Archive for the ‘Crypto News’ Category

The Segwit2x Fork of Bitcoin Has Been Cancelled

8, Nov 2017

It is official now – the Segwit2x effort as a solution for Bitcoins scalability problem has been cancelled for the moment and it will not happen at least in its current format. The lack of consensus supporting Segwit2x is the main reason for the project being cancelled, so no 2MB Segwit blocks for now. Eventually Bitcoin will need some sort of a solution for further scaling of the network with the price going higher, more transactions happening on the blockchain and the fees starting to increase again as a result. As a result of the Segwit2x getting cancelled there will most likely be a significant price fluctuations for Bitcoin in the next couple of days with analysts expecting that altcoins should start to get back their lost positions and the altcoin market will most likely boom once more.

– To read the official announcement of Segwit2X getting cancelled on LinuxFoundation.org…

The Latest AMD Radeon Drivers 17.10.2 Bring up to 12 GPU Support Under Windows 10

25, Oct 2017

The latest AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.10.2 drives come with some interesting new features not only for games, but for compute use (including mining). The two of the interesting highlights regarding mining use are the GPU Workload option as well as up to 12 GPU Compute Support (only for Windows 10). This may open up more options to users using Windows 10 for mining rigs with more than 8 GPUs, at least if they are using AMD-based video cards and maybe soon we are going to see similar feature also provided by Nvidia as apparently the video drivers are capable of driving more than 8 GPUs under Windows 10 as AMD is showing.

GPU Workload
A new toggle in Radeon Settings that can be found under the “Gaming”, “Global Settings” options. This toggle will allow you to switch optimization between graphics or compute workloads on select Radeon RX 500 and Radeon RX 400 series graphics products.

Compute Support
Radeon Software now supports compute workloads for up to 12 installed Radeon RX 400, Radeon RX 500 or Radeon RX Vega series graphics products on Windows 10 system configurations.

It is not yet clear if there will be some performance improvement when using the compute workloads option as opposed to the gaming option, this will need to be tested. The up to 12 GPUs support for Radeon RX series of GPUs under Windows 10 is much more interesting for the miners that are already building mining rigs with motherboards supporting 12 or more GPUs. Do note that this feature apparently supports only AMD Radeon RX series of GPUs and not older models, but it also seems that the up to 4 VEGA GPUs limitation should also not be a problem anymore. Again this of course needs testing for a confirmation, so if you check any of these new features in the latest AMD video drivers feel free to report your results in the comments below.

Do note that according to AMD GPU Workload feature may cause a system hang when switching to Compute while AMD CrossFire is active, not that you would need to have Crossfire enabled at all for mining, but just be sure that it is disabled if your motherboard supports that. The Radeon Wattman should also give you less trouble when overclocking/underclocking the GPU, though probably not everything is fully resolved.

Update: It seems like AMD might have messed the performance with this new driver for RX 400 and RX 500 series of GPUs compared to what you are getting with the old Blockchain driver. So do not be in a hurry to update to this driver with 400/500 series if you are mining Ethereum or other Ethash-based altcoin as your mining performance may drop instead of increase! We are still yet to test the situation with VEGA GPUs, hopefully there things should be better…

– For more details and to download and try the latest AMD Radeon Drivers 17.10.2…

Ethereum’s Byzantium Hard Fork is Happening Tomorrow

15, Oct 2017

The Ethereum (ETH) network will be undergoing a planned hard fork at block number 4.37 Million (4,370,000), which will likely occur between 12:00 UTC and 13:00 UTC on Monday, October 16, 2017. Ethereum users should update to the latest version of the Ethereum wallet/Mist if they are using it as well as any of the Ethereum clients – Geth, Parity or Harmony prior to the hard fork in order to be ready. Ethereum websites and mobile applications that allow you to store ether and/or make transactions are running their own Ethereum client infrastructure to facilitate their services and they should be doing the update as well in order to support he hard fork as well.

A hard fork is a change to the underlying Ethereum protocol, creating new rules to improve the system. The protocol changes are activated at a specific block number. All Ethereum clients need to upgrade, otherwise they will be stuck on an incompatible chain following the old rules. Metropolis is a planned Ethereum development phase that includes two hard forks: Byzantium and Constantinople. Byzantium is occurring at block number 4.37M (the hard fork happening tomorrow), while the second part – Constantinople does not currently have a release date, but is expected to happen some time in 2018.

Update: The hardfork has been successful, the new block reward is 3 ETH (down from 5), but also the effective block time and difficulty have pretty much halved, so in the end miners should still be able to get a better profit at the moment compared to before the fork.

– Here is a countdown for the time remaining until the Byzantium Hard Fork of Ethereum…


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