[ANNOUNCE] SolidCoin - new and improved block chain. Secure from pools - page 15.

CoinHunter

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Quote from: Jimmy2011 on August 31, 2011, 01:11:14 AM

If you have a look at the code, you would understand everything what 400% means. Actually, CoinHunter is just promoting for solidcoin. I think CoinHunter is also an excellent programmer through the thread. Apart from that, I can't see some other excellent points.

P.S. "400%" is not invented by SolidCoin. Everyone can see this "400%" is there in Bitcoin. What CoinHunter did was that he promoted it as a special feature belonging to SolidCoin.

Yes Bitcoin has a 4x limit on increasing or decreasing. However it is far too long, every 2016 blocks. Bitcoin also desires a "magic number" for it's blocks, and that is 10 minutes. SolidCoin on the other hand tries to stay _UNDER_ 3 minutes. To reduce variance and provide a fast network. As such the people thinking "coin generation goes too fast" are kinda missing the point, it is supposed to go fast, it isn't supposed to always be at 3 minutes and if the system is "gamed" by a miner or two to provide "artificially" higher speeds then that is also "ok".

However I also stress network balance is very important and having SCGuild so powerful on the network (like deepbit is on btc) isn't good, so I'll be looking at ways to solve this going forward, even though I think the current situation will resolve itself soon.

CoinHunter

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Quote from: coblee on August 31, 2011, 01:29:08 AM

I talked to ArtForz on IRC and he explained this 51% attack to me. This attack is only possible with this retargeting algorithm introduced in SolidCoin. So it doesn't affect Bitcoin. The gist of it is that you fork the block chain and keep finding blocks on your own without reporting them. You fake the timestamps to make it seem like it took 4 times as long to find blocks. After this period of 240 blocks, the difficulty will be reduced to 25% of what it was. Since the difficulty can only climb by 11% each time, you can do 13 fast periods before the difficulty is back to where it was. Then you introduce this blockchain to the rest of the network. Since you were hashing at >51%, your block chain will be the longest and will be accepted by everyone. ArtForz calculated that you can make ~3.5 times the number of coins that would normally get. The effect can also be compounded. So if you do 2 slow periods and reduce the difficulty by %25^2 (or 6.25%), you can make about 3.5^2 (~12.25) times more coins.

While 51% attacks are not likely, they are still a possibility. Especially when the reward can be so huge. If you just do 4 slow periods, you get 150 times the normal output.

Well he is right that it introduces some more "fun" you can have with a chain at 51%, the point is if you're at 51% it's not healthy regardless whether you're on SC or BTC.

At 51% and having a malicious attacker both chains are dead. Discussing the new ways you could die is kinda irrelevant. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Kartoff

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So when difficulty will be changed ?

coblee

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Quote from: Syke on August 31, 2011, 01:10:24 AM

Quote

raise by a maximum of 10% every 12 hours

So that's wrong too? There's no 12 hour calculation in the difficulty adjustment period at all? It's simply every 240 blocks exactly, no matter how fast or slow those blocks were found?

Exactly. So it could possibly takes months for the difficulty to retarget. But since SolidCoin is set to retarget every 12 hours ideally, it won't be as bad as what we are seeing with namecoin.

I0coin tried to fix that by introducing retargeting every X blocks or every 2 weeks (whichever is faster). But there was a coding bug that caused the whole network to crash when the 2 weeks came up.

coblee

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Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 08:53:33 PM

Quote from: ArtForz on August 30, 2011, 08:47:36 PM

They don't even have to turn off mining
1. Pull a mining cartel attack and fork the chain when another miner finds a block.
2. Start fucking with block timestamps.
3. Huh

.
4. Near-infinite number of blocks!

Similar things are possible with BTC so not sure of the relevance to only SC? Things need to be done to ensure network balance, both SC and BTC are powerless in that regard. Howeer like I said SCGuild is concerned with such things and I'm sure he would realize he would face consequences if he attacked peoples investments. Other pools, who knows, there has been open talk from people like LukeJR (elegius owner) to run malicious attacks on IXCoin. So obviously this kind of behaviour isn't unheard of when it comes to pools.

I talked to ArtForz on IRC and he explained this 51% attack to me. This attack is only possible with this retargeting algorithm introduced in SolidCoin. So it doesn't affect Bitcoin. The gist of it is that you fork the block chain and keep finding blocks on your own without reporting them. You fake the timestamps to make it seem like it took 4 times as long to find blocks. After this period of 240 blocks, the difficulty will be reduced to 25% of what it was. Since the difficulty can only climb by 11% each time, you can do 13 fast periods before the difficulty is back to where it was. Then you introduce this blockchain to the rest of the network. Since you were hashing at >51%, your block chain will be the longest and will be accepted by everyone. ArtForz calculated that you can make ~3.5 times the number of coins that would normally get. The effect can also be compounded. So if you do 2 slow periods and reduce the difficulty by %25^2 (or 6.25%), you can make about 3.5^2 (~12.25) times more coins.

While 51% attacks are not likely, they are still a possibility. Especially when the reward can be so huge. If you just do 4 slow periods, you get 150 times the normal output.

Jimmy2011

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Quote from: Syke on August 31, 2011, 12:29:39 AM

Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 11:52:40 PM

Quote from: Syke on August 30, 2011, 11:34:03 PM

Let's assume we lose almost all the rest of the miners. What's the longest time that can pass until the next difficulty adjustment?

We can't really have a discussion unless you give actual numbers. The longest time it can take is infinite, with 0 miners.

Don't know if that really answers your question or not.

I'm sorry if "almost all" means 0 to you. Let me try some easier questions for you.

The FAQ states:

Quote

it can lower difficulty 400% in 12 hours

First, what does 400% lower difficulty mean given a current difficulty of 18,246?

Why hasn't the difficulty lowered in the last 13+ hours?

If you have a look at the code, you would understand everything what 400% means. Actually, CoinHunter is just promoting for solidcoin. I think CoinHunter is also an excellent programmer through the thread. Apart from that, I can't see some other excellent points.

P.S. "400%" is not invented by SolidCoin. Everyone can see this "400%" is there in Bitcoin. What CoinHunter did was that he promoted it as a special feature belonging to SolidCoin.

Syke

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Quote

raise by a maximum of 10% every 12 hours

So that's wrong too? There's no 12 hour calculation in the difficulty adjustment period at all? It's simply every 240 blocks exactly, no matter how fast or slow those blocks were found?

navigator

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Coblee, 400% means 4.00. You divide the difficulty by 4 maximum.

coblee

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Quote from: Syke on August 31, 2011, 12:29:39 AM

Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 11:52:40 PM

Quote from: Syke on August 30, 2011, 11:34:03 PM

Let's assume we lose almost all the rest of the miners. What's the longest time that can pass until the next difficulty adjustment?

We can't really have a discussion unless you give actual numbers. The longest time it can take is infinite, with 0 miners.

Don't know if that really answers your question or not.

I'm sorry if "almost all" means 0 to you. Let me try some easier questions for you.

The FAQ states:

Quote

it can lower difficulty 400% in 12 hours

First, what does 400% lower difficulty mean given a current difficulty of 18,246?

Why hasn't the difficulty lowered in the last 13+ hours?

I'm not sure why CoinHunter keeps on using this 400% number. It makes absolute no sense. You can't lower a number by 400%. If you lower by 100%, you get 0. Lowering by 400% gives you -54,738?!? I think what he's trying to say is that it can lower at most 75%. Also the 12 hours is an estimate. The actual time depends on how long it takes to find 240 blocks. At the ideal rate of a block every 3 minutes, you will find 240 blocks in 12 hours. But if you lose 90% of your miners, it could take 5 days. And when the difficulty adjusts after 5 days, it will only reduce by 75% max and not 90%.

So, CoinHunter, please fix the text on your website.

CoinHunter

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It can drop by a factor of 4 at maximum, so anything up to 12 minute block average is under the 4x limit.

At the moment blocks are averaging perhaps 6-8 minutes. Still under BTC confirmations even though we've dropped 900GH which is why SolidCoin is the fastest currency. So we should see a drop down to about 9000, give or take. We are 43 blocks away from this retarget period actually... not very long at all.

navigator

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DELETED for privacy

Syke

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Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 11:52:40 PM

Quote from: Syke on August 30, 2011, 11:34:03 PM

Let's assume we lose almost all the rest of the miners. What's the longest time that can pass until the next difficulty adjustment?

We can't really have a discussion unless you give actual numbers. The longest time it can take is infinite, with 0 miners.

Don't know if that really answers your question or not.

I'm sorry if "almost all" means 0 to you. Let me try some easier questions for you.

The FAQ states:

Quote

it can lower difficulty 400% in 12 hours

First, what does 400% lower difficulty mean given a current difficulty of 18,246?

Why hasn't the difficulty lowered in the last 13+ hours?

CoinHunter

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Quote from: Syke on August 30, 2011, 11:34:03 PM

Let's assume we lose almost all the rest of the miners. What's the longest time that can pass until the next difficulty adjustment?

We can't really have a discussion unless you give actual numbers. The longest time it can take is infinite, with 0 miners.

Don't know if that really answers your question or not.

We're about to see a drop back down to 8000 diff or so in 6 hours, down from 18000. So we will likely see more miners coming back and the cycle continues. Notice however that we now have a new minimum amount of miners (compared to starting with 0 )

This is part of the algorithm. Each cycle the base should continue to grow.

Syke

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Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 09:33:46 PM

Firstly no it's not really a problem LOSING 80% of the network hash, it's a good test of how resilient the code is. Without that happening I won't be able to point to it in the future as evidence. It's an issue all new chains will face gaining support from miners. They come and go when it's "immediately profitable" or "immediately not profitable".

Let's assume we lose almost all the rest of the miners. What's the longest time that can pass until the next difficulty adjustment?

CoinHunter

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Quote from: Xenland on August 30, 2011, 10:14:12 PM

Actually with my current website, it will take me ALOT of work so that is a blunt statment. I don't know of any exchange that will directly take USD for SC or vice versa, I'm forced to program fluctuating SC exchange rate with the already fluxuating exchange rate..... on top of that I have a "Locked in BTC price" so its even more of a hassel. That is why I'm going to sit on the side till SC gets its stuff together.

Yep all good points. It depends of course on a variety of factors, but regardless of what the "value" is, switching to SolidCoin is really painless for most sites. Obviously determining "value" is an importing thing for any business and will definitely restrict uptake.

So we need to improve the developer tools and make it easy for businesses used to dealing in fiat to have that option. Unlike bitcoin we aren't going to force users to rely on middlemen who go to the exchanges for you and take fees and then give you fiat after a complicated and unneeded signing up procedure. We are working closely with some exchanges to offer this straight to the business and give them the code to use it.

Even with Bitcoin's "value" in 50% swings in some days businesses can't rely on it. So for a while at least we have to peg value to fiat and keep their holdings in fiat until the day the currency is stable.

Xenland

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I'm not just any shaman, I'm a Sha256man

Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 09:29:44 PM

Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:04:02 PM

Dude. You're incredibly dense. Right now, it doesn't matter how good SC theory is. Bitcoin is still better in virtually every way because you can BUY STUFF WITH IT.

Hey dude you can buy stuff with SolidCoin too!

And BTW, vendors only need to take 5 minutes switching to SolidCoin, it's not hard. One of the advantages of me still supporting the archaic bitcoin API.

Actually with my current website, it will take me ALOT of work so that is a blunt statment. I don't know of any exchange that will directly take USD for SC or vice versa, I'm forced to program fluctuating SC exchange rate with the already fluxuating exchange rate..... on top of that I have a "Locked in BTC price" so its even more of a hassel. That is why I'm going to sit on the side till SC gets its stuff together.

the joint

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Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 09:41:34 PM

Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:36:31 PM

Dude, do you permanently reside in nerdland? And when I said buy stuff, I meant good stuff.

Ok so now we're getting down to the meat of your debating talents, that when I reply to your incorrect statements you change them to subjective ones.

"I didn't mean buy stuff, I meant buy stuff that I like from the shop I like"

Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:36:31 PM

Normal businessmen do not consider accepting SolidCoin, let alone Bitcoin, easy.

That's what I'm going to change. You excited? You should be.

@CoinHunter

Dude, you're arguing with punks that have "13 year old Jr High School Girl" mentality.

You and I and anyone that doesn't have a fat wallet of BTC waiting for $30 per BTC to comeback knows that SolidCoin is an improvement. Not perfect, but it moves the needle to the good. Keep on coding.

Stop projecting cause you never got any girls when you were 13.

I own more SC than BTC, fyi.

Edit: I'm terminating my discussion on this thread. The guy who suggested instantaneous transmission of substances to the brain has a better economic model. He's a guy who knows what people want.

Tasty Champa

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Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:45:35 PM

Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 09:41:34 PM

Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:36:31 PM

Dude, do you permanently reside in nerdland? And when I said buy stuff, I meant good stuff.

Ok so now we're getting down to the meat of your debating talents, that when I reply to your incorrect statements you change them to subjective ones.

"I didn't mean buy stuff, I meant buy stuff that I like from the shop I like"

Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:36:31 PM

Normal businessmen do not consider accepting SolidCoin, let alone Bitcoin, easy.

That's what I'm going to change. You excited? You should be.

No, it was a subjective statement obviously referring to a larger issue. There's a reason nerds are nerds. They're good with gadgets, but they suck at understanding what people actually want.

You know what I meant when I said "good stuff." I was referring to the ridiculously limited selection of things you can buy with SC. I'm on this forum every day, and I haven't seen one thing that I can buy with SC.

I'm not excited yet because I don't believe you are good at understanding what people want.

Edit: Your debating talents include "oh yeah, that's coming...hasn't happened yet, but it will. You just watch. Watchin' yet?"

enter address, select compound, press send.
opiates and cannabanoids delivered to my braincase, instantaneously? XD

the joint

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Quote from: CoinHunter on August 30, 2011, 09:41:34 PM

Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:36:31 PM

Dude, do you permanently reside in nerdland? And when I said buy stuff, I meant good stuff.

Ok so now we're getting down to the meat of your debating talents, that when I reply to your incorrect statements you change them to subjective ones.

"I didn't mean buy stuff, I meant buy stuff that I like from the shop I like"

Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:36:31 PM

Normal businessmen do not consider accepting SolidCoin, let alone Bitcoin, easy.

That's what I'm going to change. You excited? You should be.

No, it was a subjective statement obviously referring to a larger issue. There's a reason nerds are nerds. They're good with gadgets, but they suck at understanding what people actually want.

You know what I meant when I said "good stuff." I was referring to the ridiculously limited selection of things you can buy with SC. I'm on this forum every day, and I haven't seen one thing that I can buy with SC.

I'm not excited yet because I don't believe you are good at understanding what people want.

Edit: Your debating talents include "oh yeah, that's coming...hasn't happened yet, but it will. You just watch. Watchin' yet?"

CoinHunter

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Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:36:31 PM

Dude, do you permanently reside in nerdland? And when I said buy stuff, I meant good stuff.

Ok so now we're getting down to the meat of your debating talents, that when I reply to your incorrect statements you change them to subjective ones.

"I didn't mean buy stuff, I meant buy stuff that I like from the shop I like"

Quote from: the joint on August 30, 2011, 09:36:31 PM

Normal businessmen do not consider accepting SolidCoin, let alone Bitcoin, easy.

That's what I'm going to change. You excited? You should be.

Topic: [ANNOUNCE] SolidCoin - new and improved block chain. Secure from pools - page 15. (Read 85500 times)