Posts Tagged ‘Proof of Stake’

Ethereum’s Istanbul Hard Fork to Start on December 4th

8, Nov 2019

The first phase of Ethereum’s next major hard fork is planned to happen on less than a month around December 4th at block number 9056000. The hard fork called Istanbul is divided in two parts with the first one to be executed on December 4th and the second one planned for early 2020. The next hard fork called Serenity that will bring Ethereum 2.0 and switch the project from PoW to PoS may or may not happen before the end of 2020, so there is still time for that. Is is worth mentioning that on December 4th Ethereum (ETH) will not be switching its mining algorithm from Ethash to the much anticipated and still somewhat controversial ProgPoW as this is still planned to happen in the second Istanbul phase with the EIP-1057 scheduled for the first quarter of 2020.

If you are still mining Ethereum with ASIC miners or GPUs and the Ethash algorithm you will have more than just a month left, it could easily take up to another 6 months for ProgPoW to replace Ethash as the PoW algorithm, though it can also happen faster than that. Nevertheless this can signal the upcoming death of ETH ASIC miners as although there are a number of other projects using the Ethash algorithm, they will most likely not be able to handle the massive hashrate outflow from Ethereum if/when it forks to ProgPoW. On the other hand ProgPoW can also bring a change in the way GPUs are being used for mining as it is supposed to provide a more level playing field for the different GPUs in terms of mining performance. So definitely Ethereum’s upcoming hard forks will have a serious impact on the crypto mining sector.

More Stake Pools For Decred (DCR) Are Launching

20, May 2016

decred-staking-pool-stakeminers

The main Decred (DCR) staking pool hasn’t been accepting new registrations for quite a while, but now more staking pools are expected to soon be available. The first from the new wave of DCR staking pools is from Stakeminer that is already running on the mainnet with a few more still on the testnet that should soon also become available of the main Decred network. The Decred Stake Pool from Stakeminer is currently running up with a 7.5% fee, but it will probably get lower once more pools are available and DCR holders have more options for staking without having to run their wallet 24/7 locally. So you can check out the new Decred staking pool that is taking new registrations now and stay tuned for more pools that should be coming online pretty soon.

Update: There are now two more DCR staking pools online now, http://stakepool.eu and https://dcr.stakepool.net both running with a 7% 5% fee. There is also yet another staking pool available now also with the lower 5% fee – http://pool.d3c.red and now there is yet another one online with 5% fee – https://stakepool.dcrstats.com.

– To check out the newly launched Decred (DCR) staking pool from stakeminer…

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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