Prohashing Mining Pool Forums

Hi everyone,

At 02:00 EST today, Bitconnectcoin seems to have had an inadvertent fork. From 02:00 until I disabled the coin at 04:50, we found 33 orphaned Bitconnectcoin blocks and 0 confirmed blocks. Normally, we only find 1-2 blocks per hour and orphans are rare. This issue is not specific to Prohashing, all Bitconnectcoin mining pools are affected, and orphan rates on the entire network have increased dramatically, as can be seen here: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/bcc/orphans.dws.

We paid about $100,000 to miners during that time while not taking in any money due to the orphans. As a result, I will have to reduce earnings during that time to the normal rate. I am calculating the exact corrections, and I will apply them later today.

I will be keeping Bitconnectcoin mining offline until I see evidence that the orphan rate has declined. I will keep everyone updated as I hear more information about the Bitconnectcoin network.

Glad you were able to catch it before I put that down payment on my new island beach house in the Caribbean.

What are your criteria for re-enabling bitconnect? It appears the chain is somewhat stabilized, when do you think it's safe to hop back on? Not that I particularly like it, but bitconnect status plays a major role in profitability here so if you can give us an idea of what you're thinking it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

nevermind, it's still down

centar wrote:What are your criteria for re-enabling bitconnect? It appears the chain is somewhat stabilized, when do you think it's safe to hop back on? Not that I particularly like it, but bitconnect status plays a major role in profitability here so if you can give us an idea of what you're thinking it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I'll re-enable it when that chart shows that orphans on the network are low. The network is under attack right now, similar to previous coins like Yocoin and Bitmark. A rogue miner is submitting hundreds of blocks at once, which reverses and orphans everyone else's blocks. I think this may be the end for Bitconnectcoin because neither Yocoin or Bitmark recovered from the same thing, and the developers of Bitconnectxoin have not even said anything much less taken any action.

Chris Sokolowski wrote:

centar wrote:What are your criteria for re-enabling bitconnect? It appears the chain is somewhat stabilized, when do you think it's safe to hop back on? Not that I particularly like it, but bitconnect status plays a major role in profitability here so if you can give us an idea of what you're thinking it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I'll re-enable it when that chart shows that orphans on the network are low. The network is under attack right now, similar to previous coins like Yocoin and Bitmark. A rogue miner is submitting hundreds of blocks at once, which reverses and orphans everyone else's blocks. I think this may be the end for Bitconnectcoin because neither Yocoin or Bitmark recovered from the same thing, and the developers of Bitconnectxoin have not even said anything much less taken any action.

Like a 51% attack? If BCC goes down there might be some fairly serious implications not only for PH but for BTC as well. I don't know how much BTC is tied up in BitConnect's alleged ponzi scheme (not saying that it is or isn't, but just that the possibility is definitely there), but if the whole thing collapses there could be a ripple effect. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

centar wrote:

Chris Sokolowski wrote:

centar wrote:What are your criteria for re-enabling bitconnect? It appears the chain is somewhat stabilized, when do you think it's safe to hop back on? Not that I particularly like it, but bitconnect status plays a major role in profitability here so if you can give us an idea of what you're thinking it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I'll re-enable it when that chart shows that orphans on the network are low. The network is under attack right now, similar to previous coins like Yocoin and Bitmark. A rogue miner is submitting hundreds of blocks at once, which reverses and orphans everyone else's blocks. I think this may be the end for Bitconnectcoin because neither Yocoin or Bitmark recovered from the same thing, and the developers of Bitconnectxoin have not even said anything much less taken any action.

Like a 51% attack? If BCC goes down there might be some fairly serious implications not only for PH but for BTC as well. I don't know how much BTC is tied up in BitConnect's alleged ponzi scheme (not saying that it is or isn't, but just that the possibility is definitely there), but if the whole thing collapses there could be a ripple effect. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

The ripple effect is that Litecoin difficulty will increase by 25% at the next adjustment, and probably much more after that, as the Litecoin network absorbs the hashrate that was on the Bitconnectcoin network. My concern is that the same attack could happen to Litecoin some day. The attack on the Bitconnectcoin network required an insane amount of hashrate - one miner/pool with about 25% of the Litecoin network's hashrate. If someone can gather that amount of miners for a nefarious purpose, I'm concerned that the Litecoin network may not be as immune to an attack as people make it seem.

I will be issuing the correction shortly after midnight since it will be easier for me to update the earnings when the earnings for December 5 are no longer increasing.

Corrections done now?

I totally understand if you have to make this adjustment to keep the place running. However, I'm going to play devils advocate for a minute here. There doesn't appear to be anything in your policies that actually allows you to make this adjustment. The low luck section doesn't apply since this is not a case of miners not finding blocks when they should. The blocks were found, they were just orphaned. Also, the errors section doesn't seem to apply as this was not a bug, but an external network wide event. If you were to consider it hacking or an attack, you policy seems to still require payment. Also, the pay per share model doesn't seem to allow for not paying because blocks were orphaned. I don't see any critical difference between these orphaned blocks and other orphaned blocks that would allow for an adjustment.

I personally would much rather accept the correction than have the pool shut down. However, unless I am missing something or looking at something wrong, it looks like this adjustment might violate your own policies.