Updates: Block Stuck Caused by Difficulty in Testnet 1.5

On July 12th, 2021, Silicoin took a snapshot in block height 93939 and started the testnet1.5. It ran stable at the beginning, but it was stuck in block height 2601. Then it moved on again and stopped once again in block height 2909 after few hours.

The Silicoin team has investigated the report thoroughly and has found the difficulty caused it.

What Happened

On the date when Silicoin launched testnet1.5, the Silicoin team received a report that the chain was stuck in block height 2601. After the team investigated, the developers confirmed that the difficulty caused this issue. The initial difficulty was set too low; then, the timelord could not deal with massive pending challenges on time. That is why testnet1.5 became unstable.

Actions Being Taken

The team checked all the codes when Silicoin got the report because testnet1.5 merged the new principles from Chia, in fact, and the developers afraid there were some conflicts. However, the team made sure the difficulty caused this issue after an investigation.

First of all, the team tried to deploy more powerful timelords to process those pending challenges. Unfortunately, there were too many pending, and the solution failed. Thus, the only way Silicoin can do this is to reset the new chain with the proper initial difficulty. But there was a bug in genesis block when v0.08 was released. So to make sure the users will not install the wrong version and get confused, the team deleted the v0.0.7 and v0.0.8 from GitHub. Then Silicoin team made the change of the difficulty. The testnet1.5 changes the difficulty itself automatically every 768 blocks. After testing, the block produce of 0.0.9 version was back to be stable.

Although v0.0.8 was failed but the interesting thing is we found an error of chia network and fixed it without intention. Now the bug was fixed and successfully merged to chia mainnet. For more details, please check https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/pull/7419

Technical Details

- Fixed the high filter passing issue.

- Adjusted difficulty. Now the testnet1.5 adjusts the difficulty automatically every 768 blocks instead of around 4000 blocks in Chia.

- Increased more powerful timelords to process the challenges.

- Added more introducers to improve the syncing issues.

- Merged the new codes from Chia network and supported the new plots.

- Fixed an error when sync with height 0 for both chia and silicoin.

ALL in all in ALL

Even we made some mistakes this time, and we found there are many users still supporting us. Nobody complained, and there were only some warm jokes. That makes us shame - What the silly-coin we are! We probably picked a wrong name as the joke Lol... Anyway, thank you all for your patient and trust. We may not be the smartest team, but we will keep working no matter what issues we meet in the future.

Although Silicoin is original from Chia, we have our own ideas. What we want is not to end the Chia but to try more innovations based on it. That is why we did the fork of Chia in testnet1, same with other forks, then goes continue something new in the further network. We are crazy about Chia's codes and want to see more differences. To be honest, we even do not mind be the testing chain of Chia. But of course, the first we need to be a most stable chia fork.

Last but not least, if you are a developer with some interesting ideas...If you do not mind that we are not the most talented team...Join us now! We really need your help to make Silicoin great.

We love you 3000.