Archive for the ‘General Info’ Category

Make Sure Your Ethereum Client is Ready for the Homestead Hardfork

14, Mar 2016

ethereum-logo

With just a few hundred blocks left before we reach the Ethereum hardfork planned for block 1150000 you should make sure you have updated any local geth or eth clients you are running, including any version of the GUI wallet. With this hardfork Ethereum will move to the next phase called Homestead – the second major version release of the Ethereum platform, which includes several protocol changes and a networking change that requires the hardfork.

The latest Go Ethereum (geth) with Homestead support is release 1.3.5 and the latest C++ version of Ethereum (eth) with Homestead support is version 1.2.2. A large number of the Ethereum nodes have already been updated, but there are still some that are running older versions of the software that are not ready for the hardfork. The latest official Ethereum GUI Wallet with Homestead support is 0.5.2 (Beta 10), so if you are using it make sure you also have the latest version installed in order to avoid any possible issues associated with the hardfork.

– To download the latest Ethereum Go client geth version 1.3.5 (Homestead)…
– To download the latest Ethereum C++ eth client version 1.2.2 (Homestead)…
– To download the latest Ethereum GUI Wallet 0.5.2 Beta 10 (Homestead)…

Do You Have Some FedoraCoin (TIPS), Sell Them Now

11, Mar 2016

federacoin-tips-coinmarketcap

If you have mined FedoraCoin (TIPS) when it was launched about two years ago and still have some coins left in a local wallet and have totally forgotten about them, then you might be very lucky now. It seems that there is an effort to revive the coin after quite some time and there is also a significant boos in its price, even though it is being traded on only one exchange at the moment. It was available on Cryptsy as well, but since Cryptsy is essentially dead and the TIPS wallet is not unlocked for withdraws you can only trade on BTER for LTC or CNY (and then turn them into ETH or BTC for example). The price of a single TIPS coin is at about $0.000022 USD at the moment, but since the block reward started at millions and moved to hundreds and is now tens of thousands of coins you might end up with quite a nice profit depending on the amount of coins you have. The TIPS deposits were a bit slow in the last days at the exchange (should be fixed now) and it could take a bit of time for your wallet to get synchronized and up to date, but it will be totally worth it if you have a couple of millions coins left and forgotten there for example. If you manage to own a Scrypt ASIC miner then you might want to check out the mining profitability of TIPS as well, an up to date pool for mining TIPS you can check the Hash-to-Coins multipool.

– Visit the Asian Exchange BTER where FedoraCoin (TIPS) is being traded at the moment…

The Official Decred (DCR) Stake Pool is Now Live

7, Mar 2016

decred-stake-pool-mainnet

We have mentioned when the test stake pool for Decred (DCR) was released about two weeks ago and now the development team has announced that the staking pool is live on the mainnet. The stake pool allows you to purchase tickets and have the pool redeem and vote on your behalf without having to send actual coins to the pool or having your local wallet online and unlocked 24/7 for the Decred staking. Do note though that in both cases your staking coins used for ticket purchase remain locked. The development team also promises that the source code of the staking pool will be released to the public in a week from now, meaning that we are probably going to see some more alternative Decred staking pools becoming available soon after that.

Staking in Decred works in a similar way to a lottery, you purchase tickets with the available DCR coins you have or the amount you want to use. Ticket price started at 2 DCR and it changes based on users staking, though it is currently pretty high priced at about 14 DCR, so you might want to carefully choose the timing when to purchase tickets. Then you need wait for your ticket to be randomly chosen to validate a block or to be taken out of the lottery in 142 days if you do not win anything. The coins you use for staking (purchasing tickets for the lottery) will be locked until they are either chosen and you get your staking reward or 142 days pass . According to the information available the lottery lasts about 28 days average and the chance of a ticket not being selected in 142 days are less than 1%, but since it is all luck based your results may vary.

Do note that the staking pool is just making it easy for you to participate in the PoS phase of Decred mining, the staking rewards in the pool remain personal, so every participant is staking just like he would using a local wallet (you still need to have a local wallet to authorize the pool to vote and stake on your behalf). We are yet to see Decred staking pool becoming available where participants will play to win together and the rewards will be shared equally between all participants, so this will probably be the next step in DCR pool staking that we might be seeing further down the road.

– For more information and to try the official Decred Stake Pool now running on the main network…


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