The result and the reason of the hardfork:
Thanks Democats we have stats with nice charts.
Can you explain this a little more please?
Did Karbo have a blockchain fork before or after the mandatory software update?
For hardfork software update was necessary, so first was mandatory update then hardfork.
Or are you saying that the mandatory software update was needed because the block times on Karbo got so long sometimes?
It was the reason. Updated software allowed us to conduce hardfork to block version 2 with new difficulty algorithm.
And did the block times get long because of the high hash attacks?
Exactly. The default Cryptonote difficulty algorithm with our realtively low average hashrate was abused starting the end of October by invasions of Nicehash miners who threw in relatively huge hashrate and mined ~300 easy blocks before lagging difficulty wast starting to rise, and when difficulty was at last climbing high they were going away leaving the rest of the miners and network with big gaps between blocks causing delays in transactions confirmations. What we did in the hardfork - changed difficulty calculation algorithm, now difficulty reacts much more quickly making impossible for Nicehash miners to mine easy blocks. It is because before hardfork difficulty was calculated based on window of around 300 blocks, i.e. Nicehash miner renting some 1Mh for an hour could easily mine 300 blocks at low difficulty before difficulty was starting to rise, now after the fork the window is much more smaller, 17 blocks and without lag so difficulty starts react to massive hashrate almost immediately. It wouldn't be the problem if they continue to mine, but after ther rizing of difficulty those Nicehash miners were leaving and the hashrate of the rest of the miners was too small for that difficulty therefore there were big intervals between blocks. This was unacceptable because confirmation time of transactions was too big, we had to wait for few hours for confirmations. The delays after the sudden drop of the hashrate was the reason of the hardfork.
Is Karbo responding better now to those attacks?
thank you!
MWD
As you can see on chart after December 22 when hardfork occured Niecehash attacks ceased, chart is now straing and we have stable ~240 seconds average block time. They were trying, but literally after few blocks (around 5-10) difficulty starts to rise very quickly making Nicechash mining with comparatively massive hashrate unprofitable.
