Identifying situations when the PPCoin daemon is attempting a pos block

So I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s enough information in the debug.log file to tell when the daemon attempts to solve a proof-of-stake block. Presumably, when a block is solved, it’s reported in the log, but without lots of high coinage transactions (and the current, apparent, inability to poll to see what the coinage of a given coin in your wallet is), I’ve been in the dark.

I updated my proof-of-stake minting start script to write the time and date that the wallet was opened up for minting, so that at least gives me a baseline to use as a marker in the log file to see if something happened today, vs. yesterday.

Occasionally, I’ll see this (line numbers added for clarity):

1 Attempting to mint stake on Wed Dec 18 20:19:59 EST 2013
2 ThreadStakeMinter exiting, 0 threads remaining
3 PPCoin Network: genesis=0x0000000032fe677166d5 nBitsLimit=0x1d00ffff nBitsInitial=0x1c00ffff nStakeMinAge=2592000 nCoinbaseMaturity=500 nModifierInterval=21600
4 ThreadStakeMinter started
5 CPUMiner started for proof-of-stake

Ln 1: My marker text
Ln 2: ?
Ln 3: Checkpoint node reporting back statistics for comparison or to use for hash creation?
Ln 4: Is this PPCoind attempting to solve a proof-of-stake block?
Ln 5: And is this the actual hashing calculations being processed?

So far, I haven’t seen anything else after that, but then again, I haven’t had a stake minted, either. Does anyone have an insight into what’s happening, or links to docs that describe it better? I can and will go through the code, but I’m not familiar enough with it yet to easily recognize if that is, or isn’t, what I think it is.

No one has poked around in their debug.log files to see what is recorded when a proof-of-stake block is processed? I’m shocked, I didn’t realize I’d be the biggest nerd here :slight_smile:

It looks something like this (I’ve removed the real numbers and hashes to maintain my anonymity)

CPUMiner : proof-of-stake block found adjkldsajklsdjklfjkdkldsjfsdla
BitcoinMiner:
new block found  
  hash: dfjsdfjklsfdjlkafdjklsadjklasjklsdfjklsdfjklsdfjklas
target: 0000000013223a00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
CBlock(hash=sdf23894982349123, ver=1, hashPrevBlock=adsffasdfdsa9as0, hashMerkleRoot=a2132253, nTime=130230423, nBits=2134234, nNonce=0, vtx=2, vchBlockSig=sadf9sfduiasfdioafdsuiofsduiosdfaioufasiofsduioasfffj12323
  Coinbase(hash=32423423, nTime=130323432, ver=1, vin.size=1, vout.size=1, nLockTime=0)
    CTxIn(COutPoint(0000000000, -1), coinbase 43289239f99f9923932493)
    CTxOut(empty)
  Coinstake(hash=234983293, nTime=130232343, ver=1, vin.size=1, vout.size=3, nLockTime=0)
    CTxIn(COutPoint(234893248, 1), scriptSig=23489328938943)
    CTxOut(empty)
    CTxOut(nValue=320.12, scriptPubKey=3249823849238fsdjfdsjiksdlkjas OP_CHECKSIG)
    CTxOut(nValue=320.12342, scriptPubKey=3249822348923489239823jkfdsjklsadflkj OP_CHECKSIG)
  vMerkleTree: dsds23489 2342344sd df8s9sd98e89 
2013-09-12 10:22:03 UTC generated 0.00
AddToWallet 344898sd  new
WalletUpdateSpent found spent coin 399.3242ppc 5438934892389423892109231809423482323412342132f
SetBestChain: new best=b2348923948239823 height=82921  trust=3245834289248  moneysupply=20952532.123572
ProcessBlock: ACCEPTED

I use to unlock my wallet for an hour, hope to mint a block, fail, and then close the wallet. I did this multiple times. Once day, i said forget it, and left it open for a full 30 hours. That’s when I woke up in the morning and realized I had minted a block.

Plus having more than 8 connections to the peercoin network can help too I think. (I had 20 or so)

Awesome, thanks PPCman, that helps a lot. I’m running 8 connections right now, but I’ll see if I can bump it up a bit. Would you mind sharing your node list, if possible?

What do you mean by 8 connections?

What do you mean by 8 connections?[/quote]
On the Qt client it shows the number of connections if u hover over the icon in the bottom right corner where 3 bars show getting higher… in the daemon… run ppcoind getinfo and it shows u some general stats… one of the stats is connections he has 8

This means that his computer is connected to 8 other similar computers that are running the client and they all agree on the block count in the blockchain.

Its like in torrents… here you have 8 seed nodes connected that you can download the files from

Fuzzybear

I must say I am hit and miss with the peercoins, I mine some sell some and then try to POS once a month with my 300 coins or so. I can tell you that if you just load the client it will be limited to 8 connections ( I was still able to find couple of PoS blocks with that) but couple of months ago I found a guide somehwre where you have to forward the PPC port on your router and I thing edit your config file to allow more connections. I now can have 20 to 50 peers connected when I load up my wallet for PoS minting, but to be quite honest I don’t think it made a difference in PoS minting, at least none that I noticed.

Agreed, connections should be irrelevant to successful PoS minting. My personal experience is that as long as your balance is sitting in your wallet for 2-3 month and then keep the client running for a couple of hours every day. You should mine a PoS block within 3 days.

You realize that this depends on the number of coins in your wallet, right?
With 5000 PPC at 3 months, the client needs to run for ~ 24 hours to find a PoS block (at current difficulty).
With 100 PPC at 3 months, the client needs to run for ~ 2 months day and night to find a PoS block.

Is that your experience or is there a calculation behind this which includes the PoS difficulty?
Could you please share?

It’s not very green if I have to run my 300watt Windows pc for weeks to mint a fraction of a peercoin. If this is true we really need a low cost way to mint. E.g a mobile client, as my tablet/mobile phone is always on anyway.

The chance of minting depends on your stake, or ‘unspent coindays’. That is the number of coins times the number of days they haven’t been used. So yes it is more than a feeling, it really is in the math that it depends on the number of coins. Also, it is a method to reward people for being online and maintaining the ledger. The more people are running the client, the more robust the distributed network.

But you are right that 300W is a lot, though of course it shouldn’t be doing much work for it (could be used for other tasks simultaneously, mining a CPU-mined coin if nothing else). If you have it on just for Peercoin, maybe you can do with a smaller machine. I run ppcoind on a Raspberry Pi (2.5W) 24/7. A mobile client would be nice to have, I see no reason why it can’t be developed over time (if PPC becomes more popular).

Thanks Jazzer. Got the part about number of coins and coinage. Don’t get the PoS difficulty bit or has that nothing to do with creating pos blocks.

Offtopic: Might pick-up a Raspberry like you awaiting a mobile client, my old PC is too expensive to run 24h just for minting.

You are right. The lack of definitive explanation of many foundamental technical aspects of PPC is what worries me. Yours are million dolar questions given the marketcap of PPC. Sure it’s all in the source code. But apparently if getting the right answer were so easy your questions wouldn’t be leaving everyone guessing here.

You are right. The lack of definitive explanation of many foundamental technical aspects of PPC is what worries me. Yours are million dolar questions given the marketcap of PPC. Sure it’s all in the source code. But apparently if getting the right answer were so easy your questions wouldn’t be leaving everyone guessing here.[/quote]

After Ben posted that statement, I provided what he needed within 40 minutes of it, on the same date, Dec 23, 2013.

Let’s address your comment further:

The “lack of definitive explanation of many fundamental technical aspects” could be true with ANY coin, including Bitcoin. It takes time, and a learning curve.

Some people don’t want to know the innermost workings of the coin they just trade it’s value. Some people do, and that’s one of the reasons for this forum.

Look at this link:

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3007320/tracking/bitcoin-coming-browser-near-you

It talks about the text message capabilities of Bitcoin that most users rarely use, or even know how to use. But it’s in the code. Bitcoin is worth billions of dollars and yet some people still successfully use it without knowing the “many fundamental technical aspects” of Bitcoin.

I am not sure mhps why you’ve decided to single out PPC in your statement, but what you said is currently true for ANY coin at this early moment in time that uses Bitcoin’s source code.

PPC’s forums are vibrant, well participated in, and full of useful information on a daily basis. We’re getting answers to our “fundamental technical aspects of PPC” simply by asking public questions, and participating in a public forum like this…

Let’s keep up the good work and keep answering these types of questions on an ongoing basis.