Why is the Block reward always dropping to 1 since the last few days?
The block reward is calculated based on the last block's difficulty and current network hashrate.
If the network hashrate jumps up a lot during low difficulty then it will result in a low block value.
Some pools and miners are configured that when the difficulty goes up they usually switch over to another coin - leaving a very difficult block for low hashrate to solve
PHC tries to automatically discourage this behavior. When the difficulty is high and hashrate is low - those are the most profitable blocks to solve! Pool jumpers are merely scratching the surface of their potential earnings..
I totally understand what the intension is by ajusting the block reward based on hashrate and last blocks diff but it was changing from 50 to 10 to 6,5,4,3,2,1 in a few minutes without any changes of network hashrate or anything else. No hashrate spikes or whatever. This behavior occured a couple of days ago for the first time and now it happened more often.
Am I just halluzinating that this is odd? I bet you can somehow track/check the hashrate and compare it to the block reward.
I am not complaining about your coin. I like it. Just trying to notify you about unusual behavior.
Pools often adjust the difficulty for the miners independently from the network... I will look into it more once I have completed the release of 1.0.0.4. I would like to start tracking / charting it in more detail, thanks for your feedback, I appreciate it.
Alternative-coins.net is doing a pretty good job at tracking the network thus far