamers who know that they spend their time at the right game.
“Virtualminer” and “Mothlabs” are trademarks of Virtualminer all arround the world.

Nachtwind
Virtualminer inc
49 010 0110

[Krakonos]

Is the ability to spend coins for something coming? Currently there is no liquidity, I know, but you could always use the minimum marker price or the last month average if sufficient proportion of users were active on exchange..

I think it would improve the liquidity a lot and even if someone would choose to cheat, he'd be paying the fee. You could always put top exchange for cases when the price will go higher, you'll use the limit. Example: you could say that one EAR is not worth to your mining company for more than .01 BTC and let users shop for this price at most (so if I'll cheat and drive the price to 10 BTC, my rig upgrade would still cost as it would at .01 BTC, but when the price falls down to .001 BTC, I'll pay ten times more EAR.

You'd be required to watch markets and make some tuning, but it's worth the time!

[Nachtwind]

i keep working on it.. i basically have a shop all done for it but the ability to cheat is still too big.. market regulatory stuff is something i look into but dont really know how to handle.. but i have some ideas there..

[drakahn]

how about a scorecoin? scorecoin can only be traded with virtual chains, not mined or bought with btc, and the top holders are the top players

scorecoin would reset every N timeframes and the top N players would get a small btc prize (a percentage of trade fees  perhaps) pushing the price of virtual chains up as people chase the prize

I also think it'd be better to leave it all free market, don't sell hardware/upgrades for virtual chains, only btc but let players sell them for virtual chains, so prices would be set by users (some trying for profit some trying to clear off old hardware)

how bout storage space? instead of limiting rigs to a hard number, have players start with a 'home' that can fit a few rigs in it, and have new storage for sale for bitcoins (And again player sellable for virtualcoins) could range from a small and cheap shed to an expensive huge datacenter (that because of extra cooling allows for extra upgrades) and people could have as many rigs as they want to pay for (more btc for the prizes for top scorecoin holders...) - hardware for sale takes up as much room as hardware in use... storage can't be sold if there are rigs in it

I'm not sure I understand the limits you have put on now... why not emulate bitcoin and just have the coin generation be set to Na blocks of Nb coins per Nc days(retargeting at end) and block generation halves every Nd days
this would give a limited supply and still last for as long as the game does without a few people having all of them

bitcoin would be 2016 blocks of 50 coins per 14 days, block generation halves every ~1470 days (off the top of my head)

with this bit
"Under 50% of all created blocks the payout is 100%
Between 50% and 75% payout per block is 50%
Between 75% and 87.5% it is 25%
After that: 12.5%"

does that mean the most popular (meaning the least likely to be going to one user) chains pay less? and the chain that only has a few users gets more? so its bad for a chain to be popular?.... i don't think i get it

[Nachtwind]

how about a scorecoin? scorecoin can only be traded with virtual chains, not mined or bought with btc, and the top holders are the top players
scorecoin would reset every N timeframes and the top N players would get a small btc prize (a percentage of trade fees  perhaps) pushing the price of virtual chains up as people chase the prize

I really like that idea... that might be what i need to make trading more interestering.. let me work that out on paper first though.. but i am very positive that this will come..

I also think it'd be better to leave it all free market, don't sell hardware/upgrades for virtual chains, only btc but let players sell them for virtual chains, so prices would be set by users (some trying for profit some trying to clear off old hardware)

I was thinking about a trade in option for vASICs later.. might take the opportunety and create a rig market rather than just a trade-in option..

how bout storage space? instead of limiting rigs to a hard number, have players start with a 'home' that can fit a few rigs in it, and have new storage for sale for bitcoins (And again player sellable for virtualcoins) could range from a small and cheap shed to an expensive huge datacenter (that because of extra cooling allows for extra upgrades) and people could have as many rigs as they want to pay for (more btc for the prizes for top scorecoin holders...) - hardware for sale takes up as much room as hardware in use... storage can't be sold if there are rigs in it

That idea is not bad.. but currently that hard limit of 30 (35) rigs was set due to two factors: Screen space in Desktop mode and the old "probability and payout"-code for coin generation.. as i change the second part anyway due to solo/pool mining i will rethink the limiting..

I'm not sure I understand the limits you have put on now... why not emulate bitcoin and just have the coin generation be set to Na blocks of Nb coins per Nc days(retargeting at end) and block generation halves every Nd days
this would give a limited supply and still last for as long as the game does without a few people having all of them

i try to emulate the way that bitcoin handles stuff... but it is hard to build one way that works for all chains so i decided to half block generation basically in the same fashion half-life times work. Every "half" time (so from first block to 50% of all blocks to be mined for example) you get the full amount of coins... the closer you get to the end though the less coins are paid out (just like with bitcoins).

does that mean the most popular (meaning the least likely to be going to one user) chains pay less? and the chain that only has a few users gets more? so its bad for a chain to be popular?.... i don't think i get it

Not really.. it works for all chains the same. If you have a chain with 100 users it will run the same way as a chain with 5 users. Difficulty adjusts the speed in which blocks are found anyway. The coin generation is somewhat disconnected from that though. It will happen for every chain when they hit the "50% block" (..the 75% and 87.5% block) every time then the coin generation is halfed. Just like in Bitcoin basically. You start, for example, with 50 coins per block, after 50% of all blocks you will have a payout of 25 coins, then 12.5 coins per block...

But i am open for suggestions on this particular feature.

[Krakonos]

To fully simulate bitcoin, you need to make use of the infinitely lowering reward and transaction payments, together with limited money supply. It will create new dynamics, so that it may be efficient to mine a popular chain while the reward is low, since the chain is used frequently for buying stuff and thus has some income from transaction costs.

You can also imitate lost coins by requiring 0.3% fee on all transactions, but giving the miners only .15%...

Another thing would be to implement device classes, to simulate GPU and CPU chains like bitcoin vs. litecoin, so if someone will buy a lot of vASIC devices for bitcoin, he'll not be able to mine scrypt chains since his hardware just isn't capable; CPU would mine really slow on sha256 chains, but would be realatively quick on scrypt chains and someone could think of scrypt vASIC.

And a lot more. This is probably far to the future, but is worth doing, since the simulation now is just missing something...

[Nachtwind]

Server is currently down to a hardware defect. It is being worked on already.
Working again.

[Nachtwind]

Postponing the update for an hour. Start will be at 2100 2200 2300 CET

Running into problems with pooled mining vs solo mining..... Sorry people...

While waiting you may want to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WUhOnX8qt3I

[Nachtwind]

Website updated and ready for the new rigs, pools, solo mining action etc etc...

I removed that subsiedy cut... will add it as option later.. maybe.

[Nachtwind]

Next addons:

Players will be able to sell/buy rigs for ingame currency from other users. So you will be able to flag a rig as "sellable" and set a price in any ingame coin you want.
That way i want the users to set a price for the coins they mine with the goal of having those chains have a "real" value.

Also i am going to add "shares". Each share can be bought with ingame coins and shareholders will get the tradefees paid out according to the amount of shares they own. These shares will be removed after a monthly dividend has been payed and can be rebought afterwards.

[Nachtwind]

Newsletter:

Hi,
Today i finished updating Virtualminer to the most recent version.
To all of you who dont read the Bitcointalk thread regularly: This update changed a few major game mechanics and therefore could need your attention.
Up till now all chains were mined proportionally - that means you could just set your rig to mine a certain chain and thats it. You did get coins whenever a block was found. As of today i introduced pooled and solo mining. As in Bitcoin every user is now mining for himself - if he has not set his rig to mine on a (user created) pool. So if you are actively participating in the game you should either create or join a pool - or happily mine by yourself.. but please note that this change is now introduced.
In the next few days i will introduce some more codechanges.. most notably some new way to increase the value of virtual chains. Users will then be able to sell their rigs for virtual coins and furthermore will be able to buy shares from the game.
With these shares you are entitled to receive a part of trade fees that are proportional to the amount of shares you have.
Last but not least i have started the vASIC revolution:
I have now three new vASICs in store that are way faster than even the most upgraded rig...
Last but not least Chain creators are asked to PM me. I have introduced limits for block generation to all chains. Every new chain will have to have an upper limit of blocks to create. For all existing chains i have set the limit to roughly 3x the current block count. If you feel like this is inappropriate for you chain: dont hesitate to tell me. I will change it.
   
Smaller changes include:
- New and improved 'hashing' algorithm. Now it benefits people with more hash more than people with higher amounts of rigs (just the way Bitcoin works)
- Minimum trade volume on the exchange: the minimum trade volume is 0.0001BTC now
- UI fixes
- Maximum rigs bumped up to 35 rigs per user


Will be included ASAP:
- Top Hashers Top 50 Users in terms of hashing speed
- Top Finders Top 50 Users in terms of block finding
- Rig selling/buying
- Shares
- Automatted deposits (Yepp, thats again on my list..)
      
   
Cheers
Nachtwind

[lassdas]

Looks fun,
i noticed a few glitches though.

After i set a Buy-order, i get

Notice: Undefined variable: mintrade in /home/virtualminer/public_html/func.exchange.php on line 52

(same notice on a Sell-order, but  it's line 165) and some strange symbols in the Amount/Price fields.

Besides that, it seems we're still unable to cancel orders, which would be nice if we hit some wrong numbers or something.

Oh and on the desktop, withing the Build a new Rig window, you mixed up the ASIC numbers a little,
it shows 10vGH for both, the Habanero and the Bug Bomb, in the dropdown menu it's set correct again though.

And as someone else mentioned,
it would be cool, if we could get a vCoin overview on our desktop-dashboards, not only BTC, so we don't have to go back and forth from desktop to the exchange just to check our balances.

[Nachtwind]

Looks fun,
i noticed a few glitches though.

After i set a Buy-order, i get

Notice: Undefined variable: mintrade in /home/virtualminer/public_html/func.exchange.php on line 52

(same notice on a Sell-order, but  it's line 165) and some strange symbols in the Amount/Price fields.

Besides that, it seems we're still unable to cancel orders, which would be nice if we hit some wrong numbers or something.

Oh and on the desktop, withing the Build a new Rig window, you mixed up the ASIC numbers a little,
it shows 10vGH for both, the Habanero and the Bug Bomb, in the dropdown menu it's set correct again though.

Thanks for the information.
I will add those things into the current batch of patches (online later today).

*edit*Quickfixed the typo and mintrade error.

[Nachtwind]

Smallish update:

Included TRADE CANCELLING
Added a "Top 5 users" and "Top Pool" widget on the news page.
Finetuned DIFF calculation
Started working on the "Fee-Shares and Rig Shop" System... if everything goes well users will soon be able to buy rigs off other users and users may buy shares to be paid dividends (in btc) i release weekly or monthly. Those fees come from Exchange fees and global upgrades.
Removed the Faucet due to above idea.


*edit* clarification:
"Top5 Users"
Top5 is currently defined by vGH owned. I will subsequently add a score to the game. This score will be related to trade volume, rigs, hash and some more things.. but currently its just hash

[lainw]

Hello iam member vnews

first nice service i love it

2 thinks for future too addon
1.Sub-Accounts (let them run own pool like) maybe with ref? (please ref. not to high onetime 2% or something like)
2. Very IMPORTANT!!! let us transfer/withdrawl all currencis the own please tooo



soo and now some errors i see and get ;8

1. buy&build too 2 chains now all away cant see reale or manage anything ;(
2. Cant buy new thinks with other coins see on desktop coupons not working;(

thanks in advanced hope your projekt grow up

[Nachtwind]

Smaller update today.. preparing a somewhat larger update to come at the weekend..
Todays changes:
- Two more vASICs: The exterminator and the Beetlejuice
- "Background" changes to rig registration managment and so on and so on... preparation for a future update (if it comes)
- Added the "shares" to the game.. as of now the shares dividend is composed of trade fees and fees for global upgrades. Shares will be available to be bought tomrrow. There will be an initial 1000 shares which will cost 0.001 BTC paid in virtual coins only. I hope to add some value that way to virtual coins and increase the amount of trades that way.

Changes soon to come:
- Share trade
- new Rig managment stuff
- Automatted deposits.. i finally found the time to implement it. Need to test it tomorrow and will then include it
- Some more Mail Alert triggers


------------------------------

Hello iam member vnews

first nice service i love it

2 thinks for future too addon
1.Sub-Accounts (let them run own pool like) maybe with ref? (please ref. not to high onetime 2% or something like)
2. Very IMPORTANT!!! let us transfer/withdrawl all currencis the own please tooo



soo and now some errors i see and get ;8

1. buy&build too 2 chains now all away cant see reale or manage anything ;(
2. Cant buy new thinks with other coins see on desktop coupons not working;(

thanks in advanced hope your projekt grow up

1. I wil add refs again.. not sure what i will give them thoug.. will have to think about that first.
2. I can add a way to transfer coins of all chains like BTC. That wont be a larger problem

Ingame purchases are still deactivated - they are to error prone and invite cheating.. at the moment at least.