High difficulty question

[excelerator]

I've been tracking my blocks as part of tuning my Titans and I was surprised to find that the most popular block reward for the last 14.5 hours was Leafcoin, with a very high difficulty and a very low block reward. 58 of the Leafcoins were dragged in from merge mining (I believe) but the remainder were direct block mining. The average difficulty for all Leafcoins was 102,663,601.77. I removed all merge mined Leafcoins but still came up with an average of 24,751,111.09 difficulty.

Here's a summary of my last 14.5 hours. It seems unusual that you would favor a high difficulty coin with such a low reward when there were other high difficulty coins with better rewards.

You're able to distinguish Pesetacoin and Viacoin which have far higher difficulties as not worth mining on a high difficulty setting, yet Leafcoin gets through.

Happy to send in the XLS file with the data if you need it. I've formatted the data below so you can copy & paste into Excel without mucking about.

Summary of all mined coins
Coin-Type Sum-of-Value Count-of-Block-reward Average-of-Difficulty
Leafcoin $0.26 140.00 102,663,601.77
Mooncoin $2.31 49.00 12,185,360.55
Sexcoin $0.51 30.00 2,608,377.17
Bellacoin $1.32 29.00 2,183,993.69
Pesetacoin $0.10 23.00 397,295,811.43
eGulden $0.43 23.00 2,321,222.74
DNote $2.81 23.00 12,395,282.26
Viacoin $0.53 19.00 278,733,759.21
Worldcoin $3.63 19.00 37,356,022.42
Megacoin $4.11 17.00 14,959,605.12
YACcoin $1.09 15.00 5,603,646.20
Florincoin $1.01 15.00 9,567,563.73
Verge $2.82 14.00 6,245,022.50
Yocoin $191.16 13.00 592,158,291.54
GameCredit $20.25 12.00 153,814,658.50
Aricoin $0.29 11.00 6,518,581.64
Casinocoin $0.72 11.00 2,819,832.55
Myriadcoin $1.22 9.00 926,738,255.44
Franc $1.17 6.00 12,998,888.00
WildBeastBitcoin $5.19 6.00 28,786,938.50
CryptoEscudo $0.11 6.00 2,120,579.00
Guldencoin $1.17 4.00 29,251,580.00
Bata $0.09 4.00 1,901,251.50
Quatloo $0.21 3.00 5,415,165.67
Bitmark $4.50 3.00 112,403,735.00
Dogecoin $5.49 2.00 1,480,877,825.50
CryptographicAnomaly $0.12 2.00 952,680.00
Litebar $0.04 2.00 1,520,892.50
Auroracoin $0.83 2.00 445,385,859.00
Cypherfunk $0.02 1.00 2,533,358.00
Digibyte $0.35 1.00 710,183,822.00
Einsteinium $0.03 1.00 2,048,361.00
Novacoin $4.40 1.00 398,726,162.00
Pakcoin $0.26 1.00 129,870,155.00

Summary of all mined coins with all merged mined coins removed.
Coin-Type Sum-of-Value Count-of-Block-reward Average-of-Difficulty
Leafcoin $0.15 82.00 24,751,111.09
Mooncoin $2.19 46.00 2,387,490.22
Sexcoin $0.51 30.00 2,608,377.17
Bellacoin $1.32 29.00 2,183,993.69
eGulden $0.43 23.00 2,321,222.74
DNote $2.81 23.00 12,395,282.26
Worldcoin $3.43 18.00 9,259,974.56
Megacoin $4.11 17.00 14,959,605.12
YACcoin $1.09 15.00 5,603,646.20
Florincoin $1.01 15.00 9,567,563.73
Verge $2.82 14.00 6,245,022.50
Casinocoin $0.72 11.00 2,819,832.55
Aricoin $0.29 11.00 6,518,581.64
WildBeastBitcoin $5.19 6.00 28,786,938.50
Franc $1.17 6.00 12,998,888.00
CryptoEscudo $0.11 6.00 2,120,579.00
GameCredit $10.08 6.00 44,482,535.67
Bata $0.09 4.00 1,901,251.50
Guldencoin $1.17 4.00 29,251,580.00
Quatloo $0.21 3.00 5,415,165.67
Pesetacoin $0.01 3.00 137,061,791.00
Litebar $0.04 2.00 1,520,892.50
CryptographicAnomaly $0.12 2.00 952,680.00
Yocoin $30.08 2.00 255,803,158.00
Einsteinium $0.03 1.00 2,048,361.00
Cypherfunk $0.02 1.00 2,533,358.00
Auroracoin $0.42 1.00 7,764,376.00
Bitmark $1.50 1.00 42,736,088.00
Viacoin $0.03 1.00 103,137,160.00
Novacoin $4.40 1.00 398,726,162.00

[Steve Sokolowski]

I've been tracking my blocks as part of tuning my Titans and I was surprised to find that the most popular block reward for the last 14.5 hours was Leafcoin, with a very high difficulty and a very low block reward. 58 of the Leafcoins were dragged in from merge mining (I believe) but the remainder were direct block mining. The average difficulty for all Leafcoins was 102,663,601.77. I removed all merge mined Leafcoins but still came up with an average of 24,751,111.09 difficulty.

Here's a summary of my last 14.5 hours. It seems unusual that you would favor a high difficulty coin with such a low reward when there were other high difficulty coins with better rewards.

You're able to distinguish Pesetacoin and Viacoin which have far higher difficulties as not worth mining on a high difficulty setting, yet Leafcoin gets through.

Happy to send in the XLS file with the data if you need it. I've formatted the data below so you can copy & paste into Excel without mucking about.

Summary of all mined coins
Coin-Type Sum-of-Value Count-of-Block-reward Average-of-Difficulty
Leafcoin $0.26 140.00 102,663,601.77
Mooncoin $2.31 49.00 12,185,360.55
Sexcoin $0.51 30.00 2,608,377.17
Bellacoin $1.32 29.00 2,183,993.69
Pesetacoin $0.10 23.00 397,295,811.43
eGulden $0.43 23.00 2,321,222.74
DNote $2.81 23.00 12,395,282.26
Viacoin $0.53 19.00 278,733,759.21
Worldcoin $3.63 19.00 37,356,022.42
Megacoin $4.11 17.00 14,959,605.12
YACcoin $1.09 15.00 5,603,646.20
Florincoin $1.01 15.00 9,567,563.73
Verge $2.82 14.00 6,245,022.50
Yocoin $191.16 13.00 592,158,291.54
GameCredit $20.25 12.00 153,814,658.50
Aricoin $0.29 11.00 6,518,581.64
Casinocoin $0.72 11.00 2,819,832.55
Myriadcoin $1.22 9.00 926,738,255.44
Franc $1.17 6.00 12,998,888.00
WildBeastBitcoin $5.19 6.00 28,786,938.50
CryptoEscudo $0.11 6.00 2,120,579.00
Guldencoin $1.17 4.00 29,251,580.00
Bata $0.09 4.00 1,901,251.50
Quatloo $0.21 3.00 5,415,165.67
Bitmark $4.50 3.00 112,403,735.00
Dogecoin $5.49 2.00 1,480,877,825.50
CryptographicAnomaly $0.12 2.00 952,680.00
Litebar $0.04 2.00 1,520,892.50
Auroracoin $0.83 2.00 445,385,859.00
Cypherfunk $0.02 1.00 2,533,358.00
Digibyte $0.35 1.00 710,183,822.00
Einsteinium $0.03 1.00 2,048,361.00
Novacoin $4.40 1.00 398,726,162.00
Pakcoin $0.26 1.00 129,870,155.00

Summary of all mined coins with all merged mined coins removed.
Coin-Type Sum-of-Value Count-of-Block-reward Average-of-Difficulty
Leafcoin $0.15 82.00 24,751,111.09
Mooncoin $2.19 46.00 2,387,490.22
Sexcoin $0.51 30.00 2,608,377.17
Bellacoin $1.32 29.00 2,183,993.69
eGulden $0.43 23.00 2,321,222.74
DNote $2.81 23.00 12,395,282.26
Worldcoin $3.43 18.00 9,259,974.56
Megacoin $4.11 17.00 14,959,605.12
YACcoin $1.09 15.00 5,603,646.20
Florincoin $1.01 15.00 9,567,563.73
Verge $2.82 14.00 6,245,022.50
Casinocoin $0.72 11.00 2,819,832.55
Aricoin $0.29 11.00 6,518,581.64
WildBeastBitcoin $5.19 6.00 28,786,938.50
Franc $1.17 6.00 12,998,888.00
CryptoEscudo $0.11 6.00 2,120,579.00
GameCredit $10.08 6.00 44,482,535.67
Bata $0.09 4.00 1,901,251.50
Guldencoin $1.17 4.00 29,251,580.00
Quatloo $0.21 3.00 5,415,165.67
Pesetacoin $0.01 3.00 137,061,791.00
Litebar $0.04 2.00 1,520,892.50
CryptographicAnomaly $0.12 2.00 952,680.00
Yocoin $30.08 2.00 255,803,158.00
Einsteinium $0.03 1.00 2,048,361.00
Cypherfunk $0.02 1.00 2,533,358.00
Auroracoin $0.42 1.00 7,764,376.00
Bitmark $1.50 1.00 42,736,088.00
Viacoin $0.03 1.00 103,137,160.00
Novacoin $4.40 1.00 398,726,162.00

This could be a key find. I'm going to look into whether merge mined coins are being incorrectly assigned to some users and will get back to you in the morning.

Great work! You might have found a bug that's been present for years!

[Steve Sokolowski]

We just released a new version that will notify us if anyone is assigned merge mined coins incorrectly like you suggested, but that code hasn't yet triggered. We'll keep you updated on this after we let the server run for long enough to detect the problem.

[excelerator]

Cool. Leafcoin continues to be the most common coin "mined" by my rigs yet it doesn't show me as the owner in the "Mined by" in the block explorer for non-merged mined coins which may be a clue. I've been watching my control panel and it has never once mined a Leafcoint (visually). Out of 341 non-merged mined coins yesterday, 86 were Leafcoin and I spent too much time watching for a Leafcoin to appear once which it never did.

I've noticed that there for the merged mined coins, only the primary coin is assigned a "Mined by" owner and the Leafcoin that's dragged in doesn't have an owner.

You should be able to just watch my account as it's like an unraked lawn in the fall of Leafcoins!


Leafcoin 3500 0 27,737,733 $0.0009 Mature 1:58:49 AM 1177790

Yocoin 50 0 64,760,604 9.4431 Orphaned 11:48:32 PM 46103
Leafcoin 3500 0 14,381,005 0.0023 Mature 11:48:37 PM 1177661 
Cometcoin 10 0 63,874,763 0.4595 Immature 11:52:20 PM 6869 
Leafcoin 3500 0 63,874,763 0.0023 Mature 11:52:20 PM 1177666 
Leafcoin 3500 0 15,376,132 0.0000 Mature 11:56:19 PM 1177671 
YACcoin 1024 0 1,201,771 0.0800 Immature 11:57:19 PM 731620 
YACcoin 1024 0 636,729 0.0800 Immature 11:57:28 PM 731622 

[Steve Sokolowski]

Cool. Leafcoin continues to be the most common coin "mined" by my rigs yet it doesn't show me as the owner in the "Mined by" in the block explorer for non-merged mined coins which may be a clue. I've been watching my control panel and it has never once mined a Leafcoint (visually). Out of 341 non-merged mined coins yesterday, 86 were Leafcoin and I spent too much time watching for a Leafcoin to appear once which it never did.

I've noticed that there for the merged mined coins, only the primary coin is assigned a "Mined by" owner and the Leafcoin that's dragged in doesn't have an owner.

You should be able to just watch my account as it's like an unraked lawn in the fall of Leafcoins!


Leafcoin 3500 0 27,737,733 $0.0009 Mature 1:58:49 AM 1177790

Yocoin 50 0 64,760,604 9.4431 Orphaned 11:48:32 PM 46103
Leafcoin 3500 0 14,381,005 0.0023 Mature 11:48:37 PM 1177661 
Cometcoin 10 0 63,874,763 0.4595 Immature 11:52:20 PM 6869 
Leafcoin 3500 0 63,874,763 0.0023 Mature 11:52:20 PM 1177666 
Leafcoin 3500 0 15,376,132 0.0000 Mature 11:56:19 PM 1177671 
YACcoin 1024 0 1,201,771 0.0800 Immature 11:57:19 PM 731620 
YACcoin 1024 0 636,729 0.0800 Immature 11:57:28 PM 731622 

How are you determining what networks your miners are mining? Do you run software that tracks blockchains from the Internet and compares them to the coinbase values sent to the miners? Since the stratum protocol doesn't include the name of the coin being mined, perhaps you can help me figure out how you obtained the information you're using as a comparison. I'm a little confused about how you found that the coin is being primary mined, but never saw a case when it was listed as the current mining coin.

The absence of a "finder" in the block explorers for merge-mined coins is a known bug. I wouldn't worry about that. We've put fixing that very low on the list because we know what caused it, and it doesn't affect mining or profitability.

[excelerator]

From your reporting, it appears that all coins merged mined have the same difficulty. See the example above where the primary coin is Cometcoin with a difficulty exactly the same as the Leafcoin at 11:52:20pm (both have the same time). All merged mined coins inherit their reported difficulty from the primary. However, when you click on the block explorer for each merged mined coin you only get the "Mined by" for the primary coin. I'm therefore surmising that any coin without a "Mined by" must be merged mined from your UI and should have a matching primary coin. In the case of the bolded Leafcoin above, there is no "Mined by" notation so it must be merged mined and attached to a primary coin from another account owner. I suggest you find difficulties for mature Leafcoins from my account which are not associated with a primary coin and do a query on your database to see if you can find a matching difficulty for another coin(s) which will most likely belong to another account holder.

As far as the "bug" is concerned, you can use it as debugging tool!

[Steve Sokolowski]

From your reporting, it appears that all coins merged mined have the same difficulty. See the example above where the primary coin is Cometcoin with a difficulty exactly the same as the Leafcoin at 11:52:20pm (both have the same time). All merged mined coins inherit their reported difficulty from the primary. However, when you click on the block explorer for each merged mined coin you only get the "Mined by" for the primary coin. I'm therefore surmising that any coin without a "Mined by" must be merged mined from your UI and should have a matching primary coin. In the case of the bolded Leafcoin above, there is no "Mined by" notation so it must be merged mined and attached to a primary coin from another account owner. I suggest you find difficulties for mature Leafcoins from my account which are not associated with a primary coin and do a query on your database to see if you can find a matching difficulty for another coin(s) which will most likely belong to another account holder.

As far as the "bug" is concerned, you can use it as debugging tool!

Thanks for the tip. I'll look into this and see if this is significant. As I told GenTarkin, I also added debug code to save work restarts to a table.

[excelerator]

Low priority but did you make any progress on this issue?

I'm still seeing these Leafcoins that I'm getting the non-merged mined block reward and the explorer doesn't show me as the "Mined by" recipient.

Leafcoin example (no "Mined by" but I received block award)
https://prohashing.com/explorer/Leafcoin/1190926/

Gamecredit example (block reward and "Mined by" authorship credit)
https://prohashing.com/explorer/GameCredit/1411265/