First of all, I would like to apologise for my extended absence. I have been away at the Australasian Winter Conference on Brain Research (AWCBR) to present my PhD research - which is a vital step in disseminating my work and earning a doctorate. I am now back in the crypto fold, and will complete the work that remains assigned to me including work on the commemorative coin.

Secondly, I am glad to see we have all survived the V8 hard fork and the blockchain is still ticking along. Despite a lot of angry messages directed at me, I maintain that criticism of the hardfork was vital in not only raising awareness (as it appears there was none) but also making the voices of the miners heard. It is great to see the devs acknowledging that some power needs to be returned to the miners, and I look forward to the implementation of this. Some things I would like to address re pre-V8 coverage:

• My staking estimates were based on the current community understanding of the functioning of network weight. It appears (almost?) everyone misunderstood this figure, and thanks to input from the Blackcoin devs that Ravon reached out to, we now better understand its significance.

• Despite still receiving accusations of everything from FUD to trying to split the chain, I will continue to cover developments as they come to light until there is no demand for that anymore. I will not be returning to IRC. I strongly believe community understanding and discussion of updates are vital to growing a healthy community. If no-one speaks up and a change rolls out that surprises people, the devs get shot for it and I do not want to see that either.

• I do not, and never have, advocated a chain split. These are alternative facts.

On to V8

To recap, V8 was vital to patch a series of vulnerabilities exposed by Brod that enabled users to game the magnitude weight component of their DPOR. The trade-off was total removal of the power of miners to either stake with their research weight, as well as total removal of their ability to help secure the blockchain.

Staking has become much slower for the average miner, and the pool has made changes to accommodate its magnitude no longer allowing it to stake by keeping a larger GRC pool in reserve. That being said, people have been repeating my worst case estimate without context, which has been detrimental to the discussion. This estimate was:

• 432,000 GRC (USD$17280 of GRC) to stake daily
• 63,000 GRC (USD$2520 of GRC) to stake weekly
• 15,000 GRC (USD$600 of GRC) to stake monthly
• 2400 GRC (USD$96 of GRC) to stake every 6 months

Based on what I have seen in V8, this estimate still is the accurate worst case scenario if all coins were to be staking. As it turns out, V8 has exposed that only a very small fraction of all GRC in existence is actually staking. This may change if the proposed fixed block rewards are implemented, requiring investors to keep their wallet online.

Based on community member reports and adjusting my calculations prior to V8, the current figures (with most coins in cold storage) stand at:

• 25,000 GRC (USD$1000 of GRC) to stake daily
• 4,000 GRC (USD$160 of GRC) to stake weekly
• 1000 GRC (USD$40 of GRC) to stake monthly
• 200 GRC (USD$8 of GRC) to stake every 6 months

These sums are much more achievable for new miners. That being said, between wallet crashes and undetected forks I am yet to stake a single block since V8 was introduced on 50k GRC.

I would like to reiterate again that with innovation comes some rough patches - stick with it and it will pay off. I am fully behind our dev team and am looking forward to balance being returned that (at the very least) makes miners just as important as investors. At the end of the day, the researchers running BOINC give this coin its value - not the 1.5% POS.

What has your experience with V8 been? I would love to hear from you all.

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