Following a successful release, please find several noteworthy updates below. These may be primarily relevant to the more experienced users among you – if you’re not involved in mining, there’s no need for action.
Epoch transition in 2 hours
Let’s begin with a brief alert to miners; the network will be transitioning epochs in approximately 2 hours. If you are utilizing the geth/ethminer combination, you should be prepared if you have selected the –autodag option on geth and –no-precompute on ethminer. If not, monitor your miners as they develop the dag. Report any issues to either the Go or C++ issue trackers, based on the client you’re operating.
Please note that certain AMD graphics cards will necessitate GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=95 to facilitate the expanded DAG size.
Upcoming client updates.
In the next few days, we will see the 5k gas limit per block increased. We will be functioning with a 3M (3141592, or pi million as it’s affectionately referred to) gas target per block moving forward.
Remember, it’s the protocol that defines the possible adjustments regarding the gas limit increase (or decrease) per block, with miners only able to modify their parameters within these predefined limits.
The maximum increase (or decrease) is dictated by the protocol at the parent gas limit /1024. With the default parameter unaffected by miners, it will require a minimum of 6 hours to rise from the current 5k gas per block to a level permitting transactions (21,000 gas needed for a basic transaction on Ethereum).
Naturally, statistically speaking, the more miners update their clients once the update is available, the quicker the network will achieve the 3M target (the minimum being 28 hours). So if you are mining, please watch for the releases of both the C++ and Go clients and ensure you update as soon as they are available.
Standard Gas price set at 50 shannon
The base gas price is established at 50 shannon (0.05 szabos, or 0.00000005 ether). Keep in mind that the gas price is ultimately determined by the users invoking a contract, while the miners can configure a parameter on their machines to accept or disregard transactions within a specific gas price range.
On the user side, we also have an integrated oracle that defines the ideal gas price, influenced by the gas usage of the previous block. For instance, if the last block was under 80% capacity, the gas price oracle will adjust to propose a lower gas price recommendation.
Update regarding Olympic Rewards
We are in the process of compiling the list of Olympic winners and will be handling them in the upcoming weeks.
If you anticipate receiving an Olympic reward and were unable to perform the A->B transaction I discussed in one of my previous blog postings, do not worry – you can still complete that transaction on the Olympic network.
Some of you have encountered difficulties with catching up to the Olympic blockchain – in such cases, try using the C++ client which can synchronize in under 5 hours. Bear in mind that you may have to mine a few blocks for your transaction to process, as miners have understandably moved on to Frontier.
Update regarding namereg
Once the thawing period is over, we plan to introduce the name registrar contract. We have not yet finalized its functionality, and its operation (similar to an auction house) will likely merit its own blog entry. You can examine its current code available at https://github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/blob/master/registrar/registrar.sol.
Announcements will consistently be posted on our blog
We appreciate your tremendous support and participation on social media, including Twitter and of course reddit. Please note that due to the many of you monitoring various sites for information regarding Ethereum, we have elected to publish all announcements moving forward – including alterations to the protocol or clients – on this blog (the one you are currently reading). Lastly, keep in mind that for technical inquiries, you will always find better assistance on our forums at http://forum.ethereum.org/.
