UNDER INVESTIGATION -> In about 2 days: BOOM! Users from 4 whitelisted BOINC projects will lose their owed research (fulfillment)

[Erkan-Yilmaz]

Rob is now investigating this, and he thinks:

• people will NOT LOSE it as I described it,

but he needs to still verify something.

• more info here

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If no fix comes soon, about 2000+(?) users (A) from these 4 BOINC projects will lose their $GRC rewards:

• Citizen Science Grid (279 active users; 958 total)
• Numberfields (152; 640)
• Rosetta (671; 3510)
• SETI (1080; 3518)

See more in the 2nd picture at:

• situation of the superblocks
• see also the effects of the ongoing probs of the SBs since 5 weeks:
  • screenhot
  • downvoted comment on steemit (please upvote)

Why?

• Because these users are waiting now for 280h+ (almost 12 days) for being paid out their $GRCs (since the superblock on July 13).
• Gridcoin has for RSA a look-back period of 14 days (336h) for the owed GRCs
• The situation gets more dangerous the longer it takes:
  • VGTU server is currently is n/a since >17h
  • Tuesday's is SETI's usual maintainance day, and Gridcoin can NOT read then the statistics files from the SETI server
  • The new 3.5.9.5 version is out since 1.5 days already, and still either not enough Windows users upgraded, or the intended fix did not fix all problems

This leaves us about a time period left of 56h (=2.3 days)

How to fix this ?

• fix the SB problems?
• see e.g.: "perhaps temporarily extend that to 30 days to give the developers time to work on a fix? If we could get one SB to include all the projects..." (see ZenMercenary's comment in link to forum in above screenshot) ?
  • but this will require that all those users run the "new version" (see also: important info to be displayed in the wallet (message of the day, ...))
• Do you have more suggestions ?

What can you do?

• inform others so they are aware and can immediately get to the new version (e.g. Windows users: upgrade), e.g.retweet/like:
  • tweet
  • reddit
  • steemit
• increase the bounty? There is still a bounty open:
  • June 25: 7000 GRC bounty: solving superblock situation (6850 GRC) + creating superblock (150 GRC)

(A) user values taken from boincstats: e.g. (279; 958) means:

• 279 active users; 958 total users

---

• About steemit + github: read this please.
• You like what I do? Take action here.

[Mercosity]

Well Erkan, I'm one of those 'poor feckers' who is crunching 3 out of the 4 projects you've mentioned ie. Numberfields, SETI and Rossetta.

SETI and Rossetta are more 'fun' crunches for me but Numberfields is not.
I have a decent RAC on there and continued to crunch although it's not been in the NN trusting that the devs (who are working very hard) will solve the SB problem.

If I do lose the PoR I'll have to definitely rethink my crunching as I have already passed my costs to rewards threshold that I set myself. This will entail simply switching off machines as I cannot afford to run them anymore.

Must admit I never thought it'd come to this but I have to be a realist and I have to think of my important monthly budgetary requirements first and BOINC/Gridcoin is down the list.

[grctest]

Lookback is 6 months not 14days, confirmed by Rob on Slack.

[Erkan-Yilmaz]

So, Rob is now investigating this, and he thinks:

• people will not lose as I described it: (A),
  • but he still needs to verify this: (B).

And the hoped fix for the SB we all wait on will be:

• to use a CENTRALIZED solution: (C)

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Full chat is in the public slack dev channel:

...
‎[21:57:52] ‎dev1: I think it's a misunderstanding on how it works. I assumed the same.
...
‎[22:06:25] ‎user4: Panic is not good but a solution to the problem is more important than to calm down some newbies
‎[22:07:03] ‎user5: we have no solution 😞
‎[22:07:07] ‎user4: If we can not get to a solution I propose fully centralization until we found a solution.
...
‎[22:10:15] ‎dev1: @Dev2 I have full centralization as a temporary proposal in my to-be article
‎[22:10:31] ‎dev1: But even with that we would still have the same problems now
‎[22:10:47] user6: Cool, so it's just the cosmetic 'owed report' that is potentially inaccurate after 14 days rather than rewards being at risk?

‎(A) [22:11:22] ‎dev2‎: Yes, I'm pretty sure of it.

(B) ‎[22:11:56] ‎dev2‎: The only thing I'm not sure of, is if I'm owed 9000 GRC, and the 14 day says I'm owed 1200, if I stake a 1200 POR, what will happen next.
...
‎[22:20:23] ‎user4: dev2 do you think a centralized solution for just a few days would be good/quick'n'dirty until we have solved these issues? I will be off to bed soon, too, but would like to encourage the easiest and fastest way to the next superblock. Then we can test everything in testnet and come back with a "perfect" solution like NN 1.5

(C) ‎[22:21:03] ‎dev2‎: I don't know, I mean that's basically what we have, a centralized solution that is not working.
‎[22:21:50] ‎user4: What about forcing the nodes ONLY to trust the server? Not (BOINC) projects, not legacy NN folder entries, just the (centralized) server
‎[22:22:14] ‎dev2‎: Yeah, that's possible, remove the damn etags and last modified and just make a download function by filename.
‎[22:22:32] ‎dev2‎: Just get the last project file that's on the server.
‎[22:22:41] ‎dev3: and hopefully we don't have an issue with project hashes matching but final hash doesn't match lol
‎[22:22:47] ‎user4: That way we can even freeze stats if a project goes nuts
...
‎[22:24:23] ‎user4: I propose going down that road of centralization and keep the current code for testnet, debug it and come back with it once we are happy
‎[22:24:31] ‎dev1: We have more problems than just source downloads
‎[22:24:46] ‎dev2‎: What other probs ?
...
‎[22:25:15] ‎dev1: We use the same data now but still can't agree
‎[22:25:40] ‎dev1: So fully centralized won't matter
‎[22:25:45] ‎user4: We do not need to agree dev1
‎[22:25:53] ‎user4: The server will be the dictator
‎[22:26:09] ‎user4: simply said...

[grctest]

And the hoped fix for the SB we all wait on will be to use a CENTRALIZED solution

The temporary fix in the run up to the mandatory release (mind the 35th hangout's contents?) is potentially a centralized solution. If you're unhappy with that then program your own alternative implementation of the gridcoin client.

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If you're going to copy/paste chat logs (nobody wants to read chat logs) then grab the most relevant sections:

user1: users are implying that sb's only last 2 weeks thus after 2 weeks there isn't a lookback to reference for payment against said project
dev2: Ive been thinking of this, and I think its complete FUD.

[barton2526]

more comments taken out of context, nice @Erkan-Yilmaz

[Mercosity]

If you guys are just going to comment with comments like barton2526 then don't.
At least grctest rebutted the comments with some relevant info.
I can understand Erkan-Yilmaz cutting and pasting because there is no relevant info being disseminated officially and he has to go and search for snippets here and there.
There is a #publicrelations channel in slack and there are people who are willing to post multisig news posts to inform everyone if they get relevant information.
All it needs is for official info to be passed to this channel and all the work will be done for you. This can then be signed off in a multisig format to confirm authenticity of information.