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Neos is changing and here's why
When we first created Neos and decided to include support for multiple algorithms, I suppose you could say it was in a somewhat romantic effort to bring back mining to everyone, even smaller miners. We figured SHA would be great for those with the heavy iron to "hold down the fort" in the present and future tense post-PoW, blake so that CPUs/GPUs could be useful again, and X11 because it's pretty power efficient and again allowed for miners to make use of GPUs that had fallen ancient to the new era of scrypt asics and scrypt mining. While this was all with good intention, over the past several months since Neos has been live we've been keeping an eye on statistics, community response and request, and overall performance on the network and feedback from the community. When I post that we're constantly working on Neos, it's exactly what we're doing. Whether it's coding, analyzing, or building on top of Neos - we're here 7 days a week and it's rare that you'll contact us without a response at almost any given hour.
With that being said the legacy diff algorithm that was being used was in more ways than one just not a model that could uphold any semblance of consistency in terms of blockchain movement due to its nature of adjustment. Over the past several weeks what we've been doing is testing, re-coding, and testing some more with multiple test branches on private networks in simulation of the active chain in parallel. We first approached the current mining situation with adjustment in the legacy diff algo. Those results of those tests didn't really prove to make much of a significant impact in terms of adjustment, at least not in the way that would be conducive to fair mining and overall network performance. What we next attempted was implementing a new diff algo from the DarkCoin community - Dark Gravity Wave. We modified the the diff algo to work with multi-algo mining and yet still weren't happy with the result.
After having spent well over 1.5 weeks with the aforementioned testing and code rewrites - we took a moment to consider some of the voices we've heard from the community in conjunction with the analysis we've seen for ourselves and our own hypothesis as to what's affecting the chain, potential longevity of Neos and so forth - and this is what we found:
1. Nearly 12,000 NEOS of a possible 14,400 NEOS were being found via blake daily.
2. Noone was really mining X11 or SHA and it seemed regardless of whether SHA was being mined or not with substantial hash - blake came out on top.
3. The market continued to see consistent dumping of Neos at rates well-below buy rates and certainly well-below ICO rates
With the above facts, at the market value at which Neos was being dumped - the blake difficulty sky rocketing yet still seeing over 80% of the blocks having been found by blake - it seemed to average out to a total of .2 BTC per day from the sells. Keeping that in mind - the only logical explanation considering it wouldn't be anywhere near profitable for a blake mining operation to continue mining at this climb in difficulty and decline in market value - it's most likely botnets. This opinion is that of many community members as well as the Neos team. That being said, we do know quite a few legitimate blake miners and we apologize for the fact that you can't mine Neos with blake any longer - but we will be putting together a blake multipool. Our current multipool (http://mp.neoscoin.com) already supports X11 so our X11 miners have a place to call home there and still be rewarded with Neos using their X11 gear.
While this is a drastic change, multi-algo was meant to provide a fair ground for everyone to mine and it turned out to be a mistake. We don't sit on mistakes here - we act on them and try to formulate the best possible plan we can to rectify issues. Neos became basically a blake coin and that's not what we had originally intended it to be nor is that what we wanted it to turn into.
What are the fork details?
The fork will take place at block 42778, which is estimated to fall on or around Dec 16, 2014. At that point, the only proof of work submitted that will actually be accepted onto the chain is SHA-256. The new diff algorithm being used is Dark Gravity Wave. We've tested it out and were really happy with the responsiveness to both a large influx of hash and a sudden drop in hash. We will be reaching out to all exchanges, pools, services, and others who currently run the Neos wallet to get them updated. Until the fork block, old clients, blake/x11 as well - will continue to be supported. However, on the fork block blake/x11 will no longer be accepted and supported and any outdated clients attempting to the network will be denied. That in mind, please upgrade as soon as possible. As always, I'll be here and available via IRC, our forums, teamviewer, and telephone if anyone needs help with the transition.
Current x11/blake pools
Please do NOT upgrade your wallets as your pools will not be able to hash blake or x11 with the new client. Until the fork block you are safe on the existing branch.
What we hope this will do for Neos
We're trying in all of this to create a more stable, sustainable network that has long-term potential rather than a short term burst and a slow death. We have major plans for Neos that have been in development for some time now, including the upcoming release of Neos 2.0.2. We'll be introducing not only a plethora of new features and community requests in 2.0.2, but some support services that we've secured in place as well as multipool stats (personalized of course) directly in the wallet. This is only phase 1 of 2 in what we consider to be an upgrade and positive change for the Neos community and we're really excited to get back to work on other facets of Neos now that these past 3 weeks of hard work have come to a positive finish.
Where can I download the patches for Neos 2.0.1b and how do I upgrade?
I've tried to make the patching process as painless as possible so I've put together some installers for each platform. Please take the following steps before patching on any of the systems supported:
1) Stop any running Neos processes
2) Back up your wallet.dat somewhere safe
3) Proceed with the system-specific patch instructions as described below
Linux Patching
As root type the following:
wget http://install.neoscoin.com/patches/linux/v2.0.1b/Neos-v2.0.1b-patch.sh && chmod 755 Neos-v2.0.1b-patch.sh && ./Neos-v2.0.1b-patch.sh
There is a specific argument to pass to the patch script which will be explained after following the above steps. Once complete, you can start neos back up by logging out of root and typing: neos start
Then visit http://127.0.0.1:18000 and you should see your wallet back up and running with some slight changes to the interface and information displayed.
osX Patching
Download http://install.neoscoin.com/patches/osx/v2.0.1b/Neos-v2.0.1b-osx-patch.tar - double-click it to open it up, and double-click the app inside. It will handle the upgrade for you.
Windows Patching
Download http://install.neoscoin.com/patches/windows/v2.0.1b/Neos-V2.0.1b-WinPatch.exe and double-click once it's complete and it will go through the installer to upgrade your existing installation.
We have a lot of really great developments in the works, and while this fork set 2.0.2 development back a few weeks I'm REALLY eager to get back to work on coding for 2.0.2. There's a lot of cool stuff ahead and I'm eager to get it out to everyone but not without it being done properly. I'll continue to update everyone as usual with any news or progress and if anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Below are the specs for Neos, with the new modifications made. I can't express enough how much I appreciate the continued support from everyone and how much it means to me to have been able to watch this community grow and strengthen over only the past several months. I'm really looking forward to what more we can do and bring into the crypto community as a community.
What is Neos?
Neos is a first-of-its-kind crypto platform written from the ground up in PHP. Neos v1 was released on August 24, 2014 - 3 weeks ahead of the promised date set in the ICO due to community demand. With v1 came many features, a lot of community feedback and much room for improvement. On October 3, 2014, Neos v2.0 was released and our vision of what we wanted Neos to be came to fruition. Well after several weeks of hard work, I'm finally able to announce the release of Neos v2.0.1! The primary focal points of 2.0.1 were performance, improved anonymity, and community requests. There's a lot to announce but first I'd like to provide some information for anyone viewing that may be new to Neos.
Some key features of Neos
In-wallet trading - One-click withdrawal and deposit, order history, buy and sell Neos at supported exchanges
Anonymous transactions - You can view how our system works in the diagram. It's simple, effective and doesn't require tokens or trust rings.
In-wallet messaging
Remote-wallet hosting support
Market data and overall stats
In-wallet pool stats including personal worker stats at our official pools
In-wallet block exploration
Configurable settings & much more
Neos technical specifications & General information
Algorithm: SHA-256
Total coins: 21 Million (after the 21 million cap, a perpetual reward of 0.0625 remains per block to keep the chain moving)
Halving every: 210,000 blocks
Fair launch: Block 2 - 1001 the block reward was 0.1. Block 1002+ normal block reward
Block reward: 50 NEOS
Block time: 5 minutes
Tx fees: 0.00000001
Block confirmations: 120
Transaction confirmations: 6
Difficulty adjustment: Dark Gravity Wave
Launch date: 8/24/14 5PM EST
Coins offered during the ICO: 1,050,000.00
Website: http://www.neoscoin.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NeosCoin
Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/NeosCoin/
IRC: https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net/#neoscoin
Forum: http://forum.neoscoin.com
Git repo: https://github.com/bellacoin/neoscoin.git
Exchanges supporting Neos:
Payment Gateways:
Pay with Neos anywhere Bitcoin is accepted via http://www.coingateway.net
Active Neos mining pools can be found on www.neoscoin.com
Best regards,
syntaks