So I have a theory as to part of what is causing the fluctuations in the network (the saw tooth pattern). After a fast block, Blagos miner doesn't error out on the block and proceed to the next one. This means all machines currently mining on the last block will continue mining on a block that is already past. They do this till they finish scanning the disks as they normally would. Meanwhile the fresh block on the network will not be mined by the full network as everyone running Blagos miner is still working on the last block until they finish as if a new block hadn't appeared.
When multiple fast blocks happen, the next block will not receive the full mine, let alone the one after that, which can cause the network hash power to stagger downhill.
Obviously there are still people not using Blagos miner and may be using Pocminer, Urays, or Rurus where this does not seem to be a issue, so it only effects about 30% of the network. It also seems as though this does not happen if you mine on the Dev pool, but I've witnessed this behavior across multiple machines solo and on other pools.
It's not hard to see this. Look through the log of your miners, when you see a 'fast block or corrupt' or a incomplete mine (% isn't 100 before the next block), you can look at the difference in time between when that event happened and when the miner continues on to the next block and it's the difference of time that was remaining before it completed the mine of the 'fast block'.
Now, I'm not exactly sure why this hasn't been fixed yet. I brought this up multiple times including in a PM with Blago and this definitely looks like something that could easily be fixed and it's not hard to reproduce, so I assume it's to give fast machines a leg up on slow ones.
If someone wants to hack a fix, a program that monitors either Blagos miner or the log file and simply restarts the miner when either 'fast block' appears in the log or when the wallet pops a new block that would effectively fix this.
not so sure about this. the default setting in the config file is 2 seconds (going by memory) so at most, and if default value is present, it will take 2 seconds for Blago's miner to give up a block and start mining the next one. I reduced my setting to 750 ms for ex.
but I have been thinking about this:
let's say I have 200TB, atm the calculator says that should be 32386 burst or /7350 = 4.4 blocks.
if I see that since 00:00:00.000 I have found 5 blocks, and let's say we have another 12 hours to go in that day, then it's very likely I shouldn't find any more blocks for the remainder of the 12 hours. so I switch to mine against a pool and rackup another 10000-15000 burst. then when midnight hits, I switch to solo. if next day I have fast luck, I repeat, if not, I keep mining solo until next day and check if I should repeat. and so on.
this is kind of like pool hoping to increase your reward? this is a crude description and you can substitute any numbers with whatever you want to test this scenario...
does this make sense, is it possible to "game" burst mining like this for a bit?
pool operators should change their reward algos to prevent this?