Pretty sure it is just UTC difficulty algo being too sensitive and 'correcting' too far either side of optimum. Things seem to get a lot more twitchy at these low low N15+ POW diffs. Also as a POS/POW hybrid adjusting teh difficulty is even more complicated as the POW diff is in feedback with the POS diff so that a weighting between the two is maintained. I don't feel like looking it up but I have a strong hunch that the YAC difficulty adjustment settings are not as sensitive so you will not see as much oscillation in difficulty if you are trying to compare the two coins.
Yeah, the Peercoin exponential retarget is much more precise. And of course, what scrypt-chacha folks are used to seeing behind a network rate. I definitely prefer the stability this retarget brings, but since it only uses the last two blocks it's vulnerable to time manipulation.
Digishield can be oscillated more. It tends to overshoot a bit at the extremes. But while it swings more than before, the blocks still have an acceptable spacing over time. It appears to scale up nicely- Dogecoin doesn't appear to having any issues with it. I like the asymmetric rise/fall. Being able to correct downward faster than upward was a positive to making the coin more available to our dedicated miners by quickly recovering from those difficulty levels that leave the chain stuck. It's less affected from time manipulation. But, at the difficulty lows and the highs the network hash rate seems to go beyond the actual a bit when it overshoots.
I was hoping someone else would have some input on this good discussion...
I'm not smart enough to tackle how to strike the right balance with the difficulty adjustments. I know it has been a complaint with YAC in the past where it takes a couple weeks for the difficulty to adjust appropriately after the NFactor change. I feel this issue needs to be investigated because I don't think these difficulty swings are good. As a miner, I could just jump on when it is low and leave when it is high--maximizing my profits while hurting UTC. Am I missing something?
Kracko, I still don't understand why you are punishing miners in order to balance your two pools while the network is completely unbalanced. Has there been a fork now? Is that why Cryptsy has UTC under maintenance?
Meanwhile, it seems UTC will soon no longer have the largest marketcap for scrypt-chacha. And the coin that will be ahead of UTC has only one working pool. I am a big fan of decentralization, but the cost-benefit analysis of what you are doing is clear. Besides, that 3% takeaway from miners for the 'dev' fund becomes pretty meaningless as the price continues to fall. Just my thoughts...
Duly noted. Sorry you feel that way, but yet again, the retarget is going to stay as it is. In my mind, a little bounciness is preferable to leaving your miners with an overly high difficulty for a couple weeks. Be it time manipulation or intermittent miners, there will be a fast recovery.
The only one making an issue of the pools is you. There are no forks that I'm aware of. And you would have to ask Cryptsy, we haven't published any changes in production since the last release.
May the best coin win.
Ugly car... 
