I learned a new term
The term Superblock. Up until a few days ago I had never heard of it. I heard of blocks and how they record digital information, my Gridcoin wallet reads them and somehow I'm part of a network that tracks and confirms that information.
Then a Superblock wasn't being made recently and it somehow had people concerned, had people stressed; and then when it showed up people let out a huge sense of relief, enough so that the person that found it was rewarded by multiple parties.
I've read through other postings and the call to arms in order to pursue the Superblock and it occurred to me... I've no idea what more I can do.
My computers are still processing Boinc tasks, my wallet is open and running 24/7 except for the times Windows automatically updates and reboots.
I wasn't really sure what else could be done, still don't know to ensure it doesn't happen again.
Flashback to being ten during emergencies, I pretty much stood back and went "taller people than me are handling it."
So if it helps my understanding of the situation is as follows: a superblock is like a block but more important because of reasons and is harder to make because of other reasons .
A superblock is just a block that contains extra information updating how the proof-of-research rewards should be distributed. If it's late, solo miners who joined since the last update can't get rewarded until it shows up again, and the reward distribution is a bit "unfair" until then since some people may be paid more than they should and others not enough.
It primarily exists to avoid reliance on central statistics servers and that's where it gets complicated; since there isn't a central server, all the various nodes have to agree on what the current statistics are, and that agreement is the superblock. With all the increased competition due to new miners jumping on in the last month or so, some bugs and inefficiencies are showing up. This is actually a good thing insofar as fixing these issues will make sure we can scale once the team requirements are removed, since we expect that growth spurt to dwarf anything we've seen yet.:)
It should be noted that it doesn't affect the security of the blockchain at all, nor does it affect people running in investor mode. It also doesn't really affect pool miners as much, though the pool as a whole may not get as many rewards as it should if the superblocks are delayed too long.
I expect we'll see a few more delayed superblocks until it's sorted out, but I'm pretty confident that our developers will come up with a good solution.:)
That's exactly what I got out of it too. I've got my family Gridcoining as well and my explanation to them was worse.
Just sit back, relax, and keep on BOINCing...it'll all be just fine :-)
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming... -Dory
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