NiceHash Now With Added Support for SiaCoin (SC)

21 May
2017

The recent spike in the price of SiaCoin (SC) has apparently sparkled interest in users willing to buy some mining hashrate or to sell their hashrate, so now you are able to do just that on the NiceHash service. Do note that the stratum supported for SIA by NiceHash would require you to use a specific compatible miner and other SIA pool miners will most likely be incompatible for the moment. NiceHash has updated their excavator miner to support Sia stratum mining on their service (only on Nvidia CUDA for the moment), so if you want to try selling your SiaCoin mining hashrate on NiceHash you will have to use it. You can download the latest 64-bit Windows alpha release of excavator 1.2.2a (source) with support for SiaCoin in Nicehash. The equihash miner also supports the Equihash algorithm used by Zcash, Pascal and Decred for the moment on Nvidia. Do note that the excavator miner software does work on both OpenCL AMD GPUs as well as on Nvidia CUDA ones for the supported algorithms. Have in mind though that running the miner on AMD OpenCL GPUs however is a bit more specific than running it on Nvidia CUDA, currently only Equihash and Pascal algorithms work on AMD GPUs!

– Download and try the latest Excavator 1.2.2a Win64 miner with SicaCoin support on NiceHash…

Major Bug in CryptoNote Base Crypto Currencies Disclosed

18 May
2017

The developers of Monero (XMR) have just disclosed that they have discovered and patched a critical bug that affects all CryptoNote-based cryptocurrencies, and allows for the creation of an unlimited number of coins in a way that is undetectable to an observer unless they know about the fatal flaw and can search for it. This major bug has been patched a while ago and it has been confirmed that the Monero network was never affected by it. All other active and affected CryptoNote coins, including CryptoNote themselves, Bytecoin, Forknote, Boolberry, DashCoin, and DigitalNote have apparently been notified about the possible issue prior to the public disclosure of the problem.

Note that, at this time, only Monero (XMR), Aeon (AEON), Boolberry (XBB), and Forknote have updated. This means that there could be potential abuse, though it may not necessarily happen with coins that have not patched and fixed the bug. As a result caution is advised for anyone using, trading, exchanging, or running services involving the following currencies affected by this issue: Bytecoin (BCN), DashCoin (DSH), DigitalNote (XDN). Just to clarify a possible misunderstanding by some users – DashCoin (DSH) is not the same as DASH as DASH is not CryptoNote, but X11-based!

– Check the official announcement from Monero about the major bug discovery and fix…

The Bitcoin Network is Congested with Unconfirmed Transactions

17 May
2017

Do you remember the time when Bitcoin was advertised as a fast and easy way to transfer money all over the world with a minimal transaction fee. Well, these times are long gone now that we are seeing the 1MB blocks full with transactions, a backlog of almost 200000 unconfirmed transactions and over 100 BTC in fees alone with almost 100MB backlog (100 blocks behind with 1MB block size). As a result there are high transaction fees that start at more than a dollar and can go as high as a couple of dollars just to have your transaction included in a block in a reasonable time. Things are not looking good, unless a consensus for a solution (even temporary) to the small block size is found as with the increase of the price of Bitcoin. Services such as online Bitcoin wallets and such have started to increase the transaction fees already so, that there will be no extra delay for their customers, the problem is that these extra costs are usually covered by the users.

For example the online Bitcoin wallet and a Bitcoin-powered debit card issuer Xapo has recently informed its customers about their plans to actually have the transaction fees for withdraws paid by the users. According to a post on Aksjebloggen.com, prior to that the service did not have users paying the fees for outgoing transactions, but the high fees associated with transfers on the Bitcoin blockchain have forced this change. With low transaction fees covering the extra cost is not a problem for some services, but with the constantly growing transaction fees you can even end up paying more for the actual transaction to be included in the blockchain than the amount you are transferring if it is just a couple of dollars.

Do you remember those promo images comparing Bitcoin to Western Union, PayPal and other popular payment services and talking about how BTC is better with the very low transaction fees cited as one of the key advantages. Well, if this trend continues and a solution is not found soon, then things might end up with Bitcoin transaction fees actually making transfers more expensive than to use a more established alternative payment method like the ones mentioned…

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