Here is the explanation of why we're currently stuck at block 250,001. There was an incompatibility between the updated legacy code and the new wallets, and the only mining pool that updated to v0.7.0 (Suprnova) was using the legacy code. As soon as we discovered the incompatibility, our team asked Suprnova to turn off their pool, since the blocks being mined after 250,001 will not be part of the blockchain after we get things started up again.

Last night, we released a patch to fix the problem in the legacy code, and informed Suprnova. They haven't yet restarted the pool though.

Anyone who wants to try to solo mine, can do so by compiling grantcoind from the latest version of the legacy code here: https://github.com/grantcoin/grantcoin-legacy. If you try this, please do a fresh blockchain download before you start to mine.

We also hope that Suprnova will start up again soon with the fix, and we'll inform you in this thread when that happens, so that people can mine again in the pool.

Our team is also testing a bug fix for the updated official code which had caused issues for Suprnova (which is why they were using the legacy version), and if all goes well, we'll release that tonight or tomorrow.

The other two pools (MaxMiners and AltMiners) have never responded to any messages from the Grantcoin Foundation about this fork, over the past couple of weeks, and as far as we're concerned these Grantcoin pools should be considered defunct and should not be used by anyone mining Grantcoin (unless we hear back from them, and if we do, we'll let the community know).