Topic: [ANN] Catcoin - 0.9.1.1 - Old thread. Locked. Please use 0.9.2 thread. - page 58. (Read 131044 times)

but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.
but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.

Absolutely. I'm just running in Excel with a row per block, since I don't have any loops or complex logic; I can move the model to Matlab if it gets any more complex, but haven't seen any need so far.

I'm using past block times, hashrates and difficulties from catchain.info to calculate the last 36 block average time, and the  current hashrate and difficulty (all of which are known values). I then adjust the difficulty based on a retarget formula (I started with the current Catcoin formula, and tried a few modifications) to get the next block difficulty.

That's where I need to start making assumptions. I can't predict the exact next blocktime, so I use the expected blocktime based on current hashrate and difficulty, with a random multiplier (normal distribution, centered on 1) to approximate the next blocktime. That gives me the next average blocktime and thus the next difficulty adjustment, but not a hashrate (back-calculating hashrate from a random blocktime doesn't seem like a satisfactory solution).

To get the next block hashrate I pulled past difficulty and hashrate info from catchain.info into Excel and fit an inverse exponential function where as difficulty goes down, hashrate goes up. It fits past data well and as predicted the past couple days fluctuations reasonably well, although there is some time lag. There isn't as much difference in stability between assuming a static hashrate and a time-variant one as I thought there would be.

I agree with you - and I think you can see from Maverick's post that he does as well.  That is why we are beginning another phase of improvement - and we are very thankful that we have the time available to us - time we would not have without this fork.  This is a real-world reminder that the outside world does not always mirror a simulation.

I'll answer this directly as I'm a person identified in the earlier thread for stopping some of the later term 'debate'.  I hope I can do it in a way that eliminates any communication barriers due to language differences.  The dev team was working on saving the coin since before I arrived.  One thing that is clear from the last thread is that at least Maverick and Hozer were calling for, begging for, and even threatening for help FROM THE COMMUNITY.  That was the point where we needed more input from everyone - when we had time to put more options on the table, debate them, test them, and choose the best.

I did some research and put an option on the table.  Others put options on the table as well.  When my option was found to be not up to the task, I dropped it and worked with the group to hunt for a better option.  Others, however, could not let go of their pet hypothesis and instead of working together were intent on splitting the dev team on IRC and the community in this forum.  Neither of those behavior choices was useful.  We simply did not have the luxury of the six months it would have taken for a 'corporate-style' centrally-controlled process that would have made one potential contributor happy at the expense of everyone else on the team.  At some point in a process, we have to make a choice, test it more fully, and deploy it.  And yes - I stood up to support the people working FOR the community and for fixing the problems - and I will do it again in future if necessary.

Unfortunately, it appears you arrived late in the process - when we had to code, not debate.  We are not in this same position today - we have the luxury of time now.  We have the luxury of calling for everyone in the community to step forward and put ideas on the table.  I promise you, kuroman, that I understand and agree with you 100% that the end result must be code -- but we also feel very strongly that this process should not be limited to only the few here that are fluent in C - everyone should have a voice if they want one.

I can not force anyone to participate in this community or the dev process, but I also cannot and will not accept an environment where anyone that wants to participate is excluded.  That doesn't mean we won't again arrive at a time when we have to close the door and start coding - but until that point all comers are welcome.

Kuroman - I'm sorry you don't understand my point here.  Please permit me to restate it in a way that might be easier to understand.  First - the programming language with which I'm most familiar is Fortran.  How comfortable would you feel debating the guts of the KGW in Fortran 77?

Now expand that to the entire community: How many people here - miners, speculators, retailers, charities - do you think know ANY programming language?

Simply put:  You did post code.  It might make sense to the 7 or 8 people here that are fans of Kernighan and Ritchie (the authors/creators of the C programming language) - but that means you're not communicating meaningfully to >97% of the community.  I'm fairly sure that's not the result you're hoping for.  I'm trying to help you get your excellent analysis into the hands of a greater portion of the community.  I hope you will do just that.

It is 12%. The thing is it's symmetrical. It's a multiplication. Not an addition. To go up 5/4 you multiply by 1.25x. You don't add 25%. To go back down you multiply by 4/5 or 0.8x. 0.8 * 1.25 = 1. 112/100 * 100/112 = 1.


It's not a clear formula. It's a copy pasted formula. SMA36LIM12 is specific. Why 0.7? Why 144? Why -1.228? Why power function?

NEVERMIND the possibility of a broken Floating Point Unit!


COPIED AND PASTED. No thinking used. No one knows WHY it works.


I don't CARE if developers innovate. Developers are creating a ton of coins already. You seem to think, like A LOT of COIN coders, that ONLY developers should contribute, the rest of the COMMUNITY should just debate, hype, freak out, and vote on polls. How DARE they contribute code! I want the code to be easy enough for even a freshman in college to understand HOW TO IMPROVE IT. That is the strength of the coin. That everyone knows what it does.

It might fix at least some problems - how many others does it cause?  We don't know yet.  Some have already looked into the algo and have found ways for it to be exploited.  Consider a possible future where a large number of coins adopt the same fad algo - they become targets for cracking development.  I'm not saying it's a guaranteed problem, but it is something we have to consider as we evaluate ALL the options.

I cannot understand why you would suggest that we should not be using hash manipulation (even though we're not and I don't recall anyone in the dev team suggesting it) yet you would suggest revamping the coin to manipulate via a 'loyalty' system.  I mine at Coinium because I like their loyalty system.  I and others believe that modifying the payout system belongs at the pool level, not in the guts of the coin.  Changing the way coins pay out - regardless of what one calls it - changes the coin.  So far, this community has made clear they want this coin with these parameters.  Our work so far has been to stabilize the coin and continue to work towards the 10 minute block target.  So far so good.

Actually, one can punish greed.  The coin already rewards loyalty.  Nobody in the dev process wants to undermine the coin, the community or St Satoshi, er Saint Catoshi.

ENOUGH. Everybody take a step back for a second. Dev team included.

A little (blatantly obvious) honesty: The current algorithm didn't work as well as we planned, but to those of us tearing us apart for it, I didn't exactly see any of you lining up at the door with any of the simulations I'm seeing now. I would have put a stop to this before we even released it if we had, or at least tweaked it some more to make it less (over)reactive.

I need you guys to all stop and take a breath and open your minds to solutions, and by all of you I mean ALL OF YOU, my team included.

This is the situation we can't control now, we released the fork, it's done, the coin arguably functions better than it did before, because at least now the confirmations don't full stop for 4+ days at a time. This is critical to the survival of this coin, and buys us time. I'm not happy this didn't solve the problem, and releasing a band-aid wasn't really the goal, and guys honestly, that is somewhat on me. I'm sorry I let you as a community down. I really am. I have a lot going on in my life, I'm getting married next week and I've been ill for the majority of this week. It's not an excuse, but merely an explanation. Please remember that I'm human and my team is human, and we had to pick this coin up quickly in less than ideal circumstances. We've established roles, and everybody is aware of what they contribute. Lessons were learned during all of this, so please, it was all part of the process. I'd like to think that we have one of the most active dev teams of any of the coins out there, that's got to be worth something. We also have one of the most active and vocal communities out there, and that is definitely worth something.

Now is not the time to tear each other apart over mistakes that were made though, I can't do any more but apologize for what happened. I can promise you I will do better and my team will do better in the future. But, we need your support, and we need some of the expertise that has shown up in the past 24 hours. It's just a fact of life, I said when we built this team we were always looking for more talent. We still are, and always will be. As an example of this I recently added Johnny_non to our team, who I don't think anybody can argue with has done an UNBELIEVABLE job turning around our PR front and websites. I'd like to take a moment to recognize that dedication, because it's been extremely important. He's got some cool shit brewing in the wings too that will be discussed here soon. The Oprah thing is absolutely huge for us. I can't stress that enough.

As for our coins future, enough bickering, bickering and name calling is not productive, one thing is for certain: this coin's community certainly does not lack in color and contrast. We have several options in front of us, and we're looking for more.

Yes, the Gravity Well is one of them, hozer's concern revolves around the floating point numbers that the algorithm uses to calculate difficulty. He can get into his concerns if he wishes. That algorithm is by no means off the table, however.

envy2010 and kuroman, and strelok have provided very detailed feedback which I've been looking through at length. I think the solution is in front of us, we just need to AS A COMMUNITY decide what direction to take this coin and what we feel the best approach will be to resolve this once and for all. We have bought ourselves significantly more time with this last fork, obviously it's not ideal, but it still functions as a coin.

I hope that perhaps everybody can take a step back and breathe and stop fighting like cats, and that a calm level head will provide us with a permanent solution that takes this coin to the next level.

Thanks for your time.

Kevin McCurdy

Gravity Well is simple to understand, and fixes a lot of problems that others have complained about. I don't understand why people are so dismissive of it. I've heard complaints that it only addresses specific problems. Well maybe the problem is you're trying to do too much with the difficulty algorithm.

If you want to reward loyal Cat miners/investors, then introduce a small PoS element. I only promote Kimoto Gravity Well because it works. Nobody can counter-argue that it benefits botnets and farms. Every single coin is vulnerable to botnets and farms regardless of what algorithm it employs.

Satoshi said one-cpu-one-vote. It sounds like some people want to undermine this principle. You can reward loyality, but you can't punish greed.

Envy - will you please tell us the assumptions you're using and/or give an example of what you're 'feeding' your model?  I'd like to understand what environment you're working in.  Thanks in advance!

It's not at all flat. That allows a 0.982^36 = ~48% change in 36 blocks, and a 28% change in only 18 blocks. Why would the coin ever need to double or halve difficulty in less than 36 blocks? A 28% diff increase is more than enough to make the coin go from very profitable to quite unprofitable to big miners.

I've been mining CAT since Dec 26th.  Speaking as someone that mined every one of the 530 CAT in my wallet, it's my position that this coin has been improving since it's launch.

There are other algos that work.  Gravity well is the current fad, certainly, but it's not the only way to go.  Maybe we'll use it, maybe we'll modify it, maybe we'll select another option.  But we're not in the final section process yet - we're just beginning!

This is a good time for everyone to RELAX!  We have brought CAT back from death - this time it can run without manipulation. 

You suggest the current algo is 'over engineered' even as you incessantly promote the gravity well? 


Ideas are good! Even the ones that make the cat laugh.

+1

1.8% ARE YOU SERIOUS? No offense, bro but might as well just give away (on drop) / freeze (on jump) the coin at that point. That's equivalent to no change at all. Welcome to FLATCOIN.

I predict every KimotoCoin will be owned by botnets and massive farms. Everyone will be at the mercy of people who DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE FUTURE.

I think if the coin goes between diff 20 and diff 40 after it settles down, that will be perfect. Stable enough to send coins and wobbly enough to chase the strip miners.

This may be obvious to you, kuroman, but how many people on this forum do you think are at least marginal C programmers?

Let's all use words, examples, and conversations that are available to the entire community.  Limiting the conversation to a few, either through expediency or hubris, doesn't help the greater good.

No solutions are off the table right now - not all possible solutions are ON the table yet. LOL  We're not yet at the stage where we need to fight over options.  Thankfully, we now have time to propose and more importantly TEST the solutions on the testnet, not just on an Excel spreadsheet or in a Matlab pageprint.

Everyone - put your 'thinking caps' on and get those ideas on the table!

Thank you!

Gravity well is a hack? What?

It's the only algorithm that seems to actually work against whales and pools. I don't even understand the current difficulty algorithm now. Probably because I lost track of it in the last thread.

You shouldn't have to borrow hashing power, or add in more layers of complexity. This has been over engineered. You're trying to fix problems that are not easy to overcome. I'm still a huge fan of Catcoin, but I couldn't possibly invest any further into it. I would mine it, if it wasn't so unpredictable right now.

Changing these three lines:


To this:


Still shows good results, but it's not as sensitive to GH/s spikes:

I think instead of looking for yet another solution in code, we should be looking to temporarily borrow some major hashing power during the next high difficulty period to help smooth out the curve, I think. Pretty sure I remember hearing that Bitcoin and even Litecoin had to do something similar during their early days as well.

The code works pretty much as well as can be expected, the mistake was letting it walk down from 108 difficulty at the beginning, I believe. We should have probably set difficulty to 60 or so and went from there, the algorithm wouldn't have tried to compensate as much as it currently is.

Average block time is still ~10 minutes overall, so that proves that something's working, at least. The coin is now mostly usable, minus Cryptsy still being.. well, Cryptsy. Once that's sorted I think we'll start to see some miners return, helping to smooth out the difficulty spikes.

No - you are incorrect.  Nobody is talking about 'a little tuning' - though we aren't ruling out that possibility, either.  What's really important is that for the first time since the original dev dropped and ran, we have a functioning coin that CAN run in a 21st century world.  Yes, it cycles.  Yes, we know we can do better.  But now - for the first time - customers can reliably use the coin in commerce, there's enough liquidity in the market and transactions clear quickly enough that more traders are coming in, and we have won a MAJOR endorsement!

NONE of that would have been possible without this fork.  End of story.

That is your choice and while I don't agree with your assessment, I'm not in a position to tell you you've made the wrong choice.  Good luck with your trading career.

Gentrification of bitcoin and litecoin is turning them into speculation traps.
Kimoto Gravity Well allows steady take over of the currency by people WHO DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE GOALS OF THE COMMUNITY.
We already have that problem on Wall Street.