Update on ZCash fixes

[Steve Sokolowski]

Yesterday, the mining server detected an error with the ZCash network and stopped mining the coin. After some investigation, I determined that there was a hard fork on the network that created a new transaction format. I believe there are three parts to solving this problem: upgrading to the latest version, downloading the latest blocks of the testnet, and implementing support for two new fields in the transactions for ZCash.

We've successfully implemented support and upgraded the daemon, but we can't test the system until we are able to download all the latest blocks for the testnet and the production network. The servers are downloading the blocks now, but at the current rate, we expect about 10 more hours of downloading. Since that will be just before bedtime, this issue is going to require the full day tomorrow, at the least, to resolve it.

At the same time, I also added and certified a new behavior on the mining server. Whenever the anchor coin is in error and no other coins are available to support all connected miners, the mining server will now disconnect the miners who are unable to be supported, so that they can mine at backup pools. This feature will be released at the same time as the ZCash changes are.

[jeffms2003]

Very nice - good work here.

[jeffms2003]

Looks like Zen Cash is having a similar issue; however, I don't really know that much about whether or not that coin had any updates.

[jeffms2003]

Also, just as an FYI I'm attaching a reddit link that is supposed to be tracking which equihash coins will fork and which won't in response to the ASIC machines being released. Just something to be on the lookout for to help manage the changing mining environment for that algorithm.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zec/comments/8 ... _coin_and/

[Steve Sokolowski]

I think the ZCash update will be ready by the end of the day today. It's in testing now, and I've been able to get the latest blocks for both networks.

[Simon_says]

I see the Zcash coin have been removed from the block explorer, does this means that coin is not available for mining at Prohashing?

[Steve Sokolowski]

I see the Zcash coin have been removed from the block explorer, does this means that coin is not available for mining at Prohashing?

Yes. It's not currently available for mining.

It's also not available on the block explorer, but that's because ZCash is an anonymous coin. Most of the transactions on ZCash cannot be tracked, so a block explorer is of limited value on ZCash.

[Tomas_Novak]

But on https://miningpoolhub.com/ can be mined with Z9 - ZCL, ZCASH and ZENCASH

[S3KshuN8]

Just curious how close you are to a resolution of this issue. I know elsewhere it's been stated that Zcash wasn't a significant portion of profit, but I don't see how that is possible given that it accounted for roughly 50% of the Equihash hashrate in the 3 days prior to Overwinter being activated. I don't doubt that the Comcast outage today diverted some attention away from this problem and delayed the fix, but hopefully not by much. I hope that your reply is that it's been fixed and Zcash is available again, but if not it would be nice to get an updated ETA on when that should happen. Thanks for all of your hard work!

[jeffms2003]

I'd be interested on an update too. Looks like Zencash is back working, but not ZEC or ZCL. Thanks!!