In short, we completed testing and validated all of the features that are listed below, from last week. These work and are ready for release.
- The ability to ignore Coinwarz's data for specific coins, since their data is not always correct.
- The backend infrastructure for multiple exchange support, although multiple exchanges won't actually be enabled.
- An option to pay coins below the payout threshold, at the cost of the transaction fee.
- The ability to hide usernames in the "found blocks" table, at jimlite's request.
- A more accurate BTC per day reading on the top bar of the site; the current reading takes the dollar earnings and converts them to BTC, which makes the pool appear to be less profitable on days that BTC value increases and the other way around.
- An option to reduce the number of blocks required until mined blocks reach maturity on a per-coin basis, to reduce slippage so that mined coins can be sold faster than 120 blocks when possible.
- A new 19th error condition that disables a coin when the last 30 blocks average twice as profitable than the second most profitable coin's last 30 blocks, as another way of detecting forks.
I was successfully able to put the merge mining information into the primary coin on Sunday, but I expect that getting the dogecoin blocks to work will be the most difficult task that we have accomplished so far, because we need to find a way to test the code (and their testnet doesn't work). To speed this up, I'm going to try to push my work on this project up to 40 hours per week by eliminating daily "bitcoin thoughts" posts and paying people to do chores for me. Imagine how fast this would go if I could spend 85 hours on this project, instead of having to spend the other 45 hours at another job working and commuting. Merge mining is a huge pain that has significantly delayed our plans, but I won't let it defeat us.
Adding dogecoin support needs to be done the right way, because I suspect that other coins are going to start doing this merge mining, and we need to be able to support multiple merge mining coins so that the Wafflepool doesn't gain an advantage by doing that first. This also involves reworking how coins are credited to users to a concept of "inputs and outputs" - for example, a share could be mining grandcoins and dogecoins, while requesting payouts in netcoins and litecoins. Previously, there was only one "input" coin.
I'm going to be quiet around here for the next few days so I can be as efficient as possible. In the meantime, Chris is going to work on dealing with incorporating the business and performing marketing while he has no testing to do. Thanks to jim for his hard work with pointing out these suggestions!
