There is a known issue with our protocol which places a floor, or minimum, on the proof of stake difficulty. Presently the network is producing about 36 blocks per hour but it should be producing 60. Normally the difficulty would adjust downward and the network would produce 60 blocks an hour with the present level of minting. However, due to this issue the difficulty will not adjust downward as it is already at the minimum enforced by the flaw in the protocol.
There are a couple problems that result from low block counts:
- The parking interval is based on block counts, not time, so that means that when funds are parked they will stay parked longer than the advertised time interval, resulting in user dissatisfaction.
- Interest rate changes occur more slowly. The protocol only allows the rate to rise by 1% every 1440 blocks.
There are two ways to address the problem:
- Change the protocol to remove the minimum difficulty level using a hard fork.
- Shareholders can mint with NuShares not currently minting to increase the number of blocks to 60 an hour (or even more for a week until the difficulty adjusts).
Hard forking poses a risk to the integrity of the ledger and a rushed hard fork poses a much higher risk. Therefore, I’m inclined to request that NuShare holders do as much minting as possible until we can implement an orderly hard fork with our 0.5 release. About 67% more minting is needed to create 60 blocks an hour. More NuShares are being distributed all the time, which will make dealing with this known issue easier with each passing day.
If you bring a new wallet online to mint be advised that voting settings are contained in the wallet, not the client. So in that case you will need to configure your votes again.
