AuxPoW Proposal: Soliciting community feedback

ATTENTION: NewYorkCoin Miners!

NewYorkCoin is considering a switch to AuxPoW.
Primary reasons are:

1) Network Security

2) Even out hashrate to keep block timings near 30 seconds for all blocks

3) Energy Efficiency

see:
https://digiconomist.net/how-auxpow-affected-dogecoin-mining/
https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/2b7eti/charlie_lees_aka_coblee_final_thoughts_on_merged/

So AuxPoW is pretty much another term for merged mining? I'm surprised i haven't heard it called that until now.

moonshot wrote:ATTENTION: NewYorkCoin Miners!

NewYorkCoin is considering a switch to AuxPoW.
Primary reasons are:

1) Network Security

2) Even out hashrate to keep block timings near 30 seconds for all blocks

3) Energy Efficiency

see:
https://digiconomist.net/how-auxpow-affected-dogecoin-mining/
https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/2b7eti/charlie_lees_aka_coblee_final_thoughts_on_merged/

I apologize for not replying to this sooner, as I know that we were asked to weigh in.

Right now we're overloaded with a number of concerns and need to address them immediately. However, I promise that I'll review the proposal as soon as possible and share my thoughts as soon as possible.

NYC seems like it pops up a lot for the high profit coins.
If that gets moved to merged mining, how will that affect the profit of the coin.
If it lowers it, how will that affect the miners on the autopool payouts?

CSZiggy wrote:NYC seems like it pops up a lot for the high profit coins.
If that gets moved to merged mining, how will that affect the profit of the coin.
If it lowers it, how will that affect the miners on the autopool payouts?

AuxPoW/Merged-Mining theoretically allows a large number of coins to be mined together.

I'll let Steve provide a more authoritative response but my take is:

- It should make Litecoin mining more profitable since that is the parent chain.
- You would essentially get the same reward for free just by mining LTC.
- Since 30 second block times are a key component of NYC's value proposition it should make NYC more valuable.
- A possible down side is that it would increase competition as other large scrypt pools might choose to add it.
- It would also make it less profitable for smaller pools and unprofitable for solo miners (but that is already happening).

The benefit to NYC is that instead of mining in fits and starts, causing the difficulty to be all over the map, NYC would get a much steadier and larger hashrate and hopefully greater resistance to 51% attacks.

Will merged mining NYC only be when litecoin is being mined or other coins as well?

I guess the idea of mining here is to mine coins that are worth MORE than litecoins so there is higher value than just mining straight litecoins.
NYC pops up as a higher than litecoin valued coin. If that is going to be subtracted and potentially be added to every litecoin mining pools merged mining lists then it would be even harder to get higher values than litecoin alone would be.

CSZiggy wrote:Will merged mining NYC only be when litecoin is being mined or other coins as well?

I guess the idea of mining here is to mine coins that are worth MORE than litecoins so there is higher value than just mining straight litecoins.
NYC pops up as a higher than litecoin valued coin. If that is going to be subtracted and potentially be added to every litecoin mining pools merged mining lists then it would be even harder to get higher values than litecoin alone would be.

In theory you can merge mine with any (scrypt) coin as long as you are willing to do the coding required.

But as of now NYC pops up for relatively brief periods of time, but is then unprofitable for 10-15 minutes. Of late it is less than 2% of the total PH hashrate, while litecoin is 53% I haven't done the math but if 53% percent of the hashrate is now more profitable that probably trumps the 2%.

AuXPoW is just one of the options being considered, but something will be done because if we don't the community will abandon the coin and it will cease to be profitable anyway since there will be no market.

Some of the options on the table are difficulty adjustment algorithms that react more quickly or perhaps reducing mining rewards when the hashrate rises dramatically.

Our goal is to come up with the solution that benefits Miners, HODLers and Merchants equally.

NYC has been under sustained "attack" from miners coordinating on https://www.mining-dutch.nl/pools/newyorkcoin.php
This appears to be reflected in the hash totals here at Prohashing, 0.6% of hashrate yesterday vs 3% 6 days ago.

update Friday April 6:
Prohashing is now back in control of the hashrate, so my guess is, worst case scenario is probably 10 minute block times, not the hour+ long gaps we were seeing yesterday.

I know there were some issues here yesterday that may have been affecting PH contributions. It's just a theory, but I'm starting to believe the PH profitability algorithms are shielding NYC from larger disruptions.

#1 prohashing has mined 57.50% of the blocks with an estimated 106.04 GH/s and earned 4140000 NYC
#2 www.mining-dutch.nl has mined 26.25% of the blocks with an estimated 48.41 GH/s and earned 1890000 NYC
#3 Unknown-YIIMP-Pool has mined 6.53% of the blocks with an estimated 12.04 GH/s and earned 470000 NYC
#4 undefined has mined 6.25% of the blocks with an estimated 11.53 GH/s and earned 450000 NYC
#5 newyorkcoin.master

As opposed to the last day or two:
#1 www.mining-dutch.nl has mined 70.69% of the blocks with an estimated 202.72 GH/s and earned 5090000 NYC
#2 prohashing has mined 26.11% of the blocks with an estimated 74.87 GH/s and earned 1880000 NYC
#3 newyorkcoin.mastermining.net has mined 0.97% of the blocks with an estimated 2.79 GH/s and earned 70000 NYC
#4 nyc.mypool.club has mined 0.83% of the blocks with an estimated 2.39 GH/s and earned 60000 NYC
#5 https://hobbyistpool.ddns.net/nyc The Developers Pool has mined 0.69% of the blocks with an estimated 1.99 GH/s and earned 50000 NYC

moonshot wrote:NYC has been under sustained "attack" from miners coordinating on https://www.mining-dutch.nl/pools/newyorkcoin.php
This appears to be reflected in the hash totals here at Prohashing, 0.6% of hashrate yesterday vs 3% 6 days ago.

update Friday April 6:
Prohashing is now back in control of the hashrate, so my guess is, worst case scenario is probably 10 minute block times, not the hour+ long gaps we were seeing yesterday.

I know there were some issues here yesterday that may have been affecting PH contributions. It's just a theory, but I'm starting to believe the PH profitability algorithms are shielding NYC from larger disruptions.

#1 prohashing has mined 57.50% of the blocks with an estimated 106.04 GH/s and earned 4140000 NYC
#2 http://www.mining-dutch.nl has mined 26.25% of the blocks with an estimated 48.41 GH/s and earned 1890000 NYC
#3 Unknown-YIIMP-Pool has mined 6.53% of the blocks with an estimated 12.04 GH/s and earned 470000 NYC
#4 undefined has mined 6.25% of the blocks with an estimated 11.53 GH/s and earned 450000 NYC
#5 newyorkcoin.master

As opposed to the last day or two:
#1 http://www.mining-dutch.nl has mined 70.69% of the blocks with an estimated 202.72 GH/s and earned 5090000 NYC
#2 prohashing has mined 26.11% of the blocks with an estimated 74.87 GH/s and earned 1880000 NYC
#3 newyorkcoin.mastermining.net has mined 0.97% of the blocks with an estimated 2.79 GH/s and earned 70000 NYC
#4 nyc.mypool.club has mined 0.83% of the blocks with an estimated 2.39 GH/s and earned 60000 NYC
#5 https://hobbyistpool.ddns.net/nyc The Developers Pool has mined 0.69% of the blocks with an estimated 1.99 GH/s and earned 50000 NYC

The pool targets the assignment of dynamic miners so that no more than 50% of the network is mined by us. In addition to avoiding control of any one coin, it also doesn't make sense for a single pool to mine more than 50% of the blocks. Otherwise, it just pushes up the difficulty of its own blocks, causing the coin to become less profitable. It mathematically makes more sense to mine less than 50% of the network and assign extra miners to slightly less profitable coins.

The remaining 7% of miners were solo miners, which we can't limit because they can just decide to switch to another pool when they want to mine NewYorkCoins.

Other pools, especially single coin pools, probably don't have the 50% limit in their code, so they simply mine as many blocks as possible and push up the difficulty as a result. That's why you see more volatility in those periods.

Steve Sokolowski wrote:
The pool targets the assignment of dynamic miners so that no more than 50% of the network is mined by us. In addition to avoiding control of any one coin, it also doesn't make sense for a single pool to mine more than 50% of the blocks. Otherwise, it just pushes up the difficulty of its own blocks, causing the coin to become less profitable. It mathematically makes more sense to mine less than 50% of the network and assign extra miners to slightly less profitable coins.

The remaining 7% of miners were solo miners, which we can't limit because they can just decide to switch to another pool when they want to mine NewYorkCoins.

Other pools, especially single coin pools, probably don't have the 50% limit in their code, so they simply mine as many blocks as possible and push up the difficulty as a result. That's why you see more volatility in those periods.

Steve, I expect I need to view the statistics over a longer timespan, the numbers I used only covered a 360 minute period, so there is obviously a great deal of variance and your numbers are probably correct though at times PH has up to 90% during that 360 minute period.

I can speak for the entire NYC dev community when I voice my appreciation of the responsible mining practices Prohashing adheres to.
We also would greatly appreciate any feedback and your perspective as a miner in regards to securing the NYC network and normalizing our block times.

This topic is for feedback on AuxPoW, I will post another topic for adjustments to the difficulty algorithm.

Best,
Moonshot