mmpool.org have got back to me to say that the pool found an ixcoin block using the new client. sounds like the client works for merge mining.

i contacted all the pools that I had contact info for that mine ixcoin. they were the only ones to respond so far.

i notified mmpool.org of my test result and they have updated the ixcoin client. they will contact me if there are any issues.

friction, a minor bug in your new ixcoin code. it seems to default rpcport to port 8337 which is the same port as the binary port. this results in an error on startup if user hasn't overridden port in ixcoin.conf. the ixcoin help notes rpc port defaults to 8338 but this is not what the code does.

i tested friction's ixcoin update for merge mining support. to do this i set up isolated network of bitcoin, ixcoin, i0coin, namecoin and devcoin. mining on this network at a lowered difficulty for test purposes generated a block on all the coins, including ixcoin. i believe the new client to be safe for merge mining from this test.

updating software on pools is risky. if the upgrade results in the loss of a block, or worse a bitcoin block, the pool can be substantially out of pocket.

has merge mining with the new client been tested? it should be easy to run a difficulty 1 'ixcoin in a box' network with old and new clients and make sure they accept each others blocks.

the other possibility is eligius or ghash are selling the coins they mined. they may be panicing that the time when ixcoin generation subsidy drops to zero is getting too close to risk further loss.

mazacoin isn't merge mineable so it'd be impressive if it got working on cex.io. yes, the maza website says it is supporting mm but the source code says otherwise.

this Devtome article on luajit appears to be plagiarized from this blog post. unless they are the same author of course. what can be done to prevent some things or verify they are the same author?

they provided a patch for old clients to apply which limited the number of transactions to <= 4,500. anyone running the old client will need to have this patch if they don't want to fork. better if they upgrade to the new one of course so maybe just advise on site that old clients will be unsupported.

is the port finished? ie. should people be updating already? looking at the source:

* bip16 and bip30 activate 2014-01-1. this is already past. people running the new client could get forked. p2sh transactions are currently unsafe until the majority upgrade. actually the source comment is wrong. it says '2014-01-01' but it is actually 2014-01-02 according to epoch.
* a patch will need to be made for old clients to update lock limits for bdb. without this old clients can be forked if transactions exceeding certain limits happens on new client. this was cause of the dogecoin fork and the bitcoin fork previously.

other than that i assume all is fine?

please provide https support to coinzen.org. i can't access it without https. a cryptocoin without encryption on its main forum is bizarre.

let me know when the new forum supports https.

difficulty seems to have jumped hugely the last day or two. it's now larger than i0coin. has it been picked up by other big pools or is it being traded on an exchange?

it was in the very early days of ixcoin, before merge mining was added to the coin. btcguild was the biggest ixcoin pool at the time.

coinzen does not appear to support https connection so i'll be unable to access it. it looks like user registration doesn't support it either. for a cryptocurrency it is important that forum discussions occur over encrypted medium so that text is not changed by third parties.

btcguild used to run an ixcoin pool before merge mining. when they shut it down they gave miners a week to withdraw the funds. after that they deleted the wallets. i'm sure there were a lot of coins in there then.

it's a big issue for casual users who wonder why their balance is wrong and transactions are unconfirmed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=460944.0

a rescan does not fix the issue. the issue affects all bitcoin versions. you are right that it doesn't result in stealing coins. it does result in incorrect balance reports and the inability to spend coins.

it would be wise for devcoin developers to apply these patches in a build:

* https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3651
* https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3654

this will protect devcoin users from problems if the transaction malleability griefers turn their attention to altcoins.