Status as of Wednesday, April 1

[Steve Sokolowski]

A few notes for today:

• Chris tested the next release with fake miners running at 600 GH/s, enough to 51% the litecoin network. The system performed with no slowdown. This proves that we can expand to x11 and SHA-256 mining when we are ready with no further optimization.
• I'm working on adding the Comkort exchange, but that won't be available in the current release.
• Chris spent 8 hours testing and found no further bugs. I'm going to ask him if we can go with the new code tonight, or whether we should wait and only update the database. The answer will probably hinge on whether the system performed well when kires's long-restart miners were used. Most likely, we will stick with the old code for a few more days and just update the database.
• There is a memory leak in the old code, fixed in the next release, that requires Chris to restart the server every day. This is one of the reasons we hope to get the newer code out as soon as possible.
• We are pleased to announce that merge mining will indeed be considered in work restart calculations. In all cases, it makes sense to merge mine all coins when a new block for the primary coin arrives. However, when the primary coin is not stale but a merge mined coin is stale, long restart miners might actually lose money by receiving a work restart. The system now computes whether more money will be lost by restarting work just for the new merge mined block. If so, then the miner's merge mined shares will be stale until the next primary block arrives, but that miner will make more money than if the merge mining shares were accepted because more primary shares will be accepted.
• Chris stopped advertising temporarily because the current server cannot handle much more than 10 GH/s. He will resume when the next release is put out.

[loszhor]

I look forward to the implementation of the SHA256 support. In terms of what can users do to go easy on the system, is there a hash rate we should limit ourselves too?

[Steve Sokolowski]

No. We were not able to break the new system with the testing software we have available. On the contrary, we need to reach at least 20 GH/s within two months in order for Chris to be able to pay for his food before the money runs out.

After this release is issued, please do connect whatever you have. I think you'll be pleased at the increase of profitability over the current release, too.

[loszhor]

No. We were not able to break the new system with the testing software we have available. On the contrary, we need to reach at least 20 GH/s within two months in order for Chris to be able to pay for his food before the money runs out.

After this release is issued, please do connect whatever you have. I think you'll be pleased at the increase of profitability over the current release, too.

In terms of the pool's solvency, what is the current status and is there a time until closure date in the near future if things do not improve?

[Chris Sokolowski]

We don't have a date of closure planned; I haven't even discussed with Steve such a thing as closing the pool. Steve is just setting goals that are aggressive.

We haven't been advertising that much because our current system can't easily handle over 20 GH/s, so we don't want a huge influx of miners that we can't support. Our next release, which should come out sometime next week, can handle >500 GH/s. Considering the huge profitability improvement that release will also bring, with a little advertising we shouldn't have a problem reaching 20 GH/s by the end of May.

[Steve Sokolowski]

No. We were not able to break the new system with the testing software we have available. On the contrary, we need to reach at least 20 GH/s within two months in order for Chris to be able to pay for his food before the money runs out.

After this release is issued, please do connect whatever you have. I think you'll be pleased at the increase of profitability over the current release, too.

In terms of the pool's solvency, what is the current status and is there a time until closure date in the near future if things do not improve?

The issue of solvency is mainly an issue of opportunity cost. I have no doubt that we can make this pool profitable enough so that Chris can live off its profits full-time. The question is whether he could make more money getting a normal job than working on the pool. We'll never "run out of money" because I make more than enough to support both me and Chris.

A large part of our business plan has always been that we want to get the pool "finished" for at least one algorithm (next week's work restarts are our definition of finished) before the next bitcoin bubble. All we need to do is to be in position to capitalize when the next bubble forms, even if we lose money before then.

The Middlecoin pool, even though it stole 56 bitcoins, made millions of dollars in 2013. Chris was making $100/day in December 2013 with just three GPUs. Imagine how much money there will be to be made the next time that price rises faster than ASIC technology can keep up. We are in an even better position now than then, because back then anyone could buy GPUs to mine altcoins. Now, there are a set number of ASICs in the world. You can't just repurpose GPUs from playing games anymore, so if there is a bubble, everyone, including you, will make a lot of money mining. The lead time for ASIC development is months, so difficulty won't be able to increase quickly enough.