Has development continued or has it stopped?
I fiddled a bit with a few patch concepts this week but did not get to a start that I was happy with. However I did not have a lot of time to apply to it.
Also I've been pondering an alternative approach of a proposal that combines the "free level" faucet distribution mechanic with a proof-of-stake like mining to achieve the same outcome without the network paying out for the free levels. The idea is that users (who already have coins) could bond a limited number of coins in a commitment transaction to get a seed for a level that spans multiple blocks. They'd then have a fixed number of blocks after the commitment in which to submit a solution. Their coins would remain locked for the duration of the period, but at the end of the period if they have found their solution they can submit it along with a block header signing to claim a stake block, with a reward set as a percentage of their stake, not to exceed the normal block reward. In the period between their commitment and their solution submission their staked amount would be eroded, with a small portion being put into the faucet pool at each block. (Less than their block reward, total) Users without coins could then mine against "free levels" to claim a portion of this pool.
In this way, it would be users who are staking (but not meeting their solution requirement "immediately") who would be paying into the faucet instead of the network itself paying in. This mitigates the concern about the network paying for work that isn't applied to securing the chain, as the network would still only be paying for "real" work or stake bonding, both of which do add depth to the chain.
There are still some problems with the concept to work out, so I'm not entirely convinced yet that it is viable. However if it could be made to work I think it would be quite a beneficial option. It could add two attractive new ways to mine moto without facing constant level restarts and doesn't (indirectly) reduce security on the network as the "free level faucet" alone arguably does. It also provides for a nice "on ramp" to real mining, where a user can go from "faucet" mining tiny amounts with virtually unlimited time to solve levels, to staking their small amounts of coins in a more time constrained challenge to get more than the faucet trickle rewards, to finally competing in the "real" work challenge where they are on the block clock and have to deal with restarts, but get the greatest reward for their work.
Thoughts?