Siacoin is now 10x Harder to Mine than before
Several were talking about a Siacoin hardfork over the past month, which in turn sparked a lot of people to go crazy over the word "Fork"
This fork was supposed to occur at block 139,000 which was estimated to be Jan 21st 2018
Here is a rundown of the way things were supposed to happen.
I've been seeing a lot of misinformation and confusion surrounding the upcoming Sia hardfork, so I'm collecting the details in a single thread.
Update: See latest thread from the Sia dev team
When will the hardfork occur?
The hardfork will occur at block 139,000.
You can check the current Sia block height at the official block explorer.
There is not an exact calendar time associated with the fork, but we can estimate based on average block time. At the time of this writing, there are 139,000 - 138,426 = 574 blocks until the hardfork. At ~30 minutes per block, the hardfork is on track to occur in ~12 days, on 2018-01-21.
SiaStats shows a countdown with the most up to date estimate of when the hardfork will occur.
Why do some sources say the hardfork will occur on Jan. 31st, 2018?
The original estimate was "around the end of January" so someone put it in a crypto event calendar as Jan. 31st and everyone thought that was the exact date.
Will the hardfork result in new coins?
No.
Hardforks only result in new coins when the fork is contentious (i.e. a separate group is supporting the old fork). This is an uncontroversial hardfork and no development team has expressed interest in supporting the old fork.
Will the hardfork break any ASICs?
No, this hardfork was announced in December 2017 and is unrelated to any discussion of a softfork to protect the network from misbehaving ASICs.
Didn't the hardfork occur already at block 135,000?
There are two separate hardforks.
The first one did occur already at block 135,000, on 2017-12-06. But that hardfork contained an unforeseen bug, which required Sia to undergo a second hardfork, which will occur at block 139,000.
Why are these hardforks occurring?
The Sia difficult adjustment algorithm needed a change to ensure that when ASICs begin mining Siacoin in mid-2018, the massive change in hashrate will not break Sia's consensus functionality. The first hardfork (at 135,000) was an attempt to make this change, but it included a bug, which necessitated a second hardfork (at 139,000).
What do I need to do to prepare for the hardfork?
If you run a Sia node (e.g. Sia-UI), upgrade to 1.3.1 or later.
But don't worry, even if you don't do this, your coins are not at risk. You can always upgrade later and recover your coins from your wallet seed.
Does it matter if my coins are in an exchange when the hardfork occurs?
No. Regardless of whether your coins are in an exchange or your local wallet at the time of the hardfork, there will be no change to your coins before or after the fork.
What will change after the hardfork occurs?
Block times will reduce from ~30 minutes to ~10 minutes. It currently takes ~30 minutes for each transaction confirmation. After the hardfork, confirmations will occur roughly every 10 minutes (the same speed they were prior to the 135,000 hardfork).
For Siacoin miners, this will bring mining yields back to roughly the same level they were before the first hardfork on 2017-12-06.
Reality is SC difficulty went up by 10x due to ASICs according to miningpoolhub.com
SIACOIN DIFFICULTY ROSE, POSTED FEB 3, 2018 AT 14:12 (UTC)
Siacoin's difficulty rose x10 due to ASIC. Seems like Siacoin GPU mining is meaningless these days.
Siacoin Average Difficulty Chart
Siacoin Average Blocktime Chart
Unfortuneately GPU Mining for Siacoin Is No Longer Viable
It might return around block 150,000 which with current difficulty could be months
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