Development Update - Oct 1, 2014

[fernando]

If has rate drops that much lower won't the reward go up in effect paying the miners who stick around more?

Yes, and then other miners (or those who left) will come back because the coin is more profitable. If the price also increases profitability will be even higher. Thendifficulty will go up again because when something is profitable more miners flock in. It could very well happen that with a lower reward for miners Darkcoin ended with more hash power because the price has gone up making it profitable to mine at a higher difficulty.

 

[crowning]

[...]
Masternode Reward Structure

While writing the whitepaper for InstantX and v2 of Darkcoin, I’ve realized that the network would gain an incredible amount of security by increasing the amount of running Masternodes. When originally envisioned, the target number of masternodes was 2000-3000. I’ve waited some time to see if the amount of active Masternodes will increase alone, but I’m beginning to think some tweaking is in order.

Are ~1000 Masternodes really THAT weak?

Wouldn't it be much easier and straightforward to let the Masternodes make POS like proposed here https://darkcointalk.org/threads/rc4-issues-bugs-feature-requests.2039/page-14#post-18282?

 

[moli]

Are ~1000 Masternodes really THAT weak?

Wouldn't it be much easier and straightforward to let the Masternodes make POS like proposed here https://darkcointalk.org/threads/rc4-issues-bugs-feature-requests.2039/page-14#post-18282?

https://darkcointalk.org/threads/development-update-oct-1-2014.2561/page-5#post-23326

 

[Propulsion]

What really needs to happen is have a centralized service like coinbase launch that allows people to store their darkcoins on it for a percentage of a MN. Lets call this website "MasternodeShares".

People with say 100 dark would get 10% of the masternode income during a month before fees of the website.

The huge hurdle of this is the actual implementation of setting up a full masternode; that is, having a unique static ip address for each one.

If the codebase was changed to allow multiple MN's to run on a single IP, that would solve this issue. For instance have masternode genkey also have an address flag.

masternode genkey X5490fja0fasdfsadfad

This would allow a website to launch while only utilizing one IP to run their service. Also, if this change was made, it would bring down the cost of operating multiple MN's substantially allowing a wallet of 5000 to run from one IP.

____________________________________________

As far as increasing the percentage that goes to MN's: honestly, I'm actually against it. Mining at the moment is extremely unrewarding. Instead of taking income away, changes should be made to make it easier to operate MN's. Like above, a website that pays people in MN shares and easier operation and set up of MN's themselves.

 

[moli]

We can do both things at the same time. If we wait to have the perfect coin to look for adoption we will never have it because there will always be something that can be improved. The time to start using Darkcoin is yesterday!! We have already an anonymous coin that works fine, now go out and preach When we get new feature we'll all win, current users and those who we'll convince tomorrow.

Minotaur is doing a great job approaching businesses to talk about Darkcoin. I'm absolutely sure that he'll be the source of many good news in the next few weeks. Anyone wanting to help should go to the thread he started about it to discuss ideas (https://darkcointalk.org/threads/darkcoin-promotion-initiatives.2463/). And if you really want to help and get your hands dirty, just say so, we'll set you up, there is plenty of work to do.

We have a lot of competitions, and the biggest competition is Bitcoin. The marketing team has done a great job, and Darkcoin is getting to be known. However, could we get Darksend to work NOT just "fine", but "EXCELLENT", please? Also, could we get a bounty to hire a dev to make fabulous GUI wallets? I will donate for this and I'm sure many of us can donate for this fund.

 

[r-ando]

What really needs to happen is have a centralized service like coinbase launch that allows people to store their darkcoins on it for a percentage of a MN. Lets call this website "MasternodeShares".

People with say 100 dark would get 10% of the masternode income during a month before fees of the website.

The huge hurdle of this is the actual implementation of setting up a full masternode; that is, having a unique static ip address for each one.

If the codebase was changed to allow multiple MN's to run on a single IP, that would solve this issue. For instance have masternode genkey also have an address flag.

masternode genkey X5490fja0fasdfsadfad

This would allow a website to launch while only utilizing one IP to run their service. Also, if this change was made, it would bring down the cost of operating multiple MN's substantially allowing a wallet of 5000 to run from one IP.

____________________________________________

As far as increasing the percentage that goes to MN's: honestly, I'm actually against it. Mining at the moment is extremely unrewarding. Instead of taking income away, changes should be made to make it easier to operate MN's. Like above, a website that pays people in MN shares and easier operation and set up of MN's themselves.

I understand what you are saying, but could this not also justify the reverse argument? Because mining is currently extremely unrewarding would it not make sense to slowly phase out the unrewarding experience? Mining is already old technology and one that has proven unsustainable over time in my opinion. It is also something that is unnecessarily inefficient as far a power consumption goes and encourages constant hardware upgrades to the detriment of previous investments in the field… It is like a vicious cycle that keeps eating at itself and at investors..Just a thought I agree 100% that mining pools should be replaced with master node pools however...

 

[MangledBlue]

Yeah



Who hosts the masternode in this scenario? And what happens when one of those wallets spends the held fund? I would be upset if the MN went down because one of the share holders moved or accidentally spent their coin.

The people would hold their own coins, locked by coin-control.
The system would know each person (for example 2 people) had say, 500DRK

Yes, the MN would be broken if coins were moved and/or spent

But I don't know if this is possible - I'm sure Evan would know

Make a MN tab where you key in the MN genkey and a drop down to pick either 2 - 4 - 8 - 10 (even numbered DRK) to choose number of people involved
2 = 500
4 = 250
8 = 125
10 = 100

But the issue with this would be - who collects the funds from MN payments?

On the MN tab page - include a private/public/personal addy for payment and use the multiplier as a divisor
when a payment hits, one of the MN operators/wallets, divides the payment and automatically sends it to the other MN participates

.....wheels keep turning but again - could it be done?

 

[stonehedge]

And what if that removes too many coins from the marketplace?

 

[acidburn]

And what if that removes too many coins from the marketplace?

The price goes up?

 

[tungfa]

And what if that removes too many coins from the marketplace?

exactly
4.7 Mill coins in circulation now
900K coins in MN's now

if we would really get to 2-3000 MN's the deflation would kill the coin and the market no ?!

 

[MangledBlue]

And what if that removes too many coins from the marketplace?

Removing coins from the market place is going to be a balancing act no matter what we all decide. Take to many out and the coin will stagnate for sure. We can't have every DRK in MNs because there would be nothing to denom/anon but not everybody is going to want to run a MN.

Beside, my solution is only speaking of the wallet side of things. We still have to consider the server side. Of which a single person would be responsible for the server. Eventually good-actors would be running that part, while distributing the needed keys to be involved in a decentralized MN partnership.

edit: I'd love to be able to send my current investors back their coins so I'm not responsible for them. Give them the needed key for the MN and away we go......

 

[stonehedge]

Just my three duffs:

1) Enforce masternode payments to look after the masternode owners. Until RC5, some of us were running at a loss due to the awful payment variance.
2) Invest more time into attracting new investment and publicity. We need adoption. Small steps...
3) Look into possibilities to make mining Darkcoin more attractive. Power is expensive and 20% is a lot to lose from a block. If there is anything we can do to help the miners profit, its a win win.

EDIT: Unless the devs can spot a problem with these three steps happening while Evan & Co work on future developments as listed in the OP then I personally think Darkcoin is so young we should let it grow naturally and see what happens before considering manipulating the economy before we even know what it is going to look like if and when people start using Darkcoin. This tree has barely sprouted.

 

[r-ando]

exactly
4.7 Mill coins in circulation now
900K coins in MN's now

if we would really get to 2-3000 MN's the deflation would kill the coin and the market no ?!

I don't think so since coins are divisible into decimals, it would probably increase the value of the coins over time and encourage valuation based on micro units of DRK. This could be compensated for by eventually lowering transaction fees…. So basically even if one day only a hundred coins(or whatever) are left in circulation, people would use micro DRK's instead of full coins to buy things, this is most likely and logically what will happen anyways over time since there are only millions of coins and billions of people on the planet… and then one day other planets…..

 

[r-ando]

And if one day all coins are in masternodes, well then people can trade shares of masternodes…. like people trade company shares today. And then all of a sudden each coin is fundamentally backed. Additionally, if the companies that run the masternodes backed themselves up with precious metals then you have a double backing of valuation. After all, the reason people started using paper money was because of the inconvenience of carrying precious metals around… That would fundamentally solve the issue for good imo

 

[MangledBlue]

And if one day all coins are in masternodes, well then people can trade shares of masternodes…. like people trade company shares today. And then all of a sudden each coin is fundamentally backed. Additionally, if the companies that run the masternodes backed themselves up with precious metals then you have a double backing of valuation.

The only thing that I can see here - is that the MN's would then be hosting other coins to facilitate BTC and Alt-coin functions - even tor like features etc etc

 

[stonehedge]

One way or another I can't see a future without mining of some sort.

Whether that be people donating idle CPU time or professional mining operations and any combination thereof. It just doesn't seem right that the masternodes should be able to generate the coins for which they facilitate anon and transmission.

 

[moli]

What really needs to happen is have a centralized service like coinbase launch that allows people to store their darkcoins on it for a percentage of a MN. Lets call this website "MasternodeShares".

People with say 100 dark would get 10% of the masternode income during a month before fees of the website.

The huge hurdle of this is the actual implementation of setting up a full masternode; that is, having a unique static ip address for each one.

If the codebase was changed to allow multiple MN's to run on a single IP, that would solve this issue. For instance have masternode genkey also have an address flag.

masternode genkey X5490fja0fasdfsadfad

This would allow a website to launch while only utilizing one IP to run their service. Also, if this change was made, it would bring down the cost of operating multiple MN's substantially allowing a wallet of 5000 to run from one IP.

____________________________________________

As far as increasing the percentage that goes to MN's: honestly, I'm actually against it. Mining at the moment is extremely unrewarding. Instead of taking income away, changes should be made to make it easier to operate MN's. Like above, a website that pays people in MN shares and easier operation and set up of MN's themselves.

Propulsion, I think elbereth has something similar that he planned to tell me more about it once he's done with the moving. Maybe you can discuss with him?

 

[MangledBlue]

You can pay someone some DRK and ask them to set it up for you and teach you how. Also you can use Testnet to practice how to set up a MN.

If somebody is looking to setup an AWS, I've been looking into, how to distribute a MN image to others.
I was thinking, for about 5 DRK sell a copy of the image and
For another 5DRK, walk you through the "setup" - not much to setup really
Change the parameters on the local and remote then run it.

 

[r-ando]

One way or another I can't see a future without mining of some sort.

Whether that be people donating idle CPU time or professional mining operations and any combination thereof. It just doesn't seem right that the masternodes should be able to generate the coins for which they facilitate anon and transmission.

If mining stays in the equation it would make sense for these decentralised masternode pool companies to also do mining.

After all, the tendency to centralisation of mining by corporate interests has been demonstrated by bitcoin, eventually the same thing will probably happen with DRK when better and better asics (with the constant and rising investment costs associated) are developed. This way the problem of centralization of mining could also be countered, slowly reducing its importance with time. Basically, the company hosting the masternodes would generate revenue which would allow it to keep mining, kind of like a functional corporate social responsibility demonstration? hahaha, now that would be something to see, companies being responsible, but it would make sense and create a sustainable shareholders-stakeholder relationship synergy… if i'm thinking this through properly, I just pulled my back so I'm in a bit of pain right now I would love to one day retire my miners and have them as a showpiece on the wall

 

[r-ando]

Maybe the Darkcoin Foundation could take up such a role?

 

[hard_forker]

Maybe the Darkcoin Foundation could take up such a role?

No.

 

[thelonecrouton]

What I would like to see WRT mining, in steps:

1. p2pool becomes the only pool from which blocks are accepted. If MN's can enforce payments then they should be able to enforce p2pool use. This solves the centralisation problem and removes the threat of 51% attacks. No one has yet offered me a sensible argument against this. Please do if you have one.

2. The logical next step - p2pool nodes need to be run on Masternodes. This removes any need for 'enforcement' in the first place. And miners who choose to leave their mined DRK in the pool account could receive pro-rata MN payments automatically at the protocol level. eg, MN starts off with 1000DRK, it has the usual probability of getting paid, but as miners increase the MN/pool balance, that probability gets weighted upwards accordingly relative to other MNPools. This makes MN shareholding practically automatic, creating scarcity and increasing price.

edit: alternately, it could allow the MNPool op to free up some or all of their 1000DRK to deploy a new Masternode, as long as the MNPool balance was > 1000DRK.

 

[hard_forker]

One way or another I can't see a future without mining of some sort.

Whether that be people donating idle CPU time or professional mining operations and any combination thereof. It just doesn't seem right that the masternodes should be able to generate the coins for which they facilitate anon and transmission.

I see absolutely no problem with MN doing the processing of the transactions. Not only there won't be threat of 51% attack, there is more than enough processing power to deal with the transactions and it has a positive effect on the environment. In addition, MN owners who keep coin will be receiving new coins rather than multipool miners who sell the coin for BTC and drive the DRK price down. All we need is a stable high number of MN.

We only needed the miners for the begining phase. It was a win-win situation but their age comes to the end now and DRK will do better without them.

 

[stonehedge]

This is revolutionary speak right here!

This would essentially create a masternode server arms race. I don't like the idea one bit. I understand the ideology but not the practicality.

Why not have both? Anybody can CPU or GPU(with the correct server) mine on their masternodes right now. Why not let them do it, enable an option to idle CPU mine in the QT wallet and also let the mining pools do their thing? Surely diversity is better?

 

[hard_forker]

This is revolutionary speak right here!

This would essentially create a masternode server arms race. I don't like the idea one bit. I understand the ideology but not the practicality.

Why not have both? Anybody can CPU or GPU(with the correct server) mine on their masternodes right now. Why not let them do it, enable an option to idle CPU mine in the QT wallet and also let the mining pools do their thing? Surely diversity is better?

I believe that diversity with 900+ MN is sufficient. Remember - all it takes is one feable CPU to process all the transactions. Everything else is just a wasted power to assure decentralisation. But - why wasting electricity when we get the decentralisation through MN ?

 

[stonehedge]

If you're not using the CPU at 100% util you aren't wasting power.

Maybe thats a feature that could be considered for a future daemon though. I've been doing some benchmarking on a C3.XLarge and CPU mining is affecting the performance of the darkcoind instances on there quite badly. AWS is reporting oer 300% CPU UTIL. I'm sure that isn't a good thing.

Are 900 (mostly t2.micro) CPU mining going to do the job? I don't think so. This is why all hash should be welcomed imho.

 

[g8F98FF3gjafogj4]

If you're not using the CPU at 100% util you aren't wasting power.

Maybe thats a feature that could be considered for a future daemon though. I've been doing some benchmarking on a C3.XLarge and CPU mining is affecting the performance of the darkcoind instances on there quite badly. AWS is reporting oer 300% CPU UTIL. I'm sure that isn't a good thing.

Are 900 (mostly t2.micro) CPU mining going to do the job? I don't think so. This is why all hash should be welcomed imho.

I imagine if Masternodes were doing the block generation the process would not resemble "CPU mining", it would be a different beast entirely and would not need to eat up the entire CPU load. The reason the CPU load is so high when CPU mining is because you are competing for blocks and trying to squeeze every little bit of processing power out of it.

 

[stonehedge]

That, Sir (I assume Sir from your avatar), makes sense.

 

[hard_forker]

If you're not using the CPU at 100% util you aren't wasting power.

Maybe thats a feature that could be considered for a future daemon though. I've been doing some benchmarking on a C3.XLarge and CPU mining is affecting the performance of the darkcoind instances on there quite badly. AWS is reporting oer 300% CPU UTIL. I'm sure that isn't a good thing.

Are 900 (mostly t2.micro) CPU mining going to do the job? I don't think so. This is why all hash should be welcomed imho.

Think outside the mining box. You do not need megahashes to assure processing simple transactions. MN would not try to brute force X11 - there would be voting in process and the selected MN would easily process few dozens/hundred transactions using CPU power.

 

[thelonecrouton]

If you're not using the CPU at 100% util you aren't wasting power.

Maybe thats a feature that could be considered for a future daemon though. I've been doing some benchmarking on a C3.XLarge and CPU mining is affecting the performance of the darkcoind instances on there quite badly. AWS is reporting oer 300% CPU UTIL. I'm sure that isn't a good thing.

Are 900 (mostly t2.micro) CPU mining going to do the job? I don't think so. This is why all hash should be welcomed imho.

Amount of hashpower is irrelevant, as hard_forker says. It's only the distribution that matters, and if p2pool is compulsory then that problem is taken care of too. If 1000 masternodes are 'decentralised enough' to process transactions then they are decentralised enough to 'secure the network.' 2000-3000 Masterniodes, even better.

Having MN's 'cost' 1000DRK achieves exactly the same thing as the GPU/ASIC arms race - it makes it extremely hard/expensive for any one party/bloc to dictate the blockchain. And anyone trying will have to spend that huge amount on DRK, not AMD/Nvidia and KNC etc.

Splitting the block reward 50/50 and implementing compulsory p2pool mining via MN's with automatic MN shares for miner balances left on the MNPool would do wonders for DRK. Maybe terrible wonders, but wonders nontheless... :tongue:

edit: The more I think about it, the current 80/20 split in favour of miners is way out of proportion to the value each group brings to the coin. The miners will all whine if the split evolves more in favour of Masternodes but let them whine. They mostly just dump for BTC/fiat anyway, what/how much actual USE are they is the question we should be asking.