Goldcoin (GLD) Core Development Thread

[MicroGuy]

I'm currently in communication with the original developer (GLD). Update to follow. Yes, It's good news! 

[AZIZ1977]

so im a little confused on what exactly happens at the hardfork. Is it just a diff change? Should we stop mining after hardfork? I think others out there don't know exactly what will happen and what miners should do.  Should we restart our mining rigs immediately after 21000 block? Anyone with any insight?

at block 21000 diff will adjust.

[MicroGuy]

...here's my update.

There are now three developers (at least) willing to help us with our project.

In addition, we now have the full support of gldcoin. He has volunteered to edit his first post, remove the outdated links, and then close the previous GLD thread on bitcointalk. I have already made the new official thread. He has also offered his services to the community (but they will be limited due to time constraints) and has offered to sell me the domain GLDCOIN.COM which I will pay for and then donate to the community.

My background is in domaining and hosting so I can handle the transfer and hosting of the name. I suggest we use this domain as the official website of Goldcoin. Maybe a community member(s) will volunteer to build the website. I don't want to get too off track so we can discuss these plans in another thread. The good news is that we have universal cooperation which was and is essential.

Now back on topic.

Anytime you are building a team of talented individuals, you will be dealing with egos. It's important that all of us (including myself) remember that what we're doing here needs to be in the best of interest of Goldcoin. We will not always agree. Now I think what we should do is narrow down the options available to us in terms of dealing with the network problem. So I propose that we hear from ALL the experts, weigh their opinions, and then collectively reach a decision.

It is the community and the idea that is all powerful. I am simply contributing my time and energy like everyone else here. And I do understand that it's the "collective energy" that is the all powerful and unstoppable force.

So let's get to work.

[hyoshi]

Keep the fork a secret so we aren't attacked directly prior.  When it kicks in, as long as the hashrate is around what it is now, we are golden.  The difficulty should drop, mining will be very profitable.  If the difficulty drops enough, it will be the most profitable coin easily at this price.  the key is you DO NOT want a bunch of new miners to come in with their large hash-rates and take all hat profitable mining from you.   They will figure that out for themselves in the coming days.  The difficulty will never rise by more than 140% (so you will never see a move from 1.5 - 7.5 roughly like happened a few weeks back.

[Majormax]

...here's my update.

There are now three developers (at least) willing to help us with our project.

In addition, we now have the full support of gldcoin. He has volunteered to edit his first post, remove the outdated links, and then close the previous GLD thread on bitcointalk. I have already made the new official thread. He has also offered his services to the community (but they will be limited due to time constraints) and has offered to sell me the domain GLDCOIN.COM which I will pay for and then donate to the community.

My background is in domaining and hosting so I can handle the transfer and hosting of the name. I suggest we use this domain as the official website of Goldcoin. Maybe a community member(s) will volunteer to build the website. I don't want to get too off track so we can discuss these plans in another thread. The good news is that we have universal cooperation which was and is essential.

Now back on topic.

Anytime you are building a team of talented individuals, you will be dealing with egos. It's important that all of us (including myself) remember that what we're doing here needs to be in the best of interest of Goldcoin. We will not always agree. Now I think what we should do is narrow down the options available to us in terms of dealing with the network problem. So I propose that we hear from ALL the experts, weigh their opinions, and then collectively reach a decision.

It is the community and the idea that is all powerful. I am simply contributing my time and energy like everyone else here. And I do understand that it's the "collective energy" that is the all powerful and unstoppable force.

So let's get to work.

Good, well done.

Collective energy, that's what cryptocurrency,P2P, is all about. I dont have any coding skills or experience, but I will continue to contribute my unseen 'nudges' in the right direction: I have owned and run 4 businesses (employed up to 8 people) over the last 30 years, so I think I can make the right sort of impression on all types of personality.

[AZIZ1977]

Another thing i was thinking about when difficulty drops in a few days the big miners will notice the profability and start mining Goldcoins by the tens of thousands and dump them on the exchange. I am just afraid it will hurt GLD more. Have the devs thought about the reward per block.

[bobbix]

I don't think anything OFFICIAL about the fork should be posted on bitcointalk.org at all. Just keep all OFFICIAL talk on GLDCOIN.com forums or here. Only those who are acutally trying to progress the coin should benefit from keeping up to date with what is going on. All imo.

[MicroGuy]

Keep the fork a secret so we aren't attacked directly prior.  When it kicks in, as long as the hashrate is around what it is now, we are golden.  The difficulty should drop, mining will be very profitable.  If the difficulty drops enough, it will be the most profitable coin easily at this price.  the key is you DO NOT want a bunch of new miners to come in with their large hash-rates and take all hat profitable mining from you.   They will figure that out for themselves in the coming days.  The difficulty will never rise by more than 140% (so you will never see a move from 1.5 - 7.5 roughly like happened a few weeks back.

This seems like good advice to me. What do we need to do in order to execute this option?

[hyoshi]

Another thing i was thinking about when difficulty drops in a few days the big miners will notice the profability and start mining Goldcoins by the tens of thousands and dump them on the exchange. I am just afraid it will hurt GLD more. Have the devs thought about the reward per block.

if you drop the rewards per block, the coin will die - you can change things just because miners will mine, and miners may trade it away.  That's really the whole point.  If no one mines a coin - the coin dies.

Rather the effort should be made to improve the coins image and usability (where can you use the coin) in order to drive up the price.

Big miners only looks towards BTC profitability, and hopefully this will stay off their radar for a while - but in no way shape or form do you want them not to mine it.

And if someone wants to be involved but has a low hashrate - the best thing for these individuals to do is to buy LTC or BTC and buy these sell orders of GLD, investing in the coin.  If everyone just hoards their coins, that is fine, but if no one actually buys the sell orders, the price will surely fall.

[hyoshi]

Keep the fork a secret so we aren't attacked directly prior.  When it kicks in, as long as the hashrate is around what it is now, we are golden.  The difficulty should drop, mining will be very profitable.  If the difficulty drops enough, it will be the most profitable coin easily at this price.  the key is you DO NOT want a bunch of new miners to come in with their large hash-rates and take all hat profitable mining from you.   They will figure that out for themselves in the coming days.  The difficulty will never rise by more than 140% (so you will never see a move from 1.5 - 7.5 roughly like happened a few weeks back.

This seems like good advice to me. What do we need to do in order to execute this option?

Really at this point just wait and see what happens at 21k.  i have examined the code and it will work.  From there we see how it goes when the fork kicks in.  I for some crazy reason its attacked prior to the release, we would need to make another emergency form immediately and without warning - only letting cryptsy, pool operator's and key people.  Then when its forked and the key people/infrastructure is using the forked chain, you let the world know.  That is a worst case scenario - I think GLD is off heir radar for now and FTC/LTC are on their immediate list to try and destroy.

[MicroGuy]

Another thing i was thinking about when difficulty drops in a few days the big miners will notice the profability and start mining Goldcoins by the tens of thousands and dump them on the exchange. I am just afraid it will hurt GLD more. Have the devs thought about the reward per block.

if you drop the rewards per block, the coin will die - you can change things just because miners will mine, and miners may trade it away.  That's really the whole point.  If no one mines a coin - the coin dies.

Rather the effort should be made to improve the coins image and usability (where can you use the coin) in order to drive up the price.

Big miners only looks towards BTC profitability, and hopefully this will stay off their radar for a while - but in no way shape or form do you want them not to mine it.

And if someone wants to be involved but has a low hashrate - the best thing for these individuals to do is to buy LTC or BTC and buy these sell orders of GLD, investing in the coin.  If everyone just hoards their coins, that is fine, but if no one actually buys the sell orders, the price will surely fall.

Ok Hyoshi. In your estimation what should we do? and when?

Edit: According to Hyoshi everyone needs to make sure they have the latest binaries as listed on the official page at bitcoin talk and here in the how-to forum. We need to get the word out to everyone to update to the latest binaries.

[twobits]

Here are some proposed changes from the Nibble developer from a previous thread:

All, I am the dev of "Nibble" - my coin has been near the top of coinchoose.com on and off for the last few weeks.  I can do whatever you want really with this coin.  Some ideas I have are to change the fork to 20,950 - its currently set to fork at 21k.  you guys will have to spread the word of the update, get cryptsy to install it and all that.

I would change the block time to 1 minute, make the difficulty retarget something like 250 blocks, make the max difficulty adjustment around 110% (makes attacks or spikes less effective or impacting), and change the coin maturity to 50 confirms - the current 100 for a coin with so few miners is insane.  I would keep the block reward at 500 but have it 1/2 every x amount of blocks (way out in the future)

These are not things the dev did wrong - its just that no coin is ever intended to be mined with under 10 mH/s total.

I can make these changes immediately and have a build for you tonight - I have dealt with gldcoin (we swapped nodes to improve both networks) and he told me that he will let me take over his dev duties.  He said that he just has no time at the moment, he's swamped at work, swamped at home or something.

It is too late to change the fork to be earlier IMO.  I don't think I agree with your other changes proposed.    The protocol was never meant for short block times.   You can get away with it on smaller networks but it will bite you if you grow later.  Also, for what happens to a coin with shorter block times take a look at i0coin.    Till better solutions to the issues caused are created I would hold off increasing block times.  As for caping the increase at 110% all the does is extend the time that the coin can be mined at a rate exceeded the designed for parameters without it readjusting to compensate.   The reduction in confirms due to the low mining power is just madness.   The purpose of the confirms is to make sure that block is locked in.  With low mining power and miners able to switch power easily, you actually need more confirms not less.

What the dev did wrong was already create a fork with the new client release.   This probably is what caused a lot of the issues seen since then.

[MicroGuy]

Here are some proposed changes from the Nibble developer from a previous thread:

All, I am the dev of "Nibble" - my coin has been near the top of coinchoose.com on and off for the last few weeks.  I can do whatever you want really with this coin.  Some ideas I have are to change the fork to 20,950 - its currently set to fork at 21k.  you guys will have to spread the word of the update, get cryptsy to install it and all that.

I would change the block time to 1 minute, make the difficulty retarget something like 250 blocks, make the max difficulty adjustment around 110% (makes attacks or spikes less effective or impacting), and change the coin maturity to 50 confirms - the current 100 for a coin with so few miners is insane.  I would keep the block reward at 500 but have it 1/2 every x amount of blocks (way out in the future)

These are not things the dev did wrong - its just that no coin is ever intended to be mined with under 10 mH/s total.

I can make these changes immediately and have a build for you tonight - I have dealt with gldcoin (we swapped nodes to improve both networks) and he told me that he will let me take over his dev duties.  He said that he just has no time at the moment, he's swamped at work, swamped at home or something.

It is too late to change the fork to be earlier IMO.  I don't think I agree with your other changes proposed.    The protocol was never meant for short block times.   You can get away with it on smaller networks but it will bite you if you grow later.  Also, for what happens to a coin with shorter block times take a look at i0coin.    Till better solutions to the issues caused are created I would hold off increasing block times.  As for caping the increase at 110% all the does is extend the time that the coin can be mined at a rate exceeded the designed for parameters without it readjusting to compensate.   The reduction in confirms due to the low mining power is just madness.   The purpose of the confirms is to make sure that block is locked in.  With low mining power and miners able to switch power easily, you actually need more confirms not less.

What the dev did wrong was already create a fork with the new client release.   This probably is what caused a lot of the issues seen since then.

Thank you for these ideas.

In your view, what is the best move for us to make at this point and time?

[hyoshi]

Here are some proposed changes from the Nibble developer from a previous thread:

All, I am the dev of "Nibble" - my coin has been near the top of coinchoose.com on and off for the last few weeks.  I can do whatever you want really with this coin.  Some ideas I have are to change the fork to 20,950 - its currently set to fork at 21k.  you guys will have to spread the word of the update, get cryptsy to install it and all that.

I would change the block time to 1 minute, make the difficulty retarget something like 250 blocks, make the max difficulty adjustment around 110% (makes attacks or spikes less effective or impacting), and change the coin maturity to 50 confirms - the current 100 for a coin with so few miners is insane.  I would keep the block reward at 500 but have it 1/2 every x amount of blocks (way out in the future)

These are not things the dev did wrong - its just that no coin is ever intended to be mined with under 10 mH/s total.

I can make these changes immediately and have a build for you tonight - I have dealt with gldcoin (we swapped nodes to improve both networks) and he told me that he will let me take over his dev duties.  He said that he just has no time at the moment, he's swamped at work, swamped at home or something.

It is too late to change the fork to be earlier IMO.  I don't think I agree with your other changes proposed.    The protocol was never meant for short block times.   You can get away with it on smaller networks but it will bite you if you grow later.  Also, for what happens to a coin with shorter block times take a look at i0coin.    Till better solutions to the issues caused are created I would hold off increasing block times.  As for caping the increase at 110% all the does is extend the time that the coin can be mined at a rate exceeded the designed for parameters without it readjusting to compensate.   The reduction in confirms due to the low mining power is just madness.   The purpose of the confirms is to make sure that block is locked in.  With low mining power and miners able to switch power easily, you actually need more confirms not less.

What the dev did wrong was already create a fork with the new client release.   This probably is what caused a lot of the issues seen since then.

You are probably right on the 1 minute blocks,  I was just throwing its out there as it was mentioned before by a few other people. 

The problem i think is that you are failing to see the past history of the coin.  This coin was attacked last minute to push up the difficulty to the current 7.34.  This coin was in the scopes of many people since the beginning, and will surely be the target of future attacks.  The cap I was suggesting would prevent these attacks from causing any huge spikes in difficulty.  It will not extend the period a coin can be mined at a faster rate - the block re-targets are 504. 

Here is some simple math:

4 difficulty changes of 110 % (440%) are actually more than 1 difficulty change at a original max 400% every 2016 blocks (which is what this coin was set to originally).

As for the confirmations, these numbers were pulled out of thin air.  120 is no safer than 60 confirmations once a coin is over difficulty 1.  Do you really think that 120 wasn't just an arbitrary number in Litecoin and/or Bitcoin?  I have had blocks waiting to mature for 4 days now - at its worst last week, it took 1 entire week for a block to mature.  Now thats madness.

[hyoshi]

What the dev did wrong was already create a fork with the new client release.   This probably is what caused a lot of the issues seen since then.

What did he do? Not sure I follow what he did.  I thought he created a new client that would fork at 21K, from the looks of it he did what FTC did.  How else would you do a hard fork if everyone doesn't have the updated client?