FTC Diff Change
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[quote name=“zerodrama” post=“16253” timestamp=“1371584033”]
[quote author=zerodrama link=topic=1741.msg16219#msg16219 date=1371577099]
The purpose of a long diff retarget is to allow profit without immediate new investment, especially if there’s a sudden influx. Our proplem was the hit and run.The closer an algorithm matches the difficulty to the hashrate, the less profit there is in providing the service.
[/quote]If you have a faster retarget, your recent upgrade of mining equipment becomes worthless faster because you end up getting the same result that you did two weeks ago when you bought it.
You do not want to hug the curve.
[/quote]What evidence do you have to back up such broad claims? The same can happen with long diff changes it does not matter how close you hug the curve. If FTC market value jumps for any reason and makes it the most profitable miners will swap over until its not the most profitable. Then your diff skyrockets and the value falls a bit. All a sudden your equipment becomes worthless mining FTC till the diff drops again. The only thing that makes your mining equipment worth less is more people buying mining equipment causing the global hash rate across all cryptos to rise.
A .004 pump and dump could crush FTC for weeks again because our hash rate will skyrocket. I know I mined through one but if it happens again I will not be able to afford to continue to do it. You hurt loyal miners and help hoppers a lot by letting the diff jump like it does now. If you want to reward consistent mining you need to hug the hash rate with your diff more.
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I also disagree with the profitability and long retarget. what we need is a stable time per block, the bitcoin algo is based on one curency having up and down from start and stop of mining not to flavor of the day big switch. Alt coins are in a different scenario as switch is a factor. so up difficulty also brings less hash power and lower more hash power. so the retarget formula that only take into account the block time should be extend to take the hash change into account.
this in fact is not simple as it has an external factor the price that can’t easily be inlcude without bringing error. but a factor .25 to .75 in the retarget should do a nice trick. the overall max is the same but the move is just slower. let say we retarget by 40% at .5 we do a 20%. so if the calculation get 88% we should get max at 41.4%.
do the point is .25 .4 .5 .6 .66 .75 is difficult to determine. but i personally think .5 is a good guess as hash rate variation seems to be inversely proportional to the difficulty in a nearly linear way. the actual retarget is over 100% so would get a 41.4% (as the LTC retarget to lower diff soon after we retarget with higher diff give us a dive in profitability and then hash rate). this formula should have retarget us at around 134 instead of 144.
for sure external event like retarget of BTC and LTC and other alt coins has effect and can’t be account for so .25 is probably not enough responsive. a big drop in price can also makes the hash rate change, but the profitability is already compute in the hash rate. non profitable = less hash rate, more profitable = more hash rate and hash rate is measure via the time per block at current difficulty. so the block time actually used already takes into account all external factor it is just not as linear as it should be with a single coin with the alt coins profitability switch.
note: We can get a small value added to use a small weighting to calculate the time per bloc favoring the recent block. so we get a better idea from event that happen lately. but this should be marginal as overweighting them can lead to retarget attack.
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[quote name=“RIPPEDDRAGON” post=“16256” timestamp=“1371584816”]
[quote author=zerodrama link=topic=1741.msg16253#msg16253 date=1371584033]
[quote author=zerodrama link=topic=1741.msg16219#msg16219 date=1371577099]
The purpose of a long diff retarget is to allow profit without immediate new investment, especially if there’s a sudden influx. Our proplem was the hit and run.The closer an algorithm matches the difficulty to the hashrate, the less profit there is in providing the service.
[/quote]If you have a faster retarget, your recent upgrade of mining equipment becomes worthless faster because you end up getting the same result that you did two weeks ago when you bought it.
You do not want to hug the curve.
[/quote]What evidence do you have to back up such broad claims? The same can happen with long diff changes it does not matter how close you hug the curve. If FTC market value jumps for any reason and makes it the most profitable miners will swap over until its not the most profitable. Then your diff skyrockets and the value falls a bit. All a sudden your equipment becomes worthless mining FTC till the diff drops again. The only thing that makes your mining equipment worth less is more people buying mining equipment causing the global hash rate across all cryptos to rise.
A .004 pump and dump could crush FTC for weeks again because our hash rate will skyrocket. I know I mined through one but if it happens again I will not be able to afford to continue to do it. You hurt loyal miners and help hoppers a lot by letting the diff jump like it does now. If you want to reward consistent mining you need to hug the hash rate with your diff more.
[/quote]TRC died particularly because the difficulty and profitability changed not only before you could receive any, but before you could even sell or trade them. You can’t make mining decisions on retargets that occur within a few hours of each other.
Our retarget at full speed is already less than a day. Unless you want this to be a pure daytrading vehicle, you’re going to want the difficulty to remain the same for a day.
We are retargeting within 1 to 2 days as it is. This is faster than litecoin retargets and they only approach our rate of retarget because of the GPU rush. If we retarget faster, you will make even less money when the flood really hits.
Faster retarget is easier pump and dump. It will not settle down. It will go wild. Retarget is dynamic inertia / mass, difficulty is static inertia / mass, if you want to use a physics analogy.
You’re thinking low = good, high = bad. Real world is extreme end and extreme middle = bad, a little less a little more than middle = good. This isn’t a fixed system. People react to it both after a change and before a change they calculated for.
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[quote name=“zerodrama” post=“16284” timestamp=“1371593289”]
TRC died particularly because the difficulty and profitability changed not only before you could receive any, but before you could even sell or trade them. You can’t make mining decisions on retargets that occur within a few hours of each other.Our retarget at full speed is already less than a day. Unless you want this to be a pure daytrading vehicle, you’re going to want the difficulty to remain the same for a day.
We are retargeting within 1 to 2 days as it is. This is faster than litecoin retargets and they only approach our rate of retarget because of the GPU rush. If we retarget faster, you will make even less money when the flood really hits.
Faster retarget is easier pump and dump. It will not settle down. It will go wild. Retarget is dynamic inertia / mass, difficulty is static inertia / mass, if you want to use a physics analogy.
You’re thinking low = good, high = bad. Real world is extreme end and extreme middle = bad, a little less a little more than middle = good. This isn’t a fixed system. People react to it both after a change and before a change they calculated for.
[/quote]See logic and reasoning this is what I like to see rather than blind statements. Do not take this sarcastically I truly want to have a constructed conversation on this topic. Ill respond to each section with a corresponding number.
1. Really good point about changes and TRC. This leads into an interesting topic about confirmations etc. Due to the nature of how cryptos work you cant have an instantly adjusting diff or anything close to that. What is the limit on how fast you can adjust a diff without hurting a currency? You really don’t know without trial and error and I don’t think this question will ever be completely answered.
2. More trading is a good thing you don’t want a stagnant currency so why would it be bad if day traders loved FTC. People can already automate selling choices and automate their mining. I don’t think it will be the end of the world if the diff changes while most of the population is working.
3. I disagree with this, because when a re-target happens faster there will be less time at a really high profitability. In fact it is less likely to reach a super high profit rate. This will lower the surge of new coins into the market dampening the pumping and thus less dumping. I like the example :) gotta give me a chemistry or bio one next!
4. First part is a bit of a generalization rather than a correct truth. The second half you are correct but why does it matter? Read 1 and 2 for my reasons.
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I’ll give you a financing scam example: Fast retarget = High Frequency Trading. All bots 24/7. All made to pump and dump municipal bonds which are known to rise due to historical role in financing communities, so when they go up even in the cents, good bots jump, and bad bots dump or even push down.
It’s a bit sideways to explain, but neither supply, demand, nor trade are good bases, there has to be a sustaining principle.
I’m thinking of installing a heartbeat into FTC, using on the 2016 time scale. At the beginning of the period the difficulty will dip and it will rise slowly, in the 2nd quarter it will be close to normal, in the 3rd quarter it will be higher than normal, and at the last quarter it will be higher again. This way it can shake rattle and roll and still be predictable enough to keep the fish biting.
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[quote name=“RIPPEDDRAGON” post=“16232” timestamp=“1371581174”]
[quote author=zerodrama link=topic=1741.msg16219#msg16219 date=1371577099]
The purpose of a long diff retarget is to allow profit without immediate new investment, especially if there’s a sudden influx. Our proplem was the hit and run.The closer an algorithm matches the difficulty to the hashrate, the less profit there is in providing the service.
[/quote]I 100% disagree with this statement. Profitability is based on the current market value of a coin and its difficulty. With our current system we will continue to yo-yo from most profitable to completely pointless. With this yo-yo we will continue to go from fast transactions to much slower ones as well offering a very inconsistent experience for merchants trying to use our system. With these profit swings we will see more pump and dump behavior with people trying to make as much as they can in a short period rather than holding and investing.
If a coin becomes less profitable people will always move away from mining it. This will always result in a lower diff which will increase profitability until it hits equilibrium. If you adjust quicker you will lower the length of high profit but also bring the low profit periods down. You will have a much more stable block time and much more stable profitability. Trying to find an equilibrium with huge 41% swings is like trying to do Acid-Base Titrations by dumping Acids and Bases (up to 41% of your mixture volume) into your solution until you get it stable.
[/quote]+1 I agree with RIPPEDDRAGON’s thoughts. I think peeps should listen to him/her.
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Church, man.
We’re back under 1 Gh/s. :(
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Why not just let it adjust in real time to maintain the proper blocks per minute regardless of hashing power or re-target estimates and all this BS?
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Not a good idea. This can allow people to sabotage the coin with very little effort. If someone had enough hashpower they could jack the difficulty up a ton without staying on the network very long. This has happened to another coin, cant remember what one.
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[quote name=“renat0” post=“16396” timestamp=“1371645059”]
[quote author=Vigil link=topic=1741.msg16393#msg16393 date=1371644739]
Why not just let it adjust in real time to maintain the proper blocks per minute regardless of hashing power or re-target estimates and all this BS?
[/quote]
+1 on that or something like retarget every 10 blocks or so. I think it’d be better retarget every single block so it’d be live
[/quote]
That is what I mean - retarget every block. That way the people who stay mining it will benefit when others jump ship. There is no benefit to mine continuously at this point. How often does TRC retarget? -
[quote name=“sl1982” post=“16400” timestamp=“1371645766”]
Not a good idea. This can allow people to sabotage the coin with very little effort. If someone had enough hashpower they could jack the difficulty up a ton without staying on the network very long. This has happened to another coin, cant remember what one.
[/quote]They would have to stay on the network because once they left it would readjust. And they wouldn’t benefit anything. That would limit the miners on the network to exactly what was needed. But I think the difficulty rise should affect those who jump on in excess of the required miners. There needs to be a way to tell the late comers or the jumpers “there is no room for you right now, please mine another coin.” If that cannot be done then difficulty jumps will just persist and the coin growth will be retarded.
In a real life mining operation, random miners can’t just show up all of a sudden and start digging in your mine. They need to find another source which is not being mined. The problem with altcoins is that they did not mature in the vacuum that BTC did. BTC didn’t have another coin to compete with. With all the alts you just jump around to which ever is providing the greatest profitability and naturally you will get difficulty swings. The hardware and software which perfrom the mining also developed in pace with BTC price, acceptance, etc. This is not the case with Alts - the hashing power is already there, sometimes idle and ready to jump around.
There should be a “Share” allocation. Each coin has so many mining sites or shares which solve the blocks. The number of potential shares will be tied to the amount of hashes required to meet the block times. There can be no more hashing power on the network than that which is capable of meeting the block requirements - there can be less but not more. If there is less then the difficulty decreases to meet the block time target.
Altcoins need to function a bit differently than BTC.
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Thats not how it works at all. If you have a dynamic difficulty of every block I can just on the network for 10 minutes with a ton of hashpower and jack up the difficulty so much that if will take you hours to find a block. Once you finally do I can jump on again for a little while.
See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/[/url] -
there is your answer :) well sort of.
lock the pools - admittedly it would be difficult as 98% of those who only mine the highest profit coin will already have pool accounts.
how to create a new pool is well documented but of sufficient difficulty to deter those after the highest profit.
as it stands now those that continue to mine will only gain profit should ftc reach a higher exchange rate - that takes a lot of faith.
things will continue on a swing where hashrate falls off as difficulty gains, only to be exploited when difficulty drops.
there has to been an incentive to mine at the higher difficulty.
like right now. and i am starting to wonder. -
Why must DiffIncrease be equal to DiffDecrease? The issue I see is that we are having difficulty maintaining the 2.5 minute block target. What would be the negative potential if the 41% increase algorithm was separated from the algorithm that determines the diff decrease based on dropping hash power. The goal being to maintain the block time, not the profitability factor. Thinking long term, the survival of any currency depends on a consumer’s ability to use it. What I see hurting the FTC value is the long block times in period of reduced hash power.
Wouldn’t this set FTC apart from other coins (not just alts)? Thinking of a currency from a payment processing perspective, digital currencies will [i]never[/i] be able to reach parity with actual cash {not thinking of bank to bank transfers} unless there was [b][i]instantaneous[/i][/b] confirmation. Part of the reason credit cards work so well for consumers is that they [i]perceive[/i] the confirmation to be instantaneous, just like if they handed over paper bills. Let’s not get into the semantics of credit as that is whole other discussion.
My point is that consumers/users of a medium of payment don’t think about the technical aspects. If we are trying to build a long term currency/economy we must remove the variability of payment processing in some way. Since transaction confirmation depends solely on the miner nodes on the network…it follows that the time period to confirm must be as fast as possible nearly irregardless of the technical backbone (miners) of the system.
The way I understand it the positive benefit of digital currency is to move [i]large[/i] amounts of currency quickly, with moderate anonymity. Cash is king because I can go down the street and hand over a bundle to my neighbor to buy his car. The legality, and proper reporting, of that transaction isn’t and shouldn’t be up to the producer of the currency.
I’m not speaking about the diff change and it’s impact on miners necessarily, rather I am thinking about it’s affect on the viability and perceived stability/staying power of currency (FTC). What I perceive as killing the network’s strength right now is that we had a huge jump in hash power which necessarily raised the difficulty (and by proxy the profitability and market value), however once the difficulty adjusted accordingly and miners jumped off the network strength suffered.
This may be a very naive point of view from an admitted n00b, but please help me understand why this wouldn’t be beneficial for long term success. We need to think ahead to the days when FTC is humming along at 5 TH/s and suddenly a major internet backbone goes dark and we lose a significant portion of the network nodes for a short period. The network needs to be able to maintain it’s confirmation times or [i]consumers[/i] lose faith.
Again, please be kind…
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[quote name=“sl1982” post=“16414” timestamp=“1371648408”]
Thats not how it works at all. If you have a dynamic difficulty of every block I can just on the network for 10 minutes with a ton of hashpower and jack up the difficulty so much that if will take you hours to find a block. Once you finally do I can jump on again for a little while.See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/[/url]
[/quote]I don’t know. I don’t think what you are talking about is the same as what I am talking about.
Good comments from SixGun. Yes, it has to be independent of the miners. That is what I was trying to get at - regardless of hashing power we need to always hit the block time target.
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[quote name=“Vigil” post=“16424” timestamp=“1371650189”]
[quote author=sl1982 link=topic=1741.msg16414#msg16414 date=1371648408]
Thats not how it works at all. If you have a dynamic difficulty of every block I can just on the network for 10 minutes with a ton of hashpower and jack up the difficulty so much that if will take you hours to find a block. Once you finally do I can jump on again for a little while.See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/[/url]
[/quote]I don’t know. I don’t think what you are talking about is the same as what I am talking about.
Good comments from SixGun. Yes, it has to be independent of the miners. That is what I was trying to get at - regardless of hashing power we need to always hit the block time target.
[/quote]“See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems”isnt this pretty much whats happening now to ftc?
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[quote name=“vipertsniper” post=“16426” timestamp=“1371650605”]
[quote author=Vigil link=topic=1741.msg16424#msg16424 date=1371650189]
[quote author=sl1982 link=topic=1741.msg16414#msg16414 date=1371648408]
Thats not how it works at all. If you have a dynamic difficulty of every block I can just on the network for 10 minutes with a ton of hashpower and jack up the difficulty so much that if will take you hours to find a block. Once you finally do I can jump on again for a little while.See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/[/url]
[/quote]I don’t know. I don’t think what you are talking about is the same as what I am talking about.
Good comments from SixGun. Yes, it has to be independent of the miners. That is what I was trying to get at - regardless of hashing power we need to always hit the block time target.
[/quote]“See this article for example of what happened to Terracoin
[url=http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems/]http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/04/15/terracoin-price-recovering-following-technical-problems”isnt this pretty much whats happening now to ftc?
[/quote]I know about TRC. You just posted that article. If you read what I am saying you will see that the difficulty can never adjust the block time to anything but 2.5 minutes. With TRC the massive jump in Hash power caused the retarget to a much higher difficulty and then it took a long time for retarget. In my case, as soon as the high hasher jumps on the difficulty adjusts to maintain 2.5 minutes and as soon as he leaves the difficulty adjusts again to 2.5 minute block time. So, for a simple example, after 2.5 minutes and no solved block, the difficulty would adjust to the last known 2.5 minute block time difficulty prior to the jump. It could make the difficulty adjustment based on estimating the hash rate differential through the current block time and past block times and the target block time.
It would be even better to control all mining shares within the protocol to keep him from jumping on in the first place, in addition to the above.
Edit: Ahhh, but the difficulty of the current block can’t be changed… is that what you are saying?
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[quote name=“SixGun” post=“16421” timestamp=“1371649501”]
Why must DiffIncrease be equal to DiffDecrease? The issue I see is that we are having difficulty maintaining the 2.5 minute block target. What would be the negative potential if the 41% increase algorithm was separated from the algorithm that determines the diff decrease based on dropping hash power. The goal being to maintain the block time, not the profitability factor. Thinking long term, the survival of any currency depends on a consumer’s ability to use it. What I see hurting the FTC value is the long block times in period of reduced hash power.Wouldn’t this set FTC apart from other coins (not just alts)? Thinking of a currency from a payment processing perspective, digital currencies will [i]never[/i] be able to reach parity with actual cash {not thinking of bank to bank transfers} unless there was [b][i]instantaneous[/i][/b] confirmation. Part of the reason credit cards work so well for consumers is that they [i]perceive[/i] the confirmation to be instantaneous, just like if they handed over paper bills. Let’s not get into the semantics of credit as that is whole other discussion.
My point is that consumers/users of a medium of payment don’t think about the technical aspects. If we are trying to build a long term currency/economy we must remove the variability of payment processing in some way. Since transaction confirmation depends solely on the miner nodes on the network…it follows that the time period to confirm must be as fast as possible nearly irregardless of the technical backbone (miners) of the system.
The way I understand it the positive benefit of digital currency is to move [i]large[/i] amounts of currency quickly, with moderate anonymity. Cash is king because I can go down the street and hand over a bundle to my neighbor to buy his car. The legality, and proper reporting, of that transaction isn’t and shouldn’t be up to the producer of the currency.
I’m not speaking about the diff change and it’s impact on miners necessarily, rather I am thinking about it’s affect on the viability and perceived stability/staying power of currency (FTC). What I perceive as killing the network’s strength right now is that we had a huge jump in hash power which necessarily raised the difficulty (and by proxy the profitability and market value), however once the difficulty adjusted accordingly and miners jumped off the network strength suffered.
This may be a very naive point of view from an admitted n00b, but please help me understand why this wouldn’t be beneficial for long term success. We need to think ahead to the days when FTC is humming along at 5 TH/s and suddenly a major internet backbone goes dark and we lose a significant portion of the network nodes for a short period. The network needs to be able to maintain it’s confirmation times or [i]consumers[/i] lose faith.
Again, please be kind…
[/quote]This is all well and good, except
- we can’t wait for things to progress until it’s all smooth,
- mining is independence from gatekeepers,
- anything that is possible in the future is possible now,
- the established traditional system doesn’t actually work.
The 2.5 minute block target and profitability are inseparable. To separate them you have to pretend we are already at the performance we should be at. We’re not. The ridiculous hashrate in bitcoin way over the amount needed for transactions.
My definition of the best solution is a balance between adaptability and ease of use. There’s so many possibilities yet unexplored.
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Really good work guys I like to see creative juices flowing all around! Zero had some really good points about the diff adjustments. I think the biggest point that he convinced me of recently is near instant or quick changes too diff is nearly impossible because of confirmations required by transactions. If you have a lot diff change while waiting for confirmations this can really hurt or kill trading which in turn hurts the market. This is because it will increase unknowns for merchants, investors, and traders.
If you want a live diff change using an algorithm it is simply not possible for the current nature of cryptos. A complete redesign of the transaction structure would be required.
After 24 hours of watching our stats page I really still think the diff decrease adjustments are too slow. We are having 8-24 hours of extreme profitability followed by 1-3 days of slow transactions and low profitability. I know personally once I move in two weeks and my power rates double (yes double) at my new appt I will not be able to mine FTC any longer at a loss.
When our hash rate drops like this between our outrageous highs we are really opening ourselves up for an attack. People want to be able to target their miners at a coin and let them stay there. I think our fork to change the diff alg was the right thing to do and I think we should consider doing it again. There have been a lot of good ideas in this thread and I personally love to follow the KISS rule (keep it simple stupid). I think doing some minor modifications of the diff change could do a lot of good for this coin. We are still in our infancy and are going to be subject to much larger hash rate swings because of LTC.
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Question:
Say the difficulty rises and a block is generated under that difficulty… that block is stuck at that difficulty, correct? There is no way to change it?
