[XPM] [ANN] Primecoin Release - First Scientific Computing Cryptocurrency

If the initial code had been properly optimized then starting difficulty could have been nearly 9 and we wouldn't be seeing such a short block time. This is a lesson, if your going to release a new algorithm for CPU mining, optimize the CPU code or else you've get quasi-ASIC like behavior in which hash rates explode and the coins may end up monopolized by people who have access to the high potency mining ability even if this is by software rather then hardware.

Starting difficulty would have still been where Sunny set it, 7. I don't know what the distribution looks like, but I am still finding blocks on 5 micro instances and a laptop running while I am sleeping. If difficulty adjustments took two weeks, I would agree with you, but it's dynamic.

If his starting difficulty was in any way chosen to reflect the mining rate of some target number of PCs (the method Satoshi used) then optimized code would certainly have lead him to choose a higher difficulty, do you think 7 was just a number he pulled out of his ass with no regard to the target block time?

So not only does he have to code and promote the coin, now he has to divine the future? I imagine that he set it where it to wouldn't be jammed up with orphan chains initially when utilizing CPU mining and then allowed it to self regulate. There is no way to predict adoption or hashing power or optimization. You are just some tool upset about the first WEEK of mining. Entitlement is an ugly thing. Didn't get enough of those 200k coins, or what?

Fuckin' a...some people will bitch about anything.

Oh get off it you twit, I'm pointing out how Sunny King could have had a better initial release that meet HIS goals. From what I've read on the optimization threads the original client was doing really obviously un-optimized stuff like calling malloc repeatedly which any first year programmer knows is a performance killer. Optimization CAN be predicted and the factor of 100x we have seen so far would be considered quite easy and 'low hanging fruit' to most programmers.

SK was clearly trying to avoid overly fast blocks per his own pre-release thread that advertised "Reasonably high starting difficulty to limit instamining" but that effort was defeated by lack of optimization to the mining code under which the initial difficulty was chosen. Its a lesson anyone working on a new hash algorithm in the future should take to heart, it is meant as a constructive postmortem of this coins release.

Your statements are simply knee-jerk defensiveness and seem to be ignorant of SK stated intentions as well, I assure you he is capable of taking constructive criticism and learning from mistakes, I recommend you do likewise.