SINOVATE (SIN) Mainnet Upgrade on Block 262000 (October 14th)

7 Oct
2019

The SINOVATE (SIN) project has announced a plan for a mainnet upgrade at block height 262000 or somewhere around October 14th that will introduce a number of changes, including ones that are very important to miners. There is a new wallet version available that you need to download prior to the fork happening in order to continue to use the wallet after block 262000. The upgrade will include a difficulty retargeting algorithm change from DGW2 to LWMA for more security and 51% attack protection, the reorg solution of Ravencoin with 55 blocks for 51% Attack protection, removal of Shadowsend (PrivateSend) anonymity option because of the regulations with Dual-Key Stealth Address Protocol (DKSAP) currently under consideration a an alternative, 375 node limit across all tiers and additional bug fixes for increased stability.

The most important change however, regarding this upcoming fork, is the adjustment in the Bock Rewards. The Treasury Reward will increase from 1.1% to 10% for further project development, marketing and funding of large exchanges while the Proof-of-work (PoW) mining rewards will be decreased from 250 SIN to just 25 SIN. This means that out of 3052.5 SIN generated every two minutes (every block) only 25 SIN or roughly 0.8% will go to miners (ten times reduction of the block reward for miners from 250 SIN). So out fo 3052.5 SIN: 25 SIN for PoW miners, 2750 SIN for Infinity Nodes and 277.5 SIN for the Treasury. This will essentially make mining SIN pretty pointless with such a low reward and result in significant network hashrate reduction, down to just 1/10 is expected from the current level and hence the additional measures against 51% attack being implemented. How will these changes affect the project we are yet to see in a week time.

– For additional information regarding the SINOVATE (SIN) block reward changes…

Optimizing AMD GPU VRAM Performance With the AMD Memory Tweak XL Tool

7 Oct
2019

Modifying the BIOS of an AMD video card with different operating frequencies or better memory timings and then flashing it on the GPU has been the primary choice of crypto miners for a while. Due to the introduction of the BIOS signature check in the video driver by AMD some time ago this also required users to patch the video drivers in order to continue using them with more recent video drivers. Earlier this year the AMD Memory Tweak Tool has been released and meanwhile it has evolved into a quite the useful alternative to BIOS modding. The latest AMD Memory Tweak XL makes it really easy to modify memory timings, memory straps or PowerPlay Table “on the fly” as well as access the ADL Overdrive and MMIO Register Control on newer GDDR5/HBM-memory based AMD video cards. This means that you can change the settings and apply them directly and test how they will affect performance and stability, changes are not permanent and as soon as there is some issue you can easily revert back to the default values.

The AMD Memory Tweak XL tool requires that you have .NET Framework 3.5 installed in order to function, if it is not available on your system it will automatically detect and offer to download it for you… though you might experience various issues when trying to install the framework on some mining rigs. Also your Windows needs to be in Test Mode in order for the tool to properly function, it will offer to get you into Test Mode if you are currently not and there is a button to easily get you back to regular operation. The AMD Memory Tweak XL is originally intended for more advanced users, though you should be able to quickly get up to speed on what and how to modify to get better performance. You can look at what other users have reported as settings that give better performance on their specific mining GPUs and try them and experiment on what your AMD GPUs are capable of. Even if you already have an modified video BIOS you can still play with the memory straps for example in order to squeeze some extra performance to test even better settings before applying them with a new BIOS modification.

– For more information and to download the AMD Memory Tweak XL tool…

BitCash (BITC) Has Forked Again, X16Rv2 GPU Mining Now Possible

6 Oct
2019

A week ago there was a fork for the BitCash (BITC) project in order to switch to the new X16Rv2 PoW algorithm. Due to some issues however GPU mining ended up not working up properly, so only CPU solo mining was possible for a week and another fork was planned to fix the problem. Today the new fork has happened and the good news is that X16Rv2 GPU mining is now possible after the successful fork. Due to the fork the difficulty of mining BITC is currently lower and you might want to take advantage of this and play around with the T-Rex miner and the X16Rv2 algorithm if you have some Nvidia GPUs and wondering what to mine. As for a good pool where you can mine BitCash on, you might want to check out IceMining or alternatively the second option is to go for GOS.cx…

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