This Difficulty Retarget Problem
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[quote name=“00400” post=“1736” timestamp=“1368088187”]
[quote author=ShadowEW link=topic=305.msg1715#msg1715 date=1368086377]
The problem with that being is FTC is never get anywhere. Powermine with higher hashrate miners for the first 2016 blocks, watch difficulty leap up, leave for 5 days, difficulty falls back to nothing, repeat.IMHO, People need to stick with FTC and keep mining. We’ll get the difficulty dropped again and all in all it’ll average out after this happens a few more times. It’s going to be a bumpy ride but if you all jump ship as soon as it gets rough then none of you get to reap the rewards at the end.
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I think 5 days are still better than 17 days (current stats).
5 days is just an example. I guess it could be less and maybe number of blocks also should be reduced. That’s for someone more qualified to say.If anyone has better suggestions, plese feel free to share. I don’t think mining and waiting 17 days (that probably will increase) is the right way.
[/quote]
It’s the ‘correct’ approach and way to do it, just I’m guessing you’re looking at it for the profitability factor. Anyone who mines FTC (even at this difficulty) IS still making a profit… Unless you’re charged an extortionate rate for your electricity and or are running a PSU with a wattage too high for you components. (a 1200W PSU for a system that draws 600W for example is really inefficient. a 750W/800W PSU will reduce your electricity usage drastically :P) -
I have thought about this problem a lot lately, but I have [s]a fascination with calculations[/s] a sneaky feeling that big rigs might be back on board FTC before the 17days+ are up. :o
Why?
Because rising LTC difficulty matched with FTC price might [i]just[/i] make FTC slightly more profitable at some point over the next 2+ weeks…It’s a long shot, but it might well happen.
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[quote name=“UKMark” post=“1739” timestamp=“1368089097”]
I have thought about this problem a lot lately, but I have [s]a fascination with calculations[/s] a sneaky feeling that big rigs might be back on board FTC before the 17days+ are up. :oWhy?
Because rising LTC difficulty matched with FTC price might [i]just[/i] make FTC slightly more profitable at some point over the next 2+ weeks…It’s a long shot, but it might well happen.
[/quote]
I’ve noticed that too, the profitability in FTC and LTC is drawing close (yes the actual coins value makes a difference but the difficulty plays just an important role) -
Do not worry too much. We will not be stuck here forever and other coins have been left at high difficulties for a long time and have done well afterwards. I’m thinking mostly about Freicoin which was stuck for three months. We should not end up like Freicoin as our block are four times as fast. However if it does look like we will end up stuck for months like Freicoin then perhaps we will hard fork early. Another trigger for a fork should be if we do end up facing another three week long wait after this one if miners do push us into such a situation again.
There was a gold rush on FTC which I do not expect to happen again, a fair few of the miners are ones that chase new coins. Some of our early enthusiastic supporters then showed equal support for ChinaCoin and now JokeCoin and so on. These chaps are only concerned with short term gain speculating on new currencies.
If we do make a change to the difficulty adjust I want to make it adjust every 504 blocks. This would make the difficulty adjust four times faster than Litecoin which is four times faster than Bitcoin due to its faster block target. This certainly continues the four times difference with Litecoin. With a block adjust of 504 blocks we would be 64% of the way through to the next block adjust at the moment. This would certainly be enough to stop some of the miners leaving who are not prepared to wait.
The change could be set in the code to take effect after a certain future block has been mined to give everyone the time to upgrade.
The more I think about it the more appealing it is. I remember being very frustrated with maaku the creator of Freicoin for not doing enough to help the coin along. Not even utilising the 80% foundation funds to help. Making a change now shows that we can be dynamic when facing obstacles.
Let me know what you think.
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[quote name=“Bushstar” post=“1769” timestamp=“1368093057”]
Do not worry too much. We will not be stuck here forever and other coins have been left at high difficulties for a long time and have done well afterwards. I’m thinking mostly about Freicoin which was stuck for three months. We should not end up like Freicoin as our block are four times as fast. However if it does look like we will end up stuck for months like Freicoin then perhaps we will hard fork early. Another trigger for a fork should be if we do end up facing another three week long wait after this one if miners do push us into such a situation again.There was a gold rush on FTC which I do not expect to happen again, a fair few of the miners are ones that chase new coins. Some of our early enthusiastic supporters then showed equal support for ChinaCoin and now JokeCoin and so on. These chaps are only concerned with short term gain speculating on new currencies.
If we do make a change to the difficulty adjust I want to make it adjust every 504 blocks. This would make the difficulty adjust four times faster than Litecoin which is four times faster than Bitcoin due to its faster block target. This certainly continues the four times difference with Litecoin. With a block adjust of 504 blocks we would be 64% of the way through to the next block adjust at the moment. This would certainly be enough to stop some of the miners leaving who are not prepared to wait.
The change could be set in the code to take effect after a certain future block has been mined to give everyone the time to upgrade.
The more I think about it the more appealing it is. I remember being very frustrated with maaku the creator of Freicoin for not doing enough to help the coin along. Not even utilising the 80% foundation funds to help. Making a change now shows that we can be dynamic when facing obstacles.
Let me know what you think.
[/quote]
It’s plausible and would definitely help out in the long term, but I don’t think now is the right time to attempt it. I’d at least want to give the network a bit of a chance and time, see if these patterns are occurring.
We should wait this change out, see how the difficulty drops, see how it rises to on the next 2016 blocks and then decide to fork it if it looks to be a common trend.Early adopters are lured in by quick gains yes, so I honestly expect to see this happen at least a couple more times.
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[quote name=“ShadowEW” post=“1777” timestamp=“1368093959”]
[quote author=Bushstar link=topic=305.msg1769#msg1769 date=1368093057]
Do not worry too much. We will not be stuck here forever and other coins have been left at high difficulties for a long time and have done well afterwards. I’m thinking mostly about Freicoin which was stuck for three months. We should not end up like Freicoin as our block are four times as fast. However if it does look like we will end up stuck for months like Freicoin then perhaps we will hard fork early. Another trigger for a fork should be if we do end up facing another three week long wait after this one if miners do push us into such a situation again.There was a gold rush on FTC which I do not expect to happen again, a fair few of the miners are ones that chase new coins. Some of our early enthusiastic supporters then showed equal support for ChinaCoin and now JokeCoin and so on. These chaps are only concerned with short term gain speculating on new currencies.
If we do make a change to the difficulty adjust I want to make it adjust every 504 blocks. This would make the difficulty adjust four times faster than Litecoin which is four times faster than Bitcoin due to its faster block target. This certainly continues the four times difference with Litecoin. With a block adjust of 504 blocks we would be 64% of the way through to the next block adjust at the moment. This would certainly be enough to stop some of the miners leaving who are not prepared to wait.
The change could be set in the code to take effect after a certain future block has been mined to give everyone the time to upgrade.
The more I think about it the more appealing it is. I remember being very frustrated with maaku the creator of Freicoin for not doing enough to help the coin along. Not even utilising the 80% foundation funds to help. Making a change now shows that we can be dynamic when facing obstacles.
Let me know what you think.
[/quote]
It’s plausible and would definitely help out in the long term, but I don’t think now is the right time to attempt it. I’d at least want to give the network a bit of a chance and time, see if these patterns are occurring.
We should wait this change out, see how the difficulty drops, see how it rises to on the next 2016 blocks and then decide to fork it if it looks to be a common trend.Early adopters are lured in by quick gains yes, so I honestly expect to see this happen at least a couple more times.
[/quote]I agree, we are not in a rush so indeed lets sit this one out and try to get some miners in here!
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[quote name=“Bushstar” post=“1769” timestamp=“1368093057”]
Do not worry too much. We will not be stuck here forever and other coins have been left at high difficulties for a long time and have done well afterwards. I’m thinking mostly about Freicoin which was stuck for three months. We should not end up like Freicoin as our block are four times as fast. However if it does look like we will end up stuck for months like Freicoin then perhaps we will hard fork early. Another trigger for a fork should be if we do end up facing another three week long wait after this one if miners do push us into such a situation again.There was a gold rush on FTC which I do not expect to happen again, a fair few of the miners are ones that chase new coins. Some of our early enthusiastic supporters then showed equal support for ChinaCoin and now JokeCoin and so on. These chaps are only concerned with short term gain speculating on new currencies.
If we do make a change to the difficulty adjust I want to make it adjust every 504 blocks. This would make the difficulty adjust four times faster than Litecoin which is four times faster than Bitcoin due to its faster block target. This certainly continues the four times difference with Litecoin. With a block adjust of 504 blocks we would be 64% of the way through to the next block adjust at the moment. This would certainly be enough to stop some of the miners leaving who are not prepared to wait.
The change could be set in the code to take effect after a certain future block has been mined to give everyone the time to upgrade.
The more I think about it the more appealing it is. I remember being very frustrated with maaku the creator of Freicoin for not doing enough to help the coin along. Not even utilising the 80% foundation funds to help. Making a change now shows that we can be dynamic when facing obstacles.
Let me know what you think.
[/quote]Bush I think you are genius!
I knew I made the right decision supporting an alt-coin with a truly supportive developer! 8)
So what block are we readjusting at? :D -
[quote name=“UKMark” post=“1782” timestamp=“1368095550”]
[quote author=Bushstar link=topic=305.msg1769#msg1769 date=1368093057]
Do not worry too much. We will not be stuck here forever and other coins have been left at high difficulties for a long time and have done well afterwards. I’m thinking mostly about Freicoin which was stuck for three months. We should not end up like Freicoin as our block are four times as fast. However if it does look like we will end up stuck for months like Freicoin then perhaps we will hard fork early. Another trigger for a fork should be if we do end up facing another three week long wait after this one if miners do push us into such a situation again.There was a gold rush on FTC which I do not expect to happen again, a fair few of the miners are ones that chase new coins. Some of our early enthusiastic supporters then showed equal support for ChinaCoin and now JokeCoin and so on. These chaps are only concerned with short term gain speculating on new currencies.
If we do make a change to the difficulty adjust I want to make it adjust every 504 blocks. This would make the difficulty adjust four times faster than Litecoin which is four times faster than Bitcoin due to its faster block target. This certainly continues the four times difference with Litecoin. With a block adjust of 504 blocks we would be 64% of the way through to the next block adjust at the moment. This would certainly be enough to stop some of the miners leaving who are not prepared to wait.
The change could be set in the code to take effect after a certain future block has been mined to give everyone the time to upgrade.
The more I think about it the more appealing it is. I remember being very frustrated with maaku the creator of Freicoin for not doing enough to help the coin along. Not even utilising the 80% foundation funds to help. Making a change now shows that we can be dynamic when facing obstacles.
Let me know what you think.
[/quote]Bush I think you are genius!
I knew I made the right decision supporting an alt-coin with a truly supportive developer! 8)
So what block are we readjusting at? :D
[/quote]Hold on. Let’s not jump the gun. As ShadowEW said, this may not be a recurring trend and a hard fork is something that will generate problems in itself. Anyone who does not upgrade will be on an obsolete block chain and could receive coins that have already been spent on the newer forked chain. All services running Feathercoin will have to upgrade and this will take some effort to contact everyone as they may not be keeping tabs on Feathercoin development.
However after I have written some material for justabitoftime I will investigate code to implement the 504 difficulty adjust at a certain block and test it on a testnet. This is the sort of thing that should be voted on as there is merit to a quicker difficulty adjust, besides trying to avoid being stuck at a high difficulty.
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I’m all for the x4 approach, seems totally logical with every other factor being this way (with no disrespect, I’m surprised you didn’t add from the start tbh), but like you say lets have a poll/vote setup.
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I think it should be at least 4 difficulty drops before we decide to reset the retarget rate.
The community interaction powers the coin. Look at BTC-e. Hacks and DDoS have not dented their reputation the slightest. They respond to mistakes (sending litecoins to a bitcoin address - did that a couple times) very quickly.
Take this drop as a gut tester.
Faster retargets will kill mining. And then prices will rise too fast creating bubblecoin.
We should just chill and build and then come back with a vengeance in this time frame.
Don’t forget that there’s a cult amongst cryptocoin users who hate anything other than 1Tr3uC01n70b1nd7h3m. They see you forking early and they will attack like wolves smelling fear.
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Hi,
New user throwing in some random thoughts here. I started mining FTC when the there was a couple of hundred MH/s, and with my measly 200KH/s didn’t expect to make much, but I’d agree with the leave it and see opinions expressed here. Slower and stable beats yoyo-ing in my opinion. I know I can’t contribute much, but am happy to leave my miners running 24/7 for as long as it takes to get stability.
Regards,
Stefan -
Definitely. The only real threat is 51% attack exposure.
It’s only been around for what? A month and a few days?
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@Bushstar: I’d advise you to do something that I have counseled many very successful people. Well successful, after I advised them. Listen to what the users are saying, but react to what they are doing. Look at hash rates, transaction volumes etc, the real stuff, things that actually matter, not what a hand full of people on this forum say, me included. We all have different opinions about this and other crypto currencies, but if you act according to what users are doing, it will always be successful.
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS.
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Thanks Christian :)
[quote name=“zerodrama” post=“1822” timestamp=“1368109397”]
I think it should be at least 4 difficulty drops before we decide to reset the retarget rate.The community interaction powers the coin. Look at BTC-e. Hacks and DDoS have not dented their reputation the slightest. They respond to mistakes (sending litecoins to a bitcoin address - did that a couple times) very quickly.
Take this drop as a gut tester.
Faster retargets will kill mining. And then prices will rise too fast creating bubblecoin.
We should just chill and build and then come back with a vengeance in this time frame.
Don’t forget that there’s a cult amongst cryptocoin users who hate anything other than 1Tr3uC01n70b1nd7h3m. They see you forking early and they will attack like wolves smelling fear.
[/quote]I’m not to worried about the cultists, if I was I would never have started Feathercoin in the first place.
I am concerned on your point about faster targets killing mining. I would like to think that a difficulty change targeted for once a day might be welcomed over having to wait the current four days. I did not pay enough attention to some of the other coins which had fast difficulty adjust like Terracoin and the sorts of problems that created, this needs to be looked at before we can do anything.
Can you expand on your point as I’m want to do some further research into this?
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[quote name=“ChristianRiesen” post=“1837” timestamp=“1368110844”]
@Bushstar: I’d advise you to do something that I have counseled many very successful people. Well successful, after I advised them. Listen to what the users are saying, but react to what they are doing. Look at hash rates, transaction volumes etc, the real stuff, things that actually matter, not what a hand full of people on this forum say, me included. We all have different opinions about this and other crypto currencies, but if you act according to what users are doing, it will always be successful.
[/quote]+1 for that.
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Hi All - new poster here…
So I’ve been reading with interest the different opinions on the difficulty re-targets and from a miners perspective, all i do is check the most profitable coin to mine and then point my 15Mh/s to the relevant pools. At present it’s LTC. Reasoning is obvious, i have a lot of money tied up in mining rigs and a large electricity bill to cover. Whilst it’s easy to say that you want the miners to stick around for the rough and the smooth, it’ll never happen. We’re a ruthless lot that are in it for the money. Simples.
In a couple of weeks the FTC diff will drop massively, all the mega-miners (read: BigRigs) will jump back on it pushing out the smaller miners, flood the market with mined coins which will further devalue it and it will spike again. You’ll end up with a massive difficulty again but coins worth even less than they are now. Meanwhile LTC diff will drop again and the profitability will rise and we all go back to LTC again. rinse and repeat.
In the meantime FTC is getting quite a bad rep on the various forums and trollboxes and i’m concerned that the damage being done may be irreparable. We need to act fast.
I actually think there is room for another Alt-coin such as feathercoin (shame no-one though to register the other TLDs though!) and think it can work but we need to somehow stop the bounce.
Is it even possible to make the re-targets live? I.e. tied to the current hash rate so there is no spike or set it to every 50 to 100 blocks or something so that it’s much more cumbersome to move your miners around? just needs to be more responsive. Or slow down the adjust so it’s only half or even a quarter of the full retarget?
Just my 2ftc…
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We are not Bitcoin when GPUs were just being repurposed for mining. We have miners jumping chains. These are not people figuring out the settings or adding new hardware for mining. They already do it. The result is that they can come and go fairly quickly.
So you have two tiers of GPU miners: prowlers jumping chains at the difficulty thresholds and community builders buying new hardware. Difficulty has to stay at a given amount because the people who bought their hardware need to make a profit on their investment. The prowlers / flash miners are most likely going to dump anyway. If difficulty changes faster, the price will have to go up in order for people to make profit. This will further cause shocks in the market.
Profit = Mining output * Price * Price drop percentage due to profit taking - Cost of hardware.
To compensate for a faster retarget, gpu miners will try renting out their hardware so they can keep buying more to keep up. They will fall behind due to scams, difficulty jumps, poor configuration, hardware failures. They will then buy up coins to meet their debt to customers. This will drive the price up for a while. But instead of being able to create long term business and community, the prices will keep rising just to have the miners break even. When this is no longer sustainable, we’ll hit another difficulty stall like we have now. And that one will be followed by a price crash.
But even without these issues, prowlers can engage in the same High Frequency Trading tactics as they do on Wall Street. The average creative person who doesn’t give a hoot about overclocking will be fumbling with settings while these big shots come in, snipe the currency, and run off. And they’ll keep flushing the currency as much as they can get away with it.
There is a solution, but I’d like to talk to you at length about it.
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Maybe something to look into, if and when the difficulty issue becomes a large enough problem, is the PPC difficulty (which was integrated into scrypt with Novacoin).
The PPC difficulty alogo appears strongly resilient to large hash swings as it is able to adjust difficulty more frequently but take in consideration an average hash rate over a set number of blocks.
TRC was basically saved from complete destruction by a “difficultly” attack by partial implementation PPC difficultly alogo.
I suggest this only as something to look into in case a hard fork is ever needed to save the coin, not as something that needs (or might ever be needed) at the moment.
Also, I know the “51%” attack is a common concern, but many times its threat is overblown. There have been multiple times a pool has had up to 61% of the BTC hash rate, and nothing happens unless said person(pool) has malicious intent. There are two phases to a “51%” and the hash rate, generating a chain in private and merging that chain are just the first part. The second part of a real “51%” attack involves creating trades or spending the coin to get goods or service and then reversing the transaction in effect stealing the goods or service traded for.
Though executing the first part of the attack and going public with it (not really a true “51%” attack) can destroy customer confidence, coins can recover and have (Example: BBQ coin)All new alt-coins communities need to be more concerned about difficultly attacks, TRC took a devastating blow and has not fully recovered, though it is recovering slowly.
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I agree a fork should be a last resort, but would a planned change to the algorithm @ a set block# require a fork? (I really don’t know the answer to this btw?)
How I see things now, and what I predict will happen (I really hope I am proved wrong though) but when the difficulty finally drops and the loyal have ploughed through it, the big-rig miners (who have since departed after dumping their quickly made coin) will return to make more quick coin and dump once again, this will drive the price lower and lower on each return visit, and we could be stuck in a cycle of 1 step forward and 2 steps back. :-\
Or am I missing something?
