Status as of Monday, January 8, 2018

[Steve Sokolowski]

Good morning!

• I've been researching JiveTonto's issues with found blocks. What I've discovered is heartening and leads me to believe that we are getting very close to resolving almost all of the significant issues with the mining server. It turns out that the cause of one of his issues is simply that when a block is stale from his own miner having already found it, the system currently doesn't submit the block to the network (because we know it will be rejected.) Therefore, this issue isn't a bug, but a misunderstanding in the design that we can make clearer. If we're getting down to "improvements" versus "bugs," that's a good sign.
• This finding has prompted a minor code change, but major conceptual change, in the way that we handle stale shares. Beginning with the next release, we'll return a "rejected" message to miners for shares that have the primary coin stale, but which have valid merge-mining portions. This change will cause the counts in most mining software to be lower, in particular so that solo miners who mine low-difficulty coins where half the blocks they find orphan each other show a reduced "found block" count. With the current code, the mining software is not provided any feedback to indicate that the found blocks have been rejected, because we designed the system to return "accepted" when any portion of the share is valid.
• Despite this change, the amount of money miners earn will not change. The "miner efficiency" chart will show lower values, and your miners will show more rejected shares, but the mining server will have no changes to the way money is recorded. We'll be modifying the documentation to reflect the changes.
• There still remain two other of JiveTonto's issues that need to be addressed. One of them concerns coins like Bunnycoin, which we found have "charity addresses" that we decided against dedicating the manpower to implement for specific coins. The correct response is to place the coin into error until the next block arrives without charity addresses, but that's not happening for an unknown reason, forcing miners to continue mining the current block over and over. We're continuing to investigate this problem.
• We've started the process of hiring another person. We decided that because the economy is so good, we won't be able to choose the specific type of person we need. Instead, we'll find someone who is excellent, and then find tasks suited to that person's skills. We've reached out to some specific people first, and if they decline, we'll then post the job(s) publicly.
• There will be a release this afternoon. The major features will be the change described above, the ability to see found blocks for the past 35 days instead of the past 12 hours, and bitcoins being paid through Coinbase to eliminate the issues from customers who have balances too low to be paid on the main network.
• We're aware of the network connectivity issues today. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do except wait until the Enterprise-class dedicated Internet line is installed. The contract was signed two weeks ago and they have promised early March as the date for installation.
• If you have an L3+ or an S9 and want to sell it/them, feel free to reply, as we need them for testing.

[meinerkey]

I'd be willing to part with 2 of my L3+'s for 4K each, used since August, shipping and Bitmain PSU included. LMK if interested. US based.

[Steve Sokolowski]

I'd be willing to part with 2 of my L3+'s for 4K each, used since August, shipping and Bitmain PSU included. LMK if interested. US based.

We only need one, so thanks for your offer. Feel free to let me know if you only have one available sometime before we purchase one.

[meinerkey]

Yes, I have 1 available, plus another one - you can have 1 for 4K, or 2 for 8K - thanks of course for your consideration, and as always, keep up the great work on PH...we appreciate it.

[KryptoNova]

How come the fee-less payout threshold for Digibyte (DGB) changed from one day to the other? From $1 to $20 ?
Is there an explanation?

[Steve Sokolowski]

How come the fee-less payout threshold for Digibyte (DGB) changed from one day to the other? From $1 to $20 ?
Is there an explanation?

With the explosion in usage, Chris reviewed the transaction fees on many blockchains and found that they have been rising significantly. For example, on Monero, the fees have risen to $5(!) now.

He reviews the fees every week and targets 200 times the fee as the free payout amount. Since we take a 5% pool fee, that means that we never lose more than 10% of our profit to free transaction fees.

[Steve Sokolowski]

I'd be willing to part with 2 of my L3+'s for 4K each, used since August, shipping and Bitmain PSU included. LMK if interested. US based.

This one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Antminer-L3-/2 ... 7675.l2557

sold for $3550.

If you're willing to match that price, then we'll buy it.

[Aura89]

I'd be willing to part with 2 of my L3+'s for 4K each, used since August, shipping and Bitmain PSU included. LMK if interested. US based.

This one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Antminer-L3-/2 ... 7675.l2557

sold for $3550.

If you're willing to match that price, then we'll buy it.

Are you asking for just the miner, or the miner + power supply?

[Steve Sokolowski]

I'd be willing to part with 2 of my L3+'s for 4K each, used since August, shipping and Bitmain PSU included. LMK if interested. US based.

This one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Antminer-L3-/2 ... 7675.l2557

sold for $3550.

If you're willing to match that price, then we'll buy it.

Are you asking for just the miner, or the miner + power supply?

Do you know if there is some sort of warranty void if one uses a different power supply?

[AppleMiner]

There is not, but you need 9 PCI-E cords to hookup a L3+, 10 for a D3, not sure how many plugs for a S9.
So you need a decently beefy server power supply with enough plugs. the bitmain powers just come with enough PCI-E plugs for them to work and the smaller powers are only $125 so if its a question of getting one with a power or saving $200 or more...