After some testing and consideration the easiest way to fix is a hard move to a new network magic number which does not invalidate the disk stored block chain, but will only invalidate the disk stored peer information. This requires an update and the transition will most likely result in some loss of coins because the network will be split into two partitions until all have updated their client.
As more and more hashing power moves from the older version to the newer, the block chain of the newer version will at some point grow faster than the block chain of the older version which is going to be overtaken (but up to that point each time 'overwritten' when a client moves from the older to the newer version). Anyone mining on the lower chain looses out (which is going to be first on the newer version, but then on the older). Benefits to move to the newer version are that network connectivity will get better again.
What would prevent us to do the opposite, that is, to build on purpose a longer chain than LTC, so LTC nodes would start to accept it?
Does the difficulty play any role, so that if LTC difficulty is larger than SMC one, the "disruption" can only be from LTC to SMC and not the opposite? Or it does not matter?
Our hashing power compared to the LTC network or most other LTC based networks is low; hence our difficulty is also low and even if we achieve at some point a higher block chain than other networks, our block chain is most likely incompatible with other networks difficulty requirements.
Also - we have a different genesis block and our blockchain is also not going to fulfill checkpoint requirements of other networks.
Anyway: that's not so much the problem here. Part of the problem is that our network is very very small compared to others and unfortunately, someone seeded a few 1000 (~4000) node ips from a different network. Now the network code tries to establish connections to those other foreign nodes and because of a mistake on my part (didn't use a unique network magic number) those connections are successful up to the point where it tries to catch up with the block chain. All in all it takes a long time until it is found out that the block chains are incompatible, thus it
takes shitload of time to find valid nodes. It also takes shitload of time for SMC wallet to realise some node is not SMC wallet, even though that other node is
constantly doing "sinister" deeds.
btw: IRC is not down, but the IRC nodes are only partly considered for connections. The clients exchange peer addresses independently of IRC.
The short version of this post:
--> Please update as soon as possible.